NASA Feed 'Goes Down As Horseshoe UFO Appears On ISS Live Cam' (mirror.co.uk) 412
schwit1 quotes a report from Mirror Online: NASA has been accused of an alien cover up after a live International Space Station feed appearing to show a horseshoe UFO suddenly went down. Conspiracy theorists are having a field day over the sighting of the strange U-shaped object hovering on the horizon of the the ISS. They claim NASA 'cut the live feed' after the glowing blue object flew too close to the space station. Some have even gone as far to say NASA's funding should be cut over their 'great alien deception.' Scott Waring of UFO Sightings Daily first discovered the UFO. He passed the footage on to Tyler Glockner who uploaded the video to his YouTube channel secureteam10. What do you think: is it an alien spaceship or something more likely such as a reflection from a station window?
Alien Bastards (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Seems obvious (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Seems obvious (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Seems obvious (Score:5, Informative)
It has all signs of a reflection, even the color split. Something bends the light and splits it into different wavelengths, just like a rainbow. It is red at the bottom (long waves) and blue on the top (short waves). What precisely causes this is a good question, but my guess is a curved lens/window getting hit by sunlight at a certain angle.
I wouldn't be surprised if somebody insists the light is bend by a cloaking device though. Once people start to believe NASA stopped going to the moon because the aliens said they would attack earth if they did or talked about it, then I'm willing to believe people will claim anything to "prove" aliens exist.
Re:Seems obvious (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Seems obvious (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Seems obvious (Score:4, Funny)
Actually forget that... it's a ghost and part of the marketing campaign for the Ghostbusters reboot...
*checks offshore account*
what no payment? dam... maybe that was the actual truth :(
Re: (Score:3)
Re: Seems obvious (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Seems obvious (Score:5, Informative)
What's with the vitriol? (Score:5, Insightful)
Neil Tyson needs to stfu and recognize the fact that no matter how hard he tries he will never be Carl Sagan.
Does this anger of yours towards NdGT have a point? Did he pee in your cereal bowl or something?
And I LIKED Pluto.
And what is stopping you from continuing to like Pluto? NdGT didn't blow it up with a cannon or anything. Last I checked it's still there, same as it ever was. Even has a heart on it to make it extra lovable.
Re:What's with the vitriol? (Score:5, Funny)
NdGT didn't blow it up with a cannon or anything.
That's what the government wants you to think.
Re: (Score:3)
And we're gonna make the Klingons pay for it.
Re: (Score:3)
And I LIKED Pluto.
Hey, you can still like Pluto, we won't think any less of you for it. What happens between two consenting adults or space-borne objects is nobody's business but your own.
Re: (Score:3)
my guess is a curved lens/window getting hit by sunlight at a certain angle.
JJ Abrams already ruined Star Trek with too much lens flare. Now he's going after real space.
Re: (Score:3)
Also, if you ever try to watch the feed in question: http://www.ustream.tv/embed/17... [ustream.tv] it goes down about 25 times per hour, especially when approaching populated areas. There's nothing suspicious in the coincidence that the feed went down when this image appeared - I'd be more surprised if we got 5 minutes of continuous coverage, of anything, from the ISS feed.
Re: Seems obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you really believe that in 100 billion visible galaxies there isn't one speck of life?
Oh, there is life out there. You can bet on it. But the UFO nutters aren't just saying "there is life out there," they're saying something VERY different, namely:
1) That this life is intelligent enough to have perfected interstellar travel
2) That it is exists coincidentally with us
3) That it feels the need to come to this backward shithole and probe our redneck's asses.
Yes, it's pretty arrogant to think that we're the only life in the universe. But it's even more arrogant to think that a species so incredibly advanced as to have developed a way to travel across the almost unimaginably vast distances of interstellar space would give a flying fuck about a primitive species that only recent developed simple chemical rockets.
We wouldn't probably wouldn't even qualify as a child's ant farm to a species that advanced.
Re: (Score:2)
I was going with martian finger print on the glass. or spec of dust and/or sunlight hitting the lens.
