Skinwalker Ranch - Laser Beam Stops and Starts in Mid Air

[MonkeeSage]

They seem to be using a Laser Space Canon, possibly by Phantom Dynamics? The company at SWR, New Salt lighting has Laser Space Canons as an option for setup.

Found a couple of interesting videos on their youtube channel.

The beginning of this one shows the Laser Space Cannon can be pulsed on and off.

Frame when pulsed on:


Frame when pulsed off:

Source: www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN016EhddEE

This one shows a studio laser show with different lasers, but showing they know how to cause "banding" where parts of the lasers appear invisible. (Don't know if "banding" is the right term but it's what the video description calls it.)



Source: www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZWYQO4JENY


NB. The spelling of the company name is actually Nu-Salt Laser Light Shows International. They have a teaser trailer for a previous episode of SWR they worked on showing a Laser space Cannon, so definitely the same company.


Source: www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5tMatBmu4M

 

[jimmyslippin]

If there was something occluding the beam, it would have to be flying. It's several hundred feet up

Not necessarily. In theory this effect could be pulled off with a rectangular notch filter affixed to a pane of glass positioned directly in front of the camera.

How noticeable the filter would be is the question. I imagine doing this at night would help conceal it.

 

[Eburacum]

Lots of UFOs and other phenomena could be faked using large sheets of glass directly in front of the camera. The Calvine photos, for instance.

Although this is a tempting hypothesis, the practical difficulties of using a large sheet of glass to fake a photo are significant, and I tend to think this form of fakery is relatively rare.

On the other hand post #121in this thread suggests that interrupted laser beams are a practical possibility.

 

[FatPhil]

On the other hand post #121in this thread suggests that interrupted laser beams are a practical possibility.

The Tom Scott vid posted earlier likewise. However, this is a camera/shutter artefact. The wagon-wheel effect isn't a bug - it's a feature.

 

[Eburacum]

This one shows a studio laser show with different lasers, but showing they know how to cause "banding" where parts of the lasers appear invisible. (Don't know if "banding" is the right term but it's what the video description calls it.)

Surely you would need to watch this through a video camera to see the 'banding'.

 

[JMartJr]

You folks check me, is my understanding of this correct?

To produce a picture of a laser beam with a short gap in it through rolling shutter, you don't need to produce a beam with a short gap in it, you merely need a laser to switch off for a fraction of a second. Illustrated here:


Here we have three lasers, the green ones are on the same circuit and flicker during the picture being taken, as the camera starts recording from the top and scans down (terminology may not be correct but is hopefully clear!) Time passes left to right.

This image is simplified, I may be missing other effects of the process, just looking at what it does to the three lasers. In the real image, the background would not get LOTS darker as there are still lots of green (and blue) lasers firing.*

If this is not egregiously wrong, it might be useful in visualizing the process.



*But should possibly be SLIGHTLY darker? Like this?

 

[MrAnderson69]

@FatPhil, I've been unable to find existing photos that would illustrate your post, but found an interesting article on deflecting a laser with air of different densities.

The innovative technique uses sound waves in order to modulate the air in the region where the laser beam is passing. “We’ve generated an optical grating with the help of acoustic density waves,” explains first author Yannick Schrödel, a Ph.D. student at DESY and Helmholtz Institute Jena.

Commonly abbreviated as DESY, the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (English German Electron Synchrotron) is a national research center in Germany that operates particle accelerators used to investigate the structure of matter. It is a member of the Helmholtz Association and operates at sites in Hamburg and Zeuthen.

With the help of special loudspeakers, the researchers shape a pattern of dense and less dense areas in the air, forming a striped grating. In a way that is similar to how differential air densities bend the light in the Earth’s atmosphere, the density pattern takes on the role of an optical grating that changes the direction of the laser light beam.

Content from External Source

https://scitechdaily.com/sound-controls-light-deflecting-laser-beams-using-air/

Id been following SWR on Reddit and got linked to this thread.

