With the US Defence Force about to release “something” on UFO’s, these very engaging videos from Mick West are persuasive and apropos. But if smart guys with trigonometry and metadata can explain how these aliens are mysterious camera artefacts — surely the Pentagon can too?
Why then are they called “unexplained” and why are they being released as teasers for “the big news?” Did the DoD forget parallax and gymbal corrections?
Apparently 120 incidents will be reviewed in June. Former intelligence director John Ratcliffe has hinted the report will be a big deal. Let’s hope they saved the best stuff. I’m looking forward to a good tantalizing mystery.
Michael Shermer (of Skeptic.com infamy) wrote this all up in a long feature on Quillette:
Understanding the Unidentified
The “Go Fast” video purportedly shows an object with no heat source (and therefore propelled by some unconventional engine) that appears to move impossibly fast just above the surface of the ocean. West then conducted what he describes as “10th grade trigonometry” (based on the numbers provided in the video image itself) to show that, in fact, the object was well above the ocean surface at around 13,000 feet and was probably just a weather balloon traveling at about 30–40 knots. “Because of the extreme zoom and because the camera is locked onto this object … the motion of the ocean in this video is actually exactly the same as the motion of the jet plane itself. You’re seeing something that’s actually hardly moving at all and all of the apparent motion is the parallax effect from the jet flying by.
Seriously, these are much better videos than I expected. Very well done.
…Flir1 and Gimbal, says [Mick West, a columnist for Skeptic magazine], are what one would see if a jet were flying away from the camera, thus accounting for the eyewitness accounts that the object showed no directional control surfaces or exhaust. The apparent saucer-like shape of the Gimbal object, West continues, are due to glare on the lens of the camera. As he told the San Diego Union-Tribune reporter Andrew Dyer, “What we’re seeing in the distance is essentially just the glare of a hot object,” most likely that “of an engine — maybe a pair of engines with an F/A-18 — something like that.”
The odd pyramid aliens spring from an unfocused triangular aperture.
Commenters are getting into the swing after the Just Bokeh video:
Pale Horseman: This sounds exactly like what a pyramid-flying alien would want us to think.
It seems a bit hard to believe that with millions of high quality cameras in everyone’s pockets, along with military grade cameras that can resolve newspaper text from space, that we still do not have any clear images of UFOs as yet.
Funny about that huh?
I like the idea from Prof Michael Masters — that aliens might be time-travelling humans from the future coming back to study us. (h/t El gordo)
But why not argue that ET is actually a traveler from across the vastness of space, from a distant planet? Wouldn’t that be a simpler answer?
“I would argue it’s the opposite,” Masters responded. “We know we’re here. We know humans exist. We know that we’ve had a long evolutionary history on this planet. And we know our technology is going to be more advanced in the future. I think the simplest explanation, innately, is that it is us. I’m just trying to offer what is likely the most parsimonious explanation.”
He calls it Archaeological Tourism — is that where future-people can fly back and watch democracy unravel?