New study names unlikely US state best for UFO spotters – where is yours?

Montana’s wide open spaces have been named the top place where you’re most likely to have a close encounter, with half of locals claiming to have seen a UFO.

Half (exactly 50 percent) of residents of this western state, often called “the country of the big sky,” also reported that they “believe in UFOs,” a new study claims.

The findings are sure to surprise residents of Nevada, home of the legendary classified U.S. Air Force base and ufology mainstay Area 51: Their state didn’t even appear in the top 10 in the study, which integrated sightings with other regional data.

Delaware came in second, with 80 percent of locals admitting to believing in UFOs, but none reporting actually seeing strange crafts or weird lights in the sky.

Among the states topping the list is Massachusetts, as data collected from Google searches shows that this New England state is the most UFO-obsessed in the United States, with 13,750 monthly Google queries related to the topic (or 19.64 searches per 10,000 people). But New York and New Jersey were not far behind.

Google search terms incorporated into this analysis included “UFO sighting,” “Are UFOs real?” and “UFO video,” among others.

The 37,260 monthly UFO-related search queries in New York City broke down to 19.04 per 10,000 residents, showing that this seemingly high figure needed to be adjusted for population density.

New Jersey’s 16,820 UFO searches came to 18.1 per 10,000 people, ranking third.

Despite stereotypes about repeated cases of “alien abduction” in rural areas of the United States, South Dakota, Arkansas and Louisiana ranked at the bottom of the list in terms of search interest in this phenomenon.

South Dakota ranked last for UFO interest, with just 850 monthly searches, or 9.25 per 10,000 residents.

The results are sure to surprise residents of Nevada, home of the legendary secret US Air Force base and UFO mainstay Area 51 – their state didn’t even make the top 10 in this new study. Above, an alien (artist’s rendering)

Arkansas ranked second with 2,870 Google searches for UFOs, or 9.36 per 10,000 people in the state; followed by Louisiana with 4,300 searches or 9.4 per 10,000 residents.

All in all, a complete whole A quarter of all Americans (25 percent) admitted to believing in UFOs, according to survey data.

The number was curiously higher than those who were actually willing to admit they had seen one: only 7 percent reported having personally witnessed a UFO in the study’s surveys.

Total UFO sightings, according to data from the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) used in the new study, were 132,850 last year.

The new study incorporated a variety of metrics to determine which state provided locals and visitors with the highest likelihood of seeing a UFO — including UFO sightings via NUFORC, data on light pollution levels, and survey data from 2,057 people on topics related to UFO encounters in each U.S. state.

The project was sponsored by JackpotCity Casino for reasons that have not yet been fully revealed.

But adjustments based on light pollution, state population density and survey data significantly altered the results compared to NUFORC’s raw UFO sighting figures.

California, for example, is reported to have topped the list with a staggering total of 16,354 UFO sightings reported to NUFORC.

But the state’s high light pollution (57.37) and the scant 7 percent of citizens who reported seeing a UFO in the study’s survey data weighed in the Golden State’s final ranking.

However, California’s skies remain a magnet for mysterious objects and nearly a quarter, about 24 percent, of its population wants to “believe in UFOs.”