"The X-Files" may have come and gone, but if viewers want to spot a UFO, perhaps they should trek across the U.S. instead of turning on their TV.

Casino.org, an independent provider of online casino reviews and information, found that states like Wyoming and Vermont offer the best odds of seeing a UFO, at 205-to-1 and 250-to-1, respectively, based off population data.

There have been 2,854 and 2,493 sightings, in Wyoming and Vermont, respectively, since 1940, according to Casino.org.

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States with the lowest odds are Florida, Texas and New York at 3485-to-1, 3395-to-1 and 2584-to-1, respectively.

California has seen the highest number of UFO sightings, at 23,419. Other states that have a high number of UFO sightings include Texas, at 8,334 sightings, New York at 7,641 sightings and Missouri, ironically nicknamed "The Show-Me State," at 7,467.

New Mexico, where 6,273 UFO sightings have been reported, is home to the famous Roswell incident. In 1947 a UFO purportedly crash landed, alien bodies were recovered and the U.S. government engaged in a cover-up, according to countless conspiracy theories.

Lisa Bennett, Casino.org marketing executive, said the company started looking into Area 51 for its blog "and we thought it would be interesting to calculate the odds of sighting a UFO within each state of the U.S."

Bennett highlighted other interesting findings based off the data:

- Our calculations show that Arizona is one of the states where you’re least likely to encounter a UFO, yet in recent news two pilots reported identifying a UFO flying over the state.

- For those worried about alien abduction, Florida was found to have the lowest odds of encountering a UFO.

In total, there have been 259,691 UFO sightings in the U.S. over the past 78 years, Casino.org noted. The site also noted that "more than 40,000 Americans have taken out insurance against being abducted by aliens."

The entire list of odds and total number of sightings can be found here.

The data follows a report last year that the Fourth of July is the most popular day to spot a UFO.

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According to data compiled by "UFO Sightings Desk Reference" co-author Cheryl Costa, July 4 represents 2.11 percent of the 121,000 UFO sightings from 2001 through 2015, more than any other specific date in the calendar.

Costa theorized this might be due to association with the movie "Independence Day," or more likely, a great number of people being outside looking at fireworks.

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A former official at the U.K.’s Ministry of Defence has shed new light on the circumstances surrounding a secret government UFO study that was conducted during the 1990s.

In 1996, the MoD commissioned a defense contractor to produce a comprehensive report on U.K. UFO sightings. The report was compiled at a time of huge public interest in UFOs fueled by the wildly popular “X-Files” TV series and 1997’s 50^th anniversary of the purported UFO incident in Roswell, New Mexico.

Careful to avoid using the term UFO, the report described sightings as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP).

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Code-named Project Condign, the report analyzed a database of sightings between 1987 and 1997 and was delivered to officials in 2000. The study, entitled ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) in the UK Air Defence Region,’ found that that sightings could be explained by a variety of known phenomena, both man-made and natural. The incidence of relatively rare natural phenomena was also noted. “No evidence exists to associate the phenomena with any particular nation,” it said.

Project Condign has been compared to Project Blue Book, a U.S. Air Force effort to investigate UFOs that closed in 1969.

Nick Pope, a former MoD UFO investigator who is now an author and journalist, told Fox News that he was involved in setting up the study with his counterpart in the Ministry’s Defence Intelligence Staff. “The reason for the study was that while we'd been investigating UFO sightings on a case-by-case basis for decades, we'd done very little trend analysis,” he explained, via an emailed statement. “Project Condign was supposed to rectify this and be a proper intelligence assessment that would look for patterns in data we already had.”

“We were trying to draw everything together and say in relation to UFOs: 'OK, what's our best assessment of what we're dealing with, what are the threats, and what are the opportunities?',” he added.

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Initial discussions about the study started in 1993, according to Pope, who had left the MoD’s UFO project by the time work on the report itself started.

“The study was highly classified and extremely sensitive, not least because the MoD consistently told parliament, the media and the public that UFOs were of limited interest and ‘no defense significance’,” Pope said. “Our concern was that if the existence of the study became known, it would have exposed an internal position on the phenomenon that was different from our public position.”

The report only entered the public domain in 2006 following a Freedom of Information request from academic Dr. David Clarke. The identity of the report’s author has not been revealed.