IT IS ONLY A REFLECTION (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I thought it looked like a Sprite
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
But Im at work and can not watch the video.
Re: (Score:2)
Hilarious (Score:5, Insightful)
All of this assumes:
- NASA has enough money to pay someone to watch the feed, their hand hovering over a giant "SHUT IT ALL DOWN" button. They don't.
- NASA knows they might have something to hide, so DOESN'T delay the live stream by one minute in case "Hey, aliens wandered into the frame, let's just static out those seconds and go oops, technical difficulties".
- The aliens are smart enough to travel between worlds but aren't smart enough to hide from a camera that NASA could have told them, in advance, that they were pointing in this one place (space is VERY big).
- None of the other observation devices pointed randomly at the sky (including people observing the ISS through their amateur telescopes and stuff, as people are want to do) saw this.
- The EU, Russians, Chinese and Indians with all their hardware and observation technology (none of whom save possibly the EU have any incentive to cooperate with the US and would, in fact, leap at the chance to discredit and shame them) didn't see it either.
The worst part is the Schroeder's competence that has to take place here. NASA have to be crazy-dedicated and funded in order to successfully cover up something as obvious as alien spacecraft whizzing around within visual range of the ISS, but also dumb enough to let it get exposed so trivially and easily as a public camera with the world watching.
When you start to think about it even a little bit the likelihood that it's real, live, true alien visitors and not just some kind of weird light reflection, space debris, or whatever is vanishingly small.
(...which is exactly what they WOULD say, isn't it...)
Re:Hilarious (Score:4, Interesting)
Your arguments are solid except the first one. Censorship of such a thing (if it were real, ha ha) would be done by the military, not by NASA. Remember, the feds have taps into all long-haul internet links in the country, all email passing across the open internet is archived and data mined (at minimum headers, but since they admit that, I'm going to assume contents) and so on. It's not a stretch to believe that there could be someone with their finger on the button there... if you could believe in aliens, especially.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Right, because the military has the time, interest and competence to monitor all these various communications feeds and shut them down. They couldn't even stop a contractor from walking out the door of a secure facility with tons of sensitive documents.... Whenever I hear these conspiracy theories that involve the government engaging in huge multi-decade clandestine operations that are run perfectly with not a single person leaking information, my response is "I only wish my government were competent enou
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Yep, because if I were going to have a classified satellite, I'd put it in orbit near the ISS, where lots of different governments can easily monitor it. That way, they could all cooperate on keeping it a secret from each other.
If it were aliens (Score:5, Insightful)
Aliens would be the biggest thing to happen to NASA ever. It would mean an unlimited budget and hiding any alien encounter would be against their best interests.
Re: If it were aliens (Score:2)
You have it backwards. Aliens and UFOs are government created distractions to hide the fact that people who work for NASA are aliens and of extraterrestrial origin.
"It's like a finger pointing at the Moon. Do not concentrate on the finger, or you'll miss all of the heavenly glory", a great thinker once said. It basically means that the UFO exhaust flames are in other direction.
Re: (Score:2)
But...why would a race that has control over time and space want to run an under-funded government agency?...
Re: (Score:2)
Astronaut groupies.
Once you realize they are kind of puritan* it makes sense. Do you realize how long it takes to go from planet to planet. They are horny as sailors. At least they aren't out anal probing or collecting cow uterus, like the pervert aliens.
* Aliens keep their women back home, barefoot and pregnant.
Re: If it were aliens (Score:4, Funny)
Same reason they run the DMV. On their home world, bureaucracy was the lowest and most reviled form of torture, apart from throwing an entire species to the Lizard pits of Zith and or dropping a clone bomb with the dial set to "Flying Sarlacs of Yendor". For species they really and truly despise, they prefer the slow sisyphean cannibalism of bureaucracy.
Re: (Score:2)
Aliens would be the biggest thing to happen to NASA ever. It would mean an unlimited budget and hiding any alien encounter would be against their best interests.
Unless they themselves are the aliens...
