Did Aliens Land in New York City, Or is it Something More Mundane?

The New York skyline was lit up this evening with a blue pulsing glow unlike anything this side of the SFX seen in alien invasion film Independence Day. The night sky with it’s relatively low solid cloud cover could be seen from more than ten miles away.

With the eerie pulsing glow at such a distance, the Twitterverse was quick to jump on a range of suspicions about the source, ranging from a mundane transformer fire.

Transformer fire in Queens? #firequeens New York pic.twitter.com/joRJ2OEckm

— Jānis Lībeks (@JanisLibeks) December 28, 2018

Other possibilities were also suggested, with some people insisting that other NYC-based exterminators might have had their own power outage leading to a laser containment grid failure.

Other suggestions included energy buildups related to a power attack.

Actual footage of what happened in New York #bluelight pic.twitter.com/FZc1QjLNkU

— 2x Father 🏆🏆 (retired) (@KESE_86) December 28, 2018

Or a temporal displacement atmospheric effect (which we suspect less-likely given that Terminators only jump into the Los Angeles area)

pic.twitter.com/DNeoUAoXgR

— openedSource (@openedsource) December 28, 2018

The kaiju-hunting organization Monarch, dismissed the idea that it was Mothra as it was being tracked via their website along the Florida coast at the same time.

Thank you civilian operatives – authorities have confirmed the illuminated blue light across the New York City skyline. https://t.co/wFz8vrC6ST #MonarchSightings #BlueLight

— [MONARCH] (@MonarchSciences) December 28, 2018

In the end the reason announced by energy company Con Edison was that there had been a “brief electrical fire” at one of their substations.

There was a brief electrical fire at our substation on 20th Avenue & 32nd Street in Astoria this evening, which caused a transmission dip in the area. All power lines serving the area are in service and the system is stable. Photo: Michael Friedl, New York Times pic.twitter.com/vq2Ao46rhk

— Con Edison (@ConEdison) December 28, 2018

However that was reported only after a brief visitation on-scene by an unidentified individual who said something to the assembled crowd, but we can’t quite remember what it was.