UFO enthusiasts admit 'aliens may not exist at all'
London, November 5 (ANI)
UFO enthusiasts from Britain, who have been scanning the skies for signs of alien activity for decades, have admitted that the "extraterrestrial" might not exist at all due to declining numbers of "flying saucer" sightings and failure to establish proof of extraterrestrial life.
Enthusiasts admit that a continued failure to provide proof could mean the end of "Ufology" - the study of UFOs - within the next decade.
Dozens of groups interested in the flying saucers and other unidentified craft have already closed because of lack of interest and next week one of the country's foremost organisations involved in UFO research is holding a conference to discuss whether the subject has any future.
Dave Wood, chairman of the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena (Assap), said that the meeting had been called to address the crisis in the subject and see if UFOs were a thing of the past.
"It is certainly a possibility that in ten years time, it will be a dead subject," the Telegraph quoted him as saying.
"We look at these things on the balance of probabilities and this area of study has been ongoing for many decades.
"The lack of compelling evidence beyond the pure anecdotal suggests that on the balance of probabilities that nothing is out there.
"I think that any UFO researcher would tell you that 98 per cent of sightings that happen are very easily explainable. One of the conclusions to draw from that is that perhaps there isn't anything there. The days of compelling eyewitness sightings seem to be over," Wood said.
He said that far from leading to an increase in UFO sightings and research, the advent of the internet had coincided with a decline.
As well as a fall in sightings and lack of proof, Wood said that the lack of new developments meant that the main focus for the dwindling numbers of enthusiasts was supposed UFO encounters that took place several decades ago and conspiracy theories that surround them.
In particular, he cited the Roswell incident from 1947, when an alien spaceship is said to have crashed in New Mexico, and the Rendlesham incident in 1980, often described as the British equivalent, when airmen from a US airbase in Suffolk reported a spaceship landing.
"When you go to UFO conferences it is mainly people going over these old cases, rather than bringing new ones to the fore," Wood said.
"There is a trend where a large proportion of UFO studies are tending towards conspiracy theories, which I don't think is particularly helpful," he added.
The issue will be debated at a summit at the University of Worcester on November 17 and findings will be published in the journal Anomaly.