Aliens over New York? A blue light festival due to a transformer explosion sparked the wildest speculation Thursday night.
The incident took place at a power plant run by the ConEdison power company in the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, just across from Manhattan, shortly after 9 p.m. local, 3 a.m. in Switzerland. A series of blue lightning then illuminated the sky of the American financial capital, very quickly triggering tweets announcing the arrival of extraterrestrials or superheroes.
The Aliens are here & i know they real ass Aliens cuz they stopped in Astoria soon as they touched down….
— Joe Budden (@JoeBudden) December 28, 2018
–
“The aliens are there, I know it’s true because they stopped in Astoria as soon as they landed,” Joe Budden, a musician tweeted humorously. “The New York skies look exactly like the moment Thanos descended on Earth,” tweeted another, Jeff Lowe, referring to the film. Infinity War from the Avengers saga, among many other messages.
On this subject:
“Avengers: Infinity War” or the twilight of the gods
In the end, New Yorkers had to come to terms with a more prosaic reality. “No extraterrestrials,” reacted Eric Phillips, spokesman for the mayor of New York, also on Twitter, simply “a transformer exploded in the ConEd plant in Queens”.
La Guardia blocked for a while
Traffic at La Guardia airport, located nearby and used mainly for domestic US flights, was still briefly interrupted, as was traffic on metro line 7, which crosses this area.
But shortly after 10:15 pm, the police confirmed that there were “no injuries”, and that the situation was “under control”, even if the police officer who provided the hotline also considered that “it was crazy”.
“There was a brief electrical fire in our Astoria substation this evening, which caused a drop in voltage in the sector”, summed up shortly before 11 pm the company Con Edison. “All the power lines in the area are working and the system is stable.”
–
