Skinwalker Ranch - Laser Beam Stops and Starts in Mid Air

[Mendel]

It appears we have more spooky satellites and space lasers on the menu in next week's episode.

"The beam stops ... and then starts again".

The question here is, what makes the beam visible in the first place?

 

[FatPhil]

The question here is, what makes the beam visible in the first place?

Is there a reason to think it's not just Rayleigh scattering? The wavelength is huge compared to the typical molecule size in air, so Rayleigh dominates. A blue beam would be scatterred more (eyeballing (green@550nm/blue@450nm)^4 ~ 2+, but I'm a bit colourblind and have no idea what colour the other beam is), so would lose more energy, but we're way less sensitive to blue by more than that factor.

 

[Mendel]

Is there a reason to think it's not just Rayleigh scattering? The wavelength is huge compared to the typical molecule size in air, so Rayleigh dominates. A blue beam would be scatterred more (eyeballing (green@550nm/blue@450nm)^4 ~ 2+, but I'm a bit colourblind and have no idea what colour the other beam is), so would lose more energy, but we're way less sensitive to blue by more than that factor.

the other color is green

in a stage setting, laser beams require dust or mist to be visible
outside at night, there might be evening dew from the cooling air

looking closely at the left laser, there seems to be some green scatter in the gap, it's just much fainter. so my hypothesis is that there's another source of scatter that is absent in parts of the air? like warm air from a vent would be less misty

 

[Mendel]

if this was a magic trick, there'd be several ways to do this, especially at night and with a fixed camera.

 

[Mick West]

Those are very abrupt starts and stops, like there's something in front of two of the green laser.

I wonder if it just shows up on video on one frame - which might indicate something like a rolling shutter artifact with the laser flickering

 

[jimmyslippin]

I wonder if it just shows up on video on one frame - which might indicate something like a rolling shutter artifact with the laser flickering

lol... I just came here to suggest this after feeding the image to ChatGPT.

From what I can tell from the preview they are just looking at a single frame.

 

[jimmyslippin]

Is it just me or does this suggest bad Photoshop job?

 

[Mick West]

It's a portrait shot, so that suggests a photo taken with a phone.

 

[FatPhil]

Those are very abrupt starts and stops, like there's something in front of two of the green laser.

I wonder if it just shows up on video on one frame - which might indicate something like a rolling shutter artifact with the laser flickering

Seeing more than one frame would be useful, certainly. Alas, it not appearing in other frames could be used to add further woo to any claims. As could it appearing in other frames. That's the wonder of woo.

For me, the strongest counterargument against a rolling shutter artefact is how the leftmost green beam is lacking a sliver on its right side, so I'd still favour something occluding some of the beams. As noted, Photoshop still can't be ruled out yet, of course.

 

[flarkey]

Interesting video on the effects of rolling shutter cameras and lasers:


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tozuzV5YZ7U

at 2m17s...

So what we've done is we've turned the camera 90 degrees on its side, so now that rolling shutter effect is going horizontally, and this laser is being turned on and off incredibly quickly and incredibly precisely, so that as the camera scans by for every frame, the laser is on when it needs to be and off when it needs to be.
That takes a lot of maths and a lot of precision, but the result... is this.

 

[Mendel]

so for this to be (unintentional) rolling shutter, two of the green lasers would've had to be synchronously off or obscured for less than 0.01 seconds, and the (phone?) camera would need a rolling shutter sweeping parallel to the short side (does this even exist?).

 

[jarlrmai]

More and more weird stuff happens at Skinwalker ranch that just coincidentally happens to be related to neat effects and stuff you'd know about if you had Travis Taylors education and career background..

 

[JMartJr]

There's some stuff going on here that strongly suggests, to me, that the image has been altered::

The rounded ends of the green beam and the two nearly identical features in the blue beam in the gap of the green beam, and the slight wave in the left edge of the blue beam look to me like somebody erased that area, decided it would look spookier if the blue beam was not broken, and so painted in the missing blue beam. Oh, and how the darker blue part of the blue beam intrudes into the lighter blue part to a very similar extent to which part of the unbroken green beam is clipped on the other side of the image.



