So I got a bazillion emails and tweets about the so-called "missile launch" off of LA the other day. I was on travel and couldn’t really write about this, and by the time I could it was already being shown to be a plane contrail. And I wouldn’t even write about it now, but I have to link to this clip from The Daily Show where they pretty much nail it:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Missile: Impossible | ||||
|
||||
The part about the helicopter pilot is magnifique! That’s a perfect example of skeptical thinking. And Occam’s Razor slices pretty well here; what’s more common in LA, an airplane or a missile launch? It shows the relevance once again of the old skeptical adage: If you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras.
Unless you live in the African grassland. Or near a zoo. Whatever.
And I’ll add that a guy appears to have figured out not only that it was a plane, but what flight it was, which I note simply because I know the comments to this post will soon be filled with conspiracy theorists who will claim this is a coverup for a transdimensional porthole like the one over Norway or Australia that were certainly not rocket boosters even though all the evidence points that way because they just know it and use words that sound sciencey but are actually the blog-comment equivalent of an Ogden Nash poem.
Say.
Tip o’ the tin foil beanie to reddit for that last bit about the plane spotter.
November 12th, 2010 at 11:03 am
Been fighting this over on facebook (Dr. Michio Kaku was getting grief from “it’s not a plane” crowd because he went on record stating it looked like an airplane contrail).
November 12th, 2010 at 11:04 am
How does this happen? In L.A., there must be hundreds of airliner contrails in the sky every day. I see nothing unusual about this one.
The “news” teams don’t seem to be making a pretense anymore of reporting the facts. This reminds me of the idiotic “balloon boy” thing, when I kept waiting for somebody to mention that obviously a 20-foot homemade balloon isn’t lifting a ten-year-old boy. I used to assume reporters had at least some logical skill and a basic grasp of how things work in the physical world.
November 12th, 2010 at 11:06 am
For Canadian Viewers: http://watch.thecomedynetwork.ca/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart/full-episodes/#clip372109
November 12th, 2010 at 11:09 am
Now that I’ve finally seen the pictures, I realize it reminds me a lot of an early morning view I once saw — and photographed — of a couple of contrails lit up by the not-quite-risen sun.
November 12th, 2010 at 11:10 am
Wait, Zucci – are you saying there was a boy attached to the missle? OMFSM!
Seriously, I’ve seen contrails like that my whole life – over Ohio, Tennessee, New Jersey, Arizona, California and elsewhere. It’s true… the human brain is shrinking.
November 12th, 2010 at 11:18 am
And in a related story… Apparently LA has been ranked among America’s dumbest cities…
http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2010/10/los_angeles_ranks_among_americ.php
November 12th, 2010 at 11:20 am
It was a Planetary Security Agency (PSA) slow-poke missile to defy the force field around the alien ship. You can rest easy, the threat has been neutralized, for now! (Oh, you did not know about the PSA? It is the super secret arm of the globe trotting TSA.)
November 12th, 2010 at 11:24 am
Why are we even discussing this? This is clearly the answer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UAeSsvHhTg
November 12th, 2010 at 11:29 am
I will treasure that phrase forever. Its been added to my quote collection.
November 12th, 2010 at 11:29 am
I guess Phil’s take that people don’t bother looking up at the sky applies to daytime as well as night? How can you know what’s “not normal” if you don’t know what’s “normal”?
November 12th, 2010 at 11:34 am
i think it was a hollywood test flight of a new Iron Man suit. they got sick of wasting all the money on CGI and just went and built the damn thing for real to use in the next film.
actually, one thing about all the reports i have read that annoys me is this: why doesn’t anyone have, say, 1/2 hour of video of the contrail? keep watching it. if i goes up then comes back down, or stops, then it is a missile. if it keeps going and going and going to the horizon, then it is a plane. at least watching it for longer would give a better idea about the shape of the trajectory, which should allow you to differentiate between the two theories. in complete data sets and improper interpolation drive me nuts!
