With the Covid virus - and the US government’s response to it - shutting down large swathes of the country in 2020, something needed to be done. And fast. The economy was grinding to a halt and plenty of Americans were feeling a pinch so strong they could see the bruising spreading by the minute. Financial stimulus was needed and it came on the day that the then-US President Donald Trump signed an appropriations bill that was to be known, rather unimaginatively, as ‘The Covid Relief Bill’.

Not only did it help the wallets and bank balances of millions of American citizens, it also did something else… It began a countdown for all US intelligence agencies to disclose precisely what they know about UFOs to Congress. 

 We’re not joking.

Weird, right? Well, yeah. It's complicated but here's the basic way it works: The huge spending bill (it totalled over five and a half thousand pages) was mostly a fiscal report, a plan on how to tackle the issues caused by mass lockdowns and the like. But written into it were a few little side issues. The one that stands out, rather obviously, is the one about unidentified flying objects.

The part of the bill we’re talking about is called 'The Intelligence Authorisation Act for Fiscal Year 2021'. It's a directive from the Senate Intelligence Committee that instructs the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to reveal any and all detailed analyses of UFO information, data and intelligence. Effectively, the shadier parts of the US government have to open up their X Files for all and sundry to have a good ol’ poke through.

So we’re very shortly going to see proof of alien life, eh? Well, quite probably not. We don’t want to burst your extraterrestrial bubble here or anything, but it seems highly unlikely that anything released will be quite that juicy.

Just how much will this upcoming report detail? Well, it's hard to know until it's out, but it's expected that all relevant dossiers and reports on 'advanced aerial threats', 'unidentified aerial phenomena' and 'anomalous aerial vehicles' are to be taken out of storage and given to Congress. It will then all have to be made public.

Ex-intelligence director John Ratcliffe is confident that what's revealed in the data dump will be big. He said this to Fox News in an interview earlier in the year:

'Frankly, there are a lot more sightings than have been made public. The report could document sightings from all over the world. There are instances where we don’t have good explanations for some of the things that we’ve seen. And when that information becomes declassified, I’ll be able to talk a little bit more about that.'

Ratcliffe went on to add: 'We are talking about objects that have been seen by Navy or Air Force pilots, or have been picked up by satellite imagery, that frankly engage in actions that are difficult to explain, movements that are hard to replicate, that we don’t have the technology for or are traveling at speeds that exceed the sound barrier without a sonic boom. There’s actually quite a few of those. And I think that that information is being gathered and will be put out in a way the American people can see.'

Ufologists have been collectively - and metaphorically, we might add - holding their breath since word spread that the bill was signed by Trump back on December the 27th 2020. There is, of course, a chance that some serious information will come to light that changes the way humanity thinks about aliens. That said, the reports could suggest that any and all UFOs have been the work of various air forces across the world.

Senator Marco Rubio is the vice chair of the Intelligence Committee. He's recently claimed that the idea that we are not alone in the universe concerns him far less than the prospect that such craft are actually piloted by other countries, countries which may not be allies of the United States.

'The bottom line is if there are things flying over your military bases and you don’t know what they are, because they aren’t yours and they are exhibiting - potentially - technologies that you don’t have at your own disposal, that to me is a national security risk. And one that we should be looking into,' Rubio said.

Hopefully, we’ll hear some interesting things when the reports are in and American news outlets release the findings. Call us cynics, but we’re not expecting much. There may be the odd interesting morsel, video clip or story. But even with a decree from the President and a demand from Congress, somehow we can’t quite see the US intelligence services ponying up all of the goods. After all, it’s fairly easy to ‘lose’ a few files on the bus from The Pentagon to the Capitol Building, isn’t it...?

Let’s not forget that back in 2017, those same agencies began drip feeding the JFK assassination files. Tens of thousands of reports and documents were unredacted and declassified. And what did the world learn? Next to nothing.

Still, we live in hope. Let’s wait and see what comes out...

Those folk who are quick to dismiss the notion of aliens visiting Earth do so with a waft of a hand and - often - an explanation that it’s only the very unreliable who claim to have had close encounters. 'Why is it always some drunk farmhand on a ranch in Montana?' they ask. What these rather scornful characters fail to take into account is that history is littered with such accounts from all sorts of eyewitnesses.

We recently told you all about the thousands of serious reports of unidentified flying objects reported by the United States Air Force down the years in our look at the ‘foo fighter’ phenomenon. Now we want to look at some of the more notable people from history who claim to have seen UFOs. 

