Mystery Lights Appear Over San Diego: 'Looks Like Floating Balls of Fire'

San Diego residents have been left bewildered after witnessing a strange light show hovering in the night sky.

The row of lights flickered in the darkness between 8 and 8:30 p.m., leading to a spate of calls to local media publications. One Twitter user described them as looking like "floating balls of fire". Dozens of tweets were posted at the time of the lights with people confused and curious about what they could be.

Ultimately, however, the lights were simply a flare training drill conducted by the a U.S. aircraft squadron. A Navy spokesperson confirmed the reason to Fox 5 San Diego and said the lights were likely to be seen intermittently throughout the night. They may also be seen tonight as drills continue.

That still didn't stop people speculating though: "Military is up to some weird shady shit if you ask me," one person wrote. "Extraterrestrial lights randomly appearing in the air of Pacific Beach, San Diego. What are they?" another person said.

Those hoping to see aliens shouldn't hold their breath. In June, a University of Oxford paper found "a substantial probability that we are alone in our galaxy, and perhaps even in our observable universe (53–99.6 percent and 39–85 percent respectively)." The team investigated the so-called "Fermi paradox," which asks: "If intelligent alien life exists, why haven't we heard from it?"

Numerous explanations to solve the problem have been offered by alien-hunters—including one of the study authors, Anders Sandberg, who previously suggested intelligent alien life might be snoozing as it waits for the universe to cool and energy to become more valuable.

Openly speaking of your belief in aliens may benefit a political campaign though. Earlier this month, the Miami Herald publicly endorsed a Republican candidate for her "working class agenda". Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera also claims she was once abducted by aliens.

The Herald's editorial board "was most impressed" by former Doral councilwoman Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera in her Congressional District 27 race to take over the seat of longtime incumbent GOP member, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who is not seeking re-election this year. While the newspaper acknowledged she is an "unusual candidate" for endorsement, both she and the editors agreed her abduction is a "non-issue" in the upcoming election.

In 2017, business consultant Rodriguez Aguilera told several Spanish-language news outlets and the Herald she was taken aboard an alien spaceship when she was seven years old. She described the aliens as three blond, big-bodied extraterrestrial beings who have communicated telepathically with her on several occasions in her life. The now 60-year-old GOP candidate recounted "going up" into the spaceship and said some of the alien beings reminded her of Rio de Janeiro's mountaintop Christ the Redeemer statue, in which Jesus poses with his outstretched arms.