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Speaker 1: The night sky, near that massive canvas above us. It's

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usually pretty predictable. We understand the physics, the stars, the satellites,

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the planes with their blinking lights, right, there's.

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Speaker 2: A certain rhythm to it exactly.

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Speaker 1: But what if you're out there one evening, You've got

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your camera pointed up at the sky, and you walk

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onto this one single bright light it's just hovering completely still.

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Speaker 2: Which is already unusual.

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Speaker 1: Aircraft don't really do that, not commercial ones anyway, And

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as you're watching, trying to make sense of it, it

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does something that just it seems to defy physics. It

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starts to blink, then it sort of stretches, and then

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the key moment, Yeah, the key moment. It doesn't fly away,

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it doesn't disappear, It just splits right in two.

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Speaker 2: And that single action, that perceived impossibility of one solid

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thing becoming two, that's where these UAP mysteries really get

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their staying power.

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Speaker 1: It's the moment that challenges everything you think you know.

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Speaker 2: It really is, and when you have visual evidence, you're

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at this fork in the road. Is this proof of

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something truly non human, some incredible technology, or is the

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explanation a lot more down to Earth just hidden by

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a trick of perception or optics.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Thrilling Threads. This is where we take the

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source material, untangle all the fascinating details, and figure out

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exactly what you the learner, need to know. And today

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we are diving deep into a phenomenon that has, i

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mean really haunted the American Southwest for decades, the Phoenix Lights.

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Speaker 2: And our entire analysis today is going to be grounded

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in one key source. We're working from detailed excerpts of

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the history YouTube video when a UFO split before vanishing.

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As far the proof is out there, it's.

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Speaker 1: A great source because it does something really interesting. It

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puts two very different events side by side.

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Speaker 2: Exactly. You have the world famous massive sighting from nineteen

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ninety seven and then this much more recent focus video

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incident from two thousand and four. They share the same

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famous name, but as we'll see, they seem to be

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dramatically different things.

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Speaker 1: So that's our mission for you today. We're going to

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dissect the evidence for both the legendary V shaped craft

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of ninety seven and this bizarre splitting object from four.

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Speaker 2: And we're going to weigh the scientific skepticism from astronomers

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and analysts against the deeply held conviction of the witnesses

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who were there.

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Speaker 1: We want to get to the bottom of why these

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incidents after all this time and all this analysis still

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challenged those easy conventional explanations.

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Speaker 2: And we also have to look at the institutional response,

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because the way the original nineteen ninety seven event was

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handled it really colored how every single sighting after that

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was perceived in that region.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so let's start with the more recent event, the

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one that's really the centerpiece of that history video. We're

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in Phoenix, Arizona.

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Speaker 2: The day is October twelfth, two thousand and four, and

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the time is around seven point four five pm, so

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it's dark, perfect for skywatching.

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Speaker 1: And the key thing here is how this was filmed.

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This wasn't just some random person.

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Speaker 2: With a phone, No, not at all. The witness, a

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local resident named Jeff Woolwine, was actively hunting for this.

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He went out there with his camera with a specific purpose.

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Speaker 1: And his motivation is so important to the story, isn't it.

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He wasn't just a casual observer, right.

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Speaker 2: He actually claimed that he'd been seeing these Phoenix lights

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ever since I was a kid.

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Speaker 1: Wow, So for him this was personal very personal.

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Speaker 2: He was on what he called a quest to find

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out what is really going on here. He was determined

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to finally get some kind of definitive proof, and.

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Speaker 1: That determination, well, it paid off with some really compelling footage.

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Speaker 2: It really did. The source describes what he captured and

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it starts with a bright, steady, white light just hovering, and.

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Speaker 1: They describe the shape as.

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Speaker 2: Oblong, which is a critical first detail. You know, an

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oblong shape already tells you it's probably not a single

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point source like a star. It's suggest something with weird structure,

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or yeah, maybe it's more than one light source blending together.

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Speaker 1: That his behavior starts to change, begins to blink.

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Speaker 2: And that's where you start running through the possibilities. Blinking

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could be navigation lights on a.

