These states have the most UFO sightings

An interactive map of UFO sightings breaks down exactly when and where people are spotting and reporting the most UFOs. 

The National UFO Reporting Center’s heat map lets you click on a region to see specifics of each individual UFO report, like what the person saw and what time they saw it. Because the reporting center is U.S.-based, the vast majority of the reports come from the United States. 

"It is apparent that UFOs are seen literally everywhere, and that the distribution of sighting reports closely matches the distribution of the population," the Reporting Center said in a blog announcing the map. 

A UFO variety was photographed when it hovered for fifteen minutes near Holloman Air Development Center in New Mexico. The object was photographed by a government employee and was released by the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization after careful s

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UFO sightings by state

Here’s a breakdown of UFO sightings in each state, according to the National UFO Reporting Center: 

• Alaska: 642
• Alabama: 1,403
• Arkansas: 1,289
• Arizona: 4,981
• California: 16,238
• Colorado: 3,281
• Connecticut: 2,033
• Delaware: 419
• Florida: 8,303
• Georgia: 2,730
• Hawaii: 672
• Iowa: 1,225
• Idaho: 1,357
• Illinois: 4,298
• Indiana: 2,732
• Kansas: 1,191
• Kentucky: 1,689
• Louisiana: 1,127
• Massachusetts: 2,709
• Maryland: 1,856
• Maine: 1,189
• Michigan: 3,668
• Minnesota: 2,111
• Missouri: 2,813
• Mississippi: 788
• Montana: 1,004
• North Carolina: 3,679
• North Dakota: 277
• Nebraska: 701
• New Hampshire: 1,196
• New Jersey: 2,894
• New Mexico: 1,672
• Nevada: 1,703
• New York: 5,900
• Ohio: 4,466
• Oklahoma: 1,501
• Oregon: 3,561
• Pennsylvania: 5,047
• Rhode Island: 599
• South Carolina: 2,246
• South Dakota: 396
• Tennessee: 2,315
• Texas: 6,202
• Utah: 1,528
• Virginia: 2,705
• Vermont: 610
• Washington: 7,230
• Wisconsin: 2,453
• West Virginia: 907
• Wyoming: 416

Click here for an interactive version of the list, and here for the heatmap. 

Pentagon official: ‘No evidence’ of aliens

In a recent op-ed in Scientific American, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, the Pentagon official who led efforts to centralize UFO investigations, said his team found no evidence of aliens. They did, however, encounter "the erosion of critical thinking."

Sean Kirkpatrick (screen shot from NASA video)

"Carl Sagan popularized the maxim that ‘extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,’" Kirkpatrick wrote. "This advice should not be optional for policy makers … Our capacity for rational, evidence-based critical thinking is eroding, with deleterious consequences for our ability to effectively deal with multiplying challenges of ever increasing complexity."

RELATED: Here's what the Pentagon's former UFO hunter learned on the job

Kirkpatrick said he and the Pentagon "painstakingly" put together a team to create a science-based strategy of investigating unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs), the government term for UFOs., but conspiracy theorists, with the help of Congress, consistently disrupted their work. 

In July, retired Air Force Maj. David Grusch testified publicly before a congressional committee, claiming the U.S. has concealed what he called a "multi-decade" program to collect and reverse-engineer UAPs. 

"Some members of Congress prefer to opine about aliens to the press rather than get an evidence-based briefing on the matter," Kirkpatrick wrote in Scientific American. "Members have a responsibility to exhibit critical thinking skills instead of seeking the spotlight."