The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
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Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
29-03-2018
UNE HISTOIRE D’OVNI PAS SI LOUFOQUE
UNE HISTOIRE D’OVNI PAS SI LOUFOQUE
La station de radio d’Arizona 92.3FM KTAR News a publié cette information, et si ce n’était pas une radio établie et sérieuse, nous ne l’aurions pas reprise : « Deux pilotes de ligne rapportent avoir vu un OVNI dans le ciel au sud de l’Arizona ».
Emplacement du vol N71PG à 15 h 47 (en haut). Emplacement du vol AAL1095 au même moment (en bas)
Phoenix, Arizona – Des pilotes volant à bord de deux avions de ligne distincts ont rapporté avoir vu un objet volant non identifié au-dessus de l’Arizona le mois dernier.
Le premier incident s’est déroulé dans le sud de l’Arizona vers 15 h 30 le 24 février, entre la frontière du Nouveau-Mexique et le monument national du désert de Sonora, à environ 65 km de Phoenix.
Plus précisément, entre environ 15 h 30 et 16 h 15, heure locale, un Learjet 36 de la compagnie Phoenix Air, vol N71PG, et un Airbus A321 du vol AAL1095 d’American Airlines ont observé une étrange embarcation volant à environ 40 000 pieds. Les deux avions commerciaux volaient vers l’est à environ 37 000 pieds entre le monument national du désert de Sonoran et la frontière du Nouveau-Mexique lorsque l’incident s’est produit.
Le site The Drive a rapporté qu’un pilote de la compagnie American Airlines a déclaré que l’objet se trouvait à plus de 12 000 mètres d’altitude et qu’il avait une forte réverbération.
Le pilote du Learjet 36 :
« Je ne sais pas ce que c’était », a déclaré le pilote au centre de contrôle de la circulation aérienne d’Albuquerque. « Ce n’était pas un avion mais c’était … la trajectoire allait dans la direction opposée. »
Le centre de contrôle aérien d’Albuquerque a alors demandé à un autre avion de ligne qui se trouvait sur une trajectoire de vol similaire de lui faire savoir si quelque chose passait au-dessus de lui dans les prochains 20 km.
Le pilote d’American Airlines : « si quelque chose passe au-dessus de nous ! »?
Le contrôleur : « affirmatif, nous avions un avion devant vous à 37 [mille pieds] qui a signalé que quelque chose passait au-dessus de lui et que nous n’avions pas de cibles [radar], alors faites-moi savoir si vous voyez quelque chose passer au-dessus de vous ».
Quelques minutes plus tard, le pilote confirme que quelque chose a survolé son avion.
« Je ne sais pas ce que c’était, mais il était a trois mille pieds au-dessus de nous », a-t-il dit. « Il est passé juste au-dessus de nous. »
« Pouvez-vous dire si c’était en mouvement ou juste en vol stationnaire? »
Le pilote de l’Airbus : « Négatif, je ne sais pas s’il s’agissait d’un ballon météo ou autre », a déclaré le pilote. « C’était juste de la lumière qui rayonnait vraiment ou qui avait une grande réflexion et se trouvait plusieurs milliers de pieds au-dessus de nous en allant dans la direction opposée. »
Puis un pilote demande sur la fréquence : « était-ce un ballon de Google ?
AAL1095 : « J’en doute ».
Une autre voix arrive alors sur la fréquence et dit « un OVNI !« .
Une minute plus tard, American 1095 rappelle la tour de contrôle et dit: « ouais, quelque chose vient de passer au-dessus de nous, comme un–je ne sais pas ce que c’était, mais c’était au moins deux à trois mille pieds au-dessus de nous. Ouais, il est passé juste au-dessus de nous. »
Roughly 65 million light-years away from Earth is a galaxy called NGC 1052-DF2 (DF2 for short). But DF2 may as well be called F-U, because that’s what it’s saying to scientists who thought they understood galaxies, dark matter, and really anything about our universe.
What makes DF2 so special, you may ask? It appears to contain virtually no dark matter.
We’ve never seen dark matter directly. We only believe dark matter exists because we can see how it affects “regular,” or baryonic, matter. Based on these indirect observations, researchers have estimated that dark matter makes up about 27 percent of our universe.
Since dark matter was (sort of) discovered, researchers assumed dark matter was essential to galaxy formation. Dark matter would clump together. Then, the gravity from those clumps would attract baryonic matter, forming the stars, planets, and other objects we can actually see within a galaxy. Easy, right?
Based on this understanding, the team studying DF2 thought they had a pretty good idea how much dark matter it contained. But when they calculated how much dark matter DF2 actually had, they discovered it contained only 1/400th the amount they expected.
“It challenges the standard ideas of how we think galaxies work,” Pieter van Dokkum, a Yale University professor and lead author of a paper on DF2, now published in Nature, said in a press release. “This result also suggests that there may be more than one way to form a galaxy.”
DF2 is unique in other ways, too. It doesn’t fit the characteristics of a spiral galaxy, which typically have dense, central regions, spiral arms, and a disk. But it also isn’t like known elliptical galaxies, which have a black hole at their center.
Instead, DF2 is a rare ultra-diffuse galaxy. “It’s so sparse that you see all of the galaxies behind it,” van Dokkum said. “It is literally a see-through galaxy.”
This might seem counterintuitive, but DF2 actually supports the existence of dark matter, which some theories argue doesn’t exist.
“For those kinds of theories, it wouldn’t be possible to ever have a galaxy that looks as though it doesn’t have dark matter,” Jocelyn Monroe, a particle physicist and dark matter expert at Royal Holloway, University of London, who was not involved in the study, told The Verge. “So [this galaxy is] really interesting for the potential it has to exclude some of these ideas.”
The researchers hope to pin down the age of DF2. “At the moment, we only know its older than 10 billion years, but we’d like to know if it’s 10 billion years old or 13 billion years old, which is right after the Big Bang,” van Dokkum told ABC.
If DF2 does end up being 13 billion years old, it could rack in another superlative: the oldest galaxy ever discovered.
Rare Dead Sea Scroll Describing Live Of Noah Exhibited For First Time
Rare Dead Sea Scroll Describing Live Of Noah Exhibited For First Time
Referred to as the Apocryphal Genesis, the ancient text describes the lives of Noah, Abraham, Enoch and Lamech, characters from the book of Genesis, and most importantly, the passages are not narrated in the third person, but it is Noah himself who tells the story. Noah describes how the ark coming to rest on the peaks of Mount Ararat after the great Flood.
The Museum of Israel (Jerusalem) has exhibited, for the first time ever, a rare fragment of the enigmatic Dead Sea Scrolls discovered 70 years ago, describing the lives of Noah, Abraham, Enoch and Lamech, characters in the book of Genesis, written in the first person.
Noah’s Ark.
Image Credit: Shutterstock.
The rare manuscript is the so-called “Apocryphal Genesis” the only known existing copy of an ancient Jewish text that tells stories of the first book of the Bible.
This manuscript, which is part of the Rolls of Qumran, dates from the 1st century BC and it was one of the first seven Dead Sea scrolls that were found in caves in the West Bank in the 1940s and 1950s.
