UFO enthusiasts have become incredibly excited in the last few days about a video of what is quite clearly a plane.
UFOs are constantly being spotted by YouTubers with strange theories about the world, rather than (for instance) the billions of cameras across the Earth not owned by conspiracy theorists, and all the world's media and space organizations.
Usually, it turns out to be a glint on a window, or maybe a Google logo, but occasionally, just occasionally, it turns out to be a weather balloon.
Well, this new footage – thought by some commenters to be proof that aliens have come to Earth to check out the exhausts left by airplanes – is no exception to the "don't be absurd, we haven't found aliens" rule.
At best, we're looking at a weather balloon.
YouTubers didn't let the fact that it's an airplane get in the way of some good old-fashioned wild speculation about what the aliens are here to do.
"This video should not surprise you because it doesn't surprise me. Because whenever these chemtrails are about – or as I lovingly like to say, our daily dose of vitamins that are being sprayed upon us – we always see these white orbs," YouTuber The Hidden Underbelly 2.0 says in the video. "They seem to be hovering around these objects or moving along it like this one."
"Now there seems to be a lot of speculation as to what these objects could be," – it's a plane – "or what they could be doing," he continued, before explaining he believes it's "some sort of terraforming that's going on, while they're trying to spray the atmosphere".
He then goes on to say that others think the objects (planes) are here to protect us from "what our government is doing to us," which appears to refer to the conspiracy theory that "chemtrails" (which are actually contrails) are spraying chemicals at us.
The "chemtrail" conspiracy theory suggests that the trails left by airplanes are chemicals deliberately sprayed into the atmosphere by a government agency of your choosing. Proponents claim they are part of military tests, dispense chemicals that make you sick in order to bump the profits for drug companies, or are used for mind control purposes. Some even go so far as to suggest chemtrails could wipe out humanity by causing "biblical flooding". Advocates include Alex Jones and Chuck Norris, which should be all the warning you need.
Or, if you want the correct explanation: Plane engines get hot. Much hotter than the atmosphere outside the plane, in fact. So when the exhaust leaves the plane, the water vapor freezes mid-air, causing a trail of ice behind the plane known as contrails.