Jellyfish UFO from TMZ's 'UFO Revolution'

[Arthur 33]

I may be incorrect, and can't find it as this thread is just getting longer and longer, but I understood the "witnesses" just to be "people who saw the video" as opposed to real-time witnesses. Is that right? If so, what they told Corbell isn't evidence of anything.

I don't think Corbell was specific on whether the witnesses he spoke to were there that night (1st hand) or not. That is a unknown. Somebody should ask him.

 

[Ann K]

When it comes down to it, there's limited provenance for this video and its context, just Corbell and one or two veterans from the base who've said someone else recorded it and told them a story about what happened and then how they joked about it being a spaghetti monster based on this and apparently longer clips of the same indicent. Unlike, for example, the Pentagon-released FLIR video, which was attributed to Lieutenant Commander Chad Underwood.

That calls into question Corbell's claim that they sent people out to look for it with night vision goggles. And the whole story about an object entering the water and then zooming off does not (as yet) have any confirming video, which seems suspect since the other video is public; is that pure invention?

 

[Bruce M]

I've browsed the multitude of posts out there on other sites from people analysing this and coming up with their theories. [Impolite snipped] They presumably instantly jump to 'aliens' because it benefits their views.
So, people who have toned it down, but are still saying essentially the same thing (ie 'This is un-explainable') dont really have much credibility in my view.
"They couldnt track it" makes it sound like stealth technology. I saw no tracking attempts on the video, and that kind of shape isnt trackable via normal optics limitations anyway.
"Invisible to NVG goggles" to hype up the mystery, when in fact they were slow to go looking and it was out of sight by the time they tried.

 

[FatPhil]

There's at least one witness that must have been actually there when it was recorded, since that's where the claim that the object went into the water and then shot off comes from (I assume at least, since nobody else has seen this longer version of the footage where this happens)

Given the lack of evidence, I can easily imagine no such witness exists, and the story is a quilt created from a patchwork of clips, only connected by geographic region, turned into a larger narrative. This is a simple doubt to assuage, and yet they make no effort to do it. They must be working on the presumption their audience is highly uncritical.

 

[FatPhil]

That's an interesting question. If the sensor operator for the aerostat saw the object real-time only via his IR camera feed (as opposed to with the Mark 1 eyeball), is that operator a witness? I watched the second a/c hit the WTC in real-time on live TV, does that make me a witness?

I'd say contemporaneity is the most important factor, and a minimally processed feed. What you saw via the telly could be used to corroborate a claim that a plane hit a building, so it satisfies what is demanded of witnesses.

By minimally processed, I mean none of this stuff: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=qkWWcjeL_zM which is Corridor Crew's /The Hidden VFX in Live Sports/ - best described as an overview of the layers upon layers over the decades of marking up, annotating, and generally blinging up televised sports. So nothing that interprets the images in any way - as that's feeding you what it's programmed to feed you, so you're not the actual source of that information. Headers, footers, logos, tickers, stuff that's more the frame than the image, that's hopefully fine as long as your testimony is only what you actually see, not what you're being told you're seeing. Of course there's a priming issue - and do you even trust the clock in the corner of the screen? They may *want* you to believe it's 9:03 AM!

 

[JMartJr]

the whole story about an object entering the water and then zooming off does not (as yet) have any confirming video, which seems suspect since the other video is public; is that pure invention?

It certainly adds two popular UFO tropes and some "sizzle" to yet another video of something moving along slowly without manuevering...

 

[Mendel]

and a minimally processed feed

and who can testify as to the lack of processing? there's your witness!

 

[JackTReason]

My thoughts always go to reasonable assertions. Which identified and accepted alien does this look like? None of course, as we don't have any of these. So far as evidence shows, there are no alien visitors to earth. Frankly, we haven't even a single piece of evidence that aliens exist or could or would visit earth if they do exist.
This makes including aliens in the speculation about what this is somewhat ridiculous. It is yet another example of "I don't know what it is, therefore aliens."
I happily join the choir curious, and wonder what it is, but until we have demonstrated aliens exist, can, and do visit earth, including them in the discussion is something I can't take seriously.

