Jellyfish UFO from TMZ's 'UFO Revolution'

If we are discussing balloon IR transparency, I would like to revisit this short segment that I posted earlier on. Initially I thought it might be the balloons getting jostled by an impact with a lamp post.

However investigating it from the perspective of IR transparent balloons, there does seem to be something of interest going on when the top portion of the balloon passes over a black background. Half of the object passes in front of a hot spot, which could be a vehicle that was recently running.

I'm open to changing my mind about whether there is any light showing through the fabric of the balloon. I still don't think it's necessarily true. But I'm open.

Also, in these frames, there's something happening to the "legs." There's a third, separate piece that may be attached to either leg, or to both. A gap opens up between that third piece and the left leg (the leg on our right).

Ann K said:

They key phrase here is "BLOW it out". Of course that causes turbulence. But if I light a stick of incense (and the window is closed, and the furnace is not blowing air into the room), the smoke tends to rise in a smooth flow.

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Blowing out is part of it, but it's also the product of combustion, a notoriously exothermic process.
Let the smoke partially equalise its temperature before letting it free, and the greater density will dominate, so you can have smoke "fountains" (a bad name for them, as generally I assume fountains project their fluid upwards, I'd say iot was better to call such things cascades).

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CtguvLB03Y

Ann K said:

They key phrase here is "BLOW it out". Of course that causes turbulence. But if I light a stick of incense (and the window is closed, and the furnace is not blowing air into the room), the smoke tends to rise in a smooth flow.

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Article:

Smoke rising from a cigarette. For the first few centimeters, the smoke is laminar. The smoke plume becomes turbulent as its Reynolds number increases with increases in flow velocity and characteristic length scale.

Fun fact: the wikipedia page on turbulence mentions "boundary" 9 times, but "entropy" not at all.
Turbulence is created when a fluid has "friction" with something it is flowing past or around, or something that is moving past it or through it. That's why wind is turbulent near the ground, but much less turbulent higher up, where the flow has no boundary.

"Persistent contrails" are an example of air that is not very turbulent.

Mendel said:

Turbulence is created when a fluid has "friction" with something it is flowing past or around, or something that is moving past it or through it.

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Not really sure if we are still talking about jellyfish here.... to get back on topic...

I've found another interesting bit that shows the object is somewhat transparent in IR that might be useful. Around frames 471 the legs cover a hot object and can be precisely inspected.



Regarding size we have to remember that (as sitrec shows) the size of the object is closely related to distance, altitude and speed. Can't change one and not the others.

This is necessarily smaller than 2meters and most likely around 1meter tall. If it was smaller than picking it up on the camera would have been quite unlikely and if it was larger than 1 meters we are very close to the ground and probably in much more turbulent air as the speed would be over 20 mph.

Intrestingly, there is a method of calculating wind speed from flags. I doubt it is accurate but probably a good guess: https://www.customflagcompany.com/blog/2020/05/15/how-to-determine-wind-speed-with-a-flag/

Using the flag in the video:


Using their method we have 50/4=12.5mph= around 20km/h or around 10 knots

This seems consistent with a very general visual estimation with the Beaufort Wind Scale:
Force 3 mph 8-12 knots 7-10 Gentle Breeze: Large wavelets. Crests begin to break. Foam of glassy appearance. Perhaps scattered white horses. Leaves and small twigs in constant motion; wind extends light flag.

Such wind speed at ground level is consistent with Mick's sitrec https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?sitch=jellyfish and the object being around 1 meter tall or less approximately.

Sitrec has some wind parameters but I'm not sure what they do (@Mick West?).

John J. said:

The metallic Eid balloons are not Mylar (to my surprise), that was the point of my post.

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Thank you for the clarification. When I say Mylar I am just using the common terms so that we understand each other but I understand it isn't precisely mylar.

From my understanding the IR signature would ne unchanged using the brand name or an analogous material.

