3 articles
A future U.S. president and about ten others watched a bright, color-shifting light over Leary, Georgia. Two ordinary explanations fit the record - the planet Venus, or a NASA rocket's glowing cloud - yet Carter, an amateur astronomer, rejected both.
Less than three months after Pearl Harbor, radar flagged something off the California coast and the guns opened up for an hour over a blacked-out city. The Army said 15 planes were up; the Navy said none. Decades later, the leading suspect was a stray weather balloon.
Astronomers, Pentagon analysts and aviation experts keep resolving UFO reports to the same short list: a bright planet, a satellite flare, a flickering bird, and the limits of human vision. Here is how they fool even trained observers - and how investigators tell them apart.
