What are these things? I always see them in the sky

Provoked Gamer@lemmy.ca to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 69 points –

These shoot up or down from the sky and leave a trail of smoke. Are these meteors?

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Those are contrails caused by aircraft. Contrails come from one of two sources- either water vapor in the jet engine's exhaust (one of the products of combusting hyrdocarbons is water,) condensing into a stream of mini clouds.

The other source is caused by the flow of air over the surfaces of the plane. typically over the aerodynamic surfaces (though in the YF-23, it could have been caused by that valley between the engines,) What's happening here is there's water vapor in the humid air, and the dewpoint is such that, as the air flows around the wing- the air pressure changes, and if that pressure change is enough, it'll cause the humid air to momentarily drop below the dew point creating a stream of cloud.

If, any points to a contrail and says 'AH CHEM TRAIL' feel free to laugh at them. it's just water vapor that's been condensed into suspended water droplets.

(Re-Commenting, since my original comment got yeeted into the nether... sorry, this is in exact but it should at least have all the same information for posterity)

My brother has this completely redpilled friend. He's taken college level classes on aerodynamics and aerospace manufacturing (so have I). He's always pointing out the contrails and saying something about mind control or Bill Gates...

I always sarcastically ask him about what other medium would he expect them to be projecting the sky on. Gets him to shut up real quick. For an hour or so.... They really aren't that bright.

I've told one of them that if they really had a chemical that is undetectable and operates at such small doses, it would be much cheaper and easier just to have a few guys with a pickup truck dropping bags of it in the reservoirs.

Way easier to keep that under wraps than to deliver tons of it to all the world's airports and secretly load it onto all the planes.

I saw her wheels turning, but it didn't work.

There is another kind of trail left by planes that really are chemicals, though: Crop dusters.

Yeah. But that, like cloud seeding, isn’t what the conspiracy is about, and pretty self evident as they’re just above the crops they’re dusting.

We’ll add water drops for attacking wildfires on this list, too.

Although, technically…. Water is also a chemical…but let’s not confuse them.

The trails or the things leaving the trails? In either case I think they may be aircraft contrails, but I'm not sure going off the image alone.

Thanks! That’s probably what they are especially because I live somewhat near an airport which would explain why I see them so often.

I think that planes taking off from a nearby airport won't be that high.

I live ~20km away from it. It’s not like really close. Would they be far enough in the air for those to appear?

Yes, absolutely. Most passenger planes will still be in an accelerated climb at that range.

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Those are rasterizing lines, also called sketch lines, and they’re a common occurrence in the sky. Clouds can easily form in the air when water droplets, already chilled by the atmosphere, are slightly disturbed and ionized by turbulent friction. At about that height (it can be higher in some places), you get air passing quickly against the dome that projects the sky and stars. That friction can cause the water to condense, and lightly fall, obscuring the air and essentially making fog in the air, which is what a cloud is. What’s amazing about this process is that it is a naturally occurring effect, not regulated by the weather masters that control the sky projection and the air within it. Apparently there is no concern that we will see these imperfections, and know our secret rulers are also imperfect, and that knowledge means they can be taken down so that the common man can retake his destiny and rule this flat earth, using their weather machines not to create storms but to create a utopia where there is ample food, not tornadoes and hurricanes. We can even maintain these beautiful rasterizing lines to remind us of our conquest of these creatures and the rightful assent of man. Amen.

I used to think they were tornados when I was young.

I'm guessing the multiple deleted comments said "chemtrails" 😆 I certainly had the urge to post that (sarcastically? ironically? satirically?)

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