November 12th, 2010 at 11:36 am
Living along a main flyway in Nebraska for many years I’d seen hundreds of dawn/dusk contrails exactly like this. The crap that emerged on national news was simply amazing. All there “experts” fit the definition I heard years ago: “X is an unknown and spurt is a drip under pressure so an expert is an unknown drip under pressure.” Sure fit the “experts” the news media trotted out.
On the insane side RT news had the linked story below of it. If your brain doesn’t explode 30 seconds in you forgot to turn on the sound or are a Pleiadian. Does RT stand for Really Terrible News coverage? It may set a record for more woo in one short clip. It has something for everyone’s woo beliefs and many I’d never heard before. Yeah it was a fluff piece but giving this “Pleiadian” air time makes me sick. I’m still trying to pull my brain back together after it exploded.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UAeSsvHhTg&feature=share
Rick
November 12th, 2010 at 11:37 am
I can see why some might think missile at least at first glance, the contrail has a somewhat “twisted” or corkscrew look to it (I assume to be wind disturbance at altitude) and based on time of day/positioning it just happened to look like a missile contrail rather than what it was (an inbound or outbound LAX or transcontinental flight flying at angle to/from the point of view{er})….
or possibly the Gubinator playing with rockets in his backyard!
November 12th, 2010 at 11:37 am
Reminds me of the story about the early days of Los Alamos when the Army spent a lot of effort to shoot down Venus.
November 12th, 2010 at 11:37 am
Omg – another transdimentional port? If we get too many more TSA will be wanting to scan our nakedness AND do a pat down/grope.
November 12th, 2010 at 11:38 am
@rob – Well, if it was a ballistic missile it might look just like a contrail, slowly disappearing over the horizon.
November 12th, 2010 at 11:40 am
I was fighting this one at the office. Ironically, on my drive home, I saw a plane flying toward me from the horizon forming the exact same appearance. I took a picture to prove my point.
The funny part is on the video that made the initial claims, you can see the object blink a green or a blue light. Like a plane.
November 12th, 2010 at 11:41 am
I saw something similar a few weeks ago. I live in Tampa and went outside and saw what looked like the trail from a shuttle launch, but I didn’t think there was one scheduled for that day. A quick check on line confirmed Discovery was still on the ground, and what I saw was a jet contrail. Mystery solved.
November 12th, 2010 at 11:56 am
Clearly this is a cover up. The space aliens who traveled lightyears across interstellar space still haven’t figured out how to mask their rocket exhaust when launching a rocket from earth. It’s either that or a secret US government missile launch to take out Obama’s conservative enemies in that conservative stronghold of LA and launch the second Civil War.
November 12th, 2010 at 12:03 pm
@Ross:
Why are we even discussing this? This is clearly the answer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UAeSsvHhTg
My god, I couldn’t even get through 1 minute of that… You are braver than I.
November 12th, 2010 at 12:05 pm
I’m delighted that the mystery has been solved, but don’t be so quick to judge the initial “it looks like a missile” theory. We do, in fact, see missile contrails out here in LA with some regularity. Several times a year, there are missile test launches from Vandenberg AFB up the coast, usually around sunset. The missiles head out over the Pacific, leaving linear contrails that then dissipate rather spectacularly and colorfully for the next hour or so, still lit by the sun in the high atmosphere. They are also never announced in advance and always come as a surprise.
Besides, if I’ve learned anything from Phil’s numerous optical illusion posts, it is that our eyes are easily fooled; so looking at this and seeing a missile contrail (at first glance) doesn’t mean we’re stupid, just human.
November 12th, 2010 at 12:06 pm
Don’t people look up in the sky now and then and notice contrails?
I used to live in Las Vegas, and remember seeing a contrail from some rocket test at Edwards AFB or maybe China Lake weapons center. The Vegas police got hundreds of phone calls, and they finally put an announcement about the test.