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Speaker 1: Plane, but planes don't just hover silently exactly.

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Speaker 2: Or the blinking could be something else, atmospheric shimmer, maybe

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a flame sputtering. You have to keep all the options open.

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Speaker 1: But it's what happens after the blinking that makes this

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footage so famous.

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Speaker 2: This is the mind boggling moment. The thing that he

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saw as one single object starts to divide. It's a slow,

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deliberate looking separation.

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Speaker 1: It goes from being one oblong light to two completely

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separate distinct lights.

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Speaker 2: That slow, clean split is what makes this video so unique.

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I mean, think about it. If it were two planes,

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they would have to be flying an absolutely perfect formation

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to look like one object to begin with.

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Speaker 1: Almost impossibly perfect. And if it was one craft breaking apart, well,

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the physics of that are just staggering. It immediately puts

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it in the unidentified box.

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Speaker 2: And the sequence ends in a very particular way. It's

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not just a pure blank split. There's a final phase.

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Speaker 1: The disappearance. How did that unfold?

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Speaker 2: Well, shortly after they clearly separate into two objects, they

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started to fade out. They didn't zoom off into space,

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they didn't crash, They just and sequentially too one went

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out and then a little bit later the other one

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went out. The source uses the phrase sequentially vanish.

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Speaker 1: That's a huge clue, isn't it.

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Speaker 2: It's an essential clue. It suggests that whatever was powering

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these lights had a limited life span and that one

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of them ran out of juice just a little bit

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before the other one. And that points us towards some

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very specific and very mundane explanations that will definitely get

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into later.

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Speaker 1: Before we get to the explanations, though, let's talk about

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the witness. You can hear Jeff Woolwine's reaction in the video,

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and his awe is just it's palpable.

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Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, He says, it's amazing, you know, because you're

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out there and you're watching and these things just magically

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appear in the sky. His level of subjective certainty is

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at one hundred percent, and.

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Speaker 1: That certainty immediately leads him to dismiss any normal.

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Speaker 2: Explanation right away. He just says, there's no airplanes gropping

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these things out. There's no explanation on why these things here.

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Speaker 1: And that really highlights a core dynamic in so many

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of these sightings, doesn't it. The experience feels so profound,

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so impossible, that it just overrides any kind of rational

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weight and see analysis.

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Speaker 2: He saw something he believed was impossible, so any simple

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answer is rejected before is even considered.

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Speaker 1: That initial gut level conclusion of no explanation is what

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gives these mysteries so much traction. He'd been hunting for

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this for years, and the moment he captures it, he's

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already decided it's extraordinary.

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Speaker 2: And what's really interesting is that Jeff Woolwine himself specifically

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says he thinks he's captured a resurgence of the famous

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nineteen ninety seven event, So he's.

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Speaker 1: Directly connecting his two thousand and four video to that

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original massive sighting.

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Speaker 2: He is. But to really figure out if that link

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makes any sense, we need to go back and understand

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the sheer scale and context of that first mystery.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so let's transition. Let's go back to the event

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that basically put the term Phoenix lights on the map

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for good.

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Speaker 2: We're talking about the night of March thirteenth, nineteen ninety seven.

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This wasn't just some local news story. This became a

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national sensation.

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Speaker 1: It was a real turning point in modern UAP history, right, Yeah,

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mostly because of the number of people who saw.

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Speaker 2: It, the sheer volume of witnesses. We are not talking

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about one person with a camera. We're talking thousands of

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people potentially across a huge populated area, all reporting these

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incredibly strange lights over Arizona.

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Speaker 1: And the thing everyone remembers, the image that's burned into

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the public consciousness is that V shaped formation.

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Speaker 2: The V shape and the descriptions of its size are

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what really set it apart from anything like the two

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thousand and four sighting.

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Speaker 1: The estimates are just they're mind blowing. Some witnesses claimed

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it was a single colossal object the size of more

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than ten Boeing seven forty sevens.

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Speaker 2: Can you even imagine that? I mean, just trying to

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picture the wingspan of ten jumbo jets side by side,

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flying silently over your head.

