A pilot, who was flying a private plane, was astounded after spotting a mysterious object he said could likely be an alien spacecraft, or perhaps "strange alien creatures," as he saw it soaring thousands of feet high in the skies of the United States.
The pilot said he saw a small silver cylinder hovering near the wing of his plane thousands of feet above the state of Rhode Island.
According to a video published by the British newspaper "Daily Mail" Daily Mail, and obtained by "Arabiya.net", the clip includes live air traffic control communication during that tense moment, where the pilot told the ground team: "It seems to be stationary," while the mysterious object floated beside him.
The object hovered near the edge of the wing, moving alongside the plane for a brief period before disappearing from sight.
The air traffic controller confirmed there were no other reports in the region and suggested the object could have been a drone or a balloon.
However, the pilot was not convinced by the air traffic control team's speculations, insisting it was an "unknown object" and that he saw no attachments on the body, describing it as "amazing" while maintaining an altitude of about 3500 feet.
The pilot was flying a small Piper (PA-32RT-300T) aircraft, which accommodates only five passengers, and was flying over the state of Rhode Island. Other pilots in the region gave comments over the radio, with one of them saying: "I want to believe him," while air traffic controllers jokingly said: "Good luck with the alien creatures."
No official report has been published by the Federal Aviation Administration or the National Transportation Safety Board, which is common in cases of unexplained aerial phenomena unless they pose a direct threat.
With the spread of the video that shows the dialogue, some experts provided alternative explanations for the belief told by the pilot, who stuck to the hypothesis that it might be a strange alien object.
Mick West, a British-American scientific writer and conspiracy theory investigator, suggested that a weather balloon is the most likely scenario.
Other social media users speculated that it could have been a military test of new technology.
Anthony Dorman, founder and CEO of (Electronic Caregiver), a company specializing in AI-supported virtual care, offered a more realistic view, suggesting that the object could have been a weather balloon, which is often launched at night and carries cylindrical payloads.
Dorman explained: "They are made from a transparent material that reflects city lights or captures sunlight in the upper layers of the atmosphere, making it difficult to determine their actual altitude."
He added that these balloons might seem like they are hovering in the air or ascending slowly, sometimes at speeds up to 1000 feet per minute, noting that many of them are launched from neighboring Massachusetts.
He also pointed out that enthusiasts experiment with balloons and other small devices at low altitudes. He said: "They are supposed to travel in a specific direction, but things don't always go as planned."
This incident comes a few months after a veteran American fighter pilot broke his silence about an incident where he nearly collided with an unidentified flying object, which defied the laws of physics and stunned the U.S. Air Force.
Major Ryan Bodenheimer, a retired U.S. Air Force pilot who flew F-15 and F-16 fighter aircraft, revealed in a YouTube video that one of his "strangest" career experiences was a close encounter with an unidentified rectangular flying object while flying with his squadron over southern Wyoming.
Bodenheimer said in the video published on June 8: "Then I realized we were not going to collide, and suddenly the object became clearer, and it was rectangular. It looked like a perfect rectangle."
The veteran pilot described the unidentified flying object as being between 30 and 50 feet in height, appearing to glow around the edges of its bright white body, while flying alongside the Thunderbirds, an elite aerial demonstration squadron of the U.S. Air Force.
He added that this vehicle did not emit any visible vapor trail from its engine, did not send any radar signals, and was moving at a speed close to 400 knots (460 miles per hour). Bodenheimer said: "Indeed, it defied all the laws of aviation I had learned."
