Famous Navy UFO video was camera glare, evidence suggests

https://petapixel.com/2022/03/14/famous-navy-ufo-video-was-actually-camera-glare-evidence-suggests/

by mromanuk • 4 years ago

342 367 4 years ago

NyxWulf2• 4 years ago

So the anomaly that the carrier group tracked, then scrambled fighter jets for. The object that four different pilots saw visually, and was confirmed on multiple different sensors. That was camera glare?

The video is only one piece of the evidence. The pilots are trained, and other sensor systems confirmed what the camera was showing. This analysis is pretty flimsy.

mountainriver• 4 years ago

Camera glare my friend, case closed

csa2• 4 years ago

Camera glare my friend, case closed

I came here to say this.

There will be no further discussion.

zmgsabst• 4 years ago

This analysis even admits that there’s an object required for the “glare” to exist.

This analysis doesn’t reject an actual object being tracked: it confirms it and describes it as one that causes IR glare!

NyxWulf2• 4 years ago

So the claim is...these highly trained pilots and the other sensor systems didn't realize that objects cause IR glare, but this guy did. Case closed.

stouset8• 4 years ago

Exactly. Zero of the GPs objections are inconsistent with this explanation. The carrier group tracked an unknown object and scrambled fighters to investigate. The pilots may have visually observed the object, but it would have been too far away to really ascertain any visual detail. Instead they relied on infrared sensors which… suffered from glare, and so rendered incorrect visuals for the object. Its strange shape and rotational behavior are now explained.

What remains is still an unidentified flying object, but one whose behavior is reasonably mundane and doesn't require advanced technology to explain.

bostonsre11• 4 years ago

This analysis is saying it's likely 10 miles away, that doesn't track with the other evidence, does it?

rasz• 4 years ago

The object might of existed for a millisecond. Test of a new stealth tech - quick directional laser burst to temporarily damage/blind IR camera. After that Jet was flying in circles trying to track its own camera glitch.

tshaddox• 4 years ago

the gimbal UFO video almost certainly shows a glare that hides the actual object

This is in the first 15 seconds of the YouTube video.

cma5• 4 years ago

The pilots are trained

Fraver (not sure he was one of the ones in this incident) has a history of UFO pranks, shutting down engines and gliding over campfires then lighting up after burners when right over them, explicitly to give a UFO experience, and someone found a contemporaneous report of him doing it, so it wasn't just a story.

Teever• 4 years ago

Source?

bostonsre11• 4 years ago

So your are saying the one with evidence was a prank because he screwed around on a training mission?

MarkMarine2• 4 years ago

As a former member of USMC Aviation, it's valid to point out that skilled navy pilots can have some of the same range of differences in belief, action and motivation that the general populace does. I flew with a pilot on a transport helicopter that was blasting Eye of the Tiger and taking every turn at maximum bank, constantly looking for AA to get to fire at us so he could call in F-18s and watch the fireworks. Some of them are cranks.

BUT... I don't think any US military pilot expects their cockpit recordings or FLIR video to be public at some later time, I'm not sure what the motivation would be to lie about this stuff. The harm to you as a respected pilot would be fairly severe, and you'd have to get your co-pilot to go along with it.

"Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead." - Benjamin Franklin

outworlder2• 4 years ago

shutting down engines and gliding over campfires then lighting up after burners when right over them

I find it very, very, very hard to believe that a fighter pilot would _shut down_ his engines in flight, at night, even more so if it's for a stunt.

Slightly more believable if he went to idle, and then full military power. Slightly.

a9h74j• 4 years ago

the carrier group tracked

Naive question: If a carrier group cannot, in essentially real-time, document three dimensional trajectories at this point (four if you include speed), what possible defense can they claim to have against evasive incoming missiles, etc.

chrisco2559• 4 years ago

Carriers are most likely partly obsoleted by hypersonic missiles that travel and maneuver at mach 20 (which Russia and China have), in addition to 100 megaton nuclear torpedoes that travel at 120mph (which Russia has).

https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2022/03/russias-new-pos...

https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2019/10/14/will-ground-bas...

rapjr9• 4 years ago

To actually answer your question, they probably can sometimes track four dimensional trajectories, however not always, and they are not going to give you that data because that would reveal how good their tracking algorithms and sensors are. Sensor fusion is a thing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensor_fusion

Even with fusion, the fewer the sensors the less accurate the tracking will be. In these videos there may only be one or two sensors actually tracking the object.

Hitting a target with a missile is a somewhat different problem, you just have to get the missile there based on whatever data you have (which might be from the carriers sensor data, the missiles own sensors, or both). For example an IR missile doesn't know the location of its target, it just knows how far off center the IR light from the target is from the missiles current flight path and it can correct course based on that simple angular offset to eventually hit the target (with some additional math since the missile has to go to where the target will be when it gets there.) Similarly stopping an evasive incoming missile does not require that you know its exact location. Also as a defensive missile gets closer to the incoming missile it may be able to get better data on where its target actually is and how it is moving. Missiles move very fast so on the final approach there is not much ability to change direction at all, it would require too many g's to turn the missile, so you can model the final approach as a straight line. When it's close your own tracking systems probably work better as well because the targets cross section takes up more of the sky.

Miner49er• 4 years ago

Do you have links to reading more about this? The video saying it was glare made it seem like the object was very far from the jet, much farther then the naked eye could see. Was it closer at some point?

nabla94• 4 years ago

That "four different pilots" stuff has not been confirmed as far as I know. All people involved in these stories are hustlers, including that one ex-pilot who peddles the story.

You must look at every statement they make separately. They give one fact that can be verified and then they tie lies or unverified stuff on that.

btw. Luis Elizondo is has not been charge of any UFO stuff. https://theintercept.com/2019/06/01/ufo-unidentified-history...

bostonsre11• 4 years ago

Have any of them made any money from this? What is the hustle?

bvbrandon• 4 years ago

Curious to hear your thoughts on this https://twitter.com/gadinbc/status/1386872125835812864?s=21

TechBro8615• 4 years ago

btw. Luis Elizondo is has not been charge of any UFO stuff

I have no conviction on the UFO phenomenon other than it would be cool if aliens exist, and even cooler if they were already on Earth. Still, I can't get enough of it – I especially love thinking about the most epistemically offensive conspiracy theories, like "the moon is a spaceship" or "Antarctica is an alien base." I sometimes fall asleep to Ancient Aliens.

But, fact is, the only government agents with any "authority" in this "movement" – which became especially fervent around the dissolution of Q-Anon, btw – are people who worked for DIA in Information Operations. That is, their specialty is in manipulating the public, not alien technology.

The "Lue anon" moniker about sums it up. My theory is the recent reinvigoration of the UFO movement is an attempt by US intel agencies to pre-emptively herd the most impressionable people with their own controlled conspiracy, rather than allow a hostile actor to manipulate them during the next election.

Also, I predicted this 10 months ago, the last time "disclosure" was imminent, in a comment [0] that I think has aged well so far.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27339120

TMWNN• 4 years ago

Luis Elizondo is has not been charge of any UFO stuff.

The late Senator Harry Reid of Nevada disagreed with you. <https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/politics/article/luis-elizondo...>

gfodor2• 4 years ago

The gimbal video is not a video of the object from the Nimitz incident. There is a video of that but it’s less compelling in terms of evidence, but also afaik not cleanly debunked. (I think it’s called FLIR?)

native_samples2• 4 years ago

Yes, Flir1:

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/military/story/202...