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Speaker 1: It's overwhelming. And the testimony was so consistent on that point,

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the V shape, the enormous size, and the silent low movement.

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Speaker 2: But it's important to remember, and the source material points

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us out the V shape wasn't the only thing people

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saw that night.

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Speaker 1: Which is a crucial detail for anyone trying to pieces

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all together right.

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Speaker 2: The famous V shaped sighting was actually later in the evening.

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At the same time, there were other reports floating around

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individual lights moving strangely, photos of light clusters. It was

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a really complex, multi layered night, which suggests.

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Speaker 1: You might be dealing with more than one phenomenon happening

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at the same.

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Speaker 2: Time, and that complicates any single, unified explanation, which leads

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to this major geographical point that the source brings up.

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It says Phoenix lights is actually a bit of a misnomer.

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Speaker 1: Okay, that feels like a huge piece of the puzzle.

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What does that mean.

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Speaker 2: It means that if you look at the timeline, the

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very first sightings that night in nineteen ninety seven, they

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didn't even happen over Phoenix.

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Speaker 1: Where were they.

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Speaker 2: They happened hours earlier near Henderson, Nevada. That's almost three

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hundred miles away from Phoenix.

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Speaker 1: Three hundred miles. Okay, that is a fundamental distinction. Talking

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about two potentially separate events on.

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Speaker 2: The same night, or even more than two, and they

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were all geographically and you know, temporarily distinct, but they

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all got swept under this one single banner, the Phoenix Lights.

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Speaker 1: And the implication for the investigation there's just massive.

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Speaker 2: It's huge. If investigators are told to look into the

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Phoenix Lights as a single event, but they're actually dealing

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with multiple different things happening three hundred miles apart, any

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explanation they come up with is going to seem incomplete

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or confusing.

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Speaker 1: Which is the perfect recipe for public distrust.

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Speaker 2: And distrust became the name of the game because so

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many people saw this. The military was eventually well, they

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were forced to investigate and give some kind of official response.

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Speaker 1: And it wasn't a quick response either, was it No?

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Speaker 2: And that delay is a major point of contention. The

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government took several months before they said anything officially.

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Speaker 1: What did they say?

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Speaker 2: Finally the US military came out and confessed. They said

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they had been running operations over the area that night.

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The specific name they gave was Op Snowbird.

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Speaker 1: Snowbird, so what exactly was Operation Snowbird?

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Speaker 2: The official story was that a whole bunch of a

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ten aircraft were in the sky.

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Speaker 1: That night, A ten war hogs the ground.

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Speaker 2: Attack planes, that's them, and they were supposedly testing different

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models of flares.

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Speaker 1: Okay, flares. For the learner listening, we should probably clarify

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what kind of flares we're talking about.

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Speaker 2: Good point. There are generally two types. You've got small

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hot countermeasures designed to fool heat seeking missiles. They'd burn

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out and fall really fast.

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Speaker 1: But then you have the other kind.

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Speaker 2: Right illumination flares. These are much bigger. They're often dropped

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with a parachute, They burn incredibly brightly, and they can

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just hang in the air, drifting slowly for several minutes.

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Speaker 1: Given the descriptions of hovering lights in ninety seven. The

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illumination flares seem like the more likely candidate for a

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mundane explanation.

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Speaker 2: Exactly. Imagine a formation of a tens dropping a series

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of those large, slow drifting flares from a distance that

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I'd absolutely look like a line of connected lights. The

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wind could even make them drift into a V shape.

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Speaker 1: But that official story, you know, coming out months late

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and involving a complicated military exercise, it just poured gasoline

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on the fire of the cover up.

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Speaker 2: Theories that delay was fatal to their credibility. The source

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says several people believed that this was a cover up

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and that the military was essentially trying to hide the

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fact that something else was operating over Phoenix.

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Speaker 1: That night, and the local political reaction didn't help either.

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Speaker 2: Not at all. We have to remember the governor at

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the time, Fife Semington. He initially held a press conference

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where he literally mocked the whole thing. He brought out

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his aid in an alien costume.

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Speaker 1: I remember that it was just bizarre.

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Speaker 2: And then years later he completely reversed his position and

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admitted that he himself had seen the massive V shaped

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object that night and believed it was otherworldly.

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Speaker 1: So you have this initial mockery, then months of silence

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from the government, and then a complex technical explanation about flares.

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It's the perfect storm for distrust.

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Speaker 2: It absolutely is, and it created the psychological framework where

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any future sighting, no matter how unrelated, like the two

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thousand and four footage, is automatically seen through that lens.

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It's seen as a resurgence or more proof of an

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ongoing cover up.

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Speaker 1: So let's bring it back to two thousand and four.

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We have Jeff Woolwine who believes his video of a

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splitting light is a resurgence of that ninety seven event.

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Speaker 2: He's operating under that exact framework we just talked about.

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He's assuming the giant vcraft and his splitting light are connected.

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Speaker 1: This is where the source brings in some objective analysis

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from Rich Hoffman of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies.

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Speaker 2: And Hoffman's job is to basically ignore the label Phoenix

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lights and just compare the raw data from the two events.

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Speaker 1: And what's his verdict When he puts some side by side.

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Speaker 2: His conclusion is pretty stark. He says there is no

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comparison there.

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Speaker 1: So a direct contradiction to what the witness believed.

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Speaker 2: Completely He points to the fundamental structural differences. The nineteen

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ninety seven lights were described as this single massive, cohesive

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triangular structure one craft or one tight formation. The key

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word he uses is structure.

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Speaker 1: Whereas the two thousand and four event was just two

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lights or one light that became two exactly.

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Speaker 2: Hoffman points out the two thousand and four footage as

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clearly two separate light sources or one source that acts

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dynamically stretching and dividing. That's a world away from a

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silent stadium sized V shape.

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Speaker 1: So for you listening, the big takeaway here is that

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just because two weird things happen in the same city

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seven years apart, doesn't mean they're related, not at all.

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Speaker 2: And applying that famous phoenix lights label to the two

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thousand and four sighting actually hurts the investigation because it

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forces a comparison that doesn't fit the evidence.

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Speaker 1: So if we accept Hoffman's analysis that they're unrelated, then

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the nineteen ninety seven event, with all its history, kind

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of stops mattering for the two thousand and four footage,

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right It lets.

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Speaker 2: Us look at the two thousand and four video on

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its own terms, And.

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Speaker 1: If we do that, we're left with that one core mystery,

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that mind boggling moment. How do you explain an object

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that appears into and then one by one just vanishes.

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Speaker 2: And that's where the scientific analysis gets really interesting. The

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witness is sure he saw one object split. The challenge

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for science to show that what he actually saw was

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an illusion, a trick of perspective.

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Speaker 1: To tackle that, the source brings in a really key expert,

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Marke D'Antonio. He's an astronomer but also a video effects designer,

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which is.

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Speaker 2: The perfect combination of skills for this. He understands the

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sky and he understands how cameras can lie to you.

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Speaker 1: So what's his take on the split?

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Speaker 2: He offers what is probably the most elegant and plausible explanation.

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His whole analysis is based on a simple idea from optics.

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The object looked like one single light because it was

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actually two lights and one was directly behind the other

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from the camera's perspective.

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Speaker 1: Okay, let's break that down. It's like seeing the headlights

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of a car from miles and miles.

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Speaker 2: Away exactly at a great distance, they just blur into

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a single point of.

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Speaker 1: Light, and d'antonio's VFX background is key here.

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Speaker 2: It's crucial. He knows how a camera lens, its focal lengths,

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its resolution, how all those things can merge two distinct

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light sources into what looks like one single, oblong light.

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Speaker 1: So the split wasn't a physical event.

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Speaker 2: No. He says that as the two objects slowly move apart,

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maybe just by a tiny amount, the image of the

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light gets more and more elongated, until finally the camera

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can resolve them as two separate points.

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Speaker 1: That makes so much sense. It wasn't a division, it

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was a revelation. It was just the objects shifting their

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position relative to the camera.

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Speaker 2: It's an illusion created by geometry and distance. And if

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we accept that it was two objects all along, the

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next question is what were they?

