[gradus_ad]

I live in NJ. I've seen these drones. They are not commercial airliners or helicopters. They are loud, fly low and slow, and make abrupt turns unlike any planes I've seen. Their lights are also very different from other aircraft.

I can see how it's tempting to chalk this up to hysteria, but they are absolutely large drones of some kind.

[motorest]

> I live in NJ. I've seen these drones. They are not commercial airliners or helicopters. They are loud, fly low and slow, and make abrupt turns unlike any planes I've seen. Their lights are also very different from other aircraft.

You better crank out your camera and collect any proof at all,because what you are describing bears no resemblance to the sightings mentioned in the article.

There is a reason why sightings of supernatural fenomenal went down abruptly with the inception of cheap digital cameras.

[iepathos]

For real, with everyone having a smartphone with high quality cameras on them there really is zero excuse for there to not be highly detailed accurate videos of this if they are legit especially with people describing them as "low and slow".

[The_Colonel]

The article suggests the drones appear during nighttime with which cameras will struggle. "low" is relative and can mean 200 meters which would be very difficult even for regular cameras (without a tripod), let alone a smartphone.

[jahnu]

Even taking a picture of the moon with a typical phone results in a white mushy blob.

[diggan]

I like that parent said "200 meters" and then you give a "even" example with the distance of ~400,000 kilometers :)

[rmbyrro]

Compared to the radius of the known Universe, it's in the ballpark

[eitland]

Then again the moon is a few times bigger than a typical drone and much brighter.

The point is: the moon is easier to spot, moves less and emits more light.

[jahnu]

Haha fair enough :D

[DaiPlusPlus]

Unless you have a Samsung phone…

https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/13/23637401/samsung-fake-moo...

[HPsquared]

This technology may well "fill in the blanks" with small flying objects too. Make them look like the most common i.e. airliner or helicopter.

[xattt]

I’ll stop you there and say there are videos. They just happen to be of naturally-occurring phenomena and captured by inept operators who don’t subscribe to Occam’s Razor.

[drjasonharrison]

had to look it up, the opposite of Occam's Razor, it is Hickham's Dictum

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hickam%27s_dictum

[zelphirkalt]

Finally! A new word we can use to throw, when we get tired of saying "Occam's Razor"! Exciting times ahead!

[matthewdgreen]

Smartphone cameras are absolutely useless when it comes to taking useful pictures of distant, moving objects. Even a proper DSLR is extremely difficult to use on a moving object at night due to focus issues.

[kjkjadksj]

Not focus issues. Set to infinity it will be fine. But shutter speed issues certainly. When people take sharp photographs at night they generally aren’t handholding a camera and shooting a moving subject. And if they are they are close enough to use flash.

[wyager]

Tbf, smartphone cameras are not really "high quality" in a way that's useful here. Try taking a video of something with small angular subtension like an aircraft at cruising altitude with a cell phone camera.

[bagels]

I'm not arguing that these are or aren't anything interesting, but low, relative to airplanes is still pretty far for cell phone cameras, especially in the dark.

[kjkjadksj]

You go take that smartphone of yours and try and take a high quality video of just an airliner at night. Its not easy at all. Even in daylight this is like a 35mm lens on a tiny sensor its not the hardware you need to crop out a speck from the sky and show the world what it is. You really need a lens thats about the size of your calf and the sort of camera that goes along with that. And probably a tripod. Not something many have handy.

[registeredcorn]

>with everyone having a smartphone with high quality cameras on them there really is zero excuse for there to not be highly detailed accurate videos of this

Absolutely not.

I understand the tendency to assume that modern tech would make it relatively easy thing to accomplish but there are considerable challenges with ground-based aerial photography/videography...at nighttime...completely unplanned and unscheduled...by an amateur. Better technology makes the field more accessible in a general way, but there is still a very large barrier of: skill, hardware, and out-right luck involved in good image capture as a medium.

Consider, if you ever look towards the beginning or end of some runways you may see a group of plane spotters setup taking photos and video of the airplanes. The typical hardware used to capture things well is a minimum of: DSLR, tripod, battery extenders (or spares), and good perch to rest during lulls (it's more physically demanding on your arms then you might imagine.) More crucially, this is for airplanes that are taking off and landing 1) in a predictable pattern 2) at routine intervals 3) captured primarily in daylight.

