Exploding UFO

January 21, 2006 10:58 PM

Recent video of exploding UFO shot in Sonora, CA. I'm not a UFO nut, but this sighting's different. Thought y'all might enjoy it. Did I mention the UFO explodes? And it's definitely not a meteor.
posted by tritisan (63 comments total)

Neither video worked for me, but from the second link... I am officially changing my name to Ian Pocock.
posted by Balisong at 11:08 PM on January 21, 2006

Neither worked for me, either.
posted by Manhasset at 11:10 PM on January 21, 2006

This just proves that the missle defense system does work. Now if we can get North Korea to trade their Long Dong missles for flying saucers, we're set.
posted by thecjm at 11:12 PM on January 21, 2006

"Whoah ...." wmv filed worked fine for me on my Mac, ironically.
It's definitely something dissentegrating, but why not a flare, drone, chaff? could be many things military.
posted by Dag Maggot at 11:16 PM on January 21, 2006

Both worked for me.

That wasn't a flare or chaff, I've seen those, but I wouldn't rule out "things military".
posted by tcobretti at 11:18 PM on January 21, 2006

On second viewing, it could be flares, but with a very strange dispersal pattern. You couldn't see chaff at night.
posted by tcobretti at 11:21 PM on January 21, 2006

That's what happens when games use the same button for chaff and flares... people don't know the difference.
posted by smackfu at 11:26 PM on January 21, 2006

Worked for me on my Mac, too. Saving the file locally works.

It's a shame he didn't drive out to the crash site. I also love how he mentions 2 witnesses to this event: Himself... and his dog.
posted by slater at 11:35 PM on January 21, 2006

YOUR UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECT A SPLODE!
posted by Effigy2000 at 12:01 AM on January 22, 2006

whoa is right.

cool link thx!
posted by freudianslipper at 12:07 AM on January 22, 2006

On the Mac: It didn't work with Windows Media Player, but I updated to Flip4Mac and it worked fine.
posted by seanyboy at 12:21 AM on January 22, 2006

I saw an unusual meteorite a few months back. Brilliant aqua-ish blue, huge head, brilliant tail, and sparklers falling from it.

I'm pretty sure it was satellite debris.
posted by five fresh fish at 12:36 AM on January 22, 2006

Space junk.
posted by ryanhealy at 1:25 AM on January 22, 2006

I blame myself. Astro Zombie not fly so good.
posted by Astro Zombie at 1:33 AM on January 22, 2006

Do think his dog would testify to this in a court of law?

One paw on the bible, woof woof.

Woof woof woof woof.


Why is it definatly not a meteor? Light refraction, the potenctially large distances and high speeds might mean that the stuff was constant falling, or at least being pulled to earth, it started to break up, one bit accelerated slower than the other two bits (the peice that went upwards) and a collision now caused the bigger peice to break up.


If UFOs could play star wars in our atmosphere, why would they? If they can travel the great distances to be here, we just wouldnt be of any interest. To them, we'd appear less developed than we consider ants or termites (sure we waste time watching those, but we are stuck on this small planet and they have got the vastness of space to cover, which given they can cover it, there must be far more interesting things out there. A planet full of nympho chicks for example.)
posted by 13twelve at 1:41 AM on January 22, 2006

(eugh really bad spelling. Too early in the morning for me. I should stick to "woof woof")
posted by 13twelve at 1:42 AM on January 22, 2006

Space junk.

I would say so too, it would have had to have been in a polar orbit for the perceived trajectory to be motionless for ~20 minutes like the guy says, but I'm not entirely sure a reentering object can hold that trajectory for 20 minutes...

Didn't anyone else see this last week? Actually I live in the area and it's been pretty cloudy this week. Mebbe the observer is FOS.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 1:47 AM on January 22, 2006

A planet full of nympho chicks for example

well, mebbe they made us their fucktoys from monkeys. Kinda the backstory to 2001 if you will.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 1:49 AM on January 22, 2006

Without information about how high or how fast it was travelling we have no reference as to how big it is or any other physical information other than the moment it explodes, however the guy says he watched it for about 20 mins, so it probably wasn't a meteor or other falling object.

