Yeah. I saw that film 30 years* ago and never watched it again. Not gonna refresh that memory.
*I know it was made in 1997, 30 years is an approximation off the top of my head.
Not likely, given the circumstances. I wasn’t going to get into this, but here’s the details.
I was driving west on a two-lane highway at sunset. On the horizon was a range of tall hills or low mountains. The sun was in my eyes, so my visor was down. I couldn’t see the sky at the time, so I have no idea how long the object was there before I saw it.
When the sun dipped behind the hills, it killed the glare and I lifted my visor. There, above the ridgeline, was a spherical object, hanging in the sky, backlit by the sunset sky. Size, altitude, and distance are difficult to estimate. Given relation to the landmass beneath it, I’d have to guess the object was at least 50 feet in diameter, possibly larger. It hung stationary in the sky, based on the reference point of the ridgeline. I was traveling toward it at ~60mph, and over the course of 20-30 minutes the object did not grow appreciably larger in size (no more so than the ridgeline), suggesting it was near the horizon, probably at an altitude of hundreds of feet, and at least three times its diameter in distance above the ridgeline.
Notably, I was not the only one who saw it. I passed a car that had pulled over on the side of the road. The occupants had gotten out and were looking at the object as well. One was pointing.
I watched the object for 20-30 minutes as I continued westward. It stayed stationary while the sky darkened behind it, until it was no longer discernable from the night sky (which gets very dark in Arizona). While I watched it, I ran through all manner of possible explanations (hot air balloon, weather balloon, water tower, etc.). Nothing fit with what I was seeing.
/End of report
Weather balloons are notoriously spheric.
I sometimes wonder what I would tell people today if I hadn’t figured out my ‘‘sighting’’ back in 2000 or the environs. Although it’s difficult to pass on the realness of that ‘‘encounter’’ I had in text, It was very very real in person. I’ve never been a religious person, and never believed in UFOs either (my mom has claimed that she’s also seen an unidentified object in the sky). But that first time I saw that ‘‘object’’ it felt as if my whole understanding of the world was coming undone. I was pretty shocked. The things were just headlights off of power lines in the darkness of night, but they looked very much like a ‘‘flying saucer’’.
It was the next day that I saw ‘‘it’’ again (rainy season), and I figured it out and was relieved. It also taught me how easy it can be to confuse simple things you can’t immediately explain for supernatural phenomena (I am not saying you are doing that).
Have you ever heard of the haunted Japanese house and the fish case?
Some are, but those are generally not 50+ feet in diameter. The really large ones tend to be teardrop shaped. They also don’t tend to be perfectly stationary, even if tethered. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to the desert, but there’s often wind.
I have not.
EDIT to add:
I get skepticism, and in most things, I am a very skeptical person. The thing about this sighting is, it wasn’t some fleeting thing in the sky, there and gone in a matter of seconds. It was there for a long time. I was able to study it, examine it, consider it, look at it again and again. I’ve seen other things since (strange lights in the sky over New Mexico) but I don’t give those much thought. They could have been anything.
This object was genuinely weird. At the time, it was deeply disconcerting. When I passed the car that had pulled over, I can’t tell you how relieved I was to know that someone else was seeing it too. Even now, 30+ years later, it makes me a little uncomfortable thinking about it.
I understand. I only watched the MIB films for Tommy Lee Jones and the humour. It ranks level with Galaxy Quest in my book.
You can’t estimate the distance without knowing the size and can’t estimate the size without knowing the distance. Without parallax both distance and size are guesses, and the last mean to tell distance is sharpness/blurriness which depend on a hundred things so they aren’t very reliable neither.
So… how do you know it vas large and away, not small and close?
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I am recounting as I remember, but basically it was this:
there was a haunted house somewhere in Japan (don’t remember the name of the city) that went through several cycles of owners in a short period of time. When someone bought it, they soon enough put it back on the market because the house was ‘‘unlivable’’ – it had strange noises and sounds, which were described as very frightening and completely inexplicable as anything other than ‘‘ghosts’’ by whoever heard them.
So eventually nobody wanted that house and the price went really low. There were two local brothers who dabbled in real estate who didn’t buy the whole ‘‘haunted’’ story and they bought the house to find out what was causing the noises and to dispel the haunted theory (I remember this part was an interesting aspect about it to me). So when they had the house, they went in there to spend the nights, and, surely enough, the noises and the sounds started up.
I don’t remember how long it took them (not months, it was in the order of days) to get to the bottom of it, but they discovered some sort of a fish in the pipes. I don’t remember if there was more than one fish or whether it was just there during the night, but that was what was making the noises. Sound can travel along the pipes as well as across the pipe wall, so it can become very distorted depending on where exactly you hear it, and it will make it difficult to pinpoint the exact source point of the sound. Again, if I remember correctly, they took apart quite a lot of the pipes there to finally find the thing.
What’s that saying that fear makes mountains out of mole hills? Or something like that? I know it’s not quoted in the context of fear, but I think it applies in a lot of these cases where people see/hear something, can’t explain it, and then draw the conclusion that it’s something huge and threatening and invincible (aliens, in this case). Human fear is a very irrational and creative agency.
Your recount doesn’t come off like that to me, by the way. It is a more rational and calm recollection, but unfortunately I can’t attempt an explanation for it, as I haven’t see anything similar. Other than spherical clouds. I do have seen anomalous spherical cloud formations. But you probably ruled that out already.