Add in height? Introduce increased shake. Add in darkness? Introduce exposure (hold the camera still, longer to get a brighter image). Add in inexperience? Introduce beginner mistakes. On top of those practical concerns, it's probably also pretty creepy to see these unknown objects/drones/whatever. Fear impacts our ability to react in a helpful way.

Smartphones make it simpler to capture a picture or a video, but there is profound gulf between getting something and something even remotely good.

If you're not sure what I mean, here's a simple test you can try: 1) Grab a pencil and go into a completely dark room like a basement 2) Turn off the flash on your phone 3) Holding the pencil between pointer finger and thumb stretch your hand as far from your body as you physically can 4) Take one photo of the tip of the pencil eraser one-handed.

That is considerably easier than it would be to photograph/video a moving object across the night sky, even if it is perceived as moving "low and slow". Longer exposure times mean the camera has to be held motionless for longer so the camera sensor can "soak up" more light to "expose" the photograph properly. (This is why photos at night feel like they take perceptibly longer to capture than they do in daytime - they do take longer!) Flash can help with nearby subjects, but for objects far away (thousands of feet above you) no amount of flash is going to reach the object to reduce exposure time.

Then, let's make things even worse! The object is moving which means that overexposure will turn that solid object into a blur. This is something that is easily possible[1] when taking photos of the night sky.

[1] https://photographylife.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Sharp...

[walrus01]

I live in the Pacific NW and there are a vast number of people with really good quality trail cameras who put them tied to trees all over the place for deer and elk hunting purposes. If Bigfoot was real, we absolutely would have seen one by now.

[sandworm101]

Futurama - s4e17

Sir, if I may? Why don't you just set up, like, a billion video cameras...

In the woods and see if he walks by one?

Ah. That would be very expensive...

And most people who believe in Bigfoot are broke.

[epr]

There are multiple videos already, some even in broad daylight. For example, the nbc news clip on youtube about 15 seconds in.

[DebtDeflation]

I've been following the story and this has been discussed on the local Reddit subs. They are almost certainly PteroDynamics XP-4 drones flying from and to the military bases in question for testing purposes. There literally was a public demo of them on the USNS Burlington in Philadelphia a year ago.

[senkora]

Video of that model of drone: https://www.reddit.com/r/EngineeringPorn/comments/13juxdi/pt...

[VectorLock]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA1ENhxLqTo

[bloopernova]

I really like that it switches off the outer pair of propellers in level flight, that's a nice feature.

Changing the vertical alignment of the wings to horizontal after takeoff is also really cool, an interesting alternative to 4 vertical propellers with a separate pair of wings. It seems to eliminate the extra moving parts to control those vertical propellers.

[VectorLock]

The linkage system is pretty cool I will say that.

[topspin]

Something actually patent-worthy.

[fer]

How? it's just a UAV, quad version of a V-22 Osprey. Maybe I'm missing something peculiar about it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Boeing_V-22_Osprey

[matsemann]

"just" is doing a lot of work there. Everything is "just" an evolution of something else. Doesn't mean it's not novel or clever.

[rtkwe]

The wing folding mechanism is pretty novel as far as I'm aware. The idea of quad hover to forward flight isn't new or unique but the specific configuration is something I haven't seen before. NASA was working on some that tilted the whole wing not this folding design which uses fewer motors compare to the old NASA Greased Lightning test article.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXql26sF5uc

[topspin]

Osprey has a common power shaft between the engines for fault tolerance, constraining the structure's design, such as the lack of dihedral. This has a different set of design constraints and a different solution to propulsion failure.

[throwaway48476]

The hinge mechanism and the control dynamics.

[selfmodruntime]

HN is yet again amazed that military technology is in fact used to carry out secret operations.

[paranoidrobot]

"large drones"

How large is "large"?

Some of the articles are claiming "SUV sized" drones, but their photos are either of commercial aircraft, or of something that looks to be a DJI Phantom 4, or something much like it.

Have you managed to capture any videos of images of these large, low flying, slow moving drones?

[toofy]

it’s amazing how so many people have seen these truck sized drones but they’ve all somehow failed to get pictures.

i can go outside right now in the dark with this phone i’m typing on and get a solid picture of stuff but somehow they keep showing us pictures that look like 1940s era ufo photo blur.

