Akkam’s Razor

There an interesting tale coming out of Texas [NPR]:

Faster than a speeding bullet — and bigger than a Wal-Mart.

That’s how residents near the west Texas town of Stephenville described an object they spotted in the sky one night last week.

Dozens of people — including a pilot and a police officer — said a UFO hovered over the farming community for about five minutes last Tuesday before streaking away into the night sky.

Pilot Steve Allen saw the object when he was out clearing brush off a hilltop near the town of Selden. Allen described the unidentified object as being an enormous aircraft with flashing strobe lights — and it was totally silent.

He said the UFO sped away at more than 3,000 mph, followed by two fighter jets that were hopelessly outmaneuvered. Allen said it took the aircraft just a few seconds to cross a section of sky that it takes him 20 minutes to fly in his Cessna.

The veteran pilot said the UFO, an estimated half-mile wide and a mile long, was “bigger than a Wal-Mart.”

[...]

Military officials, however, were skeptical. They said the residents are letting their imaginations run wild and passed it off as an optical illusion. They said it was likely nothing more than a reflection of sunlight on two airliners.

Officials at a nearby air force base also said their fighter pilots didn’t chase down anything that night.

NPR aired a debunking, claiming that what the dozens of witnesses saw was a phenomenon analogous to swamp gas and ball lightning - the Superior Mirage.

A further complication has emerged - now the military acknowledges that they had made an error, and they had 10 F-16 flying in the area - a complete reversal from what they had stated previously.

There has subsequently been a video released, which UFOlogists state was unremarkable.

embedded by Embedded Video

YouTube Direkt

The reversal of the military is the kind of thing that gives speculation like this legs.