When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. (Unless you’re in the Savannah.) When something is odd, don’t assume supernatural causes a priori.
You know, like these UFO douchebags do here:
There’s a perfectly reasonable explanation, of course. The time coincides extremely well with a Russian missile test, and the pattern generated fits the possibility that this test was a failure due to a rupture of the missile causing ejecta to stream out — making the missile spiral, creating the spiral pattern we see. Here’s an excellent video showing exactly how it could happen.
Of course, this is “all part of the conspiracy” and a “half-baked cover-up” in the minds of the pseudoscientists that scream UFO first, deny the evidence afterward. Like all anti-reality groups, where the conclusion doesn’t match the evidence, the evidence is wrong and/or cooked.
It’s crap like this that makes me weep for humanity.
When I hear hoofbeats, I think unicorns.
When I hear hoofbeats I think of coconuts and African swallows.
Great video explanation.
I used to be a big UFO believer, but a bunch of cases like this where people insist that there can’t be any mundane explanation even when there is a likely mundane explanation have pretty much turned me into a skeptic on that question. My own personal theory is that, if there are any probes or spacecraft of extraterrestrial origin poking around earth, they’re probably very small – microscopic. My guess is that anyone who can make technology that can readily travel between stars can probably also make technology that can be really tiny but also very sophisticated. The smaller the probe or ship, the better, since it takes less energy to push it over those enormous distances. Or, maybe I just picked this idea up from some bad science fiction somewhere – I can’t remember.
(Steve beat me to the coconuts, dammit!)
A microscopic space fleet is in Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, though I’m not sure if that’s what you’re referring to.
The way I figure it, space is ginormous, and there are probably isolated pockets of life all over it. But being isolated, the chances that one will get to another, much less one sentient race meeting another, is so slim as to be nearly impossible.
Then again, with the vastness of space, it’s bound to have happened a few times already somewhere in this universe. Just not to us.
Never assume a conspiracy when simple stupidity will suffice. People make me sick sometimes.
Interesting that you should say that, when one of my drafts is about the climate “conspiracy”. What’s even funnier is, there IS a conspiracy or two, but it’s certainly not the one the stupid people think.