 

[FatPhil]

My thoughts always go to reasonable assertions. Which identified and accepted alien does this look like? None of course, as we don't have any of these. So far as evidence shows, there are no alien visitors to earth. Frankly, we haven't even a single piece of evidence that aliens exist or could or would visit earth if they do exist.
This makes including aliens in the speculation about what this is somewhat ridiculous. It is yet another example of "I don't know what it is, therefore aliens."
I happily join the choir curious, and wonder what it is, but until we have demonstrated aliens exist, can, and do visit earth, including them in the discussion is something I can't take seriously.

A bayesian approach is a bit more nuanced than this frequentist approach, but my priors have a P(alien) that's only non-zero in the [0,10^-100) range. So effectively we're on the same page.

 

[Mick West]

I happily join the choir curious, and wonder what it is, but until we have demonstrated aliens exist, can, and do visit earth, including them in the discussion is something I can't take seriously.

I view "aliens" as a very small subset of the "other' category. It's worth considering because people often make the case that a particular piece of evidence indicated aliens (or NHI). Just dismissing those claims as essentially impossible isn't going to help.

 

[JackTReason]

I view "aliens" as a very small subset of the "other' category. It's worth considering because people often make the case that a particular piece of evidence indicated aliens (or NHI). Just dismissing those claims as essentially impossible isn't going to help.

I'm sure you are right in practice. I am trying to shift the tone of the broad public discussion. Perhaps when someone suggests aliens, we could ask them why not Leprechauns or Jinns?

I understand where the general public feeling is about alien existence, in that a large minority or maybe even a majority thing they exist and visit earth. I understand that my almost immediate dismissal of these claims won't cause many to reconsider their thoughts, but perhaps challenging why aliens are even presented as a possibility for sightings will invigorate critical thinking.
Again, these are just some thoughts as to how to reframe the public narrative, which currently allows aliens as a default for whatever we don't accurately identify. (This applies to cryptids and ghosts, etc as well).
Here we have what is seems likely to be just a bunch of balloons, and yet those who are not convinced by this think aliens a fair second choice. That seems crazy to me.

 

[Ravi]

I think this thread is getting too much off topic.

 

[Mendel]

I'm sure you are right in practice. I am trying to shift the tone of the broad public discussion. Perhaps when someone suggests aliens, we could ask them why not Leprechauns or Jinns?

You can, but you won't create a dialogue this way.
If you want to engage in dialogue with the people who think it's aliens, you have to at least accept the premise that it could be, otherwise they won't accept your premise that maybe it's not aliens, and you just stay in your separate camps.

"Common sense" is, unfortunately, subjective.

 

[Rationalman]

I'm sure you are right in practice. I am trying to shift the tone of the broad public discussion. Perhaps when someone suggests aliens, we could ask them why not Leprechauns or Jinns?

I understand where the general public feeling is about alien existence, in that a large minority or maybe even a majority thing they exist and visit earth. I understand that my almost immediate dismissal of these claims won't cause many to reconsider their thoughts, but perhaps challenging why aliens are even presented as a possibility for sightings will invigorate critical thinking.
Again, these are just some thoughts as to how to reframe the public narrative, which currently allows aliens as a default for whatever we don't accurately identify. (This applies to cryptids and ghosts, etc as well).
Here we have what is seems likely to be just a bunch of balloons, and yet those who are not convinced by this think aliens a fair second choice. That seems crazy to me.

As Sean Kirkpatrick said in his OpEd, very few UFO believers are going to change their minds based on anything presented to them, it's a religion.

 

[JackTReason]

You can, but you won't create a dialogue this way.
If you want to engage in dialogue with the people who think it's aliens, you have to at least accept the premise that it could be, otherwise they won't accept your premise that maybe it's not aliens, and you just stay in your separate camps.

"Common sense" is, unfortunately, subjective.

That's fair, I suppose. But just to flush that thought out, if someone did say they saw a Leprechaun, would you at least accept the premise that it could be?

 

[Rationalman]

That's fair, I suppose. But just to flush that thought out, if someone did say they saw a Leprechaun, would you at least accept the premise that it could be?

I wouldn't because a Leprechaun is said to be a supernatural being and that falls in the realm of religion by default and not science. Religion being defined as Irrational explanations for reality which are really no explanations. Science being defined as Rational explanations for reality.

 

[JackTReason]

I wouldn't because a Leprechaun is said to be a supernatural being and that falls in the realm of religion by default and not science. Religion being defined as Irrational explanations for reality which are really no explanations. Science being defined as Rational explanations for reality.

