Changing a “UFO” lightbulb (version française a venir)
“Take a look at this photo that I got from Juarez from FESPORTE, of the Santa catarina Federal University, they say it’s a UFO”.
That was the message forwarded by Eustáquio Patounas. The trivial solution and some commentary after the jump.
Patounas himself warned that the image must have been originally of a streetlight, and soon afterwards Paulo César Onofre, from SOCEX, visited the University looking for the “UFO”.
And he found it:
In February 2007, user “forked_at_fark” asked for advice in the notorious website. “
WTF did I just take a picture of? I thought it was a planet, but it looks really weird”. The first answer, seconds later, was… “a streetlight?”.
Then followed an epic thread (be sure to click the link) with over 1,400 comments, countless jokes and a confident “forked_at_fark” insisting that it couldn’t be a street lamp, since among other things, it was allegedly high in the sky.
But a couple of days later, “forked” captured more images, thought about all the thousands of comments and arguments, and surprise, surprise.
“
It IS a streetlight. Surprising that NONE of you knew. I am an Idiot — forked_at_fark”.
Recognizing the mistake and playing along, forked_at_fark was evidence, as Skepchick Rebecca Watson noted, that “
there is hope for the world, yet”.
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