Odors from UFOs: Deducing Odorant Chemistry and Causation from Available Data

Some UFO reports document the presence of odors. While the number of UFO odor reports is small, odor detection and recognition provides some information that could help solve the UFO mystery. Odorants, if released or created by the UFO, could provide information about their chemistry and possibly about the energy generated to produce them. Odors have not been considered physical evidence of the UFO presence because odors do not leave a trace. Nevertheless, odor detection implies that a chemical change took place in the environment that was significant enough to be detected.

Myriad reports of UFO sightings exist and are well documented in the literature of the study of UFOs. This field is widely known as ufology. The history of UFO sightings and their sociopolitical context and consequences constitutes the broad subject of this study and provides a site for analysis of how scientists address, both publicly and privately, anomalies that appear to pertain to science. The Condon Report, the Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, commissioned by the Air Force in 1968, provides a complex case for the exploration of how the outcome and conclusions of the study were influenced by all that had gone on before in ufology.