Gawdzilla Sama
Valued Senior Member
Waiting makes you stronger?
UFOs (UAPs): Explanations?
- Thread starter Magical Realist
- Start date
Correct. That's NOT a drone.
It's a (possibly) doctored shot of the nose wheel landing light of an F-15. One of the military aviation Facebook sites posted it sometime earlier this week. About two seconds after that shot the focus is pulled back and and it's a bog-standard Eagle coming in to land.
Gawdzilla Sama
Valued Senior Member
Piloted by an alien from Uranus?
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
Yes. I don't think it's even doctored. It's just very, very out-of-focus. Focus is pulled in halfway through the shot, as you note.
It stands as an example by comparison to some of the videos our resident video poster has been posting that - to anyone who has ever been near a telescope (or other long focus instrument) - knows is a common occurrence of extremely out-of-focus optics.
If the videographer had not pulled focus, and had posted just the first half of the video, our friend would have touted it as "incredibly compelling" or somesuch.
Venus (through a four-vaned Newt) albeit Venus does not have a diffracting grid like aircraft lights do.
What we rational skeptics have been trying to impress upon readers for 10,000 posts is that very mundane things, seen in unusual circumstances, can look very unmundane, to the untrained eye.
I thought he might take the bait, but instead I caught a very different fish. One who apparently decides a priori what "something is not" without bothering to even look at it. And who is so rash as to fling around words like "bogus" and "liar".
Indeed. And if Gawdzilla Sama had bothered to view it before deciding it was "bogus" and full of "lies", he would have seen that
a] my claim that it is not a drone was quite true, and
b] it's really rather mundane (like virtually every other video in this thread).
Last edited:
Gawdzilla Sama
Valued Senior Member
I will apologize to the forum at large for responding to the wrong post. My bad.
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
Posts. Are we to believe that you made that mistake four distinct times? Three of the ones you responded to were explicitly giving you chance to correct your error.
TheVat
Valued Senior Member
I think the first mistake compounded. it appears to me that Dawg thought you were reposting an image from an earlier exchange of pics which was a drone. Thus erroneously taking you for a liar. Then hackles rose, so this made it harder to sort out this pedestrian misunderstanding. For most people, any form of apology is acceptable, given that many human face-saving protocols involve not apologizing ever.
My former experience as a forum admin was that the best outcome possible was usually a cessation of the offending name-call, and that stern schoolmarm admonitions to apologize were usually ineffective. And, ahem, disrupt on-topic conversation with a super annoying sidebar about who said what at what time and what they meant when they said it. Jesus effing Christ, life is too short. Does anyone here think their personal honor is besmirched whenever someone they have never met types something rash and offensive?
My former experience as a forum admin was that the best outcome possible was usually a cessation of the offending name-call, and that stern schoolmarm admonitions to apologize were usually ineffective. And, ahem, disrupt on-topic conversation with a super annoying sidebar about who said what at what time and what they meant when they said it. Jesus effing Christ, life is too short. Does anyone here think their personal honor is besmirched whenever someone they have never met types something rash and offensive?
Ah, but can you prove that it's not a very large and detailed drone or RC aircraft? (btw, is there a distinction, or do RC aircraft fall under the umbrella of "drone"?)
And as for landing, doesn't the landing gear retract toward the end of the clip?? Or am I seeing things?
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
You are correct, sir.
If you can’t prove what it is then it’s Unidentified, so what’s the problem? Isn’t that the gist of the thread?
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
Explanations for the unexplainable? What if you can’t find or think of any?
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
The gist of the thread is:
- people post accounts of reported UAPs
- people analyze the accounts to see if there are possible mundane explanations for the accounts (for example: the vast majority are mistaken identification)
There is always the possibility that some account is of a genuinely exotic nature (though this cannot be proven); as there is always the possibility that the most exotic-looking account has a perfectly mundane origin (this also cannot be proven, although it can reach a consensus that even the most hardcore UFO-enthusiast acknowledges the mundanity of its origin).
It comes down to plausibility of explanation.
Sounds good to me. I haven’t read every response and if I’m wrong then I accept that.
For most here, the default is that the phenomenon in question is "unidentified" until such time as a suggested explanation rises above the "plausible", and in the case of competing "plausibles" it becomes a question of "most plausible", but by then you're usually not really concerned at what it actually is, only that, whatever it is, it's something mundane. The bar to reach to plausibly be something "not mundane" is really quite high.
For some here the default is that the phenomenon in question is "not mundane", something exotic, alien, hyperdimensional, or other some such. Only when it is shown to be almost certainly something mundane will they accept it as such.
It certainly makes for an interesting dynamic in this thread.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Good video analysis of the Atlantic City orb by an expert analyst. Definitely NOT an out-of-focus star!
Another video analysis by the same guy of a metallic orb filmed in daylight in Georgia. He even created a 3D printed model of it.
Great video capture and analysis of a large orange orb witnessed in Del Rey CA. The orb is in clear focus and shows an intriguing internal structure.
Another video analysis by the same guy of a metallic orb filmed in daylight in Georgia. He even created a 3D printed model of it.
Great video capture and analysis of a large orange orb witnessed in Del Rey CA. The orb is in clear focus and shows an intriguing internal structure.
Last edited:
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
And how is this not Venus?
We know this guy is either incompetent or dishonest, because he makes many rookie blunders.
"It's a really bright object...This thing is seriously emitting photons."
Yes, that's what 'bright' means.
" ... it's emitting quite a bit of electromagnetic radiation ... "
Same thing but more "I am so smart"-sounding.
"... this thing is emiting a lot of radition, and when I ay readiation I mean not necessarily gamma rays or X, it's just emitting photons, because the cameras are designed - the sensors are designed - to pick up photons in the frequeny of the visual spectrum and that's what we're catching here."
Thank you for the grade school primer on how seeing works, and how cameras see similar to how we see.
You had covered all of this when you said 'bright'. But now we know how giant your brain is.
"...you can see that it's going behind clouds..."
Yes, planets do that.
".. .you can see in the middle it's a little bit darker and in the dead the centre there's an object..."
You can't say it's an 'object', you can say it's 'dark'.
Here's another picture of Venus (similar to the one I posted just a few posts up):
Oh look, a very bright object in the sky that appears donut-shaped....
Here another - this time, a star.
Yes. If one starts with bad premises, one will draw bad conclusions. If one extrapolates from those bad conclusions, one will make a fool of oneself.
Next...
Last edited:
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Further analysis of the Atlantic City orb:
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
To do further analysis on a flawed conclusion is to go down a BS rabbit hole.