I confess I am in the camp that does not consider alien visitation as a rational explanation for the unknown. They seemed to be supported only in the presumption that because life exists on earth, it must exist elsewhere. We should consider that all that is "out there" is only visible to us in the past tense, that is, we see what was there, but not what is there now. How much credit are we giving for presumed aliens in overcoming that time difference? Now we must suppose that aliens either are making oneway trips to visit earth, or can travel through time in either direction, or exist in some plane where such time has less meaning.
To me, the line between aliens who can visit earth and a supernatural being gets very blurry.

I do appreciate your point about engaging with people on there terms, and I do generally want to hear why people think aliens have visited earth. But I find the answers consistently built entirely on fallacies that do not meet the basic criteria of critical thinking. At some point it sounds just like supernatural claims.
And just like supernatural claims, I am open to the possibility that they are real, even Leprechauns.

 

[NorCal Dave]

That's fair, I suppose. But just to flush that thought out, if someone did say they saw a Leprechaun, would you at least accept the premise that it could be?

We're getting off topic here. This discussion would be better in it's own thread or as part of the Politeness Policy thread:
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/discussion-of-metabunks-politeness-policy.13249/

As your newer I'll just add, maybe the way to phrase it is "I'll accept the premise that they think it could be". At least to start off. In addition, one can't prove a negative. If I'm talking to someone about Bigfoot, I can point out all the reason I think the existence of Bigfoot is unlikely, but I can't prove it does NOT exist.

More relevant to the topic at hand, the fact that some claim or believe that this strange looking clump of balloons floating along (that's what I think it is) is not only unusual, but perhaps otherworldly, is why we're talking about it. If everyone just said "that's some weird looking balloons", there'd be nothing to discuss. The fact that some think this is an alien/UFO or whatever, motivates people here to try to explain it. That means accepting the idea that at least they think it's possible.

 

[Rationalman]

At some point it sounds just like supernatural claims.
And just like supernatural claims, I am open to the possibility that they are real, even Leprechauns.

I am not open to the possibility that anything supernatural can exist, but if I did, it would be in a religion forum. What would be the point? It's a matter of personal belief and opinion. There can be no rational explanation for the supernatural. I think people we can start with a premise that ET's visiting Earth is possible as long as the supernatural is not invoked in the theory. So ET's and Leprechauns are not comparable.

 

[Landru]

I am not open to the possibility that anything supernatural can exist, but if I did, it would be in a religion forum. What would be the point? It's a matter of personal belief and opinion. There can be no rational explanation for the supernatural. I think people we can start with a premise that ET's visiting Earth is possible as long as the supernatural is not invoked in the theory. So ET's and Leprechauns are not comparable.

This is off topic. Start a new thread, go to PMs or stop.

 

[Mendel]

That's fair, I suppose. But just to flush that thought out, if someone did say they saw a Leprechaun, would you at least accept the premise that it could be?

If you look at what we've been doing early in this thread, we"ve not been discussing "could it be an alien jellyfish" because that's not an interesting topic: you can only voice beliefs and speculations.

What we instead did (well, not me, I ignored this for two weeks) was to establish provenience (which camp? when? what observation system?), provenance (Mick talked to a 2nd hand witness), and figuring out details (size, transparency). No matter what we believed or thought going in, this data allowed us to conclude that the object(s) in the footage have a lot in common with a bunch of balloons, and it's not impossible for such a group of balloons to have floated there. That's something anyone can concede, even if their first impression of the video was that it was an alien jellyfish. Collecting the data and doing the work yields better results than focusing on how it's basically impossible for an alien to be there.

So I wouldn't discuss that premise at all, because it's better to focus on the actial observation, whether the phenomenon looks like a jellyfish or a leprechaun.

 

[JackTReason]

I like that this forum is here, but I am more focused on the rationality of these claims in general, and don't have much to offer when it comes to debunking claims with tools, and analyzing photos and videos.
I may check in to see what has been done, but it seems more likely that my contributions will be distractions from the mission of the group. With that in mind, I'll stop contributing, and discontinue responses.
With respect, adieu.

 

[John J.]

...the object was not visible with NVG's. This suggests some type of camouflage technology, and the color shift we are observing could be technology intended to confuse IR targeting.

More prosaically, it suggests the object wasn't seen by people with NVGs.

If there were people looking for it with NVGs:

That calls into question Corbell's claim that they sent people out to look for it with night vision goggles.

