Page 50 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - February 2023 Edition

50 Disappointing Reality of UFOs

The Chinese Balloon and

the Disappointing Reality
of UFOs

Most strange sights in the sky

have a very terrestrial

explanation.

By Marina Koren

Residents of Billings, Montana,
encountered a rather strange sight this

week: A giant white ball hovering in the
sky in broad daylight. The ball drifted
between clouds and shimmered in the
sun. It looked almost like a second moon.

American military officials suspect that
the floating mystery object is a Chinese
spy balloon. The high-altitude object,
they say, traveled from China to Alaska
and then Canada before crossing into the
continental United States. The U.S.

government considered shooting down
all sorts of objects have been mistaken “further analysis,” as the Defense
the balloon before determining that the
for the otherworldly over the years: Department puts it—usually stay that
resulting debris could endanger those on
military aircraft, drones, floating way. And any unanswered questions are a
the ground. China has insisted that the
lanterns, meteors, weather events, birds, matter of national security, not ET;
aerial interloper isn’t a surveillance
the afterglow of rocket launches—even government officials said that when the
system, but a weather balloon that was
the planet Venus, on its brightest days. Chinese balloon was spotted, they “acted
unfortunately blown off course. The
And, of course, balloons. One of the most immediately to protect against the
White House said that the balloon isn’t a
famous UFO sightings, over Roswell, collection of sensitive information”—
threat to anyone on the ground, but the
New Mexico, in 1947, turned out to be a hardly a cosmically thrilling response. To
U.S. secretary of state has postponed a
high-altitude balloon belonging to the Air this day, there has been no definitive
scheduled trip to Beijing, reportedly
Force. evidence that any UAPs merit existential
because of the situation.
panic. The atmosphere is a bad place to
The first (and typically secretive) look for such signs, anyway. As I’ve
In a way, this is one more uncomfortable
government programs dedicated to written before, if aliens exist (or once
chapter in the story of adversarial nations
identifying UFOs emerged around that existed), their stories are probably
operating in a shared stratosphere. It is
time, and they’ve been contending with playing out (or once did) light-years from
also—hear me out—a little refreshing.
civilian sightings ever since. Last year, Earth.
After several years of breathless news
the Defense Department established a
coverage of mysterious things moving
new office to spot and identify You know what is everywhere? Balloons.
across the sky, inscrutable pilot footage,
“anomalous” objects flying around its Eyewitness reports put the Chinese spy
and shadowy government programs, here
military installations. In a recent analysis balloon over Missouri this afternoon.
is a headline-grabbing flying object of
of 366 UAP sightings, the office Canadian officials said yesterday that
concern that is, for once, identified. The
characterized 163—about 45 percent of they were monitoring what could be
U.S. and China may have different
reports—as “balloon or balloon-like another high-altitude balloon. As I was
explanations for what the thing does, but
entities.” Some reports turn out to not writing this story, I looked out my
we know what it is—and it’s not aliens.
concern objects at all: One of the most apartment window and saw a party

intriguing UFO videos in recent years balloon zooming over the rooftops. An
As in the case of the Chinese balloon,
was found by a Pentagon analysis to be alien explanation would have been great
there are almost always terrestrial
the result of a quirk of camera equipment. for my career. But we haven’t found such
explanations for unidentified flying
Another widely circulated video that an answer to that grand question yet, not
objects, or UFOs, a term that has been
captured a fast-moving object was in our atmosphere or beyond it. We must
synonymous with aliens since the
explained away as an optical illusion. settle for this: In a universe where the
moment government officials introduced
truth about aliens is out there but difficult
it in the 1950s. (These days, the official
This is the great disappointment of to find, we can have at least one balloon-
term is UAPs, for “unexplained aerial
UFOs. Sightings get “debunked,” and shaped truth. []
phenomena.”) UFOs have classically
those that are unexplained—requiring
been depicted as saucers, but sightings of