They're all ATFLIR videos. It's basically the same thing - a far away hot object, likely another aircraft, turns into an IR cylinder-shaped blog on screen which is then incorrectly interpreted as being an actual cylinder. The apparent movement at the end is just the ATFLIR losing lock as the guy constantly zooms in and out.

colordrops2• 4 years ago

It was also tracked on radar.

beebeepka• 4 years ago

Weather balloon launched by swamp gas burp

willidiots2• 4 years ago

The "saucer" shape and its rotation were IR glare, that's the point of the video. He's very clear that he's NOT debunking the existence of an object. The exhaust of a jet engine, or another high-heat signature, could cause such glare.

AFAICT no pilots saw this shape with their naked eye. They were miles away from the target and relying on what they saw via their sensors.

subsubzero2• 4 years ago

So actually Commander Fravor saw the object with his own eyes, he is one of the pilots who was sent in to engage the craft after it appeared on radar from the carrier group, here is a detailed video of him talking about the incident with Lex Fridman(AI reasearcher - MIT) on his podcast - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB8zcAttP1E

StanislavPetrov2• 4 years ago

This analysis is pretty flimsy.

Flimsy is an extremely generous and flattering word if you know anything about the details of this case or the testimony of the Navy's top pilots who witnessed and tracked this object from different vantage points both visually and with instruments.

tptacek9• 4 years ago

I don't know much about this whole story (I'm not a UFO person) and am learning most of what I know about it from this video and this thread, but: the people saying that this video depicts an actual object rotating in the sky appear to be making the extraordinary claim here: the connection between the rotation and the camera system seems compelling. The horizon is moving as the camera/plane moves; the object is not moving. You can't refute that with "these are highly trained fighter pilots": the horizon is moving with the camera, the object isn't. Training's got nothing to do with it. The shape we're looking at is, in part, an artifact of the camera, unless the aliens are somehow reprogramming the camera to fuck with us.

bonestamp28• 4 years ago

The shape we're looking at is, in part, an artifact of the camera, unless the aliens are somehow reprogramming the camera to fuck with us.

It's possible the IR glare is an intentional countermeasure produced by the craft. It might sound far-fetched, but the military can already jam some cameras already, and they apparently license this technology too:

https://techlinkcenter.org/technologies/selective-camera-jam...

The US Navy has (admittedly controversial) patents for technologies that could produce a craft with these flight characteristics:

https://patents.google.com/?inventor=Salvatore+Cezar+Pais

The first time these craft were spotted on radar was during a Navy exercise where they were testing new radar equipment, and the craft were coming from the direction of San Clemente island (an island that is a Navy base). Here's a short video that talks about the radar sighting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKyP79v9e84

In the Nimitz case, the "UFO" disappeared, and then met the pilots at their rendezvous point. How did it know where the rendezvous point was?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBpcfeHI0Kk

Sightings of these UFOs have only ever been mentioned by US forces.

Who knows what is going on, but if I had to make a guess and I considered all of this information, it seems likely that the "UFOs" are experimental US aircraft.

likeabbas5• 4 years ago

^This is the key point. These objects have been tracked on radar, FLIR, and multiple pilot witness testimony off both coasts for decades now. Attempting to debunk a single one of these three leaked videos is pointless because they do not show the entire context of the events happening.

I implore everyone to watch these two interviews with Christopher Melon, the former Deputy Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. And to read the DNI report on UAPs It will change your entire perception of these incidents and show you to view them as true national security issues.

1. https://open.spotify.com/episode/2V0uWX1C4m8xEL0HHYqbnE?si=e...

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdxcgS4spRM&t=1393s

3. https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Prelima...

There are unknown objects flying with impunity in our restricted military airspace, some that exhibit characteristics that nothing of human origin can accomplish. This should terrify you.

Edit: Why the downvotes? Please explain to me your logic. I'm just listing things that people with credibility in our government said, including the Department of National Intelligence.

argvargc2• 4 years ago

Why should a peaceful demonstration of technical superiority terrify anyone?

It's clear whomever, or whatever, possesses this superior technology could fly circles around and/or obliterate us on a whim, but has expressly decided not to, and instead simply announced: "Hey, I have this."

If they/it perceived us as a threat, we'd surely be gone already. That leaves only our hopefully sane response, to influence what happens next.

Being terrified would be exactly wrong.

willidiots2• 4 years ago

I agree that there's something in these videos - at least in Gimbal. I don't think it's a saucer-shaped thing or necessarily of extraterrestrial origin. It could be a drone (either ours - another branch of DoD/govt - or another nation's) etc. Still an interesting mystery, but no proof of anything extraordinary IMHO.

In the case of relying on Christopher Mellon's credentials, I'd point out that he has a commercial interest of some kind with To The Stars Academy, the production company which seems to be behind all of these videos' presence on the History channel.

In their 2021 annual meeting notes [https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b5a458fe749405f83225...], To the Stars Academy notes that "Christopher Mellon, a member of TTSA’s advisory board, [is] no longer with the company" implying he was employed by them in some fashion. Thus prior to 2021, he likely stood to benefit commercially from these films' distribution, particularly when he was quoted alongside them.

hindsightbias2• 4 years ago

“Christopher Mellon served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. He is a private equity investor and an adviser to the To the Stars Academy for Arts and Science”

Equity investor. No conflicts there!

“in our restricted military airspace”

In fact, they’re actually the most heavily instrumented research, development, test and training areas on the planet. Let me repeat that: research, development and test.

https://www.cnic.navy.mil/regions/cnrsw/installations/navbas...

What an incredible coincidence. Alien trolls or Occam’s razor?

And with all that, all we get are appeals to authority and fuzzy pics.

It’s akin to “Air Force pilots bewildered by objects over Area 51, must be aliens!”

pengaru• 4 years ago

So the anomaly that the carrier group tracked, then scrambled fighter jets for. The object that four different pilots saw visually, and was confirmed on multiple different sensors. That was camera glare?

I don't think we can trust the accounts of anyone in the employ of the government, past or present, when it comes to this kind of thing.

For all we know to misinform is the mission, propaganda if you will.

Consider how much of what you said above is practically verbatim regurgitation of their vernacular. Jargon is often abused to sound qualified, smart, and authoritative. AKA B.S. alert.

Reubachi• 4 years ago

I'm quite surprised to see this community be so on board with the "Oh really, the obvious saucer was lens glare and not aliens?" train.

USAF and reitred officals have gone on record to say that they actively release doctored footage and/or false narratives, sometimes via pop culture figures, to muddy waters on current technology or to sow discourse among enemies. This reeks of n example of that, and not aliens.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirage_Men

RobertMiller10• 4 years ago

Mick West debunked these to my satisfaction ages ago. The only question I have left is whether the whole thing was a US Navy psyop or whether the navy was just looking the other way and playing coy when those pilots were creating a retirement career in UFOlogy.

TooKool4This• 4 years ago

Or if you follow Hanlon's razor, if the Navy is incredibly (scarily) incompetent!

radicaldreamer• 4 years ago

That's a given (see all the ships crashing into other ships in the South Pacific a couple of years ago -- and not noticing for hours!)

RobertMiller10• 4 years ago

That is possible, but I think strains credibility. The GOFAST video is egregious, I find it hard to believe nobody in the US Navy was able to calculate the actual [mundane, very... balloon-like] speed of that object using basic trigonometry. I think it's more likely the Navy knew there was nothing actually exotic in that video.