In addition to the further beam (on the left) being accidentally partially erased(See @jimmyslippin post HERE), adjusting levels a bit confirms what can be seen slightly in the un-fiddled-with-by-be image: the glare of the missing laser is still there.



I also have about convinced myself that I see very slight evidence of the central blue beam having been restored, with a slight line barely visible at the same level as the lower occluded bit of the green beams -- but that one may just be me falling for confirmation bias and anomaly hunting. IF that is correct, though, it suggest something occluded the view of the beams, possibly intruding from our right) which blocked all but the leftmost beams, and somebody decided it would be cooler looking if some beams were blocked and some weren't.

If the third example is me seeing things, the other two still strongly suggest the picture has been manipulated.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, "reality TV" shows are entertainment. If what actually happens is not entertaining enough, they are free to jazz it up a bit. I suspect strongly that they have done so here. (Captain Disillusion catching "America's Got Talent," a "reality show" in the form of a competition, helping a magic act look better by messing with the video is HERE, cued up to the most relevant bit, for another example.)

 

[FatPhil]

Interesting video on the effects of rolling shutter cameras and lasers:

Concepts similar to that have been used in real world (OK, astronomy) for quite some time:

a Rayleigh guide star is based on Rayleigh scattering in the lower atmosphere. In order to use only the scattered light from the higher parts of the atmosphere (at roughly 30 km height), one uses a pulsed laser together with time-gating detection in the wavefront sensor.

Content from External Source

-- https://www.rp-photonics.com/laser_guide_stars.html

Don't want to see the laser for a particular period of time? Simple - don't look for the laser at that particular period of time!

 

[Mick West]

@jimmyslippin, where did you get the video in the OP?

 

[jimmyslippin]

@jimmyslippin, where did you get the video in the OP?

Check your private conversations.

 

[Ann K]

Interesting video on the effects of rolling shutter cameras and lasers:

Yes, I enjoyed that. But I think it more likely that a lower-budget method was used (for what might be a single frame) for this particular effect. And since photoshop would present no difficulties to achieve this image, it's a good candidate.

 

[LeastWeasel]

More importantly, what will

@jimmyslippin, where did you get the video in the OP?

I saw it as part of a preview for next week’s show.

 

[Ravi]

I think it is the shadow formed by a screen, hoisted up. As they similarly did with another screen in the beginning of the video, in post #1.
Basically the screen is blocking the furthest beams, and the middle blue one is in front (it is a circular laser set up). This image is might be a long exposure frame, to visualise the laser beams. You would not seen them that bright, or not even at all (depends on the air/seeing). Powerful enough lasers are visible in real time.

* edit

 

[jimmyslippin]

The company that brings in these lasers is called Nu-Salt Laser Light Shows International.
Company Website
Company Youtube Channel

 

[jarlrmai]

I think it is the shadow formed by a screen, hoisted up. As they similarly did with another screen in the beginning of the video, in post #1.
Basically the screen is blocking the furthest beams, and the middle blue one is in front (it is a circular laser set up). This image is might be a long exposure frame, to visualise the laser beams. You would not seen them that bright, or not even at all (depends on the air/seeing). Powerful enough lasers are visible in real time.

* edit

It's not about the power so much as the availability of suspended particles to scatter the light.

 

[Scaramanga]

"The beam stops ... and then starts again".

Notice it only happens where there are two almost parallel beams, and not with single beams on their own. That suggests to me that it is destructive interference. As with Young's infamous double slit experiment, the beams are literally cancelling each other out. The dual beams are not exactly parallel, which means that they slope slightly towards or away from each other. That suggests there's a specific point at which the beams are close enough for destructive interference to occur. I mean...Travis Taylor, with all his Ph.Ds in science, ought to know this sort of thing !

 

[JMartJr]

That suggests there's a specific point at which the beams are close enough for destructive interference to occur.

Interesting. You're above my pay-grade now -- can I ask whether this concept is consistent with what looks like one beam being canceled but the other not? Or are there more beams than I think, maybe, and the gaps represent a point where two beams are canceled?

While I'm here, am I seeing another green laser beam that goes up a few meters then disappears forever? Or is that just a thick part of the structure that then gets thin to support what looks like a security camera, or the like?