John J. said:

Popular packs of Eid party balloons (and similar packs for end of Ramadan, also weddings etc.) often seem to combine foil balloons (metallized nylon backed with a polyethylene but not BoPET) and latex balloons; example ads. on "Amazon"
here, here and here

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I think it is interesting that the EID packages sold on amazon are a mix of different balloon materials. That might be an interesting clue here (although size could still be problematic?)

Also a note: the "pointy" bits need to be foil and not rubber balloons. So they would not be transparent unless made of some unusual material. That rules out the half moon balloons.

Yeah, The 'pointy bits now look more like the corners of 'balloon bags' to me. Not a net, but a bag of balloons. I'm veering back towards 'accidental release' again.

tobigtofool said:

I disagree that lots of things move through the air

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They are not moving through the air, they are moving with the air.

The same misunderstanding or misrepresentation recurs several times in your posts. Please stop it.

DavidB66 said:

They are not moving through the air, they are moving with the air.

The same misunderstanding or misrepresentation recurs several times in your posts. Please stop it.

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In their defense, in that particular quote they were merely replying to me since I was talking about things that move through the air.

This is also not really anomalous behavior, lots of things move through the air in horizontal planes.

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And I said through because I was talking in a more general sense that objects moving on a single horizontal plane is not really anomalous (planes, drones and birds all move through the air in horizontal planes fairly often).

But they do indeed use "through" a lot,

At no point would a cloud keep its shape in air that pushes something through it at what 18mhp

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I don't believe this theory that objects that weigh grams, move through the air without wobble.

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when we find evidence of a balloon flying through the air in the same way

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hard for me to believe would look like a starwars probe droid while being blown through the air

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These are the quotes I could find and they are all from tobigtofool, I didn't really find other people saying through the air (except when specifically talking about going through it instead of with it) and I agree that there may be a problem in understanding the difference between moving through the air and moving with the air.

Mendel said:

maybe someone can edit the following picture from Mick's post quoted below?

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Roger. The object here is reduced to 50% of its original size in the picture; arm added to left figure.
Not sure it really demonstrates much, though!

I'm only using MS Paint/ Paint 3D (esp. "magic select"), so the exact borders of the object, as far as we can discern them, are probably compromised. Some brushwork used to lessen contrast between the edges of the selected object image and its new location; tried to avoid affecting the "jellyfish" itself but again I expect it's compromised.






If the surveillance aerostat had directional microphones, maybe listening to these two would help solve the mystery...

Hold on now. That's not the way perspective works. Let's remember there's such a thing as perspective distortion. This is a distant scene so compression distortion is specifically what we should be talking about.

I have no time at all right now. I'll just say the more distant the objects are, the greater the effect of foreshortening and the oddly mismatched proportions between closer and more distant objects will be. Perspective distortion in action.

and link to this post:

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/cl...-british-countryside.12957/page-2#post-290216

A perfect job! @John J. , thank you!

Z.W. Wolf said:

That's not the way perspective works.

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Yes, it is. Half the distance equals twice the size. Twice the distance equals half the (apparent) size.
(Obviously we do not know the distance. If the balloons are farther from the camera than halfway to the people in the picture, they'd shrink somewhat less when you match them.)

Mendel said:

Yes. And he thinks inertia is an obstacle to that. But it's not: because the balloon is neutrally buoyant, its inertia matches the surrounding air.

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So I think I am not explaining myself well. A lot of people think that mass and weight is the same thing. IT IS NOT. A 747 cruising has zero or negative weight but it's mass remains unchanged. It's resistance to acceleration remains constant. Mass is a function of protons in a system.

But we are getting into the weeds, and I agree this is starting to veer off topic.

Z.W. Wolf said:

I think he means that gas can't impart momentum, or has a hard time imparting momentum, to a solid. Because of mass...

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Basically yes that is what I am saying. That the mass of a balloon resists acceleration more than the surrounding air. You are correct that if the balloon is in a low entropy wind that is not changing speed or direction there would be no acceleration/deceleration so in that specific case it would move "with the wind". But my second argument is that type of wind is rare.

Arthur 33 said:

So I think I am not explaining myself well. A lot of people think that mass and weight is the same thing. IT IS NOT. A 747 cruising has zero or negative weight but it's mass remains unchanged. It's resistance to acceleration remains constant. Mass is a function of protons in a system.

