Key Takeaways
Dozens of TikTok, Reddit, and YouTube users reported a Mars Attacks-like onslaught against the Las Vegas Strip over the Christmas weekend. The “saucer” they reported on the evening of Dec. 23 boasted one red light and at least six white ones, and hovered for a full hour above the Sapphire Gentlemen s Club, behind a dusting of clouds.
Unidentified lights are shown over the Sapphire Gentlemen s Club sign just behind the Las Vegas Strip on Dec. 23, 2022. (Image: Twitter/Brett Feinstein)Brett Feinstein, a manager at Sapphire, tweeted: “There is a #ufo above Sapphire Las Vegas right now!” He accompanied the tweet with a video in which the narrator said: “What the hell is this? Honestly, honestly, this is really strange. I mean, we’re here every night and I’ve never seen anything like this.”
So What Was It?When you examine the video, it becomes obvious that there was no hovering. The lights remained perfectly stationary in the sky, prompting more science-minded social media users to search for a different answer.
On Christmas Eve, that answer arrived from author Mick West, whose 2018 book, Escaping the Rabbit Hole, investigates conspiracy theories from Flat Earth to the controlled 9/11 demolition to chemtrails.
Because of the cold snap across the country, ice crystals high in the clouds were acting as a giant floating mirror, reflecting the famous lights of Vegas back down to earth. Meteorologists call the phenomenon “light pillars.”
According to the National Weather Service web page: “Ice is very thin, shaped like plates with hexagonal faces. When ice drifts down through the air, it falls close to horizontally. At the top and bottom are the faces with more area. Ice is very reflective, so when light hits those wider faces, it bounces around and reflects off more ice crystals.
The light can come from the sun, moon, cities, street lights. Any strong light source, wrote the National Weather Service. The Las Vegas Strip certainly qualifies.
West took the time to create the map below, which superimposes onto the image of the alleged UFO s lights the Strip resorts from which each of the light pillars emanated from.
Not only do the colors in Mick West s map match with the major resorts on the north side of the Strip (Resorts World being the red light at the center) so do the shapes (Wynn and Encore being the crescents to the right of Resorts World). The outlying white light on the bottom left would be Palace Station, which is three miles from the Strip. (Image: Twitter/Mick West)While most of the replies thanked West for cracking the case, a few accused him of covering up the real truth.
Because of course they did.
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