Did I Really Just See That?

When skeptics hear the term "UFO," they're often prompted to spout off about little green men in flying saucers. But UFOs are really just what the acronym stands for, Unidentified Flying Objects, objects, which are visible in the sky that we do not recognize, and cannot classify or explain. The stigma attached to the term UFO in recent decades has caused modern witnesses to keep unusual sightings to themselves. It has also confined the majority of reports to anonymous posts on the Internet, in order to avoid ridicule from those who refuse to accept the fact that we may not be riding solo in the universe.

To put things into perspective, there are literally thousands of reported sightings of unidentified objects penetrating the Earth's atmosphere each year, most of which encompass unusual traveling lights and other mysterious airborne matter. With so many reported sightings, why then, is it so difficult for skeptics to open their minds to the fact that maybe we're not the only inhabitants in our vast universe? With over a billion galaxies visible by telescope alone, is it really plausible that our little, lonely Earth harbors the only structure of intelligent life? And more importantly, is our planet really that infested with compulsive liars?

It's funny, as we get older, we rarely take a moment to look up for any significant amount of time. When you look up into the sky at night, you can see more than just stars and the moon; on a clear night, you might see meteor showers, shooting stars or atmospheric phenomena such as the Aurora Borealis. Satellites are also regularly visible, even the International Space Station can be seen moving across the sky on a clear night (and yes, both are often mistaken for UFOs). Man-made objects that orbit our Earth are easily identified, resembling stars moving in undeviating paths across the sky. Yet, it is the manifestations that move erratically, remain stagnant for a short period of time, or come much closer than familiar aircrafts, that cause laymen and science enthusiasts alike to be baffled.

One of the most broadly reported sightings occurred over the city of Phoenix, Arizona in March of 1997. Ten percent of Arizona's population witnessed the infamous Phoenix Lights over a period of several nights. The triangular formation of lights that hovered over the city of Phoenix is still making headlines 11 years after its appearance.

Pilots and astronauts have also reported UFO sightings without explanation. The second man to walk on the moon, Buzz Aldrin, has publicly expressed his personal experience with a mysterious object that followed alongside the module carrying his crew during the Apollo 11 mission. Not unlike modern spectators on the ground, the crew was initially hesitant to report the sighting. The primary concern was raising alarm to unauthorized ears that might have been listening in on their radio transmissions with mission control. The crew also feared the report would cause their mission to be aborted. Similar objects have been reported and filmed on subsequent missions with regularity. Airline pilots also routinely report strange objects that tag along during flight.

Growing up in a rural area where the stars are always visible on a clear night, I've seen a fair number of strange occurrences in the sky - some that came with plausible explanation, some that did not. The first and most poignant experience I had viewing a UFO was when I was 11 years old. A clear winter night during the Christmas holidays, a friend and I were out on her front lawn goofing around and making snow angles. Flopping back onto an untouched blanket of snow, my friend stopped mid-sentence and slowly pointed straight up to the sky above us. Wondering what she was looking at, I flopped down in the snow beside her to find out what had caught her attention. There, directly above us, was what I would describe as a rotating ring of lights moving slowly across the sky. We watched for a moment before running towards her house to get her mother's camera, but of course by the time we had emerged with it, our little discovery was nowhere to be found.

The next day we had drawn pictures of the spinning object, just to ensure we both did indeed see the same thing, and to sort of document it since we had no pictures. To this day, her mother keeps the cut up cereal boxes with our sketches of the magnificent lights we witnessed on that December night. Both drawings are identical, except for a discrepancy in the number of lights.

Since then I have always been a sky-watcher. I've come to the conclusion that you will never see anything unusual if you don't take the time to look up once in a while. Perhaps this is why some people see several UFOs throughout their lifetime, and many skeptics live their entire lives without even realizing our own satellites are visible in the night sky. Although we may never have answers for all of the strange objects we see, the general consensus among stargazers is that closing our eyes will teach us nothing. In a world with so many unknowns, sharing information, while keeping an open mind is the key to enlightenment, and the progression of the knowledge of our existence.