The document, which will be shown to the public for three months, is written in Aramaic and describes the lives of Noah, Abraham, Enoch and Lamech, characters from the book of Genesis, and most importantly, the passages are not narrated in the third person, but it is Noah himself who tells the story.
The ancient manuscript is badly damaged.
Image Credit: AP/Oded Balilty
“This is the only copy of this book on Earth,” said Adolfo Roitman, curator of the Israel Museum’s Shrine of the Book, where the scrolls are housed.
“In some way what we have are parallel stories that we don’t have in the Hebrew Bible, in which the patriarchs are presented in different ways than the ways we have today in the Pentateuch,” he said.
The ancient manuscript, which is badly damaged, deals with Noah’s ark coming to rest on the peaks of Mount Ararat after the great Flood.
Noah describes how “atoned for all the earth in its entirety” by offering up various animal sacrifices.
“When you take a look at this manuscript, it’s not like taking a look at Botticelli,” Roitman said. “It doesn’t look very aesthetic, that’s not the point. The point is actually the kind of information in this document, as a lost tradition, that we didn’t know about before. It opens up a new perspective on ancient Jewish history and civilization.”
The Genesis Apocryphon scroll was already in a very damaged state when it was first discovered by Bedouin shepherds in 1947.
“Today we have the opportunity to see it (the manuscript) for a few months and then it will go back to the cellars and will not see the light again for dozens of years,” said the director of the museum, Ido Bruno.
Researchers Find The Oldest Human Footprints—From The Last Ice Age—in North America
Researchers Find The Oldest Human Footprints—From The Last Ice Age—in North America
The discovery implies that about 13,000 years ago the people who left the footprints were seafarers who used boats to get around.
The human traces found on an island along the coast of British Columbia, in western Canada, would be around 13,000 years old, making them the oldest discovered in North America. Archaeologists have uncovered a total of 29 footprints of at least three different sizes.
Photograph of one of the tracks next to the digitally enhanced image of it.
Image Credit: Duncan McLaren / CC BY-SA 4.0
This means a couple of things.
First of all, and obviously, humans existed in North America much sooner than what experts have suggested.
Secondly, the discovery indicates that during the Last Ice Age, human populations moved to America from Asia, across a land bridge that existed at the time.
Thirdly, say researchers, these footprints are the only ones ever discovered dating back at least 13,000 years. Experts explain that the prints may have been ‘recorded’ as these individuals disembarked from their boat, eventually moving to drier lands.
Using radiocarbon dating on sediment from the base of some footprint impressions, as well as two pieces of preserved wood found in the first footprint, Dr. McLaren lead author Duncan McLaren, a professor of anthropology at the Hakai Institute and the University of Victoria in British Columbia, and his team found them to be 13,000 years old, reports the NY Times.
According to preliminary studies, digital photographic studies have revealed that the ancient footprints most likely belonged to two adults and a child who walked barefoot on clay soil on what is now a beach on Calvert Island, northeast of Vancouver Island, say the authors of the study published in the journal PLOS One.
The new find adds to evidence suggesting ancient cultures crossed over to North America from Asia during the last Ice Age, between 10,000 and 14,000 years ago.
“A total of 29 footprints were found in the sediments during the excavation work carried out between 2014 and 2016,” said Duncan McLaren.
“As this island would only have been accessible by watercraft 13,000 years ago,” Dr. McLaren said, “it implies that the people who left the footprints were seafarers who used boats to get around, gather and hunt for food and live and explore the islands.”
The study suggests that humans were present on the Pacific coast of British Columbia about 13,000 years ago and that the region was then ice-free, long before the end of the last glacial period on the continent, which dates back to 11,700 years ago.
This discovery reinforces the hypothesis supported by a growing number of researchers according to which the first people who arrived in North America migrated from Asia through a land corridor along the coast, without ice, to finally reach British Columbia.
The footprints which are believed to date back to the last Ice Age.
Image Credit: Duncan McLaren CC BY-SA 4.0
Supporting this hypothesis has not been easy for researchers, since this area of Canada, very rugged and covered with dense forests, is only accessible by boat, they explained.
The researchers concentrated their excavations on an area on Calvert Island, where the water level was two to three meters lower than the current one at the end of the ice age, between 14,000 and 10,000 years ago.
The authors believe that further excavations with more elaborate methods will allow discovering more traces, helping to reconstruct the history of the first human settlements along the west coast of North America.
“It’s not only the footprints themselves that are spectacular and so rare in archaeological context, but also the age of the site,” said Michael Petraglia, an archaeologist from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany who edited the paper for PLOS One but was not involved in the work. “It suggests an early entrance into the Americas.”
“It’s so rare, particularly these days after so many years of Hubble, that you get an image of something and say, ‘I’ve never seen that before.’”
The ghostly galaxy NGC 1052-DF2 is exceedingly diffuse. See the distant galaxies behind it? The galaxy is missing most, if not all, of its dark matter. The Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys acquired this image, which is via NASA, ESA, and P. van Dokkum, Yale.
In recent decades, astronomers have believed that invisible, mysterious dark matter is the dominant aspect of any galaxy. Astronomers think that dark matter is needed to form galaxies. That’s why they are so surprised to find a galaxy with no (or very little) dark matter. The finding challenges astronomers’ ideas about how galaxies come to be. A Yale-led research team made the discovery while peering at the distant galaxy NGC 1052-DF2. These astronomers say their finding has broad implications for our understanding of the universe. A March 28, 2018 statement from Yale said:
It shows for the first time that dark matter is not always associated with traditional matter on a galactic scale …
We thought that every galaxy had dark matter and that dark matter is how a galaxy begins.
To make this discovery, the team used a telescope invented by van Dokkum and built with co-author Roberto Abraham of the University of Toronto. It’s called the Dragonfly Telephoto Array. The galaxy had been cataloged previously, but these researchers said they noticed it looked very different in the Dragonfly images. Co-author Shany Danieli, a Yale graduate student, commented:
It looked like a diffuse blob sprinkled with very compact star clusters. I love working with the Dragonfly telescope, as it shows us faint structures that no one has even seen before.
The researchers then used the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii to measure the motions of 10 very dense groupings of stars called globular clusters, orbiting this galaxy’s center. They found that the clusters were moving at relatively low speeds — less than 23,000 miles (37,000 km) per hour. Stars in galaxies containing dark matter move at least three times faster. Van Dokkum explained that, using the new motion measurements, the researchers were able to calculate NGC 1052-DF2’s mass. That’s when they realized that this galaxy was very, very different from other galaxies. Van Dokkum said:
If there is any dark matter at all, it’s very little. The stars in the galaxy can account for all the mass, and there doesn’t seem to be any room for dark matter.
I spent an hour just staring at the Hubble image. It’s so rare, particularly these days after so many years of Hubble, that you get an image of something and say, “I’ve never seen that before.” This thing is astonishing, a gigantic blob that you can look through. It’s so sparse that you see all of the galaxies behind it. It is literally a see-through galaxy.
Bottom line: The galaxy NGC 1052-DF2 appears to have no dark matter. It confounds astronomers’ theories of the universe, which says galaxies need dark matter to form.
APHet Russische ruimtestation Mir ('Vrede') brandde op 23 maart 2001 grotendeels op in de atmosfeer. Brokstukken vielen in de Stille Oceaan. De eerste module van Mir werd gelanceerd in 1986.