November 12th, 2010 at 12:12 pm
I thought it was Danger Mouse
November 12th, 2010 at 12:20 pm
@16 Gus.
yeah, i thought of that, but the boost phase for an ICBM is only about 3-5 minutes. thats why i wanted more video footage to see the time scales involved.
now, having just now watched the Jon Stewart segment, and hearing the helicopter pilot say he watched it for ~10 minutes, it is obviously not a missile.
aargh. wonderful reporting as usual.
November 12th, 2010 at 12:27 pm
When I hear hoof beats, I think two coconut shells banged together…
November 12th, 2010 at 12:38 pm
If it wasn’t for all the tinfoil hysteria and dumbtardery of a generally scientifically illiterate population out there, this would be funny. I has some conspiracy nut ask, “Why didn’t the government say anything about this if it was just a plane?” My response was, the reason the DoD, or “government”, didn’t have anything to say is because they don’t give a crap about every day ordinary flights that have no bearing on military or government operations. Seriously, what exact part of the “government” is responsible for answering idiotic questions from a portion of their citizenry that is illiterate on subjects such as optical illusions, atmospheric conditions, and all the other nuances that are required to understand the world around you? *sigh*
November 12th, 2010 at 12:39 pm
@19 Tom
Fair points for the general public, but the reporters should be doing their homework. That’s their job!
@22 rob: Exactly what I was thinking. Evening going to orbit (which missles don’t) you hit MECO in about 8 minutes (give or take a little depending on the exact launch vehicle) and it would be shorter for an ICBM as you point out (admittedly, I have seen a lot more rockets launch to orbit in person than missles!)
If you have seen rocket launches, one thing that you notice is those things move! They are gone well out of sight real quick. That’s what struck me about the video: it just wasn’t high tailing it out of there nearly quick enough to be a missle or rocket…and I base that on watching a few dozen launches from both KSC and VAB. Even from the west coast of Florida (over 100 miles from KSC) those things look like they are moving fast.
But as usual, people who have never watched a rocket launch know what it looks like a lot better than people who have watched many rocket launches.
November 12th, 2010 at 12:48 pm
it is Khan Noonien Singh escaping in the SS Botany Bay
on his way to be found by James T Kirk
edit for spelling of Khan only one K
November 12th, 2010 at 1:03 pm
8. Ross Says:
Why are we even discussing this? This is clearly the answer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UAeSsvHhTg
I find that if I assume it’s just “performance art” is makes a lot more sense. (Not that performance art ever makes sense..)
November 12th, 2010 at 1:10 pm
As usual, I see all you liberal “scientists” think you know everything.
So answer this. If there was no boy attached to the missile then what happened to him?
November 12th, 2010 at 1:19 pm
I don’t see anyone commenting that this is a conspiracy. Are you moderating the comments ?
November 12th, 2010 at 1:24 pm
clearly its been established that it was a plane, but in fairness missle launches out there arent unheard of. theres an island about 60 miles off the coast that the USAF and our allies use a missle test range, and the area is covered with military bases involved in rocket launched and ABM testing.
November 12th, 2010 at 1:30 pm
This was simply not news. Honestly, has no one ever noticed the TRAIL OF FLAME TWENTY TIMES THE LENGTH OF THE MISSILE when launches really happen?
I served on the James Madison. Trident 1 left in a big damned hurry. It had someplace to go. If we don’t have your BBQ to you in 15 minutes, it’s free!
November 12th, 2010 at 1:33 pm
When I hear hoofbeats I think I fell asleep with the TV on.
November 12th, 2010 at 1:35 pm
Now for the other side.
I saw this “phenomena” driving home and knew it was something special. I saw it from a very different angle than the CBS crew. It was a pillar of smoke, from Orange county as well -not a horizontal contrail. There were no other contrails in the sky across the whole sunset, and there would have been several to match this very heavy contrail in the busy LA skies.
It was not a contrail. I never go for conspiracy theories, but this is just a coverup.
