When it comes to UFO sightings,
the classic saucer shape from the 1950s and '60s has long
become passé, and instead it's often bright orbs
and cylindrical objects which are reported
more and more frequently.
Recently, however, we've been adding
another shape to that list--
triangles.
But why?
And what does it mean?
Well, maybe this next video can shed some light.
November 2021.
A passenger on a train speeding through the Italian countryside
notices something strange outside his window
and starts recording.
Three orange lights in a triangular formation
floating in the air above the horizon.
Let's zoom in.
The lights not only appear to be orbs, but they're also glowing.
The video is uploaded to social media
and quickly becomes a sensation.
A lot of the comments on the video
obviously linked this light pattern
to the typical triangular UFO, making claims that this was
some sort of alien spacecraft.
TONY HARRIS: Journalist MJ Banias
says that kind of reaction shouldn't be surprising.
Italy has a fairly rich UFO history.
In the early 1950s, an entire soccer game
was actually stopped in the city of Florence
when a crowd of 10,000 people in the stadium
looked up and saw a handful of strange oval-shaped UFOs
fly over them.
TONY HARRIS: Even before then, a UFO crash in 1933
allegedly became the catalyst for a secret program
led by one of Italy's most notorious figures.
Some people believe that Mussolini,
the famed Italian dictator, had a secret UFO hunting program.
The idea was that in 1933, a UFO crashed in Italy
and Mussolini allegedly hired famed radio pioneer Guglielmo
Marconi to figure out what this technology was,
and whether it could be weaponized.
The Italian Center for UFO Studies
documented almost 10,000 cases over a 50-year period.
And we've reported on some of them,
including this anomalous event we investigated last year.
Could this triangle be something related?
We asked for our expert's opinion.
We begin with forensic video analyst Michael Primeau.
Our first question, has the footage
been manipulated in any way?
MICHAEL PRIMEAU: The lights appear
to be real, at least to my naked eye,
when analyzing it frame by frame.
But what the encoder is saying using macroblock analysis
is that this information in this green color
is different than this information
in this green color.
So it's a possibility that some use of CGI
was added to this recording based on the macroblock
analysis, but no definitive conclusions
can be drawn at this time.
TONY HARRIS: Acknowledging that red flag,
we take the video to astronomer and video
effects designer, Marc D'Antonio,
to see if this could be a plane.
MARC D'ANTONIO: I don't think that this one here
is an aircraft because an airplane
light of this brightness would be the landing lights,
and airplanes generally have two landing lights, if not just
one in some cases, not three.
Now, you could say, well, is this
a stack of aircraft one farther from the other,
making a logical triangle from this perspective?
But these lights look all the same brightness.
And if you stack up planes like that,
the furthest plane away is going to be
more several miles behind the first plane and the lines,
will look a little bit dimmer and smaller
than the one in the front.
TONY HARRIS: D'Antonio rules out any commercial or military
aircraft but he does believe there is a clue
to the mystery in the video.
If you also look carefully when this train is moving,
it passes a sign along the way.
The sign is being held up by two legs.
And this object passes in front of one of those legs.
TONY HARRIS: The lights don't disappear when the train
passes the sign outside.
D'Antonio thinks it's because this mysterious object isn't
actually in front of the photographer.
I think that this is a light fixture reflected in the window
from one of the adjacent train seats.
TONY HARRIS: But when we asked science writer Mick West to
study the video, he disagrees.
MICK WEST: I don't think this is a reflection.
For one thing, it's the only lights being
reflected that you can see.
If it was a train with lots of people,
you would expect to see more.
And when the person filming it is moving the camera,
you see these bits of dirt on the window move around.
But when they're moving around, there's
no movement at all with this object, which means
that it's not a reflection.
TONY HARRIS: By zooming in, Mick sees the lights
are not staying in one place.
I took the video and I tried stabilizing
the lights on the screen.
So they all stay in exactly the same position.
And you can see that it's not like a single solid object.
They seem to be moving somewhat independently.
Another thing that you notice is that the distance
between the lights and the tree line gradually decreases.
TONY HARRIS: So we have orange objects that appear
to be slowly drifting down.
West believes there's an orange light that fits the bill--
military flares.
MICK WEST: They're attached to little parachutes
so they just basically sink down fairly slowly,
and they burn for about a minute or two,
and then they'll usually drop.
Our verdict-- this is a toss up.
We can't explain why the lights don't pass behind the sign,
but we can't call it a reflection either.
We can't even say for sure it's real.
The military flair theory feels right
but our experts aren't unanimous.
Until we know more, we have to say this remains unidentified.