The Defense Department described the subject of GOFAST, Gimble and FLIR videos as "UAV, Balloons, and other UAS". 'Balloons'; they know what it is. They're not even lying, they're being coy or misleading.

emkoemko3• 4 years ago

i think they are, there is a video of a "fighter pilot" who does not understand basics of a cameras... he thinks you can't focus on objects at different distances at the same time.... how did he ever get to fly a jet? or parallax i mean he should know how that works

zionic12• 4 years ago

Mick West utterly failed to “debunk” these videos, and actual fighter pilots have debunked his “debunk”.

https://youtu.be/ro29w4ESw44

RobertMiller10• 4 years ago

Do you happen to have a copy of this supposed debunking debunking that isn't given by Alvin the Chimpmunk? Wtf dude.

emkoemko3• 4 years ago

are you kidding now? that pilot does not even know how cameras work at all and your using him ???

this American pilot does not know how depth of field works... can't even notice in his own video recordings, this beyond funny. He thinks you can't have objects at different distances in focus at the same time ahahaha, does not get how parallax works... gave up after those dumb errors and smug attitude as he was saying such dumb things, i bet he made even more mistakes.

is he really a "fighter pilot" or they just not trained to understand their gear?

nabla94• 4 years ago

People read "Navy confirms authenticity of the video" as "This is important and Navy can't explain it." (if they try).

Only thing Navy does it confirms that the video is real. They don't say that they have even tried to identify or that there is any reason to identify. They have hundreds or thousands of hours of video or radar images of drones etc. they don't care to identify.

Navy does not engage with these hustlers from "To the stars academy" at all. That's the only good response. To the Stars Academy of Arts & Sciences (media & entertainment company) makes this stuff up and sells it.

https://tothestars.media/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_the_Stars_(company)

RobertMiller10• 4 years ago

People read "Navy confirms authenticity of the video" as "This is important and Navy can't explain it."

Precisely. There is a huge gap between what the Navy has actually claimed about the videos and what people think the Navy has claimed. 'The video is authentic' is not the same as 'the video shows what it's purported to show.'

gfodor2• 4 years ago

The UAP report debunks the idea that all the evidence the government has has been debunked. Time will tell but the report reversed Project Blue Book, which ruled out non-human technology.

billsmithwicks• 4 years ago

I like Mick West, and even though camera glare isn't usually picked up on radar by the navy, it's sufficient to fulfill Occam's razor.

zionic12• 4 years ago

Mick West is a buffoon, and his “debunking” videos intentionally mislead his audience. I say this because he has had this explained to him again and again but he still ignores evidence.

When you have infrared, multiple radar, and visual observations simultaneously of an object and pretend all you have is a grainy infrared video REPEATEDLY it goes beyond skepticism into deceit.

tsimionescu4• 4 years ago

We have a grainy infrared video, and claims of other infrared, radar and visual observations. Claims are easy to make and hard to analyze. Video is all we can analyze, and the video is unconvincing. Why then should we believe the claims?

MauranKilom3• 4 years ago

Nothing in this analysis or conclusion contradicts the radar observations - how are they being "ignored"? And it is unclear to me (as an uninitiated person) how "visual" observations lend any more credence to the story when they are just retellings of the exact same kind of footage, except impossible to further analyze/corroborate.

tiahura• 4 years ago

I find the “bump” aspect persuasive.

I’d like to see similar analysis of the East Coast cruise missile ufo video.

ssully3• 4 years ago

Mick West has some interesting videos and does a good job debunking a lot of crap, but to me he is on the complete opposite spectrum of a UFO truther in that he doesn't seem to leave any room for the possibility that he might be wrong.

With that said, I suggest reading this New Yorker piece [1] on the subject. It's actually how I came to learn about Mick. He is covered a bit in the story and gives decent counter points at certain parts.

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/05/10/how-the-pentag...

zionic12• 4 years ago

What? Mick west does a terrible job, all of his arguments that I’ve seen are preposterous, and require ignoring tons of evidence.

ssully3• 4 years ago

I think I could have gone harder on my second sentence. I do think he has some good debunking video's, but I would agree with you in that he does ignore a lot of evidence. When I say he is on the opposite spectrum of a UFO truther, I mean that I don't take him serious because his only goal seems to be to get a debunk video out regardless of merit.

toptal• 4 years ago

Didn’t they actually see the object on multiple radars using multiple types of detection methods? Assuming that’s true, the camera glare story seems unlikely.

netsharc3• 4 years ago

The video states that there's something there, but its heat signature is causing the glare (the video is in IR). Was the object flying steadily and rotating weirdly throughout the video? You can't see how the object is flying, the smooth motion and weird rotation you perceive is the effect of the glare!

Jerry2• 4 years ago

You can try the live simulation here: https://www.metabunk.org/gimbal/ It's amazingly well done!

Quick inspection shows that it was done with tree.js. Neat!

Johnny555• 4 years ago

Isn't he only debunking the image that appeared on the video as being glare as opposed to the actual object? So the object is real, but what appeared in the video is glare, not an actual representation of the object?

West contends that what is being seen in the video is actually infrared glare that hides a hot object behind it and only rotates in the way it does because the camera rotates when tracking the target from left to right.

stouset8• 4 years ago

Yes, that is correct. There was still an unidentified flying object, but the remaining aspects of its behavior do not require invoking advanced unknown technology to explain.

notfbi2• 4 years ago

UFO-ers were using things like the rotation speed as definitive evidence of some like other-worldly advanced technology. Demonstrating that it was the glare/gimble brings it back into the realm of just a normal far-away plane. It also casts doubt on the expertise of the pilots/military who didn't realize what happened.

zionic12• 4 years ago

Except they had RADAR locks, experienced jamming, and had visual identification in some cases.

The whole “lens flare from a far away plane” hypothesis has been throughly debunked. You have to ignore evidence to reach that conclusion.

nwallin3• 4 years ago

Correct.

IR video tends to bloom. If the object is hot enough, (for instance, a jet engine exhaust, a burning vehicle, a refinery flare...) you'll have a blob of smudge around/behind it on the video. The video is contending that the rotation of what is seen on the video isn't the object itself rotating. Instead, the blob is elongated as a result of glare/lens flare/diffraction gradient, and this elongation is aligned with the rotational axis of the gimbal. As the gimbal nears gimbal lock, it is forced to rapidly rotate to continue tracking the object. This rapid rotation of the gimbal causes the glare to rapidly rotate.

I do have a background in IR video, gimbals, and translating between gimbal telemetry and real life coordinates and the explanation in the video looks good to me.

lamontcg• 4 years ago

Evidence Suggests Famous Navy UFO Video Was Camera Glare

jmyeet3• 4 years ago

I honestly don’t know what to make of these observations other than I’m utterly convinced they’re not alien, super high tech or break the laws of physics (eg inertia). There was no alien crash in Roswell. I also file believe any government is competent enough for the claimed cover up and associated psyops.

What I do find interesting is the overlap between people who buy into various conspiracy theories and people who are religious, were religious or would otherwise be likely to be religious.

There’s some fascinating psychology here and I think it boils down to a combination of wishful thinking and the comfort derived from there being a Grand Plan rather than just a collection of random stuff that just happens.

“Can’t be explained” is typically “hasn’t been explained yet”. Lack of an explanation is nothing more than that. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

I approach this from the other direction. Given the huge benefits of a Dyson Swarm and the fact that it seems to require no exotic materials and no more physics it looks increasingly likely that we are very alone in the Milky Way and even if we aren’t it requires an awful lot of hubris to suggest a species would spend the considerable effort and tens of thousands of years to come here and hide.

Like this is Main Character Syndrome at its finest.

user3939382• 4 years ago

wishful thinking and the comfort derived from there being a Grand Plan

You may not have meant this by your comment, but in general I find a related analysis common among atheists, that religious people believe what they do because it feels good. I find that's often wrong, and when generally applied condescending, as if atheists are simply more emotionally mature. On the contrary many religious people will tell you they believe what they do because it seems to them to be true.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

One might consider the existence of the universe extraordinary evidence (for the existence of God).

