Yes, UFOs exist. But they're probably not what you think.
On a dark and otherwise serene night back in the 1960s, my grandpa, a doctor and recreational pilot, was ferrying two lawyers to a deposition. As they bisected the state of Washington, the airborne group encountered something surreal: An aircraft unlike anything they had ever seen before was flying straight toward them. My grandpa recalled an oblong flying machine, with blinking lights and an eerie ability to hover, that tracked his movements through the sky. When he ducked, the other object also ducked. And when he rose, it rose. While it was certainly an unidentified flying object, my grandpa never claimed he saw aliens. He seemed to believe that someday, the strange visit he’d received would be explained—in earthly terms. This family memory was the first thing I thought of when I read the recent New York Times story about U.S. Navy pilots who say they saw an unidentified flying object near the San Diego coast in 2004. In the story, titled “2 Navy Airmen and an Object That ‘Accel...