I for one hate to see a lie planted in the press this easily. I may be wrong but NORAD D@mn well better not be! I hope they get the response right, thousands of people form LA saw this and in contrast to the long stream of posts here, most think it was something special, probably a missile, first stage solid booster. This was a message to the people in the military that know. The rest of us will have to see how it plays out- the fact they are not able to take this seriously in the press worries me. Jon Steward does not have the resources to investigate this so his funny show is just more fluff! Maybe he believes it was a contrail may be he is coddling up or maybe he just want ratings. Believe what you will. just do not be surprised if we start seeing strange happenings in our foreign relations.
November 12th, 2010 at 1:42 pm
@26:
That’s it! We need a new Bureau of Dumb People Affairs.
O god… someone might take that seriously.
November 12th, 2010 at 1:51 pm
All WRONG!! The TRUTH is in this video….The TRUTH I tell you!!!
See the real answers to this story…..http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKx4MeBybkc&feature=player_embedded
Now do you believe…………………….LOL x 5
November 12th, 2010 at 2:03 pm
But this is L.A. we’re talking about here: movie entertainment capital of the Western hemisphere. We know by experience exactly how good they are at skeptical thinking. Heck, the operational attitude of that industry is to take a phenomenon and deliberately apply Occam’s razor in the wrong direction. UFOs and missile launches are to be the expected extrapolation out of people trying to get into that industry.
November 12th, 2010 at 2:19 pm
I think the most “what?!?” “theory” I’ve witnessed about this whole thing is that it was a high-altitude nuclear bomb test a la Starfish Prime.
November 12th, 2010 at 2:20 pm
Let’s be fair here, folks. No it was not a missile, and most of us here never thought it was. But, come on, it did LOOK kinda like a missile.
November 12th, 2010 at 2:44 pm
For comparision: here is my ‘rocket plume’, shot from another airplane over Argentina this July. Happens all the time …
November 12th, 2010 at 2:53 pm
#35. Looks like a missile.
Actually it doesn’t. I’ve seen many rocket exhaust trails from Vandenberg and they look more like this:
http://www.scara.org/assets/photos/sep-rocket4.jpg
It’s been my bad luck or timing that I have watched only two such trails as their rockets were making them, and even those didn’t look like this supposed one. It only takes a few minutes before the winds at the various levels turns them into something like the picture linked above.
November 12th, 2010 at 3:18 pm
It was Apollo pulling the sun. Duh.
November 12th, 2010 at 3:22 pm
You all haven’t met Colleen Thomas yet?? Lucky for you she has decided to dedicate herself to whistle blowing Obama’s collaboration with the Draco reptilians. She has made the GREAT sacrifice from completing her theory on quantum aether physics JUST SO SHE CAN WARN YOU. Be grateful sheeple!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWbFUAb6CIw
November 12th, 2010 at 3:25 pm
I remember years ago watching a very impressive and apparently vertical contrail form as a jet flew overhead at sunset, and speculating what it would be like if this were actually part of an ICBM exchange. This was just a few years after “The Day After”, so it was a chilling thought.
I took some photos of “vertical” contrails resembling a triple missile launch a few months ago:
http://anothermonkey.blogspot.com/2010/03/paparazzi.html
Not as impressive as ones seen at sunset, of course.
November 12th, 2010 at 3:32 pm
On second thought, let’s not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.
November 12th, 2010 at 3:39 pm
@ Ken B:
I guess Phil’s take that people don’t bother looking up at the sky applies to daytime as well as night? How can you know what’s “not normal” if you don’t know what’s “normal”?
Yeah. Look on YouTube for all the videos of cirrus clouds that are (in fact!) the remnants of pan-dimensional space beings or some such.
November 12th, 2010 at 3:39 pm
I briefly thought Phil had used his connections to have Wil Wheaton launched into space so he couldn’t appear in yet another episode of “The Big Bang Theory.”
Clear skies, Alan
November 12th, 2010 at 3:54 pm
Was that Michio Kaku at 2:43?