That said I think we can mostly agree that based on what we know so far, "aliens" is a fairly implausible explanation for any given unexplained phenomenon. Where ever you fall on that debate, I don't think it has anything to do with religious beliefs except as far as the biases of the people who conduct these psychology studies goes.

rblion2• 4 years ago

Agree with you 100%.

Albert Einstein was once asked to clarify his faith, here is his reply:

“Your question is the most difficult in the world. It is not a question I can answer simply with yes or no. I am not an Atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. May I not reply with a parable? The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza's Pantheism. I admire even more his contributions to modern thought. Spinoza is the greatest of modern philosophers, because he is the first philosopher who deals with the soul and the body as one, not as two separate things.”

I read this often and maintain the attitude that scripture, science, art are all branches of the same Tree.

ssklash2• 4 years ago

I think you hit on the key part of conspiracy thinking. It doesn't seem like a coincidence that many of the most conspiracy minded are also extremely religious, in the US anyway. I don't know anything about conspiracy thinking in the context of Islam or Hinduism, for example.

It seems like the tendency to accept a higher power in control of your life and the world leads to believing in other earthly powers being able to exert vast control over the world.

vmception• 4 years ago

In France, it was also deeply religion people of Christian or Muslim faith who felt is was their duty to tell me about the shadow groups controlling the world. The best part was that these shadow groups were all French, based in Paris.

oldstrangers2• 4 years ago

You can't really extrapolate being alone in the universe from "aliens aren't visiting us." The fact that we exist at all, especially as a random occurrence of events, would suggest it's not that bizarre of an event. If we were single celled organisms having this conversation, then yeah, life outside of earth would seem more unlikely.

But we have 4.543 billion years worth of evidence showing that life REALLY likes to live. To get from a single celled organism to me typing to you over the internet tells me there's probably something universal to this process.

To me it's a lot more "Main Character Syndrome" to suggest we are wholly unique and alone in the universe. We are the special chosen species that made it out of an infinite number of probabilities. Sounds insane.

tunap2• 4 years ago

AC Clarke posited perhaps extra-terrestrial life came, they observed & they quarantined our corner of the galaxy to inhibit the escape of slavery, murder & environmental destruction.

DennisP2• 4 years ago

For all we know, it takes a whole universe banging molecules together before metabolizing self-replicating life randomly arises. If it has only emerged one time in the entire universe, nothing would look different to us than it does right now.

Or maybe it happens all the time. But with only one sample, we have no data either way.

bun_at_work2• 4 years ago

Of all the life we can see only one (or a few for the more generous of you) species has what humans commonly call intelligence.

Intelligence as we commonly refer to it is not a given in evolution. Evolution seeks forward propagation of genetic material, it doesn't seek an "intelligent" state.

It's reasonable to assume there is life elsewhere in the universe. It's quite a bit more of a stretch to assume there is _intelligent_ life elsewhere in the universe, aside from the problem of defining what intelligence is.

TremendousJudge• 4 years ago

I mostly agree with your take, but I'll pick on this sentence:

Given the huge benefits of a Dyson Swarm and the fact that it seems to require no exotic materials and no more physics it looks increasingly likely that we are very alone in the Milky Way

The fact that we can come up with the idea of a Dyson Swarm doesn't mean that not finding any in our observations results in we "being alone in the galaxy". It's also Main Character Syndrome, in a way.

Even discarding the idea of alien life being so different from ours that we wouldn't recognize it even if we were looking right at it, and assuming a "human like civilization", it's perfectly possible for there being unknown physics to us that make the idea of a Dyson Swarm unnecessary. Using our own civilization as an example, in the 1950s and 60s we did all of our data broadcasting over radio waves, and built huge powerful antennas that screamed about our presence to the wider universe. People then thought "well, if we're broadcasting all this stuff, where are the alien broadcasts? why can't we hear them? we must be alone in the galaxy". Fast-forward to now. Our current tech allows pretty much all communications to be over cables, and we're being much less wasteful with our emmiting; our radio emissions are diminishing over time.

So, not a century has passed, and already newer technology has proven our assumptions of alien life wrong. Why would it be any different with Dyson Swarms? You can't know how more advanced technology looks like, you can only extrapolate with what we have now.

bostonsre11• 4 years ago

How are you utterly convinced when it can't be proven true or false and don't have any other explanation for it? Why close all those doors without sufficient evidence to close them?

We don't have extraordinary evidence therefore it's not possible that it's anything weird doesn't seem very scientific.

stonemetal122• 4 years ago

Why close all those doors without sufficient evidence to close them?

Because there isn't sufficient evidence to open them in the first place. Might as well claim it is unicorns and dragons, you don't have any evidence it isn't.

nabla94• 4 years ago

To the Stars Academy of Arts & Sciences (media & entertainment company) makes this stuff up and sells it.

https://tothestars.media/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_the_Stars_(company)

playcache2• 4 years ago

The problem with your comment is you just lumped together a string of un-credible events and then summarise you're not convinced. To be frank Roswell and psyops (whatever that is) would not be enough to utterly convince me too. What I do find very interesting though is credible recent eye witness testimonies coming from US Navy pilots and the work at Harvard University for the Galileo Project, along with the other many recent activities around the study of UAPs (whatever they might be).

The problem as I see it with this area is it's been far too stigmatised, so no researchers would ever dare touch it for fear of being labelled conspiracy theory believing nutcases. That sentiment is now dying off thankfully and we can start to find out what on earth is going on.

xdennis• 4 years ago

I'm surprised you're more convinced by eye witness testimonies. People are notoriously unreliable. If anything, this glare is better proof of green men than just talk.

honkdaddy• 4 years ago

The Dyson Swarm is more or less a science fiction concept. Is its lack of existence really your reason for believing we’re alone in the universe?

You seem keen to make fun of dogmatic people but attaching a hypothetical concept which is so trivial and fringe to your mental model seems like pretty dogmatic behavior. If you’d never heard of a Dyson Swarm, like the vast, vast majority of people haven’t, would your view of extraterrestrial life have significantly changed?

staticman2• 4 years ago

"Given the huge benefits of a Dyson Swarm and the fact that it seems to require no exotic materials and no more physics"

Since we haven't been able to build such a thing I think it's fair to say it requires something or other that's exotic to us.

bratwurst3000• 4 years ago

Totaly true . Look at alex jones. He is a full blown crazy person that believes in the supremacy of the christian race… oh yes racism goes also realy well with religion

ARandomerDude2• 4 years ago

What? Christianity is not a race.

jonnylynchy• 4 years ago

Someone forgot to take their anti-cynicism medication this morning.

jl6• 4 years ago

Given the huge benefits of a Dyson Swarm and the fact that it seems to require no exotic materials and no more physics it looks increasingly likely that we are very alone in the Milky Way

There’s still a huge engineering gap between our current tech and the theoretical possibility of a Dyson Swarm. I don’t find it at all implausible that such a thing would need too much energy, effort, collective will, or some other resource, to make it practical. There could still be plenty of stealthy sub-Dyson civilizations, or even supra-Dyson civilizations that have found it in their interest not to be detectable.

jklinger410• 4 years ago

The thing about conspiracy theories is that when people who hold power over large groups of people actively mislead them and deny them of a source of authority, those people grasp at what pieces of information they do have in order to build a narrative that isn't tainted by lies.

It is, and I cannot stress this enough, entirely unhelpful for you to ascribe it to main character syndrome or compare it to the belief in an omnipotent God.

If sources of truth in human societies like governments and scientific institutions would stop lying or misleading people nearly constantly then you could call conspiracy people lunatics, or fringe. But you simply cannot.

Not only are people being lied to, but they are being actively disinformed for "their own good." There are massive socializing forces that have taken an active role in manipulating society based around the idea that they know better.

