The following illustrations show examples of data and provide a good first glance into the available data and WFMs' visible flight properties.
Fig 1. Examples of WFM trajectories (click images for case details).
Fig 2. Example of common, supersonic travel speed. Original frame rate. (details)
Fig 3. Typical smear effect due to cameras' insufficient shutter times
(click images for case details).
The smear effect's strength is influenced by viewing angle, the object's speed, lighting conditions and the different camera sensors' shutter times.
Links to case analyses are on the left menu panel, the overall discussion chapters can be found on the horizontal menu panel above. The top menu panel follows a structure of chapters similar to an academic paper, whereas the left menu panel serves as the data appendix.
The left panel's buttons show the following information:
incident's location ► a data source ►
Weert25 May 2017 YouTube: h0s_P74oQD4★★★★☆
◂ time of incident ◂ my quality and reliability rating
The rating of the data quality and reliability serves as an indication of how relevant
the data set is as evidence for the claims made in the conclusion
of this survey. I rate the data very roughly according to the following criteria: technical video quality, informativeness regarding properties if WFM, background information of the capture, signs of being fabricated or altered, and the resulting reliability.
The analysis of each case follows a methodological template that includes a frame-by-frame evaluation of the video to determine whether the footage could be fabricated. This is done by scrutinizing the overall consistency of the video regarding the changes in
the possible WFM's visible size, smear effects due to the cameras' insufficient
shutter times and the flight path of the alleged object.
Furthermore, I investigate the detailed conditions regarding the weather and
geographical circumstances. The analysis is heavily based on
publicly available satellite imagery and every result can be
replicated by everyone based on the original data; no undisclosed data or methods were used.
The data's reliability heavily depends on the social background of their origin.
Therefore, the case analyses include the social circumstances of the filming (who?, when?, where?, why?)
and psychometric data of the originators based on their social media profile at YouTube
(what personal interests, in particular UFO related interests? what affiliations? what directions and levels of education?).
More details on the methods and arguments regarding data reliability can be found in the devoted chapter.
Historical Background
Despite the common perception among a large part of academics and other people alike,
small and often illuminated flying objects that seem to be intentionally steered were reported earlier in different contexts.
A series of internal US military reports from the last months of World War II, now published, describe pilots encountering basketball-sized, ball-shaped objects, glowing in red, orange, gold or white, which are, according to a large proportion of the reports, able to follow meneuvering air planes closely. An extensive collection of historical sources on these so-called Foo Fighters can be found at the PROJECT 1947 web site (find the other sources referred to in this paragraph there). The most influential public sources are the articles on them in the TIME Magazine (15 January, 1945)—due to its circulation—and the one
from Lt. Col. Jo Chamberlin in The American Legion Magazine (December 1945)—due to the author's professional position and expertise. Reports on Foo Fighters are mostly available for occurrences over Germany and Japan. The 1992 published War Diary of the 415th US Night Fighter Squadron, which was active over Germany from 1944 to 45, revealed how common sightings of Foo Fighters were and lead to the conclusion that FooFighters were definitely established as an existing phenomena (frame 1515) and not illusionary. Foo Fighters never attacked or harmed the pilot or airplane. A popular belief in the US Air Force (in the following abbreviated as USAF) was that Foo Fighters are secret Axis' weapons aimed to awe enemy pilots. However, no record of such a technology could be found and I deem it very unlikely that the engineers of that time were able to build something that could be the cause of the descibed observations.
These ongoing and extensive projects let us reliably conclude that UFO sightings are very common, whereas WFMs seem to be one special case of those very varied occurrences. More specifically, a quick search in the Project Blue Book Archives, a resource for disclosed US Government documents related to the UFO phenomenon, reveal sightings that resemble modern WFM sightings. I searched for white object in the archive and looked out for WFM resembling reports.—The OCR scans uploaded to the Blue Book Archive are very flawed, which makes it very likely that this automated search did not show all reports that include the string white object.
An USAF airman reports a sighting in Stuttgart, Germany, 21 August 1950 in the morning:
At about 25th minute of the run, I noticed a small white object pass throught the field
of vision of the theodolite, but as birds, airplanes and other miscellaneous objects are not unusual
I paid no attention and continued following the balloon.
(...)
After 3 minutes, I again noticed a small white object passed through the field of vision.
(...)
The object was moving in a southerly direction, and I followed it with little difficulty for a minute.
