The Sky Isn’t the Limit

Flying saucers have captured our imagination for decades, but is there any shred of truth in them or are they just myths?

Delve into your fascination of the unknown this World UFO Day

Mankind has always looked up at the sky, wondering whether we are truly alone in the universe. Every year on July 2, Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) and alien enthusiasts gather on World UFO Day to collectively look up at the sky and search for something unexplainable.

This quirky day has been celebrated since 2001 and the date was chosen to coincide with the infamous Roswell incident when a flying object crash-landed in a field. Conspiracy theories claim the object was actually that of a flying saucer, though the government claimed it was a weather balloon.

However, many Americans remain sceptical of the government’s claim even decades later. A poll conducted in 1997 by CNN and Time found that nearly two-thirds of respondents believed a UFO had crashed in Roswell.

While some may think of World UFO Day as a joke, the annual celebration has a goal to raise awareness of “the undoubted existence of UFOS” and to encourage governments to declassify their files on UFO sightings.

FASCINATION WITH THE UNKNOWN

We may think of man’s fascination with UFOS to be a fairly recent phenomenon, but people have been watching the skies for strange objects for centuries. Even as far back as 218 BCE during the era of the Roman Republic, there were records of “phantom ship” in the sky.

Interestingly, the term ‘UFO’ was first coined by the United States Air Force in 1957 to act as a catch-all phrase for such reports. Following that, there have been plenty of UFO sightings made during the Cold War (1947-1991) when there was plenty of speculation about advance technology created by both the West and the Soviet Union. In Southeast Asia, Malaysia has recorded three notable UFO incidents dating from 1995 to 2016. The first incident was stated to have occurred in Tanjung Sepat, Selangor where a massive UFO, claimed to be as wide as a football field, was spotted hovering and landed in a nearby jungle but was never seen again.

Fast-forward to 2002, another UFO incident was reported at the Kota Kinabalu International Airport when air traffic controllers spotted large airborne objects on their radar screens. Even the ground crew saw the UFOS, stating that they came from the sea, flew over the airport terminal without making any sound and disappeared behind some nearby hills. They were described as cigar-shaped objects that were bigger than a Fokker airliner, which measures 35.53m long with a wingspan of 28m.

Another incident was recorded in 2016 in Kuala Krai, Kelantan. Footage of a UFO was caught on camera and went viral over social media. However, upon closer examination, the spaceship looked suspiciously like a flying saucer from a science fiction film. The police immediately rubbished the sighting as nothing more than a hoax.

Still, that has not stopped people from believing that there is some evidence out there that UFOS do exist. The most recent incident was recorded in April 2021, when an unidentified object flew past a Spacex rocket just 12 minutes after it left Earth’s atmosphere.

Needless to say, the internet was abuzz with all sorts of theories and questions about where the object came from. But on a more serious note, it was a potential close shave that could have threatened the lives of the four astronauts on the rocket.

Former astronaut Mike Massimino’s theory is that the object was likely ice from the liquid nitrogen emitted by the rocket, given the timing of it being spotted as it got into orbit. Even so, there has been no official confirmation about the object since it was reported.

INFLUENCE ON POP CULTURE

The concept of life beyond Earth reflects mankind’s wonder, hopes and fears about the Unknown. Early science fiction writers like Jules Verne and Edgar Allan Poe fuelled the public’s interest with voyages to other worlds.

But it wasn’t until the 1950s when curiosity about UFOS reached a fever pitch thanks to conspiracies that whetted the public’s appetite for more, especially by the 1947 Roswell incident. One of the first films that explored the subject of aliens was The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) in which a race of peaceful aliens urged humans to rein in the use of nuclear weapons.

However, more often than not, aliens were painted as the antagonist in the majority of films. The threat of an alien invasion is a recurring theme in films for decades. One of the most notable films of the era was 1956’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which popularised the idea of aliens replacing humans with sinister duplicates as part of their sinister invasion plans.

The mythos surrounding UFOS has spanned over decades and well into the 1990s, with notable TV shows like the X-files that delved into themes like the existence of aliens and the paranormal.

Still, not every film viewed aliens as a threat to human existence. Two milestone films, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and E.T. the Extra-terrestrial (1982), both directed by Steven Spielberg, explored the idea of humans interacting with aliens who are depicted as benevolent beings instead of evil invaders.

FACT OR FICTION?

Regardless, whether you believe UFOS are real or it’s just a hoax, there is no denying there is renewed interest on the subject in 2021. This is due to the acknowledgement by the US government that such incidents occurred. This follows three leaked videos captured by US Navy pilots—one from 2004 and two from 2015—that showed mysterious objects flying at high speeds across the sky.

During one encounter off the coast of San Diego, California in 2004, a group of pilots had observed objects travelling at hypersonic speeds that surpassed current aircraft technology. Even more unsettling was the fact that the objects seemed to be intelligently controlled.

However, the US government maintains that the objects were not alien in origin and confirmed that they were not top secret advance test planes by the US government. At the same time, the report leaves some questions unanswered, as there was no explanation on how the objects were able to fly with such manoeuvrability and high speeds.

It does not rule out the fact that some of these incidents may have been encounters with experimental technology by other world powers like Russia or China. One logical explanation is that they could be hypersonic weapons designed to evade American missile-defence technology.

Whatever you may choose to believe, there has never been a better time to search for the truth because we know it is definitely out there.