The US Congress has been attempting to "pull back the curtain" on secret research into UFOs - as our map reveals the 31 unexplained objects witnessed above Kent. The hearing, titled "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth," heard from several experts and a variety of witness accounts.
Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) is the new name for Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs). Experts included government workers and a member of NASA's UAP Independent Study Team.
Michael Gold - former NASA associate administrator of space policy and partnerships and a member of the UAP study team - told the hearing that "the vast majority of UAP are drones". However, he added that there are anomalies that must be studied and admitted that some of the UAPs observed "can move faster" than US submarines and "are being intelligently controlled".
Author and former Department of Defence official Luis Elizondo claimed that "advanced technologies not made by our government - or any other government - are monitoring sensitive military installations around the globe." He insisted: "Let me be clear. UAP are real."
The hearing, jointly led by Chairs Nancy Mace and Glenn Grothman, was the second to investigate the phenomenon of UAP. "Americans deserve to understand what the government has learned about UAP sightings, and the nature of any potential threats these phenomena pose," the co-chairs said in a statement.
The hearing followed a long-awaited report released by NASA last year which studied previous sightings of UFOs (or UAPs) in the skies. While the report did not find any clear evidence that the sightings were alien, it did admit it was possible they could be.
Last year the British spotter group UFO Identified documented a total of 395 sightings in the UK in 2023. That was a 20 per cent drop from 497 UFO sightings in 2022 and also lower than in 2021 (413) and 2020 (484).
Those figures include 31 sightings above Kent: 12 last year; nine in 2022; and 10 in 2021. You can see what UFO encounters have been reported where you live using our interactive map below.
Sightings documented in Kent included:
A witness saw a "spinning cylinder" moving in the sky immediately in front of them in Bickley, Bromley, in July last year. Several dots of light that were seen "dancing" in the sky above Ashford Railway Station, in April last year.
An oval-shaped object was seen moving and tipping on its side immediately after a red flash in the sky above Ashford. Just under half of all documented sightings (48 per cent) include photographic or video evidence.
A quarter of all sightings (25 per cent) were of a "star-like" object or objects, moving across the sky. The next most common sighting was of an unidentified object shaped like an "orb" (17 per cent), "sphere", (10 per cent) and "cylinder" (9 per cent).
UFO Identified found that people in the North West had the best chance of seeing a UFO last year, with 41 sightings across the region, followed by the South East (40) and then the South West (39). Separate research by the UFO spotter website Enigma has documented more than 200,000 unexplained encounters above the skies of the USA.
More UFOs have been spotted in California than any other US state, just over 28,000. California is followed by Florida (14,500), Texas (12,500) and New York (10,000).
But those states have the highest populations in the US - meaning there are more people to watch the skies, and more likely that someone will see something they can't explain. Taking population size into account, residents of New Mexico are most likely to have seen a UFO.
For every 100,000 people, there are 162 sightings. That's the equivalent of one in 618 people encountering a UFO.