I'm framing this Hank! :wink:

(Yes, I did read and generally agree with the rest of what you said.)

My boyfriend works as an electrical engineer and now works with aircraft radar (the kind on the ground). He was in Erie, Pennsylvania recently and said they had "UFOs" on their radar. Objects were traveling something on the order of 2,000 miles per hour. They eventually determined that they were getting interference from a Canadian radar - and somehow (I forget how) the fast-moving echoes even showed transponder numbers.

Remote sensing equipment is wonderful stuff, but it can get really goofy sometimes. I don't know if that's what happened over Ciudad del Carmen or not, but it's still my favorite guess.

__________________
"I am Meteora, supreme goddess of weather" - Meteora, in The Unchained Goddess

One nice thing about being a meteorologist who also likes astronomy is that the sky is always interesting!

Unfortunatly we don't have access to the entire unedited tape. But if you look closely to the few seconds of continuous footage, you will notice that the camera azimuth marker remains constant or just slightly changes a few degrees. This has two possible explanations: 1) the objects were flying close and parallel to the plane at almost its same speed; 2) the objects were static (maybe ground based) and very far away from the plane (a few tens of kilometers), so that the perspective, and the relative motion of the clouds with respect to the plane, would give us the false impression that they were in motion.

It's interesting to note that only 3 objects were reported to be picked by the radar, and they were not the "formation" we see in the video. I wonder if they firstly picked on radar small planes flying over an airport and right after that the luminous objects appeared on the IR camera, turning the whole situation into a confusing/exciting/scary thing.

I agree that trained survelliance pilots should not confuse oil flares or any other ground based object, with UFOs, especially if they have patroled the area before. That's why I wonder why the SEDENA has been so silent about the case after the preliminary interviews by the pilots. Embarrasement, reputation?,.... or a genuine unexplained case?

I guess that radar signals in the area that are not transmitted from the radar on the aircraft could be seen on the receiver if they are in the same frequency. I wonder if this possiblility was considered in the investigation?

Interesting point.. never thought much about that..

The aircraft will have the ablitity to slew that FLIR to a target designated by the radar. If first contact with the target was with the radar, then this would have been done. So the slew to the contact reveals what we see on the tape. If the radar contact was signal from another radar, we would not see the feedback in the infrared spectrum which the FLIR is seeing. But this is assuming that the radar contact is the same as the IR image.

As for the FLIR tracking, we cannot see the numerical readout on the bottom of the video. I guess this is due to the screen resolution and format differences in television. If we could see the position latitude/longtitude, azmith etc. as reported there, we could get a better idea of object vectoring.

I am continuing to stand by my initial guess that the radar software algorithms would intentionally filter out fast moving targets... targets beyond the speed performance of the aircraft types that they hunt. Therefore, maybe the targets starter to move faster and thus they were lost from the radar and before the other 8 could be designated.

I think it is a genuine unexplained case. I beleive myself that SEDENA has offered all it has, and has nothing left to say. If they obtain more someday, they might investigate further, but now its just something they can't explain. They never said what this is... only that they do not know. I also would think that the crew is still attending many conferences on this and probably wish they were home on sick leave on 5 march.

Either that, or they are still secretly trying to sell it to CNN or obtain movie rights

And I fully agree... the type of feedback i see on this tape is unsettling... it much have been scary in the plane that day... you can hear the fear in the voices... one crewmember says, "we are not alone"

I remember many media reports said that the UFO'S were the following:

1. Ball lightining.

2. Environment gasses.

They concluded more would need to be studied to prove it, but this was it.

My question is, have the studied it? Has it been proven?

I see my oil-flare theory has been discussed here as well as in the "General Skepticism and the Paranormal" forum at www.randi.org where I originally posted it.

That being the case, I think I should then give an update as to what I've learned and added to my theory since then.

I'm using the edited footage here (19 megs):

http://www.ufocasebook.com/mexico-03-05-04.mpg

The edited aircrew transcipt here:

http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/.../m01-001.shtml

And the interview transcript here:

http://www.rense.com/general53/mextt.htm

And a couple of other maps and things from the thread at the other forum.

The Mexican airforce UFO incident is best split into three parts for clarity:

1) 1 radar and infrared object - from 16:42 to 16:57
2) 11 infrared objects never seen on radar - from 17:03 to 17:07
3) several infrared objects and/or radar objects - from 17:14 to 17:27

Looking at these in detail...

