The paranormal is a common topic talked about in pop culture and on the internet, because it’s become easier to spread ideas, photos, evidence, and stories. It’s an incredibly common horror theme, and includes many different things, like ghosts, cryptids, telepathy, and extraterrestrial life.
Talking about one phenomenon is hard to do without talking about more of them. Ghosts are separate from most of the other paranormal phenomena, but you can’t mention one without mentioning the other.
Ufology is the study of unexplained flying objects, which are another type of paranormal phenomena that people like to discuss or talk about online. Many details can be seen on the news about UFOs; the Spartan Scoop wrote a piece about aliens in the news. Aliens are a very common topic, and almost everyone knows about them. It’s hard not to. When aliens are such a pivotal part of online culture, ignoring them is difficult.
Movies are made left and right about aliens, with the recent Nope directed by Jordan Peele being a big hit among movie watchers and others who enjoy science fiction. There are alien hunting shows, such as UFO Hunters, a documentary series from 2008. A big rumor on the internet talks about how Area 51, a remote military base in the state of New Mexico, harbors alien life. That’s what the storming of Area 51 in 2019 was all about—which grew into a massive online meme that held the internet in its grasp for several months.
The Scoop has explored the concerns about potential alien life, and what it could mean for our future. But what’s the science behind it? Do aliens exist? Why is this paranormal phenomenon such a hit in online culture?
There’s no concrete evidence that aliens exist. Yes, there was a whistleblower in Congress who claims they do. Eye-witness accounts and physical evidence go a long way to the spreading of rumors and theories of aliens existing. However, like with anything, it can be hard to believe something you’ve never seen in person.
Scientists and astronomers are split, because without actual factual evidence, there’s nothing to prove. But outside of our Earth, the universe is massive. There are billions of exoplanets, far more than we can see with our eyes and telescopes. There have been findings of exoplanets that appear to be suitable to harbor life, including one recent one in the news.
Some scientists and astronomers choose to wait to believe in aliens until we’ve actually found them. Others say that, because our universe is so massive, it’s nearly impossible for there to not be extraterrestrial life on another planet—we just haven’t found anything yet.
Alien depictions in fiction are often green or grayish skinny human-like figures, with pitch-black eyes and large disk-like spaceships that zip around at the speed of light. Extraterrestrial life covers anything that is a living organism, not just the stereotypical alien.
One of the first ever recorded and well-known UFO sightings was in 1947 by a man named Kenneth Arnold. His account told that there were several bright objects thousands of feet in the air that were traveling at over a thousand miles per hour, near Mount Rainier in Oregon.
Some sightings of UFOs are more credible than others. One night, on New Jersey’s turnpike in 2001, motorists reported seeing “strange orange-and-yellow lights in a V formation”. The New York Strange Phenomena Investigators backed up this statement, claiming they received radar data that matched the story.
Another eye-witness account at the Chicago O’Hare International Airport in 2006 stated that a dark gray metallic aircraft was hovering over one of the airport gates. Several eyewitnesses backed this up, including some of the airline workers and other people on the ground.
There are several eyewitness accounts that can be found on the internet, some with pictures or videos that only seem to help the claims. Paranoia around aliens is a real thing for some people, and, if they were real, how would we stop them? Could we?
One of the great wonders of the world, the Pyramids of Giza, are often considered by a select few people to have been built by aliens. However, this can be disproven by historical accounts of how the Egyptians built the pyramids, and how they hauled incredibly heavy material up ramps to create them.
Crop circles are another part of the paranormal phenomena of aliens and extraterrestrial life. Crop circles initially started first appearing in the countryside sometime in the 1970s, and they only grew in popularity as more people started to see them. The formations of circles and designs in long grass was hard to understand, because they appeared overnight. This was proven to be a hoax when the originators of the crop circles came out and explained exactly how they did it, which they said could take them 10 minutes.
Some other people try to explain how they’ve been abducted by aliens, and scientists think this relates to sleep paralysis or false memories. One can imagine a whole world, a whole scenario, and believe it to be real. This is a condition called False Memory Syndrome.
Another, more natural, explanation for possible UFO sightings is the ball lightning. They are rare and relatively unexplainable, but they do exist. Some recounts of people explaining seeing bright orb lights in the sky may just be retelling the witnessing of ball lightning.
There are so many different things that are often mistaken to be sightings, evidence, or memories of aliens and their existence. This is not to say that all of it is fake, because there are claims of them being real from former U.S. government workers. There are government agencies that document the sightings of flying objects across the nation.
Ufology is credited as a science, even though it deals with more paranormal phenomena, like ghosts. Some scientists do believe in aliens and UFOs. A conclusion that can be drawn by most scientists, though, is that regardless if aliens are real, they most likely don’t pose a threat to humanity. If they did, we probably would’ve been dead by now… or at least, we would’ve been made more well aware of it.