November 12th, 2010 at 3:58 pm
Daffy,
It LOOKED like a missile the way the Apollo flags LOOKED like they were waving. To wit, it looked that way (sorta) in a still picture.
November 12th, 2010 at 4:00 pm
Your preemptive little notes in every post about what you expect in the replies are starting to get redundant and beginning to come off as rather insulting.
November 12th, 2010 at 4:14 pm
@ Chris — Conspiracy theorists should be mocked, ridiculed and laughed at. Social disapproval is perhaps the only effective way they might reconsider their delusional belief system.
November 12th, 2010 at 4:22 pm
This was a fun bit of “News casting”. At times I feel sorry for the people who are on speed dial for things like this.
November 12th, 2010 at 4:38 pm
I can’t believe I watched the full video of the ‘Pleiadian’ woman.
My brain hurts! – MP’s Gumby
J/P=?
November 12th, 2010 at 4:55 pm
@LarianLeQuella
Well said!
November 12th, 2010 at 5:03 pm
But…but, what about the poor little boy. What ever is to become of him?
November 12th, 2010 at 5:05 pm
I can only hope that someday, I too will cause mass over-reaction and near hysteria, only to be lampooned on The Daily Show.
If only I could make my chemtrails glow green…
November 12th, 2010 at 5:05 pm
I know. They will discover that he survived his trip into outer space, unprotected, but, he survived! It was a MIRACLE!!
November 12th, 2010 at 5:05 pm
@ 25. … When I hear hoof beats, I think two coconut shells banged together…
“Ni”
November 12th, 2010 at 6:35 pm
Which is more likely, that five wild turkeys got lost and wandered into my back yard, or that five SPACE TURKEYS landed in my back yard to survey the planet before they CONQUERED IT!
My money’s on the space turkeys.
November 12th, 2010 at 6:36 pm
This non-event has me fuming at the collective stupidity of humans. People really need to learn to sit back, observe, think, hypothesize, and rationalize.
November 12th, 2010 at 6:59 pm
Yay for Liem Bahneman (the blogger)!!!
The one thing I’m undecided on – is this a Win for citizen journalism, or a Fail for old-school journalism? In any case, kudos to this gentleman. For one blogger to show up the “big 3″ cable news networks, the FAA and the DoD using “off the shelf” (off the Google?) tools is pretty damn cool
November 12th, 2010 at 7:00 pm
@T. Miller,
I fear the current race to be first with the news doesn’t allow any time for such care.
Clear skies, Alan
November 12th, 2010 at 7:05 pm
That line is pure gold
November 12th, 2010 at 7:05 pm
@11 rob: Wouldn’t it have been a bitch if it had hit a patch of warmer air (or whatever it is that doesn’t allow contrails to form) and at the same time the angle to the sun changed enough that the reflection “flame” blinked out? People might still be able to argue about it
November 12th, 2010 at 7:10 pm
@#12 RickJ: Holy shazbot. How did that RT piece not make The Daily Show’s moron montage?
Ugh. I think a few dozen of my brain cells just committed seppuku in protest.
November 12th, 2010 at 7:15 pm
@#26 Larian LaQuella: Let’s not be too hasty now. Maybe we DO need a Bureau of Idiocy Debunking. I’m not normally for the expansion of government, but such an organization could do a tremendous amount of good if they played their cards right. Shoot, go ahead and dismantle the CIA if you need the money – the intelligence we’re lacking most is right here at home
@#36 Terry: Ahhh you beat me to it!
November 12th, 2010 at 7:23 pm
@#39 Julia (Jules): Hah! Wow, I’d like to see THAT!
I remember being fascinated by Starfish Prime the first time I read about it, and wishing I was there to see it.
Well, actually, no I wouldn’t since it’d fry billions of dollars worth of electronic equipment, but you know what I mean
Of course, even disregarding treaties, nowadays we have so many satellites and highly sensitive wireless devices that that kind of test would be a complete disaster.
