Culture and science
Scientific studies, academic projects, panels and surveys. 227 events, newest first.
Media1996
David Twohy's The Arrival starred Charlie Sheen as a SETI radio astronomer who detects an alien signal, is fired, and uncovers aliens disguised as humans who are secretly warming Earth. It was overshadowed by Independence Day, released soon after.
Photo: Angela George, CC BY-SA 3.0
Close encountersAug 1995
After a year-long faculty review of psychiatrist John Mack's work with people reporting alien abductions, Harvard Medical School chose not to censure him. Its dean affirmed Mack's academic freedom but warned him to keep to the faculty's research standards.
Photo: Becket01, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings1 Dec 1994
Night-shift workers at a forest farm near Guiyang reported a roar, bright light and violent wind, and trees across a wide strip were snapped. A local UFO group proposed a hovering craft; academician Ouyang Ziyuan attributed the damage to a thunderstorm downburst.
Photo: Akira CA, CC BY-SA 3.0
Close encounters19 Nov 1994
Psychologist Susan Blackmore argued in New Scientist that abduction accounts need not come from disturbed people: sleep paralysis may supply a real core experience, and suggestion and memory reconstruction can turn it into a vivid, sincerely believed abduction story.
Photo: Zooterkin, CC BY-SA 3.0
Close encounters16 Sep 1994
About 60 children at the Ariel School outside Harare said they saw a craft land near the playground and figures beside it. A BBC crew filmed interviews days later, and Harvard psychiatrist John Mack interviewed pupils. Skeptics cite mass suggestion after a rocket re-entry fireball days earlier.
Sightings14 Sep 1994
On the night of 14 September 1994 a bright fireball display was reported over Zimbabwe and seen as far as Zambia and Botswana, two days before the Ariel School sighting. Investigator Cynthia Hind logged dozens of reports; astronomers attributed the display to meteors.
Close encounters25 Apr 1994
TIME reported that Donna Bassett, a Boston writer, said she invented an abduction story and faked hypnotic-regression sessions with Harvard psychiatrist John Mack, who she said asked leading questions. Mack cited patient confidentiality; she repeated the account at a skeptics' conference in 1995.
Photo: Becket01, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings24 Mar 1994
Scientists met in Hessdalen, Norway, in March 1994 for the first international workshop on the valley's recurring unexplained lights. Organized from Ostfold University College, it launched the second phase of Project Hessdalen and plans for instrumented study.
Photo: Unknown author, CC BY-SA 4.0
Close encounters1994
Harvard Medical School psychiatrist John E. Mack published Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens, drawn from his work with people who said they had been taken by aliens. Harvard reviewed his methods and in 1995 decided not to censure him, affirming his academic freedom.
Photo: Becket01, CC BY-SA 4.0
Close encounters1994
Chinese and foreign media reported that a craft had landed on Phoenix Mountain at a forest farm in Wuchang, and farm worker Meng Zhaoguo claimed he was abducted by aliens. Astronomer Liu Yan analyzed the accounts and in 1995 concluded it was likely hallucination or delusion if not invented.
Photo: Jay Fang, CC BY-SA 3.0
GovernmentDec 1993
The European Parliament's energy and research committee issued a report by physicist and MEP Tullio Regge on a 1990 motion to create a European centre for observing UFOs. The proposal never led to an EU body.
Photo: Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0
Close encountersNov 1993
Psychologist Nicholas Spanos and colleagues at Carleton University reported in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology that UFO reporters scored no higher on psychopathology tests than comparison groups, but that intense experiences were more often sleep-related.
Close encounters1993
Harvard psychiatrist John E. Mack started PEER through his Center for Psychology and Social Change, with funding from Laurance Rockefeller, to study how reported alien encounters affected people's lives and worldviews, without trying to prove or disprove them. It ended in 2002.
Photo: Becket01, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings9 Oct 1992
A bright, fragmenting fireball crossed several eastern U.S. states and was caught on at least 16 independent videos before a meteorite struck a parked car in Peekskill, New York. Scientists used the videos to reconstruct its orbit, a well-documented natural object in the sky.
Photo: Wknight94, CC BY-SA 3.0
Close encounters12 Mar 1992
Temple University historian David M. Jacobs published Secret Life with Simon and Schuster, drawing on hypnotic-regression sessions with more than 60 people who said they were abducted. He argued abductions were real and widespread; critics questioned his reliance on hypnosis.
Photo: Hinata47d, CC BY-SA 4.0
MediaMar 1992
Ballantine Books published Jacques Vallee's account of his 1990 trip to the Soviet Union, where under glasnost he met Soviet scientists and researchers and interviewed people reporting UFO encounters.
Photo: Christopher Michel, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media1992
Nuclear physicist turned UFO lecturer Stanton Friedman and Don Berliner published Crash at Corona (Paragon House), arguing the U.S. military recovered a crashed UFO in New Mexico in 1947 and hid it. Air Force reports in the 1990s instead tied the Roswell accounts to balloon projects.
Photo: AllenS, Public domain
Close encounters1992
University of Connecticut psychologist Kenneth Ring, known for near-death experience research, published The Omega Project, which set reports of near-death experiences alongside reports of UFO encounters and asked whether the two kinds of experiencer share traits.
Photo: Kenneth Ring, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sightings1990
A photo said to show a lighted triangle over Petit-Rechain became the best-known image of the Belgian wave and was analyzed by the Royal Military Academy and others. Its author later admitted it was a hoax.
Photo: J.S. Henrardi, Public domain
Media1990
Jacques Vallee published 'Five Arguments Against the Extraterrestrial Origin of Unidentified Flying Objects' in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, arguing that the reports did not fit a simple visiting-spacecraft explanation.
Photo: Cmichel67, CC BY-SA 4.0
Close encounters12 May 1989
Psychiatrist Rima Laibow founded TREAT (Treatment and Research of Experienced Anomalous Trauma) and held its first conference at Fairfield University, bringing clinicians together to discuss people reporting abductions. She treated the symptoms as real while leaving their cause open.
Photo: Doc Searls, CC BY-SA 2.0
Government1988
France's space agency CNES dissolved its UFO study group GEPAN and its scientific council, after years of shrinking resources, and replaced it with SEPRA, a service focused on atmospheric reentries. CNES later said SEPRA was left with a single staff member and no editorial authority.
Government1987
Stanford astrophysicist Peter Sturrock published a review of the Air Force-funded Condon Report in the first issue of the Journal of Scientific Exploration. He argued the director's summary differed substantially from the staff's case findings, which stressed unanswered questions.
Close encounters1987
Folklorist Thomas E. Bullard, who earned his doctorate at Indiana University, catalogued about 300 abduction reports for the Fund for UFO Research in UFO Abductions: The Measure of a Mystery. He reported that the more reliable accounts shared many details of sequence and content.
Media1987
The Society for Scientific Exploration began publishing the Journal of Scientific Exploration in 1987, a peer-reviewed outlet for research on anomalies outside established fields. Its papers have included work by UFO researchers such as Jacques Vallee.
