Would Aliens Look Like Us?

With so many potentially habitable exoplanets (as they are called), many believe that it is inevitable that life, even intelligent life, must have arisen on some of them.

But what would those life forms be like?

If we're to believe Hollywood, quite a lot like life here on Earth. From Star Trek to Star Wars to Valerian and beyond, most interplanetary science-fiction movies populate their worlds with lifeforms quite similar — in general appearance and biology — to what has evolved here on Planet Earth. Guardians of the Galaxy takes this approach to a new extreme, including Groot, a humanoid evolved from a botanical ancestor (perhaps explaining its limited vocabulary).

Yet, not all films agree. Last year's Arrival introduced hexapods, organisms with seemingly little affinity to any species here on the home planet.

So, what should we expect? An Avatar-like ecosystem full of species slightly different from those on Earth, or a world composed of unfamiliar organisms?

The great astronomer Carl Sagan was in Arrival's camp, proclaiming "extraterrestrials would be very different from us." Paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould expressed similar sentiments, but felt that there was no way to scientifically study the question other than finding life on another planet.

Yet not everyone agrees and, in recent years, the question of how predictable evolution is has become a topic of great scientific inquiry. Convergent evolution is the phenomenon of species independently evolving to be similar. Usually it results from the species adapting to similar situations, natural selection favoring the same solution to the same problem posed by the environment. Convergent evolution was known to Charles Darwin but, until relatively recently, we thought it was uncommon, a great example of the power of natural selection, but not commonplace. We now know, however, that convergence is far from rare; rather, it is pervasive, occurring all around us. Think, for example, of fast-swimming marine predators: dolphins, sharks, tuna and ichthyosaurs (extinct marine reptiles from the Age of the Dinosaurs) all evolved a very stream-lined body shape and powerful tails for rapid and efficient locomotion. Or consider Euphorbia plants from dry parts of Africa. Tough-skinned, often green, with spines instead of leaves, they look like cacti, but they're not — the Old- and New-World doppelgängers have independently evolved the same traits to cope with water loss and herbivores in arid regions.

The pervasiveness of convergence has led some evolutionary biologists to proclaim evolution deterministic, the outcome downright inevitable (see two books by Simon Conway Morris, Life's Solutions and The Runes of Evolution, and also Convergent Evolution by George McGhee). If the environment repeatedly poses the same challenges, and if natural selection repeatedly produces the optimal solutions, then evolution is repeatable. And, as a corollary, we can predict what life would be like on an Earth-like planet — pretty much the same as here. The argument can be taken one step further — the Homo sapiens species is supremely adapted to life on Earth, the adaptations we forged as we emerged on the savannahs of Africa proving a brilliant stepping-stone to global dominance. Consequently, if evolution is so deterministic, the expectation for life on planets like our own is clear: Humanoid life forms should evolve and dominate, just like here. Hollywood has it right.

Unfortunately, there's a problem with this argument. Although the list of examples of convergence is impressive, it wouldn't be hard to make an equally impressive list of non-convergence. Off the top of my head, here are some evolutionary singletons, types of animals that have evolved just once, without a close match: sauropod dinosaurs, like Brontosaurus (Dinosaur purists may note that the name Brontosauruswas long ago discarded, replaced for quirky scientific reasons with Apatosaurus. To those killjoy know-it-alls I respond, "Haha! Thanks to new scientific discoveries, the name Brontosaurus was resurrected in 2015."); elephants; the kiwi; sloths; and the world's greatest animal, the duck-billed platypus. Each of these types of animals has evolved a single time, with no close evolutionary match, now or ever (True: Sauropods and elephants are similar in being huge, lumbering herbivores — but I'm focused on much more similar evolutionary matches).

If evolution is so deterministic, its outcome so predictable, it's hard to understand why there are no matches for these evolutionary singletons. Streams like the ones platypuses inhabit are found on every continent except Antarctica, yet the duckbill hails only from Down Under. Suitable tropical tree branches occur around the world, but sloths only evolved in South America. Why sauropods in the Mesozoic and not today?

The reason is simple: There are actually multiple different ways to solve a problem posed by the environment. Consider the woodpecker and the aye-aye, two completely different animals that live a similar lifestyle, tapping on wood to detect the tunnels of wood-eating grubs, chiseling into the wood to get to the tunnels, then extracting the grubs. But the species have evolved completely different tools to do so, the bird a tough beak, an extremely long tongue covered in prickles, and a skull reinforced against concussions to withstand the repeated jackhammering. The aye-aye, on the other hand, has a long skeletal finger that can twist in any direction and protruding incisors to do the excavating.

We don't need to find life on other planets to test the convergence hypothesis. All we have to do is go to New Zealand, an island on which life has diversified in the absence of terrestrial mammals. If the outcome of natural selection is deterministic, then a world dominated by birds would look pretty much like life elsewhere on the planet. But of course, it doesn't. The kiwi may live a lifestyle similar to a badger, but it doesn't look at all like one. The dominant herbivore is, or was, a ten-foot tall bird (the moa), quite different from deer or bison. Throw in flightless parrots, carnivorous parrots, bats that forage by walking around in the leaf-litter and many more, and we can throw the convergence hypothesis out the window. New Zealand is a distinct evolutionary world, the evolutionary outcome unique.

The question is no longer whether convergence or lack of convergence is common: We know now that both are. Rather, scientists are interested in understanding why convergence occurs in some cases, and not others. It's still early days, but one conclusion is clear: Closely-related species (or populations of the same species) tend to adapt in the same way, not surprisingly because they start out so similar in so many ways — natural selection is likely to modify them in similar ways. By contrast, distantly-related species, initially different in so many attributes, are much more likely to find different ways to adapt to the same situation. Think about the difference between birds and mammals: The former have beaks, the latter teeth and fingers. It's not surprising that woodpeckers and aye-ayes found different ways to solve the same problem.

Of course, life couldn't be more distantly related than if it occurred on another planet. With all the differences that such life forms must exhibit, natural selection (if it occurred — who's to say that evolutionary processes would be the same?) might very well sculpt well-adapted species, but they wouldn't look at all like us and our earthly compatriots. The aye-aye and the kiwi tell us that. And that means that the minority opinion in Hollywood is almost surely correct.

If you want to think about what extraterrestrial life might be like, watch Arrival, not Avatar or Guardians of the Galaxy.

---

Jonathan Losos is a professor of organismic and evolutionary biology and curator of herpetology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. His research concerns the origin and maintenance of biological diversity. His latest book, Improbable Destinies: Fate, Chance and the Future of Evolution was published in Aug. 2017. You can follow him on Twitter: @jlosos. 

Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

04-10-2017 om 21:10 geschreven door peter  

Biomarker for life found in space for the first time – and that's bad news

Michael Irving

The European Space Agency (ESA) has some good news and bad news for extraterrestrial enthusiasts. The good news is that a molecule thought to be a biomarker for life has been found for the first time in abundance in a comet and around a young star. The bad news is that the find indicates that the molecule isn't the clear indicator of life that it was once believed to be.

Since we can't exactly spot microscopic lifeforms from afar, astronomers have adopted other ways to measure a particular planet's likelihood of housing alien life. Traces of certain compounds left by organic processes, often called biomarkers, can be sifted out of soil or water samples by rovers, or detected in the atmosphere by telescopes and orbiters.

Methyl chloride is fairly common here on Earth, belonging to a class of molecules known as organohalogens. These organic compounds are made up of carbon bonded to at least one halogen – fluorine, chlorine, bromine or iodine – and are produced mostly through biological processes. In theory, that means that any celestial body where we detect an abundance of these is a good place to look for life.

Recently, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope in Chile found methyl chloride around a young binary star known as IRAS 16293-2422, about 400 light-years away in a star-forming region of space called Rho Ophiuchi. This marks the first time any organohalogen has been spotted in space, but rather than give hope that life exists in that system, the discovery instead throws doubt on methyl chloride's reliability as a biomarker.

The presence of these organic compounds around such a young star suggests they may arise during the planet-forming phase of a system. To get a better understanding of how the molecules may form, the researchers turned their attention to a comet, which acts as time capsules from the birth of a star, preserving the chemical composition of the cloud of material stars arise from.

In this case, the team zeroed in on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, which was visited by the ESA's Rosetta mission between 2014 and 2016. By sifting through the data collected by the spacecraft, the team found an abundance of methyl chloride in the comet, lending further weight to the idea that the compound arises during the planet-forming phase. In particular, the signals were strongest in measurements made in May 2015, when the comet was approaching the Sun and was giving off a lot of hydrogen chloride.

"We found it but it is very elusive, one of the 'chameleons' of our molecule zoo, only present during short times when we observed a lot of chlorine," says Kathrin Altwegg, principal investigator of the project.

The find may be disappointing for those hoping to find life in the cosmos, but it doesn't mean the search is off: rather, it's just a little more complicated than previously thought.

Source: ESA

{ http://newatlas.com/ }

04-10-2017 om 20:59 geschreven door peter  

Update on former deputy sheriff’s Roswell UFO sighting claims

Posted by: Philip Mantle  

By Irena Scott PhD & Philip Mantle

Philip Mantle and I released the testimony of a new Roswell witness, the late Deputy Sheriff Charles Forgus, in the new book, UFOs TODAY, 70 Years of Lies, Misinformation and Government Cover-Up, in June 2017. Deputy Forgus thought that he had witnessed the UFO crash at Roswell in 1947. He had been the Deputy Sheriff in Big Springs, Texas, after serving in the military during WWII.

He was en-route to Roswell with the Sheriff to pick up a prisoner. When they approached the Roswell area, they heard about the crash on the police radio and were able to find the roads to this area. When they arrived, they observed the recovery of a 100-foot diameter round craft and four strange-looking dead bodies before being told to leave the area by the military. This testimony was given to a US private investigator by the name of Deanna Short in 1999. Unfortunately, she has also passed away. There is a video interview of Deputy Forgus where he details these events which runs for approximately 16 minutes.

Charles Forgus with his wife.

(Credit: Irena Scott/Philip Mantle)

Thus, the crash might have happened in 1947, which was the time that Deputy Forgus recalled that it was.

Glen said that Charles was very straight arrow and not impressed by false knowledge. He was a no-nonsense type of person, having been in law enforcement. He had been a police officer and in the military. Glen looked up to his father as a John Wayne kind of hero. During the war, Charles was in the army but on loan to the Navy and was a deep-sea diver. Charles and his crew would dive down and weld patches on the sunken ships so they could refloat them and get them out of the harbour. When MacArthur made his reappearance to the Philippians, there had been a lot of fighting and there were a lot of ships sunk in the harbour. One of the ships settled on a reef, and the wave action would rock it. The ship slipped off the reef, squashed him in the mud, and it took three days to get him out.

Forgus’ Army discharge papers.

One main thing Glen emphasized was that his father was very honest and ethical. He was definitely not the kind of person who would make up a lie. Glen gave the same impression–he was very knowledgeable about current news and events and very civic minded. He had an electric car and powered it using a wind turbine power generator.

Thus the possibility exists that Deputy Charles Forgus did see the crash in the time frame that he reported. Charles had said that neither he nor the person he was with talked about it much, and this was likely because no one had heard of UFOs or Roswell at that time, which might help to further date the event. In addition, he did not recognize the uniforms of the attendant soldiers as Air Force, which did not did not become a separate military service until September 1947.

Artist’s impression of the Roswell UFO crash.

(Credit: Flying Disk Press)

When we released the original information regarding the late Deputy Charles Forgus we were criticised far and wide despite the fact that we also pointed out the number of discrepancies in the testimony on tape. One well-known Roswell researcher simply labelled the testimony from Deputy Forgus as a lie. Now, we have information from a nephew and the son of this witness the latter of whom supports his late fathers story. Do doubt we will still be criticized but I think it is fair to say that we have now been vindicated in releasing this information and to continue to look for more.

About the authors:

Dr. Irena Scott received her PhD from the University of Missouri in physiology, did post-doctoral research at Cornell University, has been an Assistant Professor at St. Bonaventure University, and has done research and teaching at The Ohio State University, the University of Missouri, the University of Nevada, and at Battelle Memorial Institute. She worked for the Defence Intelligence Agency and the Aerospace Center in satellite photography, was a volunteer astronomer at the Ohio State University Radio Observatory, and has taken flying lessons. Her publications include books, and works in scientific journals, magazines, newspapers, and she was a correspondent for Popular Mechanics magazine. She served on the MUFON Board of Directors (1993 to 2000), is a MUFON consultant in physiology and astronomy and a field investigator. She co-edited eight symposium proceedings, has been a State Section Director for Ohio MUFON, was a founding member of the Mid-Ohio Research Associates (MORA) and its journal editor, and has published UFO material in books and journals (including scientific journals).

Philip Mantle is the former Director of Investigations for the British UFO Research Association and is the founder of FLYING DISK PRESS. He can be contacted at FLYING DISK PRESS: FlyingDiskPress.blogspot.co.uk.

UFOs TODAY – 70 Years of Lies, Misinformation and Government Cover-Ups by Irena Scott PhD is out now on Amazon.

{ http://www.openminds.tv/ }

04-10-2017 om 20:49 geschreven door peter  

'ALIEN ORB' HOVERS WAY OUT OVER PACIFIC

Despite strong fog, you can clearly see a bright object on the horizon above the Pacific. It's not moving, so it won't be a plane. It is probably not a helicopter either, because it doesn't blink and remains stationary. Does anyone have any idea what it might be?

{ http://www.disclose.tv/ }

04-10-2017 om 20:36 geschreven door peter  

STRANGE SKY OVER ITALY, SEPTEMBER 2017

Mysterious globes moving forward and backward or from right to left. It all lasted for a couple of minutes, perhaps even less.

It's hard to believe that they could be flashlights, perhaps lit from some slope, and it's hard to believe that they could be electric torches.

It is hard to believe that they could be aircraft lights. The fact is that they disappeared suddenly, as they appeared. Initially three globes, then two and finally a single light.

{ http://www.disclose.tv/ }

04-10-2017 om 20:33 geschreven door peter  

RUSSIA FILMS SPACEWALK IN 360 HD FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THE UNIVERSE

Russia has released the first-ever 360-degree video shot by a human in outer space.

The footage puts you in the shoes of two Russian cosmonauts outside the International Space Station (ISS).

This awe-inspiring video was created in collaboration with the Russian space agency and RSC Energia.

Still, believe in flat earth?

{ http://www.disclose.tv/ }

04-10-2017 om 20:30 geschreven door peter  

Bright Orb over the Pacific disappears at the moment an incoming object hits the ocean

An unknown large bright orb was recorded hovering over the Pacific Ocean near Newport, Oregon on October 3, 2017.The object not seeming to move for nearly 4 minutes before it just disappeared.

As MrMBB333 talks only about the bright orb he probably missed a second object with a smoke trail that looks like a missile or meteorite coming in from the right side of screen, right going towards the orb. Then the orb disappears at the exact moment the incoming object hits the ocean.

Image left: Bright Orb - Image right: Incoming Object.

While some people suggest that the bright orb is the light on the mast of a vessel it does not explain the incoming object and the sudden disappearance of the orb at the exact moment the incoming object falling into the ocean. Just a coincidence or is it connected to each other?

  

{ http://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/ }

04-10-2017 om 20:21 geschreven door peter  

Alien life on Mars? Scientists in shock admission about Red Planet

This artist's concept depicts the early Martian environment (right) - believed to contain liquid water and a thicker atmosphere - versus the cold, dry environment seen at Mars today (left).

MARS once had a wet climate with lakes which may have held life, scientists have revealed.

By Douglas Patient

The Red Planet was covered by huge bodies of water within the last three billion years.

This has puzzled experts because the planet ought to have been largely cold and dry.

Now computer simulations suggest ancient Mars was warmed by powerful bursts of methane trapped in its subsurface.

It sheds light on how an otherwise freezing planet could have had episodes of wetness.

And it could help in the search for life on planets outside the solar system.

Professor Edwin Kite, of Chicago University, used complex mathematical equations to work out the new theory.

He said the shifts in the tilt of the planet's axis caused its ice cover to shrink and methane to release.

Ice then melted to produce lakes which stayed for millions of years – time for life to flourish.

Prof Kite added: "Using numerical simulations we found outgassed methane can build up to atmospheric levels sufficient for lake-forming climates if it initially occupies more than 4% of the total volume in which it is thermodynamically stable.

"Such occupancy fractions are consistent with methane production by water-rock reactions due to hydrothermal circulation on early Mars."

"We further estimate photo-chemical destruction of atmospheric methane curtails the duration of individual lake-forming climates to less than a million years – consistent with observations," he continued.

"We conclude methane bursts represent a potential pathway for intermittent excursions to a warm, wet climate state on early Mars."

The study published in Nature Geoscience adds to evidence Mars is the one planetary environment – outside Earth – where scientists can say with confidence there were periods where life could have emerged.

{ http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news }

04-10-2017 om 18:13 geschreven door peter  

Shag Harbour gets visitors from all over who come to see where an alleged unidentified flying object went in the water back in 1967. 
Photo Credit: shagharbourincident.wordpress.com/museum

Canada history: Oct 4 1967: the enduring Shag Harbour mystery

By Marc Montgomery | english@rcinet.ca

It was 50 years ago today that very strange things were seen in the skies over Canada’s east coast province of Nova Scotia.

Canadians across the country report lots of strange things in the skies every year, many classed as UFO’s. The incident that occurred in the tiny fishing hamlet of Shag Harbour, however is among the best documented and with a variety of credible witnesses.

The events may have started around 7:15 pm on a scheduled passenger jet outward bound from Halifax as it flew at 3600 metres over eastern Quebec. The pilot and copilot saw a very strange object flying beside them a few miles away. A few minutes later there was what appeared to be two explosions around the brightly lit craft, the second fading to a blue cloud around the object.

Several other reports that evening from Halifax, Mahone Bay, and fishermen offshore reported a variety of strange objects in the sky.

Then just after 11 pm several people around Shag Harbour including police, reported a large low flying object with flashing lights whoosh over the town and hit the water about 300 metres off shore. It floated awhile as a group onshore watched the “orange ball” bobbing in the waves,  and then slipped beneath the surface.

At first emergency services were called as people thought it was a plane crash of some kind.

Rescue boats came quickly but no wreckage was found and no bodies. Navy divers were later called in but say no evidence was found on the sea floor.

Some don’t believe that, and one UFO investigator claims to have found evidence the Navy traced the UFO to a secret US naval base on the Nova Scotia coast about 25 kilometres away.

Still, 50 years later the well-documented sighting remains a complete mystery.  It has benefitted the hamlet of Shag Harbour though, as it has become a bit of a tourist attraction and a UFO festival is being held there on this 50^th anniversary.

additional information- sources

• Municipality of Barrington: Shag Harbour Incident
• Canadian Press (via CTV): M MacDonald: Sep 21/17: 50 years, best documented UFO sighting
• CBC:M Gorman: Sep 30/17: UFO festival

{ http://www.rcinet.ca/en/ }

04-10-2017 om 17:54 geschreven door peter  

Many Unidentified “Airship Incidents” Occurred in 1907, Tennessee

Theo Paijmans, an infrequent visitor and critic to this blog – one of my favorite human beings – has contributed much to the UFO literature and I found several inserts inside Albert S. Rosales’ Humanoid Encounters: The Others Amongst Us 1900-1929, one in his series of Humanoid Encounters books, which I encourage you to buy and read (Amazon).

Starting on page 60 Theo recounts four airship (balloon) sightings from 1907 cited as The Tennessee Aeronaut Flap of 1907 derived from area newspapers

The accounts, all from different dates in April of 1907, tell of witnesses, in several communities, observing craft that looked like airship balloons with gondolas from which debarked parties of “queer-looking persons [women and men] in strange garb” that gathered around local springs (and in one instance, a well) to seemingly pray.

(In the well incident, one of the party members thrust a wand into the well from which oil was extracted. The wand was then stuck into the ground and became enflamed.)

The “praying” balloon passengers mostly spoke in German and left, saying such things as “Be healthy and pray.”

What are we to make of such reports?

These aren’t instances of mass hysteria – the communities involved are not interconnected except as members of the state (Tennessee).

The stories were presented by newspapers as actual journalistic news items apparently.

What does Theo attribute the accounts to? Are they fictive? Or actual, as related by the press?

The stories came about eleven years after the so-called Airship sightings, elsewhere, in 1896.

The reports intrigue, certainly if true as related and even if they are imaginary tales promulgated for other reasons: mercenary, prankish, space-fillers, et cetera.

RR
UFO Conjectures

{ http://bendedreality.com/ }

04-10-2017 om 17:42 geschreven door peter  

9 Creepy Things People Have Said After Allegedly Being Abducted By Aliens

Pawel86/Pixabay

I’ll be honest: A lot of the time, I listen to the things people say after allegedly being abducted by aliens, and I think, “Yeah, right.” To me, the stories are just so outlandish — and with so little hard evidence to back them up — that I have a hard time believing them. That said, though, the stories often are chilling to read or listen to… and who knows? Maybe I’m a skeptic purely because I’ve never seen anything myself that suggests that aliens might be among us. I might be wrong, of course. Anything is possible.

Solid data on exactly how many people believe in aliens is a little tough to come by; the most recent reputable survey I’ve found is a Gallup poll from 2005which found that 24 percent of Americans believe “that extra-terrestrial beings have visited Earth at some time in the past.” (For the curious, another 24 percent do not believe it, while 51 percent remain undecided.) A YouGov poll from 2015 found that among Americans, 54 percent do believe in extra-terrestrial intelligent life; however, although YouGov believe their polls are some of the most accurate out there, the market research company has also been criticized for not being representative of the population as a whole as well. So, y’know, do with that what you will.

In any event, though, it’s certainly possible to believe in the possibility of alien life without necessarily believing in alien abductions — but for what it’s worth, although I’m a skeptic, I also don’t think the proliferation of alleged alien abduction stories is as simple as people just making stuff up. I don’t doubt that in the wide majority of cases, people believe they experienced something; however, I think there are loads of other reasonable, rational, earthly explanations for these kinds of incidents we should try to rule out before entertaining the idea that it’s aliens.

Either way, though, it’s true that the universe is such a vast place that it seems unlikely that there’s no intelligent life in it other than ourselves. Surely there’s got to be something out there beyond our solar system, right? These folks definitely believe there is — and according to their accounts, it’s closer to us than some of us might like to think.

1. “My Body Remembered, But My Mind Did Not”

Screenshot/AskReddit

This story popped up in an AskReddit thread from earlier in 2017 asking folks who believe they’ve been abducted what their experiences were like. There are other explanations for losing time like this, of course (like, for example, a dissociative fugue state) — and, indeed, as u/Pun-Chi notes, they’ve mostly just joked about this experience having been an alleged alien abduction — but even so, this story is still unsettling.  

2. “I Started Having These Visions Of Who I REALLY Am”

Near Death Experiment on YouTube

The video here features an 11-minute long interview with a woman named Elizabeth April, who is a frequent speaker at conferences for alien enthusiasts and UFO believers. In the interview (starting at about the 3:40 mark), she tells her alleged abduction story: When she was 18, she went on a 10-day meditation retreat and woke up one night to find a huge, white head hovering above her. Several of the beings that had these huge, white heads — what she calls “Tall Whites,” a species of aliens she claims are about eight and a half feet tall, very skinny, and paper white in color — took her out of her bed and out of her room, she says, at which point they “shot [her] up to their ship.”

While she was up there, she claims they implanted something in her ear with a metal machine — and after the experience, she says, “A whole world of everything new opened up for me.” She continues, “As invasive as that was, and the fact that they put this implant in my ear — regardless of all of that, it still opened me up to the possibilities. It was in my pre-destined contracts to be abducted at that time at that age by that species.”

This, she says, is when she learned that she has ET genetics in her—that she’s basically an alien-human hybrid. “After that,” she went on, “I started getting very vivid flashbacks into other lifetimes where I lived, not as a Tall White, but as other ET species. And I lived through these lifetimes, and after being abducted, I started having this recall, these flashes, these visions of who I really am, not just who I am here and now.”

Sarah Hagi wrote a fascinating piece about attending the Alien Cosmic Expo for Vice earlier this year, where April was speaking — head over there for more.

3. “It Had A Sense Of Humor”

Screenshot/AskReddit

In the third episode of The X-Files — “Squeeze,” which originally aired on Sept. 24, 1993 —  Mulder corrects a fellow agent who asks whether he thinks their current case is “the work of little green men.” “Grey,” says Mulder. “You said green men. A Reticulan’s skin tone is actually grey.” Indeed, Greys, as they’re called, are closely associated with the Roswell incident, as well as with the Betty and Barney Hill abduction. (More on that one in a bit.)

This is all stuff I knew before reading this story, which came from that same 2017 AskReddit thread I referred to earlier. What I did not know is that Greys apparently have a sense of humor. Or at least, these Greys did.

4. “It Turned Out I Had Been Gone For Three Days”

Giphy

In 2016, Vice France spoke to a bunch of people who claimed they had been abducted by aliens and asked them to draw pictures of what they experienced. One guy, Stephane, described something that had happened to him in 2010 when he was on his way home from working the night shift at the hospital that employed him.

“At about 4 a.m. I drove up to the security gate to go home, when a flash of light blinded me,” he said. “In a split second, I found myself in another place — I was on a mountain, and there was a lake at its foot. Suddenly a huge space ship appeared in the sky, while an even brighter light began to emanate from the ground. That's all I remember.”

And then it got even weirder: “The next thing I know, I am back behind the wheel of my car, passing the security gate,” Stephane told Vice France. “When I got out, I was approached by police who said they had been looking for me. It turned out I had been gone for three days. I have no idea what happened.”

He doesn’t think he saw any aliens, but he did end up with some weird marks on his right hand. There were three of them; they made up a triangle. He said they felt “like a burn that wouldn’t heal” — and that ever since this experience, he feels like he’s being watched at all times.

(There are a lot of super interesting stories in the full Vice piece, by the way— including one from a young woman who broke up with her boyfriend after he wouldn't wake up during her experience. And, I mean, to be fair, "Failed to help prevent my alleged alien abduction" sounds like a legit reason to break up with someone. Head on over there for more.)

5. “YOU CAN’T UNDERSTAND”

Screenshot/AskReddit

The AskReddit thread this story appeared in had only a few comments; indeed, this submission makes up the bulk of the thread. It’s long — this is just an excerpt — so head on over to Ask Reddit to read the whole thing. Suffice it to say that the alleged aliens in this one did not appear to come in peace.

6. “I Knew Something Was Terribly Wrong With My Body"

FindingUFO on YouTube

This interview with Travis Walton — whose story is both one of the most infamous and frequently contested alleged alien abduction cases — is from 2014. Walton was working as a lumberjack in Arizona’s Sitegreaves National Forest in 1975 when he and six coworkers allegedly witnessed a flying saucer descend upon them. Walton said that when he approached it, he was knocked to the ground by a beam of light emanating from the saucer and woke up in a room that looked like some sort of a hospital environment. He was found by the highway five days later.

Still, though, he’s stuck to his guns — and according to him, his alleged experience was incredibly painful. Says Walton in the 2014 interview, “I didn’t know where I was; I didn’t realize the danger and the fearful situation I was in at that point; but I knew something was terribly wrong with my body, especially my inability to get enough oxygen. This feeling of suffocation generated a panic in me that, even through the haze of pain and semi-consciousness, still added to this desperate feeling. Added to that was the feeling that I couldn’t move.” Yikes.

For more, check out the first interview Walton ever gave about the whole thing here. It's... really somethin' else.

7. “I Would Often Ask My Parents Where My ‘Other Parents’ Were”

Screenshot/Reddit

The r/Abductions subreddit allows Redditors to share and discuss alleged alien abduction experiences. In this account from the sub dated to about a year ago, Redditor u/MaddyMania recalled a number of odd experiences they had when they were very small — including a number of times when they asked their parents where their “other parents” were. What made u/MaddyMania start thinking that maybe what was going on could be extraterrestrial in nature was the appearance of a location they call “the blue room.” Check out the full story here.

8. “I’ve Got To Get Away! Oh! Oh!”

Giphy

Betty and Barney Hill are often credited with making the first publicized account of an alleged alien abduction experience. In 1961, the husband and wife duo were driving on a highway in New Hampshire when they had what they said was a pretty terrifying-sounding encounter with a UFO. Both Betty and Barney underwent hypnosis several times in an effort to unearth what they believed were lost memories; they got very emotional at various points during these hypnosis sessions, including the moment in which Barney began to panic, yelling, “Run! God, give me strength! I've got to get away! Oh! Oh!”

You can listen to Barney’s hypnosis sessions here, although consider yourselves warned — it can get pretty upsetting to hear.

9. “I Couldn’t Move”

In 1973, Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker were fishing in the Pascagoula River in Mississippi when they claimed they encountered a UFO. They described hearing a whirring or whizzing sound, saw flashing blue lights, and witnessed a huge oval object arrive. They said they were taken aboard the oval by three “creatures” and examined before being released.

One of the many times Hickson and Parker recounted their story was in a 1987 article in the Gadsden Times. Said Hickson, “I couldn’t move. I don’t know if it’s because I was so frightened, or what.” Neither of the men could tell how long the “examination” lasted — but eventually they would up back at the river’s edge. Hickson died in 2011, although Parker said in 2013 that the whole incident “turned his life upside down.”

Are aliens real? That's still up for debate. But it's not stopping these stories from being plenty creepy all on their own.

{ https://www.bustle.com/ }

04-10-2017 om 17:35 geschreven door peter  

Australian Family Suffer Bizarre Shared Delusion

Robert Bartholomew Ph.D.

Reports of mysterious assailants who terrorize small groups before melting into the night without a trace, often leave authorities scratching their heads, and the public bewildered.  These rare events recently made headlines in Australia, and for several days, captivated the nation.  The strange saga began on Monday August 29th, 2016, when the Tromp family of the Melbourne suburb of Silvan, fled their red currant farm and embarked on a frantic trip over hundreds of miles in a desperate effort to evade evil forces who they believed were trying to kill them.  It would be five days before all five family members would be accounted for.  At that point, Mrs. Tromp (Jacoba) and her daughter Riana, 29, had been hospitalized for severe stress, and 22 year-old Ella was charged with stealing a car.  It was reported that the family had ditched their technology, left their credit cards behind and taken a bundle of cash with them, in a scene that resembled a Hollywood movie.  Some media outlets have speculated that the Tromps may have been suffering from a collective mental disorder and New South Wales police were worried that they may have been experiencing some type of group delusional schizophrenia.  However, there is a very real possibility that the Tromps had simply scared themselves.     

From time to time, bizarre news stories appear about a chase or siege involving a family or close-knit group who claim to have been attacked by mysterious assailants whose existence cannot be verified.  Upon closer investigation, authorities can find no evidence to confirm their story.  Incidents often give rise to speculation that the event was a hoax, that those involved were on drugs, or mentally disturbed.  I have collected about 30 such cases of what I term “small group panics.”  Most episodes involve normal, healthy people who, as a result of a series of unusual events, grow paranoid and literally scare themselves after growing convinced that their lives are in imminent danger. 

During episodes, members become distressed and emotionally unstable, often as a result of prolonged fear, fatigue and lack of sleep.  These factors enhance suggestibility and inhibit their powers of critical thinking.  Within this atmosphere of fear, members begin to redefine everyday objects and events in a new light.  It is within this context that a car backfiring, may be perceived as a gunshot, or rustling in the bushes is mistaken for a monster or hostile gang member.

Most cases begin in an isolated environment, under the cover of darkness.  The principal witness – the first to draw attention to the threat, or to panic – almost always holds an influential social position.  In each case, a false consensus emerges that the group is under attack, after which a variety of ambiguous stimuli are redefined within popular cultural labels such as space aliens, Yowies or drug dealers.  Let’s examine some examples of small group panics from the United States and Australia.  

The Kentucky Space Goblins

On the evening of 21 August 1955, a farm family in the state of Kentucky, made international headlines after claiming to have been terrorized by beings from outer space.  Members of the Sutton family, comprised of seven adults and three children, were living in the rural, isolated hamlet of Hopkinsville.  The episode began at about 7 o’clock, during a visit by their landlord William Taylor, who claimed to have spotted a glowing saucer-shaped object land in a gully near the farmhouse.  Family members were incredulous and thought that Taylor had overreacted to seeing a 'falling star.'  Soon the two men spotted a three and a half foot-tall creature outside the house.  They said it had a huge head, extended arms and large ears.  The pair panicked, retreated into the house, grabbed their guns and began firing.  Over the next three and a half hours, various family members claim to have glimpsed several creatures either on or near the house, sometimes peering through windows.  The occupants responded with intermittent bursts of gunfire.  

The Sutton’s didn't have a phone, so at about 11 o'clock, they dashed from the house, piled into two cars and raced to the nearest police station to summon help.  Police swarmed on the farmhouse but found nothing unusual.  Not long after the last officer left at 2:15 am, the family’s mother claimed to have seen a creature peering into a window and alerted the others.  More sightings and sporadic gunfire continued for the next three hours until sunrise.  At some point during the ordeal, everyone in the house said they had spotted at least one creature.  Again police rushed to the house but found no evidence of space aliens – only a terrified family and a house riddled with bullet holes. 

Former police detective Joe Nickell later visited the house, interviewed family members, and concluded that they had seen Great Horned Owls.  These creatures stand about 3 and a half feet high, become active at dusk, and are known to be aggressive in defending their nests.  They have big heads, large eyes and long ear tufts.  After the owls were scared off by the gunfire, fatigue and imagination appears to have taken over and the terrified occupants were soon firing at shadows and rustling in the bushes. 

Phantom Drug Siege in Michigan

Between 7 and 8 November 1978, a phantom drug siege took place at a house place near Lowell, Michigan.  The first man, ‘Masters,’ was 24 and suspected of being a drug dealer.  His companion, ‘Cordell,’ was 29.  The pair gradually grew suspicious after a series of mundane events.  Each new event fostered more anxiety and snowballing suspicions.  On the afternoon of the 7th, great significance was given to the finding of a bubble gum wrapper on the roof, the other half near a wood pile.  They also grew certain that people were lurking about the house, peering through the windows.

Near dusk, they thought they may have spotted a ‘kid’ in camouflage gear.  Cordell chased after the figure but to no avail.  Then he shouted a warning to “the people he felt were hiding but could not see that if the nonsense did not stop somebody was going to get shot.”  A short time later they thought they could hear people near a back door.  At this point events quickly spiraled out of control as Cordell fired a warning shot to scare away the people he thought were there.  Fearful that they might be under siege, Masters telephoned a friend and asked him to bring over a variety of weapons.  Soon, a 23-year-old friend, ‘Hamby,’ joined them. The trio kept a watchful eye on the house until about 1:30 am when Cordell and Masters thought they saw shadowy figures near the house and they fired off some 10 shots. Meanwhile, Hamby was adamant that he saw and heard no one.

Over the next three and a half hours, the trio said they heard more noises and distant figures. Then, near dusk, and in a state of physical and emotional exhaustion, the men began firing indiscriminately. Cordell was sure he saw someone hanging in a window and that he shot the figure but later no body or blood were found.  Harvard-trained sociologist Ron Westrum interviewed the men and later wrote:  “Hamby fired a .44 magnum through a refrigerator – I saw the hole myself – at a person in the kitchen, whom he heard slam against the sink, fall on the floor, and make gurgling noises, as if critically wounded. ...All three were extremely scared; Masters to the point where he was re-loading spent cartridges into the revolver.”  Near sunrise, the men phoned the Sheriff’s Department, showing how desperate they had become as one of them was on parole.  

One of the men was so anxious to get the attention of a passing police car that he fired a shotgun – inadvertently striking the windshield!  He was charged with attempted murder, but it was later reduced to misuse of a firearm.  Police conducted a thorough investigation of the scene and found no evidence of any intruders, only a bullet-ridden home littered with empty shell cartridges.

The Nullarbor Plain Incident

On 19 January 1988, Faye Knowles of Perth, Australis, decided to drive her Ford Telstar across the continent to stay with relatives in Melbourne.  Accompanying her were three sons: Wayne, Sean and Patrick, ranging in age from 18 to 24.  The group had been traveling virtually non-stop for 13-hours when Traveling virtually non-stop for 13-hours when something bizarre happened near the tiny outpost of Mundrabilla in the Nullarbor Desert. 

Near dawn and with the rest of his family asleep, Sean noticed a mysterious light in the distance and became convinced it was a ‘spaceship.’  After alerting the others, Sean became terrified that the object was pursuing them.  He floored the accelerator and the car began roaring down the remote stretch of highway at about 200 kph, generating fear and confusion among his groggy passengers. 

The group later told police that a beam raised the vehicle into the air, then dropped it, causing the tire to burst and the car to become disabled on the roadway.  They also said that a loud thud could be heard on the roof, and an eerie grey mist filled the car.  Meantime, a foul smell foul odor permeated the vehicle.  The nervous occupants changed the tire and drove on to Mundrabilla. Two truck drivers who encountered the family there said they were visibly upset.  One of the truckers said that the Knowles car was laden with a strange black ash.  They reached South Australia, where police interviewed the family who by now were making global headlines after claiming that their car had been picked up by a ‘UFO.’  South Australian police inspected the car and found only typical road grime. An investigation of the car was conducted by the Australian Mineral Development Laboratory which analyzed the ash and found particles of clay and salt, consistent with what one should expect to find in a vehicle that had recently crossed the sand-laden Nullarbor Plains near the Great Southern Ocean. 

As for the strange aerial light that appeared to follow the car, weather records reveal that at the time of the incident, there had been a temperature inversion in the area.  Former South Australian meteorologist Allan Brunt later observed that such events in the region are notorious for refracting light and distorting sizes, shapes and colors of objects.  Brunt believes that the Knowles family saw the distorted image of the headlights of a truck in the distance, which appeared to them as a UFO.

Given the lack of corroborating physical evidence, and the frightened state of the occupants, it appears that family members, fatigued from a long trip, under the cover of darkness while traveling on an unfamiliar road, mistook an anomalous light for an extraterrestrial space craft that they believed was pursuing them.  It is also notable that based on interviews with the family, they were all in an extremely emotional state, “shouting and crying.” Mrs Knowles even said she thought they were going to die.

Further Study Needed

When viewed from afar, small group panics may appear to be a sign of mental disturbance.  Yet, they are perhaps best understood through the lens of the famous Thomas Theorem.  In the 1920s, American sociologist William Isaac Thomas devised a maxim that is often quoted to this day.  He wrote that “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.”  Put simply, if you believe that you were being chased by drug dealers or space aliens, in a sense, you really were, because you behave as if you were. 

In the absence of any clear evidence of mental disorder among the Tromp family, I am inclined to believe that the most likely explanation for their behavior, is that after a series of unfortunate events, combined with stress and fatigue, they had simply scared themselves.   

{ https://www.psychologytoday.com/ }

04-10-2017 om 17:15 geschreven door peter  

A UFO ATTACKED A CAR WITH A FAMILY OF AUSTRALIANS

04-10-2017 om 16:59 geschreven door peter  

1943 — The Navy Floatplane and The Invisible UFO

By Cheryl Costa

Columnist Cheryl Costa shares a World War II encounter between a Navy floatplane and an invisible UFO.

This World War II UFO encounter story involves a United States Maritime cargo vessel, a Navy Cruiser and a Navy floatplane that hit an invisible UFO.

In 2004, a man named Frank in his mid-80s described himself as a World War II veteran. He tells us that during the war he was a U.S. Army infantry officer.

Frank explained that he was onboard the MS Sea Witch, a pre-war U.S. maritime cargo vessel that was anchored in the Fiji Islands. An accompanying navy vessel, a heavy cruiser, the USS Chicago CA-29, was among the ships in the anchorage.

The Chicago was equipped with four Curtiss SOC Seagull scout-observation floatplanes. Several times a day, the Chicago would launch one of its observation aircrafts to perform surveillance of the surrounding area. On the morning in question, Jan. 18, 1943, one of the observation floatplanes was lifted off the heavy cruiser and launched on its reconnaissance sortie.

About an hour later Frank and about 25 witnesses on the Sea Witch were watching the observation floatplane as it returned from its morning surveillance mission. The floatplane had descended to about 600 feet preparing to make its water landing. He said all the observers were stunned as the aircraft appeared to fly into an invisible object.

“Tank explained it was obvious to everyone who witnessed the event that the pilot and observer were killed in the collision. The USS Chicago mounted no recovery effort. To this day, he remembers this odd event like it was yesterday and has wondered what it was that floatplane hit.

Aftehat plane simply stopped flying for an instant and fell vertically into the ocean as a ball of tangled metal,” Frank said.

Frr the war, the MS Sea Witch was sold many times to numerous foreign owners until it was eventually scrapped in Sweden.

The USS Chicago met with a more dramatic fate just a few weeks later. On Jan. 27, 1943, she sailed from Nouméa to escort a Guadalcanal convoy. On the night of Jan. 29, the convoy came under attack by Japanese aircrafts during the Battle of Rennell Island.

Various fires caused the attack upon the convoy. This gave the Japanese torpedo bombers the light they needed to target and drop torpedoes toward the heavy cruiser. Two torpedoes hit the Chicago and caused severe flooding and loss of power. Despite valiant damage control efforts by Chicago’s experienced crew, the ship was lost. The Chicago had a complement of 1,130 officers and men and miraculously only 61 perished during the attack.

Interestingly, the loss of Chicago wasn’t reported to the general public for some time. It’s been said that Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander in chief of Allied Pacific forces, threatened to “shoot” any of his staff who leaked the ship’s loss to the press. Details of the horrendous battle started to emerge in U.S. newspapers in the middle of February 1943.

{ https://www.syracusenewtimes.com/ }

04-10-2017 om 16:51 geschreven door peter  

{ http://www.openminds.tv/ }

04-10-2017 om 16:35 geschreven door peter  

04-10-2017 om 16:15 geschreven door peter  

Will Vladimir Putin reveal aliens are here? The 'real reason' why Donald Trump won't do it

EXCLUSIVE: Donald Trump and his predecessors have not admitted to the world that aliens exist and are HERE on Earth, because it would "breach the US Constitution" and risk the "collapse of the global economy", it has shockingly been claimed.

04-10-2017 om 16:04 geschreven door peter  

04-10-2017 om 15:49 geschreven door peter  

The Reality of our Holographic Universe and Astral World: A Never Ending Cycle!

An astral projection is an out-of-body experience achieved either awake or via lucid dreaming or deep meditation. During such an experience you are consciously aware of things you encounter while out of your physical body.

In fact your spirit or astral body has left your physical body and travels in another dimension the so-called astral world whereby the Pineal Gland or the ‘third eye’ operates as a cosmic antenna, which not only aids the transfer of signals between the different dimensional planes and worlds but it has also the ability of visionary capacity to see beyond space-time during an astral travel.

Many people dismiss the astral world as little more than a mind-altering experience but a recently released CIA document suggests that the astral world in its entirety exists.

During their investigation the CIA did a so-called Reverse Event Horizon experience and discovered not only the excistence of the astral world but they also discovered that our universe is holographic and constantly creates and destroys itself in a never ending cycle, whereby one part encodes the whole, allowing them to explain the mechanism for human consciousness.

Holograms: Energy creates, stores and retrieves meaning in the universe by projecting or expanding at certain frequencies in a three dimensional mode that creates a living pattern called a hologram.

According to the study, the human mind is also a hologram which attunes itself to the universal hologram by the medium of energy exchange thereby deducing meaning and achieving the state into a two dimensional mode which we call consciousness.

So, it means that our reality is nothing more than a hologram created by thought projection (consciousness) into the physical gird whereby our physical body is nothing more than the temporary housing of our astral body which can travel infinite in other dimensions without boundaries?

If that should be the case then indeed there is life after death but only as an astral body that (sometimes) temporary return into a new physical body (reincarnation)….as the document indicates, the whole process is a never ending cycle.

You can read the full document here:

{ http://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/ }

04-10-2017 om 15:43 geschreven door peter  

Most remarkable UFO sightings in September 2017

17th September 2017; ring UFO – Jefferson City, Missouri

18th September 2017; huge orbs in the sky – Oahu, Hawaii

20th September 2017; triangle-formation – France

28th September 2017; two linked UFOs – Saddle Brook, New Jersey

{ http://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }

04-10-2017 om 15:36 geschreven door peter