Mick West
Solved: A Balloon-Like Entity near Sutter Buttes, CA is a Graduation Balloon
Solved - it was a graduation balloon:
Original Post follows:
This looks like a balloon. It was seen from a plane, only visible for these five frame. Above is brightened and added a rotated version
Source: https://www.tiktok.com/@danielvelezwagner/video/7192457692647312686
Suggestions on the text are "HUSKIES" and "HAPPY", but both could be illusory.
Original Post follows:
This looks like a balloon. It was seen from a plane, only visible for these five frame. Above is brightened and added a rotated version
Source: https://www.tiktok.com/@danielvelezwagner/video/7192457692647312686
Suggestions on the text are "HUSKIES" and "HAPPY", but both could be illusory.
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Explained: Chilean Navy "UFO" video - Aerodynamic Contrails, Flight IB6830
If you are short on time, then I made a one minute video explaining this:
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bFfuIidCK0
Background: Infrared footage from the Chilean Navy appears to show some kind of flying object that briefly leaves a trail behind it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry..._us_586d37bce4b014e7c72ee56b?lciacn1ruwjkmx6r (.", "\.)
At 1:52 pm, while filming the terrain, the technician observed a strange object flying to the left over the ocean. Soon both...
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2022 Annual Report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena
The much anticipated 2022 UAP report is a disappointment. It certainly fails to fulfill the wishes of UFO enthusiasts seeking "disclosure" of the government's secret knowledge regarding UFO propulsion and possibly their pilots. But it's also disappointing for people seeking some clarity on if there's actually anything significant behind the story.
The majority of the report details procedural issues, talking about which departments are involved, and plans for better reporting and investigation. That's great, but what about the actual investigations?
The only data there is contained largely on page five, where the numbers are broken down in a way that will certainly be misinterpreted as evidence of large numbers of amazing craft flying around our airspace. It does not say that, but it is unfortunately ambiguous in its language, allowing...
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Cedar Park Lights in the Sky with Strange Reflection [Police Drone]
Source: Nataliee Gamez on Twitter.
I originally thought this was a plane, because of the configuration of lights. The "triangle" shape seemed just to be reflections.
But then I noticed when it emerged from behind the tree, all the lights except the brightest (and possibly some barely visible) all just fade in, in front of the tree.
Now, the object seems clearly to be behind the tree, based of the light in the air, so that means that all these lights are reflections of the bright light on the right.
That's strange, but also puzzing is that earlier, on the other side of the tree, there's only one bright light visible.
I'd geolocated it to the circled region of Cedar Park )later confirmed by Nataliee), and thought it was possibly a plane...
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Debunked: Rumsfeld says $2.3 Trillion missing from the Pentagon
In 2001, Donald Rumsfeld said 'According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions.' This has been misinterpreted by many people as $2.3 trillion actually going missing. However, it's really just about the way the money was accounted for.
Rumsfeld is asking for more money to improve the accounting systems because the DOD is working with very outdated systems. This means transactions can't be tracked to acceptable accounting standards. As an example he says:
The technology revolution has transformed organizations across the private sector, but not ours, not fully, not yet. We are, as they say, tangled in our anchor chain. Our financial systems are decades old. According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions. We cannot share information from floor to floor in this building because it's stored on dozens of technological systems...
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Retired F-18 Pilot Reports 5 UAPs Pacing His Aircraft Over Channel Islands 8-18-22
[UPDATE - the flashing lights in the video appear to be reflections of the iPhone 13 Pro autofocus system. First suggested by @flarkey]
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_s-TDoc7YLY
Interesting case - some very rapidly flashing and seeming erratic motion of some lights seen from a plane. There are several video clips in Ben Hansen's video. I include one clip here that shows the light in the context of both stars and land.
Initially seems like a reflection, but the pilot says the lights moved around the plane.
Update: Attaching two files submitted to MUFON.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_s-TDoc7YLY
Interesting case - some very rapidly flashing and seeming erratic motion of some lights seen from a plane. There are several video clips in Ben Hansen's video. I include one clip here that shows the light in the context of both stars and land.
Initially seems like a reflection, but the pilot says the lights moved around the plane.
Update: Attaching two files submitted to MUFON.
Continue…
Ukrainian UAP Study: "Observation of Events"
Article: The Main Astronomical Observatory of NAS of Ukraine conducts an independent study of UAP also. For UAP observations, we used two meteor stations installed in Kyiv and in the Vinarivka village in the south of the Kyiv region. Observations were performed with colour video cameras in the daytime sky. We have developed a special observation technique, for detecting and evaluating UAP characteristics. According to our data, there are two types of UAP, which we conventionally call: (1) Cosmics, and (2) Phantoms. We note that Cosmics are luminous objects, brighter than the background of the sky. We call these ships names of birds (swift, falcon, eagle). Phantoms are dark objects, with contrast from several to about 50 per cent. We present a broad range of UAPs. We see them everywhere. We observe a significant number of objects whose nature is not clear. Flights of single, group...
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Comparing Petition Signature Rejection Rates to Mail-in Ballot Rejection Rates
A recall petition and an election are very different things. In order to get a recall of an elected official on the ballot, you have to gather valid signatures of registered voters. You need at least 12% of the number of registered voters who voted in the last election for that office.
The signatures must be in-person (not online), so they are generally gathered in the street. Sometimes it's by passionate volunteers setting up tables, and sometimes it's people with clipboards asking other people in bust public places. As you can imagine, this is not the most rigorous of processes, and that plays out in the percentage of valid signatures:
Article: The average signature validity rate for the 143 successful petition drives featured in this study is 75.33%. This means that...
