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Chile's Goverment Announces Unexplainable 'UFO' Footage (yahoo.com)

An anonymous reader quotes Yahoo News:The report from an alleged UFO sighting by the Chilean military over two years ago has just been declassified, leaving experts completely stumped. The Chilean government agency which investigates UFOs, the CEFAA, reports that a naval helicopter was carrying out a routine daylight coastal patrol in November 2014 when the camera operator noticed an unidentified flying object ahead...flying horizontally and at a steady speed similar to that of the helicopter. The mysterious object could be seen with the naked eye but couldn't be detected with the helicopter's radar, ground radar stations or air traffic controllers. Authorities ruled out that it was an aircraft as no craft had been authorized to fly in the area.
In 2014 the CIA admitted their tests of a high-altitude U-2 reconnaissance aircraft between 1954 and 1972 coincided with a spike in UFO reports. Could this be another new military aircraft that's getting its first tests?

21 of 124 comments (clear)

  1. No, it's definitely a UFO by honestmonkey · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Could this be another new military aircraft that's getting its first tests?" Obviously, it's a UFO. No other possible explanation is possible. At last, proof of aliens! Wow! To think, we're alive at such a time.

    --
    Everything you know is wrong, Just forget the words and sing along.
    1. Re:No, it's definitely a UFO by jargonburn · · Score: 4, Interesting
      ^ This!

      Authorities ruled out that it was an aircraft as no craft had been authorized to fly in the area.

      If no aircraft had been authorized to fly in the area, then it obviously couldn't have been an aircraft!

    2. Re: No, it's definitely a UFO by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Unidentified
      Flying
      Object

      Is it identified? No.
      Is it flying? Yes.
      Is it an object? Possibly.

    3. Re:No, it's definitely a UFO by cfalcon · · Score: 2

      > Wow! To think, we're alive at such a time.

      Truly, I have waited my entire life to see a small alien craft taking a nice fart through Chilean airspace for some alien reason.

    4. Re:No, it's definitely a UFO by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yes, obviously it is a UFO because it is unidentified, it is most certainty flying and it is, indeed, an object.

    5. Re:No, it's definitely a UFO by Dutchmaan · · Score: 5, Funny

      ...by the looks of the footage it was definitely of the "silent but deadly" variety....

    6. Re:No, it's definitely a UFO by aliquis · · Score: 2
    7. Re: No, it's definitely a UFO by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      A great way to test somebody's intelligence is to ask them what they think about the terms "UFO" and "conspiracy theory".

      Less-intelligent people will usually start talking about "aliens", "ETs", "kooks" and "tinfoil hats", and that's where their understanding ends.

      Smart people will realize that such words also have very reasonable meanings.

      Like in the case of "UFO", as you have pointed out, it just means it's some object flying in the air that cannot currently be identified. Nothing is implied about its origin, its occupants (if there even are any), its purpose, and so on.

      In the case of "conspiracy theory", it just means a theory about a group of people conspiring together to commit some act. Even the official 9/11 story is a conspiracy theory, for example; it's a theory that involves a number of people from the Middle East and other nearby countries conspiring to attack targets in America.

      It's a real shame that the mainstream media and commentators have tried to corrupt the meanings of such terms, and that so many foolish people have fallen for it. They were perfectly good terms to use within rational, evidence-based discussions. But now too many people of a lesser intellect fly off the handle whenever they hear or read them, rendering them almost useless.

    8. Re: No, it's definitely a UFO by Hognoxious · · Score: 2

      Object implies "built".

      No it doesn't. Stop lying.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    9. Re:No, it's definitely a UFO by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Authorities ruled out that it was an aircraft as no craft had been authorized to fly in the area.

      Other authorities were mystified about burglaries reported in various cities as no burglars had been authorized to burgle in the areas.

  2. Maybe Slashdot ran out of hot grits... by Xenographic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Really? Because there's an airport right there with standard flight route. Feel free to look it up on Planefinder. More info here: https://www.metabunk.org/explanation-for-chilean-navy-ufo-video-aerodynamic-contrail.t8306/

    Slashdot, we really need to have an intervention with all this fake news conspiracy crap. I'm only one person, I don't have time to debunk all this nonsense you keep posting. This used to have some vague relation to tech, rather than every random clickbait article you could find in the firehose.