WETENSCHAPHet onbestuurbaar geworden eerste Chinese ruimtestation, de Tiangong-1, valt zondag op Aarde terug. Dit heeft de gezaghebbende website spaceweather.com gemeld. China zegt ondertussen dat er geen reden tot ongerustheid is voor de luchtvaart of voor schade aan de grond.
Tot voorheen luidde het in Peking dat de terugkeer tussen 30 maart en 4 april zou plaatsvinden, terwijl het Europese Ruimtevaatbureau ESA het terugkeervenster naar 2 april vernauwde. Spaceweather.com zegt nu dat het zondag omstreeks 09.15 uur Belgische tijd zou gebeuren, met een onzekerheid van twintig uur. De terugkeer zal in een gebied tussen 43 graden noorderbreedte en 43 graden zuiderbreedte gebeuren.
Geciteerd door het officiële persburau Xinhua zegt het Chinese Engineeringbureau voor de Bemande Ruimtevaart (CMSEO) dat het tien meter lange ruimteschip wellicht helemaal zal opbranden in de atmosfeer. “Mensen moeten zich helemaal geen zorgen maken”, luidt het. “Het wordt geen vurige crash, maar meer iets als een meteorenstorm”. Tijdens zo een storm vallen 1.000 tot 20.0000 meteoren per uur uit de kosmos, maar de kans dat een meteoriet van meer dan 200 gram iemand raakt is 1 op 700 miljoen, zegt het CMSEO.
Drie fasen
Het legt uit dat zo een terugval gewoonlijk in drie fasen gebeurt. In de eerste fase zorgt de atmosferische wrijving ervoor dat zonnepanelen, antennes en andere externe delen op een hoogte van zowat 100 km worden afgerukt. Tijdens de verdere afdaling brandt tengevolge van toenemende hitte en wrijving de hoofdstructuur van het ruimteschip op of explodeert ze. De desintegratie gebeurt op zowat 80 km hoogte.
De fragmenten blijven branden tot ze niet meer bestaan. Enkel een heel kleine hoeveelheid schroot bereikt het aardoppervlak, tengevolge van de geringe massa aan een zeer lage snelheid.
Overblijvende brokstukken zullen heel waarschijnlijk in plaats van dichtbevolkte gebieden te raken in zee storten, want zeeën vormen zeventig procent van het aardoppervlak. Sinds de jaren zestig is meer dan 15.000 ton ruimteschroot teruggevallen. Nooit is iemand geraakt, zegt het CMSEO.
Extreem toxisch
De Facebookgroep ESA Fans Group roept niettemin mensen, die een uit de lucht gevallen verkoold object vinden, op dit niet aan te raken. De Tiangong-1 heeft nog steeds extreem toxische en bijtende brandstof aan boord. De vinders dienen de bevoegde autoriteiten zoals politie of brandweer op de hooge te brengen. Op 29 september 2011 lanceerde Peking zijn eerste ruimtestation, de Tiangong-1 (Hemels Paleis). Het is sinds 2013 niet meer operationeel en enkele jaren later verloor Peking de controle over het ruimteschip.
APHet eerste Chinese ruimtestation Tiangong-1 werd in 2011 operationeel. Sinds 2013 is het contact verbroken.
WETENSCHAP & PLANEET Een pas ontdekt sterrenstelsel slaat astronomen met verstomming. Het stelsel bevat zo goed als geen donkere materie: iets dat tot nu toe niet mogelijk werd geacht. De ontdekking haalt huidige theoriën rond het ontstaan van sterrenstelsels en de rol van donkere materie onderuit.
Toegegeven, over donkere materie is nog niet veel bekend: de deeltjes zijn onzichtbaar en niemand weet exact waar ze vandaan komen. Waar wetenschappers het tot nu toe wél over eens zijn, is dat het heelal bestaat uit vijf keer meer donkere materie dan gewone materie, zoals bijvoorbeeld van sterren, planeten en gassen. Daarnaast werd gedacht dat sterrenstelsels niet konden ontstaan zonder donkere materie. De ontdekking van een nieuw sterrenstelsel gaat lijnrecht in tegen die theorieën. Het stelsel, NGC 1052-DF2 of kortweg DF2, bevat namelijk zo goed als géén donkere materie.
Het stelsel ligt op zo’n 65 miljoen lichtjaren van de aarde, en is ongeveer zo groot als onze Melkweg, maar heeft circa 200 keer minder sterren. Belangrijker: het bevat ongeveer 400 keer minder donkere materie dan verwacht. De ontdekking “stelt alle courante theorieën omtrent de vorming van sterrenstelsels op de proef”, schrijft Pieter van Dokkum, de Nederlandse astronoom verantwoordelijk voor de ontdekking.
Traag draaien
De reden waarom DF-2 wordt geacht zo goed als geen donkere materie te bevatten, is omdat het stelsel trager draait dan het volgens de huidige theorieën zou moeten. Tot nu toe werd aangenomen dat donkere materie fungeert als de “lijm” die sterrenstelsels samenhoudt. Meeste zichtbare sterrenstelsels draaien te snel voor hun zichtbare massa - de sterren en gaswolken in het stelsel - waardoor werd gedacht dat een onzichtbare massa voor meer zwaartekracht zorgde: donkere materie. DF-2 draait echter op een heel normale snelheid voor zijn zichtbare massa. Wetenschappers concluderen daarom dat het stelsel bijna geen donkere materie herbergt.
Waarom het DF-2 ontbreekt aan donkere materie, blijft voorlopig een vraagteken. Voor nu zijn wetenschappers op zoek naar gelijkaardige stelsels om een mogelijke verklaring te vinden.
Born just a couple of years before the 20th century began, Truman Bethurum was a man who had problems keeping a regular job. He was also someone who was hardly a success when it came to the matter of marriage. He was married and divorced twice and spent his old age with his third wife. Bethurum also happened to be one of the more well-known of the so-called “Contactees” of the 1950s. Bethurum claimed that while working as a maintenance mechanic on a new stretch of Nevada highway in the early 1950s, he met an über-babe from the stars named Aura Rhanes. She was the captain of the star-ship which descended before Bethurum on Mormon Mesa, in Nevada’s Moapa Valley. The home-planet of the ETs was Clarion, about which Bethurum learned a great deal. And Bethurum didn’t just meet with his space-chick once, but on more than a dozen occasions.
Bethurum’s entertaining experiences increased, as did his relationship with the flirty Captain Rhanes. For a significant period of time, Bethurum and Rhanes had clandestine meetings, usually late at night. They generally occurred in isolated desert locations in Nevada, where, after Rhanes’ huge ship landed, the pair had long and deep conversations about the state of the Earth, the Soviet threat, and the captain’s home world – to which she promised to take Bethurum, one day. While Bethurum did not explicitly say so, there are a few nuggets of data in Bethurum’s collective work that suggest on a couple of occasions the pair might have had just about the closest and most intimate encounters of all. It’s hardly surprising, then, that many UFO researchers outright dismiss Bethurum’s story as a hoax, or as a fantasy born out of Bethurum’s unhappiness with his private life.
