Also, I don’t think I’d rule out the possibility that it’s strung on horizontal wires or something
The problem with this being genuine, is that it breaks the first fundamental rule in photographing a UFO. There is no moving film of the object. There are also no shots of the thing in open space. All the shots show it close to something, be it a telephone pole, tree line, or group of branches. Nothing where it is in open space. I’d like to see a film of this thing. If the one guy who shot it originally with his camera phone went home and got a camcorder instead of a regular camera, I’d be more inclined to surmise something other than a hoax.
Precisely my point in saying it is always shot close to something, never in open space. Thanks Mange
They look to be a homage to electrostatic levitation, sometimes referred to as Electrogravitics.
That’s quite a popular means of propulsion amongst the UFO set, and is consistent with the observer’s comment:
Yeah, but that’s the problem. Aircraft aren’t built for maximum visual weirdness. They are built to fly. If anything a flying machine could be rearranged so that the craft performs better, it would be. There’s no advantage to visual weirdness. Now, I’m not saying that it’s impossible, I’m just saying it’s unlikely.
The Rutan boomerang is a weird looking plane, but it is still designed with performance in mind. On, most twins, you have at least 3 sources of drag. Usually, it’s the fuselage and the two engine nacelles. Or, like the P-38, you have a fuselage “pod” and twin booms. Rutan, basically eliminated the pod, made the passenger compartment in one of the booms, then adjusted the flying surfaces until everything balanced out. The design is based on performance, not visual weirdness.
Also, when I said “faked”, I meant either photochopping or camera effects (wires or some other means of support.)
Mindfield - yep, exactly my points.
Well, I’m the guy that screamed Photoshop! and left, but at least I did some reading on the flickr page afterwards. Basically, it appears to be a CGI model (or, with a very slim probability, an actual photo) of an ion thrust drive (similar in principle to the one built on Mythbusters a while back). The discharge wires on top are charged to a high voltage which ionizes the air and propels it through the central hole which contains a superconducting magnet and further increases the propulsive force. The various spikes are to prevent the device from building up a charge. The long arm probably could contain a camera as well as balancing the forespikes.
So…it’s a model (or a photo) of a plausible but extremely unlikely aircraft. While we probably have the technology to get one of those in the air now, it would cost a ridiculous amount and the power supply would be problematic (the entry on the flickr page indicated that substantial power could be stored in the superconducting magnet, but battery technology couldn’t power one of those for more than a few seconds).
Advantages of the design are basically no moving parts and the ability to hover silently. Disadvantages are too numerous to mention, but include no obvious control surfaces, the complexity and expense of the technology, the effect of all that voltage on any onboard electronics, and the obvious danger of all those exposed electrodes.
If that’s true then I’ve got a much better photo of a Genuine Alien Technology Flying Machine in action.
Oh sure, to the untrained eye it might resemble NOTAR (No Tail Rotor) which has been around since the 1970s, but those of us in the know recognize it for what it really is - a UFO!!!
Naw, obviously it’s just swamp gas from a weather balloon that was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus.
I guess I should step up to the plate here.
It says “Fuck yeah, this is a Klingon space ship and not photoshopped. Oh, and the body is just a shell. So there.”
Alternatively, they could be the rigging that suspend the device from the helicopter or crane above it, with the suspension cable being the only thing photoshopped out of the picture.
In (mild) defense of the possibility that it is either a toy or an engineering/survey device, I would note that the propulsion/lift might be created by a ducted system within the ring, rather than a traditional propeller, either counter-rotating to eliminate torque or passing air down the longest “wing” (actually, tail) in a NOTAR confiuguration (which, as noted, is over thirty years old).
I have no idea how much of this is real, but a small, mostly plastic, device seems not impossible as long as it really is no longer than eight feet (as it appears).
(I would also not that the images in the two separate sets of links are either of different objects or of an object that was modified between the two sets of photos.)
Not that it is proof or anything, but the object screams ‘rendered’ to me because of that peculiar lustreless grey coloration typical of 3D rendering programs - like this or this
Folks seem to be putting a lot of weight on the fact that this thing was seen to hover (or at least, is claimed to have been seen to hover). But what if it were just flying very slowly into a headwind? An observer on the ground might not be able to tell the difference.
My guess is that it’s a toy from some hobby shop, probably made mostly out of polystyrene, and which is intentionally designed to look like a weird UFO. It probably flies by the same basic principles as ordinary airplanes, with thrust provided by fans hidden in ducts somewhere in the donut.
Not only does it scream photoshop to me, if you download one of the JPEGs and look at the raw file, the image header says “Adobe Photoshop”. No lie.
Unless the specific intent is to make people go “wow, what the hell is that thing?” - I’m talking about a model aircraft designed to cause a stir - designed specifically to provoke UFO reports.
Not if visual weirdness was the key design criterion.
There’s no advantage to visual weirdness if you’re designing for optimal performance, but why assume that has even been a consideration here? People ignore performance in favour of visual weirdness all the time
OK, here’s something interesting… or maybe not… I took a look at the EXIF data on the jpeg images from the OP’s link and they were created on Photoshop CS2 for Mac The pictures in Squink’s link were created on Adobe Photoshop Elements.
But before we get too excited and conclusive, I should mention that the non-UFO photos on the OP’s linked site also said they were created by Photoshop CS2 for Mac - even the photos of the military and police drones.
I guess people use Photoshop for getting their stuff web-ready, so it could just be that. I’m not going to argue that it isn’t photoshop, I just don’t like the habit of declaring any and every odd picture on the web as “obvious photoshop”. It happened, for example, with this image, and it’s completely real.
Well, we have two different observers then. Obviously the photos are legit.
That’s caused by Global Illumination, a way to realistically render a computer generated image using bounced light from surfaces, rather than purely directional light. That way it matches real world lighting a lot more closely.
As soon as you resize and resave an image, the EXIF data changes. It would’ve come from the guy who put the pics on the website, not from whoever originated the image.
OK, I took a close look a the image where there’s a broom tree on the right side - a couple of the branches lie in front of parts of the UFO - in these places, the UFO around the branches is conspicuously blurred or smeared - indicating, I think, that the branch was painted or cloned back in, then a blending or blur tool was used to cover up. The blurred zone is circular and about 10 pixels in diameter in both cases.
ETA: I still wouldn’t say I’m certain it’s photoshopped though - just that my suspicion is aroused.