Olly Smith
A man has been left stunned on a late night flight across the Atlantic Ocean after spotting a bunch of mysterious lights under the clouds.
We've all seen some weird things grace our skies at night. Whether it's planes, satellites, or alleged UFOs, sometimes our eyes can play tricks on us.
Either way, seeing something you can't explain can surely leave a strange impression on you, as one man on a flight to England from the US recently learned.
Rohan Goonewardena was traveling on a particularly uneventful red-eye flight across the Atlantic Ocean when his son spotted something bizarre out the plane window.
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Posting on the Facebook group Dull Men's Club, Goonewardena wrote: "My son spotted these bright light out of the window. They are clearly reflecting from under the clouds.
"The position of the plane, according to the flight map, was slap bang in the middle of the North Atlantic with Greenland much further north."
He continued: "If the plane is cruising at thirty thousand feet and the clouds are ten thousand feet below the plane, what lights would cover that much area on a cloud if the light source was twenty thousand feet below?"
While it may be easy - and rather far-fetched - to claim it was aliens, as some commenters on the post joked, other users have provided more plausible explanations for the phenomena.
One user said: "Cruise ship setting off fireworks," as a possible reason.
Another suggested: "Northern lights have been visible farther South recently. Maybe that?"
However, it should be noted aurora borealis is not usually seen from below clouds, so it's likely to be making this kind of projection.
A clue about the source of the lights could come from another instance of mysterious lights being seen.
In 2022, strange red lights were spotted hovering above the Pacific Ocean.
While on a flight, pilot Dustin Maggard snapped a pic showing lights similar to the ones Goonewardena and his son saw.
At the time, Maggard told CNN he'd 'never seen anything like it'.
The photos then went viral on social media, with users, again, coming up with all sorts of theories - from aliens to military experiments.
However, France24 contacted a meteorologist to look into it.
According to their findings, the strange occurrence was actually the result of LED lights being used by fishing boats in that region.
These lights are typically used for fishing squid and certain types of fish, who are attracted to the boats by the light.
It's possible this is also what Goonewardena and his son saw during their flight across the Atlantic.
Sadly, this is not confirmation that aliens exist!