Chinese lanterns do not now, nor have they ever, nor WILL they ever take off at enourmous speeds.
Correct, and if you re-read what I said, you will see that I never said that. What I did say is that sky-lanterns have been described as doing so. There is a big difference between something appearing to be the case and it actually being the case.
Sorry, but stop and go motions, and taking off at enourmous speeds are not characteristic of the floating lanterns.
You need to do a bit of research. They can, and do appear to do these things. Your ignorance that they do not, has no bearing on this well known fact.
Wow I love how that has become the swiss army knife of UFO explanation.
Would that be the same way as ignorance has become the "swiss army knife" of denying all rational explanation?
So we should ignore sky lanterns as possible explanations (and jump straight to the "it must be not of this world" explanation) because your lack of understanding of the subject does not extend to understanding the basics of human perception and basic investigation and identification?
You and almost everyone else here are forgetting that WE DO NOT SEE REALITY!
Our brains first have to interpret what we see before we can see it.
There is a danger of postulating special mechanisms, or processes, when none is needed. It is well known that the images in the eyes are optically reversed — upside down and switched left–right — yet the world looks upright, and visual right and left agree with touch. It is generally accepted that this does not need a special compensating mechanism because retinal images are not seen, as objects are seen — or they would need another eye to see them — with another picture in the brain, a regress, going on forever without getting anywhere
Source: answers.com
It is sometimes said that illusions occur only in laboratory or other artificial conditions, but this is far from true. Illusions of all the senses are frequent in normal conditions, and may be dramatic even with familiar objects in full lighting.
Source: answers.com
For the physical sciences illusions are nothing much more than threats to be avoided; but these out-of-this-world phenomena are important for suggesting and testing theories of how we perceive things. That there are illusions shows that at least some perceptions are not tied to the object world, as they float free of physical reality.
Source: answers.com
But illusions can be caused not by systems misbehaving, but very differently, by normal functioning being inappropriate to the situation. This distinction implies that there is more to life than physiological functions; it matters what they are doing in particular circumstances. For example, the brain effectively scales up retinal images optically shrunk by object distance (as in a camera) giving 'size constancy', but this scaling may not be appropriate. Then a distortion of size or shape occurs though the physiology is working normally.
Which girl is taller here? This scene manipulates the visual cues, rather than them not being there in the first place, as would be the case with an object in the sky.
Fig. 6a. The Ames Room: the odd-shaped room gives the same retinal image to the eye (placed at the right distance) as a normal rectangular room. So it must appear the same — and does — until there are objects, such as people, inside it. Then they look odd sizes while the room continues to look (falsely) like a normal rectangular room.
Source: answers.com
Answer: They are both the same! Of course, because the visual cues are misleading, our eyes are deceived.
Question: If you see something that appears to be a long way away, but is actually much closer than it is, how would you perceive a small movement, keeping in mind that your brain is telling you that the object is a long distance away?