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
What kind of experience does someone need to get a job in the NASA Alien Coverup PR department? I've been looking to join in one of the great conspiracies of our age and this seems like a solid growth industry with every whack job posting their crazy opinions on YouTube. J/K, right?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
NASA don't pay they guy hovering over the "SHUT IT ALL DOWN" button: the NSA and CIA do.
As for the failure to hit the SHUT IT ALL DOWN button, in a hidden ex-employee processing centre on an unknown island, and ex-NSA operative is having his memory erased.
They were smart enough, but they trusted NSA's conspiracy-with-aliens department when it said that there was no reason to worry. As mentioned above, the result is a few soon-to-be-ex-employees quickly moved to overseas assignments where their memories are
Re:Hilarious (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
- NASA knows they might have something to hide, so DOESN'T delay the live stream by one minute in case "Hey, aliens wandered into the frame, let's just static out those seconds and go oops, technical difficulties".
Vaguely recall that NASA instituted a FIVE minute delay on external camera feed from shuttle(?), but continued live feed from inside the craft. That was after a UFO flap several years ago. May be that is the same protocol that ISS also follows.
Re: (Score:2)
All of this assumes:
- NASA has enough money to pay someone to watch the feed, their hand hovering over a giant "SHUT IT ALL DOWN" button. They don't
...
When you start to think about it even a little bit the likelihood that it's real, live, true alien visitors and not just some kind of weird light reflection, space debris, or whatever is vanishingly small.
(...which is exactly what they WOULD say, isn't it...)
Unless it's government mandated and NASA want the secret to get out! How else to explain how they could fuck up such a trivial job so often......mind.....blown (I wish I could insert that picture of bill and ted whoah face)
Re:Hilarious (Score:5, Funny)
The existence of aliens would drive demands for a HUGE boost to NASA's budget. So much for conspiracies.
But let's pretend it's a UFO - "Build a dome and make them pay for it!"
Re: (Score:2)
Space Debris [wikipedia.org]
As usual, DNA nails it... (Score:2)
"On this particular Thursday, things were moving through the ionosphere many miles above the surface of the planet. Several huge yellow slab-like somethings, huge as office blocks, silent as birds, they hung in the air exactly the same way that bricks don't. The planet was almost totally oblivious of their presence. They went unnoticed at Goonhilly, they passed over Cape Canaveral without a blip, and Woomera and Jodrell Bank looked straight through them; which was a pity, because it was exactly the sort of
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
This is exactly the kind of misdirecting post someone at NASA would think up to deflect our attention from what they are REALLY trying to hide. How do you explain that the feed DID actually drop out after the reflection showed up?
What if, the reflection, and the loss of feed are BOTH fabricated to distract us from something even bigger?
Re: Hilarious (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, but every single one of those people are in on it! That is how diabolical this conspiracy is.
Re:Hilarious (Score:4, Insightful)
Basically I have similar arguments when dealing with moon landing deniers. If you take into account the whole effort behind the Apollo program [20 000 companies and universities employed, more than 400 000 people only in US working on it, the constant live feed of the communications between the spacecraft and mission control [that you could listen to yourself with some decent gear], the amateur astronomers watching, the Russians watching etc. it is WAY, WAY more difficult [bordering on the impossible] to fake the landing than to simply go there! Especially in times when movie technology was so much simpler...I mean simulating zero-gravity back then? Not a chance...even today [Gravity] when they tried simulation rather than put the actors in the Vomit comet it is immediately obvious that it is a fake....
Re: Hilarious (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
That is exactly what they want you to think.
Re:Hilarious (Score:5, Insightful)
I love that term: Schroeder's competence. That's pretty standard in any conspiracy theory. The Conspiracy is a vast network with near-infinite resources and the ability to stage/cover up a complex scheme. At the same time, they are so incompetent that The Hero (usually some guy in his basement posting to YouTube) can easily expose everything they do. It's a power fantasy. "I feel completely helpless in my life so I'll imagine there's a uber-competent group controlling X and then will expose them, making myself smarter than this powerful group and all the 'sheeple' who fell for their ploy."
Re: (Score:2)
Your forgot the biggest assumption of all: that the alien UFO had pulled into a precision orbit going the same direction and velocity as the space station.
