Signals from the Stars: Mysterious Pulsating UFOs

From time to time, especially on clear Summer nights, gazing upward toward the heavens can reveal a number of different curious-looking aerial phenomena. Sometimes, it is obvious that what we see may have been a bright and burning meteor as it streaked through the sky. On other occasions, more anomalous-looking illuminations may appear which, though less easily explained or identified, may still have prosaic explanations that involve conventional objects which sometimes lay behind them, just as well.

And yet from time to time, we see strange lights that boast a number of curious activities, ranging from movement at high speeds to apparent "pulsation" and other kinds of strange features. This lends to the notion, for some, that what is being witnessed might in fact be something otherworldly... but how likely is this to indeed be the case?

One recent UFO story in the news caught my attention along these lines, and though I certainly cannot rule out the possibility that what may have been seen in the instance I'll describe below could have been something anomalous in nature, the hallmarks of there being a more conventional explanation do seem to be present.

Writing for UFO Digest, veteran UFO researcher Jon Kelly wrote that a "UFO was detected by a night vision camera and tracked for nearly five minutes," while apparently traveling over Vancouver, British Columbia. The object "travelled SE to NW before disappearing behind a stand of trees," Kelly wrote. The event in question took place near Burnaby Mountain Park on July 27, 2011, where a sky-watching event had been taking place. Note at around 15 seconds into the video below, where a high powered sky-pointing laser can be seen flashing toward the alleged UFO:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCbJShwCHmA&feature=player_embedded#at=20[/youtube]

But of particular interest here is the fact that the object in question was described as "pulsating," and that at one point witnesses described seeing a rather significant "power-up" where the object apparently emitted a large flash of light. If perceived as an actual object emitting a large powerful burst of energy, this does certainly seem significant: however, here too there seems to be a more likely explanation for what may have actually been occurring.

In fact, in an effort to explain one possible solution to the present mystery, we might do so most effectively by revisiting a similar instance where I was a participant, having occurred just a few years ago. I had been in the town of Burnsville, North Carolina, on an evening that coincided with a similar gathering of UFO sky-watchers, who had met at a local radio station transmitter field in the nearby town of Asheville with hope of observing the night sky using night vision goggles. The idea here was that the night vision technology might aid them in seeing anomalous objects, which otherwise might evade the unfiltered viewing of unequipped observers scanning the same area for lights or objects. After the event, one of the participants contacted me to describe a brilliant object that had passed overhead, and which to their surprise and amazement, had even flashed a brilliant burst of light toward them at one point.

Funny enough, they described the time this had occurred, along with a few other details about the area of the sky where this had been observed. I wasn't surprised at all to hear that my compatriot's UFO had appeared at precisely the same time I had witnessed what must have been the exact craft, directly over my location (again, I was about an hour Northeast of Asheville, the latter being where the sky-watchers had gathered the same night in question). So as it turns out, I had actually observed the same UFO my friend and his associates had seen... but my views as to what we had witnessed were quite different.

In addition to satellites that coast along through the heavens at night (which are quite capable of reflecting light from the sun, thus appearing illuminated), there are a variety of other objects, such as bits and pieces of metallic debris, that can also manage to reflect light in the same way. Depending on the shape and reflectivity of the object in question, as it rolls and tumbles along (as some of these "space junk" objects can often do), it might indeed be able to move into such a position--relative to a viewer on the Earth below--where at times it would appear to give off more light, or even reflect no light, thus "disappearing."

When I observed the object in question myself, it was clear what I had been seeing: as the object (whatever it was) had tumbled through space in its orbit, the light it managed to reflect appeared at just the right angle so as to reflect a bright beam of sunlight it was capturing directly downward, and subsequently follow through with its natural motion into a subsequent position where no light was reflected at all. Though I hadn't given it a second thought, my friends an hour away were amazed at what they perceived to be a bright craft that "powered up," flashed a bright beam at them, then vanished! Interpreted this way, such an object might certainly appear to be intelligently controlled.

Could this be what's occurring in the video above as well? Again, I wasn't there, and based on the footage alone, it may be difficult to make a definitive assessment. What do you think?