benson111
04-05-2009, 11:15 PM
Wall of text insues, patience young Skywalker........read.
Strange lights appeared over Morris County, New Jersey, on Jan. 5 this year. The bright red lights were first noticed in the night sky by an eleven-year-old girl, who pointed out three lights grouped together, and another pair some distance away.
The lights moved silently and slowly, then disappeared one by one.
The girl's father, a pilot, said he was baffled: "I've been in aviation for 20 years and never seen anything like it." Police fielded calls from alarmed residents, and the supposed UFO made national news.
I examined the case the next day, noting striking parallels between this sighting and the infamous 2008 Phoenix Lights hoax in which flares were tied to balloons. I provided a detailed, point-by-point analysis showing that the New Jersey lights were almost certainly a copycat hoax.
Skeptical of the skeptics
One writer stated that "thousands of eyewitnesses said they saw a giant, solid, triangular object fly over their heads." Often the UFO-theory defenders cherry-picked their evidence and eyewitnesses, for example dismissing those who saw balloons tied to flares as mistaken while giving credence to others who didn't see balloons.
The case remained open (among many UFO groups anyway), until this week when, on April Fool's day, two 20-something college kids, Chris Russo and Joe Rudy, admitted to the hoax.
"We set out into the woods ...carrying one helium tank, five balloons, five flares, fishing line, duct tape, and a video camera," the duo explain now. "After filling up one 3-foot balloon with helium, we tied about five feet of fishing line to the balloon, secured the line with tape, then tied and taped the flare to the other end of the line. Once all five balloons were ready, we struck the 15-minute flares and released them into the sky."
Realizing that, in the conspiracy-minded UFO community, hoax admissions are suspect, they carefully documented their prank in a series of videos. (http://www.livescience.com/common/media/video/player.php?videoRef=LS_090402_ufo_hoax)
In a posting at Skeptic.com, the pair said the hoax was a "social experiment on how to create your own media event surrounding UFO sightings...to show everyone how unreliable eyewitness accounts are, along with investigators of UFOs."
Indeed, that point was well made.
On the "UFO Hunters" show, investigator Birnes and his team reviewed footage of the lights, concluding that "these lights are moving without any independent movement... you can almost make out a frame." Yet we know this analysis was completely wrong: the lights were in fact moving independently (tied to balloons in the wind), and there was no frame at all, triangular or otherwise. As Russo and Rudy note, "If a respected UFO investigator can be easily manipulated and dead wrong on one UFO case, is it possible he's wrong on most (or all) of them?"
Strange lights appeared over Morris County, New Jersey, on Jan. 5 this year. The bright red lights were first noticed in the night sky by an eleven-year-old girl, who pointed out three lights grouped together, and another pair some distance away.
The lights moved silently and slowly, then disappeared one by one.
The girl's father, a pilot, said he was baffled: "I've been in aviation for 20 years and never seen anything like it." Police fielded calls from alarmed residents, and the supposed UFO made national news.
I examined the case the next day, noting striking parallels between this sighting and the infamous 2008 Phoenix Lights hoax in which flares were tied to balloons. I provided a detailed, point-by-point analysis showing that the New Jersey lights were almost certainly a copycat hoax.
Skeptical of the skeptics
One writer stated that "thousands of eyewitnesses said they saw a giant, solid, triangular object fly over their heads." Often the UFO-theory defenders cherry-picked their evidence and eyewitnesses, for example dismissing those who saw balloons tied to flares as mistaken while giving credence to others who didn't see balloons.
The case remained open (among many UFO groups anyway), until this week when, on April Fool's day, two 20-something college kids, Chris Russo and Joe Rudy, admitted to the hoax.
"We set out into the woods ...carrying one helium tank, five balloons, five flares, fishing line, duct tape, and a video camera," the duo explain now. "After filling up one 3-foot balloon with helium, we tied about five feet of fishing line to the balloon, secured the line with tape, then tied and taped the flare to the other end of the line. Once all five balloons were ready, we struck the 15-minute flares and released them into the sky."
Realizing that, in the conspiracy-minded UFO community, hoax admissions are suspect, they carefully documented their prank in a series of videos. (http://www.livescience.com/common/media/video/player.php?videoRef=LS_090402_ufo_hoax)
In a posting at Skeptic.com, the pair said the hoax was a "social experiment on how to create your own media event surrounding UFO sightings...to show everyone how unreliable eyewitness accounts are, along with investigators of UFOs."
Indeed, that point was well made.
On the "UFO Hunters" show, investigator Birnes and his team reviewed footage of the lights, concluding that "these lights are moving without any independent movement... you can almost make out a frame." Yet we know this analysis was completely wrong: the lights were in fact moving independently (tied to balloons in the wind), and there was no frame at all, triangular or otherwise. As Russo and Rudy note, "If a respected UFO investigator can be easily manipulated and dead wrong on one UFO case, is it possible he's wrong on most (or all) of them?"