I don’t think that Bethurum had real encounters with a genuine, hot, space captain from some faraway world. But, I don’t think it was just a case of Bethurum fantasizing or spinning a significant number of yarns to entertain the UFO enthusiasts of the 1950s. Remember that when Bethurum got that new work contract in Nevada, and he began talking about encounters with aliens (and one alien in particular…), his second marriage was already on the rocks. Clearly, he was looking for something (or, more correctly, someone) new.
It should be noted that a number of Bethurum’s encounters with the curvy captain occurred late at night and while he was out in the desert and just after taking a snooze. This latter point of Bethurum dozing off before Aura appeared is important, because his own words strongly suggest that he was in a hypnagogic state when he encountered the woman-who-probably-never-was. Psychonautwiki note of hypnagogia that it “…is the experience of transitioning from wakefulness to sleep. During this state, one usually experiences visual, auditory or tactile hallucinations, or sleep paralysis…Exceptionally, longer-lasting auditory hallucinations can also be heard, such as music. Some people report hearing very loud noises, like crashes, gunshots or explosions…”
Bethurum’s own words show that just before he woke up, and right before Captain Rhanes put in her appearances, he would often hear words spoken in a kind of “mumbling” fashion. Sometimes he could understand the words, but on other occasions he was unable to figure out what the voices were saying. This issue of strange mumbling is a classic aspect of hypnagogia. It’s worth noting too that Bethurum’s job in Nevada involved shift-work. Sometimes, he worked from the late afternoon/early evening and through to the early hours of the morning (when the Nevada heat was more tolerable than during the height of the day). Disturbed sleep (which Bethurum must have had to at least a certain degree) can make hypnagogia worse. Or, from Bethurum’s perspective, much better! On this matter of disturbed sleep, Mental Health Daily state: “Those that work night shifts or have an inconsistent sleep schedule may be more prone to hypnagogic hallucinations prior to bed.”
Although over the years I have admittedly swung back and forth on the matter of what really happened to Bethurum, I would suggest that, probably, the entire series of encounters occurred while Bethurum was in a hypnagogic state – a state in which Bethurum could have his ideal woman. With one marriage over and another one all but finished, Bethurum’s subconscious conveniently filled in the gaps and gave Bethurum exactly what he wanted. From his perspective, it was a beautiful woman from the stars. But, just like his relationships in the real world, even the one he had with super-hot Aura didn’t last. She finally bid him goodbye, climbed aboard her UFO and headed back to Clarion.
Bethurum’s story of how he almost (or may have..) nailed an extraterrestrial was told in 1954, in the pages of Aboard a Flying Saucer, which is a fine and entertaining romp filled with innuendos and suggestive snippets. But, Bethurum was not done. Other publications surfaced, such as 1957’s The Voice of the Planet Clarion; 1958’s Facing Reality (which, clearly, Bethurum never did), and The People of the Planet Clarion, which was published in 1970, one year after his death.
One of those who helped Bethurum on his 1970 book, The People of the Planet Clarion, was an artist named Columba Krebs. It’s notable that Krebs observed, and stated, that Bethurum had an overwhelming obsession with Rhanes, even years after she dumped him. He longed for her to return. She never did. But, it could be argued that such was Bethurum’s need to still have Aura in his life, he almost managed to achieve that – albeit in a very weird way.
In 1961, Bethurum married for a third time. And it all took place at the annual, California-based Giant Rock Space Convention, which was organized each year by fellow-Contactee, George Van Tassel. Bethurum’s new wife (and final wife, I should stress) was named Alvira Roberts. Maybe it’s all just a coincidence, but I find the name of wife number three to be very intriguing. Both “Aura” and “Alvira” begin with the letter “A.” Both first-names end with an “A” too. “Rhanes” and “Roberts” both begin with “R” and both end with “S.” Bethurum may have been missing Aura Rhanes to such an extent that he chose to marry someone whose name – to a degree – reminded him of the woman who he loved, but who he could never be with – because she never really lived.
Obsession, fantasy, yearning and failure, and all wrapped up in a saga filled with flying saucers and disturbed sleep patterns.
When not one pilot, but two pilots on two different jets both call a craft a UFO, then you sure as heck can bet they were right. Most pilots never see a UFO in their career, but a few do, and here is the original recording of their conversation with one another about what they saw. Scott C. Waring
News states:
Two pilots flying on two separate planes reportedly claim to have witnessed an unidentified flying object over Southern Arizona and New Mexico. In audio shared with Inverse by the Federal Aviation Administration, pilots can be heard discussing about an "UFO" with the Albuquerque Air Route Traffic Control Center on February 24. "I don't know what it was. It wasn't an airplane but it was, the path was going in the opposite direction," the pilot of a Learjet said to air traffic control. Control then asked a nearby American Airlines plane lookout for any flying object going in opposite direction. Few minutes later the American Airlines pilot contacted the tower and said, "Something just passed over us, like a, don't know what it was, but it was at least two, three thousand feet above us." He added, "Yeah it passed right over the top of us." In a statement to KOB 4, the NBC station in Albuquerque, the FAA said, "We don't have any comment beyond what you hear. Other than the brief conversation between two aircraft, the controller was unable to verify that any other aircraft was in the area. We have a close working relationship with a number of other agencies and safely handle military aircraft and civilian aircraft of all types in that area every day, including high-altitude weather balloons."
Another UFO has just visited the U.S. at least according to the video of an unusual UFO in Florida this week. It seems to be made up of two round pontoon sections tied together, according to many commenters. It is something that no one has ever seen before. The UFO seems to reflect the colour of the background sky as if it partially uses a cloaking technology.
The witness described the UFO as the same size of a mid-size house. It was large enough for several people to fly. The witness further said that it was operating just at an average speed – not slow, not fast. It reportedly made a 90-degree directional turn.
Some believe that the UFO might come from their underwater base as it was spotted near the ocean. It is thought that many underwater UFOs moved over to the land to investigate the human activity.
The Enigmatic Nazca Lines—A Message To The Star People?
The Enigmatic Nazca Lines—A Message To The Star People?
It was in 1927 when Airlines started operating over Peru when passengers described strange lines, figures, and shapes on the ground. Almost invisible from the ground, massive figures were etched into the desert of Nazca, almost as if they were welcoming those who observe from above.
Airplanes filled with tourists from all over the world quickly conquered the Nazca skies, and over 100 different designs were discovered in the region. These strange geoglyphs depict animals, interesting geometrical designs, and even humanoid figures.
Nazca lines, courtesy Simon E. Davies.
However, what is perhaps one of the most exciting things about Nazca is that these drawings are scattered over two hundred square miles.
These figures are massive, and you can only appreciate them from the sky. If you stand on the ground the drawings cannot be seen, you wouldn’t be able to make out anything, so what was the purpose of these drawings? There are over 150 geometrical shapes at Nazca, and you can only see what they are if you are flying.
The most massive figure found at Nazca is approx. 1000 feet and the longest one goes for 9 miles. Why Nazca? How were they built? To what purpose?
According to archaeologists, these mysterious drawings are believed to have been created by the Nazca people; which flourished in the region between the 1st and 8th century A.D.
The lines were formed by the careful removal of the reddish iron-oxide pebbles that make up the desert surface. Once exposed, the underlying dirt, which contains high amounts of lime, hardened and resistant to erosion.
