[DoreenMichele]

Unidentified Flying Objects are absolutely real, though the newer cool kid term is UAP.

(From the internet: UAP stands for "unidentified anomalous phenomena.")

It's flying saucers carrying aliens from another planet that's controversial and up for debate.

[1over137]

>It's flying saucers carrying aliens from another planet that's controversial and up for debate.

Which is what "UFO" means to 99% of people.

[DoreenMichele]

I hate seeing it used that way on HN though because it actively undermines meaty discussion of objective data and promotes the treatment of articles about objective data as click-bait, like it's the "hot sheets" of Men in Black -- like HN is a place to take seriously the wildest conspiracy theories with no real basis.

[themoonisachees]

But it's not what it means to the united states government when it announced it had seen UFOs, which is the point of discussion

[Narretz]

I thought UAP stands for "unidentified aerial/aerospace phenomenon". Anyway it's better than UFO because it primes you for the fact that many "UFOs" are not flying at all. Many are stars, lights of all kinds, or artifacts of the the recording equipment.

[DoreenMichele]

I thought so too. I googled it and came up with the above quote but didn't provide the link.

Happy to be corrected if someone has a good source they can cite.

It is a better term overall and also lacks the baggage of being used colloquially to mean "aliens."

[coldpie]

> It's flying saucers carrying aliens from another planet that's controversial and up for debate.

No, it isn't. There's some people out there stuck down in a conspiracy hole, but there is no real debate.