THE search for extra terrestrial life has occupied human beings for hundreds of years.

Many people have dedicated their entire careers to the hunt for other intelligent life forms outside of Earth, while others spend their days watching the skies for unidentified flying objects.

One US-based betting company has taken UFO enthusiasm to the next level by producing an interactive map that reveals every alien sighting across the country in the past 78 years.

The map has been released ahead of Global Space Week that kicks off on Thursday.

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According to the betting site casino.org, “we’ve calculated the odds of sighting a UFO in each state across the country and compiled the results into this interactive map”.

According to the site, alien enthusiasts are most likely to see a UFO in Wyoming with almost 3,000 sightings since 1940 and a 205:1 odds of seeing something in the sky.

Don’t bother heading to Florida though, as the odds of spotting anything extra terrestrial there are 3485:1.

There have been about 259,691 UFO sightings in the US over the last seven decades.

Staggeringly, more than 40,000 Americans have taken out insurance against alien abduction.

The site also includes an interactive timeline detailing some of the more interesting UFO sightings throughout history in the US.

According to the site, a “saucer-shaped, unlit craft” was spotted by United Airlines pilots and staff hovering over a Chicago O’Hare Airport terminal.

“It then shot up vertically at such speed that it left a clear blue hole in the cloud layer,” the site said.

In 1950, Paul and Evelyn Trent observed a slow-moving, metallic disk-shaped object over their farm just outside Sheridan, Oregon.

They managed to take two photos before it sped away to the west. They have become the most famous UFO pictures in history.

But not everyone is sold on the merits of an interactive UFO sighting map.

UFO Research NSW spokesman Doug Moffett said he doubted the reliability of mapping sightings across countries.

While there have been similar attempts in Australia to map UFO sightings, Mr Moffett wasn’t sold on the idea.

“I’ve looked at previous attempts to map out UFO sightings and a lot of it depends on circumstance,” Mr Moffett said.

“There may be more UFO sightings in Uzbekestan than there are in America but we would never hear about it.”

He said he wasn’t sure that an interactive map could accurately depict the true state of UFO activity across a country due to the random nature of the phenomenon itself.

“Spikes in certain places or at certain times may well be explained by a host of anomalies or variables,” he said.

“For instance, during summer, more people are likely to be outside, looking up at the sky so you could see a spike at this time”.

As a former UFO investigator, Mr Moffett said his testing process was “very rigorous” in order to determine whether or not a UFO sighting had actually taken place.

“I was always very careful because I didn’t want to contaminate any information or damage my own reputation,” he said.

“I don’t know every investigator in Australia so I don’t know how rigorous they are and whether what they see might be something like a laser light display instead of an actual UFO”.

“It is easy to contaminate evidence by a lack of rigour when determining the unknown”.

AUSTRALIA AND THE UFO PHENOMENON

Australia’s enthusiasm for extra terrestrial life isn’t far behind the US.

“Australia was the second country in the world to have a public UFO organisation, known as the Australian Flying Saucer Bureau, after the US in the mid 1950s,” Mr Moffett said.

“So we have a very long history of being interested in UFO and extra terrestrial happenings”.

There are a number of organisations across the nation dedicated to discussing Ufology - the study of UFOs - as well as a movement of sky watchers who spend hours monitoring the horizon with cameras at the ready.

While Australia’s UFO community has only about 1,000 dedicated members, Mr Moffett said there would be “millions more” enthusiasts who participate in the movement at home.

“I would estimate that the UFO community in the greater region of Sydney would be around 300 people,” he said.

“We have anywhere between 60 and 80 people at our meetings each month,

“There are a hell of a lot of Australians who have an interest in the UFO phenomenon, it’s one of the most searched topics on the internet after all”.

GLOBAL SPACE WEEK

The annual United Nations Global Space Week event is the largest public space celebration on Earth, and is now in it’s 19th year.

More than 3,700 events are run across 80 countries that celebrate the mysteries and wonders of the great beyond.

This year’s Space Week theme is ‘Space Unites The World’.

UFO Research NSW plans to meet during Global Space Week to discuss ufology and celebrate all things space.

“Any event that gets people to focus on space is always a good thing,” he said.

“Things like Space Week allow people to look at the sky and get their head around concepts like extra terrestrial life and when you can do that, you can start to believe that there are intelligent life forms out there”.

Global Space Week begins on Thursday, October 4.