UFO (Website) Traffic and Crash

UFO’s caught my attention last week when I was looking at my traffic stats. Most of my traffic comes from the usual suspects: blogger, technorati, other science blogs, and return visitors that login directly but a small slice of the pie chart caught my eye. Last week about 7% of my visitors came from an unusual source, UFO Review Magazine, an eclectic mix of astrobiology, cryptozoology, space, archaeology, palaeontology, evolution, science, and even a healthy dose of conspiracy.

Coincidentally another UFO website has made the news. France's national space agency (Centre National d'Etudes spatiales - CNES) has declassified its UFO files and made them available to the public through a new website. The website documents all reported UFO sightings over fifty years. The website has drawn so much attention, that visitors have crashed the site, which remains virtually impossible to access.

The fervor stems from the fact that France is the first country to fully open its UFO files to the public. Other governments, including the UK and the US, collect data on UFOs but files can only be requested on a case-by-case basis.

There have been 1,600 reported UFO cases in France since 1954, evidenced by some 10,000 documents, including police reports, photographs, and videos that are now available to the public. Enjoy!