Part 1) This first object has both infrared and radar signals, appears near a small runway travelling slowly, accelerates to several hundred km/mph/knots(?) over several minutes, flies in a straight line to the city of Ciudad del Carmen, turns right and disappears from radar near the city's airport.

Conclusion: It's simply another aircraft that gets included in the UFO sighting because the aircrew make an association in hindsight with the later objects which simply isn't justified.

Part 2) These 11 objects appear as a group of extremely hot infrared objects roughly in line with the horizon, they appear and disappear randomly, they never seem to move relative to each other, one appears to split into two and rejoin several times, and they are all eventually lost when obscured by cloud.

Conclusion: These objects are seen in an area covered in oil-facilities both on land and at sea which will have oil-flares, so these 11 objects are probably oil-flares. Oil-flares can range in size from 5 m to 50 m or more.

I believe the aircrew make a mistake as they associate the first object from part 1 with these objects because the first object turned east in the direction these new objects appear just as the first object was going out of radar range, so the aircrew find no reason not to just assume that these new objects are also beyond radar range and related to the first object.

The Mexican airforce plane and the object in part 1 fly in a similar direction and turn right at similar times, so it seems to the aircrew that the first object and these 11 infrared objects are copying them.

The camera elevation is a couple of degrees positive at times but aircraft don't always fly level and the plane's natural angle of attack may be greater than that, so the very slight upward tilt of the camera may actually be a slight downward tilt relative to the horizon.

There is no evidence that these objects are airborne or even moving at all as they never appear on radar to confirm how far away and how high they are, so there is nothing inconsistent with them being distant oil-flares close to the horizon.

Part 3) Various infrared and/or radar objects appear in different directions to the earlier objects.

Conclusion: The information released so far is too vague to make any conclusions. Could be a combination of oil-flares and unknown radar signals.

Summary

I think the aircrew just saw a plane flying from one airport to another, and then the coincidence that it turns right and was going out of radar range into an area near oil-flares tricked the Mexican airforce plane's aircrew into thinking the aircraft and the oil-flares were related, when the aircraft had simply just landed at Ciudad del Carmen airport.

That the Mexican airforce plane and the other aircraft flew in a similar direction and turned right at similar times and that the oil-flares were in the area the other aircraft would be flying if it had continued in this direction confused the aircrew into making a connection that wasn't there.

Then the aircrew suddenly they see 11 infrared objects that are oil-flares in the area and get spooked.

So that's what I think, subject to change when I learn more about the objects in part 3.

Hiya wipeout, welcome to BABB.

Very kind of you to welcome me, thank you.

Welcome to the BABB wipeout. I'm the one that mentioned your oil-flare theory here and am glad you came over to explain it better than I did.

Archer17,

Thanks for the welcome. Yes, I now know it was you who first mentioned my oil-flare theory here but at the time I didn't realize that it was under discussion at this forum.

Patricio Elicer pointed out over at JREF that you'd found someone else, a Captain Alejandro Franz, had the same idea as me:

http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/.../m27-011.shtml

I e-mailed this guy to say hello and that I'd had the same idea and how to answer some of the flawed objections he was getting but got no response.

I also e-mailed James Randi and he liked the oil-flare theory and forwarded it to James Oberg whom he thought would find it interesting, but no further responses from either of them.

The Men in Black must have got to all of them.

IMPORTANT NEWS!

I read that here, dated yesterday:

http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/.../m11-016.shtml

I notice that ufologists on that mailing list are now talking about oil-flares and haven't quite yet caught up to where I was three weeks ago.

Seems the General thought oil-flares were 125 km away from the city of Ciudad del Carmen but that's probably not true as there is at least one platform only 1.5 km from the city, as an article I found and posted a few weeks ago at the JREF forum said. There are some on land too, but I don't know where.

I guess maybe the investigators made a mistake here and the General is going by their report. It's great that he's prepared to send a plane out to check this theory.

Thanks for the update .. that is good news. I was hoping they'd put this to the test. If it turns out that your theory is correct you have some major-league kudos coming wipeout.

It's certainly good that were still investigating this case!

To many times these cases just seem to dissapear into UFO folklore because of lack of investigation (Or credible findings).

We could just say it's "atmospheric debri". :P :P

Pity there's no money in it... :-?