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A Korean Linear "UFO" [Reflection]
I was approached by a Korean UFO investigator with the above video of a UFO spotted by a local witness. My first thought was a Starlink train, but they also included a video from a wider angle:
The video was very dark, but I was able to enhance it in After Effects with a combination of:
- Adjusting Levels
- "Echo" filter, 15 frames, Echo Operator: "Maximum"
I could now see that object seemed to move with the wires attached to the utility pole. I suggested this, but the witness account was of something 500m away, "floating in the sky." I then suggested taking a photo in the daytime from the same location...
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The Global Cross-Hair Enigma that looks like Hair Dryer Burns
The above two slides are from a talk by famous UFO investigator Jacques Vallee. The talk came up because scientist Garry Nolan (who sometimes works with Vallee) mentioned a later aspect of the case (a star-shaped mark on a photo and a giant UFO nobody noticed) in a recent interview with Tucker Carlson.
But someone in the comments pointed out the likely cause in April 2022:
The Paisley Wave 4 months ago
With all respect for Dr. Vallee, the 'crosshair' marks may have a simple explanation. Search for images of blowdryers and you'll see many, especially the older ones, have metal crosshair-shaped grills at their openings. They get hot and can burn the skin leaving marks corresponding with their...
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When Conspiracists Psychoanalyze
As a skeptic, I often have an experience that many people will find familiar. I'm talking to someone. They tell me something I know to be wrong. I explain why they are wrong. They refuse to believe me. I continue to try, sometimes over days or weeks. They still won't get it, and sometimes their false belief becomes even stronger. What is wrong with them?
The inability of the true believer to see reason is a frustrating puzzle. One of the most common questions I get in interviews is, "why do people fall for conspiracy theories?" I explain that it's often just a chain of chance, circumstances, and being in an unsettled time in their life with too much spare time. But that's not the "why" the interviewer is looking for. They want to know what is wrong with the conspiracy theorist. Specifically what is mentally wrong with them.
A Desire to Pathologize
There seems to be a natural desire to pathologize unconventional beliefs...
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WVNY/ABC22 Transparent "Flying Saucer" on Weather Camera — Dark Bokeh?
[Source: WVNY Twitter]
The shape of this UFO is not entirely uncommon, a horizontal-oriented diamond is sometimes seen when distant lights are out of focus. For example, in this "UFO" video of a plane, which is just the out-of-focus lights - an effect called "bokeh"
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/ex...fo-burwell-fen-uk-c-130-landing-lights.11959/
What's unusual here is that the shape is dark and slowly moving. Is this a case of "dark bokeh"? I'd never really thought about such a thing before, but of course, it's quite possible. Like here:
I put a fleck...
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Sitrec - Metabunk's Situation Recreation Tool - Development Discussion
Sitrec is a Situation Recreation tool that's just starting out in development. It's born from the Gimbal Simulator, and that's the only situation it's recreating - but eventually I'll extend it to GoFast, Nimitz, Aguadilla, Rubber Duck, mysterious DHS video #4, - and hopefully make it available so others can use it on arbitrary videos. You can see (and use) it here:
https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/
The goal is to allow real-time analysis and visualization of the possible 3D interpretations that might fit a 2D video (and any other data for a particular case) and see from that what is the most likely scenario.
This is very much a work-in-progress, and not really usable for much right now, but I'm starting this discussion thread to track the progress and get feedback and ideas. The initial goal is to replicate and check the work of @Edward...
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The AVRORA Callsign Mystery
There's an apparent aricraft with the callsign "AVRORA" that shows up on FlightRadar24. It's the subject of several threads on Reddit, but nobody seems to have figured out what it is.
The track initially looks like a standard trans-pacific route, but it's not. There's only two segments, one in the Arizona desert, and one off the coast of the Russian Kamchatka peninsula. There's no data for the path in-between (which is just an interpolated great circle).
The Kamchatka location just shows up as occasional sporadic results, over several days, with very low air speed.
The Arizona segment is very different, a steep slope and several tight turns of a 0.5 mile diameter circle at about 26 knots
(These tracks are extracted from the raw JSON files using a custom Python script)
What could this be? I think there's a few options, in no great order
- ADS-B Spoofing - i.e. not...
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Tales From The Rabbit Hole
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Episode 56: Robert Bartholomew – Havana Syndrome and Mass Psychogenic Illness
Fri, 22 Oct 2021 14:30:39 PDTRobert Bartholomew has a PhD in Medical Sociology, and is an Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychological Medicine at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He’s an expert in Mass Psychogenic Illness...
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Episode 55 – Professor Avi Loeb: The Galileo Project
Tue, 10 Aug 2021 15:22:31 PDTWhat is a University professor doing investigating UFOs? Professor Avi Loeb of Harvard University heads the Galileo Project, which seeks (in part) to identify the nature of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena by establishing a network of...
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Episode 54 – Mia Bloom and Sophia Moskalenko: Pastels and Pedophiles
Wed, 04 Aug 2021 18:00:54 PDTMia Bloom is Professor of Communication at Georgia State University with a PhD in political science from Columbia University. Sophia Moskalenko is a research fellow at Georgia State University and a researcher at the National...
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Episode 53 – Jason Colavito – UFOs and the Invisible College, How Did We Get Here?
Thu, 24 Jun 2021 15:46:08 PDTJason Colavito is an author and journalist with a focus on “alternative archeology” and, more recently, the UFO cultural phenomenon. In May 2021, he wrote the article: “How Washington Got Hooked on Flying Saucers” in...
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Episode 52 – Luis Elizondo – UFOs, UAPs, AATIP, and TTSA
Thu, 11 Mar 2021 15:06:06 PSTLuis Elizondo is a former senior intelligence official, a disclosure advocate, a national security expert, and the former director of the Pentagon’s UFO/UAP Program (AATIP). We talk about his work in those capacities and also...