Home / Articles / UFO News / Astrophysicist suggests ball lightning to explain UFOs
Enigma Labs UFO Reporting
An Australian astrophysicist suggests that ball lighting and meteor showers could explain UFO sightings.

Astrophysicist suggests ball lightning to explain UFOs

(credit: ThinkQuest)

(credit: ThinkQuest)

An Australian astrophysicist suggests that ball lighting and meteor showers could explain UFO sightings.

Dr. Stephen Hughes, an astrophysicist at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, conducted a detailed study of a large meteor event that took place over Brisbane in 2006. While this meteor shower was taking place, a farmer in Queensland spotted two green balls of light descending from the sky. While one of these orbs descended directly downward to the ground without further incident, the second orb seemed to roll down a hill and bounce over a rock before disappearing, according to the farmer. Hughes believes the first orb was simply a bright meteor, while the second orb was probably ball lightning caused by the meteor, even though the event occurred on a clear night.

A 19th-century depiction of ball lightning (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

A 19th-century depiction of ball lightning (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Hughes explains that as debris from comets passes through atmospheric gas, it can ionize this gas, which increases the current that normally flows between the ionosphere and the ground, resulting in ball lightning. Scientists have differing opinions regarding ball lightning however, as the phenomenon is still not fully understood.

As he told the BBC, Hughes believes, “If you put together inexplicable atmospheric phenomena, maybe of an electrical nature, with human psychology and the desire to see something – that could explain a lot of these UFO sightings.”

The findings of Dr. Hughes’s study appear in Proceedings of the Royal Society.

About Jason McClellan

Jason McClellan is a UFO journalist and the producer/co-host of the web series Spacing Out! He is also the web content manager and staff writer for OpenMinds.tv, and a co-organizer and technical producer of the International UFO Congress. As a founding member of Open Minds, Jason served as a writer and editor for the now defunct Open Minds magazine. He has appeared on Syfy, NatGeo, and, most recently, he co-starred on H2's Hangar 1: The UFO Files. ------ Follow Jason on Twitter @acecentric and subscribe to Jason's updates on Facebook.

One comment

  1. I watched a meteor vanish and an electric blue oblong object accelerate from the area of the vanished meteor. The blue light shot across the horizon in a couple seconds. I joke that it looked like a ufo fleeing for it’s life from the meteor because that was what it looked like. I have thought since it might have been ball lightning. I have offered this information thinking scientist might be interested. I now found this site that makes me feel my hypothesis might have actually been correct. Let me know if you know more on the subject. Seeing it was baffling and facinating!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*