[lm28469]

> ignoring the mass of solid video

100% of the ones I looked into have been debunked, helicopters, planes, out of focus stars, fireworks, &c.

> (seemed a few hundred feet up at most)

At night you have absolutely no way to tell

> And most damningly it didn’t make any noise audible from the ground, something not even stealth bombers can accomplish.

My $300 dji can accomplish that, it's not a chinese super weapon nor an alien craft

> Honestly, it kind of freaked me out having some previously abstract news-cycle object just floating ominously down the road across from me.

That's the definition of media induced mass hysteria, you notice a lot of weird things when you look at things you usually don't bother looking at. People in Los Angeles freaked the fuck out when they saw the milky way during an electricity outage in 1994

[grues-dinner]

> People in Los Angeles freaked the fuck out when they saw the milky way

It's a natural approximation to a Total Perspective Vortex. Knowing what it represents probably makes the likelihood of an existential crisis more likely.

[willy_k]

> 100% of the ones I looked into have been debunked, helicopters, planes, out of focus stars, fireworks

A lot of videos are bunk, I have seen at least one video that is certainly drones.

> At night you have absolutely no way to tell

I agree, but I’ve seen plenty of other aircraft at night and it appeared to be much closer than any of those. And you can get a rough guess based on apparent size of the lights, though of course that’s extremely rough unless you know the size of the aircraft.

> My $300 dji can accomplish that, it's not a chinese super weapon nor an alien craft

I know, I never claimed it was aliens or a Chinese super weapon, I claimed they were drones. It’s almost certain that they are military drones, and if I had to guess they’re searching for something that would cause real mass hysteria if told to the public.

> That's the definition of media induced mass hysteria, you notice a lot of weird things when you look at things you usually don't bother looking at. People in Los Angeles freaked the fuck out when they saw the milky way during an electricity outage in 1994

That certainly occurs, what I meant is more that I felt an odd sensation having the news cycle and what I observed collide, in the sense that it didn’t feel quite real. I would normally notice at an aircraft that appeared to be as close as it was, and I would definitely pay more attention to it when I noticed the lights and movement pattern, regardless of the news cycle. It actually took me a second to connect the two.

People in LA freaking out because they saw the Milky Way is normal, people noticed something new and reacted to it. I would wager that more people responded with awe than with freaking out, but they weren’t as interesting to the media. Regardless of whether they were freaked out or not (and I wasn’t freaked out so much as it was freaky), they still saw something real.

[wat10000]

You absolutely cannot determine the size, distance, altitude, or speed of an unknown object in the sky at any significant distance. It’s not even rough, it’s completely impossible. You can determine the ratios of those quantities, but the best you can do is come up with a wide minimum and maximum of, let’s say, 500ft to 50 miles of distance (more if it’s just one light).

If you saw an unknown object and it seemed closer to you than normal aircraft, that’s your brain suffering from an illusion. It’s not real information.

[willy_k]

An unlit one or one with blinking or few lights, sure. This had four constantly illuminated nav lights, and I was in a car so I was able to see the parallax relative to the clouds. I couldn’t tell if it was 500 feet or a mile, but I could tell that it was either close enough to be audible, or many times bigger than the largest jetliners.

> If you saw an unknown object and it seemed closer to you than normal aircraft, that’s your brain suffering from an illusion. It’s not real information.

Ohhh, thanks for letting me know.

[wat10000]

Parallax relative to the clouds doesn’t tell you anything unless you know how fast it’s moving or how far away it is.

Given all the rest, I have to say I’m not super confident in your estimate of angular size.

[mcswell]

Not to mention how fast the clouds are moving!

[willy_k]

> I’m not super confident in your estimate of angular size.

Neither am I, but I am confident it was a drone. Does “given all the rest” mean I wrote so much I have to be crazy, or do you actually have an explanation that better fits what I saw? Given the light configuration I don’t see how it could be a plane. And helicopters make a very distinctive noise. Maybe I saw a military helicopter, but at that point drones seem more likely.

I am interested in alternative proposals that take into account everything I observed. Less so in single-point criticisms coming from the assumption that there’s nothing to see so I must be deluded if I think I saw something.

[Eisenstein]

Nobody can explain what you saw because they didn't see it with you. Your vision is interpreted by your brain and memories are reinforced by whatever narrative you produce when you recollect them each time and grow stronger into that narrative. It will always have been a drone to you, no matter what anyone can say about why it probably wasn't.

I am not discounting what you saw and have no particular reason to doubt you, but human psychology operates in a way that is not conducive to being proven wrong about such things. Take that as you will.

[echoangle]

> It’s almost certain that they are military drones, and if I had to guess they’re searching for something that would cause real mass hysteria if told to the public.

Why is that almost certain?

[willy_k]

Well almost is doing a lot of heavy lifting, the case is all circumstantial. But I say that both because of a Reddit post that makes a strong case that at least some portion of sightings are a specific model of navy drone, and more so because their being military is the only situation where the government response makes sense to me.

If they were an enemy’s, one would expect them to be shot down. If they were an ally’s, they would need a damn good reason to be here and an even better reason why people can’t know. Maybe they’re a private citizen’s, but I struggle to imagine why a private entity would have a fleet of large drones that they covertly deploy along the coasts, and why our government would abide that. So as I see it, the two options that make sense are that they’re an enemy’s that we can’t shoot down for some terrifying reason, or they’re ours.

[echoangle]

Can you link the post?