When strange things appear in the sky, many people can’t help but turn their thoughts to extraterrestrials. But there’s usually a more down-to-earth explanation.
That was the case when a bright light in the sky off the Southern California coast last weekend touched off a flurry of excitement about unidentified flying objects.
After news reports, the Navy reluctantly confirmed it had been testing a Trident II (D5) missile fired from a submarine. A second and final missile was tested on Monday, The Los Angeles Times reported.
It was one of several recent sightings in the sky to cause talk about U.F.O.s. Others included a group of strangely shaped clouds over Cape Town, also over the weekend, and an Army veteran’s claim that he spotted a “solid, dark-gray triangle-shaped craft” in the sky over Portland, Tenn., last week. Most of these sightings go unreported in the mainstream news media, though a variety of blogs and sites track them.
“The mind abhors a vacuum of explanation,” said Michael Shermer, 61, the publisher of Skeptic magazine and a columnist for Scientific American. “Short of a good explanation, people just turn to the one that most immediately comes to mind which, in pop culture, is extraterrestrials.”
Source: The New York Times
That was the case when a bright light in the sky off the Southern California coast last weekend touched off a flurry of excitement about unidentified flying objects.
After news reports, the Navy reluctantly confirmed it had been testing a Trident II (D5) missile fired from a submarine. A second and final missile was tested on Monday, The Los Angeles Times reported.
It was one of several recent sightings in the sky to cause talk about U.F.O.s. Others included a group of strangely shaped clouds over Cape Town, also over the weekend, and an Army veteran’s claim that he spotted a “solid, dark-gray triangle-shaped craft” in the sky over Portland, Tenn., last week. Most of these sightings go unreported in the mainstream news media, though a variety of blogs and sites track them.
“The mind abhors a vacuum of explanation,” said Michael Shermer, 61, the publisher of Skeptic magazine and a columnist for Scientific American. “Short of a good explanation, people just turn to the one that most immediately comes to mind which, in pop culture, is extraterrestrials.”
Source: The New York Times
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