So... ball lightning is actually from other planets?

Remeber last week, when the Mexican air force was chasing UFOs? Well, a new story up at CNN.com suggests that the UFOs may have been manifestations of the rare ball lightning phenomenon:

But nuclear science researcher Julio Herrera said the blobs of light may have been nothing more than ball lightning -- glowing spheres that are little understood but often sighted near the ground during thunderstorms.

"Just as you have lightning between clouds and ground, you can also have it within the clouds and sometimes ball lightning can develop. I feel this is one of these rare events," said Herrera, based at Mexico's National Autonomous University.

"It's a very rare atmospheric phenomenon and it would be very interesting to be able to analyze all the information these pilots obtained," he told Reuters.

Supposedly some of the glowing objects were tracked by the air force plane via radar, and I'm not clear if some sort of plasma construct like ball lightning would have a radar profile. But either way you look at it, this is quite interesting. If it's a genuine sighting of alien probes/spacecraft (doubtful) then, well, cool. If it's a rare signting of ball lightining in a here-to-fore unknown configuration sporting unexpected behavior, then that's pretty darn spiffy as well.

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