The prospect of finding an example of life evolved in another solar system, completely separate from humans, yet similar enough to communicate with us, fills the mind with wonder: just imagine what we might learn from our new friends! The experience would be sublime, transforming, even spiritual. Alternately, aliens could wage war and wipe us out of existence in a blink, but that's just pessimism.

A great many of us want to believe, just like Fox Mulder, but few of us are quite as desperate or gullible. How do we know which evidence to count, and how much to count it for? Outlined below are the most popular mediums of UFO evidence yet used, and just how well they measure up to scrutiny.

Eyewitness reports:

Written, first and second-hand accounts of UFO sightings are the most common and most traditional form of UFO evidence, stretching back to the earliest days of recorded history and reaching across human cultures. Thutmose III, who ruled Egypt from 1504 to 1450 BCE, witnessed a silent ball of fire in the sky at nighttime; in 1133 CE, Japanese farmers reportedly saw a disc-shaped craft nearly touch the ground, then fly away. Despite this, eyewitness reports are also the weakest form of evidence we have.

Humans couldn't have developed into such massively social beings without a tendency to trust one another. We couldn't function properly if we demanded concrete evidence of every word uttered. Combined with overconfidence in our senses, this has given us an overwhelming tendency to take our own eyewitness accounts, as well as those of others, very seriously. When it comes to the strange and extravagant, however, the usefulness of our trusting nature starts to crumble.

Eyewitness accounts of UFOs are falsely considered to be highly reliable by many, but in fact, our eyes can deceive us, especially when looking at things in the sky: the location of the object disables our ability to judge size and distance, and sometimes stationary objects can appear to be moving. Even trained airline pilots have trouble with this! To test this fact, you only have to notice how the moon seems larger at the horizon than when high in the sky, despite remaining the same size and the same distance away the entire time.

Additionally, we must admit that people can lie, and probably do it more than we'd like to think. More documentation than eyewitness accounts is needed, then, to give weight to our collection of UFO evidence.

Photographs:

Pictures can easily

• 1
• 2
• next page >>

---

Add your voice

Know something about What constitutes UFO evidence??
We want to hear your view. Write now!