You know, I think it'd be cheaper and more sensible for the airforce if they just phoned the oil-companies and asked them what they think and know about what was going on that day.

My own back-up theory is that it's just a flock of seagulls set on fire by a freak lightning strike. 8)

LOL Now that would be a site to be behold! They'd prolly light up like a pair of que tips. :P

It would be cheaper but a re-enactment of the incident is the best way to put this UFO sighting to bed if similar FLIR readings are reproduced. You might even make JREF poster of the month! :wink: I'm a member of the JREF forum myself (with about 6 posts to my credit in 7 months ops: ) .. I gotta start posting over there more often, especially since I intend on making the next TAM.

Maybe it will not be able to catch the exact "light ball" configuration, but at least it will solve the FLIR distance range capability controversy, and also it may help to check if the unknown objects match the shape of the oil flares on the FLIR monitor screen.

We don't have such an award at the JREF forums, but if we had, wipeout would surely be a nominee, if his oilflare theory turns out to be correct.

Just for the record, this is the timetable of highlight events related to the case:

5/11: News of the UFOs captured on camera by Mexican air force is released to the media.

5/11: Wipeout starts a thread about the case in the JREF forums

5/12: A similar thread is created here at the BABB

5/14: Wipeout first states his "oil platform theory" (later to be renamed "oil-flare theory") at the JREF, though still hesitant because of lack of evidence.

5/15: The oil-flare theory is strenghtened by Wipeout publishing a picture of oil flames in the Campeche area

5/27: Captain Alejandro Franz publishes a comprehensive article independantly (very likely) stating an oil-flare explanation for the mystery.

Well, but the case is not solved yet. To be just and fair, I must say that a lot of people have made very important contributions to the case, both at the JREF and here at the BABB. I can't neglect to mention Thomas from the JREF for his tireless efforts in search of a solution to the case. He's contacted many people related to the case and gathered a lot of info. The outcome of his job is yet to be seen.

I've read some of your posts over there, and I'm looking forward to meeting you at TAM3 (if I can make it)

Ditto Patricio Elicer 8)

Interesting to see the timetable, Patricio.

From when I first saw the footage I interpreted the objects as something on the ground but I wasn't sure. A lot of people interpreted the blank background as sky instead, and I later realized it was actually probably both and the horizon may be invisible to the infrared camera at that range.

Now I interpret the first object seen from roughly 16:42 to 16:57 to be an aircraft which drew the Mexican airforce crew's attention to Ciudad del Carmen and then to the oil-flares to its east.

I still have no sure idea about the final objects, though, as there is no way to tell from the evidence I've seen if they are oil-flares and a helicopter (as I suspect) or oil-flares and radar interference or what. Or flaming seagulls.

Going back to the plane that will look at oil-flares through a FLIR camera, the Mexican airforce should contact the oil-industry to see if there will be any flares like those which might have been around on the day of the incident as well as finding out about what was going on that day itself.

Be ironic if they spotted something else mysterious this time as well...

To be honest, I seriously doubt this Mexico case will ever be solved, I also doubt they can duplicate such a bizzare occurance. It's still great that it's being investigated instead of just being left to our history. =D>

May I ask why you feel this way?

Because I'm a woo-woo

I feel this way because the case is to strange to be solved, and it's just my feeling.

Well, I think it will be solved. :P

Actually, if it really was an aircraft drawing the aircrew's attention to oil-flares as I suggested it was, then it should turn out to be that only the 1 or 2 erratic radar objects at the end of the entire incident need explaining as they would remain the only mystery.

Not surpised last missive came from A.Dim -only a dimwit could ask how footage could be released that wasn't visible. Any astronomer, even a bad one, knows there is infra-red and ultraviolet etc. The FLIR camera on the Mexican drug plane takes wonderful video footage - look at the fuller extracts to see it filming fields and rivers in great detail - and on the web there are many sites showing guys being frisked in IR (infra-red to you dumbo gringos - know off the mex jokes and arrogance until you get your own IQ and paunch in order, boy !).

Also, stupid comments from some git about UFO believers - such simplistic crap - there are some quite serious scientists investigating UFOs such as the former editor of Astrophysical Journal Bernard Haisch at his www.ufoskeptic.com : he was interviewed by CBS or ABC on this sighting and advised one not to write it off just yet - to him it was obvious that the usual suspects such as ball lightning, balloons etc. won't do.

