Measured Against Reality

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

UFO video a hoax



Do you remember that video? Everyone thought it was the most convincing evidence of the UFO phenomenon to date. I have to admit, when I see something like that I usually try to debunk it, but that one was well beyond my scope. It would have taken some kind of reporter to debunk. Luckily, one did.

Turns out it was just a guy who's very, very good at making CG movies and has an idea for, get this, a couple of guys who make a UFO hoax that spirals out of control, and wanted to test his idea.

The best part of the entire article, though, is the end:

The scary part, he said, was that in spite of the evidence, "many people refuse to believe it's a hoax."


Yes, it is funny how no matter what evidence is presented to the contrary, UFO believers never let the matter die (if you want some evidence of this, just look at crop circles. They're entirely man-made, but that doesn't stop "croppies"). Believe me, it would be spectacular if we were being visited by intelligent life forms. But we aren't, there's almost always a much simpler alternative explanation for every "sighting". I've never seen a case where the "official" or skeptic line was less plausible than alien visitation (and believe me, I've seen all of the History Channel specials on these things). We're almost certainly not being visited, end of story. At least until the next hoax (or video of a misunderstood phenomenon) comes along.

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3 Comments:

  • Easy to debunk. Compare the trees to each other. The two on the left are clones, then check the ones on the right. The behind the trees effect is easy to create when the trees are CGI, next time they won't make that mistake.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 8:53 AM, August 22, 2007  

  • The problem with that, anonymous, is that it is possible for two trees to look nearly identical.

    By Blogger Stupac2, at 8:55 AM, August 22, 2007  

  • I hadn't seen the video before. It's pretty good. Not entirely convincing -- it looks a bit flat and cartoonish. But considering it was done with home equipment, a very nice job.

    If flying saucers visited as frequently as their proponents were claiming forty years ago, the proliferation of video cameras in the 1980s should have made these kinds of videos commonplace. Cellphone cameras should have meant thousands of UFO pictures a year. But it didn't happen.

    These days it's hard for anything to happen -- a plane crash, a fire -- without lots of people taking live video. Even the Minneapolis bridge collapse was caught on a security camera.

    By Blogger Uncle Mike, at 10:40 AM, August 22, 2007  

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