MYSTERY OBJECT CAUGHT ON TAPE MOMENTS AFTER SECOND TOWER HIT
According to the latest Drudge Report video footage has captured a “mystery” object zipping past the 2nd tower moments after initial impact. This claim is supported by video footage located at foxnews.com
If you ask me, the footage looks doctored, but what do I know. Any thoughts ?
Oh my God!!
Matt Drudge is really Seethruart!!!
I…don’t get it.
What am I supposed to be looking at here?
Looks an awful lot like one of those “alien rods” that were doing the rounds on the internet a while ago, and which turned out to be bugs. I’d guess this is also a bug. Or a bird, maybe. I mean, if it really is going behind the tower, it must be a huge object…as long as the tower was wide. It would also have to be travelling incredibly fast - the explosion on the left doesn’t noticably change at all over the six frames, but this “mystery object” travels halfway across the field of view.
So it’s either a huge aircraft travelling really fast (and presumably about to crash, which you’d think someone would notice) that no one else saw or recorded on film, or else it’s a startled winged rat flying just in front of the camera.
And just to make the point that you can see anything in billowing clouds/smoke, have a look at the grey debris cloud just to the left of the left tower in the pictures. It’s a laughing devil! Repent now, for Nostradamus has forseen it! Hmm. Or maybe it’s a laughing pig. Or Mickey Mouse.
Um… aren’t those the things I asked about here?
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=87513
I saw 'em too, and, while not live, shortly enough after the Event that it’d be tough to have doctored 'em. In fact, later replays have ‘degraded’ somewhat, probably from multiple recopying, and possibly from having been transmitted to various locations, and the two smoke trails I saw aren’t as distinct as they once were.
In any case, I believe the consensus is they’re the “core” of the two engines- they had the mass and momentum to blast through and out the other side, and were hot enough to leave the “smoke trails”.
Yeah, in the early broadcasts we saw these and quickly concluded the same thing. Although the photographs included on that page are misleading because they purport to show a different vector, you can still see the parabolic trail of the debris coming directly from the second hit.
My guess would be that it is the copilot-side engine, which had the least distance to travel through the building.
I’d like to have seen the frame immediately before those on that Drudge page, that frame would show whether the object is really behind (and large) or in front of (and small) the tower.
The trajectory looks way wrong for it to be a piece of debris from that collision, but angles and appearances can be decptive.
I’m wondering if it might be a spotter plane or helicopter moving at a constant height (not downwards) but away from the two towers (I think I saw some footage of the second collision that would have been shot from somewhere up in that bit of sky).
Yeah, looks like a ‘rod’ to me.
[ul][li]RoswellRods.comSkeptic’s Dictionary entry on Rods[/li][li]Mailbag article on rods[/li][/ul]
I suspect it is a bug flying in front of the camera. I second Mangetout’s desire to see the preceding frames.
I saw something the size of an engine and flaming go by on the video tape. What’s the big deal?
I watched the video linked to from the Drudge site, to me it doesn’t look at all like the mystery object comes from the crash, the speed and angle are completely different.
No ideas on what it is, though.
Doc Nickel, I have to commend you on your observation. I had to have someone point it out to me. However, I think they are indeed “rods” and not the engine.
douglips, thank you for the links. I was able to entertain my roommates for quite some time as I slowly divulged the Drudge web page, Fox News, Roswell Rods and finally, the Straight Dope.
Now I know the answer to the mysteries of the universe !!!
[Airplane!]
Why, I can make a hat or a brooch or a pterodactyl…
[/Airplane!]
Just had another look at those five frames, I’m now convinced that the object is a bird or other relatively small object close to the camera; here’s my reasoning:
The object is very blurred, this isn’t just speed blur (which would cause it to be blurred more along it’s long axis, or the direction of travel), it’s blurred in all directions, more blurred than the WTC building.
The buildings that are nearer to the camera that the WTC are more blurred than the WTC.
The camera was therefore focused at (or near) infinity.
Anything behind the WTC should have been in equal or sharper focus.
The out of focus (remember, not just motion-blurred) moving object must therefore be considerably closer to the camera than the buildings.
I am surprised at you people; that sequence is so obviously a doctored hoax, not even up to the standards of the Weekly World News (which accounts for why it ended up in the Sludge Report).
What do you EXPECT? It’s the Drudge Report!
>>I am surprised at you people; that sequence is so obviously a doctored hoax, not even up to the standards of the Weekly World News (which accounts for why it ended up in the Sludge Report).
Well, Fear Itself the shot does look fake - but so does the footage of the second plande hitting the tower. Look for yourself, “Second Plane Hits Tower” from the same foxnews site. That plane looks like a cardboard cut-out sliding down a string. I’m sticking with the “Rods” theory.
I went and looked at Fox News’ footage, and the object clearly passes in front of everything in the frame, especially the smoke billowing from the right hand tower, and doesn’t pass behind that tower, as the report says. There’s no way it could be construed to line up with the trajectory of the second plane, either.
I’m voting for a bug, “rod” or what have you.
Has anyone tried to watch for it on any of the other angles?
I saw the above linked bit, and what I saw was a tiny, data-compressed movie file, almost certainly originally taped off of a TV segment, itself quite probably third or fourth generation video. I saw several segments in the later days, that had been obviously recorded from CNN (the little taglines at the bottom are something of a giveaway.) The angle of that particular shot is also somewhat “oncoming”. The path of the plane is coming toward the viewer at a shallow angle.
In the segment I saw, uncompressed full-screen CNN the same day, the plane entered from the left on a path that appeared fully perpendicular to the viewer. After the impact, the explosion started coming out the right-hand side of the building, and before any flames could be seen, two wispy black smoke trails appeared, curving down towards a point at least several blocks away.
I’d lay money on the scene shown in the little video, shows the same objects- almost certainly the engine(s) or large fragments thereof- but from a lower, ‘oncoming’ angle, which would account for the “discrepancy” in the trajectory. That helpful red line is misleading- as an object nears the ground on a parabolic arc, of course the angle of movement seems to get further and further away from the angle of it’s ejection from the building.
I’ve never said it before and this is not the forum to say it, but, IMHO, it should be said…many times.
If there are “aliens” (–which, I think, means some folks who are either from one of the other planets in our Solar System or from some other Stellar System–) here on Earth, then they have had access to all of our developed (and, likely, developing) science and technology in addition to their own science and technology.
If there are such “alien” peoples here on Earth, this fact (–the availability of two species’ technologies–) is perhaps the biggest reason governments should make everyone aware of their presence.
Sea Sorbust wrote:
Um … what planets in our Solar System can support life, besides the Earth?