UFOs: From psychology to air traffic, are we closer now to an answer?

Around the mid-1970s to early 1980s, Dr Marks says developments were taking place in the UK exploring hot air balloons and airships – and some “would resemble traditional UFOs”.

He notes, however, these were “small-scale” experiments that did not get outside of the air hangar.

Today, Dr Marks says, “a lot of air traffic movements are recorded,” with free-to-download apps able to identify a plane, where it has come from and its destination. This “digital fingerprint” makes it a lot easier to track what is going on in the sky, he explains.

For his part, David remains confident in his UFO sighting.

“Unless somebody can explain to me what type of aircraft was flying at that time, that was 45-feet long, cigar-shaped and silver – I have no explanation for it,” he says, adding that believing in UFOs can sometimes be “like you’re banging your head against a brick wall, against society”.

“It’s still being dismissed as nonsense,” he says.

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) closed their UFO desk in 2009 after saying it served no defence purpose and was taking staff away from more valuable defence-related activities.

In a statement, an MOD spokesperson added: “In over 50 years, no sightings of extraterrestrial intelligence, Unidentified Flying Objects and Unidentified Aerial Phenomena reported to us indicated the existence of any military threat to the United Kingdom.”