UFO

A UFO is an Unidentified Flying Object. Since man first started looking up into the skies he saw things he couldn't explain. For the last fifty years or so these things have taken on the label "UFOs." Originally an abbreviation for the Air Force term "Unidentified Flying Object", it has become a synonym to most people for "Alien Spaceship." For the Air Force, though, it is simply a term to refer to something in the skies that the observer can see but not recognize. It is "Something seen in the sky (or on the land, or exceptionally in the water, but thought capable of flight) which the witness could not identify and thought sufficiently strange to report to either an official or unofficial investigating body". A UFO is the stimulus for a UFO report made by a UFO witness. UFO researchers (often called UFOlogists) study UFO reports and witnesses. UFO researchers cannot directly study UFOs. There are some reports in the literature of different governments recovering craft thought to cause UFO reports, but most of these reports are speculative. The study of UFO reports is referred to as UFOlogy. This implies a scientific basis to the study, when in practice very little scientific research is carried out. After careful investigation about 90% of all UFO reports can be reasonably explained as either natural phenomena or misidentification of normal manmade devices. Sometimes the term IFO is used for these Identified Flying Objects. Those cases which are identified as natural phenomena are often rare or short lived and are worthy of study in their own right. In the early days of investigation used interchangeably with the term 'Flying Saucer'. More recently the term Flying Saucer has fallen into disuse, although some researchers use it as a term to specifically refer to an extraterrestrial spacecraft.