"Invisible to NVG goggles" to hype up the mystery, when in fact they were slow to go looking and it was out of sight by the time they tried.

But the object was visible, consistently, to an MX-20 system which has greater capabilities than NVGs,
which is why the military buy MX-20s and similar systems, despite their much higher price and bulk compared to NVGs. They see more, and see further away. (L3 Harris WESCAM MX-20 brochure below; apologies if already posted).

This suggests to me that the object didn't have any form of camouflage technology (unless the object was in fact an ETI probe designed to behave and look like a bunch of balloons); it couldn't match its IR signature to ambient air or background temperatures. No skin temperature control, no active IR countermeasures, not even a puff of IR-absorbent smoke.

Also, no interference with the operation of the surveillance aerostat, using EMP or whatever.
What happened to the extraterrestrial's much-vaunted capability to interfere with electronics at a distance, so in vogue in the 60's to the 80's? It's almost as if they lost this key capability just as large scale manufacturing and use of reliable semiconductor-based circuitry got underway. A bit like how the aliens reduced their visits, as confirmed by radar contacts, during the time that digital filters for radar were introduced...

There has been considerable discussion on other threads about the Drake equation and the Fermi paradox, which doesn't need to be repeated here. But even if technological species are common in the galaxy- and so far we've seen no evidence of any whatsoever- and even if practical interstellar travel is possible, the chances of us being visited by a technology that is roughly equivalent to our own, or just a few decades ahead of our own, is zero- they won't have interstellar travel.
But that might be the approximate level of technology that could conceal a modest object from NVGs at a couple of hundred metres while being visible to an MX-20.

(We have no evidence that the jellyfish was concealed from NVGs; at best the claimants say it wasn't seen by people using NVGs).

It's a common trope in science fiction (particularly not very good SF, e.g. some made-for-TV movies) that we meet aliens who are a bit more technologically advanced than us. When Earth-ET relations go pear-shaped all we need is a really smart plan and some cobbled-together hardware from the lovably eccentric but formerly marginalized genius, plus some innate human derring-do courtesy of the loyal but maverick veteran, the really brave practical lady, those pesky kids etc. etc.

If we were visited by an ETI/ functional ETI artefact, it must be unlikely that the originating species' technological development paralleled our own to such an extent that they were the equivalent of just a century or two in advance of us.
There are physical constraints to technology, but I suspect a technology matured for "only" a few millennia from the equivalent of our own current level would be capable of building a means of information-gathering that is effectively undetectable by us, if that's what the technology's creators wanted to do.

I think the idea of a spacefaring species conducting covert reconnaissance of Earth with some sort of small craft that has countermeasures against NVGs, but which can be imaged by an MX-20 turret, belongs more to the "They've got some better tech but we can still beat 'em!" school of SF than serious (but wholly speculative) discussion of possible (if extremely unlikely) ETI "visit" scenarios.

L3 Henry WESCAM MX-20 brochure, from the "Aerocontract" website,
https://www.aerocontact.com/en/virt...atalog/176-surveillance-system-mx-20-brochure
(Thumbnails; click to enlarge if interested)

 

[gtoffo]

-Were these changes in brightness automatic, or was the this manual? Was the system doing it, or was the operator doing it at the time? I would think that automatic changes in brightness would be small, but the large changes in brightness were done by the operator, so that he could understand what it was he was seeing.

I don’t think it works like that.

In black hot those cameras usually show:
- full black: the hottest point in the scene
- full white: the coldest point in the scene

All other values of gray are in between values of IR radiation in the scene.

As the camera pans quickly the scene shown to the operator adjusts depending on the hottest and coldest point measured by the sensor in that specific instant/frame.

It is probably automatic in this scene but we can’t rule out some manual adjustments on top of it.

 

[Arthur 33]

If we were visited by an ETI/ functional ETI artefact, it must be unlikely that the originating species' technological development paralleled our own to such an extent that they were the equivalent of just a century or two in advance of us.

I keep seeing this straw man argument. Has anyone (even Corbell) claimed that they know what it is and that it is ET? NO

Proving that it IS something is much harder than proving that it IS NOT something.

Not bird crap
Not drone
Not balloon

That is all we really know.

 

[2pint]

Not balloon

That is all we really know.

Balloons are by far the best candidate here given the evidence we DO have. The only anomalous observable the object seems to display was its apparent ability to change temperature but this has been shown to quite clearly be the camera adjusting to the background.

