did the chilean navy really track a ufo?

The Chilean military has no idea what it tracked after two years of investigations and the footage it shared really is a head-scratcher.

ufo in clouds

Here's a bizarre story blowing up on the web lately. A helicopter piloted by two Chilean naval officers tracked a UFO that emitted trails of hot gas as it flew along the coastline. If you've ever followed any military UFO sightings in any articles or documentaries, this far from the first time you've heard a story that starts like this. There are sightings of weird formations and heat sources spotted by routine patrols, or bizarre objects on radars of air force installations, and counterintuitively, the military's command structure often makes figuring out exactly what happened harder than it should be.

But in this case, two years of review turned up no possible answers to what exactly was being tracked and why it was there. Almost every theory has been shot down as soon as it was raised because it didn't fit with the observations. It really boggles the mind to put it mildly, and after two years of inquiry, you'd think that some idea would've fit the video. A plane spotted at an odd angle, space debris breaking up in the atmosphere, something. But no.

Obviously, my last thought here would be alien spacecraft because the sheer amount of coincidences it requires is mind-boggling. Just consider that any plausible alien explorers from the closest candidate for a habitable world we know of would've missed our civilization by 1.5 billion years, and may of the most authoritative-sounding claims of inside knowledge of possible visitors from other solar systems come with just as little evidence as those from any other devoted ufologist.

If we ever spy anything alien, it would most likely be indirectly, either by spotting a distant megastructure, a mining operation, or trails of relativistic propulsion, not with a helicopter flying down a coast, belching out invisible hot gasses. Still, that leaves us with the fact that there was something unknown flying down the coast of Chile, spewing out heat in its wake, caught on video by a military patrol. If it's very unlikely to be alien in nature as many ufologists and conspiracy theorists already rush to claim, then what could it possibly be, without violating Occam's Razor?

My guess? Some kind of stealth jet or drone testing its engines. One of the first theories about the video was that the object was a plane descending to Santiago and the thermal trail was contrails forming. The investigators who reviewed the footage rejected it by noting that contrails couldn't form when the plane was descending, they usually form at cruising altitude. But if this was a stealth drone of some sort, its thermal trail would be distorted by the geometry of its exhaust.

Of course, I have no definitive proof for this, but it is the first thing to come to mind after considering the top contenders and getting a little creative while staying within the realm of plausibility. It's not exactly a secret that the USAF is constantly testing new airframes and very advanced technology, something they've been doing since the end of WW2 from several famous and infamous bases. Why would these tests suddenly stop? Why wouldn't they try to push autonomous technology and stealth as far as they can go? And since anti-access and area denial weapons are a top priority for the USAF and the Navy, wouldn't this be a great test?

  archived from wowt
              
# astrobiology // drones / secrets / ufo / ufology


  show comments
latest reads

the long shot scheme to rattle the world's biggest social platform

Knives are out for Meta in court, with politicians and lawyers eager to send a message. But how likely is it to work? And is it even a good idea?
the long shot scheme to rattle the world's biggest social platform

the forward centaur's guide to complex problems

Tech critics have a lot to say about how the generative bubble will burst. They're far more mum on what to do while we wait to see if it does.
the forward centaur's guide to complex problems

the me generations: rise of the digital boomers

What happens when a generation grows up being served exclusively by recommendation algorithms by Big Tech.
the me generations: rise of the digital boomers

how american hustle culture is killing literacy

We're worried about a post-literacy world because we're living in a post-boredom one.
how american hustle culture is killing literacy

how to endanger the future of space flight for status and profit

CEOs and space faring powers are treating low Earth orbit as their personal playgrounds, much to the horror of space agencies.
how to endanger the future of space flight for status and profit

why your boss is obsessed with a.i. past the point of sanity

Not only is the C-suite not immune to AI psychosis, they seem to be primed to suffer the worst of it as their employees duck and cover.
why your boss is obsessed with a.i. past the point of sanity