And the ironic part is that, to a degree, they do know better. People act stupid in groups and have important information WITHHELD for various reasons that make it impossible to discern the truth.

If you want to start minimizing the amount of bullshit beliefs that people hold, supernatural or otherwise, you can start by tearing down the systems that are used to create false narratives which push people into those beliefs.

president• 4 years ago

I think a lot of people just find the topic of conspiracy theories interesting and entertaining. You don't need to hate on them for what is essentially a hobby.

Banana6992• 4 years ago

Given the huge benefits of a Dyson Swarm and the fact that it seems to require no exotic materials and no more physics

This doesn't account for the fact that you don't know what - if any - benefits do exotic materials and funky physics might bring if they exist and are feasible to exploit. The benefits might be so much larger than Dyson Swarms, that it would be wastful\unnecessary to use Dyson Swarms, except maybe as a hobby or as a low tech fallback for civilizations like camping enthusiasts and survivalists. Why bother with stars when you have tech to live in the 21 dimensions that those born-yesterday biologicals can't even sense yet ?

The Dyson 'Paradox' doesn't strike me as much of a paradox, imagine if a group of ants looked at the sky and wondered why aren't extraterrestials building tunnels inside the moon's regolith like ants do on Earth. It's just assuming too much. It's of course a valid scenario, it just isn't the only one.

mr_toad• 4 years ago

Given the huge benefits of a Dyson Swarm

Dyson Swarms are only plausible if your society is still stuck in an exponential growth mode. It assumes technological advancement, but stagnant sociological development, or perhaps even worse; pathological development, like a hegemonising swarm.

I think that many UFO theories make the same mistakes. They assume high tech aliens with low tech motives.

dcolkitt• 4 years ago

Given the huge benefits of a Dyson Swarm and the fact that it seems to require no exotic materials and no more physics it looks increasingly likely that we are very alone in the Milky Way and even if we aren’t it requires an awful lot of hubris to suggest a species would spend the considerable effort and tens of thousands of years to come here and hide.

Robin Hanson has the most plausible ET hypothesis to explain these UFO observations. Basically it goes:

1) Life only evolved once in the galaxy.

2) However it spread to one or more stars its system of origin through the process of panspermia.

3) This sister planet that shares a common life origin with us evolved an advanced civilization that predates ours by 10-100 million years.

4) However at some point between the tech to travel between stars and full Dyson spheres, this sister civilization developed a highly anti-growth world government.

5) They've sent local probes or outposts to study us because we're interesting as a sister branch in the tree of life, and also concerning as a fast growing civilization that contravenes their anti-growth norms.

This explains why we have spacefaring ETs poking around but no resource gobbling Dyson spheres expanding through the light clone. If civilizations were widespread, then almost certainly one would be gobbling resources. But if there are only two civilizations, ours and theirs, it's quite believable that the earlier of the two fell into an anti-growth world government.

jmyeet3• 4 years ago

The idea of panspermia isn't a new one. There are several variations.

The very early universe was relatively warm. Simple or even complex life could've evolved and spread through parts of the Universe with relative ease given the much shorter distances. It seems highly unlikely though given the rarity of metals (in the astronomical sense; meaning anything other than hydrogen and helium) and the likely needed timescales. This probably means at best it was organic molecules of some level of complexity.

There are later versions of this where panspermia occurred much more recently, either intentionally or not.

Whatever the case it's all unprovable speculation. If we ultimately the same unlikely patterns repeating on different wrolds then I guess we can revisit.

So how recent in this hypothesis did this occur? There are fossil records for people going back millions of years. Are we talking all life? Or just people? If it's all life then we need to go back billions of years, at which point we're just talking about spreading amino acids. Such a connection will be similar to our fraternal bond with bananas.

However at some point between the tech to travel between stars and full Dyson spheres

This seems unlikely. Why? Because the tech for a Dyson Swarm is basically stainless steel, solar panels and the ability to build things in space in large quantities. The last one is significant of course but is largely gated on the high cost of getting things into orbit, which is something likely to plummet in the coming centuries.

Saying we could build a self-sustaining orbital within 1,000 years I don't think is a stretch. Only industrial scale separates building 1 and building a million.

But there's another problem: people often neglect the energy cost of interstellar travel. It's... massive. And this is even assuming you solve the reaction mass problem. Interstellar travel almost seems predicated on a Dyson Swarm simpsly to have sufficient energy.

... also concerning as a fast growing civilization that contravenes their anti-growth norms.

This is a well-trodden avenue of thought on the Fermi Paradox. What if alien civilizations just stop growing? If there's 1, sure that might be possible. But what if there were 1,000? Would they all follow this path? It gets increasingly unlikely that not one would grow significantly. Non-growth civilizations would be at an extreme disadvantage with another who has vastly more energy and matter at their disposal. Like you almost have to grow just in case someone else does.

But all of this just seems like highly selective curve overfitting to reach the desired conclusion that UFOs are alien in origin.

mlindner2• 4 years ago

Atheists have religious beliefs too, they just believe in different things. Atheists are no better than any other humans. There is nothing special about an atheist. They are just as susceptible as any other human. I agree with your post other than this portion.

rpilot8• 4 years ago

Recently Jim Lacatski confirmed that Colm Kelleher ran the daily operations of AAWSAP/AATIP. Colm was also the deputy administrator of NIDS which started in 1995.

This along with the fact that Lue Elizondo used remote viewing to “save soldiers” in Afghanistan are pretty shocking revelations.

AASWAP produced no results and shut down. Yet Elizondo talks often about a 23-minute close video of a craft. And has allegedly shown videos on his phone to people.

Only recently have people claimed the government has high quality evidence, yet the evidence seems to be unclassified (but not public).

If such evidence exists, it’s almost hard to believe it’s only recently been discovered and it hasn’t somehow leaked out. The whole ordeal is highly suspicious.

voldacar• 4 years ago

Elizondo is a very sus character. He talks and talks but has produced nothing of any substance

bally02414• 4 years ago

I suppose the radar signature was camera "glare" too, smh. This is pretty weak.

zionic12• 4 years ago

Exactly! The number of comments in this thread treating this and mick west as credible is disturbing

netsharc3• 4 years ago

But nah, of course you know better!

bally02414• 4 years ago

You're right, some random guy on the internet definitely knows better than the first hand witnesses and U.S. Navy!

Actually, it was probably swamp gas. Case closed.

ceejayoz2• 4 years ago

It's probably worth at least skimming the article prior to dismissing it. He's not saying nothing's there.

He says that his video does not address the object itself as it’s not clear what the object is and there is nothing to say that it isn’t special or exemplary in some way. He just argues that his analysis shows that it isn’t actually exhibiting any incredible behavior and opens the door to other “mundane possibilities” like a distance small jet just flying away and the heat of the engines is what is creating a large glare on the thermal camera.

He's saying the supposedly magical behavior is explicable. Without that, it's a fairly boring "someone's probably flying a drone near our ships" sort of incident.

bally02414• 4 years ago

There are plenty of "mundane" explanation for the motion of the object to be real as well, and not just camera glare. No need to invoke aliens. For example, this video shows SDI technology from the 80s:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnofCyaWhI0

which appears perfectly capable (albeit in test) of in-place rotation/motion very similar to that of the object. It could very well have been a drone, but I find it incredible that people dismiss first hand accounts in preference to some internet armchair quarterback.

oblib4• 4 years ago

Interesting how so many are willing to accept "camera flare" as a concrete explanation.

One thing that bothers me about this explanation is we know those pilots had a lot of experience with those systems so I'd expect they'd know "camera flare" when they saw it on those displays. But it's clear from the audio they did not recognize it as that. And there was more than one pilot seeing it, and from different angles.

