Only once: While on an Army training exercise at Fort Irwin California, through the IR scope of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, at night (~ 9:45 PM) in the summer of 2009. I was gazing at the exhaust of a hovering black hawk when a perfectly spherical, very hot, object moved into my field of view. It was behind the helicopter, and as I followed it I realized It was rotating 360 degrees -- at an unknown distance -- around our position. I attempted to range the object with my gun, but once I did, it immediately froze in its position, went from white hot to cold black and back again, and then shot up (very quickly) and out of my view where I lost sight of it. I shared this with the rest of my platoon afterwords, after which we all took to our scopes, ... and it came back, but six spheres this time and in a diamond shaped formation. After one full rotation, the objects slowly broke formation and disappeared into the sky. I never knew what to make of it, but like Mulder, I want to believe.
Two mundane phenomena to investigate: the first part sounds like an issue with optics and/or software; I assume attempting to range something involves moving optical elements. Your description does read a bit like attempting autofocus with a damaged lens system. As for diamonds, this does sound like a kaleidoscope, which again suggests broken optics.
The issue I have with these explanations is that they require more contortions than I'm comfortable with. Multiple reports from multiple people with and without scopes are hardly an easy thing to explain.
There are things that people notice, empirical observations if you want to call them like this, that have a certain social stigma associated with them. And I feel that, precisely _because_ of this stigma, people rush to justifications and conclusions that fit our normal model. But how can we find out what they actually are if we try to wiggle things within our model, how can we tell if our model is somehow incomplete?
I will say that I am unconvinced by the explanations people have for these events. They feel forced, contorted and somehow touched by the spirit of the environment that gave birth to the explanations.
Who repairs or dusts off the optics? The maintenance person probably didn't even know that someone once thought they saw something with it in order to know to tell them it turned out to be broken.
Any mundane explanation like that is so much more likely than it being alien or super secret technology.
Yeah, we are both in the same place. I want to be a rational as possible but I also want to believe we are not alone in the universe. This is as human of a feeling as I know, right?
