In the 1940s, Allied pilots during the Second World War reported being hounded by fast-moving blobs, which they dubbed “foo fighters”.
Shaped like clouds, donuts, balls and spheres, and often glowing or translucent, the strange entities have fuelled conspiracy theories that Earth was being visited by advanced civilisations.
Now a paper suggests the phenomena are in fact plasmas, or ionised gases, which are drawn to the electrical charge of aircraft, spacecraft and satellites.
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The team believe that plasmas in the thermosphere – 66 to 372 miles high – may descend into the lower atmosphere, and account for reports by pilots.
Co-author Dr Rudolph Schild, of the Centre for Astrophysics, Harvard-Smithsonian: “These plasmas are electromagnetic entities that have a variety of shapes and sizes. They have repeatedly approached spacecraft and the space shuttles and are attracted to electromagnetic activity including thunderstorms.
“They have been filmed from space, descending into the lower atmosphere and appear to be attracted to airplanes, fighter jets, nuclear power plants, and “hot spots” of radiation, such as Hiroshima, which was destroyed by an atomic bomb.
“Based on video, photographic and computerised analysis, including reports by military officers and astronauts, we believe these plasmas account for at least some of the numerous reports of UFOs and Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon over the last several thousand years including the ‘foo fighters’ observed by German, Japanese and Allied pilots during WWII.”
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Commenting on the research, Daniel Mitchard, a lecturer at Cardiff University’s School of Engineering said: “It’s not surprising that previously unknown charge-based phenomena exist at this altitude, and that they exhibit behaviour that we don’t yet fully understand.
“It’s also likely that they will be attracted to, or repelled from, satellites and the Space Shuttle, which can build up static charges of their own.
“Even at ground level, glowing balls from thunderstorms that behave strangely are occasionally reported, often called Ball Lightning, and no one knows what these are either - they may be the same as ‘foo fighters’. It’s definitely interesting research.”
My dad claimed to have seen one of these inside a plane when he was in the RAF, although he referred to it as ball lightning.
Oh wow, that’s cool.
And yes, there are clearly a numbered of charged aerial phenomena that we know little about - it may be ball lightning is the same but at ground level. We still don’t know enough about them. There are also earthlights that appear during earthquakes.
I’ve always been curious about the role of plasma and potentially atmospheric life forms as sightings. If this is a possibility, it would still only account for a portion of the phenomenon. A lot of things can be perceived as a ball of light, so there may be a need to further break down the description of sightings by other attributes or behaviors. We may never have all of the answers, but we’re bound to discover a lot of interesting things along the way.
Foo fighters were the reflection of the sun off ice crystals. See them all the time.
As to the rest of this insanity, I’ve got tens of tens of thousands of hours flying and not seen anything inexplicable.
Tens of thousands, huh?
10,000 hours is more than a year. Homie straight up lives in the sky
10 years as an airline pilot easily adds up to 10,000 hours in flight
That’s the absolute legal maximum. It’s illegal to pilot more than 1000 hours per year. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-I/subchapter-G/part-121/subpart-R
Thanks, I didnt know that
Now multiply by another ten to get the tens of tens of thousands claimed. Not sure why people throw in hyperbole when making an argument.
They probably rewrote their comment and forgot to take the extra “tens of” while editing. Otherwise they’d have just said “hundreds”
Homie is a plasma ball
No. Though I have encountered enthusiasts, they’re generally fun. Had one kid that knew more about the aircraft than we did, asking systems questions that we never even knew existed. Kid was smart.
