Coinciding with the famous 1947 UFO incident in Roswell, New Mexico, July 2 has long been declared World UFO Day, and sightings are on the rise across the globe.
"The sightings aren't just on Earth either — they are also being picked up by NASA satellites on Mars, Mercury and the Moon," said the UK-based
International Business Times on Tuesday.
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World UFO Day, celebrated by skywatching societies all over the globe, is a day to celebrate the unknown, and commemorate all the intriguing sightings from the previous year.
At the top of this year's list is a sighting by a jet pilot flying near Heathrow airport, who said his plane was nearly struck by a silver "rugby ball-like shape" flying nearby, IBT noted. Some sightings are reported by a single source with no evidence of their observations, while others have been reported by multiple witness and caught on tape.
USA Today reported this week that 36 percent of Americans are certain UFOs have landed on Earth, and 11 percent say they've seen one personally.
Joe Nickell, senior research fellow at the Committee of Skeptical Inquiry, said that celebrating UFO's is fun, but also clarified that many UFO enthusiasts don't necessarily believe in aliens.
"Do UFOs exist? Yes, of course they do — by definition. They are unidentified flying objects," he told USA Today. "You can't say, 'I can't know what that is and therefore it's an extraterrestrial craft,'" however.
Stephen Diamond, a psychologist in Los Angeles, has written extensively about the impact of UFO sightings on the human psyche, and says it's common for those who see an unidentified flying object to imbue it with significance.
"Part of the belief in UFOs is an attempt to transcend our sense of aloneness in the universe," he told USA Today. "If UFOs are indeed real and if indeed they are piloted by sentient beings, then we're no longer alone in the universe, and that's attractive to some people."
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