I'd like to hear what the pilots and ship crew members think about this.

zionic12• 4 years ago

https://youtu.be/ro29w4ESw44

Has an actual fighter pilot’s reaction.

oblib4• 4 years ago

That was pretty painful to watch with the fast forward going on for so long. I didn't try to take that in.

Seems to me like our gov's own investigation would've found gimbal glare to be the culprit if that were the case. But they didn't. What they said is:

"Of the 144 reports we are dealing with here, we have no clear indications that there is any non-terrestrial explanation for them — but we will go wherever the data takes us..."

And:

"We absolutely do believe what we're seeing are not simply sensor artifacts."

[https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/25/politics/ufo-report-pentagon-...]

Workaccount23• 4 years ago

Actual video from the pilot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tyw4JA00AMc

tsimionescu4• 4 years ago

The US Air force and Navy have a pretty bad track record of incompetent pilots. They have a history of losing numerous planes in training excercises, for example.

tablespoon4• 4 years ago

The US Air force and Navy have a pretty bad track record of incompetent pilots. They have a history of losing numerous planes in training excercises, for example.

Or flying planes planes for the military is just really hard, and you're holding them to an unreasonable standard.

Even the best programmer writes software with bugs, especially when they're not playing it safe and just writing fizzbuzz over and over again.

RobertMiller10• 4 years ago

They have a history of losing numerous planes in training excercises

There is a reason virtually every fighter jet ever made was made with ejection seats or retrofitted with them later: They're inherently risky aircraft, and almost impossible to bail out of.

If you have some actual statistics that show that USN and USAF pilots crash their jets at a greater rate than other nations, I'd like to see it. The absolute number of crashes tells nothing because some countries (Russia) barely fly their jets at all.

Workaccount23• 4 years ago

And Mick West is a VFX artist who has a hobby of making debunking videos for youtube.

ARandomerDude2• 4 years ago

Incredible speed + low altitude flying + statically unstable aircraft + sensors + weapons + offense + defense + communications + ...

Yeah. These guys must really suck.

thjkgfgrrioppo• 4 years ago

Believe the experts!

Some people want real proof, not having to rely on believing experts.

I guess it is a chasm across society. Some people want to be able to believe.

emkoemko3• 4 years ago

you say that but there is a fighter pilot on youtube trying to debunk these videos but lacks any basic knowledge on how cameras work, while saying things like you can't focus on objects at different distances at the same time... he demonstrates this by having a camera very close to a object ahaha but never noticed he is in focus and so is his background.... :( dose not know what focal length is.. or how parallax works.

gcthomas• 4 years ago

I'd be wary of taking a pilot's subjective impressions as superior to a technical analysis of the optical system.

Pilots may be competent users of these systems, but they are not experts at anything beyond flying their missions, in general. Experience as users is not the same as expertise under unusual conditions.

shepardrtc2• 4 years ago

The pilots often say that there are multiple objects, and their cameras can only track one at a time.

Vixel• 4 years ago

The narrator sounds like an alien. That analysis is what they WANT us to think.

progre• 4 years ago

Direct link to the source

https://youtu.be/qsEjV8DdSbs

mzvkxlcvd• 4 years ago

disinfo

oblib4• 4 years ago

Sitting here knowing we have a helicopter and a land rover on Mars it doesn't feel like it's entirely impossible for an alien craft to be here, looking at us.

I can't make the leap to believe without doubt there is, or even to believe there probably is. But it is not impossible. We've already proved it's not, and we're not really all that smart.

tsimionescu4• 4 years ago

Anyone on Mars would have very clearly seen the Rover landing and known exactly what it was and where it was coming from. They also didn't arrive in Mars from the opposite end of the Galaxy, they arrived from the next planet over.

Most importantly, no one on Mars would think that the rover or helicopter are defying theaws of physics, bending space time or anything like that, which are real claims made by army personnel about the objects seen in some of these videos.

ssully3• 4 years ago

Yup, that's kind of where I am at. I think I lean more towards "this definitely isn't aliens", but if it's aliens then I definitely think these are unmanned drones keeping an eye on us.

zionic12• 4 years ago

Von Neumann probes is the most likely explanation IMO.

stouset8• 4 years ago

Space is really big. The difference in effort between getting an oversized RC car to Mars and getting a huge supermaneuverable space-and-aircraft to the nearest habitable planet is about the same as walking down tree driveway to get your paper and… well, getting a huge supermaneuverable space-and-aircraft to the nearest habitable planet.

Then doing it over and over just to play mind games with the primitive apes on the planet while somehow evading anything resembling a decent camera or photographer?

I’m not going to say it’s strictly impossible. But it sure as hell isn’t plausible.

oblib4• 4 years ago

"Space is really big"

And Time is really long, and what we don't know is still far greater than what we do know.

I agree it's not plausible within the scope of what we know.

rhema3• 4 years ago

Well, the only reason they were scrambled to begin with is that they had been tracking these objects for weeks using advanced radar. As I understand it, the radar is based on multiple resolutions. The active radar can point in the direction of objects of interest and get very very precise measurements. It's not just the video, its the radar data.

The thing that pushed me over the edge in believing these things is the long podcast interview between Commander David Fravor and Lex Fridman.

zardo3• 4 years ago

its the radar data

Did the Navy release the radar data, or an analysis based on it?

rhema3• 4 years ago

Not that I know of, so I take your point there. Here's a related video with some radar data https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rh4QngYJG4I . In the interview, Frevor does talk about the radar and instrumentation on the plane, but it's been a while since I listened to it.

BluSyn3• 4 years ago

Unfortunately, radar data - from all the incidents in question - will never be released, as the hardware involved is highly classified. We only get footage from the IR camera because the IR tech is not "classified" (basically off-the-shelf FLIR cameras with fancy object tracking software).

shepardrtc2• 4 years ago

A good point brought up by Fravor and conveniently ignored by people is that when describing the incident, they saw multiple objects. Their camera pods, however, could only track one at a time.

beeboop2• 4 years ago

Fravor is a convincing person, but he's also ultimately an asset of the US military. I want to believe him, but unfortunately the simplest and most likely explanation for this situation is that he's lying, and lying in combination with other people. Most likely because they were incentivized or asked to.

I listened to maybe half of that interview, and I really really do not buy the response to Lex's question of "Why didn't this cause more commotion in the ranks?"

Fravor said because he was the commander of 17 airmen and 300 sailors and has the weight of that command on him. I get it, but this is also his job, and we all tend to acclimate to our jobs. I don't think this guy and all other witnesses were so burdened with the idea of being a CO that they weren't able to process a potentially world-changing event. If this was in the middle of a real war and real combat - of course that's different. But this was just during the millionth training exercise of this guy's career.

He was also quick to move on from this question, and did so without any prompting from Lex. He went on to what sounded like a rehearsed talking point (I'm sure because he's said it so many times) about how he doesn't get paid for these appearances, but there's no way to know what other outside incentives he may have to go on these shows. That Lex doesn't push back on this at all is disappointing, but I get that he's not there to interrogate him.

The final sticking point - Fravor admits that he's an apologist for secrecy and the US government hiding things for reasons of "national security". Clearly someone with this belief would welcome the idea of lying repeatedly, very publicly, to help cover something up. What I'm implying is that something did happen that day (that is much more mundane), but we're not getting the honest story, and Fravor outright suggesting it was something we know to be impossible with currently technology is likely obfuscating the truth of something that is probably an embarrassing mistake/leak/something that the US government doesn't want there to be public clarity on.

rhema3• 4 years ago

Your interpretation is entirely plausible. At the same time, I found the interview to be very convincing in terms of Fravor's credibility. He mentions details about who was with him, bar scenes, and generally comes across as a professional. Historical sightings (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo_fighter ) and angelic phenomena ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1561_celestial_phenomenon_over... ) are much older and at least predate the current US military objectives.