But we are getting into the weeds, and I agree this is starting to veer off topic.

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Planes do not have zero or negative weight when cruising. The weight due to gravity is just cancelled out due to the force of lift. Weight is mass times gravity, which is obviously not 0. See this free body diagram for example:

gtoffo said:

Sitrec has some wind parameters but I'm not sure what they do (@Mick West?).

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Nothing in this situation. You could use it to calculate airspeed if there was evidence the object was moving at a different speed to the wind. But the best estimate of the wind speed and direction is probably from the object itself, roughly confirmed by the flag.

Mendel said:

And I don't condone an "everyone else is wrong" attitude when someone has no sources or evidence.

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Nobody had that attitude, stop making false attacks against people here, all I did was point out how the videos used as proof were not proof.

I am the one that found a video of a bundle of balloons moving in a straight line without wobble, not anyone who was calling me a flat earther or wrong.

This isnt an argument website, if you can't find a source to support your argument, you are not right or wrong, you are just arguing.

The efforts here should be to enlighten, not win a fight.

yoshy said:

Planes do not have zero or negative weight when cruising

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Yes you are correct. I am using the colloquial meaning of weight in the context of my last post. As in felt weight if placed on a scale.

If you'll forgive a diversion from all this acrimony, here's a palate cleanser. While browsing balloon videos, I found this one of a hot air balloon excursion in Dubai, which carried about twenty people - and what I think is a falcon! The bird was released (at about two minutes) and cheerfully flew in circles around the balloon before returning to the basket.


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Szpzuifa3FE

Guys, let's cut all the discussion about entropy, turbulence, wind sheer, mass/weight/inertia, etc.

It's all irrelevant. In the midst of that discussion it looks like most posters didn't notice that user tobigtofool actually found a real-world example a bunch of balloons moving essentially identically to the jellyfish:



This confirms what many posters here have been saying — in at least certain atmospheric conditions, a bundle of balloons moving with the wind will experience little to no turbulence, looking EXACTLY like the the jellyfish UAP.

It's settled. We don't need to educate everyone on complex fluid dynamics to prove the point, just *point to the video*. This also addresses any arguments about the apparently "rigid structure" of the object.

All that's left is the odd shape of the object. I think it can probably be explained by a combination of some small number of balloons, some probably only remaining partially inflated, and possibly contained in netting or a plastic bag. The hanging bits are likely a part of the bag/netting, and/or some deflated/exploded balloons. But the possible number of configurations of those components is so huge we'll likely never be able to *perfectly* recreate it to the satisfaction of the truest of true believers, especially considering that it's filmed in IR and we're probably dealing with objects with varying degrees of transparency.

Personally I'm very close to saying "stick a fork in it".

Cosmic Osmo said:

looking EXACTLY like the the jellyfish UAP.

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Thanks for sharing this. I will grant you this large cluster of balloons carrying a payload does move in a similar fashion as the Jellyfish UAP (constant speed, seemingly smooth). But if you look carefully it does move up and down in multiple instances when compared to the background (turbulence). It is close but far from an exact match.

The larger the balloon is (more mass it has) the less turbulences will be observed because of it's increased resistance to acceleration. That is why a small party balloon will fly in a chaotic turbulent way, while a large balloon will appear to coast along in a smooth way like we observe in this video.

Since we know the maximum size of the object we can also estimate the maximum mass if it were balloons.

For me it checks off a lot of the boxes though - it does descend at a pretty standard rate but iirc in micks video even he thinks the balloons were descending a bit.

Based off the size of the object party balloons weigh so little I was sure we'd see distortion in the shape, but we can see that it is possible for a force of wind to push a bundle of balloons in a pretty consistent manner, more so than most of the other footage which made me think it was impossible to get that behavior.

It does prove (to me) that that the rigid shape of the object is not impossible with a 1-2meter bundle of party balloons.

Arthur 33 said:

But if you look carefully it does move up and down in multiple instances when compared to the background (turbulence).

