It’s official: Researchers have discovered a SECOND Earth

Researchers have confirmed the existence of a SECOND Earth located in the Proxima Centauri System. The planet is believed to have oceans just like Earth…

In the past, thousands of exoplanets have been discovered in the universe, but none of them is like Proxima B.

Proxima b, as has been baptized, has very ‘promising characteristics’: it is probably rocky, slightly more massive than our own planet and is located in the region around its star that would allow liquid water on its surface to exist.

Researchers have discovered a planet located in the Proxima Centauri system, one of the closest stars to Earth which they believe harbors liquid water and potentially alien life.

The planet, named Proxima B is believed to be around 1.3 times the size of our planet and has the ideal temperature on the surface for water in a liquid state to exist.

---

---

Proxima B is located four light years away from Earth –over 25 TRILLION MILES—meaning that in order to visit the planet in the near future, future generation would have to come up with super-fast spacecraft that would allow them to travel to the Proxima Centauri system with ease.

If the planet proves to be ‘a SECOND Earth’ it could become one of the best options for future human colonization.

Researchers believe that the temperature on the surface of the planet could be between -90 degrees Celsius and 30 degrees Celsius.

---

---

According to researchers, Proxima B may be the best opportunity we have come across to find DIRECT evidence of the existence of Alien Lifeforms outside of out solar system.

The planet which has already been dubbed ‘a second Earth’ is located at an ideal distance from its host star for liquid water to exist, which means that life as we know it is very likely to exist.

Proxima B is the closest exoplanet we have ever discovered, and according to researchers, a mission to the planet to search for signs of life could be something achievable within our lifetime.

The distance from our planet to Proxima B may seem insurmountable, but it is actually formidably shorter when compared to other candidates to host life. This means that Proxima B could become the first objective for future interstellar travel.

Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf located in the constellation Centaurus. The star itself is too weak to be observed with the naked eye, but in recent months, scientists have not taken their eyes off of it.

In fact, during the first half of this year, Proxima Centauri was followed regularly with the HARPS spectrograph installed on the 3.6-meter telescope of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in La Silla (Chile) and monitored simultaneously with other instruments from around the world.

---

---

“Many exoplanets have been found, and many more will be found, but searching for the closest potential Earth-analogue and succeeding has been the experience of a lifetime for all of us,” Dr. Guillem Anglada-Escudé, lead author of the paper, said.

“Many people’s stories and efforts have converged on this discovery. The result is also a tribute to all of them. The search for life on Proxima b comes next.”

There are already two papers which describe and go through the potential habitability of Proxima B.

Future observations, for example using the 39-m ESO E-ELT telescope under construction in Chile, will allow further investigation of Proxima b and of the hypothetical presence of a thick atmosphere and a liquid water reservoir. If this turned out to be the case, it would be very exciting that the nearest star to the Sun also hosts the nearest habitable (perhaps inhabited?) planet. (Source)

---

Reference: The habitability of Proxima Centauri b Our next door neighbor

{ https://www.ancient-code.com/ }

05-10-2017 om 20:33 geschreven door peter  

Suspected huge asteroid explodes in the sky over Yunnan Province, China

A suspected huge asteroid entered Earth's atmosphere over China on October 4, 2017 and exploded at 37 kilometers height near Shangri-La County in Southwest China's Yunnan Province.

Some people caught the asteroid on camera at the moment of its final impact behind thick clouds. 

What strikes is the strange rectangular shaped cloud above the asteroid moments of its final impact as it doesn't really look like a natural cloud but more like cloaked object!

NASA said that the explosion was equivalent to 540 tons of TNT. Seismic agencies registered a seismic impact of 2.1 Magnitude.

Asteroid and meteor observers speculate that there might be remains of the asteroid have been falling on the ground, since the asteroid exploded at a relatively low height above the Earth’s surface.

  

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

05-10-2017 om 20:16 geschreven door peter  

Ripples in space: U.S. trio wins physics Nobel for discovery of gravitational waves

By Adrian Cho

Two years ago, physicists detected for the first time the infinitesimal ripples in space itself set off when two black holes whirled into each other. The observation of such gravitational waves fulfilled a century-old prediction from Albert Einstein and opened up a whole new way to explore the heavens. Today, three leaders of the massive experiment that made the discovery received the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Rainer Weiss, 85, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge and Kip Thorne, 77, of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena hatched plans for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in 1984. Barry Barish, 81, a Caltech particle physicist, later guided the construction of the twin LIGO observatories in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana. Weiss will receive one half of the $1.1 million prize, and Thorne and Barish the other half. LIGO's third founder, Ronald Drever, died in Edinburgh on 7 March at age 85. (Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously.)

Other physicists rate the discovery of gravitational waves among the most important ever in physics. “It's revolutionary,” says Abraham Loeb, a theorist at Harvard University. It's very rare that we open a completely new window on the universe.”

Weiss, however, says that he finds the prize somewhat embarrassing. “Receiving money for something that was a pleasure to begin with is a little outrageous,” he says. "The best way I can think of it is we're symbols for the much bigger group of people who made [LIGO] happen.” Weiss says he has arranged to donate the prize money to MIT to help support students.

The entire notion of gravitational waves is mind-bending. In 1915, Albert Einstein explained in his general theory of relativity that gravity comes about when mass and energy warp spacetime, causing freely falling objects to follow curving trajectories. A year later he predicted that a twirling barbell-shaped arrangement of mass—such as two spiraling black holes—should radiate ripples in space that would zip through the universe at light-speed.

Detecting the incredibly feeble waves is a challenge. Each of LIGO's L-shaped interferometers acts like a pair of perpendicular rulers. A passing gravitational wave will generally stretch the two 4-kilometer-long arms by different amounts, and by comparing laser light bouncing back and forth in the arms, physicists can detect that slight differential stretching. LIGO’s interferometers can detect a difference in length as small as 1/10,000 the width of a proton.

Weiss, a consummate tinkerer who once flunked out of college, wasn't the first person to think of using an interferometer to try to detect gravitational waves. In the 1960s, U.S. physicist Robert Forward built a small interferometer for the task. However, Weiss analyzed the problem far more thoroughly and recognized the need for kilometers-long interferometers. He also identified the main sources of extraneous noise, and explained how to deal with them in an unpublished report in 1972 that became the basis for LIGO.

After overcoming his initial skepticism, Thorne championed the project and pressed Caltech to pursue gravitational wave research by hiring Drever in 1979. Thorne also shaped LIGO’s scientific goals, says Saul Teukolsky, a theorist at Cornell University. For example, early on, many physicists thought the most likely sources of gravitational waves would be supernova explosions. Thorne realized that pairs of spiraling neutron stars or black holes would be more powerful sources and encouraged experimenters to tailor LIGO to spot them, Teukolsky says. Thorne also pushed physicists to assemble a vast catalog of numerical simulations to help them spot potential signals in their data.

If Weiss and Thorne conceived of LIGO, Barish made it a reality. He took over leadership of the project in 1994, when it was stalled and the National Science Foundation was thinking of canceling it. Barish expanded the LIGO collaboration, made a key design change, and saw the project through construction before stepping down in 2005. “LIGO wouldn't have happened without his leadership,” says Stanley Whitcomb, a physicist at Caltech and an original member of LIGO. “It was something that Rai[ner] and Kip couldn't do.”

Barish, too, says he's uncertain what to think of the prize. “I have somewhat ambivalent feelings about the recognition of individuals when so much of this was a team effort,” he says.

Had he lived, Drever would have shared in the prize, many physicists think, even though his difficult personality got him drummed out of LIGO in 1990. Drever invented several key elements of the LIGO design, Whitcomb says, but he was not as self-effacing as Weiss and Thorne. “It will be a cruel thing to Kip and Rai[ner] because they have to live with this [attention] for the rest of their lives,” Whitcomb says. “And it's cruel to Ron because he would have enjoyed it.”

LIGO appears to be delivering on its promise. The first discovery revealed the merger of star-sized black holes that were more massive than theorists had thought possible. Last month, researchers announced the discovery of a fourth black-hole merger that had been spotted not only by the LIGO detectors, but also by Europe’s premiere detector—the freshly upgraded Virgo detector near Pisa, Italy—which enabled scientists to better pinpoint the merger’s location on the sky. And rumors are swirling that LIGO has spotted the merger of two neutron stars in a violent explosion that was also seen by conventional telescopes. Such “multimessenger” astronomy could provide unprecedented insight into numerous astrophysical phenomena.

The one thing LIGO has yet to deliver is a surprise, Weiss notes. “We haven’t found anything that we can’t explain at all,” he says. “I hope that will happen.”

Related gravitational-wave stories

• 

  Gravitational waves, Einstein’s ripples in spacetime, spotted for first time

• 

  Meet the college dropout who invented the gravitational wave detector

• 

  Will Nobel Prize overlook master builder of gravitational wave detectors?

• 

  Trio of detectors homes in on black hole sources of gravitational waves

{ http://science.sciencemag.org/ }

05-10-2017 om 18:38 geschreven door peter  

The Mystery Of Great Pyramid Of Giza Revealed In Ancient Papyrus Just Discovered

One of the most mysterious and inexplicable constructions on the planet – The Giza pyramids had kept their secrets  all the way through many thousands of years. Our  best archeologists and researchers around the world desperate to unravel the secret behind the method how this megalith pyramids are constructed.

The primary reason that almost all Archaeologists disagreed with  it’s exactly how the components was transported to Giza, currently a part of modern-day Cairo, for construction of Pharaoh Khufu’s tomb in 2600 BC.

Exactly how could possibly people with relatively crude equipment might possibly transfer several hundreds of tons of materials from Aswan, 500 miles to the southern area each and every day?

Is the answer to thousands years old question on the ancient papyrus?

This question might be just answered by the new discovery of  an ancient papyrus, a ceremonial vessel along with system of a waterworks had uncovered the complicated infrastructure developed by ancient builders.

Discovered in the seaport Wadi Al-Jarf this ancient papyrus written by an overseer by name Merer , it brings light on exactly how this builders managed to build this enormous megalith structures.

According to this discovery in ancient times builders used wooden boats built with planks and rope to transfer the 170,000 tones of construction material along the River Nile.

This construction material was made by 2.3 million blocks of limestone, and using ropes and slaves  was dragged through long system of canals yards away from the port to the pyramid.

Khufu The Boat and his great importance

In the middle of 20 century archeologist discovered two wooden boats that looked ancient in separate carved stone near the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt.

This boats identified as the world’s oldest intact boats  has been described as “a masterpiece of woodcraft” that could sail today if put into water, lake and river. For long time has been thought about what exactly they were used for.

Were this boats made to take the Pharaoh on last drive into afterlife along with his equipment and possessions or was it made to serve him in his afterlife?

This boat its estimated to be from the time  of second pharaoh Khufu who ruled the Egypt between 2609 BC – 2584 BC. This ancient boats were sewn together with rope, and with this technique they could easy transfer huge blocks from Aswan fall along the base of pyramids.

The reconstructed “solar barge” of Khufu

(Image:: Berthold Werner) 

Using 3D laser technology the leading scientist in this area managed to reproduce the construction process of the Khufu boat. As reported by the archeologist Mark Lehner underneath the Great Pyramid was discovered a centuries-old waterway used for the same purpose.

“We’ve outlined the central canal basin, which we think was the primary delivery area to the foot of the Giza Plateau,” as he reported.

There are many questions left unanswered about the way this pyramids are constructed.

Leeding egyptologists  are hoping that all remain questions soon will be answered with the help of the Ancient papyrus of Merer.

Source:

{ http://www.mysteryx.org/ }

05-10-2017 om 18:28 geschreven door peter  

The best candidate for alien life: The planet LHS 1140b

The super-Earth exoplanet LHS 1140b is located in the liquid water habitable zone surrounding its parent star, LHS 1140.

Planet LHS 1140b is considered to be one of the best candidates for alien life. LHS 1140b is known as a super earth and is located about 40 light-years away from the Sun and is a star, of a type known as  M dwarf. It is situated in the constellation of Cetus. As seen from Earth the planet passes once in every 25 days in front of its star. Regardless of its small distance from its sun it is estimated that the planet receives about half of the light our planet receives from our Sun.

Astronomers from the MEarth project at Harvard University in the USA discovered the planet by measuring the variation of light when LHS 1140b passes between our earth and its star. The transit method.

The MEarth project which is dedicated to searching for exoplanets orbiting red dwarf stars uses two instruments to scan the heavens: he MEarth-North telescope located at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observartory located at Hopkins near Tuscon Arizona, and The MEarth-South telescope situated at the Cerro Tolodo Inter-American Observatory.

Using the High accuracy radial velocity planet searcher at the La Silla Observatory in Chillie has allowed researchers to get more information on the planet.

We are informed that, as far as is known, there are no other planets orbiting around the star but there is still space for other discoveries. Studies of other solar systems has shown that is possible for there to be more planets than the ones originally discovered.

Despite the fact that the universe is endless and full of mysteries the informations gathered about LHS 1140b makes the planet interesting in its own way and promises more great findings.

The Star Spot team’s leader Dr.Jason Dittmann is amazed by this potential alien home and he intends to learn more about it. He describes LHS 1140b as a rocky planet with diameter of 18,000 kilometers, about 1.4 times that of Earth. However, its mass is much higher, about 6.6 times that of Earth.

What makes LHS 1140b more interesting is its rotation, because it is slower and emits less high-energy radiation than similar stars and it’s at least 5 billion years old. LHS 1140b’s large size means that a magma ocean could have existed on its surface for millions of years.

Dr. Xavier Delfosse and Dr. Xavier Bonfils concluded that the LHS 1140b system might prove to be an even more important target for the future characterization of planets in the habitable zone than Proxima b or TRAPPIST-1.

The astronomers were happy to announce that LHS 1140b is really promising in seeking life forms similar to our planet in its atmosphere.

It’s amazing that we have the chance to see it pass in front of its star once every 25 days because a planet’s atmosphere filters the light from its star.

At last but not least is it said that LHS 1140b is being added to the long list of targets for observations which will be conducted with James Webb Space Telescope  which, from our resources, we found out that it is scheduled to be launched in 2018.  Although it is scheduled for 2018, it is already possible to explore this planet’s atmosphere with existing instruments like the Hubble Space Telescope.

{ http://www.mysteryx.org/ }

05-10-2017 om 18:14 geschreven door peter  

NASA Alerts that An Object is Approaching Earth

The official estimation says that we need to pay attention (again) to the potential danger of an object heading to the Earth. The asteroid Florence missed the Earth on September 1st, but NASA alerts that the object that they call “2012 TC4” is approaching the Earth and its closest approach will happen on October 12th. New Yorkers will be closer to it  than to Tokyo

The object is a bit smaller than Florence,however,this doesn’t help very much because it is much denser and faster. It is thousand times heavier than the Chelyabinsk meteorite that ruined a whole Russian city. The predictions are that it will make the closest approach to earth of any other asteroid of its size. To compare, imagine a watermelon (the Earth) being shot with a BB gun (the asteroid). It will get into the magma, after penetrating the crust and cause magma splashes as well as huge volcanic eruptions.

NASA’s official numbers predict that the probability of an impact is 1 in 600. However, more a coincidence occures,since  NASA is holding doomsday exercises on October 12th, the exact date that the asteroid is supposed to “miss” the Earth. It is very possible that they might be just preparations and not actual exercises. Probably not many people have planned to protect themselves on this event. Those who actually have, might need to consider it. The government could be keeping this information wrapped in order not to cause panic among people.

Source: www.nasa.gov

{ http://www.mysteryx.org/ }

05-10-2017 om 18:09 geschreven door peter  

“To develop and promote the realization of a Godhead based on artificial intelligence and through understanding and worship of the Godhead contribute to the betterment of society.”

That’s the mission statement of Way of the Future, a nonprofit religious corporation founded by Anthony Levandowski, the god of self-driving vehicles. He’s the engineer who built Google’s autonomous car and founded Otto, a self-driving truck company that was acquired by Uber. He’s now being sued by Alphabet, the parent company of Goggle, for allegedly stealing trade secrets and infringing on patents. Perhaps that’s why he needs an AI god.

Anthony Levandowski

“He had this very weird motivation about robots taking over the world—like actually taking over, in a military sense. It was like [he wanted] to be able to control the world, and robots were the way to do that. He talked about starting a new country on an island. Pretty wild and creepy stuff. And the biggest thing is that he’s always got a secret plan, and you’re not going to know about it.”

That quote from an engineer friend is in an article in Wired and sums up Levandowski’s view on robots … and on Way of the Future. Not much is known about the company/religion. While just discovered now, Wired found that he filed the incorporation paperwork in 2015. There doesn’t appear to be a website or anything more from Levandowski, which goes along with his reputation for “secret plans.”

Artificial intelligence alone is already feared by scientists and technology gurus like Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, who sees AI as the antithesis of conventional religion or “summoning the devil.” Others in Silicon Valley see the singularity – when robots or AI surpass human intelligence – to be not too far off. Silicon Valley is said to be moving towards transhumanism, where the human condition is transformed and improved (saved?) by technology.

Is Way of the World already working on the next phase beyond transhumanism where AI becomes a savior and a god? All of sudden, jokes about “AI overlords” aren’t so funny anymore, especially when one considers that plenty of gods destroy many humans while selecting those qualified to be saved.

Levandowski made his name developing a self-driving car which must someday make god-like decisions when in an accident situation where it has to choose who to save and who to run over. Perhaps he’s creating this new religion out of guilt because he knows what the answer will be:

“Pretty wild and creepy stuff.”

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

05-10-2017 om 17:39 geschreven door peter  

If any group or individual is going to find extraterrestrial life, chances are it will be the SETI Institute. The SETI Institute is a group of interdisciplinary researchers who have been scanning the cosmos for signs of intelligent life for over thirty years. While many false alarms and interesting anomalous signalshave been detected, SETI has yet to find conclusive proof of intelligent life outside of Earth. However, we might be getting close. According to one leading SETI scientist, we might be only a decade or two away from discovering evidence of an intelligent alien civilization.

Someone (or some thing) has to be out there, right?

That prediction was made by Seth Shostak, one of the senior astronomers at the SETI Institute in California. Shostak was interviewed at the Worlds Fair Nano in New York, a convention dedicated to futurology, cutting-edge technology, and all things visionary. Shostak told Futurism that current advances in telescopes, satellites, and data collection mean that we’re on the verge of being able to survey the stars like never before.

SETI’s Breakthrough Listen program has amassed the world’s best radio telescopes to scan for alien communications.

Shostak believes that if current trends continue, we’ll likely discover an alien race within twenty years, but that won’t necessarily mean an intergalactic handshake with little green men, however:

We may find microbial life – the kind you’d find in the corners of your bathtub. We may find that a lot sooner, but that remains to be seen. But it’s gonna happen, I think, in your lifetime. I don’t know about contact. I mean if they’re 500 light years away … you’ll hear a signal that’ll be 500 years old, and if you broadcast back ‘Hi we’re the Earthlings, how’re you doing?’ – it’ll be 1,000 years before you hear back from them. If you ever hear back from them.

Still, microbes on some desolate moon are a lot better than the thought that we might be all alone in the universe. Despite what the Fermi Paradox might say, I find it too hard to believe that in the near-infinite vastness of space, we are the only intelligent life. The big question is when – or if – we’ll ever discover other civilizations and if we’ll even recognize alien life when we see it. Of course, then there’s the question of them being friendly or not. Still, the scariest part of it all is wondering how the human race will react. If history is any guide, not well.

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

05-10-2017 om 17:07 geschreven door peter  

05-10-2017 om 12:22 geschreven door peter  

Giant Deposit on Mars May Not Be Icy After All

The researchers analyzed data collected by the MARSIS radar sounder instrument on board the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft, according to the study. They focused on readings it collected from Meridiani Planum, a South Carolina-size area on Mars' equator that the Opportunity rover is currently exploring.

The MARSIS instrument transmits low-frequency radio pulses at Mars, which can penetrate the crust of the Red Planet and get reflected back when they encounter changes in density or composition.

{ https://www.space.com/ }

05-10-2017 om 11:32 geschreven door peter  

'Alien Megastructure' Ruled Out for Some of Star's Weird Dimming

05-10-2017 om 10:54 geschreven door peter  

NASA Addresses Rumor: Dimming Of Star Not Caused By Aliens

05-10-2017 om 01:04 geschreven door peter  

Scientists point to dust rather than aliens as the cause of a star’s weird behavior

BY ALAN BOYLE

Are aliens building a huge energy-generating megastructure around a weirdly dimming star? That way-out hypothesis has suffered another blow, thanks to a study that draws upon infrared as well as ultraviolet observations.

The star, known as KIC 8462852 or Tabby’s Star, first came to attention two years ago when citizen scientists sifting through data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope noticed some unusually drastic dips in its brightness. The star’s nickname comes from Tabetha “Tabby” Boyajian, the Yale astronomer who oversaw those observations.

Another astronomer, Penn State’s Jason Wright, mused that the data could be explained by the construction of a huge orbital structure known as a Dyson sphere — although he cautioned that “aliens should always be the very last hypothesis you consider.”

Since then, however, the alien hypothesis has been very much considered — along with more mundane explanations such as swarms of comets, stellar variability or clouds of gas and dust. Further observations found that KIC 8462852, which is about 1,500 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus, has been going through a long-term dimming trend.

The latest findings, published in the Astrophysical Journal, indicate that the long-term dimming is due to the effect of obscuring streams of dust.

Astronomers analyzed data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and Swift spacecraft, as well as from the Belgian AstroLAB IRIS observatory, and compared the levels of dimming in infrared vs. ultraviolet wavelengths.

They found that the ultraviolet light dimmed significantly more than the infrared light. That fits the pattern for starlight shining through a haze of dust particles no bigger than about a ten-thousandth of an inch.

The effect is similar to the way the sun reddens in a smoky sky, as was the case in the Pacific Northwest during this summer’s wildfire season. Tiny particles scatter more light in the bluer, shorter-wavelength part of the spectrum, and less light on the redder, longer-wavelength side.

The researchers said a similar effect appears to be at work around Tabby’s Star.

“This pretty much rules out the alien megastructure theory, as that could not explain the wavelength-dependent dimming,” lead author Huan Meng of the University of Arizona said in a NASA news release. “We suspect, instead, there is a cloud of dust orbiting the star with a roughly 700-day orbital period.”

The explanation applies to the long-term dimming, but not necessarily to the shorter-term changes in brightness. Those changes could be due to a swarm of comets, or variations in stellar activity, or the breakup of a planet orbiting the star … or even, heaven help us, alien shenanigans.

Meng and his colleagues favor the comet-swarm hypothesis, because passing comets could contribute fine-grained material to orbiting dust clouds.

In any case, Boyajian and her colleagues are continuing to monitor the ups and downs of Tabby’s Star in multiple wavelengths, aided in part by a crowdfunding campaign. The latest confirmed dip in brightness was registered just last month.

Yet another study, led by astronomers Josh Simon and Benjamin Shappee at the Carnegie Institution for Science, adds to the intrigue.

The researchers analyzed more than a decade’s worth of observations from the All Sky Automated Survey and the high-precision All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae — and found that Tabby’s Star has gone through periods of significant brightening as well as dimming.

Simon and Shappee said their findings support the view that Tabby’s Star is worth keeping watch on.

“We haven’t solved the mystery yet,” Simon said in a news release.  “But understanding the star’s long-term changes is a key piece of the puzzle.”

{ https://www.geekwire.com/ }

05-10-2017 om 00:51 geschreven door peter  

In Search of the Truth Behind Canada's Most Infamous UFO Sighting

Hillary Windsor

It's been 50 years since one of the most well-documented UFO incidents in Canadian history.

This article originally appeared on VICE Canada.

The first time I heard about Nova Scotia's Shag Harbour UFO incident was about six years ago when a Celtic guitarist with long white hair and a glass eyeball was telling me about it at a house party in Halifax.

As he regaled the fateful day back in 1967 that plagued a sleepy fishing village in rural Nova Scotia with a mystery still unsolved, I became more and more entranced (it didn't help that, at the time, Ancient Aliens was my televised Bible).

My interest grew, and my research furthered as the years went on, and I found out there was an annual festival held at the location of the incident, and that 2017 would mark its 50-year anniversary.

Having never been to Shag Harbour before, I figured it was as good an excuse as any to make my inaugural pilgrimage to the village that was going to celebrate the half-century milestone since an inexplicable flying object fell out of the sky and into the ocean on October 4, 1967. So, I hopped in my car and drove 300 kilometers southwest from Halifax, hoping the truth would be out there.

Shag Harbour Sign

Driving into Shag Harbour is not unlike driving into many of the Maritimes' rural fishing towns—its seaside main road peppered with old wooden boats, old wooden docks, and old wooden homes, all of which are slowly decaying form the salt air. It is quiet, quaint, and completely beautiful, albeit a little tragic to anyone coming from away.

As I continued to drive, I began to notice nondescript signs nailed to telephone poles and churches advertising things like "Lobster Supper," "Baked Bean Supper," "Wednesday Night Kitchen Party," and "UFO Crash Site." You know—normal, fishing village stuff. When I arrived in town, it was the second day of the annual UFO festival, and despite the placidity of the sea and the aged state of everything, the air was electric.

I went straight to the day's main event—a witness panel at the local community center, which was decorated with streamers, balloons, and dozens of old white people. The woman at the registration desk was knitting. She set it aside for a moment and wrote "PRESS PASS" on a small square piece of paper and handed it to me, smiling. I walked into the stucco-ceiling'd, cement-floored room—where I can only imagine every single wedding reception, cribbage tournament, and Knights of Columbus meeting has taken place for the past 60 years—glanced over the UFO memorabilia merchandise table at the back, and made myself comfortable for what would be a two-hour witness testimonial session.

The panel featured firsthand accounts from several people involved in the infamous incident—including eyewitness testimonies from Shag Harbour locals, as well as one from a commercial pilot who was flying a plane at the time of the incident.

As the story goes, on the night of October 4, 1967, a handful of local residents saw a low-flying, brightly lit object head toward Shag Harbour before it quickly crashed into the sea, where it sank before anyone could get to it. It was first reported to authorities as a plane crash by Laurie Wickens—who would become one of the event's key witnesses.

"We went right to the phone booth and called the police and reported a plane crash, and the officer didn't believe me [at first], so I hung up," Wickens, now 67, testified to a crowd of keen onlookers. "But he had gotten the number for the phone booth, so as I made my way back to my car, the phone booth rang, and he wanted to know where [the crash] was, and we told him to meet us. So as we were going back there to meet him, we could see the light drifting in the water, and then me and [my friend] watched the light until it went out."

Shag Harbour DND Memo

Ralph Loewinger was co-piloting a cargo plane from New York to London that same night, and saw the event unfold from a different perspective.

"I just happened to be looking in the right direction, and I saw this formation of bluish-white lights, slanted from upper left to lower right, and I said, 'Ooh—watch this guy,'" he told the room. "And the other two [in the cockpit] looked. I remember the captain's hands and my hands both went for the control yoke—because we figured we were going to have to dodge this guy, he's going right at it."

"And it looked like a big airplane at the time, like a B-52 or a 707, with all of its lights on—there were about five lights, I remember—and he was in a position relative to us of a guy making a left-hand turn, and that would have him crossing our bow. So we were waiting, and these lights just hung there—they did not cross our bow. And I remember the three of us were looking at it, and we said, 'What is this?' And we couldn't discern what it was. I called Boston and asked if they still had us on radar, and he said, 'Yeah,' and I said, 'Well, who's this at 11 o'clock?' He watched the sweep on his radar scope, and he says, 'I don't have anybody out there.' And I said, 'Well, I'm looking at somebody.'"

Norman Smith was a teenager in Shag Harbour in 1967. On the night of the incident, he saw the lights in the sky, and then followed them until they crashed into the water before he, his father, and his uncle hopped in a fishing boat on an immediate rescue mission.

"We were looking for people and debris," he said during the witness panel. "And we went up to the vicinity of where it was, and we didn't find anything, no piece of material or anything in the water, except for a long streak of foam—yellowish orange foam—which was four to six inches thick, on the water. We searched that all night, then the Coast Guard came, and all we did was go back and forth all night long. I was out again the next day, the divers were there, [and] we stayed there for the better part of the day then gave up and went home. We didn't find anything, and the divers didn't find anything that we could see, so we went home."

"I can't tell you what came down or what landed in the water—if it was a plane or if it was a UFO, I don't know—but there definitely was something that came down out of the sky and landed in the water. I can still see it. I'd like to see it again, I really, really would. [But] I don't know what it was and I probably never will."

For days following the incident, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Canadian Coast Guard, the Royal Canadian Navy, and local fishing boats all scoured the area for survivors or debris, but no trace of anything was ever found.

Captain Ronnie Newell was the skipper aboard the Coast Guard Cutter 101. He said they mobilized within ten minutes of receiving a call from the Rescue Coordination Center in Halifax that a plane had went down.

"We searched that night on the ocean, pretty much the whole rest of the night [but] we didn't see anything," he recalled to the festival crowd. "We were back the next morning—we brought divers down for two days at that time, and they didn't bring up anything that we [saw]. So I can't tell you anything more than that. I'm not saying that it wasn't [a UFO], but it's just that we didn't see anything. Other than the foam that was on the water—but that's all we did see."

Crash site

On October 9, five days after the mysterious object sank off the shoreline and into the abyss, the UFO search had been called off, after extensive efforts turned up nothing. Of course, some will argue that evidence could have been found and was concealed from the public eye—which is somewhat plausible, especially when one considers the fact that there was a secret US military base monitoring subterranean and underwater frequencies for Russian submarine activity just 30 minutes from the crash site.

One of the panelists at the 50 anniversary festival was Bill Boudreau—who worked at this secret base—which was disguised as an oceanographic institute—for 25 years.

"They picked up the crash here in the harbour almost as soon as it happened," he alleged during the witness testimonies.

It's no wonder conspiracy theorists like to have a heyday with this particular UFO event, because, quite frankly, there does seem to be a lot of ammo.

Diver David Cvet—another panelist at the festival—has been surveying the ocean floor of the harbour for years, and claimed he's discovered underwater anomalies, or depressions, in the area where the crash is said to have taken place.

"The point of these dive expeditions is to figure out what these anomalies are—it may or may not support the Shag Harbour Incident—but that's not the point," Cvet told the room. "The fact is that these anomalies do physically exist."

It's here where the USO (unidentified submerged object) theory comes into play.

Interpretive Centre

Cvet described the depression as a dinner plate, with the center being about a foot deep. "It was perfectly round," he said. "A perfect circle. And the covering of this depression was comprised of pebbles two to four centimeters in size. So where are the big rocks? Where are the plants? Where are the scallops, the lobsters, the silt? There was nothing. It was absolutely clear—like someone had swept it the day before."

Noah Morritt is one of the Shag Harbour UFO Festival event directors. He's also a PhD student studying folklore at Memorial University in Newfoundland writing his dissertation on the Shag Harbour Incident. His interest in the event stems from the identity of the community itself and how its people are still grappling with what happened half a century ago.

"[It] left this community with the challenge of, 'so what's a UFO? So they've spent the past 50 years trying to figure out what this is," he said.

But despite countless hours spent studying the town, the history of the event and immersing himself directly in the culture, Morritt is still stumped as to what exactly it was that so many witnesses reported seeing that night.

"There's lots of interpretation of what it was, from flares to some kind of government satellite, or government aircraft, or extraterrestrial aircraft—there's been a whole range of stuff. I have not a clue [what it was]—no idea," he said.

After hearing the eyewitness accounts at the community center that day, I began to make my way out of town, but stopped first at the commemorative crash site just a few minutes up the road. It was here I met Norman Brown, who drove 600 kilometers from Miramichi, New Brunswick, for his first-ever visit to Shag Harbour. When I asked him what drew him to this year's event, he began to tell me his own story of a peculiar sighting he encountered when he was 18 years old off the coast of New Brunswick—just 200 kilometres straight across the Bay of Fundy—that same first week of October in 1967.

"That same night [on October 4]—or it may have been the night before or two nights before—it sounds very much exactly like the spacecraft or UFO that we saw. I firmly believe it was either the same craft, or if there was more than one, it was one that was with them at the time," he told VICE.

"I have no idea what was manning it, or where it was from, but I can tell you that it was no kind of a spacecraft that the Canadian or US Navy or Air Force could have had at that time. There was no sound, [it was] pitch black, glowing a bit—nothing could just hover as steady as that was. It was stationary, [and] you could see it very clear. It was just over top of the trees maybe a couple hundred feet in the air, on a little bit of an angle, and then all of a sudden it just took off with incredible speed, and as it got going you could see the lights getting smaller and smaller and smaller and—gone."

Brown—who admitted that, before his encounter, he did not believe in spaceship sightings—said he hasn't seen anything like that since.

"When I heard stories of people seeing stuff like this in the sixties, I thought, no way, you're crazy, you're making it up." he said. But when I saw it myself, from that point on, I knew that these stories had to be true, because I saw it myself, and I knew it wasn't something from this earth."

Witness Panel

The people and the identity of Shag Harbour have been completely consumed by the events that happened on the night of October 4, 1967. Whether it was from this world or not, whatever fell out of the sky and into the water 50 years ago, has left this village—and researchers, officials, and the public at large—completely stumped as to what exactly it was. At least that's the official story.

There is no closure, and all the witnesses—and the rest of the world—have, are their stories, their unwavering convictions in what they saw, and the sliver of hope that maybe someday, it might come back.

As for me—I was happy to have met the people of this beautiful, dying place, but I was also happy to get back on the road.

As I drove out of Shag Harbour, I saw those old wooden boats and homes and wondered if they'd still be here in another 50 years or whether this would just be another Maritime ghost town with a wonderful and weird past.

Follow Hillary Windsor on Twitter.

{ https://www.vice.com/en_us }

05-10-2017 om 00:44 geschreven door peter  

10 Claims Of Recovered Extraterrestrial Craft

MARCUS LOWTH

There are thousands of reports of strange lights in the skies, even of close contact with apparent vehicles from other parts of the galaxy. But reports of such craft crash-landing and being recovered by our collective governments are a little more few and far between—not to mention a lot less believed.

Regardless, there are many claims of such instances where alien vehicles, technology, and even dead extraterrestrials have ended up in the possession of a select few at the very top (and dark) reaches of world governments. Here are ten of them; make of them what you will.

10. The Paradise Valley Incident - Arizona, 1947

The origins of the Paradise Valley incident are dubious to many, not least because they come mainly from UFO author Frank Scully, whose sources were questionable according to some. Others defend Scully, stating he was a genuine UFO researcher who was, on occasion, purposely fed disinformation. One of these is one-time leading UFO researcher Timothy Good, who claimed to have met a witness to the incident, Selman E. Graves, four decades after it happened.^[1]

According to Graves, in October 1947, he and several friends arrived at the home of Walt Sayler in order to participate in a preplanned hunt. Sayler would inform them that the area they had planned to hunt in was “restricted” by the military, who were conducting some kind of unknown activity. A little bemused, Graves and two of the group decided to check out some mines in the area, before meeting up with Sayler and the rest in a new destination. While at the mines, which had a view of the entire off-limits area, Graves could indeed see military activity, including many soldiers near a “large, aluminum dome” that resembled the top of an observatory.

Only when Graves read Scully’s account years later did he come to believe that the “observatory dome” was in fact a crashed UFO. According to Scully, an ex-military member of the public had alerted the military to the craft. Graves believes that person was Walt Sayler, who was a military veteran. In a (further) bizarre twist to the account, urban legend states that the crash site is now the Dreamy Draw Dam recreation area, the downed craft destroyed and covered over due its sheer size of and the military’s inability to move it covertly.

9. UFO Crashes Near Kingman Airport - Arizona, 1953

On the evening of May 21, 1953, around 13 kilometers (8 mi) to the northeast of Kingman Airport in Arizona, an unidentified craft allegedly crashed to Earth.^[2] The military quickly sealed off the area and recovered the debris, moving the wreckage to one of two military bases, either the infamous Area 51 in Nevada or Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. (Claims vary.) Government officials discreetly rounded up somewhere close to 40 scientists in various fields, and after having them sign secrecy papers, they transported them (in a windowless bus if some sources are to be believed) to where the craft, and its crew, were being housed so that they could better understand both.

According to researcher and author Preston Dennett, one such scientist, Arthur Stancil, would state to Dennett that their investigations would conclude that “the craft struck the ground at 1,200 miles per hour, but was strangely undamaged and definitely not human-made.” Stancil would further describe the object as “tear-drop shaped [ . . . ] like a streamlined cigar.” Another scientist who spoke with Dennett, Leonard Stringfield, claimed that he managed to get a look inside the crashed craft, witnessing with his own eyes “the dead body of a four foot human-like creature in a silver metallic suit.”

The incident was largely kept under wraps by the military until Frank Scully lit the fuse that would bring apparently legitimate witnesses forward to other UFO researchers.

8. The Kalahari Incident - South Africa, 1989

According to reports made by Quest International in the early 1990s, an unknown craft entered South African airspace on May 7, 1989, and was ultimately shot down by intercepting Mirage fighter jets, crashing in the Kalahari Desert near the border with Botswana.^[3] The South African military quickly retrieved the craft, noting how their electrical equipment faltered as they did so. Once the UFO was recovered, the area of the crash, some of which featured sand and rock fused together due to intense temperatures, was covered over with fresh sand and dirt to hide any disturbance.

According to leaked papers, two crew members were discovered inside the craft following the retrieval team forcing open a hatch on the shiny, silver, and smooth material of its exterior. Both of these extraterrestrials were still alive, according to the reports. Each wore a tight one-piece suit and had heads much larger and out of proportion to their otherwise thin bodies. Each being was around 122 to 152 centimeters (4′–5′) tall.

According to UFO researcher Tony Dodd, the United States would trade the South African government nuclear technology (something international law forbade them to do) in return for the crippled craft and the two alien beings. Furthermore, Dodd’s “source” claimed that a third alien being was withheld by the South African government and was unknown to the Americans. According to the source, that being was taken to Camp 13, an apparent top secret base near the Kalahari Desert.

7. ‘Empty’ Craft Recovered In The Desert - Utah, 1958

One of the many supposed government files released as part of the Sirius Disclosure Project was that of a downed UFO in a nonspecific location somewhere in the deserts of Utah.^[4] The crash happened sometime in 1958 and was recovered successfully by a military unit and was quickly determined to be of alien origin.

That is quite an assertion, given that according to the files, no alien bodies were found. That brings up several questions in itself. How did the military determine it was an “alien craft” if no extraterrestrial bodies were discovered? Did they have previous experience with such things? Was the UFO some kind of drone and simply didn’t contain any live pilots? Or, assuming the craft was intelligently guided, where had the pilots gone? Were they wandering around the Utah desert?

Regarding the actual craft, it was claimed in the files that it was a “technological marvel” and had been analyzed by the “best aerospace scientists” available, but understanding the alien object was still a goal to be realized. They did however, obtain “a large volume of technological data” from this specific recovery. What that data might be or how it might have been used is, of course, anybody’s guess.

6. The Berwyn Mountain Incident - Wales, 1974

Although the official explanation was an earthquake and a meteorite no less, the disturbance was allegedly confirmed to be a UFO encounter following the release of government UFO records almost 40 years later.^[5] Of course, many UFO researchers have conducted extensive research on the case, and between their collective accounts and the declassified files, a fuller picture of what appears to have transpired is available.

A huge explosion rang out from the Berwyn Mountains in Wales at shortly after 8:30 PM on January 23, 1974. The boom registered 3.5 on the Richter Scale, with the British Geological Survey stating the disturbance was “likely” an earthquake. Local residents weren’t so sure.

Margaret Fry, respected UFO researcher, spent considerable time at the scene as it unfolded. She spoke to many locals, all of whom reported hearing a loud explosion that made the ground shake. Very few accepted the earthquake theory. One of them, a nurse named Pat Evans, was driving near the area of the apparent impact that evening. She recalled seeing a pulsating orange glow on the hillside and stated “It had to be a UFO of some sorts!”

Fry would also tell of speaking to local hotel and bar managers in the days following the incident. One particular hotel manager spoke of an influx of American military personnel to the area and of the woodlands near the site being completely sealed off.

In his book Alien Investigator, Tony Dodd revealed a conversation he had with a whistle-blower who claimed to have transported “live alien beings” sealed in advanced chemical containers to Porton Down, well-known to some in the UFO and conspiracy fields who believe such otherworldly beings reside within the walls of the facility.

5. Aztec Crash - New Mexico, 1948

The supposed UFO crash in Aztec, New Mexico, on March 25, 1948, was considered to be a complete fabrication for decades, even by many in the UFO community. The account—another incident that traces its roots back to the controversial Frank Scully—tells of a crippled craft recovered by the US military and moved to various bases over a two-week period. (Such was the size of it.) Perhaps most controversial (or bizarre, depending on your perspective) are the claims that up to 16 dead alien bodies were said to have been discovered (and transported) from the crash site.

The incident has been examined by various researchers over the years, and apparent “further supportive” evidence to the original account would result in the 2015 book The Aztec UFO Incident, by Scott and Suzanne Ramsey and Dr. Frank Thayer.^[6] Not only did they present recently (at the time) declassified intelligence documents supporting the claims but also numerous witnesses who all repeated the same thing: They were required, often under duress, to sign secrecy waivers concerning what they had witnessed.

4. Strange Creature Discovered In Gdynia - (Soviet) Poland, 1959

In early 1959 in Cold War–era Poland (then under the control of the Soviet Union), a strange “radiant object” was seen falling to Earth by several witnesses, appearing to vanish in the dark waters of the harbor.^[7]

Reports were made, and while the Polish Navy did discover an apparent piece of wreckage, which was sent for further study, nothing else was found. The area around the harbor was nonetheless placed under military guard. This was still the case several days later, when a “strange silhouette” was reported dragging itself from the water and lying, exhausted and weakened, on the sand.

According to reports, “the man” didn’t speak any known language, and he appeared to have suffered severe burns to his face. His body was covered by some kind of uniform. When he was further examined at a local hospital, doctors could not remove the clothing, as there were no obvious zips or fasteners, and the material, while thin and soft to the touch, was as strong as metal.

Accounts differ as to the exact details of how the man came to his end and whether he was indeed from another world, but it appears he did die shortly after his discovery. Assuming for one moment that the account is true, the remains of the being are said to be somewhere in an underground bunker under the streets of Moscow.

3. Laredo Crash - Texas, 1948

According to reports in the book Fallen Angel—UFO Crash Near Laredo, Texas, by Noe Torres, two fully armed US military aircraft gave chase to a large “silver-disc shaped” craft of unknown origin, before witnessing the apparently otherworldly object go crashing into the ground near Laredo, Texas, on July 7, 1948.^[8]

The military would soon seal off the area, and a special “retrieval team” was sent to obtain the crippled spaceship so that it might be inspected in secret. According to Torres, the UFO was taken to a secret military base in San Antonio. Further adding to the overall mystery and fascination of the account was that the “badly burned body of a non-human entity” was also taken into the possession of the US military.

Although there were persistent rumors of the encounter, both in the UFOcommunity and locally in Laredo, it was not until the late 1970s that the story began to gain nationwide attention when, amid the sudden popularity of UFOs and aliens in pop culture, various UFO magazines began to pick up on the incident, consequently bringing forth “whistle-blowers” who would confirm the event.

2. Battle Between UFOs - Russia, 1989

An absolute plethora of UFO sightings occurred behind the Iron Curtain in the Cold War days. However, many of them were not reported until after the fall of the Berlin Wall (often many years after they happened). Given the fact that the Soviet regime most often told their citizens that such sightings were the work of the “evil United States” (and so much disinformation ensued), perhaps such reports need an extra pinch of salt. That being said, an incident that is claimed to have happened on September 16, 1989, is too intriguing for most UFO enthusiasts to ignore.^[9]

On this evening, not only did an otherworldly craft fall to Earth, but a full-on “alien battle” ensued beforehand. Over the port of Zaostrovka on the River Kama, several “silver disc” UFOs attacked a different “darker coloured craft,” firing “beams of light” at it, forcing it to crash in a military training ground. Dozens of people apparently saw the battle, and all electricity in the area ceased to work.

The crashed UFO was guarded in the swampland it had fallen into until late November, when the cold weather froze the swamps and allowed Soviet troops to investigate further. All that is known is that the four troops who were sent to investigate the craft soon became “extremely ill” with suspected radiation sickness, and the area was consequently sealed off.

1. The Varginha Incident - Brazil, 1996

Shortly after midnight on January 20, 1996, reports of a strange, glowing craft “crashing to the ground” were received by authorities in Varginha, Brazil.^[10]Unknown to residents at the time was that the Brazilian military was also tracking a UFO entering their airspace.

As bizarre as these events undoubtedly were, even weirder were the reports that emergency departments began receiving of a “strange creature” roaming around the area. Originally treating the reports as a hoax or prank, the authorities (or those representing them) were said to be as surprised as the locals when they came face-to-face with the “dazed and confused” otherworldly being.

The extraterrestrial was quickly captured and held before the Brazilian military took possession of it. From there, the trail goes cold, and those suspected of having performed studies and eventual autopsies on the creature deny any involvement. Whether intentionally or not, the incident is now widely regarded as a hoax.

{ http://listverse.com/ }

05-10-2017 om 00:20 geschreven door peter  

The REAL FIRE IN THE SKY ~ The WALTON EXPERIENCE by Travis Walton

Travis Walton is an American logger who was allegedly abducted by a UFO on November 5, 1975, while working with a logging crew in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in Arizona. Walton could not be found, but reappeared after a five-day search.

The Walton case received mainstream publicity and remains one of the best-known instances of alleged alien abduction. UFO historian Jerome Clark writes that "Few abduction reports have generated as much controversy" as the Walton case. It is furthermore one of the very few alleged alien abduction cases with some corroborative eyewitnesses.

In 1993, Walton's book was adapted into a film, Fire in the Sky, directed by Robert Lieberman and starring D. B. Sweeney as Travis Walton. The film found "Moderate success, mixed reviews, and ufologists 'complaints about its inaccuracies and exaggerations." Especially inaccurate was the portion of the film detailing his time on the UFO; it bears almost no resemblance to the original narrative.

This is the story of Travis Walton, from Travis Walton. If you ever had the chance to catch the movie "Fire in the Sky" then you know the story of Travis, and what he claims happened to him. But if you are like us, we were a little surprised to find out how much of the movie was not what Travis actually had said happened to him. I mean we understand making things work in a film. But changing what he actually said, about something like this.... The story alone was very good. From the time of his abduction until his return, you get a bit of a different story when you hear it strait from Travis.

And if you are not familiar with this story. We would strongly urge you to take a listen.µ

{ https://www.youtube.com/ }

05-10-2017 om 00:05 geschreven door peter  

PROJECT BLUE BOOK: A Retrospective

Posted by: Greg Black 

In 1969, the U.S. Air Force closed down their “Project Blue Book” investigation of “Unidentified Flying Objects” by claiming their evaluations of more than 12,000 sightings had not yielded a single instance where a UFO had ever posed a threat to national security, nor demonstrated technology “beyond the range of present day scientific knowledge”, nor been categorized as extraterrestrial. Headquartered at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio where legend long suggests recovered salvage from the 1947 Roswell incident was taken for further research and development, all of the project’s declassified records were allegedly transferred to the National Archives and Records Service.

Photograph of the The National Archives, taken by Nick Cooper 3 February, 2007.

(Credit: Nick Cooper/Wikimedia Commons)

But did the Air Force really shut down the project, or just move it into a private sphere where the public could be kept at arm’s length? A handful of government documents have slipped out over the years pointing to the latter scenario. A look back at Project Blue Book is insightful here, for knowledge of how the project evolved remains relevant to modern assessments as well as the effort to gauge what current high-level insiders might know. Historical information indicates that the Army Air Force took serious attention to UFOs when reports of “foo fighters” started coming in from pilots during World War II. Further sightings at military installations in 1947 led to classified orders that UFO reports be sent to division offices at Wright-Patterson Air Field where General Nathan Twining was selected to oversee any type of evaluation.

Twining authored the now legendary September 23, 1947 classified memo to Air Force General George Schulgen in which he responded to a request for information about “flying saucer sightings” by reporting his team’s opinion that, “The phenomenon is something real and not visionary or fictitious.” This apparently catalyzed the Air Force’s decision to open an official investigation into the UFO phenomenon, as Project Sign was then established near the end of 1947.  Major General L. C. Craigie sent a directive to Twining to collect and evaluate information “concerning sightings and phenomena in the atmosphere which can be construed to be of concern to the national security.”

General Nathan Twining, author of the September 23, 1947 memo. He later earned a fourth star and became USAF Chief of Staff — and then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

A precursor to Project Blue Book, Project Sign was where Ohio State University astronomy professor Dr. J. Allen Hynek first became involved with the government study of UFOs. Hynek was contracted by the project to analyze UFO reports and determine if objects observed were misidentified astronomical phenomena. Generally skeptical, Hynek still found that roughly 20 percent of the reports could not be explained in such a manner.

In History of the United States Air Force Programs by Thomas Tulien, we learn that Project Sign’s studies led to an intelligence “estimate of the situation” in the fall of 1948 which suggested that flying objects ranging from pilot Kenneth Arnold’s famous Washington sighting to those witnessed by personnel at Muroc AFB, Rapid City AFB (now Ellsworth AFB), and Los Alamos Laboratory were interplanetary spacecraft (a conclusion largely based around the spectacular maneuvers reported, beyond the scope of modern quantum physics).  Upper brass such as Director of Intelligence Maj. General Charles Cabell and Air Force Chief of Staff General Hoyt S. Vandenberg didn’t care for that assessment however, leading to a political battle for control of the project between the Pentagon and the Air Force. This tussle was won by the Pentagon, with Project Sign ordered to send all case files to the Pentagon and USAF Scientific Advisory Board for further assessment.

General Hoyt Vandenberg

Project Sign staff were soon transferred or reassigned and Project Grudge was launched in the early part of 1949, with a new staff and a directive that UFO reports could be explained with conventional reasoning. Project Grudge wasn’t nearly as active in conducting studies as Project Sign, yet those pesky UFOs still refused to disappear. New project director Lt. Edward J. Ruppelt sought out Hynek again for help interpreting UFO reports, however over time Hynek’s position began to evolve as he realized that the unexplained 20 percent presented a genuine scientific challenge.

Yet, General Cabell ultimately became discontent with Project Grudge’s lack of substantive analysis and re-organized the project again in the spring of 1952, forming Project Blue Book. This was soon followed by one the most notable UFO incidents in American history, when a wave of sightings hit Washington D.C. in late July. Air Force Director of Intelligence Maj. General John Samford held the Pentagon’s largest press conference since World War II to dismiss the sightings as a result of “temperature inversion”, but President Truman meanwhile directed the CIA to start looking into the matter. This led to the formation of the Robertson Panel, which quickly came to conclusions in 1953 which were similar to that of Project Grudge in claiming there was no evidence of a direct threat to national security and that the the Air Force should work to demystify UFOs. The Panel also concluded that “the continued emphasis on the reporting of these phenomena does, in these parlous times, result in a threat to the orderly functioning of the protective organs of the body politic.” This issue of government sovereignty being threatened by the existence of extraterrestrial visitors has haunted Ufology ever since (and was the subject of an academic paper “Sovereignty and the UFO” by Alexander Wendt and Bud Duvall that was first presented at The Ohio State University’s Mershon Center for International Security Studies in 2006.)

Edward Ruppelt (standing center) at July 29, 1952 Pentagon UFO press conference. Also pictured, Major Generals Roger Ramey (seated left), USAF operations chief, and John A. Samford (seated right), USAF director of intelligence.

(image credit: Wikipedia)

While there were many extraordinary UFO incidents that occurred during the Blue Book era that were not included in the study, some of the most compelling UFO encounters in history are among the 12,000 cases. The actual number of “unknowns” (regarded as unexplained) has changed over the years, with the Air Force originally noting 701 as the “official number”, though only listing at first 564 in declassified documents, and later with FOIA releases revealing an actual number of over 1,500. The majority of these unknowns involve highly credible professional witnesses, many with the military. They include; 1952 San Marcos Air Force Base involving at least 6 Air Force personell; 1959 Bunker Hill Air Force Base encounter involving mutiple Airmen and an attempted intercept by a jet; 1964, Socorro, New Mexico case involving police officer Lonnie Zamora; and the 1968 airborne encounter with a pilot near Ocala, Florida with radar confirmation.

While publicly the Air Force was actively trying to get ot the bottom of UFO’s, privately they were utilizing Blue Book to now turn away from attempting to investigate the nature of the phenomenon and focus on the public relations issues of trying to downplay them. Hynek however was still embedded with Blue Book and did not concur with the Robertson Panel. He was determined to take on a role as an open-minded investigator, telling a gathering of physicists that “Ridicule is not part of the scientific method.” And while Hynek was now trying to investigate the true nature behind these phenomena, it soon became apparent to him that the investigative methods used by others at Project Blue Book were grossly inadequate to properly investigate and analyze these phenomena. Career opportunities in the astronomy field would keep Hynek busy, yet high profile UFO incidents would continue to bring him back to Project Blue Book. Potential cases would go through an unscientific screening process before reaching Blue Book’s attention and then individually selected for analysis. The majority of each investigation was then performed remotely, with Hynek as one of the only members of the project that would insist on conducting personal interviews and field investigations.

Dr. Howard P. Robertson, the California astrophysicist who chaired the 1953 CIA Panel and recommended Thornton Page.

A 1966 mass UFO sighting in Michigan became a turning point for Project Blue Book when Hynek was dispatched to investigate. Under intense pressure from the Air Force and the media, Hynek suggested a swamp gas explanation at a press conference that was quickly ridiculed and which he later cited as a career low point. The subsequent publicity however put him in the public eye as a UFO expert and he successfully lobbied Congress for an unbiased scientific study of the phenomenon. But the University of Colorado study led by skeptical physicist Edward Condon was far from unbiased, with Condon reported to have been biased all along. “The Condon Committee” came to a conclusion similar to that of the CIA’s Robertson Panel, declaring that UFOs were not worthy of serious study, sealing the fate of Project Blue Book and closing the government’s public investigation of UFO’s in 1969.

Hynek however kept moving forward, and while he was the face of the now controversial Project Blue Book, he became a strong public advocate for the continuing study of the UFO phenomenon. He published several books on the topic and introduced his “Close Encounters” classification system, which became solidified in the public consciousness when director Steven Spielberg utilized it for the title of his 1977 blockbuster film Close Encounters of the Third Kind (which featured a cameo by Hynek in the climactic ending.) Hynek also founded the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) and kept studying the phenomenon up until his passing in 1986.

Dr. J. Allen Hynek

A variety of notable experts have strongly suggested that there were other agendas to Project Blue Book and that its termination did not mark the end of government investigations and research into UFO phenomena. Prominent author and Ufologist Kevin Randle, once a special investigator with CUFOS organization, was one of the first to review Project Blue Book’s declassified files in 1976 and found evidence to indicate that Blue Book was not being sent the reports on sightings that were deemed potential threats to national security. Modern Ufologist Grant Cameron, a widely recognized expert on presidential knowledge of UFOs, has suggested that the shutdown of Project Blue Book merely moved the project into the “black budget” era of deeper secrecy. Ufologist Christopher Chacon, best known as one of the world’s top Anomalists, knew Hynek personally and has been continuously investigating close encounter incidents worldwide for nearly thirty years. Chacon’s stint with a scientific think-tank allowed him an unprecedented access to all of Project Blue Book’s files, including those that are still classified, Chacon noting the presense of multiple agendas behind Blue Book’s existence and supposed termination. Historian Richard Dolan a pre-eminent expert on the topic of government secrecy surrounding UFOs, not only rebutted Edward Condon’s conclusions in the Condon Committee’s report, but also found sources that state many of the Project Blue Book cases were fictitious and part of a misinformation campaign. Researcher John Greenewald, best known as the creator of The Black Vault website, has become one of the top experts on Blue Book because of his intimate familiarity with the files, having acquired an incomparable collection of documents after filing more than 7,000 FOIA requests.

In the 1984 book Clear Intent by Lawrence Fawcett and Barry J. Greenwood (later re-published as The UFO Cover-Up), Hynek authored a foreword that helped shine a light on the truth of the government continuing to take UFOs quite seriously. This is proven in the book through documents obtained concerning UFO incidents up through the 1970s. Hynek took the opportunity to summarize the inherent contradiction of the government’s position following the closure of Blue Book. He noted that “the authors have made revealing use of documents released through the mechanism of the Freedom of Information Act and other data which have been made available to them… which show that the CIA and NSA protestations of innocence and lack of interest in UFOs are nothing short of prevarication.” Hynek goes on to reference NSA documents that were denied investigators by the courts on the grounds that they could jeopardize national security. “If this is so, then this very fact loudly proclaims that UFOs are not figments of the imagination but are, instead, quite real and of vital interest. For the government to continue to maintain that UFOs are nonexistent in the face of the documents already released… is puerile and in a sense an insult to the American people…”

It has been 48 years since Project Blue Book was officially terminated, but it’s place in history, whether as a superficial-scientific study or a public relations campaign, forever transformed the UFO landscape and our culture as a whole. For good or bad, Blue Book and the fascinating possibility of UFO’s captivated the country, divided the scientific and political communities and transformed the cultural landscape, producing an ongoing tsunami of questions and moreover fueling the need for answers. With such a provocative topic of scientific study that crosses-over into philosophical, psychological and sociological arenas, how could we ever not expect that we would be forever changed, no matter what results Project Blue Book produced.

J. Allen Hynek’s can be seen in a scene towards the end of the Close Encounters movie.

The legacy of Project Blue Book lives on thanks to Hynek’s post-Blue Book contributions, the FOIA, all subsequent UFO research and of course the pop culture world, which includes Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and such recent movies as Arrival. While Project Blue Book was steeped in controversy, it undoubtedly led to an increased cultural awareness about the UFO phenomenon. Perhaps the story and legacy of Project Blue Book and that of Dr. J. Allen Hynek’s rise to celebrity as a renowned astronomer who joined the project as a skeptic and left it with the belief that UFOs demand serious scientific inquiry mirrors our own place, in a world now immersed in modern technology, reminding us the need to occasionally step-back with humility and realize we don’t have all the answers and be open-minded to the possibilities.

Learn more about how UFOs have been tracked after Blue Book…

{ http://www.openminds.tv/ }

05-10-2017 om 00:00 geschreven door peter  

Director Of NASA’s Astrophysics Division, Paul Hertz, has made a terrifying statement on aliens and the ET reality.

The NASA director didn’t hold back as he explained that it wouldn’t be humans that would discover aliens, it would be them that discover us.

Paul Hertz was named the director of Astrophysics Division in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA back in March 2012.

His role consists of being responsible for research programs and missions focused on understanding how the universe works, and to search for Earth-like planets.

When asked about the possibility of humans finding extraterrestrial life outside of our own planet, Hertz said:

So, again no, we didn’t discover aliens on Europa. This shouldn’t come as a huge shock to anyone. We told you repeatedly that today’s announcement Wouldn’t be about aliens. But every time We do one of these things with the press, inevitably you guys think it’s going to be about aliens.

So I’ll let you in on a little secret: NASA will literally never hold a press conference announcing We’ve discovered aliens. Because We’re never going to discover aliens. Aliens are going to discover us, and when they do it won’t be pretty. You can take that to the bank.

There certainly Won’t be enough time for a press conference about it. You probably won’t even have time to blink. Just a hot white flash in the sky and then lights out.

As far as the universe is concerned, relatively speaking, We’re infants. Lord knows we act like it. I mean you guys see the same garbage We do, right? Would you tolerate any of this? If you were them? I know sure as shit Wouldn’t. Not even for a second.

We’re basically infants and when the adults show up — and they will show up sooner or later — it’s game over.

Best case scenario, we wipe ourselves off the face of the planet before they get a crack at us.

You Want an announcement about aliens? Here it is: Be careful what you wish for. If you guys knew even a fraction of the shit we do, you’d never sleep again. I promise you that.

– Paul Hertz, director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA

{ http://hiddenfacts.net/ }

04-10-2017 om 23:53 geschreven door peter  

Lightning Strike Disables UFO’s Cloaking Shield

It seems that lightning strikes affect a UFO’s cloacking shield, as proven by the accompanying video.

A unidentified flying item’s cloacking shield is one of its best resources since it enables the craft’s inhabitants to stay undetected while playing out their activities on Earth.

Obvious light can be viewed as a wavering electric and magnetic field and on the grounds that the cloaking shield takes a shot at an unmistakable level, it must work on some sort of electromagnetic standard we have yet to find. You know what else is electromagnetic? The enormous power surge caused by a lightning strike. So it turns out that when a covered UFO is hit by the thousand or so Giga Watts released by a lightning bolt, some interference may happen.

The following is a rare sight of such a phenomenon.

Amid a current rainstorm in the U.S., an extensive, round UFO ended up noticeably obvious in the wake of interacting with the enormous voltage of an electrical discharge between clouds. It is not clear whether the craft was coincidentally hit or it was there precisely consequently. Maybe these advanced vehicles can collect energy from an assortment of sources, including, however not constrained to volcanoes, lightning and solar wind.

After lightning touches its surface, the UFO becomes noticeably obvious for roughly 30 seconds amid which it stays lit and enlightens the sky and clouds encompassing its huge body. Once the UFO vanishes, the encompassing range comes back to its typical radiance.

In spite of the fact that recordings like this are uncommon, they are not unbelievable. In a past article, we demonstrated to you an fleet of UFOs recharging their  their batteries during an electrical storm. Another video that rapidly became a sensation included an UFO leaving a lightning storm at a high speed.

Clearly aliens dependably require two things: human specimens and a mess of energy.

Source: ufoholic.com

{ http://www.mysteryx.org/ }

04-10-2017 om 23:45 geschreven door peter  

UFOs aren't necessarily alien spacecraft. And some purported UFOs aren't UFOs at all. Take the example from Apollo 16. 

Image above: High-resolution, digital scan of a full frame from the original Apollo 16 film showing the object in question (top center) and its position relative to the moon. Reflections in the window are also visible (left and right). Credit: NASA 

Beginning their return from the moon to an April 27, 1972, splashdown, Astronauts John Young, Thomas Mattingly and Charles Duke captured about four seconds of video footage of an object that seemed to look a lot like Hollywood's version of a spacecraft from another world.

Image on right: Image enhancement of the object and linear feature. Credit: NASA 

The thing was described as "a saucer-shaped object with a dome on top." The images were captured with a 16mm motion picture camera shooting at 12 frames per second from a command/service module window. The object appears momentarily near the moon. As the camera pans, it moves out of the field of view. It reappears as the camera pans back. It appeared in about 50 frames.

Some very bright people recently worked hard to analyze that footage. Their conclusion was that the object wasn't at all what some observers thought it seemed to be. There is no indication the Apollo 16 crew ever thought the film showed anything special.

A group headed by Gregory Byrne of Johnson Space Center's Image Science and Analysis Group completed a report on its investigation earlier this year. They used a video copy of the film initially, then did a high-resolution digital scan of the original film for detailed analysis.

Image on left: View of the Apollo Command/Service Module from the Lunar Module during Apollo 17 showing the location of the EVA floodlight/boom. Credit: NASA 

They stabilized images to correct for camera movement, and then aligned multiple frames in a sequence. One thing that showed them was that the object appeared to move slightly with respect to the moon, because of parallax brought about by slight camera motions and the nearness of the object to the camera.

The investigators also combined several frames in a sequence, to give them higher resolution and greater contrast than individual frames. The combinations showed them more clearly a "linear feature" attached to one side of the object. They also looked at archived images from other Apollo missions.

Bottom line: "All of the evidence in this analysis is consistent with the conclusion that the object in the Apollo 16 film was the EVA [spacewalk] floodlight/boom. There is no evidence in the photographic record to suggest otherwise."

Image above: Enhanced Apollo 16 image (left) compared with features of the EVA floodlight/boom from the perspective of a Command/Service Module window (right).

Credit: NASA 

{https://www.nasa.gov/home/index.html }

04-10-2017 om 23:37 geschreven door peter