The explosion seems to suggest that the object is not to far away, due to the apparent speed of the explosion and the velocity of the falling debris - and therefor not to massive. I would estimate between 2m - 6m (im only estimating).

I can only imagine it being a balloon of some kind, probably some kind of military test.

Maybe even target practice...
posted by Meccabilly at 2:18 AM on January 22, 2006

If UFOs could play star wars in our atmosphere, why would they? If they can travel the great distances to be here, we just wouldnt be of any interest. To them, we'd appear less developed than we consider ants or termites...

Yadda yadda yadda....if I had a nickel every time I heard this "reasoning", I'd...well, I'd have a lot of nickels. If aliens are indeed studying us, who the fuck knows why they're doing it. I don't think we're a boring species, but even if we were, maybe that's our hook--"Check it out, Xyoborg! These things are the top dogs here! Why the hell?" We study lab rats, don't we? If they were sentient, would they say, "Why are you wasting your time with us, we're boring!"

It's just a lazy and stupid refutation somehow aimed at debunking UFOs. (BTW, that video does indeed look like a meteor breaking up, though the fact(?) that it was hovering around for 20 minutes tells me it was something else).
posted by zardoz at 2:31 AM on January 22, 2006

"If UFOs could play star wars in our atmosphere, why would they? If they can travel the great distances to be here, we just wouldnt be of any interest."

I dunno... traditionally you make landfall, claim the area in the name of the monarch, tell the natives they're now part of the British Empire and not to listen to anything the Dutch say.

Granted, a more enlightened species might just try and sell us Alien-Cola, McExtraterrestrial's and iPodpeople - but I can't see them coming all this way and doodling in the cornfields...
posted by Auz at 2:44 AM on January 22, 2006

though the fact(?) that it was hovering around for 20 minutes tells me it was something else

Pellican with flare gun
posted by Meccabilly at 3:28 AM on January 22, 2006

This caught my eye just because my Dad lived in Sonora for 25-odd years. 40 miles SE of Sonora would be south of Lake Don Pedro, I guess. (SW would be Merced, right off the 99, above Fresno..?). The night sky, you can see pretty much every and any star. Sierra foothills, not far from Yosemite, scarcely populated, very beautiful.

That ain't exploding--you'd see stuff going out in all directions. It's melting. It just drops. And it seems to be on a string. In the first second of the video, you can also see another light below it as well, no surprise.

It looks like it implodes and slinks down something. Gooey. Burning vanilla ice cream in a Mulder vacuum, and a Home Depot extension cord. Painted black.
posted by toma at 3:54 AM on January 22, 2006

That ain't exploding--you'd see stuff going out in all directions.

Depends what it is and how big the explosion is...

If it were a solid object then sure it would go out in all directions, but if it were some kind of loosly held together struture with a smaller expolsion leading it to go up in flames then that would produce a different reaction...
posted by Meccabilly at 4:51 AM on January 22, 2006

Looks like a meteor or similar object to me. No evidence suggesting it's an alien spacecraft, that's for sure.
posted by tranquileye at 4:53 AM on January 22, 2006

I agree, Mecca. A massive gel-ignite-o Hindenburg, a hundred miles off, with a firecracker bellybutton...
posted by toma at 5:49 AM on January 22, 2006

Auz: "I can't see them coming all this way and doodling in the cornfields..."

Humans put an amazing amount of effort into finding obscure spots to grafitti, why wouldn't teenage aliens with their crop-based spraycan equivalents do the same?
posted by jack_mo at 6:21 AM on January 22, 2006

Are you kidding?

