6 ms·

Ever notice how UFO and Bigfoot sightings mostly went away once everyone had a 4K60 video camera in their pockets? One thread about this in 1995, and then the

Ever notice how UFO and Bigfoot sightings mostly went away once everyone had a 4K60 video camera in their pockets? One thread about this in 1995, and then the phenomenon is never seen nor heard about again . . .

Mistletoe 2y ago
Bigfoot and ghosts yes, but the recent drone mania seems to have increased. :) Maybe they would have been called UFOs before we had video to look back on.
- colechristensen 2y ago
  A lot of the recent drone mania is people taking videos of airplanes and helicopters. At this point I don't know how many of these videos are making fun or the paranoid people.
  - baxtr 2y ago
    I was amazed how suddenly it stopped being a thing. It was like one day people were talking about it all the time, and then the next day it went away completely.
    - Mistletoe 2y ago
      My Mom was super into this just like all the things her TV tells her to be super into. I asked her today what happened to them and said she "guessed they fulfilled their purpose and went back to China". :D
      - gambiting 2y ago
        Ah, they migrated away for winter.
    - mrguyorama 2y ago
      It started exactly when the public was getting angry at the media about killing healthcare CEOs and expressing their joy, and ended as soon as everyone stopped talking about that. Which is just conspiratorial thinking. It also ended as soon as people posted pictures of stars and planes as "evidence" and insisted that the evidence was still valid because "the aliens are just appearing as planes". It also ended the moment r/UFO threads showed up on the front page of reddit and normal people who thought this MIGHT be something got to see the insane mental gymnastics of the people insisting we should pay attention to it.
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    Yeah, my local news had a clip that was clearly an American Airlines tail logo.
    - giantrobot 2y ago
      That's the best way to disguise UFOs! Shape them like airliners and carry passengers on regular daily routes! No one would ever suspect a thing. Oh no, I've said too much.
CuriousCosmic 2y ago
Not just one thread. ANTEC '97 Conference Proceedings, CRC Press, pages 1310-1313. https://www.google.com/books/edition/SPE_ANTEC_1997_Proceedings/uuBHUl4UNekC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA1310 https://www.google.com/books/edition/SPE_ANTEC_1997_Proceedi... The thread is based on a conference talk and journal publication that preceded it. The reason this particular case hasn't been reproduced is just because it has no practical application, requires a lot of equipment, requires the equipment to be intentionally improperly operated risking damage or injury, and it's extremely expensive to test. Nobody is going to willingly tool up an environment capable of running a mile of 20 foot wide PP film at a thousand feet per minute, then purposely ungrounding the equipment, and run it at 100+ F and 95+ % humidity for hours, days, or weeks. Just setting it up would cost millions of dollars and running it may cost millions more.
- swayvil 2y ago
  We could design the experiment. Then try to reduce the experiment to a cheap, convenient form. Surely somebody has done at least that.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- sunshinesnacks 2y ago
  According to https://www.weather.gov/arx/heat_index https://www.weather.gov/arx/heat_index, 100 deg F with 95% RH is a heat index of 185 F. The linked paper says "temperature often approached 100 F with relative humidity above 95%," and later references specific conditions of 92 F and 95% RH (137 F heat index). Are these sorts of heat index values feasible for a plant environment? The line about 100/95 seems almost hyperbolic, which doesn't help with credibility in my opinion. Maybe I'm missing something.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    > 100 deg F with 95% RH is a heat index of 185 F. So just a typical summer day in Texas
lxgr 2y ago
On the other hand, we just witnessed a nationwide drone panic, and not for a lack of video evidence… An odd phenomenon being rare and hard to document is neither proof nor evidence of absence for it existing.
- EA-3167 2y ago
  I think it's telling that said panic was short-lived, and to anyone watching the video, laughably silly. Unless you're a psychologist studying the dynamics of digital crowds, it probably isn't very interesting at all. By contrast that same "panic" would probably have been framed as UFO's and an alien invasion pre-smartphone era.
  - lxgr 2y ago
    I personally really wouldn't bet on there being less UFO believers these days than before the ubiquitous availability of cameras.
    - EA-3167 2y ago
      I wouldn't bet on that either, but they're less mainstream, less respected, and most of us no longer feel a particular urge to humor them. Every passing year makes them less relevant, and more like the sort of people who believe in any other conspiracy theory or magical belief system. Which is frankly where they always belonged.
      - mrandish 2y ago
        > magical belief system. To be fair, if one includes religions this is significantly more than half the population. Add in astrology, psychics, ghosts, crystals, auras and other common 'woo' and it gets higher still. Sadly, HN is not a representative population sample. Skeptical non-believers are still a minority in the modern world.
      - _ea1k 2y ago
        At the other end of the spectrum, the belief that the moon landing was faked seems to be steadily increasing in popularity. I don't get it at all.
tshaddox 2y ago
I'd say UFO mania is more intense and more mainstream than ever. Still no remotely compelling physical evidence, of course.
- aftbit 2y ago
  I'd say anyone who doesn't believe in UFOs is just not observant enough. That doesn't mean aliens among us or secret government spy planes, but if you watch the sky long enough, you'll see some odd, hard to explain things.
mrandish 2y ago
> One thread about this in 1995, and then the phenomenon is never seen nor heard about again . . . A default mode of skepticism is best, however the story of this incident didn't trigger my "Yeah, probably not" reflex. It is based on known physical principles and the extremely unusual context seems in the ballpark of sufficient to potentially cause something like this. So my assumption was this was an extremely unlikely edge case that happened "that one time." It's also not something which strikes me as being a thing people who work in a large 3M factory would lie about.
- dist-epoch 2y ago
  > It is based on known physical principles What exactly does it repel against a human? And why would it repel instead of discharge?
hammock 2y ago
What does this comment have to do with OP?
tedunangst 2y ago
They even went home and came back the next day. Why not bring a camcorder along?
shepherdjerred 2y ago
https://www.xkcd.com/2572/ https://www.xkcd.com/2572/
wombatpm 2y ago
We had plenty of UFO sightings over the last couple of years. Remember the navy pilots? The drones a few months back? Big Foot, sadly, has been displaced by climate change and was forced to relocate to Canada
- t-3 2y ago
  I just assumed those were made up in an attempt to get more budget for the military.
stackghost 2y ago
Not sure about Bigfoot but isn't it pretty well-established that most UFO sightings were the SR71?

