Earth's Cosmic Newspaper
Short, plain definitions of the terms the rest of the Guide uses. Other entries link here.
Reference note. This guide explains the basics of well-known UFO and UAP cases, people, and claims: what happened, who was involved, and what supporters and skeptics say. Milky Way News takes no position. Further investigation, skepticism, or belief is up to you.
UFO (unidentified flying object) is the classic term, coined by the Air Force's Edward Ruppelt in the 1950s to replace "flying saucer." UAP originally meant "unidentified aerial phenomena"; Congress redefined it in 2022 as "unidentified anomalous phenomena" to cover objects in air, sea, space, or moving between them. Officials use UAP to shed the cultural baggage of UFO. The things described are the same.
A deliberately broad term for any intelligence that is not human, used in the Grusch-era testimony and the 2023 UAP Disclosure Act to avoid committing to "extraterrestrial." It covers alien, interdimensional, ancient-terrestrial, or artificial possibilities.
An unidentified object observed underwater or entering and leaving water. Modern discussion favors "transmedium."
Describing an object that appears to move between domains, such as air to sea, without losing performance. The term entered official language with AARO's "all-domain" mandate.
J. Allen Hynek's 1972 classification. A close encounter of the first kind is a sighting within about 500 feet; the second kind involves physical effects (traces, burns, interference); the third kind involves observed occupants. Later writers added a fourth kind (abduction) and beyond; those extensions are not Hynek's.
Luis Elizondo's shorthand for reported UAP characteristics: instantaneous acceleration, hypersonic speed without signatures, low observability, transmedium travel, and positive lift without visible propulsion. A claims checklist, not a set of verified facts.
In the movement's usage, the hoped-for official confirmation that non-human intelligence is real and that governments hold evidence of it. Lowercase disclosure also covers ordinary records releases like PURSUE.
The alleged recovery of downed non-human craft by governments or contractors. The central claim of the "legacy program" allegations. No crash retrieval has ever been publicly documented.
The alleged study of recovered non-human technology to reproduce its capabilities. AARO's 2024 historical review found no evidence any such program existed.
A person claiming ongoing, usually friendly, communication with visitors, a genre that began with George Adamski in the 1950s. Distinct from abductees, whose reported experiences are unwilling.
A person reporting being taken and examined by non-human beings. "Experiencer" is the broader, less loaded modern term preferred in research and support communities.
A concentrated burst of sighting reports in one region or period, such as 1947, 1952, the 1989-90 Belgian wave, or the 2024-25 drone flap.
The proposal that some UAP are craft operated by beings from elsewhere in the universe. The default popular explanation; unproven.
The proposal, associated with Jacques Vallée and John Keel, that the phenomenon originates from some other reality or dimension coexisting with ours, which its proponents argue better fits the phenomenon's absurdities and its presence throughout history.
The claim that non-human visitors shaped early human history and religion, popularized by Erich von Däniken and the Ancient Aliens franchise. Rejected by mainstream archaeology.
Physicist Enrico Fermi's question: if intelligent life is common, where is everybody? The tension between high probability estimates and absent evidence.
Frank Drake's 1961 framework multiplying the factors that would determine how many communicating civilizations exist in the galaxy. A way of organizing ignorance, as its users admit, not a calculation with known inputs.
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence via telescopes and signal analysis. Mainstream SETI historically kept sharp distance from ufology; the UAP era has softened, not erased, that line.
A Fermi paradox answer: advanced civilizations know about us and deliberately avoid contact, observing without interfering.
The recurring discovery of livestock dead with unusual-seeming injuries, attributed variously to predators and decomposition (the FBI-era conclusion), cults, or non-human activity. A standing crossover between ufology and rural high strangeness.
Patterns flattened into crops, overwhelmingly documented as human land art since confessed hoaxers emerged in 1991, but retained in the lore's border regions.
Shorthand for a dismissive official explanation, from J. Allen Hynek's regretted 1966 suggestion that Michigan sightings might be marsh gas.
The 701 cases of 12,618 that Project Blue Book closed as unidentified in 1969. The classic era's unexplained residue.
U.S. Navy reporting vocabulary for an unauthorized object intruding into controlled training airspace, the bureaucratic frame in which several PURSUE-released reports were filed.
Deliberately false information seeded to mislead. In ufology, a documented reality (the Air Force's Paul Bennewitz affair) and a universal explanation of last resort. Handle both facts at once.
The recovery of alleged hidden memories under hypnosis, the method behind most detailed abduction accounts. Memory science now regards it as capable of creating vivid false memories, which is the central problem of the abduction literature.
The claim, from Skinwalker Ranch research, that anomalous phenomena follow investigators home and attach to their households. Testimonial only.
Organized faiths built around visitor beliefs, including the Raëlian Movement, the Aetherius Society, and, catastrophically, Heaven's Gate.
"Close encounter of the fifth kind": human-initiated contact, the term and protocol popularized by Steven Greer's CSETI, whose practitioners attempt to invite craft through group meditation. Widely practiced; never demonstrated under controls.
The fuel Bob Lazar said powered the S-4 craft. Element 115 (moscovium) was synthesized in 2003; its known isotopes decay in fractions of a second, which physicists cite against the stable-fuel claim and believers answer with undiscovered isotopes.
MWN's term for a pattern in promoted cases: a narrowly scoped technical report from a credentialed lab is rebroadcast as institutional endorsement of a much larger claim, which downstream actors then cite as established. See the Buga Sphere entry.