[roflyear]

No you can't - try it. Take a picture of the moon.

[sethammons]

careful, you may get an AI moon to make up for the fact you can't really get a good picture of it.

https://www.samsung.com/uk/support/mobile-devices/how-galaxy...

[HPsquared]

The same probably happens with blurry small aircraft in the scene. It'll "upscale" (i.e. draw in) all kinds of objects with what it thinks is most likely from the context, from its training set.

[ben_w]

I can get an acceptable picture of the moon with my phone (at least when autofocus doesn't decide to do something stupid), yet also I can't get good pictures of birds in nearby trees or urban foxes on the other side of the road.

Phone can do night with just hand jitter ok, can't effectively compensate for target motion.

[karamanolev]

Probably not with a phone, but "affordable" full-frame MILC/DSLR cameras with 100-400mm or 600mm lenses exist and people have them. Much better chances.

[The_Colonel]

This article links photos from a Sony full frame camera and 600mm lens but it clearly struggles:

https://eu.app.com/picture-gallery/news/2024/12/10/drones-in...

[ycombinete]

These photos look very much like a helicopter. Especially the fifth photo.

[sandos]

Odd, one of those pictures clearly show either a regular RC helicopter, or a full-scale helicopter. You can see the boom and tail light clearly. And no sound associated with it? There are designs for "silent" blades. I mean theyre not silent, bud at least less noisy.

[haswell]

Even decently fast glass won’t do a good job of capturing drones at night unless there’s a significant amount of ambient light.

And telephoto lenses with the range you mention with fast apertures are not exactly cheap. A 600mm F/4 goes for $12-15K and is still not fast enough for shooting moving subjects in the dark.

[theodric]

I did find it odd when this news reporter said of the craft "it's really difficult to show you with our camera, so we have to show you with our phones." You'd think a broadcast-grade camera rig would be better than a smartphone at this.

At the 11-second mark: https://youtu.be/M186uZ1RCxU?t=11

[ZenRiots]

In my experience the majority of that 1940s photo blur comes when you crop and zoom what otherwise looks like a beautiful digital photograph. I experienced this quite often when utilizing security cameras to try and read license plates.

Any movement of the vehicle whose plate you are attempting to track creates pixelization requiring you sometimes to stitch together multiple frames where individual characters on the plate have become clear in order to read the entire license plate.

[FuriouslyAdrift]

High resolution film can get to the equivalent to 500 MP resolution just in 35mm.

Larger film has insanely high resolving power...

https://www.analog.cafe/r/409200000-pixels-with-adox-cms-20-...

[ninininino]

Incorrect, there are dozens or hundreds of video clips showing these drones in both social media and mainstream news.

[carabiner]

Why do the drones always look like airplanes?

[op00to]

"large" is whatever is scary.

[Aeolun]

At least 6 out of 10 images in the linked article are clearly commercial aircraft.

[abuani]

And those other 4 out of 10 are very clearly not commercial airlines. I live in NJ was very skeptical of this at first, but after seeing the same patterns 5 nights in a row for aircrafts not going towards Newark, I really have a hard time believing it is simply airlines.

[murderfs]

I believe the other 3 pictures are this helicopter: https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=ab19fa&lat=39.865&lon=-...

Image 8 is too blurry to make out, but it's probably also a plane.

[sandos]

I would agree with that! It matches the curvature of the fuselage in one point, and there is an image with faintly visible nav lights on this page:

https://www.anthelionhelicopters.com/flight-training/add-on-...

which matches the images as well, with the green light bright, so its likely flying head-on in the picture.

[Aeolun]

Sure, I’m not saying there’s nothing, but there’s clearly some component of hysteria.

[abuani]

Oh, very much so some elements of mass hysteria. It took the better part of two weeks for authorities to recognize it, then it was "nothing to see here", then FBI is investigating. It sucks that one of our state representatives is out their claiming it's Iran and stoking further tensions.

My personal feeling is if it was enemy drones, our military would have already taken them down. It's hard to imagine we'd let this go on for many weeks without a response. But it's also hard to imagine military testing so obviously over public space. So who knows lol

[llamaimperative]

> My personal feeling is if it was enemy drones, our military would have already taken them down

I think you overestimate a few things here… the military isn’t constantly monitoring all airspace across the country for drone-sized objects and shooting things down if they don’t recognize them.

