Watch the news clip - it looks pretty weather ballooney too me, the payload looks a bit battered though.
I guess "package", "wires" and "strange noises" flagged it as a possible bomb.
Mystery object falls from sky, area sealed off by military: 'Weather balloon', say officials
Simply nobody will be giving any credence to officials in America who have stated that a mystery object which fell from the sky this week - after which the surrounding area was evacuated and sealed off for some time by police and military personnel - was just a "weather balloon". Reportedly, large numbers of government …
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Monday 5th August 2013 02:48 GMT Wzrd1
They *do* send up a lot of weather balloons to measure high altitude things. When one comes down unexpectedly in a populated area, shades of a Japanese bomb from WWII come to mind, as a family was erased by one during WWII.
Think even worse with a radiothermic generator, one really gets the hot and bothered look.
But, many will assume an NSA balloon that replaces the dozens of satellites that blanket the globe or something even crazier.
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Tuesday 13th August 2013 07:15 GMT Ralph B
Watch the news clip
From what I saw, it looks like the results of a pretty typical UPS or FedEx delivery.
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Friday 2nd August 2013 09:04 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: One of our Playmonauts is missing?
Good point - are they sure the Playmonaut crashed into the Channel - or was his advanced craft beamed aboard an alien mothership where he spent the last few months bringing about galactic peace in the Kirk manner by canoodling with interstellar vixens; or was he probed into insanity by multitentacled horrors from beyond*?
* for all our sakes let's hope it's the former.
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Friday 2nd August 2013 16:05 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: mmm
Then boil them for 20 of their minutes.
Then smash them all to bits.
That reminds me that I was recently trying to explain to the members of my family my memories of a "missing" Smash advert that I couldn't find on YouTube or anywhere else. They go on holiday "They never have any good food on the Planet Zarg" or somesuch and they get the Smash confiscated at customs. The didn't believe me until I actually managed to find it somewhere. Those ads were so awesome. :D
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Friday 2nd August 2013 09:46 GMT Parax
Re: it's...
It's more likely a Space Data Corporation balloon .
Surprised link had not already been made since it's mentioned here.
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Tuesday 6th August 2013 15:16 GMT Paul Hovnanian
Re: it's...
Quite likely. But if they are testing a device for extending military communications, shouldn't they anticipate its occasional falling into 'enemy' hands.
Over friendly territory, a sign requesting return to the appropriate authorities when found should be sufficient. No quarantines or evacuations required. If these things are ever used during a conflict, occasionally one will fall on the wrong side of the front line. If security is such a major issue, these things would be useless.
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Friday 2nd August 2013 07:44 GMT Trevor_Pott
Norfolk is a big time military town. There's a decent chance that it legitimately was a weather balloon but may have been carrying a sensitive payload. (Weather balloons being used to lift all sorts of stuff into the air.) Alternately it could just be a crashed drone, which they would obviously be wanting to keep wraps on.
*shrug*
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Friday 2nd August 2013 09:47 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: If Occam was alive today ...
It's not assuming it means the same thing it's just not being an anally retentive knobhead who ignores common parlance so he can have an excuse to correct people. It's like how when you say 'Coke' you generally mean 'Coca Cola' and not Pepsi, even though technically you could mean both. Do you correct people on that one? You must be the life and soul of the party!
I should've known the Linux comment would've got me downvotes though, this site is nothing if not predictable.
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Friday 2nd August 2013 11:16 GMT Fink-Nottle
Re: If Occam was alive today ...
> I should've known the Linux comment would've got me downvotes though ...
You made a stupid, ill considered comment and were corrected. While I understand it's human nature to be defensive in such situations, I believe you were down voted for resorting to childish and unwarranted name-calling (c.f. house rules). I would remind you that incivility and personal remarks are seldom productive, and suggest you move on.
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Friday 2nd August 2013 13:15 GMT NumptyScrub
Re: If Occam was alive today ...
quote: "It's not assuming it means the same thing it's just not being an anally retentive knobhead who ignores common parlance so he can have an excuse to correct people. It's like how when you say 'Coke' you generally mean 'Coca Cola' and not Pepsi, even though technically you could mean both. Do you correct people on that one? You must be the life and soul of the party!"
Ad-hominem attacks should never be used if you are trying to assert you have a valid point, they do tend to immediately polarise the audience. Also, the generic term is "cola" not "coke", if you ask for Coke(TM) in a bar or restaraunt which serves Pepsi(TM), they are trained to specifically tell you that "I'm afraid we do not have Coke, we only serve Pepsi sir (or madam)". You need to ask for "cola" if you are happy with any brand of brown sugary effervescent beverage.
And the reason for that is lawyers. Not Linux users, not spotty geeks living in their mums basement, but the suited up and well paid masters of all pedantry. Seriously, us geeks have nothing on the legal system when it comes to the practise of pedantry. :)
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Monday 5th August 2013 08:22 GMT Vic
Re: If Occam was alive today ...
It's like how when you say 'Coke' you generally mean 'Coca Cola' and not Pepsi, even though technically you could mean both
Not so. "Coke" is a Registered Trademark of the Coca-Cola Company (it even says so on their advertising), and does not mean Pepsi, which has its own Registered Trademarks.
