What is a UFO?

I have had this spinning for some time and I thought it was time to share this with my fellow ats members and I hope the title of this thread made you smile.

Ok now to the serious stuff.

So we all know the term Unidentified Flying Object by now.

But every sighting has multiple stages.

At first sight it is unidentified

The ufo than if evidence is taken and brought forward gets identified or becomes unidentifiable.

Since the most unidentifiable are something that with some deeper research are things we can explain, again we come to what should be the real the real ufo term in my opinion and that should be.

Unexplainable Flying Object. (lol even Unreal would do)


What are your thoughts?

I like the term flying saucers. It just makes more sense. Unless its a cigar shaped one. In that case we could call it the "C" ship, C for Clinton.

depends on what how you define unidentified

like say after a lot of research you come to the conclusion that it is a craft that is not of this earth, it could still be considered unidentified, as its origin is unknown.

or it could look like something we have here but have no identifying markers or anything to lock it to a specific country or location and it could remain as unidentified.


i suppose if you were to determine it was of alien origin but couldn't pin it to a planet you could call it an under-identified flying object

or if it was really awesome it could mean uber flying object

reply to post by Grey Magic


The vast majority of sightings are nocturnal lights. There can be many explanations for these, from planets to shooting stars. If they do some types of maneuvers that are not consistent with known phenomena, they are unknown (although some could be military craft: helicopters, Harrier jets etc.)

The better cases are daylight sightings or close encounters of the first kind at night where the object is very close.

90 to 95% of all UFOs have a down to earth explanation to them. It is the others that need to be followed through.

I think the way Blue Book determined when to label something is unidentified is one of the only good things that came from it. Pretty much something should only be labeled as a UFO if there is no better explanation for what is being seen. I mean odds are if you see a light in the sky and it could either be a UFO or a star, chances are its a star. This way you filter out all of the evidence that is ambiguous and in the end doesn't really contribute anything to the field. Of course Blue Book went overboard with this approach and started applying mundane explanations to sightings that didn't fit their explanation at all.

reply to post by Xcalibur254


Good point, Xcalibur254. I think Occam's Razor should be used for most UFO cases.

I also like J Allen Hynek's classification system. It still works, although there is now a fourth kind to deal with abductions.