Mistletoe 2y ago

Bigfoot and ghosts yes, but the recent drone mania seems to have increased. :) Maybe they would have been called UFOs before we had video to look back on.

colechristensen 2y ago
A lot of the recent drone mania is people taking videos of airplanes and helicopters. At this point I don't know how many of these videos are making fun or the paranoid people.
- baxtr 2y ago
  I was amazed how suddenly it stopped being a thing. It was like one day people were talking about it all the time, and then the next day it went away completely.
  - Mistletoe 2y ago
    My Mom was super into this just like all the things her TV tells her to be super into. I asked her today what happened to them and said she "guessed they fulfilled their purpose and went back to China". :D
    - gambiting 2y ago
      Ah, they migrated away for winter.
  - mrguyorama 2y ago
    It started exactly when the public was getting angry at the media about killing healthcare CEOs and expressing their joy, and ended as soon as everyone stopped talking about that. Which is just conspiratorial thinking. It also ended as soon as people posted pictures of stars and planes as "evidence" and insisted that the evidence was still valid because "the aliens are just appearing as planes". It also ended the moment r/UFO threads showed up on the front page of reddit and normal people who thought this MIGHT be something got to see the insane mental gymnastics of the people insisting we should pay attention to it.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  Yeah, my local news had a clip that was clearly an American Airlines tail logo.
  - giantrobot 2y ago
    That's the best way to disguise UFOs! Shape them like airliners and carry passengers on regular daily routes! No one would ever suspect a thing. Oh no, I've said too much.