I should've known the Linux comment would've got me downvotes though
Indeed you should. Bigotry of all kinds tends to be downvoted here, and I for one am glad of that.
Vic.
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Sunday 4th August 2013 22:16 GMT HelpfulJohn
Re: If Occam was alive today ...
I have seen UFO's, some decades ago in another country. I still have no idea what they were and there is no way to find out.
I have seen *temporary* UFO's that I watched for a while until they resolved into landing aeroplanes coming at me head-on, not something I was used to seeing at the time. And others that were soon identified as bats, very large birds or even moths that were far closer than they at first seemed.
I have also seen very large numbers of *Identified* "flying" objects, objects that were in the air, like aeroplanes, choppers, birds, grit, dust, feathers, balloons of all shapes and sizes, clouds, puffs of dust and smoke and the odd falling human with air-braking technologies. I have even seen Venus, Jupiter, aurorae and meteors, maybe even the occasional meteorite-to-be.
So far as I am aware I have never seen anything alien apart from the meteoroids and the planets. But there are still those UFO's. I truly doubt any were alien spacecraft, but I have no proof they were not. I also have no proof they were not the chariot of Apollo but I'm fairly sure they were *not* that, either.
Still, I *have* seen UFO's.
I use MacOS, Windows, Unices and mainframes as the mood takes me or the task demands.
I would really like to meet an observing team from an alien species with a superior technology. Maybe *they* could fix W8?
(I still deserve one.)
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Sunday 4th August 2013 22:16 GMT HelpfulJohn
Re: If Occam was alive today ...
Uhhhnn... it wasn't actually "flying". More like just lying around making noises and bothering folk.
So "UFO" is a bad description. Perhaps just "UO"?
I don't know about USAlien kit but UKlander weather balloons sometimes carried bits that measured stuff and made whirring, clicky clock-like sounds. Mechanical, wind-up instruments. Dunno if they still do in this age of electronic everything but they used to. These and other, quieter thingys were packed in styrofoam boxes and dangled from balloons the size of houses lofted by hydrogen.
Those were easily identified as they had labels on them asking for the kit to be returned to the UKlander weather guys but they might have been thought of as Unexpected Dropping Objects, UDhttp://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/graphics/icons/comment/pint_32.pngO's, just before they hit the surface.
Beer 'cos it's sticky, warm and Saturday and I think I deserve one.
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Monday 5th August 2013 09:08 GMT Vic
Re: If Occam was alive today ...
> it wasn't actually "flying". More like just lying around making noises
That's not important.
The technical description for many forms of aircraft is stil "flying machine", even when they're parked up on the ground.
So it is with a Flying Object - it's still a Flying Object, even if it's not currently an object in flight.
Vic.
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Friday 2nd August 2013 11:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: If Occam was alive today ...
@FinkNottle
> he'd be the first to point out that until an object is actually identified it remains, by definition, an unidentified flying object.
I'd like to add that by the time they identify it, it will be an "identified *non*-flying object". (Except for a few short moments if someone drops it while carrying it to the super-secret warehouse where these super-secret things are kept) [*]
[*] I've seen the Indiana Jones films - it's all true I tell you.
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Friday 2nd August 2013 11:22 GMT Annihilator
Re: If Occam was alive today ...
"he'd be the first to point out that until an object is actually identified it remains, by definition, an unidentified flying object."
Or in this case, it was an unidentified flying object, then became an unidentified falling object and is now an identified fallen object.
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Friday 2nd August 2013 09:51 GMT Mephistro
(@ murph)
"there are about a thousand things it is more likely to be than a UFO"
FYI, UFO means Unidentified Flying Object. This means that it's still an UFO for most of the public.
At some moment in the future, the military will produce an statement making public the true nature of said object, e.g. "a weather balloon". That will automatically transform the artefact in a WIFO, that is, a Wrongly Identified Flying Object, as nobody ever believes a word of the official version in this kind of incidents.
A tracking device for anal probes? A wide angular lens spy camera , able to spy on a whole city and it's inhabitants simultaneously? An automatic interstellar probe from Alpha Centaury? A party balloon from a high level government official? We'll never know for sure. But the truth is out there! :0)
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Friday 2nd August 2013 08:22 GMT Another User
Ridiculous
It was apparently attached to a balloon. It was broken. How on earth did these guys think that this was something suspicious?
One TV crew seems to make fun of the entire situation: ... some type of alien life form ...she wasn't off a rocker ... phone lines were even cut off... neighbourhood held hostage by this white box... a weather monitoring device.
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Friday 2nd August 2013 12:07 GMT Alien8n
It's cheap an effective. Not everything floating in space is made with an infinite budget*
* Actually we tend to use the secret slave labour camps in China for those things, we've been outsourcing all our alien space tech to Foxconn for years, it's cheaper than running a factory on Alpha Centauri...
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Friday 2nd August 2013 09:37 GMT daveake
Re: Probably
A foam box landing by parachute at 10mph is going to have trouble killing anyone. Even an American-sized foam box like that one. In the UK our flights are typically much, much smaller.
