Continued from the previous post.
9. The newspaper account, quoted in Good's book, has D'Alton claiming that "ground radar couldn't pick it up, so it must have been travelling at
phenomenal speed." Actually, the speed would have had nothing to do with radar failing to pick it up, but the actual distance -- which D'Alton
misjudged, leading to subsequent erroneous interpretations -- did.
10. The Tornado pilots described the flaming debris as " two large round objects, each with five blue lights and several other white lights around the
rim." Since they were used to seeing other structured vehicles with lights mounted on them, when they spotted this unusual apparition, that's the way
they misperceived and remembered it.
11. "In Belgium, dozens reported a triangular object with three lights, flying slowly and soundlessly to the south-west," but these were separate
fireball fragments at a great distance, which witnesses assumed were lights on some larger structure. Their slow angular rate was misinterpreted to be
a genuine slow speed because their true distance was grossly underestimated.
12. "A British pilot . . . reported four objects flying in formation over the Ardennes hills in south Belgium." The pilot may have been over southern
Belgium, but the objects he saw didn't have to be, they were hundreds of miles away. And despite his instinctive (and wrong) assumption the lights
were "flying in formation", they were randomly-space fireball fragments.
13. Note that Good writes that "Jean-Jacques Velasco,. . . said an investigation would be launched," but Good saw the results of that investigation
before his book went to press, and he neglected to tell his readers that Velasco proved the lights were from the satellite re-entry.
Such selective omissions make many such stories appear far stronger than they really are.
14. One Air France pilot told a radio interviewer: '. . . It couldn't have been a satellite (re-entry) because it was there for three or four
minutes', but such reasoning is groundless since near-horizontal re-entriers can be seen for many minutes, especially from airplanes at high altitude.
The pilot didn't know this, and rejected that explanation erroneously.
15. "In Italy, six airline pilots reported 'a mysterious and intense white light' south-east of Turin. Pilots also reported five white smoke trails
nearby." They may have been near Turin when they saw the lights and assumed incorrectly they were 'nearby', but the lights were far, far away.
In general satellite/junk reentries are much slower and longer lasting than a natural meteor, giving time for observers to get a good look at them,
yet experienced pilots still managed to misidentify this one.
There are exceptions, but most natural fireball class meteors don't last longer than around 1-10 seconds, giving the observer very little time to
think about what he or she is seeing, and making it more likely that an observer might misinterpret what they are seeing.
The reports we get from people after a large fireball are testament to this, but please, don't take my word for it. A
search of this site which collects meteor reports will bring up many cases where meteors are misidentified.
I'm sure you are quite capable of finding other sources on the web as you have demonstrated in other posts I have seen from you, but here are a couple
more meteor/fireball related events that were posted here on ATS that all had people misidentifying meteors
Mysterious Fireball Prompts Dozens Of 911 Calls
Huge Fireball Reported Over Madison, WI!
Freshly fallen meteorites were recovered in this event, and that together with the lack of crashed planes/UFOs strongly suggests that people who
observed the object and reported a plane or UFO crash were mistaken.
Massive object crashes over Edmonton, Canada
Also a case where hard evidence in the form of meteorites was/were recovered.
Meteors can be a mysterious and
very deceptive phenomena to people who have not spent time observing and learning about the
phenomena, and I know this to be true from my own personal experience of the subject, which I have been interested in for over 14 years now.
Of course, although meteor in this case is the most likely explanation, given the reports, and that bright meteors are surprisingly common... it might
have been something else, but apart from the witness reports (which we know are by their very nature unreliable in cases like this), what else is
there that suggests it was anything else?
edit on 20-12-2011 by C.H.U.D. because: fixed typo
