In the past two weeks, the U.S. military has opened fire on multiple flying objects that have crossed into North America. The most recent intruder was taken out over Lake Huron on Super Bowl Sunday.
The government says at least one of the four objects was sent to spy on the U.S. by China. (China officially disagrees, calling the first object a wayward weather balloon.) The most recent administration spin is that the three most recently shot down UAPs (unidentified anomalous phenomena) could be benign.
But as with so many UAP sightings, and especially given the government’s aggressive response, speculation about alien activity ran rampant.
But as with so many UAP sightings, and especially given the government’s aggressive response, speculation about alien activity ran rampant anyway. Are fighter pilots blasting extraterrestrial craft out of the sky?
Ever since the 1940s, aliens have been the go-to explanation when it comes to understanding mysterious objects in our atmosphere. It’s a disputable hypothesis, but one that enjoys widespread popularity. Half of the respondents in a 2021 Pew Research survey endorsed the idea that UFOs reported by the military are actually craft sent here from light-years away.
However, it needs to be said, again, that blaming the aliens doesn’t pass the smell test in this case.
Whatever China was doing with its giant balloon, the object’s highly limited maneuverability, a common shortcoming of inflatables, hardly sounds like what extraterrestrials would send our way. After all, if they can bridge the tens of trillions of miles between their planet and ours, they would surely deploy sophisticated steering technology once their probe reached our planet. We don’t send rovers to Mars that just roll around with the wind. Aliens would want to direct their hardware to the most promising vantage sites.
It also seems unlikely that an interstellar probe would be a balloon at all. Inflatable craft are slow, easily seen, and — as evidenced…
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