Until the apparent video of it dipping in and out of the water turns up then there’s not a lot more to say.

 

[Arthur 33]

Balloons are by far the best candidate here given the evidence we DO have

Not true. Balloons have been pretty much debunked.

If I were to make a guess of a prosaic explanation I would say that it is foam.


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

 

[Calter]

Not true. Balloons have been pretty much debunked.

If I were to make a guess of a prosaic explanation I would say that it is foam.

What would you say discards the balloon hypothesis? For me at least, it doesn't really display any behavior one or several balloons couldn't display.

 

[Ann K]

Not true. Balloons have been pretty much debunked.

If I were to make a guess of a prosaic explanation I would say that it is foam.

Over 800 entries on this thread, and nowhere have balloons been definitively debunked. And since the sighting was near Baghdad in a place of high heat and low humidity, I'd say "foam" runs a close second to green cheese of lunar origin as a plausible suggestion.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

I don’t think it works like that.

In black hot those cameras usually show:
- full black: the hottest point in the scene
- full white: the coldest point in the scene

All other values of gray are in between values of IR radiation in the scene.

As the camera pans quickly the scene shown to the operator adjusts depending on the hottest and coldest point measured by the sensor in that specific instant/frame.

It is probably automatic in this scene but we can’t rule out some manual adjustments on top of it.

I'll explain. I'm an old film guy. Photo major and advanced amateur in film photography. Not laying the ground for an argument from my own authority, but laying the ground to explain why I think this is (at least primarily) a change in brightness and a manual adjustment.

When you increase brightness everything in the frame gets lighter.
When you decrease brightness everything in the frame gets darker.

All values change together and equally

Contrast increases or decreases the differences between dark and light values.

After you've made a few hundred prints off different negatives you get an eye for the difference between brightness and contrast and what needs to be adjusted. Keeping in mind that I'm rusty, I'm fallible, and I don't know much about this IR digital system, to me it looks as if it's brightness that's being adjusted in this GIF, which goes from 0:08 to 0:11 seconds in the high quality video.



Note that all values are changing from lighter to darker. The UAP gets darker, the ground gets darker, even the artifacts get darker. What I see is the brightness getting turned down. Quickly and a lot.


If contrast alone were being increased, the UAP balloon would be getting whiter, not darker, while the dark areas would be getting darker. If contrast alone were being decreased, the dark areas in the background would be turning gray, not darker. We don't see either of these things happening. Everything is getting darker. To my fallible eye this is the brightness getting turned down, rather drastically.


Now then, contrast may also be changing at the same time. This system may link the two together in some complex way, even when in manual mode. But I can't see that. I fully acknowledge that this may be my failure. It may be that I can't keep track of brightness and contrast at the same time. It may turn out that the contrast is being adjusted up or down at the same time... or not at all.

To complicate further, there's the question of dynamic range and perception. Dynamic range is the range of bright and dark values that something can record/perceive/display. Over exposing or under exposing film degrades the dynamic range of the film and degrades the contrast in the image. Is the same true for this IR sensor? Don't know.

Does adjusting the brightness in this system involve changing the amount of IR light getting to the sensor? (Adjusting the size of the iris in the diaphragm of the camera lens?) Or is it an electronic adjustment? Don't know.

Also human perception of values can change. So maybe this IR system makes changes in contrast to compensate? Don't know. But in that case the whole point in changing contrast would be so that you wouldn't see a change in contrast.


Turning to the question of whether this adjustment in brightness was done by the operator manually, or whether this is an automatic adjustment...

Luminance indicates the brightness of light emitted from or reflected off a surface.

This is what I see:

The luminance of the background is not changing significantly during this ~3 seconds of the video. And we can safely say that the luminance of the UAP isn't changing either.

So why would the auto-brightness feature (it would be auto-exposure on a film camera) make an adjustment to the brightness when there's no change in the luminance within the frame?

Because the bootleg camera didn't capture the entire video screen, we can't tell for sure whether brightness and/or contrast were set to auto or manual.

I'm just reporting what I see. An informed - but fallible - speculation. To me this looks like a manual change in brightness by an operator testing to see if that would help him to recognize what the heck he's looking at. It doesn't matter if that test made it look crappier for a few seconds. It was an experiment. Experiments can fail.

It's already been established that the object was being manually tracked by an operator, so we can reasonably assume that the operator may have been doing other things. Like adjusting brightness manually. That's what I would do.