Then it made an abrupt change in direction towards the west-south-west and approached the sun at evidently
a high rate of speed. That the speed was high was shown by the increase in size of the object.
It increased from about 15 minuter to about 50 minutes in diameter, or about 20% of the field of
vision of the theolodite, which is two degrees.
(...)
When first seen, the object was small, oval, and white in color. As it became closer and larger,
it seemed a grayish white color with several dark lanes or shadows on its surface. The object,
altough clearly visible, seemed to have a rather indistinct outline.
(MAXW-PBB8-162)
The 10th District Office of Special Investigations at Kelly Air Force Base in Texas reports:
Charles C. Wiedman, 1st Lieut. (...) reported that he observed a white object travelling at an estimated speed of 2,000 miles per hour
at 0115 hours on 20 March 1950. He reported that the object appeared to be spherical and luminous when first sighted;
that because of its velocity, distance, altitude and size were difficult to estimate. (NARA-PBB90-878)
The US 29th Air Division Intelligence Officer logged a citizen's report:
Mr. Plattner said that about 0400Z, 9 Aug 66, he and 16 other
people, including two Minnesota highway patrolmen, saw a
high, round, luminous, white object move rapidly across the
sky going northeast, executing several abrupt right angle
turns as it did so.
(...)
Mr. Plattner said a surveyor
who was present on 9 Aug made an admittedly very rough estimate of the object's velocity at 3500 miles per hour, However,
the object was large enough or low enough to have a
round shape, and no sonic boom was heard, The object''s size
was about one-third that of a high, full moon. (MISC-PBB1-324)
A USAF Deputy of Intelligence noted a sighting at 1 August 1952 from an aircraft near Tokyo, Japan:
(1) Description is a round blue-white object with trail traveling at a
terrific rate of speed. No size could be determined. No sound was
noted. The object remained in vision for approxiamtely two seconds and suddenly disappeared.
(MAXW-PBB14-34)
The quality of details of these sightings are well in the scope of the usual UFO reports of that era. Note that these sightings are accidental and, therefore, in many cases more suitable measurement equipment was not at hand. WFM footage via drones and other modern cameras are a proper step to overcome these shortcomings and introduce WFM sightings into the scope of established science.
Before the proliferation of video drones WFMs (or at least something that looks very similar to them in size and color) were already claimed to have been filmed near so-called crop circles. The earliest instance that I know of is the Milk Hill case that Steve Alexander claimed to have filmed in 1990. The following video shows a selection of alleged balls of light near crop circles in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Fig 5. Collection of videos claimed to show balls of light.
These videos (figure 5) were mostly brought forward by individuals, who already show some interest in the crop circle phenomenon and they would also not be very hard to fabricate. However, on the other hand there are no clear indications of a hoax and they might not be fabricated. The occurence of WFMs that look very similar to these balls of light increase the likelyhood of the genuineness of scenes in this video to a significant degree. Furthermore, these alleged sightings influenced a discussion about the origin of crop circles (Levengood 1994, Levengood and Talbott 1999, Haselhoff 2001), criticized by others (Grassi, Cocheo and Russo 2005).
Why now? Why Drone Camera Footage?
Are WFMs only a recent phenomenon? We cannot answer this question due to the lack of sufficient historical data. However, there has never been a widespread scientific analyses of them (as far as I know) and technical circumstances are only now right for gathering a sufficiently large amount of data. Since not much is known about what causes WFMs to occur, we need a lot of spread out field investigators that capture WFM footage whenever possible.
Since about the mid 2010s, unmanned areal vehicles, commonly referred to as drones, used for videoing and with technical capabilities to capture WFMs well are available on the retail market for affordable prices (around €500 to €2000). They are capable of even capturing WFMs that travel with supersonic speed, which is, as it turns out as a result of this study, their most common travel speed when filmed. (find more details on drone capabilities in the chapter about the analysis methodologies) WFMs have already been filmed by sky watchers using ground based cameras (find examples in chapter about next steps for data gathering), but drones provide the crucial advantage of a view from above. This view allows, in the best cases of WFM footage, to see the object traveling a large distance (e.g. more than one kilometer) over a dark and, therefore, contrast providing background (e.g. a forest)—see figure 1 for examples.
The WFM footage presented on this web page is usually, according to the originators' testimonies, a result of surprising finds in drone videos for purposes other than capturing WFMs.