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Speaker 1: And we have to remember the time period two thousand

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and four. Today, everyone would just shout drones, right, But.

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Speaker 2: As D'Antonio points out, back in two thousand and four,

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it was not very likely that they were drones. The

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consumer drone market basically didn't.

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Speaker 1: Exist, so unless they were military.

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Speaker 2: That's the only real possibility. And the main military drone

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in use at the time is the Predator.

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Speaker 1: So could it have been to predator drones?

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Speaker 2: It's unlikely a predator drone isn't some little quad copter.

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It's the size of a small airplane. It has a

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big wingspan, it makes noise, and it has to fly

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like a plane. It can't just hover silently, and it

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would have standard aviation lights right, high intensity strobes, position lights.

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It would look like an aircraft. The objects in the

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video just seem to be silently drifting before they separate.

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It doesn't fit the profile of a predator drone at all.

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Speaker 1: So if it's not military drones, we're looking for something smaller, lighter,

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maybe even unguided.

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Speaker 2: Which brings us to d'antonio's number one candidate, which is

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wonderfully beautifully mundane.

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Speaker 1: What is it?

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Speaker 2: A launch of two sky lanterns.

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Speaker 1: Chinese lanterns, the little paper hot air balloons exactly.

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Speaker 2: And this hypothesis is so powerful because it checks almost

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every single box.

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Speaker 1: Okay, walk us through it. How does it fit?

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Speaker 2: First, the silent hovering their balloons, They just drift on

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the air currents, no engine noise. The split is blamed

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by the perspective theory. Two lanterns launched together, one happens

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to drift in front of the other for a while.

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Speaker 1: Okay, but what about the color. Jeff Woolwine said it

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was a bright white light. Sky lanterns I've seen usually

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have a more orange fiery glow.

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Speaker 2: That's a great question, and it's where d'antonio's optics knowledge

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comes in again. At night, from a distance and with

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a camera that's probably struggling in low light, a flame

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can easily get over exposed.

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Speaker 1: Meaning it blooms on the camera sensor.

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Speaker 2: Precisely, the camera sensor gets overwhelmed by the light and

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just renders it as bright white, even if the actual

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flame is orange or red, So the color discrepancy isn't

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really a problem.

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Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, that's a really important detail. But the final

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piece of the puzzle, the vanishing act.

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Speaker 2: This is the real giveaway, the ultimate clue. The lights

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in the video fade out one after the other, sequentially, sequentially,

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and that is exactly how sky lanterns work. The little

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flame packet at the bottom has a limited amount of fuel.

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When the fuel runs out, the flame the light vanishes.

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Speaker 1: And since there are two separate lanterns, their fuel won't

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run out at the exact same millisecond.

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Speaker 2: They are two independent systems. One will burn out a

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few seconds or a minute before the other, and that

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gives you that mysterious looking sequential disappearance.

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Speaker 1: So the sky lantern theory seems to account for everything,

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the oblong shade, the silent hovering, the split, the color,

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and the vanishing. It's a really strong.

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Speaker 2: Case, it is, but the source material leaves us with

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one final analytical problem, one little knot that keeps it

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from being a one hundred percent closed case.

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Speaker 1: And what's that.

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Speaker 2: It comes down to the physics of the launch. How

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could two unguided paper balloons, subject to every little gust

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of wind fly so closely together that they appear as

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a single object for any length of time.

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Speaker 1: They'd have to be in perfect alignment.

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Speaker 2: Perfect alignment maintaining that position one behind the other without

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turbulence pushing them apart would require either an incredible amount

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of luck or very specific atmospheric conditions.

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Speaker 1: That's the part that still requires a bit of a

401
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leap of faith. I mean, if you launched two from

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your backyard, you'd expect them to drift apart almost immediately.

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Speaker 2: You would, and without finding the launch site or the

404
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lantern debris. That tiny bit of ambiguity is enough to

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keep the case technically classified. As unidentified.

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Speaker 1: So we've reached the end of the analysis from the source,

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and despite this incredibly strong, mechanically sound explanation from Mark D'Antonio,

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the official verdict is still unidentified.

