It was supposed to have been a routine commercial flight over Peru. Flying at 7,000 feet, the plane had just passed through a minor electrical storm. Suddenly, without warning, a ball of dazzling light appeared off the starboard wing. 16. ______ Inside the plane, the lights grew dim, and the beginning of panic was evident. In the cockpit, the compass was going defective and radio reception went dead. Transmission, however, remained unaffected. 17. ______ The report reached the desk of Edward U. Condon of the University of Colorado. Doctor Condon is under contract to the Air Force and is the official watchdog for such aerial phenomena. He immediately began checking the persons aboard the plane who had seen the mysterious object. Putting together bits of information from each, he quickly dismissed the obvious explanations. It had not been an exceptionally bright planet, such as Venus or Jupiter, nor a plastic weather balloon. It had not acted at all like a meteor or a re-entering satellite. It was obviously not a strangely shaped cloud formation. For nearly 15 years, various groups have expounded the theory that UFOs are actually spacecraft from other worlds. On the surface, this appears to be the simplest explanation. I believe, however, that it is by far the hardest explanation to swallow. 18. ______ And, more importantly, there is the irrefutable fact that space is under constant surveillance. The United States maintains a large number of tracking stations. The Russians and Germans also keep their own tracking equipment in constant use. What then was this fiery ball of light that tracked the Peruvian airliner I have always suspected that most UFO sightings could be explained by natural phenomena, and 1 personally believe that what the people on that plane saw was an aerial phenomenon as strange and enigmatic as UFOs themselves. Its name is "ball lightning", and as the name suggests, it is spherical in shape. Appearing usually after a thunderstorm, it ranges in size from 10 to 30 inches in diameter and can last for up to one minute. Since it is electrical in nature and is seen for such a short period of time, little is known about it save one thing: its behavior is decidedly weird. One of the first reported appearances of ball lightning came from East Prussia some 40 years ago. According to the owner of ,a restaurant, there had been a heavy thundershower early in the afternoon, and the restaurant was hit by lightning. He investigated but found no damage. Then, from out of nowhere, a glowing, reddish ball appeared. It was over a foot in diameter. Both doors were open, and the thing seemed to move with the air currents. It was rotating all the time and passed a good number of people. Everyone watched as it climbed along the wiring of the electric bell, and, as if caught in a draft, traveled along another electric wire to the back of the room. Then it just disappeared altogether. In 1927, from Bad Godesberg, Germany we heard of "...a ball of light that was perched on the cast-iron post of a wire fence." Or, from Kalispell, Mont., about people who saw "...brilliant balls of light drop to the ground and disappear." 19. ______ During the last year of World War II, however, American fighter pilots began talking about something they called "Foo Fighters". They were balls of fiery light which appeared a few yard beyond the wing tips of their aircraft. Originally believed to be a revolutionary Axis weapon, stories about them were sharply censored. After the war, suspicion grew that the Foo Fighters were lightning balls, somehow produced by the presence of aircraft in an electrically charged atmosphere. The theory was enhanced by other reports of similar sightings. In April, 1952, a British science journal reported that a lightning ball appeared in the cabin of a British commercial airliner flying at 9,200 feet. It most likely had entered the craft through an air-intake vent. The lightning ball slowly drifted along the aisle, probably scaring the passengers silly. It moved to the rear of the plane and simply vanished from sight. Like most lightning balls, it did no harm. People have actually been touched by them without experiencing any sensation. 20. ______ It is my firm contention that many of today’s UFOs are no more than appearances of ball lightning, and that also includes the report of Peru.A. In the first place, alien spacecraft would most certainly explore rather khan engage in a futile game of hide-and-seekB. It moved to a point directly above the airliner and, maintaining a constant air speed, the mysterious light stayed there for a while.C. Just as suddenly, the ball of light was gone. Was the unidentified flying object an uninvited visitor from another planetD. None of these appearances of ball lightning caused a UFO report; people just didn’t worry abut UFOs then,E. So what we have here is a well-documented, natural phenomenon. It is mysterious mainly because of its inherent nature, which makes more thorough investigation nearly impossible,F. The resemblance of this report to the Foo Fighters is obvious. But to say definitely that Foo Fighters were ball lightning poses other questions,