Explainable phenomena.

I'm creating this thread for us to discuss the wierd things you have seen, in which are perfectly scientifically explainable, but at the time of observation seemed bizarre.

I want to create this in the hope of getting people to look at things objectively, instead of jumping to conclusions in the future.

I'll start.
I've seen two main things in my life that were very bizarre.
1. Asteroid (2 of them).
2. Ball lightning.

1.
I often took walks after midnight back when I lived in Trenton. At the time I was smoking, and my parents didnt know about it... so I would get up at night and go for a long walk.
It was almost pitch black, aside from the street lights in the distance. Almost clear skies above, so I did what I typically do, and look for sattelites in the sky. What I saw definately wasnt a sattelite.
The few clouds in the sky lit up bright green, as did the grond. I looked for the source of the light, and there was a HUGE greenish flame passing overhead, oviously descending. It was travelling slower than a shooting star, faster than a plane. It passed overhead, with a very light rumbling noise which followed shortly after. It dropped out of sight ahead of me, and everything went dark again.

Now, Trenton is home of CFB Trenton, a military air force base used mostly for long range flights... one of the largest airstrips in Canada.
My first thoughts after watching the object were "I hope the pilot managed to get out of that wreck in time".
But soon remembered that jet fuel doesnt burn green. So at that point I really didnt know what it was.

The next night I was out for my walk again... and there was ANOTHER one.
Bright green flame, slightly smaller than the original one, different area of the sky, but travelling in the same direction. Again, I watched as it passed out of sight.
This time I was REALLY curious as to what it was. The next day I tuned into the local news (I actually wasnt thinking about it when I tuned in)... and there was a report on an asteroid, issued by a pilot who was on approach to the base that night. The asteroid

_______________________________________________________
will post the rest in a sec, gilfriend just had her cat put down... will edit to post the rest in a bit...
_______________________________________________________

okay, sorry about that, had to give a shoulder to cry on...
---

The asteroid touched down just south of the city. The news report only mentioned the one asteroid though, so I was the only one I knew of who had seen the first one. So I trotted off to the local news paper place, and let them know about the first one.
The air base of course had headed out to go and pick up the second Asteroid that touched down, and that same day, because I reported the other asteroid, they went to look for that one aswell. They found it aswell, only alot farther away that the second.

Now, if I had jumped to conclusions, I would have come up with some wacky explanation for the big green ball of flame... but I didnt. I remained objective until I had a reasonable explanation.

The second thing I've seen was even stranger.


2.
I was heading to bed one night, I couldn't go out for my usual walk because of the storm that was approaching. I don't like getting wet, especially at night.
I was climbing into bed, Smokey my cat had just jumped onto the foot of the bed with me where he normally sleeps.
Just before I pulled the covers up, something caught my eye near the doorway.
It was slightly smaller than a soccer ball. Spherical. It resembled a glass ball, only it moved as though it had no mass to generate momentum. The object was clearly high in energy, as it had it's own illumination... though there appeared to be no actual point of illumination within it... as if the entire shell were illuminated.

The object came straight through the closed door. It then moved in an S pattern through the room, not very quickly either.
It seemed to be attracted to the walls, only it acted as if it couldnt decide which wall it wanted to hit.
I watched the object with extreme curiosity, as it accelerated once it neared the rear wall, then seemed to pass into the wall completley unaffected by the walls presence, as if it werent there at all.

My cat had been wathing the object pretty intently aswell. I was worried that Smokey would attempt to chase the object as a cat would chase an insect. But he stayed where he was. I myself was only worried that the seemingly random path of the object would cause it to collide with me, so I was ready to move out of its way at any time. Other than that, I had no worries, I remained objective about it, and decided I would research what it was in the morning.

After someone on ATS here suggest ball lightning, I went to do some research on what Ball lightning was.
There it was. The exact same descrition of it's shape, appearance, and behavior as I had witnessed.
Aparrently ball lightning is an accumulation of energy that hasn't found a grounding source. I'm not sure how that happens, but it drifts until it finds a grounding source. I can only assume the pipes in the rear wall was what it grounded itself to in the end.

If I had jumped to conclusions in this event, I probably would have assumed it was a ghost or something along those lines.

The point is, you should allways look at things objectively, and never assume it is paranormal. There is a scientific explanation for EVERYTHING... we just havent found all the answers yet... if we claimed to know everything, it wouldnt be science at all.

Anyone else who has a story of something odd they've seen that was scientifically explainable, please post it aswell.

[edit on 15-3-2007 by johnsky]