This sound wave induced differential air density is interesting as DrTT’s 1999 thesis was to simulate the turbulance layers, as we see in our atmosphere, in a laboratory - where different densities of air passed each other create turbulence as their viscosities are different. He was researching/investigating this and other were too, to understand the the distribution of light through atmospheric layers, which can be calculated through existing mathematical formulas and laws, to reconstruct that distributed light and I guess see what is very far away and blurred due to the atmosphere.

The title is

Laboratory simulation of atmospheric turbulence induced optical wavefront distortion​

I don’t have access to the full thesis, but read the Abstract and some other very similar/identical titles theses that weren’t behind a paywall/registration page!

https://www.proquest.com/docview/304543402/abstract/4AB70B0648F84D39PQ/1?sourcetype=Dissertations & Theses

Abstract here.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0030399202000956

Also, the 5th method in this paper is the LCTV method as per DrTT and others theses.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/507849/pdf

Or, perhaps the suggestion above about the panel being hoisted to reflect the laser off heated the air and created that effect in the vertical lasers!

https://www.semanticscholar.org/pap...aint/0069ca8a480a200eaadc9df8c8ed320841b52b8d

Except it was apparently a single frame, so either the thing that obstructed the beams was hypersonic or it was simply a digital timing artefact between the laser pulse rate and the recording/rolling shutter frame rate.

I expect the lasers were synchronised if these things are used for Laser Display shows.

Also, are they not just Ultra High Power LED panels, like the white one shown. LEDs are driven with a pulses supply these days as they will burn out if allowed to draw all the current unrestricted - previously you used a ballast resistor to reduce the current flowing through the LED, but in high power use, they’d need large heat dissipating resistors that’d get really, not to mention the waste of energy creating heat.
So, all the LED’s would be linked to the same power and pulsed at the same time.
I expect the LED/Laser heads would be just that and their power and therefore pulsing would be from the same source, perhaps green separate from blue due to the power requirements of the different colour LEDs/Lasers.

 

[Ravi]

Interesting thought, @JMartJr , but it cannot explain what we see in the image of post #5.

 

[JMartJr]

Interesting thought, @JMartJr , but it cannot exaplain what we see in the image of post #5.

I agree, for various reasons I don't think it's a rolling shutter artifact. Or at least is not an un-modified pic produced by rolling shutter, it is possible a surprising rolling shutter pic was dressed up to look cooler for TV.

By the illustration above I am just trying to make sure I have a decent understanding of how rolling shutter would work.

 

[Mick West]

Surely you would need to watch this through a video camera to see the 'banding'.

Yeah, there's quite a bit of discussion on banding on Reddit, eg..

Article:

brad1775 May 6 2018
Those Lasers were designed by the companies Future Weapons, and Nice Lasers, they are both champions of lasers (check out Gareth emery’s laserface video on youtube for more of their work!).

The apearance of moving lines is a process of lining up the frame rate of the laser lines being drawn with the framerate of the camera. the bent lines is an occurance of Rolling Shutter used in video capture.

In person, you can't see that effect, it's only visible on a recording.

Heres how it works: If you project a line that sweeps back and forth 32 times times per second, with a camera that only captures one frame every 1/30th of a second, you will see a patern that oscilates back and forth once every 15 seconds (32/30 = 1 with a reminder of 1/16, giving the 16 second effect). Lasers of course use much faster drawing paterns than 26 "lines" per second, and this can allow a range of cuncurrent timings, if you notice there were several paterns being thrown by the ceiling mounted fixture, you can see that the fixture was capable of outputting several paterns at once, because it can draw 50,000 points per second, with a vector between the points

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/lightingdesign/comments/8hfuei/comment/dyjrc6q/

 

[Mick West]

And here it's specficially referred to as an "on-screen effect"
https://www.dynamicsfx.com/laser-beam-floating-banding
With several examples:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0fm0Mr2ebw

 

[Eburacum]

Interesting thought, @JMartJr , but it cannot exaplain what we see in the image of post #5.

Well, I think we can explain almost all of the image in post#5, although it is quite involved. These is just one bit I don't understand.
Here is the image from post #5.

