The Cellar - What on Earth were those lights over Phoenix?

What on Earth were those lights over Phoenix?
Jet? Flares? Balloons? UFO? Sighting remains a mystery

19 comments by John Faherty - Apr. 23, 2008 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

There were absolutely four lights. They appeared to hover in the sky.

They looked red or white, and they flickered. They were visible for nearly 15 minutes on Monday night.

The lights were seen by, among others, a Phoenix police-helicopter pilot, air-traffic controllers and a reporter. There was even an extended videotape.

But the lights were a mystery. A mystery that generated a lot of interest. By Tuesday afternoon, there were 125,000 page views of the story on azcentral.com, 600,000 page views on the photographs and 40,000 viewings of the video. The story was on the Drudge Report, FoxNews.com, ABC News and newspaper Web sites across the country. Almost immediately, there were theories about what the lights might be. Perhaps they were high-altitude flares that were visible from a great distance in the clear Arizona sky. Or maybe they were airplanes or helicopters or weather balloons.

One Phoenix man said he saw his neighbor launching small flares attached to helium balloons. The mystery couldn't be answered by civilian or military authorities. And perhaps, although this would have to be considered fairly unlikely, they were spaceships piloted by aliens.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command, which monitors the skies for security threats, said the organization did not know where the lights came from. Luke Air Force Base officials said that they didn't have any aircraft in the sky Monday night and that the lights were not part of any Air Force activities.

No agency thought it necessary to investigate the matter. It's the mystery of it all that makes people a little bit anxious. "We are in the Age of Technology; we assume we can know anything we want to know," said Chong Ho Yu, director of Arizona State University's Applied Learning Technology Institute and who has a doctorate in psychology.

For some, aliens are a preferred scenario to not knowing. "People become more anxious when they cannot know something," Yu said. "It makes us feel less and less secure." Angela Cotera, an astronomer from Avondale, did not see the lights, but she does work with the SETI Institute. SETI stands for Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence and is a respected scientific community with a goal to "explore, understand and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe." With a research grant from NASA, Cotera researches how planets form around stars and whether they can sustain life. She will not be preparing a welcoming party for our "visitors." Cotera, who has a doctorate from Stanford University, says these sighting are almost always flares.

"They move counter to what we expect they should, especially when you see them from a great distance like we can here in Arizona," Cotera said. "They are not really hovering, it's simply perspective."

On Tuesday, many people were talking about a similar incident in March 1997, when a string of lights was visible over the city.

Just like that incident more than 10 years ago, people were intent on findings answers. And some people think it is interesting to watch people look for answers. "I have absolutely no doubt that these lights are an Earthly phenomenon. Perhaps something occurring in nature or man-made," said Dan Cook of Phoenix, a retired preacher and aerospace engineer. "The fact that man, in his infinite wisdom, cannot explain causes them to turn to the easiest answer. Aliens!"