14 DAY TRIAL // Since the time of the old Egyptians, UFO sightings have plagued humanity, with those going through such experiences being called heretics at first, then lunatics, and then simply ignored. Because of this massive popular interest in the matter, scientists have attempted to come up with logical explanations for these phenomena over the decades, and have attributed some of them to weather balloons or other experimental crafts. Now, they say that a natural occurrence known as sprites (flashes high in the atmosphere that are visible during thunderstorms) may also account for some of the sightings.
These lights are very puzzling to the scientific community, which never really paid any attention to these phenomena until 1989, when a camera captured footage of it by accident. “Lightning from the thunderstorm excites the electric field above, producing a flash of light called a sprite. We now understand that only a specific type of lightning is the trigger that initiates sprites aloft,” Colin Price, who is a geophysicist at the Tel Aviv University in Israel, explains.
The thing about these occurrences is that they can come in many shapes, including balls of electricity, tendrils or streaks. They also take place far above the altitude at which regular lightnings are generated. Their height goes from 35 to 80 miles (56 to 129 kilometers) from the ground, as opposed to the 7 to 10-mile (11 to 16-kilometer) altitude lightnings strike from. Because of their shifting appearance, sprites can easily confuse the untrained eye into believing that there are actually UFOs in the sky.
Up to this point, research teams from around the world have had no idea why these natural phenomena are formed, or what purpose they serve, but they have been quick to point out that these events may easily explain some recent UFO sightings. There remains, however, a problem – no matter how many incidents are accounted for by means of weather balloons, aircraft and natural events, there are still hundreds, if not thousands that go on unexplained.
And, of course, there are drawings of such events in the past, ranging from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. On some pyramids, for instance, figures wearing what appear to be space helmets are revered as gods, and are shown in postures of power over other authority figures. One thing is for sure, it would take a very large amount of thunderstorms to explain all UFO sightings on Earth.