November 12th, 2010 at 7:31 pm
I really miss the old days. When little boys supposedly flew in balloons.
November 12th, 2010 at 9:11 pm
And it’s hardly the first such “missile” to be seen when the sun is at a very low angle:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2010/01/27/nl-ufo-military-012710.html
November 12th, 2010 at 9:20 pm
The Ant
The ant has made himself illustrious
Through constant industry industrious.
So what?
Would you be calm and placid
If you were full of formic acid?
I always liked Ogden Nash.
November 12th, 2010 at 11:37 pm
Best. Conspiracy. Explanation. Ever.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKx4MeBybkc&feature=share
November 13th, 2010 at 3:20 am
I took one look at the video and was bored. It reminded me of all those UFO photos – I couldn’t make out what the things was, but I assumed as usual that if it were a missile test the appropriate notifications would have been filed and sites like space[dot]com would have links. The glare looked suspiciously like the sunlight being reflected off an airplane though.
November 13th, 2010 at 5:03 am
Occam’s Razor is simply anathaema to the minds of the credulous. What’s more likely? A (not so secret) and dangerous missile launch by the military into busy Los Angeles commercial airspace? Or a passenger plane in that very same busy airspace?
If you take such people to a racetrack then blindfold them, when the race starts and they hear the thunder of hooves they’ll probably shout “Arrrghhh! Centaurs!! Run for your lives!”.
At a push, maybe the less paranoid might say “Oooooh. pretty unicorns!”.
My Opinion of Humanity plummets when I see stories like this
November 13th, 2010 at 9:40 am
Ogden Nash is my new favorite wordsmith o’ the month
November 13th, 2010 at 10:38 am
The last minute was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in a long while.
November 13th, 2010 at 10:55 am
The most popular “theory” on the FB page of pseudo-scientist extraordinaire Richard C. Hoagland is that it is a Tomahawk cruise missile. Even pointing out the fact that the solid rocket booster on a Tomahawk only lasts a few seconds (not 10 frakking minutes) didn’t seem to kill the popularity of the idea. Sometimes people can be real stupid.
BTW, Hoagie himself is AWOL at the moment, supposedly working on his next “paper”, so I have no idea what HE thinks it was.
November 13th, 2010 at 11:15 am
#25 Thomas Siefert
“When I hear hoof beats, I think two coconut shells banged together…”
GUARD #1: Where’d you get the coconut?
ARTHUR: We found them.
GUARD #1: Found them? In Mercea? The coconut’s tropical!
ARTHUR: What do you mean?
GUARD #1: Well, this is a temperate zone.
ARTHUR: The swallow may fly south with the sun or the house martin
or the plumber may seek warmer climes in winter yet these are not
strangers to our land.
GUARD #1: Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?
ARTHUR: Not at all, they could be carried.
GUARD #1: What — a swallow carrying a coconut?
No, by a missile of course!
So, when I hear coconut shells, I think missile.
November 13th, 2010 at 4:09 pm
I can’t believe an airplane is causing so much fuzz.
November 13th, 2010 at 5:30 pm
db #32 writes,
clearly its been established that it was a plane, but in fairness missle launches out there arent unheard of. theres an island about 60 miles off the coast that the USAF and our allies use a missle test range, and the area is covered with military bases involved in rocket launched and ABM testing. (Text by db, punctuation inspired by e e cummings).
Care to do a bit more research and tell us the name of that island, and its longitude/lattitude so we can look at it on Google Earth? Does it even exist?
November 13th, 2010 at 5:44 pm
To answer your question, perhaps this will help.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/san-nicolas-island.htm
November 13th, 2010 at 6:13 pm
David. Thanks so much for the Canadian link.
November 13th, 2010 at 6:31 pm
Ross #8 Wow, that clip was really remarkable. Those tqo actually sounded like they were serious. Where do people come up with this kind if absurdity/
November 13th, 2010 at 11:06 pm
Darren Evans @#74:
New formulation: If I hear hoofbeats, I assume I passed out drunk at the track again.