 

[Mendel]

Notice it only happens where there are two almost parallel beams, and not with single beams on their own. That suggests to me that it is destructive interference. As with Young's infamous double slit experiment, the beams are literally cancelling each other out. The dual beams are not exactly parallel, which means that they slope slightly towards or away from each other. That suggests there's a specific point at which the beams are close enough for destructive interference to occur. I mean...Travis Taylor, with all his Ph.Ds in science, ought to know this sort of thing !

There is no evidence for interference at all, and it should be very visible—if it is even possible with this setup, which I doubt.

 

[Mick West]

There is no evidence for interference at all, and it should be very visible—if it is even possible with this setup, which I doubt.

The laser cannons look like those they used in previous seasons, which use multiple independent beams in what looks like a 10x10 grid.


I'm no Ph.D. in optics, but I can't see how that could create the abrupt breaks we are seeing via interference.

Either way, if it's a beam artifact or a camera artifact, then I'd expect there be other examples.

One possibility is a panorama stitching glitch - if it's a still image, maybe someone could not fit it all on, so took a panorama, maybe even in landscape mode swep vertically.

 

[Mick West]

regarding Rolling Shutter: iPhones, etc have the rolling shutter line parallel to the long side, with makes it seem like this is wrong:


However I think it would still work as the lines are tilted. However it would need both green lasers to flicker off and on very quickly at the same time. And there's other issues mention, like the glow, that are difficult to reconcile with this.

 

[John J.]

Playing about with brightness/ contrast/ exposure, it seems there might be hints of edges of a rectangular object visible against the sky.
You might need to tilt your screen/ nod your head to see what I think I can see.





-Am aware of illusory contours, which have been discussed on at least one other thread here.
Which doesn't make me, or anyone else, immune from seeing them.

If there is an object (e.g. a tethered rectangular balloon?) maybe the set-up is something like this:




Obvious problems with this tentative theory are
(1) The object would have to closely match the colour of the sky
(2) Maybe we'd expect it to be illuminated by reflecting light from the beams.

Perhaps a balloon or something was green-screened out?

What with all the scientific research going on at SWR, it's quite possible that a balloon, moored for a different study, was overlooked...

-Got to go, was randomly cutting big triangles out the sides of bits of paper earlier, just noticed there's a leopard hiding behind them.

 

[Mick West]

Playing about with brightness/ contrast/ exposure, it seems there might be hints of edges of a rectangular object visible against the sky.
You might need to tilt your screen/ nod your head to see what I think I can see.

Boosting it to the max, I think that's a very tenuous outline. Maybe just compression noise.


I suspect the weirdness with the other beams is just iPhone image sharpening/"enhancement"

 

[FatPhil]

Playing about with brightness/ contrast/ exposure, it seems there might be hints of edges of a rectangular object visible against the sky.
[...]
Obvious problems with this tentative theory are
(1) The object would have to closely match the colour of the sky
(2) Maybe we'd expect it to be illuminated by reflecting light from the beams.

There's no "maybe" about number 2. Radiosity mapping was one of the advances in 3D rendering that separated the too-contrasty obviously CGI images of the past from the actually quite believable images that came afterwards. There's a glow nearby - it's going to be illuminating whatever's near. Absence thereof would be weird.

This uses no fancy tech at all, but shows you the difference:

via: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiosity_(computer_graphics)

 

[john.phil]

There is a very common similar looking effect in laser shows where a gap appears:



Some of the gaps can be registered in a way straight edges are perceptible and no faint connecting beam is noticeable. It can also be asymmetric, where only part of the perceived thickness of the beam is missing:





In this laser show, there are several moments where the beams seem interrupted. Some of them are highlighted further down:


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPsaNB0uQkU


A still from the video above shows a moving beam with a gap persisting at around the same location whilst the beams sweep right (00:20):



I have separated and slowed down the moment in the video where the gap seems to "follow" the beams on the left-most bunches:

Another section of the footage shows a similar interruption (02:10):



I have cropped and slowed down the footage of the beams in the still above. In this footage, the gap highlighted above changes configuration over time:

The photo in question seems to be a still extracted at the right moment in the footage, where pareidolia gives the impression of a reasonably well defined rectangular shape blocking the camera's view. From the still, it's not possible to perceive what the temporal evolution of the gap was, but from the examples above, it could have persisted in place and yet remain unrelated to the extraordinary.