Perhaps they should be as we enter this brave new world of drone-everything, but they don’t right now.

[abuani]

NJ has some of the leading research centers for the US military, our new president's second estate, and critical infrastructure for telecommunications. Reportedly drones were flying close to all of these spots. I would fully expect our military to be monitoring these parts of the country for drone-sized objects given how effective they have been in waging our wars the past 20 years. So yeah, it's a massive intelligence failure if these are combatant drones.

[obmelvin]

The military isn’t allowed to shoot down drones in the US. There was a WSJ story last month about drones flying over Langley for 2 weeks. All the general could do is stand on the roof and watch

[ericjmorey]

He's the one that got elected as a Democratic candidate and switched to the Republican party about a month after he was elected.

[_Wintermute]

Reminds me of the hysteria we had about drones shutting down an airport in the UK, with loads of reported sightings yet no evidence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatwick_Airport_drone_incident

[hersko]

It's not hysteria if UFOs start showing up en-masse and then people start thinking everything in the sky is a UFO. It just means people are more likely to attribute lights in the night sky to this new phenomenon. Of course there will be false positives, but it does not mean the underlying issue exists.

[ImPostingOnHN]

Everything in the sky is a UFO until it's identified.

[motorest]

> And those other 4 out of 10 are very clearly not commercial airlines.

Cool, so a simple cursory glance of these mysterious phenomena is enough to immediately call bullshit on 60% of the claims.

That's a heck of a false positive rate, given the fact that this happens before any verification takes place.

If at least 60% of the claims given the same credibility are outright rejected without any effort, what does it say about the claims and those who make them?

[ricksunny]

There is supposed to be an elemwent of 'mimicry' on the part of the Phenomenon. Kelleher in his work with AAWSAP was the most vocal in studying & concluding that aspect:

https://www.rdrnews.com/opinion/columnists/drones-mimicry-an...

[lxgr]

I'm very sorry, as it's probably a perfectly respectable local news source, but: Did you just link a Roswell newspaper article on UFOs? :)

[wbl]

Which ones clearly aren't that or a police helicopter?

[toofy]

why hasn’t someone got decent pictures to back this up after five nights?

[roflyear]

The drones only operate at night and it's hard taking good pictures at night with phones (or even nice cameras) - try to take a picture of the moon, which isn't moving, is brighter, etc.. you can tell it's the moon but it's a lot quality picture.

[Aeolun]

Drones are a lot closer than the moon. I’m fairly certain my middle of the line camera can do better than what I see on that article.

[roflyear]

Why argue online? Just try to take a picture outside of a streetlight, or something, in a dark area. You'll see what I mean.

[gloflo]

Drones are small while the moon is far away.

[mp05]

Stop believing your lying eyes for they deceive you.

Here, read this, it will calm your nerves.

[bee_rider]

Most of us have not actually seen these things. We’ve just seen social media posts about them.

[bluescrn]

If it's got bright lights on it, it's very unlikely to be espionage.

[moralestapia]

Hiding in plain sight is also a thing.

[numbsafari]

So is sowing mass hysteria and deepening distrust in authorities.

[bee_rider]

It sucks that we have to worry that our normally silly and harmless UFO hysteria and other fringe stuff might actually be an influence operation. (Just because tone doesn’t go well over the internet sometimes: Not disagreeing or being sarcastic, commiserating).

[mschuster91]

Well that's the natural result of not doing anything meaningful against Russia and its "plausible deniability" campaigns in well over a decade. Of course Russia and China feel emboldened when they never felt consequences.

[StanislavPetrov]

As someone who lives in New York near two very busy airports, I can assure you that after seeing dozens of planes fly over my house every hour, year after year, it isn't hard to figure out what isn't a plane.

[highcountess]

But they got you to click and flip through the slides

[walrus01]

Under what circumstances and motivations, exactly, do you think that unlicensed and illegal (clearly not FAA Part 107 compliant) drone operators would be motivated to put blinking white, red and green lights on their mystery drones? Why would they do that?

If you're doing to build a drone to fly at night and do clearly illegal things you're going to make the thing matte black and have no lights on it whatsoever.