Alien Teens would fly straight to the planet capital and spray "Respiratory Losers."
posted by toma at 6:32 AM on January 22, 2006

Perhaps it appears to hold still in the sky because it's travelling directly towards the camera. That clip spans about 6 minutes. Is that longer than you'd expect a meteor/piece of junk to take to reach the ground?
posted by hoverboards don't work on water at 6:52 AM on January 22, 2006

It looked a lot like a parachute illumination flare to me. They are designed so that they burn up completely in the air for safety reasons, so the "explosion" in the video would be the remains of the casing and the parachute burning up after the main candle is expended. His description of the object made is sound as if it were slowly descending, which also fits a parachute flare. After the "explosion", the remaining pieces fall faster, as they would after the canopy is destroyed.
posted by Obvious Fakename at 6:56 AM on January 22, 2006

C'mon guys admit it. The evidence is overwhelming. A large bright blurry ball breaks up and falls to the ground, what else could it be but an aliean spaceship falling apart in our atmosphere? I think it must have been hit with some of the shrapnel loosed from the charges used to bring down WTC 7.
posted by caddis at 8:03 AM on January 22, 2006

Good thing it broke up or that guy (and his dog) would have been clobbered, perhaps to be immortalized in a Devo song.
posted by jimfl at 8:07 AM on January 22, 2006

There were survivors:


posted by caddis at 9:41 AM on January 22, 2006

However, the aliens do appear to have stolen MetaTalk. An hour or two ago. Will they give it back?
posted by caddis at 9:51 AM on January 22, 2006

Wasn't that NASA Pluto misson launched the same day? Perhaps this was just a returning rocket booster element burning up in the atmosphere...
posted by bobloblaw at 10:17 AM on January 22, 2006

The flash of light you saw in the sky was not a UFO. Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus.


posted by Gamblor at 10:32 AM on January 22, 2006

I don't think parachute illumination flare is a viable explanation because of the large amount of time that the object was in the air (20 minutes).
posted by tcobretti at 10:40 AM on January 22, 2006

[gnaws own arm off in frustration at the "I'm an alien to the internet" image hotlinking]
posted by NinjaPirate at 10:51 AM on January 22, 2006

Finally some proof. UFOs are teh real! Its clearly bigfoot losing control of an Atlantean saucer ship in a night-time suicide run against the Lemurians. Bigfoot, you will be missed.

Natural explanations are sooooo 19th century.
posted by skallas at 11:17 AM on January 22, 2006

.
posted by skallas at 11:17 AM on January 22, 2006

Parachute flares can hang like that for ages, especially when they're way up there. And those suckers are bright. The USAF uses them for target practice and target acquisition. And they look a bit like that video, especially in night vision/IR mode - as they're designed to show up for IR instruments.

However, this isn't a parachute flare.

Oddly, that video seems different then when I first saw it. Shorter? Less clear? I dunno.
posted by loquacious at 11:18 AM on January 22, 2006

Some context. This is hosted at the HSCC site which recommends listening to the rense.com radio show. Rense.com is currently sporting stories about Nazi Bush and how international terrorism is a hoax. There are ads for such things as "Psychic Pills," which claim 'research based guaranteed results.'

The HSCC recommend books (they change on refresh) which have almost the same theme: Aliens are among us, the author either communicates directly with them or through a UN/Military/Academic official, and there will be a day of reckoning.

The video is from "Johnny Anonymous."

On their polls page over 90% believe in a UFO coverup involving world governments.

This is the current feature over at HSCC. The previous one suggests a UFO/Military coverup because, "..when his brother was coming over the top of a hill and walking through a hay field he came across a K- ration can. After his brother found the one K- ration, he kicked the ground a little bit and discovered a few more cans, of course military issue." Right. Super-top-secret agents leave rations laying around.

tritisan says he's not a UFO nut? Err, ok, then why post this at all? Whats its purpose? Its some video with no reason to believe it is anything extraordinary but couched in terms like UFO and aliens and such, thus promoting the UFO believer cause/conspiracy theory.
posted by skallas at 12:04 PM on January 22, 2006

There are MILLIONS of people in Southern California, yet this guy was the ONLY ONE to see this? That seems rather unlikely to me.

Even if it's real, it's unlikely to be Bug-Eyed Monsters. If they're smart enough to fly these spacecraft and hide from us (which I can grant), they're also smart enough to know that probably a third of the population now has portable cameras with them. So either they've gone away because we can look for them now, they were never there in the first place, or (my running explanation) most of the UFOs were research aircraft for the DoD. Their lies, to try to hide their Top Secret projects, didn't add up, which got people suspicious. But the real truth is probably fairly boring.

