The "Rod Phenomenon"?

Question

http://www.ufomystic.com/wake-up-down-there/rods-video-evidence-skepticism/

check them out on youtube as well, just search "Rods"

isn't that weird? what the heck could they be?

Answer 1

I was watching the Discovery Channel and they even got a nerd scientist from NASA to look at rods to give his expert opinion.

The guy slowed down the film, that was provided for him to see, and the zig-zag pattern that you see is actually a bugs wings moving up and down.

Answer 2

I have done my own rods photo work with some very high quality Sony video cameras about 10 years ago.  Mostly at the request of people who have caught them.  They wanted to make sure that their cameras were not having a malfunction.  I used stationary tripod mounted cameras.  They were aimed at a dark wall outside with  midday summer sun light behind the camera. What I got was a bunch of bugs at low shutter speeds that look like rods, and at faster speeds they were just bugs flying past the wall.  What I was really amazed to see was things flying past a 40 foot wall section at a high rate of speed that the camera could not stop the motion of. That works out to be a speed of about 1200 feet per second for the recording equipment I used.  Allowing for some possible error in the capture rate it is still faster then any bug I know about.  The math is ~ 40 feet(the space traveled by object in one frame) X 30( the 30 frame per second capture rate) = 1200 feet in one second.   1200 X .681818182 = 818 miles per hour.  That is faster then the speed of sound and should be causing a snapping  sound like a whip.  Even if it was slower then the speed of sound your eye can not see something going that fast.  I guess I should try doing it again with the new faster 60 frame per second digital video cameras now.  Just about anyone can get good shots of rods if you try it.  Be sure to set everything to manual settings to stop the camera trying to auto focus on everything that goes by.

Answer 3

probably a few bugs

Answer 4

They're massive gorillas.

ps...i'm not checking out your super cool links. sorry.

Answer 5

Apparently they are just insects. The visual illusion is created by the frame rate of the video capture vs. the beating frequency of the insect wings.

Answer 6

They had a show on called Proof Positive, and they determined that the "rods" that we see are the flapping of the wings of insects and the blur of the wings on each frame of video.

Answer 7

They're insects. Bugs. Creepy-crawlies. As that one commentor on that article said, if they're real, why haven't we found any rod bodies or rods splatted against car windshields?