NASA engineer decodes UFO hypotheses

Cases that caught UFOs from cone-shaped blue light trails appeared in the sky to a strange spaceship cloud that often caused fever on the Internet, drawing a lot of controversy over real objects after the phenomenon.

James Oberg, an engineer working at the US Aeronautics Agency (NASA) in the late 1990s, now an aviation journalist and historian, spent decades studying videos of unidentified flying objects. (UFO), according to Atlas Obscura.

Flying saucer cloud in Cape Town, South Africa.(Photo: Instagram).

Unlike many experts in UFO decoding, Oberg is not interested in rejecting the hypothesis, but is more interested in understanding exactly why humans react strongly to images and scenes of objects in space. Oberg argues that human senses are familiar with slow moving objects, certain types of light and environments. When those conditions change, people become more alert and reactive.

Space object around the shuttle

In 1996, NASA's STS-75 space shuttle exploded while carrying out a 15-day mission to bring the satellite system with conductive wires into space. However, the rope that broke off made the satellite lost. The strangest thing after the incident was the ice crystal cloud floating above and around the lanyard, which looked almost like dandruff on the scalp, causing many to believe it was a UFO.

The ice crystal cloud floats around the shuttle.(Photo: NASA).

"The first principle of astronautics is that objects fall from a medium that tends to fly along that medium. They seem to move in straight lines until they encounter a resistance like the atmosphere or a column of smoke. discharge from rocket propulsion , " Oberg said.

According to Oberg, the suspected UFO object in this case is actually ice crystal."Some vehicles emit heat through evaporation water in the cooling wings, leading to ice crystals. The dots in the incident picture of STS-75 are difficult to accurately identify, but most likely they are Ice crystals or debris splashed from the shuttle and floated around , " Oberg said.

Green light trail

In November 2015, people in California, USA, discovered a strange object flying across the sky. After that, the object glows, creating a giant tail trail that glows blue.

Strange objects fly across the California sky in November 2015.(Photo: Twitter).

Oberg explained that the object's huge blue tail is actually a column of smoke, formed by chemical elements emitted by the rocket's propulsion when launched into space. Since it is not dependent on air, the particles spread along a wide cone. Some elements even shoot away from missiles, appearing in front or along missiles, making the smoke column longer.

If the rocket is in a very high position in the atmosphere, it can be fully sunlit. This effect became most apparent at dusk. Looking from the ground, the object looks like it is on fire, but it is really just a column of smoke illuminated by the Sun. The smoke column appearing in the sky of California was the result of a US Navy missile test. Other similar cases occur in Russia, Australia and the Canary Islands.

"Thousands of people can handle visual stimulation properly if the column of smoke is only 1.6 to 16 km away. But this column of smoke at altitudes higher than 480km in the air does not grow and is illuminated by the Sun. not in the normal vision of people, " Oberg commented.

Twilight shadow

In 1996, Columbia shuttle made a mission to transport two satellites around Earth's orbit. In the video recording mission, there are a series of strange light flashes in a circle. Oberg explained that objects that did not suddenly appear from the horizon were only moving around the shuttle ball.

A series of lights flashed in a circle in the video recording the mission of the shuttle Columbia.(Photo: NASA).

"They tend to appear at a particular time in orbit, when the shuttle emerges from the shadow of the Earth and lies in the sunlight. Because of the camera lens position, the object suddenly appears like as they appear after the horizon or a cloud , " Oberg shared.

On Earth, when an object blocks the sunlight, it creates a shadow on the ground. In space, the shuttle's shadow could see clearly from afar. Sometimes it obscures debris or ice crystals around the hull. Oberg calls this the "twilight shadow" effect.