The reason these lines survived so long is that of the weather conditions in the region, there is little rain and wind is almost nonexistent so if you go to Nazca today, and draw something on the ground it will remain there for quite some time.
The Hummingbird at Nazca.
The question we need to ask today is if the ancient Nazca people created these drawings, to what purpose did they do it. You can truly appreciate the greatness of these figures from the sky, but at the time they created them, airplanes didn’t exist, so for who did they design this? They would have needed something or someone to guide them because these lines are precise, they are very accurate, and it’s hard to believe that the Nazca could achieve such accuracy in their drawings without having a way to observe what they were doing, they needed to be guided somehow.
You cannot just go ahead and draw a figure that is over 1000 feet large or over five miles long without making mistakes.
To draw something at Nazca isn’t the problem, you can draw anything on the ground and well… that’s about it; you remove the top layer and whatever you decide to draw will stay there, the question is how did they make these huge designs so accurately.
Could have extraterrestrials been the reason for the Nazca lines? The answer is YES because in that period in mankind’s history the only ones that could have had the ability to fly were extraterrestrial beings.
Some of the parts of Nazca have amazing designs highly accurate triangles that are a mystery. Some of the triangles look like they were made by something that pressed the ground down at least 30 inches with incredible force, now could the ancient Nazca have done this? With their feet? How would you press down a six-mile “perfect” triangle into the desert?
What is the purpose of these lines? Could they have been used as “navigational” markers for visitors from outer space? Where they created by the natives to commemorate the gods that visited them thousands of years ago?
Mysterious geometric patterns adorn the landscape.
According to legend, the mysterious Incan creator god Viracocha commissioned the Nazca Lines and glyphs in the past.
Some myths maintain that the Nazca lines are said to be created by Viracocha himself.
Viracocha was the great teacher God of the Andes, similar to Quetzalcoatl or Kukulkan.
Viracocha was one of the most important deities in the Inca pantheon and was seen as the creator of all things, or the substance from which all things are created, and intimately associated with the sea.
According to the myth recorded by Juan de Betanzos, Viracocha rose from Lake Titicaca (or sometimes the cave of Pacaritambo) during the time of darkness to bring forth light.
Erich von Daniken’s controversial theories concerning the Nazca Lines have ignited hundreds of people to travel to Nazca and study the culture, the life, and history of the Nazca people.
There are some scholars that have found curious patterns in the numerous designs, and they infer that the Nazca may be one of the earliest known examples of applied geometry.
One of the most intriguing designs of Nazca, without a doubt, is the one which represents a Spider.
The Spider has one leg extended way out. Curiously, if you take that geoglyph and if you were to flip and turn it, so it displays the mirror effect, what you would observe is that the Nazca spider is representing the Constellation of Orion, and the long spiders leg is representing the brightest star in the sky, Sirius which is also one of Earth’s nearest neighbors.
Weird, right?
What you have here is a depiction of a spider, which can only be seen from the sky, and that represents stars and constellations.
Whoever designed these intricate geoglyphs at Nazca had an excellent knowledge of Astronomy and geometry, and like many other ancient cultures around the world, the Nazca also knew that Orion and Sirius were important, almost as if the geoglyphs was their way of paying respect to the stars.
According to statements, experts from the University of Dresden studied the Nazca lines. They measured the magnetic field and found changes in the magnetic field under some of the geoglyphs at Nazca.
Electrical conductivity was also measured by scientists at Nazca where tests were performed at the Nazca lines, and next to them and the results showed that electric conductivity was 8000 higher on the lines than next to them.
Lines and Geoglyphs of Nazca, Peru – collage (From top left: seabird, hand, pelican, condor, giant, whale, spider, monkey, dog, scorpion, hummingbird)
Eight feet beneath some of the lines there are magnetic field anomalies. There is something at Nazca that makes it unique, different from any other place on Earth but we simply do not know what it is.
What makes Nazca so special? Well, Nazca has everything. It is a mineral-rich environment. Nitrates and various things that we use in our modern propulsion are found in abundance. The Nazca were located in a nitrate-rich environment, but as far as research has shown, they did not need it.
The question might be, whether nitrate was of special importance to “otherworldly” visitors that could have visited Nazca in the past. In today’s technology, nitrate is used in a lot of interesting things; technology is perhaps number one as even today we have certain interest in nitrate because it is used in space travel.
Nazca holds infinite mysteries, but at the same time answers, the question is will we ever truly understand this gigantic display of creativity and geometry? One thing is certain, this area of Peru will continue to be an area of huge interest to archaeologists, scientists, and historians.
Archaeologists Find The Amazon Was Home To Ancient Civilization With A Million People
Archaeologists Find The Amazon Was Home To Ancient Civilization With A Million People
“Our research shows we need to re-evaluate the history of the Amazon,” say researchers.
The distribution of the potential sites suggests an interconnected, advanced series of fortified villages spanning over 1,100 miles that flourished between 1200 and 1500 A.D.
According to recent studies, southern parts of the Amazon rainforest were covered by a vast network of ancient settlements and ceremonial centers long before the arrival of Columbus. Researchers have shown how complex societies—of around one million inhabitants—existed in the Amazon as early as 1250AD.
The National Geographic Society partially funded the new study published in the Journal Nature Communications.
Amazon Geoglyph photo. Credit: Jenny Watling
The study details parts of the Amazon rainforest thought to have been uninhabited to be home of a thriving ancient culture with more than one million inhabitants.
So far, researchers have discovered around 1,500 fortified villages in the Amazon rainforest, built far away from major rivers.
By excavating charcoal remains and pottery, archeologists have discovered an area of 1,800 kilometers in Southern Amazon that is believed to have continuously been occupied as early as 1250 AD.
This discovery contradicts earlier beliefs that ancient communities preferred to build villages near rivers and lakes.
Geoglyphs in the southern Amazon are evidence of a once-thriving population.
Image Credit: University of Exeter.
But most importantly, the new finding has helped scholars fill in a major gap in the history of the Amazon and its ancient inhabitants. Furthermore, it provides conclusive evidence that parts of the Amazon thought to have been untouched by human occupation were under heavily influenced by ancient cultures.
Many people have the image that it’s an untouched paradise,” says Jonas Gregorio de Souza, an archaeologist at the University of Exeter who collaborated on the project.
Much of the Amazon remains unexplored and is covered in dense forest, making it nearly inaccessible to archaeologists and other scholars interested in learning more about life away from the mighty river.
As noted by the National Geographic, “the distribution of the potential sites suggests an interconnected, advanced series of fortified villages spanning over 1,100 miles that flourished between 1200 and 1500 A.D.”
“We need to re-evaluate the history of the Amazon,” said José Iriarte, an archaeologist at the University of Exeter, National Geographic Explorer, and the paper’s primary author, in apress release.
Aerial photo of an archaeological site — a circular enclosure (140 m diameter) located on a hilltop.
Image Credit: José Iriarte.
“Our research shows we need to re-evaluate the history of the Amazon. It certainly wasn’t an area populated only near the banks of large rivers, and the people who lived there did change the landscape. The area we surveyed had a population of at least tens of thousands.”
So far, archaeologists have revealed that there are around 1,300 geoglyphs and villages in a 154,000 square-mile swath of Southern Amazonia.