------
Here is my recreation of this image, using @JMartJr 's excellent method.



I'll talk through what I think is happening.
Beams 1, 4, 5 and 7, the blue beams, are not interrupted. They shine throughout the duration of the image.
Beam 2 is split into two different segments, beam 2a (which shines continuously) and beam 2b, which is interrupted for a fraction of a second.
Beams 3 and 6 are interrupted for a fraction of a second as well.
Beams 2b, beam 3 and beam 6 display gaps, due to the rolling shutter effect, which may be rolling from top to bottom or from bottom to top (it doesn't matter which).

I've labelled two more effects which I've noticed; the interrupted (green) beams seem to have a slightly rounded end, which I've labelled as A; I'm not sure why this happens, but the 'interrupted beams' in Tom Scott's video also show a tapered cut-off at the end for some reason, so it may be some sort of 'fade-out effect' caused by residual glow from the laser.

There is also some sort of 'wave' effect at location B in the original image, and I don't know what is causing that at all.

 

[Eburacum]

I also note that beams 2a and 2b both seem to be coming from the same box, according to this larger image, although it is difficult to be sure.
It would be a lot easier to explain this phenomenon if 2a and 2b were issuing from different boxes, but that does not seem to be the case.

 

[Mick West]

I think this is the configuration of the lasers. Not the positions of the light stand and the white board to orient with the above image, which seems to be looking from the top right so there's two overlapping blues in the middle.

 

[JMartJr]

It would be a lot easier to explain this phenomenon if 2a and 2b were issuing from different boxes, but that does not seem to be the case.

I have no idea how these things are wired, but if I understand correctly each beam is a BANK of lasers -- if so could a third (or so) of the individual lasers in one side of a box flicker with the other two entire banks/boxes?

 

[Mick West]

I have no idea how these things are wired, but if I understand correctly each beam is a BANK of lasers -- if so could a third (or so) of the individual lasers in one side of a box flicker with the other two entire banks/boxes?

Seems unlikely. Maybe a power glitch, but it would seem like that would affect the entire box.

I'm leaning towards these being edited images. Perhaps "enhancing" something less dramatic.

Here's a screenshot of the 4K stream:


We can see some striping from the individual mini-beams, likely because they are at right angles to the camera.

Here's the layout:


Here lined up (perspective is a bit off) with the plan view



Looking at the two on the right, we see the blue is in front of the green. But where the green is missing there's some dodgy looking blue.




This looks to me like someone thought the single blue beam should be as wide as the one in the middle (which is actually two beams) and so a gap in the green should show more blue. But it should show black.

And really the beams should simply add together making cyan if they overlap.

Attached is a zip file with the 4K grabs of the gaps

 

[jimmyslippin]

Looking at the two on the right, we see the blue is in front of the green. But where the green is missing there's some dodgy looking blue.




This looks to me like someone thought the single blue beam should be as wide as the one in the middle (which is actually two beams) and so a gap in the green should show more blue. But it should show black.

Good catch. That blue beam is way thicker than it should be.

There's way too much dodgy stuff happening in these images. Everything about them screams manipulation.

 

[FatPhil]

We can see some striping from the individual mini-beams, likely because they are at right angles to the camera.

Looks like possible anti-aliasing of a moire caused by them not being quite at right angles to the camera. Moire's unavoidable given that physical setup, and if there is anti-aliasing, it's probably done deep in the camera itself, it's typically an optical element (sometimes called an "optical low pass filter" - OLPF), though theoretically you could do it in the firmware too. (If f/w, then it could be disableable, which would permit you to get sharper images when you know moire's not a problem.)

 

[dlandelle]

The only way I can explain this is by some kind of rolling shutter effect. See the Tom Scott video for more details.
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/sk...stops-and-starts-in-mid-air.13479/post-316336
Note that Tom Scot's expert had to turn the camera on its side to get the 'interruption' effect. In the Skinwalker images the camera is the normal way up, scanning from the top to the bottom (or vice versa).