 

[John J.]

...the object was not visible with NVG's. This suggests some type of camouflage technology, and the color shift we are observing could be technology intended to confuse IR targeting.

If I were to make a guess of a prosaic explanation I would say that it is foam.

Though I don't agree with your current hypothesis, I think the ability to alter one's beliefs about something after considering the evidence is a useful and positive trait, particularly in this forum (and more importantly in some real-world settings).

If anyone posts IR footage of a blob of windblown foam several hundred feet in the air over an inland location in the Middle East or a similar environment, largely maintaining its shape and size for several minutes, that behaves / appears more like the jellyfish than a bunch of balloons would, I hope I too would reconsider my current (unproven) belief that the jellyfish is some party balloons perhaps with some other lightweight but equally everyday material.

 

[NorCal Dave]

I keep seeing this straw man argument. Has anyone (even Corbell) claimed that they know what it is and that it is ET? NO

I haven't listened to Corbel that much on this particular case. However, I think we both know what his angle is. He may not come out and say "this is an alien" but as George Knapp's protégé and an influencer in the UFO world, I don't think he would post this video while promoting the "phenomenon" if it was an obvious balloon, or blob of foam or any other easily identifiable prosaic explanation.

Proving that it IS something is much harder than proving that it IS NOT something

Correct, proving a negative is difficult if not impossible, that's why the starting point is more of "what is a more likely explanation" for what we're seeing. Sometimes the negative can be proved by showing what something is conclusively, such as in this thread where an unusual thing in the air was shown to be a graduation balloon:

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/so...tter-buttes-ca-is-a-graduation-balloon.12856/

But usually, it's about what it could be and what seems likely. What things can we identify that we know already exists and behave, more or less, like what is in the video. Of those things we know what seems most likely?

It's been shown that whatever it is, it pretty much moves along like it's floating with the wind, like a balloon. People have shown that in the Baghdad area there are lots of occasions where elaborate balloon creations made from a mix of helium and air-filled balloons made of various materials are the norm. It's been established that this was filmed ~40miles from Baghdad, so a large source of elaborate balloon creations. That no one saw it with NVG isn't that unusual giving the circumstances. The light/dark changes in the video appear to be results of either operators manually doing it or automated systems in the camera.

Giving all that, what is most likely? It's some sort of weird looking balloon assembly floating along, or some sort of strange unexplainable or possibly other wordily something or other?

 

[pantoptican]

Is there any way for this to be something like a dead spider hanging from the front of the blimp? I assume no since it travels from right to left too far to be something right in front of the camera housing but just wanted to check.

To me the most realistic non alien explanation (assuming it isn't a dead spider close to the camera) is balloons or a drone covered by some sort of net or other disguise possibly to distract the camera operator while something more nefarious was going on in the other direction. Or to test the response time and/or actions of camera operator/army by the enemy.

 

[Mick West]

Is there any way for this to be something like a dead spider hanging from the front of the blimp? I assume no since it travels from right to left too far to be something right in front of the camera housing but just wanted to check.

To me the most realistic non alien explanation (assuming it isn't a dead spider close to the camera) is balloons or a drone covered by some sort of net or other disguise possibly to distract the camera operator while something more nefarious was going on in the other direction. Or to test the response time and/or actions of camera operator/army by the enemy.

No. This has been discussed. It would not move like that, and it would not be in focus.

 

[Mick West]

If contrast alone were being increased, the UAP balloon would be getting whiter, not darker, while the dark areas would be getting darker. If contrast alone were being decreased, the dark areas in the background would be turning gray, not darker. We don't see either of these things happening. Everything is getting darker. To my fallible eye this is the brightness getting turned down, rather drastically.

It seems roughly equivalent to a levels adjustment, compressing the upper (black) end of the dynamic range. Here's two frames. we see lots of vegetation that read as similar temperature to the object. Also note the edges of the road. They all change with the object.


Doing a levels adjustment on the right side (lighter) image. I drag the black marker about 1/3 of the way across. The result is very similar.


I think this adjustment is automatic. If we look at a similar earlier transtion, from black to grey


We can do a similar levels adjustment on the grey image to narrow the dynamic range:

But notice how the covered building is now invisible in the black. The scene would be very over-exposed. This change happens smoothly as more of the building comes into view, suggesting it's automatic.

