Is it real or is it memorex?
How about if it was 3D aerial imaging, a movie stunt ala Star Wars let’s ask George Lucas
Who does aerial imaging at night?
I laughed at some of these comments.
The one that indicated the aliens might have traveled millions of light years to visit New Jersey was hysterical.
Or a hologram
There is also a group dedicated to the New Jersey drones:
Hey, this is serious, people! I took a look in the sky last night and I saw approximately 7 drones in a fixed formation that took the shape of a big ladle…or ‘dipper’, if you will. And there was also a similar-looking, yet smaller drone formation nearby! A ‘little ladle’, I named it.
Chuck Schumer has gotten into the act and is feeding the Fear of Drones frenzy.
Well it is distraction but distraction slathered in madness.
The mass hysteria that makes people all over an area see what they think are mysterious aircraft in the skies goes way back, long before the flying saucer scare of the late 1940s.
In 1896, many people in Oakland saw lights and heard voices coming from overhead late at night. They returned the next few nights, especially as Oakland newspapers covered them heavily, and then moved to over San Francisco, which - coincidentally? - had more newspapers and less scrupulous reporters.
Ironically, people hoped that the things they saw in the skies was actually an airplane, because that would give Californians the honor of the first working powered heavier-than-air craft. Indeed, people confessed to this, naturally seeking backers for more development.
The sights moved down the coast and then eastward along the railroad line. In a few months half the country had made sightings.
It was easy to prove that once the sightings started, the newspapers made up stories to boost circulation. Few cared. They knew they had seen something up there, something new and exciting. The parallels between 1896 and later scares are more uncanny that any of the causes.
I wrote about this in an article called "What Was It? The Mystery Airship of 1896. I can’t link to it because it’s on sale at Amazon. But I can give away the ending behind a spoiler for anyone who wants to guess.
The fact that the first sightings were accompanied by voices from the sky narrows the possibilities greatly. No aircraft of the time was silent; motors made thundering rackets. Gliders maybe? Or hot-air balloons? Those were almost never taken aloft at night because that made navigation and landings too dangerous. Nor did the movements correspond to a flight path by either. Even people at the time could dismiss them. Aliens, then? Yeah, well. Anything is possible if you start with aliens. Astronomers came down on unusually bright displays from Venus, which is the accepted answer today for early and not hysteria-launched sightings.
It goes back further than that: see jack o’ lantern, will-o-the-wisp, St Elmo’s fire, etc. for folk re-interpretation of lights as sinister.
Venus has been very prominent in the sky lately, and I saw it between the moon and the set sun about 10 days ago, after dark. I noticed it when leaving campus, and it was clearly visible during the entire drive home, and hovering over my neighbor’s house. Made me wonder if Venus was contributing to the NJ hysteria.
Seems to be happening.
Absolutely. The 1896 hysteria is not even the first case in which aircraft were postulated as the source, but it was the largest and best documented case. The sightings went on for months as they moved gradually from California to Illinois. New York papers began reporting on the sightings, although they never reached the East. Nobody has a good answer for sightings following along the major railroad line. I don’t think that Venus moves east in the sky, but I’m no astronomer.
Nevertheless, modern mass newspaper and wireservice coverage was certainly a factor in 1896, multiplying the audience by possibly orders of magnitude. Sightings were no longer confined to be mere local events after that. They could go national. That pattern has emerged in every major sighting craze that I’m aware of.
Well yeah, but I’ll bet they didn’t see scintillating orbs in the sky (that were actually just Venus seen through an out-of-focus telephoto lens):
There is the Battle of Los Angeles.
Doesn’t anyone in NJ own a pair of binoculars?
Only the ones who don’t report sightings.
An unskilled person looking at Venus through hand-held binoculars would report “It’s moving all over the place!”
I suspect few people own binoculars these days, but most have smartphones with really nice cameras. So perhaps video the suspected drone, even without zooming in, and then zoom in on the video later?
I still think we should send up armed fighter aircraft to shoot down the planet Venus.
It’s the only way to be sure.