Now, of course, simply being famous or notable doesn’t necessarily make you more reliable or believable. But esteemed and prominent figures do have plenty to lose by coming out and making such bold claims. So you’d have to imagine that these flying saucer spotters were pretty convinced in what they saw to go on record…

Here are five of the most interesting examples of historical figures to have seen UFOs:

Livy

Livy might sound like the name of one of your sister’s friends or a girl at work, but in this context, we’re talking about a man called Titus Livius Patavinus. Alongside Sallust and Tacitus, Livy is generally regarded by scholars as one of the three great Roman historians. His work chronicled the incredible history of the city, its people and civilisation, especially in his most noteworthy work, his magnum opus, 'Ab Urbe Condita' ('From the Founding of the City'). But we don't really care about any of that here. What we care about is his UFO sighting.

One of his many writings on Rome includes a very interesting account of what he described as ‘many prodigies’, which he saw in the sky way back in 214 BC. This included ‘phantom ships’ that he claims were seen ‘gleaming in the sky’. 

Some historians have claimed that Livy might have been talking metaphorically, but no one has ever given an accurate idea of what he was supposed to be representing, so it seems as though there’s a good chance that the man meant it literally.

Plutarch

What is it about Roman historians and seeing UFOs, eh? Here’s another one. Joining Livy in the craft-spotting club is the essayist and biographer Plutarch.

Describing a battle that happened in 74 BC between the Roman army and the armies of King Mithridates VI of Pontus, he mentioned how 'with no apparent change of weather, the sky burst asunder and a huge, flame-like body was seen to fall between the two armies. In shape, it was most like a wine-jar, and in colour like molten silver.'

Plutarch hadn’t been at the fermented grapes, though. There were thousands of witnesses, by all accounts. Including, none other than King Mithridates himself.

Alexander the Great

The famous king of Macedonia, famously played by Colin Farrell in Oliver Stone’s slightly dodgy 2004 film, was said to have seen UFOs a few times during his celebrated life. The most talked-about sighting occurred in 329BC when he was said to have curiously observed ‘gleaming silver shields overhead’.

John Lennon

Onto more modern history and for this next figures to have claimed to have seen a UFO, we turn to pop culture. Musicians and cultural icons don’t come much bigger than Beatle John Lennon.

'I was lying naked on my bed, when I had this urge. So I went to the window. There, as I turned my head, hovering over the next building, no more than 100 feet away, was this thing with ordinary electric light bulbs flashing on and off round the bottom, one non-blinking red light on top.'

Lennon's pal Uri Geller even claims that his musical friend once confessed to having come face to face with 'bug-eyed aliens'. The Israeli spoonbender failed to mention if this encounter coincided with one of John Lennon's many experiences with hallucinogens. 

Muhammad Ali

We end on a sporting legend - the late, great Muhammad Ali. The heavyweight champ had, he claimed, lots of experiences with unidentified flying objects in his life. As you might expect, the boxer wasn’t shy about talking about them, either. Here’s what he said:

'I happened to look up just before dawn, as I often do while running, and there hovering above us was this brilliant light hanging as if by an invisible thread. At first I thought it was a beacon projected from a helicopter. But moments later a similar object passed in front of us. I brought it to the attention of my trainer, who was standing nearby. We watched them come from behind the skyline and move slowly across the sky for at least 15 minutes.'

'The best I can describe the sighting is to say they were just round and big. This is no joke. All my friends here saw it. Actually, I’ve seen them many times before. I’ve had 16 sightings total to date. Many times, in the early morning hours, if you look up in the sky you can see them playing tag between the stars, really high up. I’ve had a good number of sightings myself.'

'The closest one happened when a cigar-shaped ship hovered briefly over a car I was a passenger in one night driving north on the New Jersey Turnpike. What a sight that was. We could see the shadow made by the UFO as it passed over the pavement of the road in the light of the full moon.' 

'Before I could blink my eyes, this light had come down toward the mountains until it hovered right above the valley here. I knew I couldn’t be dreaming. Sure enough, it was still there. This had to be one of those big ships they talk about! The UFO was streamlined and shaped sort of like a cigar, but blunt on both ends. I couldn’t see any windows or anything, but I’m certain there must have been people onboard.'

Float like a cigar, sting like a bee. Was it alien spacecraft that Muhammad did see…?

You've woken up in the middle of the night. There’s a presence in your bedroom. A dark, foreboding one. You feel an intense fear as you realise that someone - or something - is approaching you. There’s more than one of them too. You’re terrified but you can’t move. You can’t scream. You’re paralysed. 

The men loom over you. But they’re not men. They’re impossibly tall and thin. Their limbs and digits jut out and move around like the crooked legs of a spider. You’re frozen in dread and abject horror.

