App shows unexplained objects travel Michigan skies
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A startup allows people to share firsthand UFO sightings via an app, and Michiganders are among the top users.
Driving the news: Enigma Labs developed an app where users can upload videos of odd sightings in the sky.
- Alejandro Rojas, a UFO researcher, tells Axios that the West and Southwest are generally the biggest hotbeds of strange activity.
- However, per Enigma, Michigan has the ninth-highest total sightings.
How it works: An AI program on the Enigma Labs app generates a score to help determine whether an uploaded user video captures something truly unidentifiable or just a plane, satellite or other known object.
- Rojas says the app aims to crowdsource as much information as possible because the government typically lacks enough data to study these anomalies.
By the numbers: Since the app started in 2023, Michigan users have submitted 526 sightings. Enigma has recorded 7,375, including from public sources. That's compared with 29,000 in California, including 2,220 submitted to the app.
- The most common shapes reported in Michigan are lights (2,497) and triangles (656), followed by circles, "other" and spheres.
Zoom in: One user in Ypsilanti submitted video in late October purporting to show six lights flying together.
- A February submission on the state's west side records a person driving on a highway toward an object.
- "As I got even with it, it was only about 150 feet above the ground and about 250 yards away above the field. It was rather large, I'd say about the size of Taco Bell," the user wrote in their post. "I tried to record but I was driving and I couldn't do anything but hit record and hope for the best."
Catch up quick: Most people know the term UFO, but the current term coined by the government is UAP, an unidentified aerial phenomenon.
- With widespread media like "The X-Files," the public started associating "UFOs" with aliens, but Rojas says experts prefer a neutral approach, recognizing that these objects are simply unidentified — not necessarily extraterrestrial.
What we're watching: Most of the time, objects are explainable. However, misidentifications have increased lately because Space X rockets have been adding satellites, he says.
- But he said he's heartened that NASA and Congress have taken UAP sightings more seriously recently and shared their reports.