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A new set of previously-unseen documents recently obtained by Clarke, a principal research fellow at the U.K’s Sheffield Hallam University, have thrust Project Condign into the spotlight once again. The records show how over-worked MoD officials were keen to reduce their commitment to investigating reports of UFO sightings. With its findings, Project Condign duly laid the foundations for the MoD to start scaling back its UFO-related operations. The Ministry’s DI55 department, which had secretly collected data on potential UFO sightings since 1967, closed at the end of 2000. The MoD’s UFO Desk closed in 2009.

Pope found the final Project Condign report disappointing. “In places it looked like a conclusion-led study where data had been used to support a personal opinion,” he said, but acknowledged the challenges involved in compiling such a confidential report.

“The problem with an intelligence study like Project Condign is that it's so secret and sensitive that those involved don't reach out to subject matter experts outside the intelligence community,” he explained, adding that consultation with the U.K.’s Met Office weather service, other scientists and academics would have been helpful.

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The report also suggested that atmospheric plasma may account for some UFO sightings, which Pope sees as confusing. “In speculating about exotic atmospheric plasma phenomena the report's author had made the classic mistake of trying to explain one mystery in terms of another,” he said.

The former MoD employee was also surprised by the discussion of “novel military applications” that could be supported by greater understanding of the UFO phenomenon. “This was essentially a reference to weaponization, including the construction of a directed energy weapon,” he said.   

In a statement provided earlier this week to Fox News, the MoD explained that all its historic files that refer to UFOs have either been released, or are in the process of being released to the U.K.’s National Archives. “The MOD continues to have no opinion on the existence, or otherwise, of extra-terrestrial life and does not investigate reported unidentified flying object sightings,” it said.

Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers

The truth is out there … and it’s not from another planet. Previously unseen documents reveal how officials at the U.K.’s Ministry of Defence handled the “UFO mania” of the late 1990s.

In 1997, there was massive spike in interest around UFOs, fueled by the 50^th anniversary of the purported UFO incident in Roswell, NM. and the global popularity of the “X-Files” TV series.

Set against this backdrop, over-worked officials at the Ministry of Defence sought to cut their commitment to investigating UFO reports, the Guardian reports.

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The documents were obtained from the MoD by Dr. David Clarke, a principal research fellow at the U.K’s Sheffield Hallam University. “The new papers show the UFO desk head in 1997 ‘wanted to get rid of’ an issue they considered a ‘diversion from their main duties’,” Clarke wrote in a blog post. “Within the files civil servants, intelligence officers and military staff debate how the British Government should respond to growing public interest in the phenomena and what they called ‘the media’s obsession with UFOs’.”

The files run to more than 2,500 pages and some of the more sensitive papers, declassified from “secret,” are heavily redacted, according to Clarke. “What has survived the censor’s pen paints a fascinating picture of the arguments that raged behind closed doors in Whitehall around the 50^th anniversary of the UFO mystery in 1997,” he wrote.

One RAF Wing Commander, for example, urged caution on shifting focus away from UFOs. “He argued that as MoD had not carried out any study of the UFO data they had collected since the 1970s it was not credible – and also politically risky – to continue to claim UFOs posed no ‘threat to the realm’,” Clarke explained.

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In 1996, the MoD commissioned a defense contractor to produce a comprehensive report on UFO sightings, which were carefully described as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP).

The report, which analyzed a database of sightings between 1987 and 1997, was delivered in 2000. The study duly found that most sightings could be explained by a range of known phenomena, both natural and man-made.

This opened the door for the MoD to start scaling back its UFO-related operations. The DI55 department, which had secretly collected data on potential UFO sightings since 1967, closed at the end of 2000. The MoD’s UFO Desk closed in 2009.

STEPHEN HAWKING'S SEARCH FOR ALIENS GETS A BOOST

It appears, however, that the writing was already on the wall for the MoD’s UFO operations long before the report was finished. In a document dated April 16 1998, the report’s author writes: “I am particularly looking ahead to my expected recommendation, that DI55 should no longer be involved in UAP monitoring.”

“It was the end-game,” Clarke told Fox News. “They created a definitive study that would draw a line under their involvement in the subject.”

The academic notes that in 1997 MoD officials were clearly swamped with reports of UFO sightings. At that time, the Ministry even had a UFO hotline that members of the public could call. “The workload on the subject had trebled as a result of what was going on in popular culture,” he said.

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The hotline eventually closed in 2009.

“All our historic files which refer to UFOs have either been released, or are in the process of being released to The National Archives,” explained the MoD, in a statement emailed to Fox News. “The MoD continues to have no opinion on the existence, or otherwise, of extra-terrestrial life and does not investigate reported unidentified flying object sightings.”

Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers