People are always trying find new ways to investigate the paranormal, and new gadgets are always being tested. I’m not sure why it took UFO seekers to try infrared night vision cameras, but they are now. And of course, they are seeing all sorts of things in the sky. And of course, they must all be alien spaceships. Having space battles right above our heads. Apparently, these invisible UFOs are using cloaking technology (which I guess they just invented, probably after watching some episodes of Star Trek), and are invisible to the naked eye. Unlike the thousands of other reported UFOs that have been seen over the past few centuries.
“Why are all the good UFOs invisible?” one Gather.com user asked in response to the latest “invisible UFO” report posted to the site.
You might have thought a defining characteristic of a UFO would be visibility. But thanks to zealous alien hunters doggedly scanning the sky with night-vision cameras, a new class of flying objects that only emit infrared light has emerged from the darkness. Are they spies from the great beyond?
“Some people claim to see actual battles between UFOs up in the sky, using night-vision equipment,” the ufologist Robert Sheaffer told Life’s Little Mysteries. “Those devices magnify faint objects so much that the sky seems to be filled with invisible UFOs. In reality, of course, they are seeing owls, bats, moths, airplanes, satellites, etc.” Night-vision optics trade low resolution for high sensitivity, he explained, so that points of light (such as distant satellites) spill out into circles that make the objects appear huge.
However, some of the invisible UFOs out there really are spies of a sort — or whatever else you choose to call military drones.
Consider, for example, an invisible triangle UFO recently caught on camera by the Laredo Paranormal Research Society, a Texas group. In their footage, captured using an infrared-sensitive third-generation night-vision camera and posted to YouTube July 13, an object composed of three evenly spaced glowing orbs streaked southward across the field of view and disappeared behind the roof of a house.
According to LPRS founder Ismael Cuellar, the “infrared-cloaked” object could not be seen with the naked eye, and cruised silently. “[We] have ruled out birds, bugs, airplanes, helicopters, and even flying drones by comparing them side by side as a point of reference,” Cuellar told Life’s Little Mysteries. This seems to leave just one explanation: It’s a cloaked alien spaceship.
Not so, according to Ben McGee, a geoscientist, aerospace consultant, UFO skeptic and lead field researcher on the National Geographic series “Chasing UFOs.” In McGee’s opinion, all the signs point to this object being a border patrol drone with infrared anti-collision or identification lights. Here’s why he thinks so.
“Nearly one-third of traffic through the nearby Laredo International Airport has historically been military in nature. Laredo is very near to the Mexican border. The military is increasingly using drones to assist with border security, which are small, quiet, and dim (to the naked eye) aircraft,” McGee wrote in an email, adding that most drones are also triangular. [UFO Sightings Are 3,615 Times More Common than Voter Fraud]
This alleged drone oversaturated the camera’s infrared sensor. Why? “Particularly with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), anticollision systems are of the utmost importance,” he wrote. “One custom UAV lighting manufacturer recently announced custom infrared navigation lights for a major UAV defense contractor. Using these lights in ‘constant-on’ infrared mode would make the tail, belly, and wingtips extraordinarily bright in infrared, washing out the shape of the aircraft in-between.”
And that description pretty closely matches the case.
“In short,” McGee said, “high-intensity/close-range infrared lights interacting with a sensitive infrared camera is the problem — turning an aircraft into a triangular blob — rather than the infrared camera being the solution to revealing invisible triangles or pyramids zooming about our airspace.”
I must say, I have to agree with Ben McGee, even though his new show Chasing UFOs is just the latest in a long line of crappy, clichéd paranormal “reality” shows on the air right now. People need to understand that night vision will indeed distort normal looking objects o the point of being almost unrecognizable. Night vision is mean to allow one to see in the dark. bright lights will overpower the technology and distort it. And, even if there is something being seen in the sky that can’t be explained, why is it automatically alien? It’s more likely to be secret military technology than to be of extraterrestrial origin.
