‘From hearsay to hard evidence’: are UFOs about to go mainstream?

Unidentified aerial phenomena are getting serious attention on TV and from Barack Obama and Marco Rubio and next month the Pentagon is set to release a major declassified analysis

Nick Pope spent the early 1990s investigating UFOs for the British ministry of defence. Sequestered in a rarely visited government office – the “metaphorical basement” – he well remembers how his field of work was regarded.

“I would walk down the corridor and people would whistle the theme music to either Close Encounters of the Third Kind or the Twilight Zone,” Pope told the Guardian.