Some of these cities existed before written history, and before mankind existed on Earth, at least according to the Bible. But before religion, and before written history, ancient cultures around the world built massive cities, extremely old cities.
And when we talk about the oldest cities on Earth, we mean the oldest continuously inhabited cities. Note that different sources have different dates for the cities.
Starting off with what many claim is to be the oldest city on the surface of the planet: Jericho.
Then the Lord said to Joshua, “See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men. March around the city once with all the armed men. Do this for six days. Have seven priests carry trumpets of rams’ horns in front of the ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, with the priests blowing the trumpets. When you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpets, have the whole army give a loud shout; then the wall of the city will collapse and the army will go up, everyone straight in.”
Joshua 6:2-5
Traces of habitation: 9000 BC.
The ruins of Jericho.
Image Credit: Shutterstock.
Fortifications date to 6800 BC (or earlier), making Jericho the earliest known walled city on the surface of the planet.
Jericho is believed to have been continuously inhabited from 9,000 BC. Archaeologists have unearthed more than 20 remains of successive settlements, which are said to go back as far as 11,000 years. Jericho is mentioned in the biblical and is located on the banks of the Jordan River, at the bottom of the slope that leads to the mountainous plateau of Judah, about 8 km from the northern coast of the Dead Sea dry basin, almost 240 m below the level of the Mediterranean Sea and approximately 27 km from Jerusalem.
Some say it isn’t Jericho, but Damascus the oldest city on Earth.
This ancient city was established sometimes between 10,000 and 8,000 BC, and many authors argue Damascus is the oldest continuously inhabited city on Earth.
Consisting of a maze of narrow alleys, the walled city of Damascus characterized by stunning ancient doors leading into radiant courtyards and blank-faced houses.
Damascus is commonly known in Syria as ash-Sham and nicknamed the “Jasmine City” it is the capital and the second largest city in Syria after Aleppo.
Byblos is believed to have been inhabited since 5,000 BC and is considered by many authors the third oldest continuously inhabited city on Earth. It is believed that it was founded around the year 5000 BC, and according to sources attributed to the Phoenician historian Sanjuniatón, was built by Crono, and was the first Phoenician city.
This ancient metropolis was founded by the Phoenicians, despite the fact that its name was given to it by Greeks, who imported large amounts of papyrus from it.
In fact, the English word ‘bible’ derives from Byblos.
Aleppo in Syria is another ancient city worth including in our list of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on Earth.
Ruins of the Ancient city of Aleppo.
Image Credit: Shutterstock
According to scholars, this ancient city was inhabited from around 4,300 BC. It’s currently Syria’s most populated city with around 4.4 million inhabitants.
The ancient city was founded around 4,300 BC as Halab, and the ruins of the ancient city have not been excavated nor studied by experts.
History In Pictures@HistoryInPix
16th-c. Ottoman miniature by Matrakçi Nasuh depicting the city of Aleppo in Syria w historic citadel in center
During the city’s long history, Aleppo was under Hittite control until around 800 BV, after which it passed to Assyrian, Greek, and Persian hands. It was also occupied by the Romans, Byzantines and Arabs. The city of Aleppo was besieged by the Crusaders and was also invaded by the Mongols and Ottomans. In modern times, the city is a war zone, and most of its history has been lost in conflict.
The ancient city of Sidon, another wonder of the ancient world.
Considered as one of the most important ancient Phoenician cities, Sidon is located some 40 kilometers south of Beirut. According to experts, archaeological excavations have found evidence of human occupation since 4,000 BC. Before being captured by the Assyrians, this city was the capital of the Elamite Empire. It was also ruled by Cyrus the Great. It currently has a population of around 65,000 people.
Reports: People are seeing something odd in the sky in Phoenix and in Yuma
Reports: People are seeing something odd in the sky in Phoenix and in Yuma
We have been getting reports in our newsroom of something odd in the sky, as they look west. People are seeing it in Phoenix and in Yuma. We are working to get more information.
Meanwhile, if you have photos of what's going on, we'd love to see them
#BREAKING: We have been getting reports in our newsroom of something odd in the sky to the west. People are seeing it in Phoenix and in Yuma. We are working to get more information. Meanwhile, if you have photos of what's going on, we'd love to see them.
Thanks to New Criterion's Andrew Stuttaford, now we know what devout UFO-logists were up to on the latest anniversary of the appearance of a well-identified flying object that turned up one sweltering day in the high desert.
"After losing my way last summer in a tiny town best known as the deathplace of Billy the Kid," Mr. Stuttaford writes in the March issue, "I eventually located the right desert highway. Outperforming the alleged aliens who, 70 years before, had allegedly crashed their alleged spacecraft nearby, I swept past a welcome sign decorated with--in honor of a cowtown's real and imagined pasts--cattle and a flying saucer, and reached Roswell, N.M., in one piece."
"The city of Roswell," announced the Welcome sign, "invites UFO enthusiasts and skeptics alike to join in the celebration of one of the most debated incidents in history."
Clearly history ain't what she used to be if the existence or non-existence of a pile of scraps turned out to be one of its most debated topics. Lincoln-Douglas this debate never was. Instead it proved a mix of circus sideshow and local chamber-of-commerce promotion. What a strange interlude between Twilight Zone episodes and what might be called the country's first outburst of post-nuclear phobias.
A photo by Mr. Stuttaford shows alien kitsch at his hotel's front desk, and notes that there is "an alien face on the elevator floor and each elevator button too." Enough should have been more than enough, but it seems Americans still haven't learned where to stop when it comes to wretched excess: "Applebee's held itself aloof, but Arby's was ready to 'welcome' unsuspecting aliens. A little green matador graced the walls of a Mexican restaurant, and the striking architecture of one local McDonald's paid tribute to a saucer that never was. Downtown, an immense metallic construction with a pointed rocket nose turned out to be an old grain silo, a disappointment dispelled by a $2 'black light spacewalk' in a nearby souvenir store, the not-exactly-NASA Roswell Space Center."
How in the world, or rather in the space-time continuum, did this fad ever get started, and how will it end, if ever? Your guess is as good as mine, Gentle Reader of Arkansas' Newspaper full of news, opinion and zany doings from all over.
But this much I can be sure of by personal experience as a public information officer in Uncle Sam's army, where an order is still an order: On July 8, 1947, when the commander of the base told his PIO to put out a press release on the much disputed matter, that's just what Lieutenant Walter Haut did. "The many rumors regarding the flying disc," it proclaimed, "became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509th Bomb Group . . . was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc."
What a typically modern transmogrification and inflation of what was an illegitimate news story in the first place: "RAAF [Roswell Army Air Field] Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region," read the headlines on the Roswell Daily Record's front page, and if you're so moved you can buy a reproduction of it in forms ranging from T-shirts to refrigerator magnets. Anything for a buck. For there's still one born every minute in this land of the free and all too gullible.
In his press release, Lieutenant Haut said the aforementioned disc had been duly inspected, "then loaned by Major Marcel to higher headquarters." But it was higher headquarters that let this scrawny cat out of its torn bag by telling the press that this celebrated hunk of junk was only a balloon, or rather the remains of a weather balloon plus the radar reflectors attached to it.