How many drones with sufficient technical capability to capture WFMs (camera sensors, height and stability of flight) are in use? The U.S. Consumer Technology Association estimates around 825,000 hobbyist drones with a weight above 250g sold in the U.S. in 2016, which is about one for 390 people. (recode, retrieved 17Sep2018) This number serves as a proxy for scaling the sales up to global numbers and other years. Disregarding any details of such a calcuation, drones are obviously very widespread in rich countries. Only a small fraction of drone owners edit and upload their videos to YouTube or other internet services. However, given the peculiarity of a WFM capture, many users filming such an event, might be motivated to upload their finding. We can conclude that, if WFMs are a common phenomenon, we should find proper drone footage from very different sources. To show that this is exactly the case, is the mayor goal of whitefastmovers.org.
Fig 4. Retailer presentations of widely used drone models (in 2018) with equipment. DJI'sPhantom 3 Advanced (left, droneshop.com) and Mavic Pro (right, exclusivebrandsonline.co.za).
WFMs can Conveniently be Studied According to Scientific Standards
In contrast to many other rare phenomena, given the data gathered already, WFMs seem to be measurable in a repeatable way. They are abundant and technical equipment for gathering better data is cheaply available. In the chapter about next steps for data gathering I detail this: additional cameras add spacial vision (comparable to humans using two eyes), and other well-standardized sensors for waves of different lengths or emittable particles can easily be installed. I am currently working on a measurement station.
As in all other cases of scientific inquiry, methods of a scientific field have to be developed or adapted to suit the very field-specific requirements for data gathering and theory formation. The study of WFMs has some apparent resemblances to the study of rare natural phenomena and we can therefore adapt many measurement methods from the natural sciences. On the other hand, social and psychological methods need to be employed to not fall victim to hoaxes. Historical methods are relevant to get a better understanding how UFO sightings were processed in earlier decades. Even a more politological view on society is necessary to analyse why despite an abundance of very interesting and relevant data topics like WFM can only be found on the fringes of society and science—Wendt and Duvall (2008) provide a study.
I elaborate on the reasons why hobbyists' and filming companies' drone footage uploaded to YouTube (and other web sites) provide good arguments in favor of the existence of WFM in the chapter about data reliability. These arguments include the results of frame-by-frame video analysis, the great social plurality of the videos' sources, the lack of interest to sensationalize the footage by most of the originators, the wide variety of technical equipment used to capture WFMs and others.
The available data is best explained by actual white, small objects that travel through our airspace with a speed of several hundred km/h up to many times the speed of sound. Model air planes or other drones using widely established forms of propulsion cannot execute the flight patterns that are shown in many cases of WFM footage. The smear effect, the distances between the objects' positions in the succeeding frames, and the objects' changes in size on the screen during approach point unambiguously to objects that reflect the whole spectrum of visible light (i.e. being white) and pass distances of many hundreds of meters, which leads to estimations of great travel speed. WFMs seem to reflect light, but do not emit it. However, not much can be concluded about the objects' material composition. WFMs could be gaseous, solid, liquid or even be a plasma cloud. However, the lack of observable gravitational impact on WFMs hints to the possibility that today's knowledge about physics might not be sufficient to fully understand WFMs.
Other, more confounding factor-like suggestions, such as insects, birds, hail stones or camera reflections are very often put forward by sceptical commentators in the discussion sections of YouTube. In many cases of possible WFM footage the speed can be estimated fairly reliably when the object can be seen to approach from a far distance. For a common animal to fly in the necessary trajectory and change of speed to produce the measured signals is extremely odd and untypical. Therefore, these mundane confounding factors can be excluded as explanations for good cases of WFM footage with a very high degreee of certainty.
The most threatening attack against the hypothesis that WFM footage is genuine data showing a new and difficult to explain phenomenon is that the footage is hoaxed. Attackers may claim that YouTube is not a sufficiently reliable source. But this is a cheap attack. A user can upload a sophistically hoaxed video, but this does not mean that he/she necessarily did so. The social and personal clues provided by a social media plattform, as well as all analyzable video features of the here presented cases of WFM footage point very clearly to one specific explanation. This is that many people filmed fast moving, small, white objects with their drones and did not know what this is. Differences in location, language, personal professions, personal interests, weather conditions, applied technical equipment, gimbal movements, relational objects in the images (e.g. moving cars), video compression artefacts and the fact that many cases of WFM footage are not specifically pointed out as such point all to this one explanation.
Explanatory candidates for WFMs are the following:
