Greg Eghigian has received funding for his research on UFOs from the American Historical Association, the American Philosophical Society, NASA, and th

From flying boats to secret Soviet weapons to alien visitors – a brief cultural history of UFOs

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2021-07-10 12:30:07

Greg Eghigian has received funding for his research on UFOs from the American Historical Association, the American Philosophical Society, NASA, and the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.

On June 25, 2021, the U.S. government released a nine–page preliminary report on UFOs, or, as it is now calling them, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or UAPs. The report is the latest notable event in what has been a renaissance for UFOs in recent years. Greg Eghigian is a historian of science at Penn State who has published research and is writing a book on the history of UFOs in the U.S. We spoke with him for The Conversation Weekly podcast the day before the new report came out to better understand the cultural history of UFOs in the U.S.

The idea of aliens and that other worlds might be inhabited actually goes back to ancient times. The question was a matter of real debate among philosophers, scientists and theologians in the Western world by the 18th century and it was widely accepted that alien civilizations existed.

But something changed in the 19th century. That’s when you first start to see these reports of people seeing what they say were flying ships overhead. The things people describe back then sound a lot like the things they were familiar with – they literally saw ships and vessels that would normally float on the sea in flight. Some people would see steam-powered ships.