Internet abuzz over UFOs, Area 51

The U.S. Navy turbocharged conspiracy theories by confirming last week it cannot identify the flying objects in three videos taken by its pilots. “The Navy designates the objects contained in these videos as unidentified aerial phenomena,” Navy spokesman Joseph Gradisher told The Black Vault blog.

When and where were the sightings? The New York Times and the To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science reported on three Navy videos of unknown flying objects in December 2017, all of them taken from F/A-18 Super Hornet aircraft. One of the videos was taken off the coast of San Diego in 2004, but the time and place of the other two are not known. Meanwhile, UFO enthusiasts might descend this weekend on rural Nevada, where the Air Force flight testing facility known as Area 51 is thought to hold secrets of extraterrestrial life.

Dig deeper: Read the Times report on the Pentagon’s UFO project, which former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., pushed for after talking with astronaut John Glenn.