After the Chinese spy balloon was seen across the country, including in Chesterfield, and shot down over the Atlantic in February, more and more UFOs have begun being discovered around North America.

“Until we knew what it was, it was indeed a UFO, an Unidentified Flying Object,” said Earl Mullins, president and founder of The Space Museum and Grissom Center in Bonne Terre, Missouri. 

Mullins actually saw the spy balloon and took pictures of it.

“The other objects, two or three that they shot down, I truly believe that they were as harmless as weather balloons,” he said. “When something like this happens, it heightens our curiosity, and so people start looking more and they start seeing more things.”

Though many objects have a logical explanation such as with the Chinese spy balloon. Others, like the gimbal objects that were discovered by the navy, are harder to explain with our knowledge of physics. 

Mullins is one of many people that entertain the idea that aliens might exist. However, he said he would have to see it to believe it or ample evidence of aliens would have to have been found being a person of the Missourian “Show-Me State” mindset. 

Mullins also thinks that sentient, humanoid aliens would be very improbable.

“For creatures like human beings to exist, we have to have a specific gravitational field, which we have. We have to be in what you call the Goldilocks Zone, and we are in our solar system. Not too hot, not too cold, and we have to have the presence of water,” Mullins said.

The sheer size of space also makes the likelihood of aliens coming to earth improbable.

“Even the closest star to us, the Centauri system, is like 4.3 lightyears away,” Mullins said.

Nia Ovcharova, senior said that she fully believes aliens exist because of the vast amount of planets and galaxies there are.

“It’s huge. There’s no way there isn’t other life out there,” Ovcharova said.

Ovcharova said the UFO sightings that have been occurring recently are genuine alien sightings, or at least she prefers to believe they are, and has seen videos of the UFOs on TikTok and Twitter.

“I don’t think I have actually seen anything concrete,” Ovcharova said. “I think I’m just silly and delusional and believe in it.” 

Zachary Cantor, senior, also believes aliens exist, but doesn’t necessarily believe they have come to Earth when humans were living here, but he wouldn’t be surprised if an alien visited Earth at some point.

“There’s trillions of planets in our galaxy, and there are hundreds of trillions of galaxies, so I think to not believe in aliens is ignorant,” Cantor said.

Cantor said he doesn’t think the recent UFO sightings were aliens.

“A UFO is just an unidentified object. It could be another country,” Cantor said, “Like I said, the universe is huge so it would be pretty hard to spot an alien or for them to get to us in general. It would take a long time.”