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I looked carefully and the balloons seemed to move up and down at the same time as the camera moves up and down, not due to turbulence.

flarkey said:

I looked carefully and the balloons seemed to move up and down at the same time as the camera moves up and down, not due to turbulence.

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It's hard to tell but it looks like its reducing the height a bit based on the chimney in that video I think.

I was trying to be critical to myself last night and seeing if it rotated (I fee like at the start you can see some changes of shapes that are not due to the rotation of the camera as it passes, but it wasn't enough that I could call it out IMO)

I thought about motion tracking it but forgot how and didn't want to learn anything last night

Mendel said:

Yes, it is. Half the distance equals twice the size. Twice the distance equals half the (apparent) size.
(Obviously we do not know the distance. If the balloons are farther from the camera than halfway to the people in the picture, they'd shrink somewhat less when you match them.)

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Exactly. The people may only be a couple of hundred yards behind the balloon cluster. In which case the balloon cluster would be larger, and the speed would be somewhat faster, but still within the range of credible wind speeds.

This video posted earlier illustrates my point. If you go to 2:44 you will see the small blue balloon flapping around in the wind, while the other balloons under tension from the payload hardly move at all.


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neCEqjdo6f8

Arthur 33 said:

But if you look carefully it does move up and down in multiple instances when compared to the background (turbulence). It is close but far from an exact match.

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Timestamps please. I see nothing here that looks in any way different to the way the jellyfish is moving. Claiming that this is "far" from an exact match is a stretch, to put it *extremely* generously.

Z.W. Wolf said:

I have no time at all right now. I'll just say the more distant the objects are, the greater the effect of foreshortening and the oddly mismatched proportions between closer and more distant objects will be. Perspective distortion in action.

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To enlarge on your statement, here's a picture shamelessly stolen from a drawing video.
The back corner of the house is about a third of the height of the front right corner, so it's three times as far away, so you are standing perhaps twenty feet from the front but sixty feet from the back of a forty foot building. But if you were, say, five hundred feet away from the house, the difference would be between five hundred and five hundred and forty, and proportionately insignificant. You would barely see any perspective at all.

This, of course, has very little bearing on a bunch of balloons / plastic bag / anomalous object whose proportion of width to depth is entirely unknown.

Arthur 33 said:

This video posted earlier illustrates my point. If you go to 2:44 you will see the small blue balloon flapping around in the wind, while the other balloons under tension from the payload hardly move at all.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neCEqjdo6f8

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This could be the result of the weight of the giant bundle the guy is riding and that blue balloon is attached to.

If I can try to explain my thought process clearly:

Because that balloon (structure, vehicle idk what to call it) has so much mass, he wont travel at the same speed as the wind, so the gusts of wind will pass him as it pushes the vehicle, and the dangly bits will flap in the wind as it does.

Whereas with the smaller bundle of party balloons, they are lighter, so can more easily travel at the same speed as the wind, with less dangly bits flapping as the wind passes it.

Due to no evidence otherwise and plenty indicating so, I assumed that an object so light it was traveling at the same speed as the wind would mean the object would wobble; but in the video I see that a light balloon can remain pretty steady as its pushed through the air.

flarkey said:

I looked carefully and the balloons seemed to move up and down at the same time as the camera moves up and down, not due to turbulence.

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From 0 sec to 18 sec the balloon appears to be moving left and down when compared to the background. It than levels off.

tobigtofool said:

dangly bits flapping as the wind passes it.

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This is a KEY point. If a balloon has light weight material dangling (not holding a load) those bits will flap around in the small gentle gusts of wind, while the balloon and payload will remain steady and smooth because it's mass resists the acceleration. The Jellyfish appears to have dangling bits, but they are not moving at all as if they are rigid material.

Arthur 33 said:

So I think I am not explaining myself well. A lot of people think that mass and weight is the same thing. IT IS NOT.

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Nobody here thinks that. Above, I stated that weight is mass times g.