These things emanate evil. Soon, they take you. You’re transported away. Upwards. You’re held down and who-knows-what is done to you. You awake back in bed. The entities are gone and you’re at a loss to explain it.

Have you just been abducted by aliens? Or have you, perhaps more likely, simply just had a ‘night terror’...?

Night terrors occur at very specific stages of sleep. Those unlucky enough to experience them will have to endure the paralysis, fear and visions just as they fall asleep (the ‘hypnagogic state’) or when they wake up (‘hypnopompic’). They’re surprisingly common too; it’s thought that between 40-50% of people will suffer from night terrors at some point in their lifetime.

In them, sufferers effectively have particularly bad nightmares. Ones in which they’re paralysed and panicked. These petrifying dreams can be extremely realistic, sometimes even lucid. They often featured the person accosted by - even interfered with - by one of more shadowy figures.

'I think it can explain claims of witchcraft and alien abduction,' says Kazuhiko Fukuda, a renowned psychologist at Japan's Fukushima University. In Fukuda's country, such incidents are called 'kanashibari'. The leading expert on sleep paralysis goes on to say that 'we have a framework for it, but in North America, there's no concept for people to understand what has happened to them. So if westerners have the experience and if they have heard of alien abductions, then they may think, "Aha, it's alien abduction!"'

Night terrors may or may not only explain the phenomena of alien abductions. Those that believe that they do also point to the lucid nightmares as being responsible for other such paranormal or supernatural experiences. Chief among them are ghost sightings. Other phenomena that may historically have been explained away by these scary nocturnal episodes include witches, trolls and succubuses. And, in more modern times, Slender Man.

In centuries past, some credence may have been given to those people who reported such extraordinary occurrences. Nowadays, people might be less inclined to believe ghost stories or reports of kidnappings by little green men. Reports of this kind are likely to be dismissed as lies, hoaxes or put down to some sort of mental health breakdown. Perhaps rightly, perhaps unfairly.

If night terrors are a potential cause of such ‘sightings’, however, there is a third option. These reports of nighttime ordeal don’t necessarily have to be real or fake. They can lie in the middle ground. Much like hypnagogia, that state between sleep and wake. They’re not made up, but neither are they ‘real’ in any real tangible sense.

Dr Allen Cheyne, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Waterloo in Canada is able to elaborate. 'A sensed presence, vague gibberish spoken in one's ear, shadowy creatures moving about the room, a strange immobility, a crushing pressure and painful sensations in various parts of the body,' he says. 'These are compatible not just with an assault by a primitive demon but also with probing by alien experimenters. And the sensations of floating and flying account for the reports of levitation and transport to alien vessels.''

Sleep paralysis can’t completely account for all tales of alien abduction, however. While many accounts do see the ‘abductee’ woken from a slumber and taken away, many more report being snatched and examined in the waking hours of the day. 

So while it looks likely that night terrors possibly do explain some close encounters, they can’t account for all of them. There could well be a much darker, much more real reason for these ‘day terrors’. As ever, many people will look to the skies for an explanation.

Bonnybridge is a large village of around 7,000 folk found just four miles west of the city of Falkirk, in the Central Lowlands of Scotland. North of the Forth and Clyde Canal, it's a centuries-old settlement that is close to one of the country's most complete surviving Roman forts along the Antonine Wall. But that’s not why the place is semi-famous.

Bonnybridge is a UFO hotspot, a veritable homing beacon for flying saucers. Each and every year, the area in and around the place has hundreds of sightings of unidentified flying objects. It’s been the case for some three decades now, giving cause for Bonnybridge to be referred to by some as ‘The Scottish Roswell’.

Of course, most of us are more than familiar with the goings-on in Roswell, New Mexico, back in 1947. When an apparent alien craft crash-landed in the desert. But while Bonnybridge can’t claim to be the home of a crash site or any shady Area 51-style research facilities, it still boasts a bizarrely high rate of UFO reports.

Shining star and cigar-shaped aerial craft are often cited, with frequent mentions of howling or buzzing noises accompanying them. The things are generally said to remain stationary in the sky until they fly away at a terrific speed. Crafts have even been spotted landing on local golf courses. Abductions and procedures onboard the ships have even been spoken of, albeit in slightly more hushed terms.

It’s not a lighthearted joke of an issue, either. The local townsfolk don’t write the sightings off as daft and cash in on them with alien-themed coffee shops and a few tacky postcards on sale in the Post Office. They take Bonnybridge’s abnormally high UFO sighting rate very seriously indeed. 