Re: (Score:2)
All of this assumes:
- NASA has enough money to pay someone to watch the feed, their hand hovering over a giant "SHUT IT ALL DOWN" button. They don't. - NASA knows they might have something to hide, so DOESN'T delay the live stream by one minute in case "Hey, aliens wandered into the frame, let's just static out those seconds and go oops, technical difficulties". - The aliens are smart enough to travel between worlds but aren't smart enough to hide from a camera that NASA could have told them, in advance, that they were pointing in this one place (space is VERY big). - None of the other observation devices pointed randomly at the sky (including people observing the ISS through their amateur telescopes and stuff, as people are want to do) saw this. - The EU, Russians, Chinese and Indians with all their hardware and observation technology (none of whom save possibly the EU have any incentive to cooperate with the US and would, in fact, leap at the chance to discredit and shame them) didn't see it either.
The worst part is the Schroeder's competence that has to take place here. NASA have to be crazy-dedicated and funded in order to successfully cover up something as obvious as alien spacecraft whizzing around within visual range of the ISS, but also dumb enough to let it get exposed so trivially and easily as a public camera with the world watching.
When you start to think about it even a little bit the likelihood that it's real, live, true alien visitors and not just some kind of weird light reflection, space debris, or whatever is vanishingly small.
(...which is exactly what they WOULD say, isn't it...)
Why would they static out the image when they could just have the MIB send out a light pulse and wipe everyone's memory? Kudos to Scott for looking away just in time to save his memory of the incident!
Re:OT: wont, not want (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not a writer, I'm a typoist.
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting, since I just learned about this kind of thing...
This is what's called the ad-hoc fallacy. The fallacy is where one party introduces new information for which there is no evidence at all, except that it fits a conclusion that party has already accepted.
For example:
Your neighbour Ted is your best friend, and an honest man. Ted would never steal from you. Yet you come home and find your house is burgled! You find muddy footprints that match Ted's unique shoe-print in your house, and you confide in
Re:Hilarious (Score:5, Funny)
Oh shit, I'm a fuckwit?
Oh god.
I... I never knew.
Re: Hilarious (Score:2)
Re:Hilarious (Score:4, Insightful)
>Maybe the aliens are in contact with NASA/Government
If so, in't it much simpler for NASA to say to these aliens (who can travel between worlds easily), "Hey, don't fly in THIS specific spot during this specific time, by the way it's optical range for a shitty webcam on a fixed, predictable path, so like, it's really really tiny and SPACE IS BIG GUYS, just seriously avoid this tiny strip and you're fine."
That's like them saying, "Hey aliens, when you're visiting Earth and wandering around totally undisguised, try to avoid the front door NASA headquarters because we are filming a press release there today."
> The aliens might just be humoring the governments they're in contact with, they have no reason to hide from us or fear us
So now they're... just trolling us?
Space is big, so obviously, this is deliberate action. If they wanted to reveal themselves they wouldn't do so via a grainy image from the ISS; they could just appear over New York City and just hover for a while. If they wanted to hide, again, they could simply not be in this one specific spot at this one specific time.
> Space is big, observers are few, and non-official observers are easily discredited if something slips through
It's possible to discredit a few people, but with collaboration it becomes harder. I can concede an occasional independent voice may be silenced, but this kind of thing requires a competence that the US government has shown with literally no other part of its administration.
> The aliens might similarly be in contact with the other space-faring governments on the planet
That assumes that essentially the Chinese (current frenemies of the US), the EU (a group of many man disparate countries with plenty of quasi-rogue-state elements present), the Russians (traditional enemies of the US and relations are quite cold right now), the Indians (who are third-world aligned but lean toward Russia) would all agree to, under no circumstances, no matter how bad it got, no matter what, including things like the total collapse of the USSR which happened not all that long ago, or during heightened tensions such as Russia playing in the Syrian sandpit, or Russia invading Georgia, or Russia carving up the Ukraine, would never ever blab about this, ever.
It's the same problem with fake moon landings. The Russians had roughly equal instruments pointing toward the moon and tracked every US launch made there, and put their best minds to work analyzing it (for military purposes). If the landing was fake, they would laud this over the corrupt capitalist pig-dogs for all eternity, but even they acknowledge the US was really there.
