The national finals of debate were held in Fargo, North Dakota my senior year of high school. In the final round of the national qualifying tournament my partner and I sparred with a team from West Bakersfield, California over which of us would get to go cow tipping.

None of us actually knew if that was a thing, of course. And now we can pretty much surmise that it wasn’t — because otherwise there would be documented videos of cow tipping on YouTube.

So it is with UFOs. The number of UFO sightings has dropped tremendously since the days of the X-Files since we all have cell phones with cameras and video capability now. We can’t credibly claim to have seen a UFO and not have video of it. And the quality of these cameras has improved exponentially, streaks of light caught on film in the 1970s might lead to ‘many unanswered questions’ but now we can get a better sense of what things actually are in those photos.

As a result it actually stands out when there’s video of ‘unidentified’ flying objects in the sky. That’s why video of an unidentified flying object speeding past and overtaking a plane is so fun. It’s 2016 footage but recently posted and social shared.

The eerie clip shows a saucer-shaped object following the plane in its vapour trails before passing it completely.

…I immediately thought I was witnessing some strange aircraft, possibly military but it was not a jet

“The UFO was gaining on a jet. No helicopter could do that. I was blown away and luckily got out my phone in time to take a video.

I have to imagine we’re looking at aircraft flying at different altitudes. And though media have described one as a passenger plane that’s not clear, it could easily be that both are military. That’s clearly what’s happening in this 2015 video of a plane speeding behind a Virgin Atlantic 747 taking off from New York JFK. The truth is out there.

I never did see any cows in Fargo – or in the adjacent Morehead, Minnesota where we stayed. We were late buying our plane tickets and had to fly Northwest Airlines into Grand Forks. And we did get to drive along a highway that probably had missile silos on either side. The Soviet Union had just collapsed, so being at what was presumably at ground zero for a pre-emptive nuclear strike was scarier than UFOs and more fun than cows for this then-17 year old.