In the UK there are around 50 amateur flights per year listed on the UKHAS site, and maybe the same again that don't appear there. The UK met office fly about 2000 per year, and they haven't managed to kill anyone either (worst they managed was breaking a greenhouse window).
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Friday 2nd August 2013 09:35 GMT Anonymous Coward
My theory.
My theory.
It was a weather balloon.
With a classified military payload.
They are probably experimenting with balloon-based radio for field communications to take the strain off of the overloaded sat system - it's not easy maintaining contact with troops in urban sprawl. Or it could be some new spy device - a balloon carrying a gyro-stabilised camera array. Balloons do tend to get blown around - it may have just escaped the test area and failed to respond to a 'emergency vent gas' command. So it blows around a bit, eventually makes landing when the gas leaks out, and in go the Men in Black to collect it.
As for the robot... if you're making a balloon that needs to run for days or weeks, and don't have the space or weight budget for solar, how are you going to power it? I imagine an RTG could be made quite compact if you left all the shielding off.
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Friday 2nd August 2013 13:50 GMT xyz
Thing that gets me is...
if this happened on Tuesday why aren't the local Norfolk rags reporting anything. Stories about a fat chihuahua getting a home etc , but no news of anything to do with evacuations, robots and governemnt agents who found a weather balloon in town. Zip, nada. Not even a report about someone saying something happened in town that didn't happen. Odd
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Friday 2nd August 2013 15:19 GMT nexsphil
I actually like the "weather balloon" explanation
Given the history of that extremely flaky explanation, it says clearly to those interested "alien/military shit", while allowing those disturbed by such things to stay with "weather balloon".
After all, it can't escape the attention of any thinking person that a military exclusion zone is not required to recover a poxy weather balloon.
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Friday 2nd August 2013 15:24 GMT Jim O'Reilly
Alien balloon
This weather balloon is clearly a close relative of the one at Roswell. Reporters need to check if it actually said "Take me to your Leader", and if the truck took it to the White House.
Congress should ask NSA for a transcript of all the conversations at the site.
The people need to know, so that the proper shrine will be set up at the site!
There is a reality show planned for Fox TV already.
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Friday 2nd August 2013 16:03 GMT Richard Joseph
At some Space exploration unit on the homeworld of Alpha Centauri...
.....Auric, you misplaced the decimal point when you photo-formed that hydro-plastic casing! You sent the intelligence gathering device to Earth with a case an order-of-magnitude too thin, and now it lies broken, having collided with what the Earthlings call a 'power-line'!!!
Auric, you're only slightly less incompetent than those guy who buried Earth's 'Beagle' in the Mars desert....
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Saturday 3rd August 2013 20:16 GMT Destroy All Monsters
Re: At some Space exploration unit on the homeworld of Alpha Centauri...
The sentence:
Be designated undercover agent for 10'000 rotations in an area called the "UK" where protein uptake is fraught with danger, chemicals and heavy metals, weather patterns are anxiety-inducing and locals are on a level with the standard inhabitance of the cantinas found on common sand planets.
Being in a particularly sadistic mood this rotation, we statuate that you shall man a one-person late-night kebab joint a bit south of something called "Thames".
Thus it has been decided etc. etc. etc.
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Friday 2nd August 2013 16:25 GMT Anonymous Coward
Hey Batman....
Do you REALLY believe those are pictures of what fell out of the sky? Give a reporter a picture and a 50, a few hints ("NASA", "Wallops Island") and you have your coverup story.
Evacuate whole neighborhoods for a pile of crumbled Styrofoam, and you believe it? (how to paralyze America: just fly over dropping chunks of Styrofoam, and everyone flees for the hills).
Nay, what really fell out of the sky was
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Friday 2nd August 2013 17:40 GMT Anonymous Coward
I have a theory
Maybe someone built a high altitude radiation monitoring setup, one possible approach is multiple thin plastic tubes filled with the Penning mixture and electrodes, shared HVPS and counting electronics.
The whole thing would be encased in foam which could end up quite large and disk shaped (!)
Yes, the whining noise could have been a failing fan, locating speaker.
A good way to tell a balloon is coming down is the continuous green light and/or beeping noises.
AC/DC 6EQUJ5
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Sunday 4th August 2013 14:47 GMT TkH11
It's too big to be a standard weather balloon instrumentation pack. Meteorologists do use packages made from the same white expanded polystyrene (styrofoam to you yanks) to contain instruments but they are normally a lot smaller. Typically in a weather balloon there is a GPS receiver, RF transmitter, battery, sensors for measuring temperature, air pressure, humidity. The whole lot fits in to a small lightweight polystyrene box. The key design goal being to keep the price of the thing down (because most of them are never found, returned back to the organisation that released it), they'll often have an address tag with a return address in case it is found. The one in the video is far too big and complex in shape to be a standard weather balloon with a standard instrumentation pack, could contain additional sensors for some other purpose.
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Monday 5th August 2013 07:23 GMT Sebastian Brosig
No one would have believed in the early years years of the twenty-first century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable.
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