Blurry (Score:5, Insightful)
As usual for anything "identified as UFO's" the object is blurry, suggesting the "object" was outside the field of depth, which does seem to be pretty deep as it includes infinity as well as a good amount of the station outside the window.
Could it be that whatever it is, is very near the lens? **gasp, I used logic, I must be part of the conspiracy then.**
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Blurry (Score:5, Insightful)
It has all the classic hallmarks
- It's blurry.
- It's impossible to gauge distance to any accuracy (but your logic is quite good to narrow the range down quite considerably).
- It does nothing. In fact, technically, to be "an object" there it would have to be in a partnered orbit, which would mean it would have to have GOT THERE. Are we suggesting cloaking devices too?
- Incomplete footage. It doesn't appear out of nowhere, it's just there when the footage starts DESPITE it probably being quite easy for whoever captured it to include 30 seconds more at the beginning (where you'll see that reflection / lens flare quite obviously start to come in).
- It's indeterminate in size, shape. Thus it's probably not an object. And the only thing it doesn't have indeterminate (but which is because of the above) is "speed", which is actually more working against it being anything interesting .
- It's then zoomed into to "see more detail". Please, please, stop doing this. We're not in Bladerunner.
Honestly, guys, I would love to witness such a thing. I firmly believe in the Drake equation. I virtually guarantee you there's "something" out there. I also mathematically virtually-guarantee you (I'm a mathematician, certainty is a big word) that we'll never be in the same time/space/evolution that we'd ever be able to communicate usefully.
I would love to see such a thing in my lifetime. That's a truly ground-breaking thing to be witness to (Where were you when Kennedy was shot, who cares? Where were you when we found out about the aliens? Much more interesting to tell your grandchildren).
But this sort of shite just makes me shake my head, and I've never seen anything EXCEPT this sort of shite. And so my above beliefs label me - by proxy - as some kind of nutter if expressed poorly.
Would love to see an alien. This isn't it. It's precisely what all the others are. An unidentified "something" (I can't even call it an object, I think it's lens flare thus an optical effect). And the vast, vast, vast, vast balance of probability is that I could set up a camera and replicate this effect almost perfectly in minutes with an innocent setup (e.g. lens flare, object behind the camera and glass window in front, etc.).
Nutters, the lot of you.
Re: (Score:2)
it is designed to be blurry for a reason .... Plausible Deniability !!!!
The guys in the lab have to adjust it to be just off-focus before launching. Duh - everyone knows that.
Re: (Score:2)
Where? (Score:2)
God (Score:5, Funny)
Dear God,
I'd like to file a bug report.
Re: (Score:2)
The zerg are not a bug, they're a feature.
--
The Xel'naga.
Maybe NASA is just the first to fall (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe the aliens cut out the feed themselves. Maybe they're now in control of NASA. Maybe the invasion.. is beginning..
Next time one gets back their movements will be...off and they'll seem a bit weird. We'll just say oh they've been in space then BAM giant bug monster eating everyone!
UFO? I think not. (Score:5, Funny)
But it probably is a cover-up: this blob looks very much like some kind of flying grassy knoll.
Bored astronauts... (Score:2)
Easy, they got bored and decided to play horseshoes. How hard was that?
"Appears" (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah, alien spacecraft can hover. Big whoop...
It's a mic (Score:5, Funny)
Its just a boom mic getting into the shot on the soundstage. You UFO-believers and your wacky theories *rolls eyes*
Oh dear fucking god.... (Score:3)
Why dont we just change the name of slashdot to Gawker media?
Really This is news? you guys are now grabbing crap from nutjob whack sites? I hears there is some great stuff out there on 4chan.
Re: (Score:2)
Wish I had mod points for ya. You and I don't agree on much, but I'm with you on this.
Re: (Score:2)
says the kid that is too chicken shit to post under his own account.
probably just a spider (Score:2)
happens to me all the time, bit of spider web over the lens. Little buggers get everywhere.
