UFO

n., pl., UFOs, or UFO's.
An unidentified flying object.

Origin: 1953

It is no coincidence that the first reported sightings of unidentified flying objects came after the revelations of the secret military projects of World War II. America has always been a land of invention, from the cotton gin to the telephone, from the airplane to the Motel (1925). But wartime inventions raised the status of our technology from awe-inspiring to mythic. Working in total secrecy while spending billions of dollars building whole cities and manufacturing plants, the Manhattan Project succeeded in extracting the energy of the atom and building a doomsday weapon. What could not be accomplished by the American military working in secret? What else was being accomplished?

This was the background for sightings of peculiar objects in the skies, beginning in June 1947, in the Southwestern desert area which had so many secret military installations. The objects could be some new super-secret aircraft developed by the U.S. military. Or could they have been developed by some other technologically advanced beings, perhaps from beyond the Earth or the solar system? After all, we now knew that the technology to permit space travel was possible. And these elusive objects traveled far faster and maneuvered far more adroitly than even a jet airplane.

There were many skeptics, however, who considered the objects pie in the sky--or more exactly "flying saucers" (1947), since excited observers had described the objects as saucer-shaped. The name flying saucers caught on, making serious research difficult. As a 1953 book Flying Saucers Have Landed complained, "ever since the cliché 'flying saucer' was coined, the greatest and most exciting mystery of our age has been automatically reduced to the level of a music hall joke."

The believers preferred the solemn government designation unidentified flying object, first used in 1950. But that was a little weighty for everyday use, so in 1953 the acronym UFO was coined to replace it. It has dignified the pursuit of the elusive objects ever since. Those who study them have been known at least since 1959 as ufologists, and their field of study has been ufology. But most people still couldn't find the alien spaceship in the tail of the Hale-Bopp comet of 1997, and the saucers--oops, UFOs--still haven't landed on the White House lawn.

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The UFO phenomenon consists of reports of unusual flying objects that remain unidentified after scientific inquiry. It first came to public attention in the United States in 1947, when a pilot reported seeing nine unusual objects flying in formation in the state of Washington. Since 1947, the U.S. federal government, private research institutions, and individual scientists have collected data about the phenomenon. Although UFOs are not a phenomenon unique to the United States, American organizations and private individuals have taken the lead in collecting, analyzing, and publishing sighting reports.

The most publicized collection agency was the U.S. Air Force through its Projects Sign (1948), Grudge (1948–1951), and Blue Book (1951–1969). The Air Force also sponsored research by the Battelle Memorial Institute in 1955 and the University of Colorado in the late 1960s. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, and other U.S. government agencies also looked into the phenomenon. Congressional hearings were held on the subject in 1966 and 1968. The goal of the U.S. government was to determine whether the UFO phenomenon was a threat to national security. Unable to find the threat, the government stopped collecting reports from the public in 1969.

Private research institutions, including the Aerial Phenomenon Research Organization (APRO), the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), the Mutual UFO Network, the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies, and the Fund for UFO Research, have collected and analyzed reports since 1952. Even the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) conducted a study in 1971.

Nearly all research efforts have determined that a small but significant number of sightings remain "unidentified" after scientific investigation. This is especially true with reports made by the most articulate witnesses and containing the most data. Although the primary objective of private UFO researchers was to collect and analyze reports, they also sought to convince the public and the scientific community of the legitimacy of the subject. Their task was made all the more difficult by ridicule, caused in part by the perceived unlikelihood of the phenomenon's extraterrestrial origin, and in part by publicity hungry charlatans and self-promoters ("contactees") who, beginning in the 1950s, made fictitious claims about meeting "space brothers" and traveling to distant planets, or hinted darkly about secret government conspiracies with aliens.

In addition to the problem of ridicule, serious researchers found it difficult, although not impossible, to gather "hard" evidence of the unconventional nature of the phenomenon. They amassed photos, films, videotapes, radar tracings, and great numbers of multiple witness reports of objects on or near the ground. They reported studies of UFO effects on electrical and mechanical devices, animals, and humans. They studied soil samples purportedly altered by landed UFOs. In spite of all this, they were unable to present artifacts of a UFO—the hard evidence that most scientists demanded.

Since the late 1940s, the UFO phenomenon has entered U.S. popular culture, and it has become a staple of motion pictures, television shows, advertising copy, and media images. As early as 1950 it proved to be one of the most recognized phenomena in Gallup Poll history, and it has continued to play an important role in popular culture.

In the early 1960s, people began to claim that they were abducted into UFOs. Although UFO researchers at first considered these reports to be an "exotic"—and probably psychological—sidelight of the main sighting phenomenon, abduction accounts grew steadily in number. Evidence for abductions was mainly derived from human memory, usually retrieved through hypnosis. But the people who reported being abducted were not "contactees" or self-promoters and appeared to be genuinely concerned about what had happened to them. In the 1980s, the numbers of people who came forward with abduction accounts had begun to rise dramatically, and a 1998 Roper Poll of 5,995 adults suggested that as many as a million Americans believed they had been abducted. By the end of the twentieth century, the abduction phenomenon had come to dominate UFO research.

