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Start here. Our home is Upsilon Bootes, which is a double star. We live on the sixth planet of seven, counting outward from the sun, which is the larger of the two. Our sixth planet has one moon. Our fourth planet has three. Our first and third planets each have one. Our probe is in the position of Arcturus, known in our maps.
-Alleged message of an unmanned probe allegedly placed in orbit around our moon between 15,000 and 13,000 years ago by the inhabitants of another planet
and allegedly translated by British astronomer Duncan Lunan in 1974. (Steiger and Steiger 152)
Since the late 1940s, there have been periodic reports of UFOs in Russia and Eastern Europe (indeed, dating back to 1908, if the Tunguska meteorite is counted as a crashed alien vehicle). Since 1989, particularly after a well-publicized "sighting" in the Russian city of Voronezh, the number of sightings in the region has sky-rocketed. Many ufologists have noted that the dramatic upsurge in UFO sightings in the region coincided closely with the fall of communism, though no one, as far as I am aware, has speculated on any putative connection between the two. More usefully, we may note that the increase in the number of UFO sightings coincides with the recently accelerating development of secret and advanced military technology, and that many UFO sightings occur in the vicinity of top-secret military installations.
Literally speaking, UFO means unidentified flying object. If, at a certain distance, one cannot tell if a certain object is a plane or a missile or a helicopter, for example, then it would seem to qualify as "unidentified"-at least for the poor observer on the ground who is wondering what it is. In 1972, Carl Sagan defined a UFO as "a moving aerial or celestial phenomenon, detected visually or by radar, but whose nature is not immediately understood" (Spencer 301). But in practice, the expression is not usually employed in so modest or literal-minded a way. In practice, the acronym UFO is taken to refer to a flying vehicle of extraterrestrial origin. The University of Colorado UFO Project provided a working practical definition of "UFO" in 1969, equating it with,
...the stimulus for a report made by one or...