Technically it can't be a UFO (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Falling. With style.
Re: (Score:2)
Technically it can't be a UFO because if it's that high above the atmosphere, it can't be flying :)
Funny comment that make me wonder, is there a technical term for unidentified space object? USO?
Re: (Score:2)
Spaceflight is still flying.
I quote Wikipedia: "Flight is the process by which an object moves, through an atmosphere (the air in the case of earth) or beyond it (as in the case of spaceflight) ..."
Re: (Score:2)
I doubt that flight requires an atmosphere.
Just a Communications Handover (Score:5, Informative)
coffee break (Score:5, Funny)
It's not a UFO..... (Score:2)
It's bigfoot.... in space!
Object is probably a classified satellite (Score:5, Insightful)
Obvious (Score:2)
Clearly, there's no intelligent life here, so why would aliens care?
Remember what the U in UFO stands for (Score:4, Insightful)
What do you think: is it an alien spaceship or something more likely such as a reflection from a station window?
Have you forgotten what the "U" in UFO stands for? When you see a UFO you should stop right there. It's unidentified so you don't know what it is. You can make a list of possible explanations but until you have evidence to establish or refute any given explanation you shouldn't go further. If the "evidence" for the UFO is eye-witness testimony then you should examine the drinking habits [itsokaytobesmart.com] of the observer.
There is a saying that when you hear the sound of hoofs you should probably be thinking horses instead of zebras [wikipedia.org]. Point is that there are innumerable explanations FAR more likely than an alien visitation. In fact alien visitation should be at the absolute bottom of any list of possible explanations of a UFO sighting. You might keep it on the list just because you cannot definitively rule it out but it doesn't move higher on the list unless you have some VERY compelling evidence. Some visual artifacts on film doesn't remotely qualify as very compelling.
Simmer down, there's an easy explanation.. (Score:2)
Clearly this is just a viral marketing campaign for the new Independence Day 2/ Independence Day: Resurgence movie.
Clearly! :D
Pony up (Score:2)
I for one welcome our giant Equestrian Overlords.
I cannot believe they still think this is a UFO (Score:4, Interesting)
This is a well known optical issue, where a point source or illumination outside the field of view (sun) scatters light off the diaphragm edges inside the lens (almost square when fully stopped down). The light then passes back out the lens to reflect a second time of the front elements inside surface. This results in multiple images of the point source appearing at a point in the frame that are out of focus and appear to drift and merge.
Bet you anything you like, if the camera had been even slightly tilted during that clip the "UFO" would have shot across the frame at an integer multiple of the angular tilt.
This effect in a slightly different manner for UFO believers is repeated often when they insist on seeing Diamond UFO's in video footage taken with a camcorder at full zoom with the iris and focus on auto. What they see with their eyes is an unfamiliar point source of light (planet, plane etc), what the camera see's is an out of focus point source vignetted by the iris to a diamond shape with often the light meter filter giving the bottom half a red or green hue.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
As a tax payer, you don't get to decide what your taxes are spent on, nor does any agency or government official owe you squat for an answer. They may even require you to file a FOIA request to get an answer. Government employees are responsible to those who oversee their agencies...hint: it's not you. You only get to put your $.02 in during elections.
Yes, there's plenty wrong with the federal government, but your lack of understanding it isn't helping you.
Re: (Score:2)
"Threatening me with eternal damnation won't get you in any faster."
Re: Now do you believe? (Score:5, Funny)
God does not play horseshoes with the universe.
Re: (Score:2)
Come to think of it, it does look like Trump's toupee.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Tell that to Trump. He says there are 11 million of them among us :-)
Of course he's wrong. That number is low.
Re: (Score:2)
My brother moved to the states. I'm pretty sure that makes him an alien, even if he is legal. He is an englishman, but does not currently reside in new york.
Re: (Score:2)
+5 Informative
Sorry, no. You can't request your own mod up, and I'll never waste one on an AC anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
It looks to me like some kind of plume.
My question is telemetry -- do we know the orbital location of ISS when the video was taken and can that be used to approximate the location of the phenomena? What part of earth might be centered under that location?