A UFO Over O'Hare? Where Are These Two Now When We Need Them?

Yeah, I know....it was a TV show! It wasn't real! It was just a T.V. show....

but I luuuved every minute of it. Friends and kidlets taped this for me, because I had no cable when the X-files was running in prime time. I would await the delivery of a new videotape as eagerly as a five-year-old awaits Santa. I even freely admit to having X-files computer wallpaper that I downloaded for free off AOL: distant and forbidding purple-sage hills, with "The Truth Is Out There" written above them in white letters.

Now, according to the Chicago Tribune, the truth may be more "above us" than "out there." According to the article I've linked to, on November 7th, United Airline pilots and employees saw something that they swear wasn't a weather balloon, a trick of lighting, or weather phenomena (and believe me, even the private pilots I know understand a lot about weather quirks--surely United pilots, who fly all over the world, have even more knowledge about the oddities of clouds, tricks of light, and so forth). It's an interesting article.

I find one thing particularly strange in the midst of this. Why, in this age of picture-taking cellphones (even cellphones that have video), didn't one of the United employees who witnessed this take a picture--even of the hole in the cloud-cover that the UFO supposedly left, which remained for a few minutes? The lack of a picture is strange to me, considering the heightened security around airports in this post-9/11 world. Airline personnel had enough time to radio each other and race out of the building to look at the thing; a pilot had time to crack open the window of his grounded plane to get a look at it. Does this mean an unidentified object hovering over a major airport for several minutes doesn't even warrant a photograph to be investigated later?

Were photos confiscated, or were people just so freaked out, trying to make sense of what they were seeing, that they didn't think to get out a cellphone and snap an image? I've read on various sites that a cellphone picture actually does exist, but the United employee who took it has refused to release it publicly due to fear of losing his job. I did not see this referenced in any news article, though.

According to the Chicago Trib article, neither United nor the FAA intend to investigate. The FAA even denied the incident entirely until the Trib invoked the Freedom of Information Act. The United pilots and employees who witnessed this are upset that no investigation is taking place.

Investigating this incident seems an intelligent response, I think. We live in an age where airport security is extremely tight for a very good reason. Why then is a mysterious aircraft over one of the busiest airports in the world left uninvestigated?

As an amateur astronomer in love with the night sky, I have to admit that I can't look at the vastness of the universe and believe we are alone. It would be good to know, as we see more and more evidence of global warming and we face so much social fragmentation and despair, that perhaps help would come from other citizens of the universe. Maybe the sighting is a sort of visual memo, telling us we may not be the only ones who live among the stars.

But one thing I know for sure: this would have made a great X-files episode!