Originally posted by Heliocentric
For all of you who doubt your eyes, do the following. Go to the video on youtube and make sure you download the whole thing. Then drag the time marker from beginning to end, so that you see the one minute in ultra-rapid. See how the clouds sweep over the sky and change form, while the 'object' stay intact and stationary. It kind of looks like a contact lens floating in a glass of water. If anyone of you who see this still thinks this is a smoke ring, then please post your coordinates and I will see to that you're taken care of at a mental institution close to where you live, so that you can go on living in the illusion that Occam's razor (the simplest solution) is always right.[edit on 17-6-2009 by Heliocentric]

Thank you, Heliocentric! I knew someone out here on ATS had to have made a no-nonsense comment on this video.

This doesn't even appear to be a "ring" to me. When I look at this video more rapidly it becomes obvious that it's one solid object. For whatever reason, we're able to see the outside definition of the circular object more easily than the center. And like others have pointed out ... if this is a smoke ring, why the heck isn't it dissipating and being pulled apart by the wind? Use common sense if you can't answer that question off the top of your head.

It might sound like science fiction (and indeed, I feel a little "kooky" even mentioning it), but there have been many witnesses to this subject over the years who have testified that these vehicles are either not visible in our normal spectrum of light or they have the ability to blend into the sky in such a way that they're near impossible to spot with the naked eye. It looks to me like this vehicle was have some difficulty maintaining its cover.

Originally posted by turda07
sorry chief, I was at Kings Dominion this weekend and noticed such a ring. But it is not a UFO, sorry to disappoint you all! I and my friends watched the smoke ring come from the Pyrotechnics of the Volcano Coaster. we commented on how perfect of a ring it was as it floated up. So either it is just smoke, or a UFO takes from off from that roller coaster every 5 minutes of every day that the park is open! haha, you decide..

Let's see the video.

Originally posted by turda07
sorry chief, I was at Kings Dominion this weekend and noticed such a ring. But it is not a UFO, sorry to disappoint you all! I and my friends watched the smoke ring come from the Pyrotechnics of the Volcano Coaster. we commented on how perfect of a ring it was as it floated up. So either it is just smoke, or a UFO takes from off from that roller coaster every 5 minutes of every day that the park is open! haha, you decide..

Yes, I for one haven't decided yet on what it is. I would like to hear a professional meteorologist explain to me how a smoke ring can stay intact for 60 seconds while clouds swirl around it. I say 60 seconds because that's the length of the video. But imagine that the guy who filmed it was walking around and suddenly looked up. His eye caught something in the sky. Something weird up among the clouds. It probably took him a while to figure out that it was something worth filming, and then it took him more time to get his camera up and filming.

Should we say 30 seconds? So that 'smoke ring' was up there probably for 90 seconds, and it's not breaking up or fading away as he stops filming.

So turda07, I see that you became a member here at ATS today, and you have one post so far. I guess you just logged on to a UFO orientated debate site to tell everyone that you sure as hell didn't see one.
We don't even know if this video is for real, so how could we know you were there? Nothing what people say should be taken for granted, including me.

Just a comment on the amusement park, King's Dominion, that immediately refuted the UFO sighting: Oops, the media was talking about your park being visited by cloaked flying saucers, and you immediately killed the story. There was free publicity there, BAD business move I would say. But I salute your honesty, and I respect that you think you know what you're talking about. You could have dressed up your staff in alien suits - Fyfe Symington style - to cash in on the buzz, but you didn't do it. Thumbs up!

cool find.. but you know its not anything too extra ordinary when MSM pick it up..

I am so very sorry to the people who say that this was a smoke ring, there is no way this was from the volcano ride. I work at kings dominion and the smoke that comes out of the volcano is a greyish color the ring in the video was black, not to mention that the ring would have had to travel quite a distance to get from the volcano coaster all the way over near the drop zone ride which is the ride in the video, so this so called smoke ring traveled by two roller coasters and a hand ful of water rides stayed in tact then parked it by the drop zone and stayed in tact for lets say 90 seconds or more. (hahaha I dont think so) the wind from it passing by two other coasters alone would have disturbed the smoke ring, and if not them the drop tower would have because the wind from that thing is strong. By the way the wind on that day was about 10 miles an hour give or take a little more or less. The park is in doswell virginia for those of you that wanted to look up statistics. Im really sorry but i think that anyone who says its a smoke ring is in denial , im not saying aliens are coming there is probally a good explanation for it but no one knows what it is right now so it would be considered an UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECT.