It looks very likely that some of the individual beams consist of several lasers in a cluster, which do not seem to be exactly in phase with each other; that could explain why some of the beams are only partially absent.

Reading of CMOS can be random unlike CCD "flush", it can be read like memory.
If the sensor has no mechanical shutter, it may lead to such side-effects.

The problem seems only visible on green color, which is weird because sub-sampling is even worse on red and blue (1 ou of 4 pixels). I would expect more problems on blue, a pity there is no red laser ;-)

 

[KalleMP]

All of it shines through. Light throws no shadow.

Here are a pair of cool videos that somewhat contradicts your observation.

Amazing Experiment Actually Makes Black Fire! The Shadow Fire Experiment (youtube . com/watch?v=5ZNNDA2WUSU)

Light sucking flames look like magic (youtube . com/watch?v=1o8ktldjcog)

 

[Eburacum]

Yes, the gases and soot in those videos do absorb light. However there are no gases or soot in a laser beam apart from ordinary air, which is transparent.

 

[LeastWeasel]

I wouldn't make that assumption given that Travis has a history of deliberately making false statements that eliminate mundane explanations, like "it's moving waaaaayyyy to fast to be a satellite" and "where did it go, it's not cloudy?" Those were just from one incident and both are objectively false statements designed to mislead when the object was just a satellite moving behind a cloud.

Taking long exposure photos in this scenario makes no practical sense. The beam would have to be disrupted for the entire time the shutter is open to get this effect, which seems highly unlikely given that 1) nobody saw it happening with their own eyes, 2) they obviously weren't caught on video because that would have been far more compelling evidence. I don't believe for one second that they weren't capturing video of the beams during this "experiment", especially when they had three cameras supposedly dedicated to taking periodic long exposure snaps.

In my opinion, "long exposures" is deliberate misdirection design to eliminate the rolling shutter explanation. We're also probably looking at portrait crops of landscape images for the same reason.

I tend to agree with this statement. This discussion is based on some very sketchy information. Information that has zero data to support. I assume everything they show is a hoax perpetrated to get ratings. Nothing on the show has ever been validated as genuine.

 

[MapperGuy]

I tend to agree with this statement. This discussion is based on some very sketchy information. Information that has zero data to support. I assume everything they show is a hoax perpetrated to get ratings. Nothing on the show has ever been validated as genuine.

If the effect could be faked I would assume it was faked. This is an entertainment show, not intended to be taken seriously.

 

[jimmyslippin]

So they went back to the well this week and brought the Nu-Salt guys back in to play around with the laser space cannons again, but only one was needed for this "experiment.

This time the beam encountered a "visible obstruction" at about 2000 feet.





Later on the laser, according to Travis, "split in two."





Also, classic Travis moment:

Thomas: Well I'm just wondering if maybe the mesa is obstructing our view?
Travis: Sure, it could be. But how could we get up there and see?
Thomas: Well I'm about tempted to run up there and look.
Thomas goes to the top of the mesa.

Multiple PhD guy couldn't figure out how to walk up a hill.

 

[Eburacum]

The blue beam seems to be encountering a layer of mist (or probably two layers of mist, since the beam shows two distinct scattering events) which it can't penetrate.

Blue light is more prone to scattering in our atmosphere, of course - that is why the sky is blue. Perhaps the laser beam is encountering the planetary boundary layer mentioned in @FatPhil 's post here
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/sk...stops-and-starts-in-mid-air.13479/post-316765

 

[Eburacum]

From FatPhil's link
https://www.laserpointersafety.com/aviationfacts/whybeamsseemtoend.html

 

[FatPhil]

From FatPhil's link
https://www.laserpointersafety.com/aviationfacts/whybeamsseemtoend.html

The important bit:

Based on a NOAA diagram. We Photoshopped this into a nighttime view, to illustrate how a laser beam appears much brighter to the person holding it, as the beam passes through the aerosol-filled Planetary Boundary Layer only a few hundred meters above the earth’s surface.

