re: Forensic Acoustic Ananlysis of 2nd Shooter in Vegas

Are any of the shots overlapping?

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It is safe to say I have been shot at a hell of lot more than you have and by multiple automatic weapons, before you decide something can not be, listen to the video, use your brain if you have one and THINK FOR YOURSELF

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Well I have never been shot at, nor did I watch the video. I have no experience whatsoever with any weapon other a basic rifle, and I'm terribly lacking in my understanding of physics.

So I'm about as ignorant as it comes regarding the specifics of this topic. But when asked to think for myself, all I needed to do is recall my first memories of exposure to scientific logic and experimentation in elementary school to know that this is a load of crap:

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he proved there are two shooters and explains there locations within specific yardage

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Unless used within the context of something like a "mathematical proof," one of the most fundamentally unscientific terms used to describe is science is "proof."

Science can't really "prove" anything, even when something has gone through the most comprehensive and stringent scientific research, controlling for every imaginable variable, testing every imaginable alternative, using every imaginable independent source of information and perspective, in an attempt to not only verify the theory, but most importantly falsify it. In fact, verification is not possible without falsification.

So we can even put aside the fact that this "proof" doesn't even pass the basic heuristic test of Occam's Razor. And we can put aside the fact that we don't even know if this basic cell phone audio is a reliable and valid instrument to use, or the fact that there are so many known and unknown variables that need to be accounted for even if we can use it.

The only "thinking for oneself" that is necessary in this case is to know that basic premise and process of the argument is fundamentally unscientific, so all of the scientific knowledge and application in the known world cannot overcome those fatal flaws.

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mysterious person would have to be on ground level.

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If you do not have time to watch the video, look at the last half, he has a layout of the area, with measurements and identifies the POSSIBLE locations, all elevated.

The video is very well done, worth you time, do I believe it, it is information

I saw this a couple of nights ago and there are a couple of glaring issues:

1-it assumes only a single caliber. As someone else pointed out, different calibers would cause differing delays.

2- Even if you assume only one caliber, the differences could potentially be explained by a few things:

a- different bullet weights (55 gr, 62 gr, 75 gr, etc)
b- different powder loads (.223 vs 5.56)...more powder, higher muzzle velocity for a given bullet weight
c- different barrel lengths, the longer the barrel the higher the muzzle velocity, and vice versa

I haven't done any of the math to see if the differing report signatures he shows fall into a variance that could be caused by any of the variables above, but it's at least a possibility.

Also the fact that it's cell phone video is irrelvant, the quality of the audio is not important as long as the wave form signatures of the reports can be picked out, and from what he's shown it seems as though they can.

ETA: Echos are another possible reason for the variance. To rule that out you'd have to be sure to isolate the "bursts" . Obviously if there are two strings of reports happening at once, the fist question should be whether one of those is the result of the sound reflecting off of nearby buildings. He didn't go into this so we don't know how, or if, he went about isolating the strings of gunfire to ensure he was comparing the correct muzzle report sound to the corresponding bullet impact.

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The cellphone issue is absolutely still relevant since you are talking about such minute delays and issues.

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Absolutely

Still a fascinating presentation

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I'm not saying anything negative about the video, everything the guy said is scientifically sound. I just don't like his conclusion

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That's the thing, is it scientifically sound? I consider myself a scientist, albeit my scientific work is far less of my life than I wish (and posting isn't helping). But I'm not a physicist. More importantly, my scientific education, training, and experience training does not have a close enough relation to physics, to even argue that I can make a basic determination about the scientific applications.

So it may appear to be sound, but it uses such a complex science that is hard for most to even understand at a rudimentary level, let alone have the knowledge and expertise to determine the validity of the applications used in the argument.

This is why logic and the scientific process are so important. I don't need to be a content expert to be immediately skeptical. Science shouldn't be more disproportionately more complex than the phenomenon it is studying, especially at the very first stages when formulating hypotheses.

Gravity is a complex phenomenon, but we didn't need genius scientists like Hooke, Newton, and Einstein and complex math and physics to formulate a hypothesis about its possible existence because it's something that is easily observable.

And the notion of a second shooter, with tens of thousands of possible observers, shouldn't need to begin with complex physics to formulate a hypothesis. There are a number of simpler ways that hypothesis should be formulated before getting to the science in the video (observations, associations with known shooter, trajectory of bullets, cell phone video, etc.).

So when the hypothesis begins at the complex science few could discredit, for something sp simple, one should immediately be skeptical and question why. But more importantly, whether the application is sound or not, one should question why a person would apply complex science but not use the basic scientific process and not draw scientific conclusions.

Thanks, well explained and written

Yep agreed. I'm just pointing out that simply dismissing the whole thing because it was shot from a cell phone isn't necessarily sound thinking.

Of course there is a certain minimum standard the audio would need to meet, and at this point I'm essentially giving the guy the benefit of the doubt based on what he has presented. It may well be the case that this is not warranted.

How can they not know at this point what rounds were used in this attack?

It's not like they don't have the dead bodies to pull bullets out of.

I'm not expecting some kind of blog with regular updates put out by whoever's investigating this, but if they don't have a shelf full of bullets extracted from the corpses at this point, they are doing it wrong.