What are UFOs: The top 6 best theories

UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) have been fascinating, mystifying and frightening people for many decades, and maybe going all the way back as far as ancient times. Over time, many theories have developed as to who made them, where they come from, and why they are here.

In the public mind, the most commonly held theory is that UFOs are crewed by extraterrestrials from another planet who are investigating or monitoring the Earth for some reason.

Skeptics, on the other hand, tend to hold that UFO sightings are made up of everyday things such as aircraft that have been misidentified, astronomical events, or other explicable phenomena caused by things such as freak weather, or they are just hoaxes.

Below, I have listed the top 6 theories that seek to explain the mystery of what are UFOs.

The idea that UFOs are the craft of aliens from another planet who are visiting Earth is probably the most common explanation for UFOs. It has been speculated that the aliens might be investigating or monitoring the human race – maybe taking a special interest in us because we have begun to venture out into space ourselves.

The main criticism of this theory relates to the distances and time involved with space travel for the aliens. In the past, it used to be believed that aliens might live on the Moon, or Mars, or Venus, but now science is fairly sure that there is very little chance of intelligent life being found within our solar system. This means that the aliens would have to travel from a neighboring star. The distances involved are huge and and would take enormous amounts of energy and decades in time, at the very least, to traverse.

Different dimensions of time and space used to be very much on the speculative fringes of physics, but has gained respectability in recent years. If UFOs are visiting us from a different dimension, rather than a distant planet, then that would get around the problems with them traveling long distances from another planet. It might also explain some of the strange behavior that people who’ve seen them have reported, such as moving through solid objects and appearing and disappearing out of nowhere.

Another theory is that the UFOs are carrying visitors from the future who are coming back in time to visit us. This provides an explanation for why the UFOs seem so technically superior to our own aircraft and are able to perform spectacular maneuvers, as well as generally avoid detection. It also avoids the time and distance problems associated with UFOs traveling to Earth from distant planets.

At the height of the Cold War, there was lots of talk of UFOs actually being man-made secret weapons, built by the US or the Soviet Union. This was offered as an explanation for the apparent official secrecy surrounding UFOs and why the authorities seemed reluctant to investigate sightings. There was also a related hybrid theory that said that the craft were man-made, but based on technology discovered at one or more crashed alien UFO sites (the most famous being the Roswell Incident). The man-made secret weapon theories are less common nowadays.

There have certainly been some famous UFO cases that have later been shown to be hoaxes, either because evidence was uncovered which demonstrated how the hoax was carried out, or because the hoaxer later confessed. Given the sheer number of sightings and the unlikeliness that all of the reporters of UFO incidents were acting dishonestly, it seems probable that many, if not most, UFO sightings are not deliberate hoaxes, however.

This tends to be the skeptics favorite explanation (along with the hoax theory). They argue that things like freak weather conditions (for example, peculiar cloud formations and lightning) can account for many sightings. Also things like misidentified airplanes, helicopters, weather balloons could account for some sightings. Reports of strange lights in the sky sometimes coincide with astronomical events such as meteors and asteroids showers and could be explained that way.