Mysterious lights spotted off the coast of San Diego have prompted social media users to wonder if they might be witnessing an extraterrestrial encounter.
Hundreds took to Twitter on Monday with pictures and video of a pattern of up to six lights that formed an inverted pyramid shape over the ocean.
“It’s still happening, going on about an hour now,” Gabe Gunlock wrote on a Twitter post above a video that had attracted 250,000 views by Wednesday.
“Multiple floating lights over the ocean. Very still, very bright. Orange, reddish light.”
Many watched the lights for hours as they changed formation and shape, and then gathered in a tight cluster, musing that they could be some form of unexplained aerial phenomena.
“There are some wild lights floating over downtown San Diego,” Austin Gunter wrote.
“Does anyone know if it’s 4th or July related, or the Navy, or do I get to believe it’s finally aliens visiting us?”
The actual explanation was more mundane.
The San Diego Police Department told ABC News that the lights were flares from military exercises.
San Diego is home to several large naval bases and around 15,000 military personnel are stationed in the area.
US military intelligence officials told lawmakers at a congressional hearing in May that UFO sightings near US military facilities are so common that a database of encounters has grown to about 400 incidents.
In June 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report on UFOs — or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, UAPs, in the new Pentagon approved nomenclature — noting that 143 sightings since 2004 remained unexplained.