'Hoax' is the simplest explanation. With the advent of digital video editing on most home computers, photographic evidence alone just isn't that strong anymore.
posted by Malor at 12:12 PM on January 22, 2006

metatalk btw
posted by skallas at 12:23 PM on January 22, 2006

It's definitely a UFO.
posted by neuron at 1:56 PM on January 22, 2006

but it ain't no alien spaceship
posted by caddis at 1:58 PM on January 22, 2006

It looks like a Sony zero lux system or something similar. Why is the center of the image brighter than the periphery. Even if it's a night vision system the infrared lighting wouldn't look like that on a distant object. It'd be like using a flash for photographing a star. It wouldn't do anything.
posted by substrate at 2:42 PM on January 22, 2006

Raytheon's Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle strikes again.
posted by TorontoSandy at 3:51 PM on January 22, 2006

UFO abduction video
posted by caddis at 4:28 PM on January 22, 2006

UFO abduction video
posted by caddis at 4:28 PM on January 22, 2006

There are MILLIONS of people in Southern California, yet this guy was the ONLY ONE to see this? That seems rather unlikely to me.

I'm not going to argue for or against this "sighting", but just to be clear: Sonora isn't in SoCal. It's to the West of Yosemite, due East from San Francisco/Oakland, and just East of Stockton. There's still a whole lot of open space East, North-East and South-East of the Sonora and Stockton areas, and it's some of the most rugged terrain this side of the Rockies.

And even if it were in the general SoCal (But not metropolitan) area, there's lots and lots of open space out there, too. Plenty of places within a few hours of the SoCal metro area where even an average joe with an average car can drive for just a little while and get so far back into the boonies the only visible man made objects are the road he came in on and the car he drove. There's thousands and hundreds of thousands of little canyons, valleys, weird alluvial plains, dry lakes, arroyos and more out there. California is really big. It's one of the few places left in the continental United States where you can actually drive for hours in the right direction and see nothing but the occasional road sign or marker, without it being ranch or farm land, homestead or otherwise. I believe it's only second to Nevada in percentage of BLM or government owned land, by ratio, and may even have more acreage then Nevada.

So it's entirely plausible that someone could be the only witness to weird, glowing lights in the sky out there. I know I've seen weird stuff in the sky and otherwise while out and about in the back country with friends, and there have been times out there when there probably wasn't another human for at least tens of miles or more in any given direction.
posted by loquacious at 4:52 PM on January 22, 2006

I enjoyed this Lecture about UFO phenomenaie
because for the most part, lately,we have been goverened by fear. L-01 The Political Implications of the UFO Phenomenon and the “ET” Myth
posted by hortense at 5:31 PM on January 22, 2006

UFORA Member Johnny Anonymous mentions that the "NiteVision" feature was enabled on his camcorder while recording the object. this then implies a fairly heavy dose of image compensation/processing was pre-applied to whatever was lighting up in the frame.

so what Johnny Anon's offering as evidence is to all intends and purposes, bogus. he needs to subtract out all the effects introduced by the NightVision feature before analysing anything. and from my experience, low light compensation on consumer level camcorders tends to be pretty ropey at best - effects bad enough so as to render the feature practically useless.
posted by rodney stewart at 7:03 PM on January 22, 2006

After much analysis I have come to the following conclusion from the video clip.

This is indeed an Atlantean saucer ship of standard civillian design circa 1200 B.C. The large thursting body is quite evident throughout the video and especially right before the breakup at second 28. Diagrams and specs for this common space/aqua craft can be found at atlantisbook.com under the title, "Atlantis, Alien Visitation and Genetic Manipulation." Click on "YES! I want to know what secrets are being kept hidden from me!" to pay 24.95 for this informative technical tome approved by the Ufology community.

Sadly, this tragic explosion is further evidence that ergonomics arent a luxury in ancient spacecraft. Atlantean hands have little to no difficulty flipping the various switches on the console.

When piloted by a sasquach, which seems to be the case, it is difficult to make quick flight adjustments with such meaty hands. The sasquach community has ignored these risks for far too long. Perhaps this video will help enforce the proposed Sasquach Hands Compliance act over at the Andro-Pleiadean Federation, but savvy political commentators from the federation often blame their form of collectivism as being ineffecient in handling safety issues.

