What if the balloons really were from space?

Who sent the mysterious objects — UFOs in reality — into air space over Canada and the U.S.?

When all other options have been exhausted, what is left is the truth, no matter how ludicrous it may sound.

That’s the wisdom of Sherlock Holmes and it may also be the wisdom of the great balloon controversy that is rocking Canada and the U.S.

Where do the balloons come from? Who sent them into the airspace over Northern Canada and the U.S.? Are the unidentified flying objects, as some are calling them, really balloons? Or are they something else?

Is this all the result of actions by the nefarious Chinese? Or should the equally nefarious Russians be blamed?

As it tries to answer these question, officialdom keeps tripping over its feet. Its first guess was the initial Chinese balloon was part of a deliberate plot to spy on America. Chinese explanations that the craft was a weather balloon that had been blown off course were dismissed as rubbish.

The Americans called the balloon a security threat and blew it up with an air-to-air missile.

That was early in week. Later in the week, U.S. officials changed their minds. They said the balloon posed no security threat but, as the Chinese had long claimed, was a benign craft that had been blown off course.

They said the Chinese were engaged in surveillance with their balloon, but that it wasn’t particularly serious.

What then about the other unidentified flying objects over North America? These too were treated with great suspicion by the U.S. and Canada. U.S. President Joe Biden found it made good politics to blow them out of the sky and ordered one destroyed over Alaska.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was determined not to be left out of the action. So he ordered the takedown of yet another unidentified flying object, this one drifting over the Yukon.

A third object flying over the Great Lakes was fired at by U.S. jets. This attack was more problematic in that the first attempt missed its target. But the Americans made it on the second shot, downing the object over Lake Huron.

Only after these attacks were made was the question seriously asked: Were they necessary?

Apparently they were not. Officialdom concluded that none of the three craft posed a threat to anyone.

Nor did any of the three belong to a terrestrial state like China or Russia.

In short, there is no obvious terrestrial explanation for the unidentified flying objects plaguing North America. The cause it seems must be something else. Using the logic of Sherlock Holmes, the cause must be extraterrestrial. It’s the only option left.

And why not? Why would an extraterrestrial UFO be any less likely than a terrestrial one? The key characteristic of the objects shot down over North America in the past week is that they are unknown. My guess is that people are reluctant to draw the obvious conclusion from this because they don’t want to be dismissed as nuts.

But what is nuts about this scenario? We are apparently shooting down aircraft that we don’t understand. Is this wise? What if there is some danger involved in targeting these unidentified flying objects?

What if these really are UFOs?