I was up early this morning and as I walked to the studio in the cold darkness, my eyes drifted up to the clear sky above where the stars were sharp and glinting. I thought about the mystery of the spiral light that flashed across the skies of Norway this past week, causing much alarm and speculation.
Mystery solved.
Turns out it was a Russian intercontinental missile test over the White Sea that was fired from a submarine. The spiral of the light was caused by a failure of one of the rocket’s stages.
UFO believers were a little disappointed and, once again, suspicious. There’s a conspiracy lurking in every event for those guys.
The whole thing made me wonder about our fascination with UFOs and alien life forms. Does the desire to believe in such things as UFOs mimic in some way religion and our need to believe that there is more than our temporal life on Earth? Are these people searching the skies responding in the same way as someone searching their religious texts?
Both want answers. Both want to believe that we are not alone in our existence here, that there is life beyond. Both are often stubbornly entrenched in their beliefs even when faced with positive evidence that contradicts them.
Are UFO believers simply people who are disenfranchised from conventional religion yet still seek answers to the mysteries of life, turning outward to the cosmos instead of looking inward?
Like most questions that come to me at 5:30 in the morning, I have no answers. Just wondering. Unlike the Norwegian lights, this is a mystery that will not be solved anytime soon…
Redtree Times 
You wrote, “Both are often stubbornly entrenched in their beliefs.” I might disagree with that. Many have an open mind but I don’t buy the missile theory at all.
The “both” I was writing of were the parties on both side of the UFO question who will not waver from their belief or disbelief. There is certainly a large central faction with open minds who are willing to judge evidence objectively without predetermining their belief in its validity. I believe this large central group simply wants to know that what we are being told by the governmental agencies around the world is indeed the truth, whether it proves or disproves the existence of aliens visiting our world.
As for the spiral, when I first saw it I thought it was spectacular and possibly the most credible piece of proof but after watching it several times the first thing that came to mind was a missile of some sort. I think there have been other sightings, albeit less spectacular, that are more credible as evidence and remain unexplained.
Thank you for the comment.