Experts: Mystery Contrail Was Plane, Not Missile

(Nov. 10) -- It's a bird. It's a plane. Well, actually, it is a plane.

At least that's what experts and the military seem to be saying about Tuesday's scare over what initially looked like a mystery missile spotted off the coast of Los Angeles.

The Northern Aerospace Defense Command already weighed in Tuesday, saying the unexplained contrail posed no threat to the nation. But NORAD did not speculate on what the source of the missile-looking contrail might come from. Now, experts are saying why it's highly likely that what a helicopter camera crew captured on camera was a plane, not a missile.

There's a rich history of unexplained contrails being attributed to secret aircraft, UFOs and, yes, even missiles, and the problem comes down to how the human eye perceives direction ."[A]s surprising as it may sound, the object seems to have been simply an aircraft contrail, with tricks of perspective making it look like a missile flying away from you, when in fact it was an aircraft flying toward you!" Robert Sheaffer writes on Bad UFOs, a skeptic blog.

What the camera crew saw that made them think it was a missile is nothing more than an optical illusion created by the angle they were viewing it from, according to Contrail Science, a blog that is dedicated to busting myths about contrails. In a detailed explanation, the blog says the alleged "missile" is likely America West Airlines Flight 808 from Hawaii to Phoenix.

According to Contrail Science, there are three reasons why the contrail looked like a missile: A horizontal contrail can look vertical depending on the angle you're viewing it from; as contrails disperse, they give the mistaken perception of being closer to the viewer, when it fact they are further away; and contrails that look like they are starting from the ground are really simply beyond the horizon.

In other words, the brain does not see physics.

The Pentagon, at least, is satisfied with that answer. "There is no evidence to suggest it was anything other than an aircraft," said Col. David Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, according to Agence France-Presse.