The statistician observed that the type of craft witnessed has changed considerably over the years, with traditional "flying saucers" being exchanged for mere "lights in the sky."

"The plurality of post-Internet sightings take the form of strange lights in the sky. Why lights instead of tangible shapes? Maybe claiming to see 'lights' is less likely to make your friends and family react skeptically than claiming you saw an actual UFO up-close, especially now that everyone walks around with a handy picture-taking device in their pocket," says Monfort.

Monfort makes interesting correlations between certain dates, like the fourth of July, having higher incidents of recorded sightings, speculating that "maybe the mysterious lights [reported on the fourth of July] are actually fireworks."

He also noticed that certain countries are much more likely to report UFOs than others, with the number of reported sighting in the USA being almost 300 times greater than the global median.