[0cf8612b2e1e]

Or disguise them as birds.

https://www.newsweek.com/china-shows-new-drones-disguised-bi...

[mmooss]

> blinking white, red and green lights

I feel like I've seen a lot of that this time of year ...

[op00to]

What’s not part 107 compliant? All the activity I’ve heard was fully legal.

[walrus01]

For starters, you need special waivers from the faa to fly at night. If any such waivers existed, I am sure the FAA would have told the news media who are hyping up this story.

[15155]

This has not been the case for years.

https://www.faa.gov/uas/commercial_operators/operations_over...

[walrus01]

I was referring specifically to BVLOS operations at night. It's doubtful if there are any nearby operators of these craft that they're within legit LOS. Combination of BVLOS and night operations is presently only found in very special circumstances and test ranges like at Pendleton.

Of the number of operators who have active BVLOS waivers I am aware of, such as for powerline, pipeline survey and delivery operations, very few or none are trying to also operate at night.

[ddtaylor]

It would allow for different configurations to make identification harder. It's very easy to only operate at night and swap out the color and pattern of the lights constantly. Almost every photo device would capture the light pattern the attacker WANTS them to capture. High quality equipment could get better pictures, but such equipment is often not rolling 24/7 or easy to point at a drone moving fast.

[carabiner]

> low and slow

How can you be sure? Are you aware of the speed-size illusion? https://jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2551105#....

[JumpCrisscross]

> can see how it's tempting to chalk this up to hysteria, but they are absolutely large drones of some kind

It's probably neither enemy infiltration or hysteria, but mis-identified drones and aircraft. (Together with some hooliganism.)

Pentagon should investigate. But this is way below the threshold of warranting public alarm. "What is that thing in the sky" is a notoriously terrible game for the public.

[keepamovin]

It's not just NJ, here's one weirdn in Miami: https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1hcfaqw/glowing_orb_f... (https://archive.is/VPxBG) (from tiktok account jessica.leigh)

Also, a consensus is building that it's ridiculous for the powers that be to claim they have no clue. This is an underappreciated take. See for example: https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1hcdsgf/whatever_this... (https://archive.is/mFMis)

[carabiner]

Ok, what configuration are these drones? Quadcopters?

Why are they only flying at night? To evade detection? Then why do they have lights?

[genewitch]

The videos i saw ostensibly showed what looked like rear fixed wing aircraft, like a small f-16 or something. But you could only make out that detail from the lights, which can be configured however you want to configure them to look, so, technically, it could be a large quadcopter (or octa, or hex) with lights affixed that make it look like a fixed wing aircraft.

none of the videos i saw had sound from the drone to verify fixed wing or "copter".

regarding night flights, FLIR would work better for certain things at night ;-)

[05]

> FLIR would work better for certain things at night ;-)

At those distances and with typical thermal imager resolutions, the zoom lens required would cost more than a cheap car..

[genewitch]

when i say FLIR i mean the things that militaries use, not the little doodad you plug into a cellphone or a handheld device with a screen and a camera. I was under the impression these things loitered much longer than any commercial quadcopter or normal battery powered aircraft. if my understanding is correct, that leaves two options - a glider, which is weight constrained so probably just a gopro or two, or a fueled aircraft, in which case, FLIR makes sense because that's a decent platform.

the reports were "flying around for hours" but that could be exaggeration and it flew a pattern several times over a couple of hours but was landing to swap batteries or whatever. IDK. I think this is all much ado about nothing.

[semi-extrinsic]

Nope, it would cost more than an expensive car.

The only openly available price I've seen for such things is from China, and then it's $80k. The Teledyne FLIR stuff is probably quite a bit more expensive.

[K0balt]

These are being extensively tested in the area: https://pterodynamics.com/

[keepamovin]

Please take my upvote for your first hand account over someone's speculation. What do they sound like?

[foxglacier]

It contains speculation about their height and speed. You usually can't estimate those things for a UFO because near, low, and slow looks the same as far, high and fast when you have no idea how big it is or how it "should" behave.

[keepamovin]

Man you're a killjoy, but you can't really say they can't estimate it as you don't know the specifics of what they saw, so there's speculation on your part too. I'd say you get a rough estimate, but you can't know for sure especially at night.

