• Published15 hours ago

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By Mike Wendling

BBC News

American authorities have examined around 800 mysterious reports of unidentified flying objects collected over decades – but only a small fraction are truly unexplained, a panel of researchers says.

Nasa set up the panel last year to explain its work on what it calls unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP).

UAP are defined as sightings “that cannot be identified as aircraft or known natural phenomena from a scientific perspective”.

The panel held its first public meeting on Wednesday.

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Here are some of the revelatory moments.

Many sightings can be explained – others remain a mystery

“We have 50 to 100-ish new reports each month,” said Sean Kirkpatrick, director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), part of the US Defence Department.

But he said the number of those sightings which are “possibly really anomalous” are 2% to 5% of the total database.