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Volume 18: Number 3: Article 2
Time-Series Analysis of a Catalog of UFO Events: Evidence of a Local-Sidereal-Time Modulation
P. A. Sturrock, Center for Space Science and Astrophysics, Stanford University, MC 4060, Stanford, CA 94305
Analysis of a large database may yield patterns that are not obvious by studying individual cases. We here carry out a time-series analysis of a selection of the 1999 version of the Hatch UFO catalog, comprising 12,100 events, for which geographical and temporal data are well established. We compare our results with those of earlier analyses by Poher and Vallee on smaller datasets, and confirm that the event rate exhibits a modulation related to local sidereal time (LST). Such a modulation could in principle be simply a spurious effect due to the combined influence of a strong time-of-day modulation, and an expected time-of-year modulation. However, we develop a test to distinguish such a spurious pattern from an intrinsic pattern. This test indicates that the LST modulation is intrinsic.
Keywords: UFO events, UFO time patterns
FULL TEXT:
Time-Series Analysis of a Catalog of UFO Events: Evidence of a Local-Sidereal-Time Modulation
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