By the CBC Kids team  June 26, 2021 | Last Updated June 24, 2022

For thousands of years, people have reported seeing strange lights and objects flying through the sky. Today, these unexplained phenomena are commonly called UFOs.

But what exactly are UFOs? Are they visitors from another world? Where have famous sightings happened? Keep reading to find out!

What does UFO stand for?

(Pixabay)
Although people have claimed to see strange objects in the sky for much of human history, UFO is a fairly new term. It’s an acronym (a word formed from the initial letters of a set of words) that stands for Unidentified Flying Object.

The term first appeared in the 1950s, and up until then these weird objects were known by another name: flying saucers. This is because many of the sightings described floating, disc-shaped objects.

The term UFO was originally meant for any unknown object people saw in the sky, but it quickly became attached to sightings of crafts that were thought to be from other planets.

Are UFOs really from other worlds?

Some people believe that UFOs are actually vehicles from other planets, flown by alien visitors. Others have even claimed to have been abducted by these eerie, floating vessels.

Though there has never been any hard evidence of aliens, it’s impossible to completely rule them out.

Many of the reports we have on UFOs come from pilots who have claimed to see flying objects that don’t look or behave like any aircraft they have ever seen before!

So, are UFOs really alien in nature? While there haven’t been a large number of scientific studies done on these phenomena, different governments have looked into them.

If UFOs aren’t alien spaceships, what are they?

(Pixabay)
In most UFO sightings, what people believe are UFOs are actually just common objects like planes and clouds, or celestial events like meteors and planets that seem unusually bright.

Some cases remain unidentified even after they’ve been investigated, but scientists believe many of these to also be sightings of more common objects that people simply didn’t recognize.

Many reported UFO sightings actually turn out to be something as simple as a balloon.