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This reminds me of the chap in Teignmouth, Devon, who took a photo of a fleet of UFOs, and was quoted as saying it hovered for a while then shot away at high speed. Which is what most UFOs seem to do (TicTac, anyone?) In the Teignmouth case the fleet of UFOs turned out to be the Moon partially...

Speaking from memory, the MoD have identified the aircraft as a Harrier but said that no Harriers were flying in Scotland at the alleged time of the photo. Since the MoD would have no reason to lie about the second point, it would call into question the date of the photo. But based on the poor...

When did anyone ever give a valuable photo to a tabloid newspaper? .

It seems fairly obvious that the photographer sold the photo(s) to a newspaper, with or without a 'bidding war'. The lucky recipient then had qualms about possible legal aspects (the Official Secrets Act, D Notices, etc) and out of public spirit and/or desire to cover their back decided to send...

It should be noted that the photography expert, Andrew Robinson of Sheffield Hallam University, has revised his report analysing the photo. Most importantly, he includes an entirely new 'conclusion' and section on the apparent physical size of the object. The conclusion is that it is probably...

We seem to be generally accepting the expert's 'considered opinion' (his own words) that the image is the result of a monochrome (black-and-white) negative printed on colour film paper. This may be correct, but his grounds for the conclusion are not overwhelming. They seem to be essentially...

I'll think about this further tomorrow, but I thought this was being touted as a good quality image? The photographic analysis report states that the 'object' is the best-focussed part of the photo, and that the grain in the area of the object is fairly fine and uniform. It seems to me (no...

My first impression of the photo was that the UFO is rather dull. My second impression, after seeing 'blown up' versions of the object, is that it looks tatty. Both the upper and lower edges of the object appear ragged, and someone or something has taken a bite out of the upper vertex of the...

I think I've mentioned this before somewhere, but Picard's balloon ascent was made from Augsburg in Bavaria (mis-spelled as 'Augsberg' in the Popular Science article). From there the Swiss Alps would have been visible in the distance to the south, and the Austrian Alps to the south-east. It...

Does he say why he thought it 'looked perfectly stationary'? Assuming it is further away from the observer than the contrail, as it seems to be, the parallax of the object due to the motion of the observer should be less than that of the contrail, but on a casual viewing I don't see this. It...

Are you sure about this? My hairdryer is a very old, and fairly cheap, Braun Professional 1800, and has a metal grille. I'm not sure about the physics of cooling for metal v. plastic. Metal is generally a good conductor of heat, so when the dryer is switched off the hot grille will lose heat...

Surely it is the Artificial Horizon that is 'misaligned'. The source I quoted at #6 above (and there are other sources, e.g. the Wikipedia article on 'Attitude Indicator') gives some reasons for temporary errors in the AH, especially when the aircraft is making a tight turn. Ideally it might...

Yes, I see your point now. With the AH set to horizontal, the clouds do consistently seem to show an upward trend as they move to the right, during at least the white-hot part of the video. Since we can't reasonably suppose the clouds are actually moving upwards, this implies an error in the...

The tops of the clouds are lumpy and irregular. If you freeze the video at various points they may seem to slope either to the right (relative to the artificial horizon) or to the left. I think this is just pareidolia. The switch from white-hot to black-hot around 12 secs may contribute to...

I was just thinking the same thing. I've often seen paper confetti of various shapes lying around the street. I live quite near a church, so there would be confetti blowing around from weddings. After all, confetti is literally made to be thrown into the air, and on a breezy day it could...

In my hair dryer, the 'vanes' of the dryer are slightly inset from the end of the nozzle, and would not touch a flat surface if the nozzle is just held against it. If it is hot enough, you might still get a simple circular burn, but not the complex patterns shown in the photos. In order for...

It is difficult for adults to recreate the mentality of a young child. We've all been young children, but it's easier to remember physical details of our child experience (like climbing a tree) than the mental states which accompanied that experience. One thing I do remember from my childhood...

But we don't have any film or photos, and no adult witnesses. How good would the costumes need to be to fool 8-year-olds?

Brian Dunning's article says: The Wikipedia article on 'Ariel School UFO incident says: with supporting references. I must admit I haven't checked these. It also seems consistent with the video footage of interviews, etc, which show a clear majority of white children. Some footage from the...

I may have missed it, but one possibility doesn't yet seem to have been considered. According to an article by Brian Dunning, the media in Zimbabwe were first alerted to the Ariel story by a phone call to the local radio station (ZBC Radio), which had actually been calling for 'UFO' stories in...