"It was just like a big bright light, and it had a tail on it - kind of like a comet, but not real long," Mary Cline, 63, told The Associated Press.

Cline said she saw it near a warehouse in Selah, a town about five miles north of Yakima. "It seemed to be really close. It seemed like it was just right over the roof of the warehouse."

Asya Guerrero, 21 of Yakima, called the AP to say she spotted an object that looked like a shooting star, only much closer, headed toward the city's Terrace Heights area.

Kip and Valerie Wachter saw the fireball pass over their heads about 10:15 Sunday evening as they walked north of Pinetop.

"The colors were a bright green, red, white. The size was about three times wider than its length. It seemed to emanate a low, soft swishing sound as it passed overhead," the Wachters wrote in an e-mail to The Republic.

Steve Kates, a Chandler resident and science journalist known as "Dr. Sky," said that description, particularly the noise, was consistent with meteoric activity.

Most meteors visible on earth occur high in the atmosphere and these "shooting stars" are about the size of a grain of dust, said Jeffrey Hall, associate director at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff.

"The great majority are these tiny particles moving through the atmosphere at a high rate of speed," Hall said. "Larger ones tend to be moving more slowly and produce a much larger trail through the sky."

Between 10 and 50 meteor events occur over the Earth each day, according to the American Meteor Society, with the vast majority happening over oceans and out of eyesight. Meteors lose mass and decelerate as they enter the atmosphere, with only the largest slamming into the Earth and forming a crater. Scientists think the Barringer Crater, near Winslow, was formed by an iron meteor about 50,000 years ago.

Kates said a meteorite the size of a human fist could have created the light show West Coast residents witnessed Sunday night.

Rural/Metro responded to the north side of Saguaro Lake but found no sign of damage or destruction from a plane crash, Cooper said. Witnesses reported seeing the meteor travel from southwest to northeast.

Hall said the meteor likely never made it to the ground.

"This is not like a mountain coming into the atmosphere. It's more like the size of a softball," Hall said. "Even something this bright probably burned up completely in the atmosphere."

Santa Fe County Sheriff Greg Solano said six people called his dispatcher to report the lights in the sky, including one who thought it might have been a falling airplane.

The National UFO Reporting Center in eastern Washington State reported that about 30 people across the West reported seeing something in the sky, with most of the calls coming from Colorado.

Menka Jain, who was driving near Los Alamos on Sunday night, said she saw what looked to be an orange fiery projectile that exploded into pieces.

Peggy Crumbacher, who lives south of Santa Fe off N.M. 14, said she looked to the north at about 11:15 p.m. "It went from white to blue, and then I could see it turned toward the north, and then it absolutely disappeared,'' she said. "This was not a meteor. Meteors would be bright lights.''

Peter Davenport of the National UFO Reporting Center said Sunday evening's reports began with a fireball over Seattle about 9:26 p.m. New Mexico time.

He said other reports Sunday evening came from:

_Winslow, Ariz., where a large light green fireball was observed at 10:18 p.m.

_Cheyenne, Wyo., where an airplane pilot flying at 30,000 feet observed to the south at 11:15 p.m. at approximately the same altitude a bright object that seemed to eject five golden objects out its back end at regular intervals. The objects remained visible for about 30 seconds.

_Cascade, Colo., where eight to 10 orange objects were seen flying from north to south for about 10 seconds about 11:15 p.m. An airplane was spotted nearby about 10 seconds later.

_Hartsel, Colo., where eight to 10 glowing orange, yellow and red objects were seen about 11:15 p.m. moving south to north. Several of the objects broke off in different directions, while the lead objects changed their color to blue and white before disappearing within one minute.

_Raton, N.M., where a motel employee observed a large gold star about 11:20 p.m. that split into three, then seven objects that moved in a straight line for several seconds.

Davenport said similar lights were reported Sunday evening in Roseville, Calif.; Boulder, Colo.; Silver City and Las Cruces.

"The first thing that comes to my mind was the possibility of space debris,'' he said. "But usually when that happens, NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) at Peterson Air Force Base (in Colorado) makes a statement. ... And I have not heard from NORAD.''