Councillors and senior academic types within the community have written to British Prime Ministers on several occasions, demanding that an investigation of some description be launched. Their letters effectively went unanswered. Writer and UFO investigator Malcolm Robinson was involved in many of the attempts. He takes up the story:

'We went down to 10 Downing Street with our petition from the people of Bonnybridge and it all fell on deaf ears. All they said was "as these objects did not constitute a threat to the defence of the United Kingdom" and that they would not open any inquiry. We were really annoyed and we hope to do something similar in modern times with Nicola Sturgeon and other ministers.'

'Bonnybridge is a hot spot or window area that seems to attract a higher concentration of UFO reports than anywhere else,' Robinson goes on. 'The mmillion-dollarquestion is "why?" There is nothing significant in the land of Bonnybridge, there are no military airbases or anything. We simply don't know. All we can say is the people of Stirlingshire are seeing things in the sky that do no conform to conventional aircraft or helicopters.'

'There are certain things that just defy explanation and it's to those sightings that we are very keen to find out for sure. I would put a figure of about 95% of reports being explainable sightings, however.'

'The 5% that remains... of that 3% could be our own "black budget" technology - something akin to stealth aircraft that was flying in the skies for many years and leading to false UFO reports. That leaves 1% - 2% of that could be new rare atmospheric phenomena something akin to ball lighting. The 1% that's left, the fly in the ointment if you will, are these classic UFO sightings that have not just been seen here in Scotland but the world over..."

Now, of course, Robinson is a ufologist. A believer. But his comments don’t seem overly sensationalist. Especially given he’s so willing to dispel the majority of sightings as ‘explainable’. And what skin in the game do the rest of the good people of ‘The Falkirk Triangle’ have? Given they don’t make any money out of their claims? It seems unlikely that a whole area would collectively lie. Especially with it being motiveless.

What are we left to think? That aliens plove Scotland? Or perhaps as ever, it’s not easy to come up with any hard and fast conclusions. All we know for certain is that something’s definitely afoot in the skies above Stirlingshire.

Right off the bat, let’s clear something up. If you’re here to read about how Dave Grohl’s famous band came about, you’re in the wrong place. You might want to try Kerrang or somewhere. If you’re reading this to find out all about the unidentified flying objects that have dogged the world’s armed forces for decades, well… this is entirely the right place.

What are they?

It’s a big question to start with. Foo fighters are basically UFOs. So, by their very definition, no one truly knows exactly what they are. Or, if they do, they’re not telling the rest of us. Are they alien crafts? Perhaps. We’ll come onto the explanations and theories later.

‘Foo fighters’ are inexplicable aerial phenomena, generally reported by pilots in air forces. Most famous examples come from the United States Air Force, who began reporting mysterious craft in the skies over Europe and the Asiatic-Pacific Theatre during the Second World War. 

Similar sightings have been made by pilots in the years since the end of World War Two, across many countries. So the term has come to be synonymous with fighter pilots’ UFOs sightings. The original term, however, was only meant to refer to a certain type of unknown craft as seen by American pilots.

Where does the name come from?

 The term ‘foo fighter’ was coined by a radar operator in the 415th Night Fighter Squadron, called Donald J. Meiers, back in 1944. He took inspiration from his favourite comic, the popular Smokey Stover strips by Bill Holman that appeared in the Chicago Tribune between the 30s and 70s. Stover's catchphrase was ‘where there's foo, there's fire!’

The term caught up with the men in the force because ‘foo’ was also shorthand for ‘FUBAR’, a polite way of saying ‘effed up beyond all recognition’. So ‘foo’ or ‘FU’ made sense as something that was crazy (or ‘effed up’).

Internally, for the first few years, these head-scratching flying objects were called ‘f***in’ foo fighters’, which is actually how Meiers used to describe them. In time, their cussy nickname was cleaned up a little and the first eff was dropped.

Notable sightings

 Of course, UFO sightings are as old as time. But pilot sightings that fall under the foo fighter banner date back to the early 1940s. Seen and reported by Allies forces, they were known colloquially as ‘Kraut fireballs’ before they were given their slightly less offensive ‘foo fighter’ tag.

In 1941, a Polish merchant vessel (the SS Pułaski) was transporting British troops across the Indian Ocean when two of its sailors reported seeing ‘a strange globe glowing with greenish light, about half the size of the full moon’.

Allied pilots flying over Europe at night witness glowing spherical objects following them in November ‘44. They were bright red, white and orange Christmas tree-style lights that disappeared after complex fighting patterns were reported. While never described as hostile, they appeared to be able to outmanoeuvre the pilots’ planes and could not be shot down.

There are multiple other reports of foo fighters throughout WWII. Charles R. Bastien of the US Air Force saw them over the skies of Belgium and Netherlands towards the end of the war, referring to them as 'two fog lights flying at high rates of speed that could change direction rapidly'. 

