Popocatépetl and the Objects in the Crater
An active volcano seventy kilometres from Mexico City whose crater is watched around the clock by the cameras of the national disaster prevention centre. The recordings are published openly, and since 2012 elongated glowing objects have regularly been found in them, entering or leaving the crater. The best-known clip, showing a cigar shape about a kilometre long, went round the world in October 2012. Volcanologists attribute such footage to a combination of video compression artefacts, birds and insects passing close to the lens, and glowing fragments thrown out in minor explosions. The cameras keep recording, and the material accumulates faster than anyone works through it.
Fort Knox and the Death of Captain Mantell
On 7 January 1948 a large bright object was reported over Kentucky and a flight of fighters was scrambled. Captain Thomas Mantell climbed after it, radioed that he could see something "metallic and of tremendous size", and kept climbing without an oxygen mask. His aircraft came down south of Franklin; Mantell was killed. The military first said Venus. It was later established that the object was a classified high-altitude Skyhook balloon the pilots had no way of knowing about: from the ground such a balloon looks exactly as Mantell described it. It is the first death connected with the pursuit of an unidentified object, and it set the tone of the subject for years.
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