Also, there are multiple problems with this video presented by LPRS. There is no normal comparison footage (sans night vision) to show there was nothing with lights in the sky at the same time. There is also no sound, nobody talking, so how do we know there were no engine sounds? The object even moves like a plane. Also, all of their “analyses” are done on the night vision footage, which just distorts already distorted footage. The comparison footage looks different as well, almost as if there are different light settings on the camera. I do appreciate LPRS at least putting this into the “unknown” category. It may well be a UFO, but the footage can’t be considered proof of anything at this point.
The only thing I want to add about the “Silent Triangle UFO’s” is that if anyone will remember that The Rutan Model 76 Voyager flew around the world without stopping in 1986. It stayed up 9 days, 3 minutes and 44 seconds.
Now, doesn’t anyone think in 27 years, we could improve on this record, and perhaps make a solar powered unit that can store enough electricity to fly by night? A slow turning large prop would be very quiet, and by night it would be almost invisible to the naked eye. You could find it easily with a FLIR, (unless the motors were shielded against IRR), but very few people have those. But wouldn’t an unmanned, silent, drone with IR be the perfect devise to observe anyone you wanted to? It could stay up indefinitely, having to land only for maintenance.
With polymer research advancing as fast as it is, some forms of plastics are much harder and stronger than any steels available. If they can make a plastic pistol, isn’t a high-flying drone an easy thing to imagine?
Let’s face it; a UFO means it’s an unidentified flying object, not always meaning aliens. It simply means it’s unidentified, not an object that is from another planet. One thing I never have seen on all of these so called proof videos, is the fact that IR cameras have been known to pick up a ghost images real easily. Even the extremely overpriced government models can produce a ghost image off a lot of things. I’ve seen ghost images in the sky, hence a Fata Morgana or complex mirage if you will, that was very real. When the atmosphere is right, you can literally see things that aren’t there.
Do I believe all UFO reports can be explained by reflections off the atmosphere? No. I am not so arrogant that I believe out of all the planets and galaxies out there that we are the only life forms that exist. The thing I find incredible is that we have to think about all life forms are bi-pods. What if octopus overlords turn up and demand to know why we eat their children? Actually octopi are very smart, more than some people I have met, LOL.
The thing I have to stress is that we have to ask ourselves is it possible that what we have a picture of, or a video of, can be explained by any normal phenomenon? If not, then we can approach a way to research what we do have. I know we are all tired of it being a “weather balloon”, but the facts remain that there are a hell of a lot of those launched. I have seen whirlwinds throw large pieces of cardboard over 4000 ft. in the sky. I know the military has scrambled an aircraft to find a big piece of plastic floating on thermals over a military lane. Ever watch a condor, or any bird of prey? They are the ultimate aviators. They can’t fly very long by just flapping their wings, but by soaring, they can remain aloft for hours and soar to incredible heights. The highest-flying bird ever recorded was a Ruppell’s griffon, a vulture with a wingspan of about 10 feet; on November 29, 1975, a Ruppell’s griffon was sucked into a jet engine 37,900 feet above the Ivory Coast–more than a mile and a half higher than the summit of Mount Everest. The plane was damaged, though it landed safely.
(Ref: http://archive.audubonmagazine.org/birds/birds0011.html)
All I’m saying is that to be taken seriously we have to have all our ducks in a row. If one person involved with Roswell would have pocketed one piece of what crashed, they could have put all the rumors to rest, one way or another. You know, that’s not really true, because no matter what the evidence is, they will always be a group of people that would debate it. I guess that’s a good thing. If we all become sheep, and buy whatever we are told, then this whole race goes down the tubes.
You know ufo’s are un-identified object’s so we cannot defined any ufo if it’s an objet or not because it was unidentified,
Real interesting article but I must say I have been filming objects with my night vision monocular for sure are not bats, birds, bugs, satellites or drones made by man unless someone’s not sharing this new technology. Attached is my YouTube video filmed with portable cheap DVR but nevertheless the object was bright enough to track and film. This is the original compressed for online media upload. It’s for real and have no idea what it could be…other videos similar to this shows the object eventually shooting off like a meteor, streak with tail and everything do rules out any bug or bat!!! Have a look and please comment thanks charles