Davenport said some of Sunday's reports had the characteristics of a meteor -- fragments coming off a main object, objects moving in a straight line, flaring up like a match and lasting only a few seconds.

Federal Aviation Administration officials also said the lights were likely a meteor, according to KOB-TV. A person at LodeStar Astronomy Center in Albuquerque didn't know about the lights, and neither did a person who answered the phone at Santa Fe Community College's planetarium.

Now, many people will read that last paragraph and nod their heads in agreement. Trouble is, however, a significant and burgeoning segment of society doesn't believe this to be true - the so-called UFOlogists. You know, the folks who talk about flying saucers, little green men (or is that grey men?), crop circles - the whole X-Files bit. Today, an entire sub-culture exists devoted to these topics as if they were matter of fact.

Closer to home, I've known for some time that UFO aficionados frequent my blog. I often get nasty letters from them complaining about my UFO denial and my fixation with such empirical anomalies as the Fermi Paradox. At the same time however, I have to assume that UFOlogists read my blog and integrate my reports on science and philosophy with their own beliefs in extraterrestrial visitations.

For example, last week I blogged about the search for artificial objects in the cosmos. A quick Googling for that post shows that the article was referenced by the UFO site, Virtually Strange and distributed on their newsletter (much to my chagrin and without my permission). My hit counter revealed similar referencing links.

I am also aware that Raelians frequently visit Sentient Developments; I've even had the opportunity to meet some of them in person - but once the conversation turns to a discussion of how to quantify the varying energy content of crop circles, I tend to lose it and start to rant. I don't have many friends among the Raelians, but I don't have very many Seventh Day Adventists and Scientologists as friends either.

And I also know that Mac Tonnies over at Posthuman Blues links to my articles from time-to-time. Posthuman Blues often deals with transhumanist and other future issues, but Tonnies's legitimate content is offset by his misguided focus on UFOlogy. As a result, the transhumanist movement may have a harder time gaining public acceptance and support with this kind of negative association.

I'm sorry, folks, but you can't have your cake and eat it to. You can't choose and pick the science that appeals to you and then attempt to tie it in with bogus and unfounded speculations. It's like Fox Mulder in the X-Files who has a poster on his wall which reads, "I want to believe." Well, I also want to belive in UFOs. I also want to belive in Jesus and the tooth fairly, but wanting to believe in those things ain't gonna make it so.

Part of the problem here, aside from wishful thinking, is the rampant scientific illiteracy that now pervades much of Western society, particularly in parts of the United States. Many people these days are unable to determine which claims have scientific credence and which do not. Popular culture does little to remedy this, with shows like the X-Files and Coast to Coast perpetuating the idea that it's okay to discuss UFOs and other pseudoscientific claims in the context of legitimate science.

Let's take my blog entry on the search for artificial objects in space. Many UFOlogists, I'm sure, took that article as further proof that there are aliens in our midst. Wrong! It's actually telling us the opposite. The work that Luc Arnold is doing is important from the perspective that we have devised yet another way of detecting signs of ETIs. Given the sheer simplicity and elegance of Arnold's theorized calling-card technique, the cosmos should be screaming with signs of ETIs. I fully suspect that work by astronomers over the next several decades will reveal none of these calling cards. The search for artificial objects, like SETI's impossible search for radio signals, will provide further proof that there's nobody out there zipping around in spaceships.

I am already imagining the comments and emails I'm going to receive in response to this post. I'm going to read about how UFOlogy is in fact a legitimate scientific endeavor and that I'm being both unfair and closed minded. I'm going to be asked where I get off denying all the sightings and testimonials and how I can account for these things. Bla, bla, bla.

While I'm loathe to engage in these conversations, there is one point that I wish to make in hopes that I can influence the thinking of those UFOlogists who visit my blog, particularly those with an interest in such things as posthumanism and the Singularity.

My message is this: STOP THINKING SO SMALL!

This whole UFO thing reminds me of something Carl Sagan once said about religion: "How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant'? Instead they say, 'No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.' A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths."

