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The latest events on the record: hearings, official reports, releases and reported encounters. Each one links to its sources.
Sightings2010
Physicists G.S. Paiva and C.A. Taft proposed in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics that the Hessdalen lights are clusters of Coulomb crystals in a plasma made by radon decay ionizing dusty air. It is a theoretical model, not an observation.
Photo: Unknown author, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media2010
Gareth Edwards' very low-budget film Monsters is set in Mexico six years after a NASA probe returning from space crashed, leaving creatures in an 'infected zone' near the U.S. border. Edwards, a former BBC effects artist, created its effects himself.
Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0
Media2010
NBC ordered The Event in May 2010, a conspiracy thriller in which a man's search for his missing fiancee exposes 'the biggest cover-up in U.S. history' involving a mysterious group of detainees. NBC cancelled it after one season.
Photo: Greg Hernandez, CC BY 2.0
Sightings9 Dec 2009
A large white spiral with a blue tail was seen and photographed over northern Norway on the morning of Dec. 9, 2009. Russia's Defense Ministry said the next day a Bulava missile test had failed in its third stage; analysts widely tied the spiral to it, though Russia did not confirm the link.
Photo: Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation, CC BY 4.0
GovernmentDec 2009
The Ministry of Defence closed its UFO desk, hotline and email address after officials advised that no UFO report in over 50 years had shown a threat to the UK. The MoD stopped investigating sightings; files on the closure were released in 2013.
Photo: ArildV, CC BY-SA 3.0
Government25 Nov 2009
At a member's request, the Bundestag's research service wrote a paper on the search for extraterrestrial life and the UN decision on UFO observation. The Bundestag refused a 2010 freedom-of-information request for it; Germany's top administrative court ordered access in June 2015.
Photo: Jorg Braukmann, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media20 Nov 2009
Planet 51, a computer-animated comedy from Madrid's Ilion Animation Studios, opened in U.S. theaters through Sony's TriStar. It reverses the flying-saucer formula: a human astronaut lands on a world of green beings living in a 1950s-style suburbia gripped by fear of alien invaders.
Government6 Nov 2009
The Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences hosted scientists at the Casina Pio IV from November 6 to 10, 2009, for a study week on astrobiology, covering the origin of life, habitable planets and the search for life and intelligence beyond Earth.
Photo: Jean-Pol GRANDMONT, CC BY-SA 3.0
Media3 Nov 2009
ABC premiered a new version of V, the 1983 miniseries about outwardly friendly alien visitors. The first episode drew about 14.3 million viewers, according to Nielsen figures reported at the time.
Photo: Kristin Dos Santos, CC BY-SA 2.0
MediaNov 2009
Universal agreed to pay the Alaska Press Club after promotion for The Fourth Kind, a film about alleged abductions in Nome, used fabricated news stories attributed to real Alaska papers. The deal included removing the fake articles from the web.
Photo: Sir Mildred Pierce , from North Augusta, South Carolina , USA, CC BY 2.0
Sightings8 Oct 2009
Residents near Bone in South Sulawesi reported a loud blast and fireball. NASA's NEO office said an undetected asteroid of about 5-10 m exploded in the atmosphere with roughly 50 kilotons of energy, recorded by 11 international infrasound stations.
Photo: Midori, CC BY 3.0
MediaOct 2009
A Colorado couple said their 6-year-old son had floated away in a homemade saucer-shaped helium balloon, setting off a chase and search costing at least $62,000. The boy was found at home; the parents pleaded guilty to charges over the staged stunt and were sentenced.
Photo: Sgt. Benjamin Crane, Public domain
Sightings25 Sep 2009
Seven all-sky cameras of Western University's Southern Ontario Meteor Network recorded a fireball about 100 times brighter than the full Moon at 9:03 pm. Analysis pointed to the Niagara Peninsula, and a 46 g fragment was found on the hood of an SUV with a cracked windshield in Grimsby.
Close encountersSep 2009
As Yukio Hatoyama prepared to become Japan's prime minister, wide press coverage noted that his wife Miyuki had written in a 2008 book that her soul rode a triangular UFO to Venus while she slept. She said a former husband had called it a dream.
Photo: Lawrence Jackson, White House photographer, Public domain
Media14 Aug 2009
TriStar released Neill Blomkamp's District 9 in the U.S., a film about stranded aliens confined to a Johannesburg camp. It received four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.
Photo: Natasha Baucas at https://www.flickr.com/photos/sdnatasha, CC BY 2.0
GovernmentAug 2009
The National Archives put online a fourth batch of Ministry of Defence UFO files: 14 files, about 4,000 pages, spanning 1981-1996. Highlights included Rendlesham Forest correspondence, the 1989-90 Belgian wave and London sightings the MoD traced to an advertising airship.
Photo: Eirian Evans, CC BY-SA 2.0
MediaJul 2009
Torchwood's five-part third series, Children of Earth, aired on consecutive nights in July 2009 on the BBC and then BBC America. Children around the world start chanting 'We are coming', and a Home Office official manages the crisis in a story critics compared to The X-Files.
Government24 Jun 2009
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wrote to Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn asking for a restricted special access program for parts of the DIA aerospace study he called AATIP, citing sensitive findings. A November 2009 DIA review found no justification for the protection.
Photo: United States Congress, Public domain
Media27 Mar 2009
DreamWorks Animation's 'Monsters vs. Aliens' opened in the U.S., an animated comedy in which government-held monsters fight an alien invasion, built as an affectionate parody of 1950s monster and flying-saucer films.
Photo: Casey Kennelly, CC BY 2.0
Media20 Mar 2009
Summit Entertainment released Alex Proyas's 'Knowing', with Nicolas Cage as an MIT astrophysicist decoding a 50-year-old list of disaster dates. Mysterious 'whisper people' prove to be benevolent aliens who carry chosen children away before a solar flare ends life on Earth.
Photo: Sachyn, CC BY-SA 3.0
