[imagesource: YouTube / willease]

Given that US authorities have started to take reports of UFOs seriously, with the Pentagon confirming the validity of numerous videos, this phenomenon isn’t so far fetched anymore.

Okay, except for all those times that jokers and delinquents tried to trick the public and the media with fake sightings.

Add in some pollution and world powers’ extreme military presence ramping up in recent years, and we have quite a lot to work with when strange lights appear in the sky.

That’s part of the reason why nobody can really explain the eerie video that surfaced some days ago showing a plethora of glowing lights dancing above the South China Sea:

IFL Science described what’s going on:

The 53-second video was filmed by a pilot on the morning of November 24 at a height of approximately 11 887 meters (39 000 feet) above the South China Sea, as per the tracking website UFO Stalker.

As the sun rises, the film first shows nine lights moving across the sky in three organised rows. The closest object then disappears, before three more objects reappear on the outside of the formation.

With no official statement to dampen the social media ruckus, speculation regarding the cause have ranged from it being a military exercise to some kind of extraterrestrial message system:

“At first I thought cockpit glass reflection … but no,” one person tweeted. “It’s not consistent with that. Now I’m thinking, could it have been a military countermeasure exercise?”

“Considering that there are billions of Galaxies which contain millions of stars and planets,” another added, “it only stands to reason that there are others out there less intelligent than humans (which doesn’t take much) and way more intelligent than us.”

The South China Sea is very busy with maritime shipping, and as a geopolitically significant waterway, it has also seen its fair share of territorial disputes.

So the most likely explanation is probably just experimental military technology.

It could also just be explained by some human-made thing on the ground reflecting light onto the clouds.

Like this “triangle-shaped UFO” in Shanghai that turned out to be a building’s lights projected onto the city’s clouds:

Not much defies explanation if you look hard enough.

[source:iflscience]