Newest first
The latest events on the record: hearings, official reports, releases and reported encounters. Each one links to its sources.
Sightings10 May 2004
A dozen members of the UT Dallas Society of Physics Students spent May 10-14, 2004 filming the Marfa lights, counting traffic on U.S. 67 and sending a chase car. Their 2005 progress report found all lights reliably observed during the study were car headlights.
Photo: Allison Meier from Brooklyn, United States, CC BY 2.0
WhistleblowersMay 2004
Jean-Jacques Velasco, who had led the French space agency's UFO office SEPRA since 1987, published a book arguing that UFOs exist and probably have an extraterrestrial origin. CNES said the view was his alone, as SEPRA disappeared from its organization chart.
Military5 Mar 2004
A Mexican Air Force surveillance plane on a drug patrol recorded up to 11 lights visible only in infrared over Campeche. The Defense Ministry gave the video to a UFO researcher, and it aired in May 2004; a later analysis argued the lights were distant oil-platform flares.
Photo: Zahpo75, Public domain
Sightings4 Jan 2004
A daylight fireball seen by thousands across northern Spain at about 16:46 UTC exploded roughly 30 km above Palencia province. The Spanish Fireball Network used photos and video to reconstruct its path, ruled out a satellite reentry, and meteorite fragments were recovered in the following weeks.
Photo: Valdavia, CC BY-SA 4.0
Government2004
The Brazilian Commission of Ufologists, coordinated by Revista UFO editor A. J. Gevaerd, launched a 2004 campaign asking the government to open its UFO files. Organizers say it led to meetings with Air Force and Defense Ministry officials and to later document releases to the National Archives.
Close encounters2004
Harvard psychologists Richard McNally and Susan Clancy reported in Psychological Science that people who believed they were abducted reacted physiologically to their abduction memories much like trauma patients. They argued that strong belief, not real events, can drive such reactions.
Government2004
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson wrote the foreword to The Roswell Dig Diaries, a book on a Sci Fi Channel-funded 2002 dig at the alleged crash site, saying the mystery had never been adequately explained. In 2007, as a presidential candidate, he said he would consider releasing Roswell files.
Photo: U. S. Department of Energy, Public domain
Skinwalker Ranch2004
Robert Bigelow's National Institute for Discovery Science, which had studied the Utah ranch since 1996, ended its work after operating from 1995 to 2004, according to former associates. Its research later continued in a new form as Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies.
Photo: Bill Ingalls, Public domain
Military2004
Studies by Magnus Wahlberg and Hakan Westerberg (2003) and by Ben Wilson, Robert Batty and Lawrence Dill (2004) showed herring make pulsed sounds by releasing gas. Wahlberg had been asked to examine noises the Swedish navy linked to submarine activity. The work won a 2004 Ig Nobel Prize.
Photo: Gervais et Boulart, Public domain
Sightings2004
Italian astrophysicist Massimo Teodorani published 'A Long-Term Scientific Survey of the Hessdalen Phenomenon' in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, reviewing instrumented observations of the Norwegian valley lights. Later papers cite it as an early proposal of a geological origin.
Photo: Unknown author, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings15 Oct 2003
China's first astronaut, Yang Liwei, said in a 2016 interview that during his 2003 Shenzhou 5 flight he heard a knocking like a hammer on an iron bucket that ground teams could not reproduce. Later crews reported similar sounds; proposed causes include thermal flexing.
Photo: Dyor, CC BY-SA 3.0
Media13 Sep 2003
A stainless-steel Mothman sculpture by retired welder Bob Roach was unveiled in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, with author John Keel as guest of honor. It became a tourist landmark for the town's 1966-67 creature reports.
Photo: Csassen13, CC0
Media8 Aug 2003
Rakesh Roshan's Hindi film Koi... Mil Gaya opened in India. Hrithik Roshan plays a young man who befriends a small blue alien, nicknamed Jadu, left behind by a spacecraft. Variety reported it as a runaway hit; critics noted its debt to E.T.
Photo: Bollywood Hungama, CC BY 3.0
Sightings26 Mar 2003
Just before midnight a bright flash lit the sky over Chicago's south suburbs and stony meteorites fell through roofs and windows in Park Forest. Field Museum research later tied the stones to an asteroid breakup about 470 million years ago.
Photo: James St. John, CC BY 2.0
Media21 Mar 2003
Warner Bros. released Lawrence Kasdan's 'Dreamcatcher', from Stephen King's 2001 novel. Aliens crash a spaceship in the Maine woods, including a grey humanoid called 'Mr. Gray', while a military colonel played by Morgan Freeman wages a long secret war against them.
Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0
SightingsMar 2003
University of Queensland neuroscientist Jack Pettigrew proposed that outback Queensland's Min Min light is an inverted mirage, or Fata Morgana, carrying distant natural or man-made lights over the horizon during temperature inversions, based on his own observations and a field demonstration.
Photo: www.gondwananet.com, CC BY-SA 3.0
Close encounters2003
Atria Books published 'Sight Unseen: Science, UFO Invisibility and Transgenic Beings' by abduction researcher Budd Hopkins and co-author Carol Rainey, which argued that alleged abductions involve beings and craft able to stay unseen. The claims are not established.
Photo: Carol Rainey, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media1 Jan 2003
After Art Bell announced his retirement in October 2002, citing back problems, George Noory was named to take over the late-night paranormal talk show Coast to Coast AM on January 1, 2003.
Photo: SMG2019, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media2003
Jang Joon-hwan's South Korean black comedy Save the Green Planet! follows a man who kidnaps a pharmaceutical executive he believes is an alien from Andromeda plotting to destroy Earth.
Photo: MediaLog Movie (YouTube), CC BY 4.0
Media27 Dec 2002
Brigitte Boisselier of Clonaid, a company founded by the UFO-based Raelian movement, told a Florida news conference that a cloned baby girl called Eve had been born. She offered no proof, and no independent verification was ever produced.
Photo: Asklepioscaduceus, CC BY-SA 3.0
