Alien, angel or shapeshifter? New viral footage of some strange aerial phenomenon is the choose-your-own-adventure story of the conspiracy theory hive right now.
In a video that reportedly first appeared in June on Facebook, a UFO — for lack of a better term — was spotted by an air traveler against a clear blue sky backdrop, with characteristics that looked more like something seen in a biology book, according to some who saw the clip.
YouTuber Neal “Grimreefar” Evans, whose channel Disclose Screen regularly publishes sightings of UFOs and other “bizarre” phenomena, soon picked up on the new footage, which has even skeptics scratching their heads.
“This one has me stumped. No clue,” one said.
“People are going to call this a UFO,” Evans narrates in a voiceover, heard by over 42,000 on YouTube so far. “Well, technically, it is, but I’m leaning more towards this being a biological entity or a plasma-based life form living in our upper atmosphere.”
However, one viewer’s plasmodial mirage is another’s heavenly glow, while others have suggested the phantasm could be a “portal” to other worlds.
“It is real close to the huge Angel type sightings by some of our Astronauts,” said one viewer, referring to the story of Russian cosmonauts aboard the Salyut 7 in 1984 who saw what the men later described as angelic beings.
Those disseminating the footage claim the ghost-like apparition was captured with a high-resolution Nikon P900 camera, from the window of a plane flying between 10,000 and 30,000 feet in the air.
“Nice hoax,” said one viewer, who blamed the reflection on a double-paned airplane window for the optic trickery, along with others who proposed that moisture at high altitudes could also fool the eyes. “Ice crystals in the double-glazed windows….. They jump and move around and shift shape in an instant,” another hypothesized.
Perhaps the most convincing theory is even simpler than that: “It’s a high altitude balloon, used by organizations like NASA, NOAA and the military.”
Indeed, giant balloons are often used by scientific and government agencies for a variety of research purposes, and they don’t always look like the floating rubber orbs we see at birthday parties. As with those sometimes used in weather research, they can instead resemble a formless plastic bag caught in the wind.
Air officials have yet to weigh in on the mysterious shapeshifting phenomenon. However, the pursuit of truth remains a priority for astronomy researchers as controversial Harvard professor Avi Loeb has recently announced the launch of the Galileo Project, which aims to search for extraterrestrial life by developing new algorithms to parse data from astronomical surveys and a global network of telescopes.
Loeb has decried those who stigmatize his study as hurdles to “the scientific method of unbiased, empirical inquiry.” He told Live Science in a statement this week, “Science should not reject potential extraterrestrial explanations because of social stigma or cultural preferences … We now must ‘dare to look through new telescopes,’ both literally and figuratively.”
