Google Roswell Doodle marks 66th anniversary of "UFO crash"

Google has rolled out another of its interactive Google Doodles, this time marking the 66th anniversary of the Roswell Incident complete with an alien-themed mini game. The playable doodle, found on the Google homescreen, involves guiding the alien character through Roswell-themed tasks and challenges.

Along the way, the point & click adventure requires collecting useful objects which are needed to complete the game. It's one of the more entertaining doodles of recent memory; other playable games have included Google Hurdles and the PAC-MAN game of 2010, which was so popular it earned itself a permanent home on Google's site.

The Roswell UFO incident itself remains controversial. The alien-believer theory suggests that an extraterrestrial craft – and its alien pilots – crashed on a Roswell, New Mexico ranch on July 7, 1947, with the wreckage and bodies subsequently hidden by the US government in an attempt at a massive cover-up.

The government's own version, however, has the crash comprising debris from an experimental high-altitude balloon being trialled for surveillance purposes as part of a classified program to monitor Soviet atomic bomb tests. Dubbed Project Mogul, the scheme would use highly sensitive microphones to track the sound waves caused by such testing in the upper atmosphere, before relaying the audio down to the ground by radio.

Unsurprisingly, neither side has proved particularly willing to accept the opposite explanation, and speculation continues to this day. Online comic XKCD also has a take on the reasons why UFO sightings have declined in recent years, to mark today's anniversary.