In spite of extensive efforts in the second half of the twentieth century, attitudes toward the legitimacy of the UFO phenomenon and the research into it changed little. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, researchers had failed to convince the scientific community of the phenomenon's legitimacy, they had not developed a standardized methodology to retrieve alleged abduction accounts, and no UFO organization had gained the academic backing to professionalize both UFO and abduction research. Yet after half a century of study, UFO proponents had advanced knowledge of the subject greatly, and some even claimed that a solution to the mystery of UFO origins and motivations seemed possible.

In the twenty-first century, the UFO phenomenon persisted, apparently unaffected by societal events. It continued to maintain a ubiquitous presence in popular culture, researchers continued to study it, and, although scientists and academics still scorned it, ordinary people continued to report both sightings and abduction accounts.

Bibliography

Clark, Jerome. The UFO Encyclopedia. 2ded. Detroit, Mich.: Visible Ink, 1998.

Dean, Jodi. Aliens in America. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997.

Hopkins, Budd. Intruders. New York: Random House, 1981.

Jacobs, David M. The UFO Controversy in America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975.

———. Secret Life. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992.

(yooh-ef-oh)

The abbreviation for unidentified flying object. Sometimes referred to colloquially as “flying saucers.” Most UFO sightings have prosaic explanations; there is no hard evidence that extraterrestrial beings are visiting Earth.

• Artist: UFO
• Rating:
• Release Date: 1971
• Total Time: 39:05
• Genre: Rock

Review

Recorded on a shoestring budget, UFO has several challenging sonic moments. The uneven mixes and amateur performances that some listeners might find quaint or innocent could be distracting to others. In their pre-Michael Schenker days, the British band made a much more experimental noise that reflected psychedelic as well as R&B influences pitched with a dark resonance. This swirling mish-mosh barely suggests the early British metal of the group's commercial pinnacle that was still years off when they released their eponymous debut. Blue Cheer, early Black Sabbath, and maybe a little bit of the Who (mostly derived via bassist Pete Way's meandering, over-saturated basslines) all come to mind on standouts like "Boogie," "C'mon Everybody," and "Follow You Home." While ignored completely in the States as well as their British home, U F O was a bit of an international hit. "C'mon Everybody" made it to the top of the charts in Japan, which led to a tour of the country and enough career momentum to keep the records coming while the sound of (and worldwide market for) heavy metal slowly took shape. While far from being the best offering from Pete Way, Phil Mogg, and company, U F O is a nice pre-metal study that reveals how the blues/psychedelic amalgam inspired would-be metal artists before pop was injected into the genre. ~ Vincent Jeffries, All Music Guide

Tracks

Track Title	Composers	Performers	Time
Unidentified Flying Object	Mick Bolton, Phil Mogg, Andy Parker, Pete Way	UFO	(2:19)
Boogie	Mick Bolton, Phil Mogg, Andy Parker, Pete Way	UFO	(4:17)
C'mon Everybody (Lyrics)	Eddie Cochran, Jerry Capehart	UFO	(3:12)
Shake It About (Lyrics)	Mick Bolton, Phil Mogg, Andy Parker, Pete Way	UFO	(3:47)
(Come Away) Melinda	Fred Hellerman, Gérald Minkoff	UFO	(5:06)
Timothy (Lyrics)	Mick Bolton, Phil Mogg, Andy Parker, Pete Way	UFO	(3:29)
Follow You Home (Lyrics)	Pete Way	UFO	(2:14)
Treacle People	Mick Bolton	UFO	(3:24)
Who Do You Love	Ellas McDaniel	UFO	(7:50)
Evil (Lyrics)	Pete Way	UFO	(3:27)

Credits

UFO (Main Performer), Mick Bolton (Guitar), Guy Fletcher (Producer), Phil Mogg (Vocals), Andy Parker (Drums), Pete Way (Bass), Pete Way (Guitar (Bass)), Doug Flett (Producer)

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Dansk (Danish)
n. - Uidentificeret Flyvende Objekt, UFO

Nederlands (Dutch)
UFO (unidentified flying object)

Français (French)
n. - (abrév = Unidentified Flying Object) objet volant non-identifiable

Deutsch (German)
n. - Ufo

Ελληνική (Greek)
abbr. - αγνώστου ταυτότητας ιπτάμενο αντικείμενο, ΑΤΙΑ

Italiano (Italian)
U.F.O.

Português (Portuguese)
abbr. - OVNI

Русский (Russian)
НЛО

Español (Spanish)
n. - OVNI, objeto volador no identificado

Svenska (Swedish)
abbr. - UFO, flygande tefat

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
不明飞行物, 飞碟

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 不明飛行物, 飛碟

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 미확인 비행 물체, 비행 접시

日本語 (Japanese)
abbr. - 未確認飛行物体

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(اختصار) حركه غير معروفه ( في السماء او في البر)‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮עצם בלתי מזוהה, עב"מ‬

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ufo	radio controlled ufo
Ufo Pants