A recent, nation wide poll shows that 45 percent of Americans today believe Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO’s) have visited Earth in some form (Rhodes 18). The same poll taken in the 1950’s shows that under four percent of the US people believed aliens even exist. What could have caused the American people to go from under four percent believing in the existence of UFO’s in the 1950’s, to almost half today? This question is easily answered when one opens a TV guide or checks the newspaper when deciding what movie to see on a Friday night.

With the mass media hype, the ever-increasing movie production, and the millions spent on new merchandise every year, it is not hard to see how so many Americans today have been fooled into believing Aliens exist. Some time during the first week of July 1947, a local New Mexico rancher, Mac Brazel, was on his way out to check his sheep after a long, hard rain and lightning storm the night before. On his way out to the pasture, he noticed a large amount of unusual debris. As he looked closer, he noticed there was a long gouge several hundred feet in the ground with strange, unrecognizable debris all over the area (Missler 54).

Brazel gathered a few of the pieces, took them to his neighbors to ask them what they thought it might be, and eventually decided to drive into Roswell, the local town, and show the pieces to the sheriff. The sheriff, George Wilcox, contacted the Roswell Army air field, and began investigating the matter. It wasn’t long after, when the military stepped in, sealed off the area for a few days, and gathered all the debris, flying it to a different air field in Dayton, Ohio. Because of the way the military had covered up the findings, and the secrecy involved, it wasn’t long before the press got a hold of the incident, and took off with it.

Before a week had passed, almost all the locals of that Roswell town were believing that an alien space craft had crash landed in Mac Brazel’s pasture, and that the government was stepping in to cover it up. Hundreds of people began stepping forward, claiming that they saw the wreckage, and that they believed themselves that it was the remains of a crashed alien space craft. Because of how hard the Air Force tried to convince the people it was nothing more than a weather balloon that had crash landed due to the violent storm, and how much effort they put into keeping people quiet about what they saw, it sparked more and more interest.

Since then, Roswell, has actually become the single most famous “alien siting” location in America. If one were to travel through Roswell today, they would be amazed at all the alien toys, movies, clothes, shops, museums, and other paraphernalia. In fact, every year, in July, hundreds of alien supporters from all over the American and even some parts of the world journey to Roswell to celebrate the birthday of the supposed alien crash landing and visit all the alien museums and retail stores in the town. So what actually happened at Roswell?

Well, this was something that has been debated about for many many years. It wasn’t until June, 1997 that the Air Force made their official statements about the Roswell incident released the report for all to see. The military officers in charge have made every part of the 231-page report public. In the report, they explain what happened, and why they wanted to keep it a secret. The Air Force had been working on a new jet they had been designing, the KC-97G, and was testing its durability in the rain/bad weather.

Due to internal electrical problems, the plane crashed in the sheep’s pasture of Mac Brazel. Because of wanting to keep the new plane a secret, and not allow foreign nations to find out about it, the Air Force attempted to covered up the entire thing, and called it a weather balloon crash (Space Invaders 2). Kent Jeffrey, one of the men in charge of investigating the crash site reported; “No UFO crashed at Roswell-with or without aliens. It did not happen. Period. ” Kent Jeffrey collected more than 20,000 signatures from people opposed to secrecy about the Roswell matter (Space Invaders 3).

Acording to Star News Services, the vast majority of ALL UFOlogists now agree with the Airforce that the Roswell Incident was not really a UFO and agree with the Airforce’s explanation. Though the Roswell incident is the biggest “alien event” to occur in the history of the US, gaining more press coverage and national interrest than any other alien phenomenon, the Roswell incident is only one of many “sightings” alien supporters are using to back up their claim that aliens exist, and are making landings, visits, and flights on and around our planet every year.

What most people don’t know is that over 90 percent of all UFO reports prove to be IFO’s. -Identified Flying Objects (Rhodes 62). With the help of the media, the movie industry, and large merchandise corporations, anti-government and pro-alien supporters have successfully convinced a whopping 71 percent of Americans today that our US government wants us to believe that we are alone and are even taking measures to keep things like alien sightings from us (Rhodes 18). Is this true?

To date, no one has produced any evidence of a government Alien/UFO cover-up” (Rhodes 60). A senior researcher for the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal recently said; “There is no evidence that men in black are anything other than hoaxes or urban legendsIt just grows and every so often, is renewed. These things never go away” (Rhodes 60). The belief that our government is covering up alien sightings is as fictional as the hit TV show that bases many of its shows on this phony belief, The X-Files.

Astronomer Alan Hale once said, “If you are making an extraordinary claim, the burden is on you to produce the extraordinary evidence to prove that you are correct; the burden is not on me to prove that you are wrong” (Rhodes 57). Following this statement by Hale, The ICR (Institute for Creation Research) made the statement “To date, there is not one iota of real evidence in either science or the Bible that intelligent beings were either evolved or created anywhere in the universe except on earth. In any case, it is the planet earth which is the focal point of God’s interest in the Universe.

There is no need to look, because there couldn’t be anyone out there. ” It is understandable that alien supporters would be angered by statements like this, but the fact is, there hasn’t been one artificial signal from space logged by NASA despite many determined efforts (Easterbrook 1). In addition, almost every UFO sighting can be easily dismissed as mistakenly identified planets, rocket launchings, weather balloons, and various atmosphere phenomena (Rhodes 119). In fact, there are over 7087 man-made objects in spaceoften being mistook for UFO’s by people all over the earth (Rhodes 65).

In no way have alien supporters came close to proving that aliens are anything more real than the cute, extra-terrestrial flying saucers in the movie Batteries not Included. Allen Hynek, a well-known scientist, has made a recent statement; “If UFO’s are indeed somebody else’s nuts and bolts hardware, then we must still explain how such tangible hardware can change shape before our eyes, vanish in a Cheshire cat mannerseemingly melt away in front of us without apparent detection by persons nearby or in neighboring towns. We must wonder, too where UFO’s are hiding when not manifesting themselves to human eyes” (Missler 78).

Hynek makes a good point that even if these aliens are from another planet, they would still be under our laws of physics. The fact that so many of the reported sightings break our laws of physics, supports the conclusion that the sightings may be UFO’s, but have nothing to do with aliens space crafts, or aliens period. Whether or not aliens do exist far, far away, Americans should realize the chance that they have or are currently visiting our planet are nearly impossible, and hasn’t been close to proven in any way. This is something the media and pro-alien activists have worked hard at getting us all to believe in.