You could almost sense the air of disappointment when the Roswell Daily Record had to announce that "General Ramey Empties Roswell Saucer." Mac Brazel, the innocent local who discovered the mysterious fragments, said he was sorry he'd ever spread the story in the first place. But he felt obliged to add in his own defense that "he had previously found two weather observation balloons on the ranch, but . . . what he found this time did not in any way resemble either of these . . ."
But hope, or rather self-delusion, springs eternal among the UFO-logists, and so they go on peering expectantly at the night sky waiting for the next big story--or at least the next big rumor--to break. And when or if it does, then this story, myth or just rumor will surely spring into its eternal life once again.
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Paul Greenberg is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer and columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
A diagram showing the final moments of a US Air Force C-118 that crashed near Bonney Lake on April 1, 1959. (U.S. Air Force)
LISTEN: UFO mystery in Bonney Lake
On the evening of Wednesday, April 1, 1959, an Air Force C-118 – that’s the military version of a DC-6 airliner – was on a training exercise. It was doing “touch and go” landings at McChord Air Force Base, or what’s now JBLM, taking off and landing, and then flying around the nearby countryside.
At about 8:12 p.m. that night, the tower at McChord asked the pilots of the C-118 to delay their next return to the runway because several fighter planes were landing. The C-118 headed east toward Bonney Lake to fly in a holding pattern.
It was about five minutes later when something went terribly wrong. The C-118 went down.
And within a few days, some people were blaming a UFO. Some still aren’t sure what exactly happened.
The crash site
Lee Corbin is a retired military and airline pilot who for many years has been researching the story of what happened to the C-118. Last Friday, Corbin led a reporter on a hike to a wooded area not far from Highway 410, during an unusual bout of springtime snow.
The woods where Corbin walked are in Pierce County near Bonney Lake, south of Highway 410, and not far from the growing “master planned community” called Tehaleh. Corbin had parked his truck off the side of the road, near a dead end that will one day connect the east and west halves of the development, and then walked up a gentle slope and onto a woodsy plateau.
“At the time this happened, and this is where the UFO controversy comes in, is supposedly the [pilot] made a radio call saying ‘We’ve hit something or something has hit us,’” Corbin said, leading the way along an old logging or fire road leftover from when the land belonged to Weyerhaeuser.
“[And] you don’t find [mention of that] in any of the accident reports, interestingly enough, but several newspapers carried that story,” Corbin said.
That quote mentioned by Corbin – with the pilots reporting some kind of collision – was attributed to Colonel Robert E. Booth, commander of the 1705th Air Transport Group. It appeared in the Seattle Times on April 2, 1959.
What had happened, it was later reported by the Air Force, was that the pilot and co-pilot thought the tower at McChord was tracking the plane’s altitude, and the tower thought the pilot and co-pilot were tracking their own altitude.
It was dark, and there weren’t many houses or lights in that area in those days. As it turned out, the plane was flying too low to clear a place called “Spar Pole Hill” near Orting. The right wing of the C-118 struck the treetops there. The wing was badly damaged, and it caught fire, but the plane kept flying.
Six or so miles north of Spar Pole Hill, the damage from striking the trees proved to be too much.
“The right wing peels off the airplane, and about this same time the co-pilot makes a radio call saying ‘This is it,’ because they know they’re going in,” Corbin said.
The pilot was later credited with somehow steering the plane clear of the homes and businesses in and around downtown Orting.
“So the airplane loses its wing, rolls inverted, then just basically noses in right here,” Corbin said, pointing to a wooded area, dense with underbrush and 50-foot tall evergreens.
The plane crashed and exploded, and a huge fire consumed much of the wreckage and was still smoldering the next day. At the crash site on Friday, Lee Corbin easily found pieces of the wreckage – small chunks of thick and twisted aluminum, some with rivets still attached – just sitting on the forest floor.
All four men aboard the plane died in the fiery crash, including 1st Lieutenant Robert Roy Dimick, the pilot; 1st Lieutenant Thomas E. Lasater, co-pilot; and Technical Sergeant Guy J. Cunningham and Staff Sergeant Arthur T. Foote, both flight engineers.
Corbin has researched military aviation accidents around the Northwest, and he lives not too far from the site of the C-118 crash. He’d ultimately like to see some kind of monument to the crew of the C-118, maybe when the Tehaleh development reaches this, so far, relatively untouched piece of land.
Corbin has also been in touch with the developers and asked them to keep him apprised when work is set to begin in the area near where the C-118 crashed, so that he can help keep a lookout for artifacts that might turn up during any tree removal or excavation.
What actually caused the crash? Officially, the Air Force cited “operator error” and “supervisory error” in the downing of the C-118, pointing to the confusion over who was keeping track of the plane’s altitude.
But in addition to the crash that night, a series of sonic booms had been heard and felt around much of the Puget Sound, and a series of odd and seemingly inexplicable lights had been witnessed near Bonney Lake. This, combined with the news that the pilot had reported that they might’ve hit something, helped spawn theories that the crash was caused by a collision with a UFO.
These theories were collected and written about by a Seattle firefighter named Bob Gribble. Gribble was a pioneer in the amateur scientific study of UFOs – and sharing of information – going back to the 1950s. He’s in his 90s now, and reportedly suffering from dementia.
Gribble is best known in the UFO community for founding the National UFO Reporting Center and UFO hotline in Seattle in the 1970s. When Gribble stepped down from running the hotline, a UW fisheries school graduate named Peter Davenport volunteered to take over.
Davenport had witnessed a UFO as a small child with his family in St. Louis back in the 1950s, and he wrote about UFOs for a local paper in New Hampshire as a teenager.
In July 1994, Davenport heard that Bob Gribble was thinking of closing down the hotline. So he called him up.
“We talked, and before I knew it, Bob said, ‘Would you like the hotline?’ He said, ‘If you’d like it, it’s yours,’” Davenport said by telephone late last week.
“I accepted the responsibility for the hotline in that conversation,” Davenport said. “There are many times when I wished I’d turned my back on the generous offer and not accepted it, because it has resulted in tens of thousands of hours of work, very interesting work in many instances, but work nevertheless.”
Davenport calls the hotline “work,” but it’s more of a volunteer project or labor of scientific love.
“Most of the expenses are met by me, out of my savings, in order to keep the process going. It’s a measure of my dedication to the field, but I’m convinced that we are being visited, frequently visited, by these objects we call UFOs,” Davenport said.
“The US government, is trying to convince people that it’s all a hoax and a fiction, but I don’t believe so,” Davenport said. “And I think it’s extremely important . . . that the American people know the truth about the UFO phenomenon.”
Peter Davenport was based in Seattle for more than 20 years and only recently moved his residence – and the hotline – to Eastern Washington. He’s heard as a guest, discussing recent UFO reports almost every week on “Coast to Coast AM,” broadcast nightly at 10pm on KIRO Radio.
As for the Bonney Lake crash, it’s not as famous as the time when Kenneth Arnold coined the term “flying saucer” near Mount Rainier in 1947 or the Maury Island Incident in the same year, but Peter Davenport had heard of it.
“I think Bob Gribble did mention this case to me once before,” Davenport said. “What triggered my memory was the fact that the plane appeared to have been pressed down vertically to earth rather than hitting, striking the earth at a slant angle.”