Thumbs up to your video Xtraeme, that was the best smoke ring video I've seen so far.

It proves two things; that Brits know how to have fun, and that you can do damn good smoke rings that linger for a long time if the conditions are right. It almost convinced me that the King's Dominion video shows nothing but a smoke ring, that somehow stayed intact because of an unspecified weather condition that allowed it to.

Although, in order to stay rational, I can't let my judgement be carried away by a fantastic smoke ring theory, no matter how intriguing

The King's Dominion UFR (Unidentified Flying Ring) is intact from the start of the filming and stays intact to the end of the filming (60 seconds). It stays - as far as I can see - perfectly circular. At some point it seems to fade out, only to reappear, so I ascribe that to changes in visibility due to the clouds or other.

The beach smoke ring goes into the air as a puff of smoke, then transforms into a beautiful smoke ring, only to break up eventually.
At no point do I get the impression that the beach smoke ring is anything else but a smoke ring. It is in constant transformation, which is normal when a visible gas compound enters the air. Wind (no matter how faint) and temperature differences will disperse it into the atmosphere. The blue sky background makes that very obvious, while in the King's Dominion video the clouds could make it hard to tell.

The altitude is different, and that is probably a crucial factor. So is time, since the beach smoke ring stays a ring for about 40 seconds, then changes.

To sum it up;

Kings' Dominion: constant, circular, stays that way 60 seconds +

Beach smoke ring: evolving, temporarily circular, for about 40 seconds, then brake up.

The smoke ring theory is tempting, especially considering that a flame tower that habitually makes smoke rings was right by. But, saying that it probably was a smoke ring because of that is kind of like saying that any UFO spotted near an airport or a Military Base is probably an airplane or a military craft.

I would still say that the King's Dominion UFR resembles the Ft. Belvoir UFO more than any smoke ring posted so far, I therefore have to draw the conclusion that they are related somehow.

Keep posting them smoke ring videos though, I'd like to see one stay intact and perfectly circular for more than 60 seconds.

Originally posted by TheAgentNineteen
I have witnessed vapor based smoke rings blown across a room from a person's mouth, wherein the ring in question stayed completely intact and uniform in shape

Now all you have to do is to film it in a cloudy, windy, higher altitude environment to show us that this simple indoor experiment works as well outdoors.

Originally posted by TheAgentNineteen
On the day in question, there was in fact a High Pressure system moving in over the region, as a Cold Front (From the North) passed over the night before.

Which means... that it was pretty windy that day?
You know, trying to explain how a smoke ring will behave from reading a weather chart is kind of to extrapolate, no? I wouldn't have tried it myself, but that's just me.

Originally posted by TheAgentNineteen
As an experimentally based control sample, take a look at a very large EOD initiated blast in Afghanistan, and notice how even though a very large smoke ring is formed through immense pressure, it still lingers stationary for a VERY long time (Relatively):

Yes, a puff of something not very much like a ring does linger in the air for about 30 seconds before it breaks up, the sky is clear, it should be hot and not very windy. We're in Afghanistan after all, not in King's Dominion, with totally different types of weather conditions.
We already know that smoke rings can linger in the air for a while, several of the videos posted so far shows this.
The question is, can they stay perfectly circular for 60 seconds +? Can they remain stationary for 60 seconds plus while clouds swirl around, and why doesn't this smoke ring look like any of the other smoke rings? Where is the rest of the smoke that all of the other smoke rings produce?

Originally posted by askbaby
So - it's either an invisible UFO
OR a smoke ring created by huge man-made volcano

You got it, those are the two contestants so far.

Which brings on another question. If the Blast Coaster produces smoke rings all day long, there should be a fair amount of King's Dominion smoke ring videos out there, because people film just about everything, right?
Bring them on, show us just another banal King's Dominion video with a Blast Coaster smoke ring going up in the air and behaving just like the OP video, and you've wrecked the UFO theory.

Personally I still want to hear more witnesses speak up. One for, one against so far.



[edit on 19-6-2009 by Heliocentric]

As asked in earlier posts the Guys from the KD site have provided us with another smoke ring to show that this happens all the time, Its pretty faint but you can clearly see it.. I have edited in an arrow to show you in case you have any issues seeing it,