November 13th, 2010 at 11:21 pm
That was a long sentence in the last paragraph!
November 14th, 2010 at 6:20 am
Thank you, Chris L. Pardon my, err – skepticism, but db could have done this just as easily, rather than just write “theres an island about 60 miles off the coast…” yada-yada-yada.
November 14th, 2010 at 7:28 am
@79: Managing to cause less buzz than a streetlight in a crappy camera a couple years back. “In my defense, there WAS something in the sky. It turns out my camera was pointed the wrong way.”
(Spoiler: Google “It’s a streetlight”)
November 14th, 2010 at 9:51 am
JB,
I understand completely. I wasn’t aware that they did missile testing on San Nicholas either. I just knew it as a small Navy base with a 10,000 foot runway. From his description though, I guessed that was what he was talking about.
November 14th, 2010 at 10:18 pm
One person pointed out that if it was a missile, then why did only people in the one area report as missile? It would have been visible to a much larger area so why didn’t people there report a missile. The answer was, because it only looked like a missile from that one angle–the rest of the area saw an airplane contrail.
Completely missed the helicopter/10 minutes though. Good one.
November 14th, 2010 at 11:41 pm
@MadScientist: The most sanest conspiracy theory (if you could call it that) I’ve heard regarding the lack of notifications for a missile test is that the US military was conducting a realistic full scale test of the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system and wanted to avoid any advanced notice wherever possible. Of course, when the FAA said they had no information about any missile launches after the “rocket plume” and no radar sightings of a missile launch, that idea basically died.
**********
The one thing that I can’t fathom about this whole thing is that for every person who said it was an “enemy missile” on the news, what did they think when the entire Third Fleet wasn’t racing to the California coast the next morning?
November 15th, 2010 at 3:19 am
Anyone got a link to a version of the video that works here in Europe (UK)?
November 15th, 2010 at 8:18 am
A brief but brilliant take on the whole affair comes from CNN’s Jeanne Moos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gor4VrNXgog – with the right experts, a lot of skeptical thinking (the ‘phenomenon’ repeated exactly 24 hours later – case closed!) and a lot of dry humor, of course.
November 15th, 2010 at 10:54 am
How does this happen? In L.A., there must be hundreds of airliner contrails in the sky every day.
Simple, actually. Only a few people noticed the contrail in question. Everyone else first heard it reported as “Mystery missile launch!” and saw either a still image or a short video clip, and heard the initial discussion of “who launched it” instead of “is it a launch at all”. The rest is mass hysteria and the “Government denial means the opposite in ALL CASES” crowd blathering on. And it didn’t help that the ***MORON*** at the UN declared it a “show of power”.
November 15th, 2010 at 12:10 pm
You meen it was’nt alien vistors? No I thought it could have been a missile but for the fact that there were no explosions any where . Of course I also the missile coud have come from China or North Korea . and I thought it could be a satelite launch form Vandenburg Afb . But now I know it was a plane .
November 15th, 2010 at 1:42 pm
Aren’t missiles intended to explode? If it was a missile launch, where was the explosion?
November 15th, 2010 at 6:23 pm
TBC, you should have said “Where’s the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!” Preferably in Marvin the Martians voice.
Seriously, you didn’t watch the videos linked to above? Admittedly it may have preserved your IQ by not watching them but the missile didn’t explode because the Reptiloids, sorry, wrong conspiracy, the Pleiadeans screwed with the missile and stole the Illudium PU-36 Explosive Space Modulator. Or something like that.
November 16th, 2010 at 12:13 pm
I went out of my way to avoid watching the videos. My computer is doing some important calculations, and I was afraid my tears would short it out.
November 19th, 2010 at 7:05 pm
I enjoy Ogden Nash’s poems. But I don’t base my idea of reality on them. After all, Medusa did not write Forever Granite.
May 28th, 2011 at 2:32 pm
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