Originally published at: Do you live in a UFO hotspot? Check out this UFO sightings map | Boing Boing
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Now lets do an overlay of that map that makes the point that People vote not land. You know the one that cuts down the size of Red state territory to account for the low populations.
I would be they look a lot like this map. Ufo sightings are concentrated around where people are. Live in a high population area? You are in a hot spot.
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so everyone else is an alien confirmed? /s
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[ignore this comment] boring ol’ statistician rolls out a boring ol’ quibble again. These just look like population ‘heat maps’. That is “UFO sightings” seem to scale with the number of people who could think they are seeing such things. and/or produce such a map “per-capita” then you’ll see where the …creative are concentrated. xkcd, as always, says it best
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It seems we are talking Unidentified Flying Object, not necessarily an alien sighting.
I’ve seen what is typically known as ball lightening twice. I also saw a meteor once that must have been traveling straight toward me. At first I thought it was a planet (Venus), but then realized it wasn’t in the right location and was getting brighter. Then it disappeared.
Some random lights in the distance don’t bother me too much. Now if something happens like a scene form “Fire In The Sky”, it’s gonna be all grades of “I believe.”
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Oh brother! The Joshua Tree area has a plethora of UFO nuts, and that’s as polite as I can be about it. Do not converse with these people, convo never ends, first hand experience talking here.
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It’s actually a bit surprising to me, as I’d expect it to not just be a population density map. I would have expected that non-urban areas would be more represented (because urban illumination makes it hard to see things in the sky), and disproportionately represent areas with clear skies that are more rural (where people are more likely to be watching the sky and feeling isolated, and more likely to see - and misidentify - astronomical phenomena). And maybe that is true to some degree, but it’s overwhelmed by population numbers and not obvious.
Still, it creates some nice filters for UFO sightings - if only one person in an urban area sees something, it’s probably not significant (i.e. it’s one person being weirdly unable to recognize something common, it’s not actually in the sky, etc.).
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I would guess that is is just the fact that more people will report things then less people
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Seeing Lord Kinbote is an experience you never forget.
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Even that seems like it would be filtered out by density - if people who saw something, but their nearby friends and neighbors didn’t (or were able to identify it), it seems like that would discourage people from reporting. But apparently not.
That is the problem. Everyone is lugging a video camera nowadays, so if you meet aliens, I’d want to see an in-depth interview with them, with working E-mails provided at least. Simple lights won’t do it: it happened to me once on a train, and it could be worked out that it was a funny multiple reflection of an interior light, which made it seem that a luminous dot was following the train on a parallel course at the same speed. Nice, but no lil’ green men alas.
Another time it was a perfect Iridium flare at night, first time I ever saw such a thing, and for two seconds I lost it (Gaah! Supernova! Aliens! Space lasers! Waah!), before my overheating brain found an explanation.
Brrr. Really. Satellitarian b*stards.
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When I was young I saw a UFO. I am not saying it was piloted by gray aliens or Venusians or whatever, but I saw it.
It was on the way back from a family ski trip in the Sierra, so it must have been somewhere in the foothills or Central Valley. I was looking out the rear window of the car and suddenly, overhead, I saw a triangular object with lights around its perimeter and a large light in the center. I watched it as it sat still in the sky over the car. I called out to my dad, who was driving the car, and he told me I probably fell asleep and dreamed it and, regardless, he had to keep the car on the road. My teenaged aunt was with us and I nudged her awake and made her look. We both watched it as it sat still in the sky and then, suddenly, it accelerated away from a standstill at an amazing speed. I remember it like it was yesterday.
For years my aunt denied that she saw it, making me question my memory. A few years ago I brought up the subject with her at a family gathering and she admitted that yes, she saw it too, and denied it for so long because the experience scared her.
I did check the map for sightings in the area where we might have been and came across a couple for “triangles”. Interesting.
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For me it’s only showing 1997-present. But, on the plus side, i’m pretty sure what i saw as a kid was a paper sky lantern.
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If only this were enough to convince people. Every time I wade into a UFO thread, I am reminded this is an area where BB, despite being a fairly rational lot normally, has a lot of true believers. 
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Wow, UFOs are most often seen where most people live!
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If you want to check the satellites hovering over your head, you can check ou this site. It shows a weekly satellite forecast based on the place you live, or the coordinates you give. I used it to see the International Space Station, the Hubble Telescope and the procession of Musk´s controversial satellites.
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Yeah, because nobody’s there to see them!
Came here for this, and several people delivered.
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