Indeed, the advanced space-faring species of the UFOlogist is a little UFO. He zooms around in his flying saucer annoying us with his crop circles, all the while looking to inflict his anal probe on some poor unsuspecting trailer trash. And of course he's a frail and little creature, clammy grey skin, big head and all.

Give me a break. What kind of pathetic vision of advanced intelligence is this?

Meanwhile, transhumanists are discussing the radical potential for god-like artificial superintelligences, megascale computational projects like matrioshka and Jupiter brains, uploaded societies, metaconsciousness, Kardashev scale civilizations, existential paradigm shifts, universe re-engineering and immortality.

Given these potentials, the UFO vision is an absurdity of the highest order. The fact that our civilization hasn't been uplifted by an advanced ETI is a blatant indication that something strange and different is going on out there in the depths of space. That's where the Fermi Paradox comes in, and it's in that discussion that we can meaningfully discuss topics as they pertain to astrobiology, astrosociobiology, cosmology, and computer science. It will also give us an indication as to where we ourselves may be headed as a species.

One final note to the UFOlogists, you're obviously welcome to keep visiting my blog, but it's apparent to me that you're just not getting it.

He saw the object from the Waikato University tennis courts and said it was heading west toward Raglan.

It was visible for about 30 seconds before dropping out of sight.

Hamilton Astronomical Society member, and past president, Carol Thompson said the streaking object could have been a meteor.

Meteor sightings were not uncommon, she said.

It was impossible to say where it might have landed although it could have burnt up before hitting the Earth or landed out to sea, she said.

Earlier this month a meteor was seen racing across the Canterbury skies and was accompanied by a sonic boom as it travelled at an estimated 40,000km/h.

Mrs Thompson said anyone who saw yesterday's streaking object should contact the Hamilton Astronomical Society and fill out a fireball-meteor report form.

# Have your say: Did you see the meteor? Email Aaron Leaman or phone 07-849-9670.

"Jimmy Carter was the first president ever to admit that he had seen a UFO," Mr. Thomas said. "Many applauded him for his bravery. He was taking a chance. A man preparing for a presidential bid is in no position to say things that make him sound like a crackpot."

It was 1969, and Governor Carter was in Leary, Georgia, for a meeting with the Lion's Club. Shortly after dark, he saw a bright object in the sky that was a big as the moon and kept changing colors.

After he filed his report in 1973, he said, "If I become president, I'll make every piece of information this country has about UFO sightings available to the public and the scientists."

But after Carter took office in January of 1977, Walter Wurfel, the administration's Deputy Press Secretary, made it clear that this would not be the case.

"There might be some aspects of some sightings that would have defense implications that possibly should be safe-guarded against immediate and full disclosure," Wurfel told the press.

And one of the stories covered up was the Jasper UFO Incident.

According to "The Top Secret UFO Project," in the summer of 1956, mysterious occurrences in Jasper forced President Eisenhower to prepare for a showdown with aliens, setting up huge military operations in the little Colorado town south of Denver.

Based on Thomas' 2004 novella of the same name, "The Top Secret UFO Project" chronicles the UFO-related events experienced by this tiny Colorado hamlet. According to the film, the town dealt with one unusual event after another. After a farmer spotted a flying saucer zipping over his property, scientists rushed into Jasper to investigate, reporters rushed in looking for stories, and government officials rushed in to keep it a secret from the world.

Billed as "the movie the government does not want you to see," "The Top Secret UFO Project," is a parody of the cheesy UFO documentaries of the 70's like "Overlords of the UFO" and TV programs like "In Search Of."

Mr. Thomas plays a documentary filmmaker who, in 2003, discovered some top secret government films pertaining to the Jasper Incident of 1956. This inspired him to make a documentary about Jasper's UFO story, and to discover the truth behind what really happened that mysterious summer in Colorado.

And as for the former president's sighting?
"Carter looked at that UFO for at least ten minutes," Mr. Thomas said. "He really believes he saw a UFO. Not everybody agreed with him as far as his politics go, but I don't think anybody ever saw him as crazy. But, remember, MacArthur never saw a UFO, and he so firmly believed in them that he was ready to prepare for an invasion from Mars!"