 

[Arthur 33]

And since the sighting was near Baghdad in a place of high heat and low humidity, I'd say "foam" runs a close second to green cheese of lunar origin as a plausible suggestion.

The shape is not right for a balloon/cluster. Some of those foam clusters can be pretty rigid. And since it was at night there is no sun to rapidly dry it out. Also I suspect foam would be less transparent than latex balloons because of the water content. So I personally put foam way above balloons.

But that does not explain the inability to lock on, the color change, the NVGs not picking it up, the object going into the water and than leaving at rapid speed. Also the stability (lack of rotation) is not right. But foam is clearly better than balloons IMHO.

 

[flarkey]

But that does not explain the inability to lock on, the color change, the NVGs not picking it up, the object going into the water and than leaving at rapid speed. Also the stability (lack of rotation) is not right. But foam is clearly better than balloons IMHO.

Wow - didn't see that bit in the video, can you link to a timecode? Or is it more 'trust me, bro' evidence?

 

[psikiwi]

Some of those foam clusters can be pretty rigid.

I've seen stable foams, and they can have a pretty impressive life-span. However, what are you proposing is the lift element? Although I am only arguing from personal experience watching sea-foams get airborne on a stormy day, I would appreciate a further explanation from your hypothesis, of where the foam is formed, and why/how it remains airborne for the extent of at least this video.

But that does not explain the inability to lock on, the color change, the NVGs not picking it up, the object going into the water and than leaving at rapid speed.

And to my mind this is where the foam theory then dissolves (pun intended). This appears to be stretching the hypothesis beyond it's limits.

 

[jdog]

I've seen stable foams, and they can have a pretty impressive life-span. However, what are you proposing is the lift element? Although I am only arguing from personal experience watching sea-foams get airborne on a stormy day, I would appreciate a further explanation from your hypothesis, of where the foam is formed, and why/how it remains airborne for the extent of at least this video.

And to my mind this is where the foam theory then dissolves (pun intended). This appears to be stretching the hypothesis beyond it's limits.

You should apologize for bursting his bubble.

 

[Calter]

But that does not explain the inability to lock on, the color change, the NVGs not picking it up, the object going into the water and than leaving at rapid speed. Also the stability (lack of rotation) is not right. But foam is clearly better than balloons IMHO.

This thread is about discussing the video footage, not Corbell's claims about the video footage.

If you want to argue based on Corbell's claims you also need to take into account the footage of apparently the same object, floating over water with a different camera overlay. Granted, that footage seems to be over land, and several miles south, and in a path that doesn't make sense for it to be the same object, but you are the one that wants to take Corbell's words for facts so that's your issue to come to terms with.

In this thread, that second footage is ignored because it's likely a different event (it has its own thread for analysis). The going into the water and leaving at rapid speed is also ignored because it's not part of the footage. NVGs is also ignored because it's not part of the footage, it's impossible to know if the object was actually invisible to NVGs or if they simply didn't see it. If there were a part of the footage where they change from FLIR to NVG and the object was suddenly gone, then you'd have a case in your hands.

In order of what is displayed on the footage, here's how each thing has been addressed.

• inability to lock on

While this MX20 can use an AVT to lock onto objects, this target would be difficult. The very cluttered background, of varying temperatures, would make optical tracking difficult.

Locking on mechanisms aren't magic, they don't have a little guy inside them that has the mind of a human and realizes what are valuable things to lock on. They are made to lock on to possible threats, these will likely be emitting heat and will stand out to the environment, this object does not stand out, it's possible the camera simply didn't find it notable enough to be a target to lock on.

• color change

This is currently being discussed so I'm not sure how you are missing the conversation, but it is likely an automatic contrast (or brightness I'm not sure at this point) change done by the camera as hot objects enter and leave the frame. This would also explain why the rest of the environment changes color, which would not be explained by the object magically changing heat signature by itself.

• stability (lack of rotation) is not right

As discussed extensively, this is plausible if the object is moving with calm winds.

• shape is not right for a balloon/cluster

And here I was thinking that there's no point in discussing balloon shapes because they can be whatever shape you want them to be. It's also important to remember the footage has edge sharpening, which will inevitably distort the actual shape of the object in favor of making some figures more identifiable.

There is also the spatial filtering on (the SPA on the overlay). This will apply edge sharpening to everything.

Both quotes are from Bruce M, in page 20 and 19 of the thread respectively. (which are now linked)