The other day, my wife and I were flying near Sedona, Arizona, heading home to California after visiting relatives in Colorado, when we experienced something that felt a bit like “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” though I’d be the first to admit I’m not exactly sure what it was we experienced.

Please permit me a brief, airplane-geek digression to offer some technical context and to better set the scene:

Many pilots these days, myself included, use iPads and an app called ForeFlight to help us navigate. It’s basically a satellite-based, georeferenced moving map that displays your location in the air at any given moment, while also painting an easy-to-follow line pointing in the direction of your next waypoint or final destination. Moreover, if your aircraft has something called an Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast-In receiver (“ADS-B In” for short), which mine does, ForeFlight also allows you to keep track of other aircraft relative to your current position, heading, and altitude. The display provides much of the same information air traffic controllers on the ground see on their radar scopes, and greatly reduces the chances of midair collisions.

OK, now back to our close encounter.

So there we were, cruising along on our assigned course at an altitude of 11,000 feet, when, suddenly, an unidentified blip popped up on my iPad. Foreflight showed that the aircraft was a couple of miles away, directly behind us, and at our exact altitude. What was particularly disconcerting was that it was coming straight at us at what looked to be an alarmingly high rate of speed.

I quickly radioed Air Traffic Control.

“Phoenix Approach, Cirrus Seven November Delta. Just wondering if you’re painting any targets at my altitude and six o’clock position?”

“Cirrus Seven November Delta, negative.”

Whatever this thing was, it was now less than a mile away and swiftly closing the gap. When you’re on an IFR flight plan, as I was, you’re not supposed to deviate from that plan without first getting permission from ATC. However, there’s a fundamental tenant in aviation drilled into all pilots during their basic training: “Aviate first. Navigate second. Then Communicate.” Basically, what it means is that if you’re in trouble, focus on your first responsibility, to keep flying the plane as safely as possible. You can let ATC know what you’re up to later. With that in mind, I immediately disengaged the autopilot to commence evasive maneuvers when, just like that, the blip disappeared.

Bizarre.

Was it a UFO—known in more modern parlance as a UAP, or “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena”? Or was it some sort of computer anomaly, an echo of my airplane’s own electronics signature? The latter theory was certainly the more scientific and perhaps more likely, but it was the former that remains tantalizing.

If you fly planes long enough, you’re bound to encounter any number of strange objects up there. Mylar balloons. Ballistic missile launches. Unmanned Predator drones. Birds soaring at impossibly high altitudes. But I can’t say I’ve ever seen a UAP or flying saucer or whatever you care to call the prospect of an extraterrestrial vehicle operating in our airspace. To be honest, I would seriously love to see one someday because I know it would serve as an existential moment, one that could go a long way in answering that age-old question: Are we alone in the universe?

Actual confirmation that we share the cosmos with other sentient creatures surely would upend traditional beliefs about our place in it. It would demand a reassessment of our philosophical and theological notions about creation and existence. And maybe, just maybe, it would foster a greater sense of coexistence, compelling the nations of the world to set aside their cultural and religious differences and work together to make Mother Earth a less contentious place in which to live.

With equipment like the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers every day are identifying more and more exoplanets outside of our solar system where conditions might be right to sustain life as we know it. Our closest exoplanet neighbor, Proxima Centauri b, is a mere 4.24 light years away. Could travelers from places like that, inhabitants of civilizations more  technologically advanced than ours, transcend such vast distances? Spend five minutes on the internet and you’ll find no shortage of anecdotal evidence suggesting they’re already here and have been for centuries. To date, however, irrefutable proof of their presence remains elusive.

In the interim, I intend to continue flying and to remain ever vigilant to the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Statistically, it seems implausible if not impossible to me that we’re the sole inhabitants of the stars. Indeed, as the late planetary scientist Carl Sagan wisely noted, “The universe is a pretty big place. If it’s just us, it seems like an awful waste of space.”