This past weekend, the hashtag “UFO” was trending on various social media sites. The reason? An unexplained series of strange lights flashing in the sky were photographed in Southern California. Sites like Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter declared the lights to be UFO sightings, which is technically not incorrect: these lights were in fact Unidentified Flying Objects, and although it was recently “confirmed” that the lights were actually a test missile launch, those speculating about the lights remained unconvinced. Mainstream media outlets like People Magazine attempted to dismantle the rumors about UFOs, but people who saw the lights firsthand seemed more amazed at the sighting than anything else.

Southern California as a region is considered to be littered with UFO hotspots, and it doesn’t help that sources have claimed that the sighting was multiple things: a comet, a missile, an airplane. Similar stories are recycled, as UFO sightings throughout the years are either given vague explanations or no explanations at all. Alien enthusiasts and "X-Files" fanatics alike cannot be expected to be appeased. If the story is always inconsistent, then maybe there is no explanation; at least, no explanation that can be confirmed by human beings.

Why are human beings so obsessed with these strange lights in the sky? The sky is a symbol of human wonderment. Astronomy helps us understand our place in the universe, and unearthly life forms are part of that equation. As much as we like to speculate and apply our theories to what is out there, we still admit that most of the universe is made up of “dark matter," which is really just a placeholder term for the expanse of existence that we have not yet been able understand. “Dark matter," like aliens, is hypothetical matter. Until we can explore the worlds beyond our own more thoroughly, everything is debatable, and nothing is truly known.

So, these flashing lights that are being named as a missile that was launched off the coast of California may very well just be a missile. But even if this particular instance is not something mysterious and otherworldly, at the very least, it symbolizes our fascination with what lies beyond us, and what sort of experiences we expect for the future of the human race.