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Speaker 2: And that's the fuel that keeps these mysteries alive, isn't

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it that inability to get to one hundred percent certainty.

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We can get to a high probability hypothesis, but not

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a definitive classification.

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Speaker 1: And when you look at the whole Phoenix light story,

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from the giant v in ninety seven to the splitting

415
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lights in O four, you just see this same conflict

416
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playing out over and.

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Speaker 2: Over, official skepticism versus public conviction.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you have these rational, down to earth explanations. The

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ninety seven event was very likely military flares from Operation.

420
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Speaker 2: Snowbird, and the two thousand and four event has an

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extremely high probability of being two sky lanterns explained by optics.

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Speaker 1: Both are completely man made explanations, But the source makes

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it clear even after you give people these detailed scientific answers,

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there are still those who are skeptical.

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Speaker 2: Which brings us right back to the psychological damage that

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was done in nineteen ninety seven. The public trust was

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broken by the government's response to Operation Snowbird.

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Speaker 1: That delayed, confusing and initially mocking response created a credibility gap.

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Speaker 2: It's a huge depth. So when the military finally did

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confirm they were dropping flares, it wasn't seen as a confession.

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It was seen by skeptics as a cover up, a

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convenient lie.

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Speaker 1: And that initial mistrust just taints everything that comes after completely.

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Speaker 2: The public isn't just analyzing the physics of a sky

435
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lantern in two thousand and four. They're distrusting the source

436
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of the analysis. They're primed to believe that any simple

437
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explanation is just another attempt to hide a bigger truth.

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Speaker 1: It's a fascinating situation where the truth might just be

439
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too simple to be believed. The experience of seeing something

440
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so so profound, so impossible, just overwhelms the dry scientific breakdown.

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Speaker 2: It really reinforces the power of that initial emotional reaction.

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When a witness categorizes what they saw as impossible, the

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bar for accepting a mundane explanation becomes impossibly high.

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Speaker 1: It really seems like the enduring mystery of the Phoenix

445
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Lights is less about aliens and more about human perception

446
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and the consequences of governmental ambiguity.

447
00:21:25,960 --> 00:21:28,599
Speaker 2: It's a perfect case study in how doubt can sustain

448
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belief for decades.

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Speaker 1: So we have covered a ton of ground in this

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thrilling threads deep dive. We started with this single bright

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light from two thousand and four that did the impossible and.

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Speaker 2: Split in two, and we've walked through the very likely

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explanation that was just two sky lanterns creating an optical illusion.

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Speaker 1: We put that against the backdrop of the massive V

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shape from nineteen ninety seven. We talk about military flares

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and operations, snowbird and the physics of visual deception, and when.

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Speaker 2: You zoom out the whole saga of the Phoenix lights,

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it's really more than just a collection of sightings. It's

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a powerful lesson in how an unexplained event, when it's

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mixed with a fumbled official response, can create decades of

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belief in a hidden truth.

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Speaker 1: The key lesson really is about institutional credibility. Once you

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break it, it's almost impossible to get it back.

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Speaker 2: We heard rich Hoffman say there's no comparison between the

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ninety seven and oh four events. One was a massive

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structure or a flare drop, the other was a small

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optical illusion, but they are forever linked under that one name.

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Speaker 1: So here's our final thought for you. We have the

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military's confession about using flares in nineteen ninety seven, and

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we have a really strong scientific argument for the two

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thousand and four event being two sky lanterns.

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Speaker 2: Considering all the evidence, the physics, the timing, the political

473
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mess of that initial response, what stands out to you

474
00:22:44,240 --> 00:22:47,000
is the strongest indicator of what these objects actually were.

475
00:22:47,200 --> 00:22:50,079
And maybe more importantly, why do you think we as

476
00:22:50,079 --> 00:22:52,960
the public still find these down to earth answers so

477
00:22:53,079 --> 00:22:54,160
hard to swallow? You?

478
00:22:54,160 --> 00:22:55,680
Speaker 1: We'd love for you to think about that, and if

479
00:22:55,720 --> 00:22:57,440
you're so inclined to share your stand with us,