Topic
The books, broadcasts, films, podcasts and reporting that shaped what the public knows. 342 events, newest first.
Media26 May 2019
The New York Times published on-record accounts from Navy F/A-18 pilots, including Lt. Ryan Graves and Lt. Danny Accoin, of objects seen almost daily off the East Coast in 2014-2015, including a near collision. The Navy said it was updating its guidance for reporting such sightings.
Photo: U.S. House Committee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs, Public domain
Media26 May 2019
The Black Vault posted Dave Beaty's documentary The Nimitz Encounters in full on YouTube with his permission. The film retells the November 2004 Tic Tac events off southern California through CGI re-creations based on accounts from sailors and naval aviators.
Photo: United States Navy, Public domain
Media13 May 2019
Stanton Friedman, a nuclear physicist who lectured on UFOs for five decades and whom a colleague called the original civilian investigator of the Roswell crash, died at 84 at Toronto Pearson airport while returning home to Fredericton. He said he never saw a UFO himself.
Photo: SMG2019, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media15 Apr 2019
Harvard's Amir Siraj and Avi Loeb posted a paper arguing that a small meteor that hit the atmosphere near Papua New Guinea on January 8, 2014, recorded in U.S. government fireball data, had an orbit showing it came from outside the solar system. The claim remains debated.
Photo: Aloeb, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media15 Jan 2019
The CW premiered Roswell, New Mexico, its second adaptation of Melinda Metz's Roswell High novels about aliens living in the town, after the WB's Roswell series of 1999.
Media8 Jan 2019
History premiered a period drama from executive producer Robert Zemeckis, starring Aidan Gillen as astronomer J. Allen Hynek, with episodes drawn from Air Force Blue Book cases. It ran two seasons before History ended it in 2020.
Photo: U.S. Air Force, Public domain
Media2019
UNC Wilmington religious studies professor D. W. Pasulka published 'American Cosmic' with Oxford University Press. Based on six years of interviews with scientists and tech figures who believe in extraterrestrial contact, it treats UFO belief as a new, technology-centered form of religion.
Media12 Nov 2018
Harvard astronomers Shmuel Bialy and Avi Loeb argued in a peer-reviewed letter that sunlight pressure could explain the first known interstellar object's odd acceleration if it were a very thin sheet, raising the possibility of an artificial light sail. Most astronomers favored natural explanations.
Photo: Alan Fitzsimmons (Queen's University Belfast), Isaac Newton Group, Public domain
MediaSep 2018
Ryan Eslinger's film UFO, with Alex Sharp and Gillian Anderson, follows a math student trying to explain a saucer-like object seen hovering over an airport runway. One review said the story was based on an unexplained sighting at a Chicago airport.
Media22 Mar 2018
Stanford and UCSF researchers published a whole-genome study in Genome Research showing that 'Ata', a tiny skeleton from Chile's Atacama Desert promoted in a 2013 UFO documentary as possibly alien, was a human female, likely a fetus, carrying rare bone-related mutations.
Media9 Mar 2018
Former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence Christopher Mellon argued in the Washington Post that military UAP encounters were going largely unanalyzed and urged a serious collection effort. Later commentary credited the piece with helping move the topic into mainstream news.
Photo: Max Moszkowicz, CC BY 3.0
Media3 Jan 2018
Fox premiered season 11 of The X-Files with the episode My Struggle III, continuing the revival in which agents Mulder and Scully search for their son William amid a looming global threat.
Photo: Fox Broadcasting Company, Public domain
Media2018
Filmmaker Jeremy Corbell's feature revisited Bob Lazar's 1989 claim of working on alien craft near Area 51. The Orchard acquired it in 2018 for release that year; it later reached Netflix in 2019, and Lazar then appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast. Lazar's education claims have long been disputed.
Media16 Dec 2017
The New York Times reported that the Pentagon had run a little-known Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, funded with about $22 million from 2008 to 2011. The story ran with two Navy videos and said Luis Elizondo had led the program.
Photo: United States Navy, Public domain
Media13 Dec 2017
The Breakthrough Listen project pointed West Virginia's Green Bank Telescope at 'Oumuamua, the first known interstellar object, across four radio bands. Its initial results found no sign of artificial signals, though most of the data was still being analyzed.
Photo: NRAO/AUI/NSF, CC BY 4.0
Media1 Sep 2017
Sony Pictures marked the 40th anniversary of Close Encounters of the Third Kind with a 4K restoration from the original camera negative and a one-week U.S. and Canadian theatrical run of the Director's Cut starting September 1, 2017.
Photo: Owen Byrne from Mountain View, USA, CC BY 2.0
MediaAug 2017
To The Stars Academy's August 2017 SEC filing lists Christopher Mellon, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence and Senate Intelligence Committee staff director, on its advisory board. He was presented with the team at its October launch.
Photo: Max Moszkowicz, CC BY 3.0
MediaJul 2017
In June 2017 the streaming site Gaia and journalist Jaime Maussan promoted a 'three-fingered' body said to come from Nazca, Peru. In July Peruvian scientists said they would file a complaint over altered ancient remains, with the Ministry of Culture and prosecutors to review.
Media28 May 2017
In a CBS 60 Minutes profile of his space company by Lara Logan, Las Vegas businessman Robert Bigelow said he was convinced of an existing alien presence on Earth. CBS reported the FAA had confirmed it once referred UFO reports to a firm Bigelow owned.
Photo: Bill Ingalls, Public domain
Media21 Apr 2017
Cinelou Films released Phoenix Forgotten, a found-footage horror film imagining teenagers who vanish while filming a search for the source of the 1997 Phoenix Lights. Ridley Scott was among its producers. The story is fiction.