Although in this case if the person thinks it was low, and slow, that's less remarkable than if it was high and fast, because then it would be giant.

Overall, I'd say we're "converging on truth" because of all the reports. Like sparsity, even if each report is incomplete or has innacuracy overall we can build a picture, which is what we're doing. Killjoy. Hahahaha :)

[foxglacier]

Yea, maybe he had other information that helped. I'm just sensitive to reports of UFOs that include estimates of those derived quantities because people reporting them never say how they worked them out or what assumptions they were making. They could have reported the more directly observed quantities like angular speed instead of linear speed.

I know someone who saw an alien spacecraft landing on a distant mountain. Turned out to be Venus :P

[taylorius]

What sort of noise do they make? Do they sound like normal drones?

[darkarmani]

That sounds like a legal height then.

[megablast]

And you recorded if of course!

[mcphage]

If all we had to depend on was cell phone footage, I'm not sure I'd believe the moon existed.

[philosopher1234]

Are there any recordings to back up your story?

[paul7986]

This story is so strange. I mean the US if im not mistaken allowed a huge white ballon to transverse the country and i heard Trump say that was from China. If that's true we just allowed it fly all over our airspace (weird). Is that not a potential public safety hazard and now these things. So odd nothing is being done like one of our jet fighters going up and shooting one down into a field.

[scottyah]

It's much more valuable to watch it, see what kind of scans are coming from it than to just shoot it down immediately. It is also a bargaining chip for those in international politics.

If you're going to shoot it down, it has the same value if you do it immediately or later (assuming any remote wiping/detonation), so either you're paranoid that it poses a legitimate threat or it's beneficial to not shoot it down immediately.

[kasey_junk]

Shooting things down over populated areas is a public safety issue.

Drones flying about may or may not be.

[paul7986]

Into a large field or farm

[ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7]

> American officials later disclosed that they had been tracking the balloon since it was launched from Hainan and its original destinations were likely Guam and Hawaii,[a] but prevailing winds blew it off course and across North America.[11]

> The Chinese government maintained it was a civilian (mainly meteorological) airship that had been blown off course.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Chinese_balloon_incident

[paul7986]

So weird my comments in this thread here are being downvoted a ton.

Those who are downvoting and you are in the US i'd love to hear why you have no concern about these things and or no concern the world thinking we let drones fly unabated in our airspace ... prompting various foreign nations to try and do the same over our massive US of A airspace on up into remote-ish Alaska. You have congressman saying scary things while the Pentagon says those congressman words arent true.

I mentioned Trump above (i voted for her) if that was something that triggered some downvotes?

[paul7986]

overall this says the US will allow undenitified drones in our air space and to fly unabated to our enemies ... one of these or future ones could be weaponized. So its unfathomable to me that they we are letting these things fly unabated in our airspace, as well the govt is providing zero info or re-assurance.

[JohnBooty]

If we start blasting things out of the sky:

- We certainly can't deny that "something" is happening

- The US, if not the world, is going to be rocked by (basically) open war in the skies of America

- If we fail to down these things, we look like utterly weak fools

- Succeed or fail, we reveal our capabilities (or lack thereof)

- Legit public safety issue, bullets/shells/missiles/etc that miss these things have to come down somewhere, as well as wreckage (if any) it self

These drones, IF hostile are not necessarily the security risk one might think IMO. If we are just leaking radio signals into the air around bases that these things can intercept, then those communications could just as easily be intercepted by people/cars/etc on the ground. And our "near peers" have plenty of satellites overhead.

I am not going to tell you that letting them fly around unmolested is good. It is not. It sucks. But it is probably the least shitty option.

[JohnnyLarue]

Because they're not threats, and your 'enemies' are just other countries who have resources your country wants, but won't do what your country says. The calls are coming from inside the house.

[JPKab]

Nah dude, all of these people in the comments thread who live in northern California and have no knowledge of drones beyond playing with a buddy's DJI one time at a cookout are insisting it's your imagination, and that you're gripped by a mass hysteria.

Who are you gonna believe? Them, or your lying eyes?

[nozzlegear]

I don't think your sarcasm adds anything constructive to the discourse. If anything, it makes the person you're replying to look less credible because you're furthering the stereotype of UFO conspiracy theorists touting "trust me bro" evidence and little else.