Is Video Footage Of A Speeding UFO Captured Near Area 51 In Utah Fake?
February 06, 2019 6:00 AM ‐ UFOs
This article is more than five years old and was last updated in September 2019.
Once again an inconclusive video which shows an unidentifiable object moving across the shot has got the paranoid and conspiracy nuts all fired as they label the questionable footage as proof of "aliens".
Last month YouTube was flooded with comments from people debating the legitimacy of a video which alleges to show a UFO. The clip, which frankly could be anything, was uploaded to YouTube and after notching up hundreds of thousands of views became one of the most talked about and analysed clips of its kind - amazing given the fact it shows nothing more than a fast moving object in the air which is probably a bird.
The one thing the clip has got going for it is the video quality. Most videos which claim to show evidence of a UFO are usually very poor quality, shot with a handheld camera and zoomed in. This means the camera wobbles all over the place, because it's zoomed in and dark there's no frame of reference to determine the object's speed or trajectory, but this newly emerged clip is the exact opposite.
The video was shot by filmmaker Sam Chortek and drone pilot Jimmy Chappie outside of the small city of Beaver in Utah. The duo were shooting b-roll footage for a documentary they were working on. They took hours of video of landscapes and didn't notice anything unusual at the time, but when they watched the footage later that night in their hotel room they saw an object, which seems to defy physics.
The object appears to be moving at unearthly speeds, however no sonic boom was heard, even though the filmmakers were only stood about 130 meters behind their drone and the object whizzed right past them. Because the object was only in frame for a few seconds, it's hard to really determine its distance from the camera and therefore its true speed.
Photo: youtube.com
What makes this video so unique is that it's shot using a drone which means the camera's movement is steady and it's stable. It is shot in full HD and at 60 frames per second. This means it's possible to zoom in to the footage and the high frame rate means that, although the object is only visible for about a second, there are 60 frames of the object to examine.
The object appears to come down through the valley in the distance before banking sharply in what looks like a controlled and precise movement, performed at speed and at low altitude. Sam, one of the filmmakers behind the clip said, "something travelling that fast, turning at that speed, that low, is just insane."
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Photo: youtube.com
After performing this manoeuvre, the bright object - which some have described as metallic silver-looking - straightens up and shoots off in the direction of the camera on what appears to be a totally straight trajectory. Some who have attempted to guess at the speed based on fixed points on the terrain have quoted figures as high as 12,000mph - but of course, logic tells us that an object moving this fast would appear as a stretched-out blur on camera rather than a reasonably defined shape.
Photo: youtube.com
The video premiered exclusively on Brian Hanley's YouTube channel on January 9th. This is Brian's personal channel, but he also hosts the YouTube channel Complex Hustle and has a background as a political reporter covering the Bernie Sanders campaign for the Huffington Post.
The moment the video was published, the debate instantly erupted. The clip garnered so much interest and raised so many questions that the filmmakers released their raw footage. The idea behind this was to allow interested parties to download the footage and analyse it as they see fit. They're hoping this crowd sourced approach to investigation might bring them closer to the truth about what this object really is.
Opening up the original footage in this way has allowed others to try to prove or debunk the clip. One YouTuber named Rob Woodus has debunked several theories about the video. Rob has been able to pinpoint the exact spot on Google Earth where the drone was hovering at the time the footage was captured. Using this geo data, combined with careful analysis of the video, he's been able to confirm that the object first appears in a valley near a distant mountain. He's confirmed this by showing that trees on the nearside of the valley momentarily block the view of the object in several frames.
Rob said in his video, "I am confident that the object is a craft travelling at great speed." Based on the speed, the distant at which it is first sight, and the size the object grows to on screen as it approaches the camera, the possibility that the object is an insect or a bird can be ruled out. Especially when you consider that there is no sign of flapping wings. Rob added, "to originate that small and exit frame that large in one second confirms to me that it is one sizeable craft traveling at over 9,000mph."
In another video, Rob compares visible landmarks in the video with landmarks on Google Earth in order to calculate the speed of the mystery object. If the speed is calculated from the first point the object becomes visible, at the peak of the mountain range in the distance, then it would have to travel 3.5 miles before vanishing out of shot. This would equate to a speed of around 12,000mph.
Or the speed can be calculated at the point after it makes its turn, in this scenario it would be traveling a distance of 2.5 miles in one second, equivalent to 9,000mph.
The most conservative estimate places the object much closer near a utility pole seen in the foreground. This is just quarter of a mile away, so over one second this would give the object a speed of 900mph. That's almost 300mph faster than a stealth bomber, which rules out it being a plane.
So, believers are convinced that it's not a bird, it's not a plane. What does that leave us with? Well, it's either an actual alien spacecraft, some weird and unexplainable light anomaly, or it's a fake. Both Sam and Jimmy sound genuine, and Brian who uploaded the video also seems credible. It could be CGI, but that's impossible to prove, so it really comes down to whether you trust the filmmakers or not.
Some think that there is one other theory. As the location where the footage was captured is just a two hour drive from Area 51 in Nevada, many think that the object could be an experimental military aircraft, perhaps back engineered from alien technology. Sam agrees with this theory, he makes the bold claim that it's 50/50 whether it's of military or ET origin.
Although it has only recently surfaced, the event took place in October 2016, but Sam and Jimmy sat on the video until now and I wondered why. Speaking on Brian's YouTube channel, Sam said, "to be totally honest with you, the reason we really didn't want to push it out there or do anything with it, was because there's a certain paranoia level for me personally, that I'm a little scared about." Believe it or not, he actually thinks that they might have caught something on camera that they really shouldn't have and didn't want to get hunted down for it.
Today another new video has been uploaded which takes a closer look at the shape of the object using enhanced stills from the video. Take a look at the video and let us know what you think it is in the comments below...
So, What Is It?
Sam does seem very genuine, which makes us think that the video is not a fake. So, where does that leave us?
Well, outside of the world of science fiction, there's no evidence that aliens have ever visited Earth and even if they had, it's unlikely they're smart enough to travel across deep space but get spotted while doing nosedives over Utah. So, we can obviously rule out the possibility that it's an alien space craft.
It could be a craft of terrestrial origin, but it's doubtful that the military have any experimental aircraft that can travel at the sort of speeds that are being talked about - any human inside would end up as a pancake on the back wall of the cockpit at those speeds.
This leaves us with what is the most logical explanation... it's a photographic fluke. We think this is one of those cases where the camera has caught something that isn't as it seems. Although there are frames of reference in the video, the movement of the drone, its elevation and the orientation of the object in the air has lead viewers to the false conclusion that the UFO originates from a distant point and shoots off at high speed.
The footage probably shows a bird, that is actually much closer to the camera than people believe it to be. It's most likely a gyrfalcon, which is found in this part of Utah. A large white bird with a high airspeed.
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