 

[jimmyslippin]

I went back and looked at some photos I took at a Tool show in February 2020. This was taken with a Samsung Galaxy Note 8 and shows multiple interruptions in the same beam.







Shutter speed is 1/125 for the top two photos and 1/50 for the bottom one.

Here's a Youtube video from the same performance at the exact moment I took the top two photos.

 

[Mendel]

@jimmyslippin @john.phil I take your examples to show the rolling shutter effect explained above. It's clear that this can explain the "break" in the laser at SWR, but so far we have not identified a camera where this could happen as it does here on portrait image (and a vertical beam). Your examples are landscape.

 

[jimmyslippin]

@jimmyslippin @john.phil I take your examples to show the rolling shutter effect explained above. It's clear that this can explain the "break" in the laser at SWR, but so far we have not identified a camera where this could happen as it does here on portrait image (and a vertical beam). Your examples are landscape.

True, but given the history of dubious and manipulated evidence presented by the "experts" at Skinwalker Ranch, I don't discount the possibility that what we are looking at is a landscape image cropped to look like a portrait image. I fully expect the first thing to come out of Travis Taylor's mouth will be "well it's not rolling shutter because it's in portrait mode" as per FatPhil's Fake Beard.

 

[Mick West]

@jimmyslippin @john.phil I take your examples to show the rolling shutter effect explained above. It's clear that this can explain the "break" in the laser at SWR, but so far we have not identified a camera where this could happen as it does here on portrait image (and a vertical beam). Your examples are landscape.

As I said earlier:

However I think it would still work as the lines are tilted. However it would need both green lasers to flicker off and on very quickly at the same time.

The lines are tilted 2° relative to the long sides of the image. This is still enough to create a gap of a few scanlines during which the laser is off

The line on the right is tilted 2.2° (10% more) and is about 10% longer. However that's the opposite of what I'd expect. The more tilt relative to the scan lines, the shorter the expected gap. It's a very small difference though, so might not be meaningful if there are other factors.

In this example the red lines are the same distance apart vertically, and they span the gap perfectly. So the upper gap is longer (along the beam).



This concert image is probably a single beam split into 10, so the gaps will all be the same duration. That might not be the case in the SWR image.

 

[jarlrmai]

All those broadcast cameras there filming the show, yet the beam gap evidence we see is a cell phone photo..

 

[FatPhil]

I'm no Ph.D. in optics, but I can't see how that could create the abrupt breaks we are seeing via interference.

No need for a PhD, The basic idea of why it's practically impossible drops out with Fourier Analysis and Shannon-Nyquist's sampling theorem (OK, some dot joining is required). Step functions decompose into a lot of components at a wide range of frequencies, you can't get a sharp transition between flat levels unless you fine tune those components just so. Not enough components, and you'd see the familiar ringing of overshooting, then repeated overcorrection (at both sides of the desired discontinuity, so there would be unwanted darker bits in the light, and unwanted lighter bits in the dark). Even if you could create all the components, it would be a task of horrific complexity to combine them, and I'm not even sure you could create all the components needed anyway. To make it possible probably doesn't require just a Ph.D., you're now in the realms of last year's Nobel Prize.

 

[Mendel]

The lines are tilted 2° relative to the long sides of the image. This is still enough to create a gap of a few scanlines during which the laser is off

Sure. But at that angle, shouldn't there be more glare visible near the ends of the gap?

 

[JMartJr]

There is a very common similar looking effect in laser shows where a gap appears:

Many of these give the impression that we may be seeing a gap in the smoke/mist used to make the beam nice and visible. Could something like that be happening in the Skinwalker laser show?

 

[Mick West]

Sure. But at that angle, shouldn't there be more glare visible near the ends of the gap?

I'm not sure, it's hard to wrap you head around exactly what is happening at the pixel level. I think maybe it would be slanted (which is obviously isn't)

 

[nmarsollier]

Sharing a picture of the monitor is suspicious, why not just share the original photo ?
A photo of a monitor can hide all software manipulations.