“Swamp Gas” being of course the infamous explanation for UFOs seen in the skies back in the day. This is a piece I wrote for American Chronicle in 2006, and thought it’d be interesting to repost it here.

UFOs: Plasma, The New Swamp Gas
May 07, 2006

I recently wrote about the items that crop up every so often about how UFOs are dead and gone. (UFOs: Not Dead Yet.) These items are cyclic in nature, insistent in their thesis: UFOs are no longer with us. These appear despite the fact that at the same time, items appear about the latest sightings, encounters, new UFO book and magazine publications, etc. The creaky debunking machine continues however, churning away, giving us the latest explanation for UFOs, reasons on why UFOs are no longer present, or the self-congratulatory, albeit very late news that a particular case was a hoax. (ie, Santelli film.)

On the heels of the most recent bits that UFOs are no longer, are these items that tell us what UFOs are. They are many things, according to these "news" pieces, but one thing is certain, as they tell us: they are not extraterrestrials from outer space. (Or, while rarely stated but certainly implied, are they beings from another dimension, entities of the earth but non-human, and so on.)

Most people, including the average person with a brief acquaintance with UFOs, knows that swamp gas is code for 'explanation for silly flying saucers.'. That?s become a running joke now in pop culture. Well, it seems that, according to the latest news, UFOs really are something as ludicrous; plasma.

Here's a sampling of a few items that have appeared in the past few days:

Scientists explain UFO sightings. Not a creative title, but to the point.

Scientists at the Defence Intelligence Staff, part of the Ministry of Defence, reportedly described how glowing "plasmas" of gas were created by charges of electricity. Air flows then sculpted the plasmas into aerodynamic shapes which appeared to fly at extraordinary speeds through the sky.

I am of the opinion that the people writing these things for their various intel agencies are snorting milk out their noses as they come up with these ideas. They go on:

As a result, people who thought they'd seen a UFO were instead suffering from "extended memory retention and repeat experiences" induced by the plasmas.

No comment. None needed.

Another one; UFO study finds no signs of aliens.

People who claim to have had a "close encounter" are often difficult to persuade that they did not really see what they thought they saw. The report offers a possible medical explanation.

The close proximity of plasma related fields can adversely affect a vehicle or person," states the report.

Local fields of this type have been medically proven to cause responses in the temporal lobes of the human brain. These result in the observer sustaining (and later describing and retaining) his or her own vivid, but mainly incorrect, description of what is experienced."

To really rub it in, they dump a whole shaker full of salt in the wound:

There are, of course, other causes of UFOs - aeroplanes with particularly bright lights, stray odd-shaped balloons and strange flocks of birds, to name but a few.

Apparently they just couldn't resist.

It's dazzling to see how quickly this official explanation has made its way to the news feeds. If you can't smell Big Bad Debunker in all this, it's because, as the saying goes, you haven't been paying attention.

UFO Updates. Anyone who sincerely swallows this explanation for UFOs -- that it's plasma -- is simply naive, stubborn, or both. And if both, that?s a dangerous combination.