As I noted before, the object did not noticeably change in size over the course of 20-30 minutes approaching it. If it was nearer to my car than the hills on the horizon, it should have appeared larger in relation as I drew closer, unless it was moving in the same direction at or near the same speed (in which case, by the way, it was not a balloon). Also, if it was nearer in relation to the hills, it should have changed in relative position as I drew closer. It was to the right side of my windshield, so if it was closer, it should have appeared to move to the right as I approached. It did not. The position remained fixed relative to the ridgeline.
I already said that it is difficult to estimate size, distance, and altitude. I don’t know the exact distance between my car and the far hills, other than they were still on the horizon after driving approximately 20-30 miles. They had grown nearer, but not that much nearer. The object, relative to the hills, appeared from my perspective to be roughly 0.5 to 0.75 inches in diameter. Using a guestimation of the hills’ elevation, I ballparked a diameter of at least 50 feet. That may be a gross underestimation if the hills were more than 200-300 feet in elevation.
Unfortunately, at the time I was lacking my transit level, tripod, and surveying markers to make accurate measurements, not thinking I’d need them for a weekend in Phoenix.
EDIT:
I should also add, the object was either above the ridgeline or forward of it (toward me) because the light from behind the ridgeline cast on the bottom of the object and changed as the sun sank behind the hills. If the object was beyond the hills (meaning, further away), the light wouldn’t have been occluded by the shadow of the hill.
“The universe is a pretty big place. If it’s just us, seems like an awful waste of space.”
Carl Sagan.
I did not vote simply because this was not on the list.
If there are advanced civilizations watching us, and again advanced enough to survey earth, all they would see is a toxic world filled with a malevolent virus. And if they do want the planet, there is nothing we could do about it anyway. I don’t think there watching us simply because with the technology to travel with some kind of “warp” drive, I would think they would pick on larger systems just like in EVE for whatever profit their looking for even though earth is a goldilocks planet. Their tech should easily surpass such difficulties. Meh..
Good post for food for thought!
I don’t discount the possibility of life existing elsewhere in the universe. That seems very likely. However, here on Earth, like I alluded to before, “UFOs” don’t necessarily mean “ETs.”
In fact, if the phenomenon is real, I think “alien visitors from another star system” is one of the least likely explanations. Culprit(s) ranked, most likely to least (in my opinion):
- Cryptoterrestrials (prehistoric advanced civilizations, or remnants thereof, co-habitating the Earth with us).
- Government skunkworks program.
- Secret space program/breakaway civilization.
- Combination of 1, 2, and 3, the latter based on recovered tech from 1.
- Intra-solar extraterrestrials (e.g., refugees from a former Martian civilization).
- Ultraterrestrials (visitors from another dimension).
- Interstellar extraterrestrials (visitors from another star system).
- Time travelers from the far future or ancient past.
EDITED after a double-check of terminology.
I have increasingly become a fan of the “Mars refugee” theory the more time goes by. Ever since Musk demonstrated private enterprise going to Mars is not only feasible but now a target goal, NASA has suddenly been “discovering” a whole lot more and giving up on their past BS ( like they stopped adding red filters and suddenly the “red planet” of Mars has a blue, albeit thin atmosphere, brown and grey rocks , water and ice, and suddenly a helicopter drone can fly there ).
I will add, while I am not a believer in some of the wilder conspiracy theories, I do NOT trust NASA as far as I can throw them.
For instance, do I believe they faked the moon landing? Absolutely not. Do I believe they manipulate and distort findings before releasing to the public? Absolutely. And they’ve even admitted as such.
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most of the aliens i see drive cars with ohio license plates… they should stay north in ohio and stay out of WV 
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If it didn’t change size for a 20 minutes drive towards it, chances are that it was the Moon. Nothing is so ginormously large nor is so far away as to not change in size for miles and miles driving towards it.
And people has made similar mistakes in the past. Take a sample large enough and you’ll come with people who don’t know that the Moon can be seen in broad daylight… or even that the Moon is a real thing and not a metaphor from the Bible.
"Devils don’t come from hell beneath us. No, they come from the sky.- Lex Luthor
I know the feeling. What I felt was akin to that, but probably less intense, because moving lights can still be explained as man-made aircraft no matter how strangely it is that they seem to be moving.
Under similar circumstances as you, I would have tried to increase angular separation between myself and the object, because the angle of observation can sometimes distort things beyond recognition. However, I realize that’s not always a viable option to drop one’s real life for something like that.
I know what a waxing crescent looks like, but that’s fine. If you need to believe it was the moon, then it was the moon.
I don’t believe. I just wonder what kind of thing on Earth won’t change size for a 20 minutes drive towards it. 
The Musk on Mars is full of bull. NASA never had a “red filter”. The sky on Mars is the color of what’s in it -dust. And Mars soil is polluted by toxic perchlorates whose discovery threw a wrench on the gears of even the more enthusiastic “Colonise Mars” proponents. You can’t just “clean up” or “wash away” perchlorates and they will end up everywhere, specially inside the astronaut’s bodies.
There are many, many challenges, and many of them will not be solved in our lifetimes. We haven’t even tried to stay in orbit for 3 years without supplies, and testing it would take.. well.. 3 years… once we even had the technology for it, which we don’t. The ISS and the CSS are resupplied each 3 months with a safety margin of two missing resupplies before everybody packs and goes back home.
That’s a whole 8-9 months endurance and that would be running on fumes by the end.
The technology isn’t there yet.
And certainly not SpaceX’s rocket which has achieved 11-ouf-of-11 explosions with 0 seconds in orbit to show for them.
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