US pilot Duane Adams and multiple men in his crew reported seeing foos above him over the Pacific Ocean shortly after the war too. The sightings have never really stopped. The most notable recent example dates back only to 2021, with Pakistan International Airlines pilots reporting having witnessed 'a large round object had a metal ring around it and was emitting white light from the centre'.

Theories behind foo fighters

There are multiple explanations for these so-called foo fighters. Each has weight, but we don’t know for certain which - if indeed any - is correct.

Here are just some of the more prominent theories behind foo fighters:

● Nice and simple this first one - they’re extraterrestrial spacecraft

● They could be unusual weather phenomena, eg ball lightning 

● The CIA dismissed foo fighters as ‘electromagnetic’ phenomena

● Might they be sunlight that’s reflecting off ice crystals?

● Could their prevalence during WWII be proof that they were experimental Nazi tech?

● Pilots have been known to suffer visual hallucinations during night flights

So, then. Foo fighters. Not just a dad rock stadium band fronted by the drummer fella from Nirvana. 

You’re born, you grow up, you get a job, you raise a family, you grow old and then you die. It’s a rather glib assessment, but that’s life. Sure, there’s plenty that happens to us in between, but that’s it, really. It’s a pretty straightforward affair. We’re a meaty collection of atoms and cells that plods about keeping busy until we stop. 

That’s what we all assume, anyway. But what if we’re wrong…?

What’s really ‘real’? Is the screen you’re reading these words on ‘real’? Was your lunch ‘real’? Are you even ‘real’?

What if we’re all just imagining it? By ‘it’ we mean life. What if life as we know it is an illusion? A simulation? It may sound ridiculous, but there’s more to this idea than you might think.

The concept that life is merely an emulation, a computer-generated fiction, is known as The Simulation Theory. The concept has it that everything that we think, do, believe, say and basically are - it’s all a mirage. A fantasy. A crazily sophisticated computer game being played by advanced beings.

Sound familiar? Well, quite. Some of us remember going to see The Matrix in the cinema 22 years ago. The central plot of which explores The Simulation Hypothesis in some depth.

Those proponents of Simulation Theory are convinced that ‘life’ isn’t real, essentially. Here are some of the main things they point to when explaining themselves and why the idea isn’t quite as fanciful as it might first seem:

‘The Simulation Argument’

Oxford Professor Nick Bostrom’s 2003 paper ‘Are we living in a computer simulation?’ is a key text here. In it, he argues that human beings have got so adept at creating technology that can replicate reality that we can’t be sure we aren’t living within a simulation. Given that if humans have managed it, another species in the universe may have also done so. And we may be the product of that.

Bostrom doesn’t call for panic if the admittedly wild idea is true. In fact, he says we should be pretty chilled out about it…

 “Supposing we live in a simulation, what are the implications for us humans? The implications are not all that radical. Our best guide to how our posthuman creators have chosen to set up our world is the standard empirical study of the universe we see. Properly understood, therefore, the truth should have no tendency to make us ‘go crazy’ or to prevent us from going about our business and making plans and predictions for tomorrow.”

Are you gonna argue with Descartes, Kant and Plato?

It’s tempting to write off talk of a ‘matrix’, given that advocates for the hypothesis are - Bostrom apart - generally a gang of stereotypical nerds and conspiracy theorist figures. It’s a whole lot harder to scoff at and dismiss the concept when you learn that it’s all deeply rooted in established and respected philosophy.

René Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy was published in 1641. In it, the French polymath discusses the possibility that life may well be illusory. ‘What Can Be Called into Doubt’ is his first meditation where he puts forward the idea that everything must be challenged. He argues that things seem real in our dreams, but they’re not. So we can never truly know how authentic - or inauthentic - our conscious lives and existences are.

Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason argues that because humans interpret their surroundings through biased and unreliable means such as language, we can never fully distinguish truths from falsehoods. Plato also wrote about the lack of reliability in what we perceive, especially in his work Republic, where he presents his semi-famous cave allegory. Many of history's greatest thinkers have ruminated that existence could well be vastly different from how we understand it. 

Science as religion

Of course, plenty of folk in the scientific and philosophical communities call hooey on the notion. While acknowledging it in terms of possibility and theory, they pour water on Simulation Theory for one major reason (other than the sheer unlikeliness of it all…).

For millennia, humans have explained our existence using religion. We have created gods to explain our reason to be. God is ‘The Great Creator’. Intelligent design is reassuring. The random chaos of the alternative, ‘more scientific’ explanation is more unnerving. Mankind may well have cooked up Simulation Theory as yet another way to explain our existence.