It's also totally possible that this is some kind of funding grab. That Rubio et al. are simply pawns being teased and pushed around in the name of national security to fund large and barely monitored government research and military funding. It could be some of both.

deutschew• 4 years ago

It is bewildering that they expect people to actually believe intelligent people to discount the IR footage from the F-18 just based on this article that reads like the "it was a weather balloon" trope we often get whenever we ask questions.

edit: holy crap, there are actually lot of people on HN buying it!

MauranKilom3• 4 years ago

Do you have some factual counterpoint to the analysis, or just "the conclusions sounds like something I don't want to hear"?

zionic12• 4 years ago

I for one get really annoyed with the people who go “it’s aliens!” every time, but the cynical “debooonkers” that will seemingly go to any length to say it’s _not_ aliens bother me even more.

We simply need more information.

mikeInAlaska• 4 years ago

Listen to the Navy pilot himself https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB8zcAttP1E

deepnotderp• 4 years ago

Lens glare tracked by radar.

That's a new one.

ChrisGranger• 4 years ago

The claim isn't that there is no flying object. The glare accounts for its appearance.

zionic12• 4 years ago

So when the pilot says “it’s rotating!” And the lens flare rotates with it, that’s just a coincidence? The far-away-plane hypothesis would have the exhaust as a point source. The lens flare would maintain it’s orientation as the plane rolled.

ynniv4• 4 years ago

What is the point of this story? Someone lacking context could watch this and arrive at the conclusion that "the Navy video of a UFO has a simple conventional explanation", which is how the presenter delivers his arguments. He meticulously demonstrates that the shape of the object which is the subject of the video is an artifact of camera glare from overexposure. In case you are not convinced, he breaks it down into four reasons, supporting each of them with data based on a detailed understanding of the system. If you are still not convinced that this shake is camera glare by the end of the video, I would be surprised.

And yet, whether the shape of the subject is representative of the object or an artifact of the camera is almost irrelevant to whether or not this is a video that should be investigated. The source of the glare is clearly not part of the camera or the aircraft. We should not treat the silhouette of the object as valuable data, but it says nothing of the actual object that is being tracked. The presenter does not suggest this, and the post spins the whole event as being "debunked". I don't know why "debunking" things seems to have become a cottage industry, but there was considerable effort put into analyzing and visually modeling this thoroughly condescending presentation.

xmaayy• 4 years ago

He literally says something to the effect of "I'm only saying that the glare is obscuring the true shape of the object" in the first minutes of the video.

tejohnso• 4 years ago

Yet the title of the article says the video was camera glare. Which doesn't even make sense. But what it suggests is that the entire contents can be explained away as camera glare. So blame the media in this case perhaps?

teawrecks2• 4 years ago

The intention of the video is to show that there is no advanced technology or unexplainable phenomena captured in the video. If this is already evident to you, then the video isn't for you. But there are a lot of people who watch this video and think the object itself is rotating or deforming strangely, when in reality, all evidence suggests it's just some kind of terrestrial aircraft. Whether they know who/what is driving the aircraft is up to the Navy.

darkhorn• 4 years ago

Could it be a ball lightning? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning

alphabetting• 4 years ago

Still convinced the intelligence and technology it would require to get here would make us identifying aliens in our ozone impossible. They'd only be seen if they wanted to be. First contact could be seeing a von neumann probe or some other kind of scout type aircraft in space but it wouldn't be like the videos.

lsllc• 4 years ago

More specifically camera glare caused by swamp gas from a weather balloon that was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus.

orblivion• 4 years ago

Maybe they're just gaslighting us to keep us a safe distance from any certainty on this issue.

oyebenny• 4 years ago

The title of this article sucks. Real bad.

SubiculumCode• 4 years ago

From the first I thought it looked like a bug smashed on the gimble lens because of how it orated relative to the horizon. Fascinating explanation why it could be glare from an actual object.

belter3• 4 years ago

- David Fravor and his colleagues, are highly credible witnesses of something they observed visually.

- This is certainly a very interesting interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIUBjvY4PnQ

- There are visual observations, and what are, ( by military standards), flimsy short images/video.

- This analysis partially explains one part of it, without excluding the presence of an object.

- There is also Radar data, but it has not been published or time correlated to the reported visual observations.

Observations:

- These Aliens only seem to want to goof around with folksy US pilots.

- Pilots known to simulate UFO sightings, fans of UFO invasion stories and stories of Russians shooting UFO's and getting shot back. ( watch the interview...).

- These Aliens show up exclusively during their training time and with sightings restricted to areas with US carrier groups exercises.

Also...

- The Aliens don't show up with their "Tic Tac's" or seem to be interested on the Ukraine conflict.

- They don't care about EU or Latin America citizens...

- Don't want to play around with the Russian or Chinese Air Force.

- They don't show up in the data of any of the existing Military satellites capable of reading a bus ticket on the ground from 400 km.

- These Aliens don't show up in the observations of the thousands of professional and amateur astronomers, that scan the sky a total of thousands of hours every night, using some of the most exquisite optical instruments available.

I would say: They either don't exist, or if they do, they are pretty dumb and we have nothing to fear.

avl9993• 4 years ago

These observations have also been made by military adjacent organizations in UK, France and China. It is definitely not a US pilot specific thing.

belter3• 4 years ago

References?

bonestamp28• 4 years ago

"These Aliens"

Why do you say aliens? It seems more likely they are experimental human developed aircraft.

belter3• 4 years ago

Because some of the reported changes of speed are not within any technology conceivable for the next 100 years. Like physically doing Mach 200 with no noise or sonic boom and show up 80 Miles ( the way point of the interview...) after a few seconds. ( And how did they know where the way point was?)

hackernewds• 4 years ago

The sightings are military classified aircraft, explaining why they appear during trainings. The govt would rather have you believe they are UFOs than the public suspecting where tax dollars are being funneled, and enemies being weary.

russdpale6• 4 years ago

Im pretty suspicious, why does an MIT AI researcher have a youtube channel? Does he not get paid enough with his salary?

Also, this is a four hour video, what is the timestamp of the comments you refer to?

nkassis• 4 years ago

Some people have YouTube channels as hobbies ? I don't see the issue.

e40• 4 years ago

There's an index in the video notes.

vo2maxer• 4 years ago

Im pretty suspicious, why does an MIT AI researcher have a youtube channel? Does he not get paid enough with his salary?

Could you please elaborate on why you think that an MIT researcher having a YouTube channel where is had some very interesting interviews somehow makes it suspicious?

russdpale6• 4 years ago

Because he would be busy doing researcher things and making money and not worried about something like youtube?

drc500free• 4 years ago

removed needlessly snarky comment

Banana6992• 4 years ago

Those are 3 very, wildly, different men that you're comparing.

russdpale6• 4 years ago

As if youtube isn't filled with quackery. A youtuber is not beyond reproach by any means.

qaq• 4 years ago

This podcast generates millions it is one of the most popular pop sci podcasts. David Favor is not a random pilot he was Top Gun instructor at the time.

anothernewdude• 4 years ago

Im pretty suspicious, why does an MIT AI researcher have a youtube channel?

Are you serious?

russdpale6• 4 years ago

Yes I'm serious. Rich people don't need youtube channels. People don't do youtube as a hobby, they do it to make money, so thus I must question his motives, since I assume he has enough money.

