Things that go bump in the sky

“No-one would’ve believed/ In the last years of the 19th century/ That human affairs were being watched from timeless worlds of space/ No-one could have dreamt that we were being scrutinised/ As someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.”

So Richard Burton — the greatest speaking voice of all time — begins the opening narration of the terrifying musical version of  the HG Wells classic The War of the Worlds.

Maybe  not in the late 1800s, but nowadays we certainly can dream it, because at the weekend the US military shot down not one, but three airborne ... things  that strayed into the airspace over the US and Canada.

Last week it was the Chinese “spy balloon”, satisfyingly taken out by a missile fired from an F22 Raptor, leaving one TV anchor momentarily nonplussed as the balloon disappeared in a puff of smoke.

The word “balloon” does not feature in  descriptions of the latest three targets, with a US Air Force general saying they were “very, very small” and the Canadian defence minister describing one as “cylindrical”. Another was described as “octagonal”. No-one called them anything more specific than “objects”.

This fuzziness has sparked UFO hysteria the likes of which has not been seen since the 1950s, except perhaps among dedicated crystal-meth smokers in trailer parks in the arid parts of the US. 

The US says it is now more aware of “sky trash” — which, by the way, is mostly balloons sent aloft to gather scientific data — because after the Chinese balloon incursion, it “fine-tuned” its radars to keep tabs on all the stuff flying overhead.

Or so Melissa Dalton, US assistant defence secretary for homeland defence and hemispheric affairs, told reporters in Washington DC.

A bit of caution is probably wise, then. For as Burton himself says: “The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one. But still, they come.”