Jul 31, 2024 08:47 PM
UFO Sightings Are Spiking. This Man Has Unraveled the Truth Behind Hundreds of Them
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science...-debunker/
INTRO: On a clear, sunny day in July, Mick West, a former video game programmer, was flying from his home in Sacramento, California, down to Pasadena. From the aircraft, he spied a small, white, elongated object that seemed to be passing over the mountains. Intrigued, he took a short video with his phone. Though he assumed the anomaly was just another airplane, West just couldn’t help himself; he needed to investigate.
When he got to his hotel room, West did what he so often does: a bit of digital sleuthing. First, he uploaded the raw footage to Photoshop to drill down into the image until it resembled a mosaic of zoomed-in pixels. “You have to be very careful about what you’re looking at … for me, that’s the very first step in investigating a case,” he explains. He also downloaded the GPS routes of his plane and a few nearby ones from FlightAware.com, a real-time worldwide flight tracker.
West is a longtime UFO debunker. Retired from the gaming industry in the early 2000s, he’s dealt with about 1,000 UFO cases over nearly a decade, ultimately completing a deeper analysis of about 100 on a pro-bono basis. He examines scoops from official and leaked government reports, sightings trending on social media, emails people send to him, and anomalies posted on popular UFO databases like Enigma and MUFON. He’s even appeared on a History Channel show, The Proof Is Out There, as a forensic video analyst.
He’s found that most skyward curiosities have a logical explanation. No aliens required.
And yet, reports of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs)—a term the U.S. government’s National Defense Authorization Act of 2023 established to replace the term “UFO”—are on the rise, according to data from the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, established in 2022. West believes in using logic and common sense while investigating such claims. That means following the clues and cross-referencing them with simultaneous events such as flights, weather phenomena like saucer-shaped lenticular clouds, ground camera images, and satellite data from companies like Starlink.
That may not necessarily lead to thrilling discoveries of alien encounters, but for West, chipping away at the puzzle to reveal the truth is enormously satisfying.... (MORE - details)
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science...-debunker/
INTRO: On a clear, sunny day in July, Mick West, a former video game programmer, was flying from his home in Sacramento, California, down to Pasadena. From the aircraft, he spied a small, white, elongated object that seemed to be passing over the mountains. Intrigued, he took a short video with his phone. Though he assumed the anomaly was just another airplane, West just couldn’t help himself; he needed to investigate.
When he got to his hotel room, West did what he so often does: a bit of digital sleuthing. First, he uploaded the raw footage to Photoshop to drill down into the image until it resembled a mosaic of zoomed-in pixels. “You have to be very careful about what you’re looking at … for me, that’s the very first step in investigating a case,” he explains. He also downloaded the GPS routes of his plane and a few nearby ones from FlightAware.com, a real-time worldwide flight tracker.
West is a longtime UFO debunker. Retired from the gaming industry in the early 2000s, he’s dealt with about 1,000 UFO cases over nearly a decade, ultimately completing a deeper analysis of about 100 on a pro-bono basis. He examines scoops from official and leaked government reports, sightings trending on social media, emails people send to him, and anomalies posted on popular UFO databases like Enigma and MUFON. He’s even appeared on a History Channel show, The Proof Is Out There, as a forensic video analyst.
He’s found that most skyward curiosities have a logical explanation. No aliens required.
And yet, reports of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs)—a term the U.S. government’s National Defense Authorization Act of 2023 established to replace the term “UFO”—are on the rise, according to data from the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, established in 2022. West believes in using logic and common sense while investigating such claims. That means following the clues and cross-referencing them with simultaneous events such as flights, weather phenomena like saucer-shaped lenticular clouds, ground camera images, and satellite data from companies like Starlink.
That may not necessarily lead to thrilling discoveries of alien encounters, but for West, chipping away at the puzzle to reveal the truth is enormously satisfying.... (MORE - details)