There is a lot of quackery on youtube, not everyone has good intentions.

dang• 4 years ago

We detached this offtopic subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30703907.

prawn2• 4 years ago

How much can someone earn before them having a YouTube channel or podcast make you suspicious?

russdpale6• 4 years ago

What?

birdyrooster2• 4 years ago

Obviously it was glare, it looked like bokeh…

throwaway984393• 4 years ago

Those crafty aliens.

avl9993• 4 years ago

But a new detailed analysis by self-described debunker, skeptic, and UFO investigator Mick West

Ignored as soon as I read the name "Mick West". The guy's brand is to be a debunker which in of itself is not bad but I am not gonna trust a video game developer's (brand aligning) explanations of this phenomenon compared to trained fighter pilots and the US Navy/Pentagon who have found no explanation of this phenomenon thus far.

nwallin3• 4 years ago

the US Navy/Pentagon who have found no explanation of this phenomenon thus far.

"Released no explanation to the public" != "have found no explanation". The DoD is simply not in a habit of releasing information to the public unless they're instructed to do so by the executive branch.

avl9993• 4 years ago

They did not have an explanation as of last spring when they were forced to disclose everything they knew about the phenomenon by an act of congress. There wasn't even a redacted appendix.

phendrenad2• 4 years ago

Nitpick: This isn't "evidence", this is "analysis". The title of the video itself is "Gimbal UFO - A New Analysis". A photography magazine can't be expected to understand the difference though, I guess.

imwillofficial• 4 years ago

Camera glare is often known to disable ships and cause small fleets to mobilize to investigate

Maursault• 4 years ago

Why, at the time, were Navy pilots behaving so incredulously, and why did they not pull up along-side the UFO and simply eyeball its identification? And why did they let it get away? What is it that Navy pilots are supposed to be doing when they're inscrutably not pursuing possible unidentified threats?

BluSyn3• 4 years ago

FYI, Mick West is not an "expert". He has no experience with military hardware. Everyone involved in the incident, or has background knowledge of the classified details, says there are multiple sensors confirming the footage, including direct visual by the pilots. This can not possibly be explained by "lens flair".

People say trust the experts. Well, in this case, the experts are the ones who know the military hardware, who flew the plane, who tracked the objects (plural) on radar. That is not Mick West. Mick West is a professional debunker, which means he analyses these videos with a baked-in assumption that it's "fake", not from an unbiased view.

If you fall for Mick West's BS, you aren't any different from UFO nuts who fall for Steven Greeer's. I suggest thinking for yourself instead.

jollybean• 4 years ago

This comment, which doesn't reference any of the very powerful bits evidence, and merely spouts a lot of ad hominem, probably belongs on YouTube.

I see very compelling evidence for an argument, which makes your comment seem even more 'unhinged'.

"he analyses these videos with a baked-in assumption that it's "fake", not from an unbiased view"

The balance of 'unbiased view' of either it's 'aliens or something mundane' is going to almost always land on 'something mundane'.

"I suggest thinking for yourself instead."

This is the statement of the true conspiracy theorist:

"Don't believe the evidence in front of you! 'Think for yourself' and 'Make up your own reality!'"

BluSyn3• 4 years ago

I actually agree with you in general.

"Don't believe the evidence in front of you! 'Think for yourself' and 'Make up your own reality!'"

I never said this. Evidence is very important. Notably Mick West offered no new "evidence", only supposition. Supposition in direct contradiction to known facts of the case (eg, other sensors, pilot reports, visual confirmations, etc).

I never claimed to know the answer. But I do claim that Mick West is generating faulty conclusions derived from bad assumptions. So in this case you could make a compelling argument that Mick West is the conspiracy theorist. So we go around and around debunking the debunker who debunked the debunker.

It's all a waste of oxygen.

bonestamp28• 4 years ago

West suggests there is an object being tracked, just that it is obfuscated by the glare. From the article:

West contends that what is being seen in the video is actually infrared glare that hides a hot object behind it

So, he's not debunking the existence of what the pilot saw. He's just saying that what we see in the video is not what the pilots saw.

That would be a fascinating countermeasure if the craft was able to rotate to reflect the sun at a tracking pod on a potentially hostile aircraft, or perhaps the craft itself emitted the IR "glare" to prevent it from being accurately photographed.

rblion2• 4 years ago

I call bullshit. Prove me wrong.

verytrivial• 4 years ago

I watched that video when it first came out and saw what looked like sun glare in the middle of image and ignored it and kept looking for what was meant to be the UFO. It was even rotating like you see those FLIR videos that keep up-up during fly-overs. I was like -- "That's it? Seriously? Come on!" The rotation looks like ansiotropic surface features on the lense where someone has wiped (perhaps a bit too hard) the surface and left streaks. (Or it's reflections between elements, I don't know.) It's hard to know if the lense is rotating, or the camera itself -- you only see the nett result on the monitor after all the transformations are done.

Exact same thing with the more recent super fast UFOs that are so totally birds locked while the camera orbits against a deep-zoom background. I wonder how many other people have seen these exact features dozens of times, tried to point it out, but it just gets lost in the endless garbage factory that is media these days.

cf141q5325• 4 years ago

Joe Scott predicted as much, rather liked his explanation if somebody is bored. Starts around here https://youtu.be/Hv-sbtCAz9Y?t=732

mlindner2• 4 years ago

It's amazing how many imbeciles on hacker news actually believe that we actually saw UFOs. There is simply no evidence for them. (The sheer idea of a "saucer" for a UFO is straight out of fiction even, it's also conveniently exactly the same shape as a smudge on literally anything. A smeared spec of mud becomes a UFO saucer.)

WalterBright• 4 years ago

A simple rule of thumb is if it's a grainy, out-of-focus, smeary blob doing impossible things, it's not a UFO. It's a hoax or an artifact of the camera.

Where are the sharp, hi-res UFO pix? If there are UFOs, that is?

ck22• 4 years ago

Always find "UFO are aliens" belief so non-logical.

Like a FTL civilization would even be curious about earth, having such advanced sensor technology to avoid dust at beyond light speed that they actually need to cruise around in the atmosphere?

Or that their ship would be so small? There's no penalty for mass in space, why not make it the size of a city? Certainly a FTL civilization has no construction limitations.

We have small plane-sized craft because of our limitations on power and mass and construction abilities. Aliens that can "visit" would be nothing like us.

PlanckMeasure802• 4 years ago

But this assumes FTL travel is the only way they’d show up?

ck22• 4 years ago

At 10% the speed of light it would take 45 years to get here and slow down from Alpha Centauri, and it goes way up from there:

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/7Gdct9VzQFHUYf8Ec8GXmY.jpg

Again that's exponentially beyond anything we could do and why would they even bother buzzing around inside the atmosphere if they can do that?

Unless you are saying they are popping in from other dimensions/universes and that's way beyond even FTL theory.

Earth would be a huge yawn to them. They'd catalog it and move on. Unless earth-like planets are so incredibly rare to find even with those abilities.

sennight• 4 years ago

ugh, more and more each day I hate the fact that Obama undid the last of the legal impediments to domestically targeted military counter-intelligence operations. It is no coincidence that there is a massive gap in military related UFO sightings that matches up perfectly with when it was illegal for the government to spread paranoid delusion in the interest of national security. How anyone could think that an advanced spacefaring species could spend over 50 years reconnoitering the planet - but primarily in restricted airspace used for bleeding edge military flight tests and over a whole lot of empty ocean... its depressing.

tudorradubarbu• 4 years ago

I don't get it :))

antishatter• 4 years ago

I suspect It’s a Chinese or Russian sub floating a balloon that specifically does things to capture information on our radar systems.we used to do it to them too.

qgin• 4 years ago

Wasn’t this tracked by multiple operators in more than one location using visible light and also radar and was visually confirmed by pilots? How does glare explain that?

Famous Navy UFO video was camera glare, evidence suggests

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