Sunday, May 16, 2004
UFO's & Ball Lightning
Nearly lost amongst the ugliness surrounding the beheading in Iraq was this little news item...
- A videotape aired Monday on national television showed a series of brilliant objects flying at more than 11,480 feet over southern Campeche state. The tape was filmed March 5 by air force pilots using a video camera equipped with an infrared lens.
The objects appear to accelerate rapidly and change course suddenly. At least one crew member testified in a videotaped interview that the objects encircled the military jet at a distance of at least two miles. - KTVU
I'm not a believer in aliens (Hell, I was pissed off during Muppets in Space when the Great Gonzo was revealed to be an alien instead of a Whatever). But I'd like to be. Because let's face it, how frigging cool would that be? My current belief system is split evenly between wanting to believe, a healthy amount of skepticism and a deep appreciation for the possibilities of unreal things suddenly becoming real. Remember the Coelacanth? Thought to be extinct for millions of years until some guy caught one while fishing. The Megamouth shark did not exist in the minds of men until the Navy pulled anchor one sunny afternoon in Hawaii. Giant squids were regulated to fiction until they started washing up on shore.
So I try to keep an open mind when it comes to this kind of stuff. Besides, it's a lot of fun to read about. Which brings us back to the Mexican UFO's.
What the hell are those things? Believers will tell you this is the most significant advancement in the pursuit of extraterrestrial life since the award-winning documentary Men in Black. Not to be left out, scientists are developing a few theories of their own.
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A cluster of mysterious objects that surrounded a Mexican Air Force plane, alarming the pilots and sparking a UFO scare, could be a weather phenomenon known as ball lightning, a scientist said on Friday.
"Just as you have lightning between clouds and ground, you can also have it within the clouds and sometimes ball lightning can develop. I feel this is one of these rare events," said Herrera, based at Mexico's National Autonomous University. - Reuters
Ball lightning is interesting stuff, some scientists don't even believe it exists. So we're down to UFO's, which most people believe don't exist, or ball lightning, which may or not exist. That really clarifies things. Whatever they are, it'll be fun to see where (if anywhere) the investigations into this will go.
Labels: Science, UFOS
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