Content from External Source

 

[Mendel]

The important bit:

Based on a NOAA diagram. We Photoshopped this into a nighttime view, to illustrate how a laser beam appears much brighter to the person holding it, as the beam passes through the aerosol-filled Planetary Boundary Layer only a few hundred meters above the earth’s surface.

Content from External Source

The background is obviously painted anyway. (The lines and arrows should be a clue, if nothing else.)

 

[FatPhil]

The background is obviously painted anyway. (The lines and arrows should be a clue, if nothing else.)

But the background was painted by someone else, not them. Here's the original:

https://web.archive.org/web/2019082...srl.noaa.gov/research/themes/pbl/img/fig1.jpg

 

[LeastWeasel]

So they went back to the well this week and brought the Nu-Salt guys back in to play around with the laser space cannons again, but only one was needed for this "experiment.

This time the beam encountered a "visible obstruction" at about 2000 feet.





Later on the laser, according to Travis, "split in two."





Also, classic Travis moment:

Thomas: Well I'm just wondering if maybe the mesa is obstructing our view?
Travis: Sure, it could be. But how could we get up there and see?
Thomas: Well I'm about tempted to run up there and look.
Thomas goes to the top of the mesa.

Multiple PhD guy couldn't figure out how to walk up a hill.

So they redo the broken green beam with a single blue?

 

[Eburacum]

I am not entirely sure, but I think the green colour and the white colour are both 'night vision' - they were only using a blue laser here.

 

[Eburacum]

At the top of the blue beam you can see a local brightening and scattering effect - this is probably where the blue beam encounters one or two thin layers of mist.

There are presumably thin layers of cloud up there; maybe the same sort of thin layers we noticed when they filmed the CSS disappearing.

 

[jimmyslippin]

I am not entirely sure, but I think the green colour and the white colour are both 'night vision' - they were only using a blue laser here.

Yeah, you are correct.

 

[Ravi]

We need better or more footage of the show, I believe. We now have to work only with a few video screen grabs..

 

[JMartJr]

The blue beam seems to be encountering a layer of mist (or probably two layers of mist, since the beam shows two distinct scattering events) which it can't penetrate.

Or possibly which is does penetrate, with clean air above it, so it is no longer visible reflecting off of aerosols...?

 

[jimmyslippin]

At the top of the blue beam you can see a local brightening and scattering effect - this is probably where the blue beam encounters one or two thin layers of mist.

There are presumably thin layers of cloud up there; maybe the same sort of thin layers we noticed when they filmed the CSS disappearing.

I think you're right. It was difficult to gauge the cloud cover from the video of the beam, but there was one shot that Thomas took with a night vision camera that showed thin and patchy cloud cover.

 

[Mick West]

This time the beam encountered a "visible obstruction" at about 2000 feet.

Did they say where they got "2000 feet" from?

 

[Mick West]

I'm away right now, but just watched the laser segment.

It's hitting clouds. At 22:22 you see the clouds drift off.

The cross shape is from the rectangular arrangement of mini-lasers. You see it elsewhere.

Pretty ridiculous. I'll look more when I get back.

 

[jimmyslippin]

Did they say where they got "2000 feet" from?

No, I should have added that it was a Travis Taylor guesstimate.

 

[Mendel]

No, I should have added that it was a Travis Taylor guesstimate.

"How to triangulate the height of a tree" is a highschool maths problem. It's not hard to do, and not hard to measure with simple equipment (like a protractor and a piece of string). 2000 ft is ~600m or ⅓ of a mile, a distance hard to estimate into the sky with no nearby objects to help and a featureless beam. We explained upthread how the laws of perspective naturally (and inevitably) make it look like a laser beam ends at its vanishing point. If there's a reflective medium (such as a cloud) across the faraway portion of the beam, it would look brighter.

It cannot look brighter along a length if it actually hits a solid object. (Think about a laser pointer hitting a whiteboard or a wall.) Because we do not see a bright dot in the SWR video, but something elongated, that itself is proof that the beam hit a transparent medium (a cloud) and not a solid object.