Google, it is cheekily said, knows everything — even, apparently, the origin of an unidentified flying object (UFO).
On Oct. 16, 2012, residents of Pike County, Ky., looked high in the sky to find a strange sight. Amateur astronomer Allen Epling described it to a local reporter as looking "like two fluorescent bulbs, side by side, parallel, shining very brightly."
"It would get so bright they would seem to merge, and you could see it very clearly with the naked eye," Epling said. "Then, it would dim down almost invisible ... It wasn't anything I recognized. Definitely not an airplane, and I've never seen a helicopter that looked like that."
Epling wasn't the only one who noticed; police in Kentucky, Virginia and
Tennessee got phone calls from concerned citizens. Calls were made to
nearby airports, but government officials could shed no light on it. The
unidentified flying object,
estimated to have reached an altitude of 60,000 feet (18,300 meters),
remained more or less stationary for hours, suggesting that it was
tethered to the ground somehow, or hovering under its own power.
Besides that, the fact that the U.S. government didn't know — or,
depending on your point of view, claimed not to know — what the object
was simply fueled the speculation. Obviously, whatever was that big and
high up in the sky was not put there by a hobbyist, and if no one at the
Air Force or Pentagon truly knew what it was, perhaps a private
company, or maybe even a foreign power, was behind it. The reports and
news faded away, but the mysterious object hung like a question mark in
the sky.
Secret revealed
Now, an article in Wired magazine
has revealed the secret behind the mysterious craft: a Google-financed
tech endeavor code-named Project Loon. "The people in Pike County were
witnessing a test of Project Loon, a breathtakingly ambitious plan to
bring the Internet to a huge swath of as-yet-unconnected humanity — via
thousands of solar-powered, high-pressure balloons floating some 60,000
feet above Earth," wrote Wired's Steven Levy.
The balloon stayed aloft for 11 days before reaching Canada, Levy reports.
The Project Loon balloons, while providing fodder for UFO websites and conspiracy theorists,
travel "on the edge of space, designed to connect people in rural and
remote areas, help fill coverage gaps and bring people back online after
disasters," according to the project's website. The solar-powered
balloons would circle the planet, floating in rings about 12 miles (19
kilometers) above Earth in the stratosphere (about twice the altitude at
which commercial airplanes fly). "People connect to the balloon network
using a special Internet antenna attached to their building. The signal
bounces from balloon to balloon, then to the global Internet back on
Earth," the website reads.
The result? Low-cost Internet access.
So the mysterious UFO was, indeed, the result of a technologically
advanced civilization, but it seems that civilization comes in peace and
is here to help us — or at least provide affordable Wi-Fi to rural
populations.
Website: livescience
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