cavfancier wrote:That reminds me...I have to phone home.
Reminds me, I'm really in the mood for some Reese's.
Ball lightning?
There's something I don't understand...why did the pilots have to use infrared to spot the so called "ball lightning"? You can see the phenomenon without using any kind of equipment. I have seen them and they do actually seem kinda intelligent as they travel with extremely high speed and move as they where alive. But we didn't use infrared cameras to spot them (I don't really have expensive toys like that), they light up everything automatically.
It may have to do more with how F15 pilots observe their surroundings than with the phonomania its self. They are travelling very fast and dependent on instrumentation for much of their information.
that's logical...but it is said that the objects where in fact invisible
PICKED UP FIRST ON RADAR
[quote] The videotape was filmed by air force members in March as they conducted a routine anti-drug trafficking surveillance flight over the coastal region of Campeche.
The objects were reported to be invisible to the eye - the pilots turned on the infrared camera to track them after three of them were picked up by the radar.[/quote]
This is either from Fox News or the BBC - URL's above in L.R.R.Hood's post.
Yes, the objects were invisible to the eye, but had been picked up on radar first. Then, when the pilots couldn't see them, they turned on their infrared camera - for heat emanating objects.[/color]
Exactly...do they normally pick up weather phenomenons with a radar?
medusa : sure they do. They do a wealth of weather diagnosis with radars.
See
http://mirror.bom.gov.au/weather/radar/
Relative
Thanks relitve, that's an interesting link.
for many years i was under the impression that out of the mere size of the universe it was crazy to consider the idea of human solitude. but one day for the same reason i realised its not so crazy, i happen to beleive in one out of ten tries, one in a million chances, one in a billion chances. so it easilly applys to my reason. if i were to say it is crazy, then it is merely crazy to assume the unanswered logic. aliens sure, no aliens sure. maybe we are a fluke. maybe our solitude is a fluke. to argue anything with convictions that accept no alternative is not to argue at all, it is to tell. the non-beleivers are as annoying as the beleivers to me. but my opinions may be trite as well.
hrm
I disagree (I am a physicist.)
From what I know of the various states of the elements and compounds, combined with the lore of ball lightning, I have speculated that they [ball-lightning] can only exist under various [rare] circumstances. I also doubt it would have a radar signature beyond that of steam. I also doubt it can be proven that ball lightning can exist in nature for more than a few split seconds. Compound those comments with the thought of having more than one ball in an area at the same time "should be" ultra-rare (1 sighting in millions). It just does not add up (in my mind).
Background: I believe that certain geographic areas on earth may be prone to ball lightning. This could be due to metallurgy, atmosphere or environmental conditions - which we have only begun to track simultaneously.
Therefore, it could have been many things. Let's just agree that it was something and not a figment of imagination. Whether it was plasma-state ozone or alien probes from afar, let's just agree it was "odd".
-my two cents