Arthur 33 said:

A 747 cruising has zero or negative weight but it's mass remains unchanged

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NASA disagrees.
https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/VirtualAero/BottleRocket/airplane/weight1.html

Arthur 33 said:

. It's resistance to acceleration remains constant. Mass is a function of protons in a system.

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No, it is not.

Arthur 33 said:

But we are getting into the weeds, and I agree this is starting to veer off topic.

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Please use sources to back up your claims.

Arthur 33 said:

Yes you are correct. I am using the colloquial meaning of weight in the context of my last post. As in felt weight if placed on a scale.

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Yes, that's sometimes called "buoyant weight". I don't think anyone else here used it like that?

Arthur 33 said:

This is a KEY point. If a balloon has light weight material dangling (not holding a load) those bits will flap around in the small gentle gusts of wind, while the balloon and payload will remain steady and smooth because it's mass resists the acceleration. The Jellyfish appears to have dangling bits, but they are not moving at all as if they are rigid material.

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My guess is because the weight of the dangly bits, doe snot weigh too much more than the main part of the balloon.

Where as in the giant balloon vehicle, that little blue dangly balloon weighs drastically less than the overall balloon vehicle.

I agree if I plastic bag was on top of it, we'd see some shimmering or something as wispy plastic bag is even lighter than a deflated party balloon.

But, if its like, half-deflated balloons hanging, they might be like kind of limp, but light enough so that in the gentle wind they'd flutter or dangle much, similar to how the balloons in that video above the houses is.

I'm thinking the odds are that usually the balloons move erratically in the wind but sometimes... they can stay pretty static. We may just be looking at one of those sometimes.

I can at least say "ok so balloons can behave this way" which is big for me when it comes with debunking. Previously I just outright did not believe they would move in that manner.

Arthur 33 said:

From 0 sec to 18 sec the balloon appears to be moving left and down when compared to the background. It than levels off.

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Now you're talking about whether or not the object is slightly descending as opposed to in perfectly neutral, level flight. Where is the turbulence you were insisting made the balloon clip "far from a perfect match"?

Note that, given the angle and elevation it was filmed at, if the jellyfish were also slowly descending it wouldn't be obvious in the way it would be if it were filmed side-on like this balloon cluster. Ask yourself what a slowly descending bunch of balloons ~1000ft up would look like if filmed from above at a ~30° angle.

Cosmic Osmo said:

Now you're talking about whether or not the object is slightly descending as opposed to in perfectly neutral, level flight.

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Though this is not enough for myself to say the behavior of these balloons in flight is similar enough that I can believe the UAP is balloons.

It is fair to say the bundle in the videos seems to be making a "stepped" and non linear decent.



If you notice in those 3 shots, the red balloon does not face the same exact forward facing direction either, so that bundle, is rotating a smidge in the air (but not enough that I can't say the UAP isnt also with the video distortion)

Adding a correction with the stabilized footage, by looking at the trees in the background ou can see it doesnt step as I thought, it continues that trajectory

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/jellyfish-ufo-from-tmzs-ufo-revolution.13304/post-309848

Arthur 33 said:

This is a KEY point. If a balloon has light weight material dangling (not holding a load) those bits will flap around in the small gentle gusts of wind, while the balloon and payload will remain steady and smooth because it's mass resists the acceleration. The Jellyfish appears to have dangling bits, but they are not moving at all as if they are rigid material.

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There is no evidence of gusts of wind.

Mendel said:

There is no evidence of gusts of wind.

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There is 2 separate flags one dangling with no wind the other over 50 degrees indicating wind.

This indicates evidence of gusts (meaning changing wind speeds) of wind to me.

tobigtofool said:

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Take two similar balloons. Inflate one with air (blow it up). Tie each balloon to its own piece of string, and then dangle both in the wind (an electric fan may be helpful here).
The masses are almost equal (the inflated balloon has more mass because of the air inside!)—which one is more "resistant" to the wind?

Movement due to wind depends on pressure, mass, area, and shape (drag). Inflated balloons are, next to umbrellas, the prime examples of everyday objects with low resistance to wind, because they have high air resistance/drag compared to their weight.