    What's the next story going to be? That Russian lizard people hacked the Bilderbergs to steal their chemtrail recipes for the alien galactic overlord, Xenu to use in Darl's $699 Linux auditing sessions?

    1. Re: Maybe Slashdot ran out of hot grits... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      This housewife is making experts
      furious with her one simple trick to
      remove fake news from Slashdot!!1!

    2. Re:Maybe Slashdot ran out of hot grits... by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 2

      You are bad in reading?

      If that plane was there, they had not claimed there was no authorized plane around.

      If they had figured later they had made an error, and there was an authorized plane around then they had not releases this as "UFO news".

      And regardless what: an unauthorized plane or authorized plane, both would show up on radar! Or respond to radio calls.

      So the question is not rally if LTAM LA330 was the culprit, question is: how can so many things be wrong recorded or wrong reported?

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    3. Re:Maybe Slashdot ran out of hot grits... by jocarren · · Score: 2

      It's pretty official. We may be an underdeveloped nation, but we can keep track of our airplanes. The chilean army keep track of this things because they are paranoid, they worry the peruvian army might be spying us with some secret russian tech (lol). Chilean an Peruvian military have their own mini cold war going on. This might even be a move to showcase the Chilean Airforce surveilance skills.

  3. It's an object? Says who? by munch117 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There's not necessarily anything there. It could be a conspicuously shaped gap, forming in the cloud formation.

    That must be why the Chileans are calling it an "unidentified aerial phenomenon", not a UFO.

  4. Chile is interesting by Natales · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It never ceases to amaze me how prevalent and commonly accepted are UFOs in the Chilean collective psyche. You can even do a general search in the news for UFO-related articles and come back with a bunch (in Spanish). In virtually all cases, the generally accepted belief is that they have an extraterrestrial origin.

    An overwhelming 85% of Chileans believe in the phenomenon, compared to a 48% of Americans, and the topic can easily come up in any colloquial conversation among regular people as something totally accepted.

    Coincidentally, Chile is also fertile ground for "spiritual movements" that very regularly include UFO elements. As a Chilean myself, and as someone who was attracted to those movements in my 20s, I struggle to come up with a clear explanation of why Chile in particular seems to be so captivated by beliefs in the supernatural. Michael Shermer does a good job explaining generically why people believe weird things, but doesn't explain why certain specific cultures or countries seem to be more susceptible than others.

    I, for one, believe the reason is the lack of formal teaching of Critical Thinking as a subject, throughout the school curriculum. In the US, critical thinking is virtually part of all subjects in the new Common Core standards, from K to 12. They were even part of the old standards, at least in all science classes. Although things may be different in Chile now (I graduated high school in 85), I don't recall to have ever been taught critical thinking skills. That's something I discovered years later when I moved to the US. That in spite of having gone through a rigorous degree in Computer Science at the University of Santiago. University careers, at least back in my day, were very technical in nature, and focused very narrowly on deep subjects, without concern to create a more rounded individual. That was an exercise left to each student.

  5. There's a simple explanation... by demonlapin · · Score: 4, Funny

    I knew a former US Army helicopter pilot. He had great stories about stuff they did. One example: find a car driving down a lonely rural road at night. Approach it with lights off. Settle in at low altitude and fifty yards behind it. Turn on the several-million-candlepower search light, then immediately bank to one side. Turn the light off. Run away. Watch the local papers for UFO sighting reports.

    1. Re: There's a simple explanation... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      Taxpayer here! I'm ok with this expenditure.

    2. Re:There's a simple explanation... by demonlapin · · Score: 4, Informative

      You don't get good at flying low, at night, following a target, in blackout mode unless you do it over and over again. Just standard training flights with a little fun thrown in.

  6. Surprised they didn't find a way to blame Russia by Xenographic · · Score: 4, Informative

    > Is it identified?

    Yes. It appears to match LATAM Chile flight LA330, callsign LXP330, which is an Airbus A320-233.

  7. Re:Surprised they didn't find a way to blame Russi by Xenographic · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You seem to be assuming that the story is accurate, despite the fact that it offers few details and no primary sources

    I'm not nearly so credulous as to simply believe that journalists would let facts stand in the way of good clickbait. This goes double when someone posts verifiable, factual information that contradicts it.

    Who am I supposed to believe here, a journalist writing UFO clickbait, or people who posted information that can be verified and corroborated from other sources?