 "Photo: AP")
Residents in a small town about 150 miles from Austin are attracting national attention because of their claims to have seen evidence of extraterrestrial life.
Stephenville, Texas residents allege to have seen an unidentified flying object, or UFO, on Jan. 8. The Mutual UFO Network will visit the residents and bring trained field investigators to research the case.
"This case is very unusual because we have more than a dozen reports of a sighting," said Ken Cherry, state director for the Mutual UFO Network. The organization supports the scientific research of UFOs and has many chapters throughout the United States. Cherry added that in many cases only one person will report a sighting.
He said none of the witnesses in Stephenville have visual proof of what they saw. So, the network will fact check the residents' claims to better understand what people saw. Cherry said the network maintains case studies of reported sightings and tries to confirm the beliefs of those who make the claims by first eliminating every possible explanation.
"Just because it remains in the UFO category doesn't mean it is extraterrestrial," Cherry said.
According to The Associated Press, residents reported seeing an object that operated lower to the ground than a plane and had lights unlike an aircraft's.
Lockheed Martin Corp., which provides many of the aircrafts for the U.S. Department of Defense, has a branch in Fort Worth, just 70 miles northeast of Stephenville.
Joe Stout, spokesman for Lockheed Martin, said the company does not test planes in Stephenville, but Lockheed planes will sometimes pass over the town for a test in the Fort Hood area.
Lockheed is making aircrafts that will fly lower than the average plane, but Stout said none of these models have been tested yet.
UT professor Neal Evans teaches an astronomy course in which students must prove the likelihood of whether or not extraterrestrial life exists and whether humans on earth could ever come in contact with such life.
Evans said that it is difficult to travel between stars because they are so far away from each other.
"It takes tremendous technology to travel between stars and a large amount of resources," he said. "Any civilization who could do that would be far beyond us, and I don't think they would be fooling around in Stephenville."
