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Are UFOs lighting up the skies over Australia's outback?

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Move over Roswell. New Mexico's UFO Museum and Research Center may attract more than 150,000 visitors annually who are curious about the alleged 1947 alien crash landing there, but some residents of Australia's outback claim their skies are alive with unidentified flying object activity now.

In June, reports Northern Territory News, the town of Marlinja (population 112) was reportedly visited by three spaceships that hovered just a few meters over several homes. Residents were tipped off to their presence by a "strange, loud noise," the News reported. After running outside, several say they saw three red lights in the distance as the sound grew louder, causing the ground to shake. The encounter lasted "for what seemed like a couple of hours," residents reported, with the UFOs casting enough light to make them feel as though they were "sitting in a football stadium." The lights left as suddenly as they arrived, only to return briefly later that night as residents gathered to sip tea and discuss what they had just seen.

No abductions were reported, so it's safe to say that agents Mulder and Scully were not called in to investigate.

This alleged sighting, combined with a number of suspected UFO's in pictures snapped throughout Australia's Northern Territory, have outback  denizens bracing for a possible influx of tourists: The area's unofficial UFO capital, Wycliffe Well, attracts "hundreds of visitors" each year hoping to catch a glimpse of a UFO zipping across the sky, according to a story today on the Northern Territory News Web site.

Other sightings (and photographs) in the Wycliffe Well area reveal a saucer-shaped object that appears in the background of a snapshot taken of an eagle in flight and an unidentified object that appears in the sky just over the shoulder of a man being photographed by his wife. The History Channel plans to send its team of experts to the area to shoot an episode of the cable television series UFO Hunters.

Of course, appearances by little green men aren't limited to Roswell and the Australian outback. The Sun of London reported today that U.K. UFO experts have been unable to identify the white and green lights photographed recently above a 24-hour convenience store in South London. Apparently, even aliens need milk and eggs in the middle of the night.

(Image courtesy of iStockphoto; Copyright: Michael Knight)

Larry Greenemeier is the associate editor of technology for Scientific American, covering a variety of tech-related topics, including biotech, computers, military tech, nanotech and robots.

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