Leading ufologists are quite critical of the federation's ability to be an effecting pan-galactic governing force. Tradition, cronyism, and a galactic budget crisis have almost crippled the federation. Very few have taken Solon's warning about the arrogance of power, especially in light of how Atlantis was lost the first time.

The safety issues of the standard Atlantean saucer ship have been discussed literally for millenia, but it is an effective and powerful design. It is easily modified to add armament, especially what is called the Light Weapon from the sky:

2 KINGS 1:10 And Elijah answered and said to the captain of fifty, If I be a man of God, then let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and thy fifty. And there came down fire from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty.
A beam of light comes down and vaporizes the company.

This has been an effective weapon against the greys as photographed here after a joint Sasquach/Atlantean raid on a stronghold in the old Soviet Republic. Unfortunately, the weapon is not precise and many humans have been injured with it, while ironically trying to save them from the grey menace. Normal M.O. is to injure or probe the human in some way to cover-up our reckless and ageing weaponry. This has led to an entire mythology of abductions which serves us well as it distracts from the Sasquach/Grey conflict.

This particular ship (viewed through IR) has traveled quite a bit. There is some vaporization of non-terrestrial sand, most likely from Sedonia, Mars, where Ancient Astronauts left the "Face" landing pad and condo. Which is more Kynthia than martian anyway.

Back to the video at hand. Its clearly not the newer triangle craft first used in 900 BC, which we all know has a weaker stealth modules especially against CCD based recorders.
The only solid conclusions I could draw from this video follows:

1. The Sasquach race are formidable fighers but their piloting skills are lacking. This is not much unlike the Wookie from star wars. I believe Lucas's involvement with UFOs was inspiration for this character. Some are skeptical of this fact and cite Carlos Castanada as his primary influence for Star Wars. Until Lucas is able to break away from the NDA agreement he has with the UN we may never know. Regardless, a redesign of the piloting controls may help the loss rate on sasquach piloting the saucer crafts.

2. The explosion is of the type of a delayed fusion missile. John Lear has proven that the Greys have mastered Cold Fusion in this report.

Not much else can be deciphered from this video clip. We all know the feds have collected all the evidence and have their disinformation agents all over the internet.
posted by skallas at 7:17 PM on January 22, 2006

Looks to me like maybe a clear plastic garbage bag used as a hot air balloon, maybe carrying a burning candle -- eventually the top burns or melts through, we see something like a smoke ring going up, and something like dribbling burning plastic falling down.

Maybe I just had an interesting childhood, it looks familiar.

Kids, don't try this around home, especially during fire season.
posted by hank at 9:18 PM on January 22, 2006

skallas--no one likes a smartass. (But good one).
posted by zardoz at 10:46 PM on January 22, 2006

UFOs
posted by aerify at 2:48 AM on January 23, 2006

I hate this expression, but seriously,

skallas wins.
posted by caddis at 4:45 AM on January 23, 2006

Skallas wrote:

"When piloted by a sasquach, which seems to be the case, it is difficult to make quick flight adjustments with such meaty hands."

WHO YOU CALL MEATY? YOU THINK IT EASY TO DRIVE?! STOP TALK FROM THE BACK SEAT!
posted by storybored at 8:34 AM on January 23, 2006

But seriously :-), skallas, that's gotta be the post of the day.
posted by storybored at 8:36 AM on January 23, 2006

zardoz: I like a smartass.
posted by joecacti at 10:21 AM on January 23, 2006

scallas, I made this post (my first on MeFi, by the way) to see what kind of response it would get. It would appear that there are indeed quite a few UFO experts/skeptics/nuts here ;-)

I am agnostic about most things. Therefore, to me, UFO simply means "Unidentified Flying Object", a meaning not to be conflated with "alien spaceship".

Have I mentioned that I heart MeFi?
posted by tritisan at 11:34 AM on January 23, 2006

What hank said.

Looks like a home made hot air balloon to me.
posted by skinnerneil at 12:30 AM on January 24, 2006