First, ball lightning explanation:
- ball lightning lasts only seconds, while hte Mexican balls lasted 30 mins or more on the IR video.
- secondly, BL does not line up as 2 groups of almost identical
triads in similar regular triangular formation with outlying escorts. Reports of ball lightning that I have heard always speak of one single ball, that flies chaotically around before exploding with a pop.
These balls, however, were flying at jet-plane speed - maybe nearly the speed of sound. Radar showed
that for example in one case they accelerated from 140 km/h to 540 km/h in seconds and made abrupt course
direction changes.
- Radar also put them first at 2 km away, then when 'fled' their pursuers they reached up to 7 km range, but then as if noting their presence, slowed down and moved in to fly nearer to them, and when the plane turned around so did they and followed. - no, this sort of long (1/2 hour) behaviour always in strict geometrical formation (as WW points out) has to be artificial.
- The idea that they were attracted electrostatically to the plane sounds like nonsense - first,
an electric field would havce to be very strong to work over 7 km. Second, why would they sirst be repelled to 7 km and then attracted again?

The 'ball lightning' theory is handy for pseudo-sceptical 'scientists' if they interpret it in a vague way to be 'any weird moving ball'. Also laughable in this Mexican scientist's statement is that because ball lightning was mainly seen at night this time since it was 'seen' in daytime is why it only appeared in IR and radar. Talk about inverted logic! They are only seen at night normally precisely because they are glowing visible balls of light!

Finally, the seemingly intelligent behaviour when they closed in and encircled the plane sounds like a coordinated activity. Just because they are 'unstable balls of gas' does not mean they will behave like this.

Balloon hypothesis:
- At 2 km such large baloons would have been visible.

- Weahter baloons do not accelerate from 150 km/h to 540 km/h in a few seconds. This data was reliably returned by the radar,
which is more accurate than eyeball estimates of the IR screens.

- Since when did weather baloons travel in groups of 11, that then proceeded to approach and surround a plane?

Others maintain it could be oil fires - but a glance at the altitude data on the FLIR frame borders shows these thingees are, as crew comments imply, at the same altitude as the plane. Also what fires array themselves with such regularity. Nope - gotta be s.t. else.

We must remember that an infrared camera was used.

"Water absorbs" infrared OR IR (734 Web Search Results):
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22wa...infrared+OR+IR

"Water reflects infrared" (1 Web Search Result):
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22wa...ts+infrared%22

The Infrared Landscape - Images
... Some things reflect more infrared than others, which is why foliage appears
as white to dark grey. Water reflects infrared light poorly. ...
tom-adams.netfirms.com/irinfo.html - 5k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages

If water reflects infrared light so poorly, then why should the infrared signature be that of burning oil shining on the water?

I know, I still can't believe Hank Solo and Archer17 agreed on something either!

Or were you talking about something else . . .

Do we know you? I don't think anyone here has endorsed the ball-lightning or balloon hypothesis. wipeout's oil-flare theory is the best conventional explanation offered so far and, hopefully soon, will be put to the test. I don't know about you, but if this is ground-based and industrial in nature I would expect it to be arrayed with regularity.

The FLIR was sensing in thermal IR, not near-IR. Plants reflect brightly in near-IR (wavelength close to visible red, about 0.7 microns), and water absorbs in thermal IR (10-12 microns and vicinity). The weather satellite images you most often see are thermal IR (usually 12 microns).

Why would the burning oil be "shining" on the water? Why not directly viewed at the top of the stacks?

__________________
"I am Meteora, supreme goddess of weather" - Meteora, in The Unchained Goddess

One nice thing about being a meteorologist who also likes astronomy is that the sky is always interesting!

me: "Why would the burning oil be "shining" on the water?"
you: "Why not directly viewed at the top of the stacks?"

ok, that is possible - clearly i need to explain myself

The thermal IR signature could be direct from the source... which would bypass the "IR cannot reflect off water" argument. The following page shows burning oil stacks and shows how the light from the flame "can" reflect off water surrounding them. Making the assumption that this could be discussed here (while forgetting to reference it)... i posted the above.

I personally do not agree with the conclusion of the authors of the following page of alcione.org. The page concludes that they were burning oil stacks.

http://www.alcione.org/FRAUDES/FAM/FLIR_CONCLUSION.html

I like how they did all the research... however I do not agree with their explaination concerning the reflection of thermal IR off the waters nearby these oil stacks.