Benjamin Radford has a special report over at Live Science discussing a sudden rash of UFO sightings that have occurred all over the US in recent weeks.
America has seen a spate of alleged UFO sightings in recent weeks and months. Eyewitnesses in Arizona, Illinois, Arkansas, North Carolina, and other states have reported seeing mysterious lights and objects in the sky.
Among the sightings:
- In November 2006, United Airlines employees reported seeing a large, dark, “saucer-shaped” craft over a terminal at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. It hovered for a while, then suddenly rose and shot up into the sky.
- In January 2007, multiple eyewitnesses reported seeing a formation of mysterious bright lights in the sky over western Arkansas, moving too slowly to be aircraft.
- Similar lights were reported this week over Phoenix.
Could such sightings be alien spacecraft? Of course it’s possible; many things are possible. The question is not what is possible but what is probable—what evidence and logic suggest. Before jumping to conclusions about ETs in spacecraft, we must look at the most likely explanations.
What's more likely?
Without some independent confirmation or other evidence, it’s hard to know what the United Airlines employees might have seen. But is it more likely that they saw an optical illusion, or that a large, unknown object hovered over one of the country’s busiest airports without being seen by anyone else or appearing on radar?
The lights over Arkansas and Arizona had something in common: they were both seen near military bases, at a time when Air Force pilots were dropping very bright flares from parachutes during training. The flares, producing in some cases nearly 2 million candlepower, would be visible for miles.
Well, if Radford had just called, we could have sent him the pictures our enterprising photographer from Magic 8-Ball Photography and Turtle Detailing, Inc. took when he was passing through O'Hare on his way to the 8th annual Full-Contact Canasta Tournament. (He suffered severe injuries during the semi-finals but is expected to be as good as new – er – as good as he was before – soon). But Radford never calls. *Sigh*