CuriousCosmic 2y ago

Not just one thread. ANTEC '97 Conference Proceedings, CRC Press, pages 1310-1313. https://www.google.com/books/edition/SPE_ANTEC_1997_Proceedings/uuBHUl4UNekC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA1310 https://www.google.com/books/edition/SPE_ANTEC_1997_Proceedi... The thread is based on a conference talk and journal publication that preceded it. The reason this particular case hasn't been reproduced is just because it has no practical application, requires a lot of equipment, requires the equipment to be intentionally improperly operated risking damage or injury, and it's extremely expensive to test. Nobody is going to willingly tool up an environment capable of running a mile of 20 foot wide PP film at a thousand feet per minute, then purposely ungrounding the equipment, and run it at 100+ F and 95+ % humidity for hours, days, or weeks. Just setting it up would cost millions of dollars and running it may cost millions more.

swayvil 2y ago
We could design the experiment. Then try to reduce the experiment to a cheap, convenient form. Surely somebody has done at least that.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
sunshinesnacks 2y ago
According to https://www.weather.gov/arx/heat_index https://www.weather.gov/arx/heat_index, 100 deg F with 95% RH is a heat index of 185 F. The linked paper says "temperature often approached 100 F with relative humidity above 95%," and later references specific conditions of 92 F and 95% RH (137 F heat index). Are these sorts of heat index values feasible for a plant environment? The line about 100/95 seems almost hyperbolic, which doesn't help with credibility in my opinion. Maybe I'm missing something.
- dylan604 2y ago
  > 100 deg F with 95% RH is a heat index of 185 F. So just a typical summer day in Texas

lxgr 2y ago

On the other hand, we just witnessed a nationwide drone panic, and not for a lack of video evidence… An odd phenomenon being rare and hard to document is neither proof nor evidence of absence for it existing.

EA-3167 2y ago
I think it's telling that said panic was short-lived, and to anyone watching the video, laughably silly. Unless you're a psychologist studying the dynamics of digital crowds, it probably isn't very interesting at all. By contrast that same "panic" would probably have been framed as UFO's and an alien invasion pre-smartphone era.
- lxgr 2y ago
  I personally really wouldn't bet on there being less UFO believers these days than before the ubiquitous availability of cameras.
  - EA-3167 2y ago
    I wouldn't bet on that either, but they're less mainstream, less respected, and most of us no longer feel a particular urge to humor them. Every passing year makes them less relevant, and more like the sort of people who believe in any other conspiracy theory or magical belief system. Which is frankly where they always belonged.
    - mrandish 2y ago
      > magical belief system. To be fair, if one includes religions this is significantly more than half the population. Add in astrology, psychics, ghosts, crystals, auras and other common 'woo' and it gets higher still. Sadly, HN is not a representative population sample. Skeptical non-believers are still a minority in the modern world.
    - _ea1k 2y ago
      At the other end of the spectrum, the belief that the moon landing was faked seems to be steadily increasing in popularity. I don't get it at all.

tshaddox 2y ago

I'd say UFO mania is more intense and more mainstream than ever. Still no remotely compelling physical evidence, of course.

aftbit 2y ago
I'd say anyone who doesn't believe in UFOs is just not observant enough. That doesn't mean aliens among us or secret government spy planes, but if you watch the sky long enough, you'll see some odd, hard to explain things.

mrandish 2y ago

> One thread about this in 1995, and then the phenomenon is never seen nor heard about again . . . A default mode of skepticism is best, however the story of this incident didn't trigger my "Yeah, probably not" reflex. It is based on known physical principles and the extremely unusual context seems in the ballpark of sufficient to potentially cause something like this. So my assumption was this was an extremely unlikely edge case that happened "that one time." It's also not something which strikes me as being a thing people who work in a large 3M factory would lie about.

dist-epoch 2y ago
> It is based on known physical principles What exactly does it repel against a human? And why would it repel instead of discharge?

hammock 2y ago

What does this comment have to do with OP?

tedunangst 2y ago

They even went home and came back the next day. Why not bring a camcorder along?

shepherdjerred 2y ago

https://www.xkcd.com/2572/ https://www.xkcd.com/2572/

wombatpm 2y ago

We had plenty of UFO sightings over the last couple of years. Remember the navy pilots? The drones a few months back? Big Foot, sadly, has been displaced by climate change and was forced to relocate to Canada

t-3 2y ago
I just assumed those were made up in an attempt to get more budget for the military.

stackghost 2y ago

Not sure about Bigfoot but isn't it pretty well-established that most UFO sightings were the SR71?