Indian Army Mistook Planets For Spy Drones

hackingbear writes "BBC reports that India's army spent six months watching 'Chinese spy drones' violating its air space, only to find out they were actually Jupiter and Venus. Between last August and February, Indian troops had already documented 329 sightings of unidentified objects over a lake in the border region next to China. India accused the objects being Chinese spy drones. The incident even escalated to a military build-up and a stand-off at border between the two countries. Residents of the solar system are glad that India does not possess the capability to shoot down such high altitude objects."

Comments

Re:What would have happened..

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem is India have been wrongfully accusing China for the drones for 6 months and the border for decades. About time to send your apology.

Moon sets the U.S. into motion

[Trax3001BBS]

When the U.S. installed one of the first Radar stations to catch Russian missiles as they came over the hemisphere. The Moon set off one of the first alerts, was a tad too sensitive.

Best cite I can come up with; but a common snicker when I was growing up.
http://nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/issues/accidents/20-mishaps-maybe-caused-nuclear-war.htm
"The rising moon was misinterpreted as a missile attack during the early days of long-range radar."

Re:Just FYI

[smaddox]

Those are actually pretty lax specs. Any stainless steel nut should do.

Perhaps the $300 nuts are just rediculously large? Like aircraft carrier anchor line large?

Have you guys *looked* at the sky?

[gman003]

I know most of us probably haven't taken a good, long look at the night sky. Most because of light pollution, or from just not bothering to look up.

I've seen planets before. With the naked eye, you know what they look like? Little dots of light, about the size of a star, or a high-altitude aircraft. Saturn is the farthest planet that can be seen with the naked eye, and also the hardest.

Without a telescope, you don't see the rings. Or much else - it's a dot in the sky, like the billions and billions of other dots in the sky. The only easy way to tell the difference between planets and aircraft, from the ground with the naked eye, is by movement - planets move far, far slower. Unless, of course, the aircraft is circling, or even just of a type that can hover (either a aerostat, or a helicopter design).

So yeah, I can totally believe that a squad of soldiers, most of whom were likely born in cities and never grew up with a good view of the night sky, and none of whom are trained astronomers, would find Saturn suspicious enough to report as an "unidentified object".

And, contrary to the headlines, they didn't "mistake it for a drone". A team of military observers observed something, made some requests to see if it was something benign, or a potential threat. The scientists sent back some requests for better information, just to be sure (after all, placing a drone around where a planet would be sounds like a decent idea for camouflage), then reported back "yep, that's Saturn".

Same goes for Venus. Easy to see in the night sky, sometimes even in the day, but not easy to identify unless you were specifically looking for planets. It's commonly seen, but misidentified - our own President Carter did so, for instance.

Planets also *move*. They're not in fixed positions from night to night - they move through the sky. So it's not like spotting constellations, where you just need a point of reference. Knowing where those planets will be takes some pretty complex calculations - figuring out how to do that drove many advances in math.

So yeah. Stop acting like they're morons for not instantly recognizing a planet. I'd wager money that you all wouldn't even spot them in the sky, much less know exactly what they are.

Re:Just FYI

[Alioth]

While "On the beach" is not at all scientifically sound, recent simulations with new climate models show that a limited nuclear war at India's latitude (limited to a total exchange of 50 Nagasaki sized devices), if population centres are targeted, would result in a "nuclear autumn" that would affect everyone. The simulation indicated the amount of soot injected into the stratosphere would result in several years without a summer. While it may not kill us all, it would cause problems for agriculture (shortened growing seasons, large increases in food prices, food shortages in 3rd world countries) so even if you're thousands of miles from any nuclear exchange between (say) India and China you're going to suffer some consequences as a result.