Remember a few months ago when the news was saying that aliens were real — and then the story went away like two weeks later?


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At the time, some cried conspiracy. *They* have just taken the story out of the headlines because they’re hiding something! Not sure what they could be hiding besides actual aliens, but maybe there’s, like, *super* aliens out there or something! You never know!


As it turns out, the story may have disappeared because some of its major claims were B.S. For example, back in July, Department of Defense official Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick described footage he had seen of a metallic orb flying somewhere over the Middle East. “This is a typical example of the thing we see most of,” he stated. “We see these all over the world, making very interesting apparent maneuvers.”


Well, now researchers at Bellingcat have a simple explanation for the orb. It was a dang balloon.



For context, the video above shows a dark sphere flying through the air. The camera trained on the sphere has a hard time keeping up, constantly losing it in the frame. The video cuts before we see the orb disappear — but regardless, it’s suspicious, right?


Not really. Researchers at Bellingcat did such high-tech things as “looking at Google Maps” and “basic math” to determine that the orb was likely just 0.43 meters (about 17 inches) in diameter or smaller.



So how was this (smaller than expected) object moving so fast? According to Bellingcat, it wasn’t. The video was captured by a drone that itself was moving through the sky. As the balloon was above the ground, the perception of movement in the balloon was likely just due to the parallax effect.



But wait, wait, wait — sure, you’ve shown that it was probably just hanging out in midair. And yes, the orb wasn’t “1 to 4 meters” in width, as the government originally said. But maybe it’s still an alien craft? Please, God, let me just have this!


Apologies for bursting the bubble of those who might still be believers, but no. As Bellingcat puts it, “A balloon is consistent with what we see in the video. They can be spherical, they can appear metallic (particularly those made of foil), and they can float in the air.”


Additionally, the video was taken on the last day of Eid al-Adha, a major holiday in Islam. Videos of a nearby Eid al-Adha celebration showed they did, in fact, have balloons. Ask yourself which scenario is more likely: an alien craft visited earth and we got it on video, or some guy accidentally let go of one of his party balloons?


To summarize, no, we don’t have video proof of interplanetary craft visiting Earth just yet — though I’m personally still holding out hopes for the Mexican alien.