Despite its dystopian nature, the idea of our lives being figments of some vast otherworldly game is oddly calming. If nothing is real, nothing matters. Pain and suffering are only theoretical. You don’t need to cut the grass on Sunday morning. It isn’t really there.

What do you think? Is life real? Or is it all just one long computer game being played by lifeforms in the deepest reaches of the universe? How do you even know that your opinion on the subject is your own and not just code? Your thoughts right now may just be a string of 0s and 1s...

Oumuamua. It may sound like the noise made when two people air kiss at a fancy cocktail party, but - trust us - it’s infinitely more interesting than that.

The word is Hawaiian in origin. It means ‘messenger’. It was given to a rather puzzling interstellar object that was detected passing through our solar system back in October of 2017...

Oumuamua was discovered by the Canadian astronomer Robert Weryk using the Pan-STARRS telescope at the Haleakalā Observatory in Maui, Hawaii. Red in colour, the thing is estimated to be anywhere between 100m and 1,000m long, with a width thought to be in the range of anywhere between 35m and 160m. At around 20 million miles away, understandably it's difficult to be too specific with numbers.

The official word from the astronomy community is that Oumuamua - the first interstellar object ever recorded in our solar system - is likely to be 'a natural object'. The theory most put forward by scientists is that it's probably matter from a disintegrated comet. There is, however, dissenting hypotheses from others in the field that are brave enough to speculate that it could well be some form of alien technology. Imagine that.

In 2018, the head honcho of Harvard’s astronomy department, one Avi Loeb, co-authored a paper with fellow Harvard type Shmuel Bialy which discussed Oumuamua’s 'peculiar acceleration' and suggested that 'the object may be a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth’s vicinity by an alien civilization.'

This is no crank shouting 'ALIENS!' on an online forum, though. This is one of the world's most eminent experts on space theorising that the thing previously assumed to be a piece of comet or asteroid could, in fact, be proof of extraterrestrial life. Professor Loeb at least wants us to consider the possibility that Oumuamua was sent our way by aliens from another solar system or galaxy. And we’re all for that.

This isn’t just guesswork or the aching desires of some stargazer who watched too many episodes of Star Trek as a kid. Loeb points to six ways in which Oumuamua behaves differently to other less interesting rocks. Each interesting - though complicated - point adds credence to his exciting idea.

Prof. Loeb gave an interview with the esteemed New Yorker magazine where he reaffirmed his belief that life exists on other planets. 'There are tens of billions of stars in the Milky Way, it is quite likely we are not alone,' he said.

Let’s imagine that The Professor is right for a moment. That Oumuamua was some sort of probe or craft sent out to monitor or communicate with us. Does that mean we might make interstellar pals…? Well, no. Not according to Loeb.

'It’s very similar to when I walk on the beach with my daughter and look at the seashells that are swept ashore,' he says. 'Every now and then we find an object of artificial origin. And this could be a message in a bottle and we should be open-minded. It’s possible that the civilization is not alive anymore, but it did send out a spacecraft. It may be dead by now.'

So, then. Was Oumuamua an alien probe sent to our galaxy to make contact with us or was it just a rock? The science, ironically, isn’t rock solid. Professor Loeb’s theory is tantalising, but his theories are - admittedly - rejected by most other astronomers. 

Did aliens visit us in 2017? Well, it’s possible. We can’t say for certain, though. As the world-famous US space expert Carl Sagan was so fond of saying, 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.'

Image: Artist's impression of ʻOumuamua' - Wikimedia

Take a stroll along Peru’s coastal Sechura Desert and you won’t see them. But fly high above the arid landscape some 250 miles south of the nation’s capital of Lima and it’s a different story altogether. You’ll witness the Nazca Lines in all their magnificent, captivating and mysterious glory.

They’re effectively enormous doodles. Giant motifs seemingly drawn into the earth that can only truly be appreciated by witnessing them from above. Which must be fun for the Andean condors that soar through the skies over the Piura region of the country. 

What are they?

They’re called ‘geoglyphs’. Large designs created on the ground that can be seen from the ground but are far more visible and clear from a height. They’re often pictures of people or animals, sometimes symbols. These ones, in Peru, are particularly notable. For their scale and their enigmatic history if nothing else. They’re called the Nazca Lines and no one quite knows how they came to be…

So, they’re lines (that’s where the name comes from, funnily enough). Some 800 of them. There are also wavy patterns, spirals, arrows and other basic shapes. Those aren’t quite as pretty or interesting as the animals, though. There are spiders, birds, monkeys, ducks and even llamas (well, this is Peru). There are also pictorials of humans. Or humanoids, at least. Some suggest these could be etchings of creatures from another planet...

How were they created?

The Nazca Lines are effectively ‘negative images’. They’re not drawn or scorched or marked into the ground. Instead, rocks have been removed to create the geoglyphs. Rocks in the deserts are oxidised, turning them a reddish-brown colour. When the top foot or so of stone is taken away, a lighter shade of earth is exposed. That’s what is visible.

Who created them?

Scientists and historians are fairly sure that the Nazca Lines of Peru - now an area designated as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO - were created by the Nazca people. The Nazcas were a civilisation which flourished in the region between 100 BC and 800 AD.

Now for the interesting bit... THE THEORIES

There are two main and pervasive theories surrounding the Nazca Lines. There are:

Maria Reicher’s astronomical calendar

Back in the time of the Nazca people, rainfall was absolutely vital for their very existence. Charting the seasons was important, they needed to be prepared for the annual spring rainfall. Aachen University professor of philosophy Maria Reicher believes that the geoglyphs in the Sechura Desert were established as a way to chart the change of the seasons.

The lines seem to point to spots on the landscape where the sun rises and sets. So observing which line tallies up with the rise or set would indicate the time of year and how long it was until rain was due to help with crops.

Erich von Däniken’s ‘ancient alien landing pads’

Now we’re talking... Erich von Däniken’s famous book from 1968 ‘Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved Mysteries of the Past’ is something of a Bible to those that believe in ancient aliens. In it, the Swiss author puts forward the idea that the Nazca people created the lines on instruction from none other than extraterrestrials.

Why? Well, according to Erich, the lines were put there as landing strips for alien spacecraft. As well as decoration, all designed by those from another planet. He backed up his claim by making a very interesting point as to how the Nazca people would have been unable to sketch out and then create such ornate and precise images from the ground. After all, they didn’t have drones or cropdusters to help them out.

It sounds fanciful and Erich von Däniken’s various theories aren’t exactly taken seriously outside of paranormal circles, but the Nazca Lines raise very similar questions to those that surround the Pyramids of Giza and Machu Picchu.

Just how were ancient civilisations capable of such tremendous feats? It could well be that we’ll just never know for certain.

Viewers of Ancient Aliens will be more than familiar with the theory that states that extraterrestrials just might be responsible for the design and construction of some of the world’s most famous early buildings and monuments. 

The highest-profile example of this idea comes, of course, in the shape of the Pyramids. Some folk are adamant that the historic conoid temples of Egypt’s past were not built by human slave labour, but are - instead - the work of beings from another planet.

The Pyramids of Giza are not the only Earthly things theorised to be the design of ET & Co. Here are some other high-profile examples...

Stonehenge

The origins of Wiltshire’s world-renowned ancient neolithic monument is the source of much contention. The ring of enormous standing stones are thought to date back to 3,000 - 2,000 BC, but because their exact origins are unknown, theories have swirled around as to how they came to be for years.

The Swiss author Erich von Däniken’s famous 1968 book Chariot of the Gods postulates that Stonehenge was, in fact, the work of aliens. He claims that not only is it a model of the solar system (something folk in the Bronze Age would have been ignorant of), it doubled as an alien landing pad. It was a hard sell, but Erich got a lot of people on board with his controversial theory.

Machu Picchu

No, we’re not suggesting that aliens are behind Pokemon - we’re referring to the Incan citadel that stands in Peru. An instantly recognisable landmark, it’s thought by some not to be the work of the Peruvian Incas at all… but of lifeforms from space. Why? Well, it’s all in the rock layout of the spectacular 116 square mile fortress.

'Sometimes there are three levels to the construction - the bottom level has massive, gigantic, megalithic blocks as big as railway wagons; the middle about half a size smaller. And at the top, brick-sized stones are just thrown up there. That makes no sense,' Ancient Aliens legend Giorgio Tsoukalos has said on the show before.

Easter Island

‘Rapa Nui’, as it’s known in its native Spanish, is an island territory off the coast of Chile, in the southeastern Pacific Ocean. It’s a 63 square mile patch of land with a population of around 8,000 people, but no one cares much about any of that. What people do care about, quite rightly, are the 900 enormous face-shaped stones that litter the island.

Standing up to 30ft high and weighing in anywhere up to 80 tons each, there are another 400 or so stones in varying stages of completion too. That’s a lot of huge cleverly-carved monuments on such a tiny little dot on the map. But who put them there?

The indigenous people of the island say that the ‘Moai’ ‘walked’ down from the volcano. Captain Cook, the first westerner to see the statues, was stumped. Erich von Däniken, of course, postulates that they were put there with a little help from up above.

Sacsayhuamán

Pronounced 'Sac-sigh-wha-man’, this is another entry from Peru. Which either proves that aliens really like that particular corner of South America, or that ancient civilisations from Peru were just really smart, master masons.

This giant dry stone wall structure is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the city of Cusco. The giant, intricately placed stones consist of four walls, with each stone weighing an incredible 100-200 TONS. They’ve been found to have originated from some 20 miles away from Cusco. How did hundreds of stones weighing an average of 150 tons make the journey and be cut with mathematical and laser precision? That’s the question...

So, then. What do we think? Otherworldly? Or just impressive work from our ancestors? Well, unless aliens drop in on us and fill us in on whether they have or haven’t involved themselves in the building of complex architecture across history, it’s unlikely we’ll ever know for sure. Unless any of you know an alien and wouldn’t mind dropping them a text and asking. 

If you find out, let us know.

Watch Ancient Aliens on Blaze.

Drag someone in off the street and ask them to explain a typical alien abduction and they’ll probably act frightened and scream, ‘PLEASE! LET ME GO!’ 

Explain to them that you’re not going to hurt them and are simply canvassing public opinion about close encounters with extraterrestrials and - if they calm down - they’ll tell you a familiar tale…

Aliens abduct working class types from rural America. They beam them up, paralyse them and probe them with unspeakable metallic objects, before chucking them back on their farm. Without so much as a thank you card or a box of chocolates. 

What are we to make of the fact that most alien abductions seem to take place in towns you’ve never heard of in states you’ve barely heard of? Are little green men just big fans of westerns? Is the sky above the average trailer park just that bit clearer in which to navigate a spaceship? Who knows. 

But wait. There are stories of intergalactic kidnappings from other countries, they’re just little told. These are four of the more interesting British alien abduction stories…

The Todmorden Abduction - 1980

On a dark and chilly November morning in the West Yorkshire market town of Todmorden, a police officer by the name of Alan Godfrey spotted a strange fluorescent thing in the sky. PC Godfrey was investigating a call about some escaped cows when he saw the ‘rotating diamond-shaped’ UFO. Other officers also went on record with having seen the thing.

He tried to call his sighting in but his radio was temporarily unable to work. He felt a strange sensation and soon realised that he was a further 30 or so metres down the street. Not only that but he had lost half an hour and had somehow split his work boot and hurt his foot. 

He later underwent hypnosis on the advice of a solicitor and recalled how ‘a beam of light blinded him and made him pass out, before waking up inside a room being medically examined by small beings.’

The Langford Budville Abduction - 1973

In the mid-1970’s, the glamorously named Gabriella Versacci claims to have been taken aboard a spacecraft without her consent above the skies of the Somerset village of Langford Budville.

Versacci says that she stopped her car when a bright light obscured her vision. The vehicle then lost power. She then found herself aboard the half moon-shaped UFO, which she estimates was 20ft high and 40ft across. 

Inside she says she was strapped to a table, had various bodily samples taken, was probed and even sexually assaulted by ‘slim, mask-wearing robot-like beings’.

The Basingstoke Canal Abduction - 1983

Aldershot, August 1983. 77 year-old Albert Burtoo is out by himself, quietly fishing on the Basingstoke Canal. His concentration was broken when a terrifically bright light came into view and slowly lowered until it was clear that it was a craft of some kind and had landed on the ground near the man. Burtoo assumed it was a plane from the nearby Ministry of Defence base. It was not.

According to him, the elderly fisherman’s age saved him from too much hassle. Two ‘strange-looking beings’ escorted him to their now-grounded spaceship. 

"They were about four foot high, dressed in pale green coveralls from head to foot," Burtoo told the media afterwards. "And they had helmets of the same color with a visor that was blacked out. 

"What is your age?" one of the beings apparently asked him, in English, in an accent which sounded ‘like a mixture of Chinese and Russian’. When he told them, they informed him that he was too old for their tests and they let him go.

 Aliens are ageist. Who’d have thought it?

The Ilkley Moor Abduction - 1987

It seems as if aliens like Yorkshire coppers. In 1987, another policeman from God’s own county claimed to have been taken aboard a craft and medically examined. One day, retired officer ‘Philip Spencer’ (an alias) spotted a large, bizarre-looking ‘dome-topped’ white object appear in the sky and land nearby.

Spencer claims that a humanoid creature then emerged and took him onto the craft. Unlike most other abductees, Philip managed to take a picture of the alien. The image was soon scrutinised by Kodak who confirmed that the picture of the alien was not superimposed, as some had claimed. This doesn’t exactly prove anything, but it’s an interesting footnote to the story.

What have we learned? Well, aliens are not quite as obsessed with Americans as you might imagine. Old folk are safe from them... The old bill, though? Slightly less so.