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

  • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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)

    • eldoom@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • PetDinosaurs@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.