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Unidentified flying object (commonly abbreviated as UFO or U.F.O.) is the popular term for any aerial phenomenon whose cause cannot be easily or immediately identified by the observer. The United States Air Force, which coined the term in 1952, initially defined UFOs as those objects that remain unidentified after scrutiny by expert investigators,Air Force Regulation 200-2 text versionpdf of document, initially defined a UFO as "any airborne object that by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or that cannot be positively identified as a familiar object." The Air Force added that "Technical Analysis thus far has failed to provide a satisfactory explanation for a number of sightings reported." A later version [http://www.foia.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-070703-004.pdf] altered the definition to "Any aerial phenomena, airborne objects or objects that are unknown or appear out of the ordinary to the observer because of performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features," and added "Air Force activities must reduce the percentage of unidentifieds to a minimum. Analysis thus far has explained all but a few of the sightings reported. These unexplained sightings are carried statistically as unidentifieds." though the term UFO is often used more generally to describe any sighting unidentifiable to the reporting observer(s). Popular culture frequently takes the term UFO as a synonym for alien spacecraft. Cults have become associated with UFOs, and mythology and folklore have evolved around the phenomenon.Vallée, J. (1990). Alien Contact by Human Deception." New York: Anomalist Books. ISBN 1-933665-30-0 Some investigators now prefer to use the broader term unidentified aerial phenomenon (or UAP), to avoid the confusion and speculative associations that have become attached to UFO. A good example is the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena or NARCAP. [http://www.narcap.org/newspage.htm] Another widely known acronym for UFO in Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian is OVNI.

Studies have established that the majority of UFOs are observations of some real but conventional object?most commonly aircraft, balloons, or astronomical objects such as meteors or bright planets?that have been misidentified by the observer as anomalies while a small percentage of reported UFOs are hoaxes.For example, the USAFs Project Blue Book concluded that less than 2 % of reported UFOs were "psychological" or hoaxes; Allen Hendry's study for CUFOS had less than 1 % Only a small percentage of reported sightings (usually 5 to 20%) can be classified as unidentified flying objects in the strictest sense (see below for some studies).

Some scientists have argued that all UFO sightings are misidentifications of natural phenomenaMenzel, D. H.; Taves, E. H. (1977). The UFO enigma. Garden City (NY, USA): Doubleday and historically, there was debate among some scientists about whether scientific investigation was warranted given available empirical data.McDonald, James. E. (1968). Statement on Unidentified Flying Objects submitted to the House Committee on Science and Astronautics at July 29, 1968, Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Rayburn Bldg., Washington, D.D.COMETA Report: http://www.ufoevidence.org/topics/Cometa.htm Politicking and Paradigm Shifting: James E. McDonald and the UFO Case Study http://www.project1947.com/shg/mccarthy/shgintro.htmlhttp://news-service.stanford.edu/news/1998/july1/ufostudy71.html Very little peer-reviewed literature has been published in which scientists have proposed, studied or supported non-prosaic explanations for UFOs. Nevertheless, over the years UFOs have been the subject of many investigations that have varied widely in scope and scientific rigor.

UFO reports became frequent after the first widely publicized U.S. sighting, reported by private pilot Kenneth Arnold in 1947, that gave rise to the popular terms "flying saucer" and "flying disc." Since then, millions of people have reported that they have seen UFOs.For example, recent 2008 U.S. and U.K. opinion polls [http://www.reporternews.com/news/2008/jul/26/you-are-not-alone/] indicate that at least 8 % of these populations say they have had UFO sightings