Gribble published an article in May 1959 in a publication called “A.P.R.O. Bulletin” – short for “Aerial Phenomena Research Organization.” Gribble’s piece detailed his investigations into the Bonney Lake crash. He described the odd sounds and lights that many witnesses had reported that evening, and what he described as the “silencing” of local officials in Orting – by the military – about what had really happened on the night of April 1, 1959.
UFO mystery years later
Nearly 60 years later, it doesn’t really help clear things up much to see that the crash investigation report prepared back then by the US Air Force still has about two pages of text redacted—even though Lee Corbin has tried for years to get the full report and has been denied multiple times.
All those details aside, it’s fascinating to hear Peter Davenport describe the big-picture, scientific and non-sensationalized national approach that Bob Gribble took to studying UFOs, from right here in Seattle.
“He set up the National UFO Reporting Center and the Aerial Phenomena Research Group, and he also formed a telephone hotline which is the hotline I run today,” Davenport said. “It’s been in continuous operation since October of 1974.” Gribble, Davenport says, also did mass mailings of information about the hotline to law enforcement agencies around the country, to make sure word got out that there was a place to call to report UFO sightings.
As it turns out, Bob Gribble was just one of several nationally influential people in this area who compiled information and studied UFOs for decades.
Dr. Marilyn Childs and her late husband Laurence Childs moved to Seattle in 1971 and were the first husband-and-wife team of UFO investigators. They were part of a local chapter of group called the Mutual UFO Network, or “MUFON” for short.
“What we did was, we kept the metaphysical part out of MUFON,” Childs said earlier this week. “There’s a lot of us who do believe in this stuff, but we want to keep it strictly scientific . . . because if it’s going to [be taken seriously], we’re going to have to do that.”
“So we concentrated on mainly education and scientific research, and we trained our people,” many of whom were engineers from Boeing and Fluke, Childs said.
The various groups also got along with each other, and the members of different organizations attended each other’s meetings and were supportive of their groups’ respective activities.
Marilyn Childs says this was unusual compared to what she heard about or saw in other parts of the country.
“I haven’t ever heard of anybody working together like we all did,” Childs said. “But we just loved each other and nobody was on a big ego trip, and it just worked out perfectly.”
The earlier era described by Childs sounds downright idyllic, and it also seems to have changed somewhat in recent years.
Meanwhile, Peter Davenport is not sure about who’s going to take over the hotline when he retires. He’s also not sure about what will happen to the decades of UFO reports that he and Bob collected. Aside from their value to UFO researchers, these records likely say much about broad aspects of American culture and the human psyche.
“I’ve approached the University of Washington to inquire whether they’d like to have my records, and they expressed disinterest,” Davenport said. “The library said, ‘Because we don’t have courses in the subject, we’re not interested in having the archives.’ Which makes sense, I guess. I might just burn it. There’s very little good that the archives would do if people are not going to pay attention . . . I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t have a solution to that problem.”
Davenport may also write a book about his experiences, but he says it likely won’t be strictly about UFOs.
“It will be about the peculiar facets of human psychology that I’ve been witness to as a UFO investigator,” Davenport said. “People do and say and believe strange things, some of which are true, most of which, in my opinion, are probably not true.”
“But it’s hard to know for sure.”
Have you seen or experienced a UFO? Peter Davenport wants to hear about it! Reach him via the National UFO Reporting Center.
Open Minds UFO Radio: In this episode, we held a UFO roundtable at Treefort’s Hackfort in Boise, Idaho. Treefort is a massive music festival held in downtown Boise. Alejandro was invited to participate on a media panel, and also moderated a panel on UFO tech with Ben Hansen, UFO researcher and former host of Syfy’s Fact or Faked: The Paranormal Files, and Marc D’Antonio, the Mutual UFO Network’s photo and video analyst. Marc appears on several TV shows, such as NASA’s Unexplained Files, and most recently, an upcoming episode of the reboot of In Search Of. Karen Brard, the owner of the International UFO Congress, was also present to lend her insight. We discuss UFOs and the youth, the success of our Hackfort UFO panel and recent UFO news.
For more information about the International UFO Congress, visit: UFOCongress.com
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2 airline pilots report seeing UFO while flying over Arizona
2 airline pilots report seeing UFO while flying over Arizona
Two airline pilots traveling over Arizona claim they were passed by an unidentified flying objects while flying at over 30,000 feet in the air. CBS Denver reports that both planes reported the sighting and now the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has released a radio broadcast of the out-of-this-world incident.
According to the radio logs, pilots of a Learjet operated by Phoenix Air and an American Airlines flight saw the object flying in the opposite direction of their planes on Feb. 24. In a copy of the conversation with the Albuquerque Center air traffic control, the Phoenix Air pilot makes the first sighting of the strange object at around 3:30 p.m. local time.
"Was anybody above us that passed us like 30 seconds ago?" the pilot asks in a tape released to the Phoenix New Times. The answer from the FAA was "negative."
With the Learjet's close encounter still on their minds, the FAA in Albuquerque alerts American Airlines Flight 1095 to keep an eye out for an object in the sky as they fly towards San Diego. Less than a minute after the warning, Flight 1095's pilot radios in that his plane was just passed by the UFO.
"Yeah, something just passed over us," the pilot reported. "I don't know what it was, but it was at least two-three thousand feet above us. Yeah, it passed right over the top of us."
The pilots couldn't determine if the unidentified object was hovering or actually flying but the American Airlines pilot can be heard saying the UFO had a "big reflection" and doubted it was a Google balloon.
"Other than the brief conversation between two aircraft, the controller was unable to verify that any other aircraft was in the area," the FAA's Lynn Lunsford told the New Times. Coincidentally, the UFO sighting took place just 500 miles away from Roswell, New Mexico. Roswell is home to the most famous UFO stories in U.S. history as a flying saucer allegedly crashed in the desert there in 1947.
In a statement to KOB-TV in Albuquerque, the FAA said it doesn't know what the object is either.
"We don't have any comment beyond what you hear. Other than the brief conversation between two aircraft, the controller was unable to verify that any other aircraft was in the area," the statement read. "We have a close working relationship with a number of other agencies and safely handle military aircraft and civilian aircraft of all types in that area every day, including high-altitude weather balloons."
The radio logs come three months after video captured by U.S. Navy pilots offered an inside look at a secretive government program that investigated UFOs. The little-known Pentagon program had a budget of about $22 million, according to the civilian intelligence officer who used to run it. Most of the sightings it looked at were by U.S. military personnel, who have been reporting UFO sightings for decades.
2 airline pilots report seeing UFO while flying over Arizona
Photograph of one of the tracks beside a digitally-enhanced image of the same feature. Note the toe impressions and arch indicating that this is a right footprint.
Image credits: Duncan McLaren.
Canada’s Pacific Coast isn’t the nicest place to go looking for archaeological remains. It’s covered by thick, lush forests, and much of it is only accessible by boat. But scientists weren’t deterred by this. They excavated intertidal beach sediments on the shoreline of Calvert Island, British Columbia.
After a painstaking analysis, they identified 29 human footprints of at least three different sizes in these sediments. Using enhanced photography, they were able to clearly distinguish the footprints, and conclude that they probably belonged to two adults and one child, all barefoot.
“This article details the discovery of footprints on the west coast of Canada with associated radiocarbon dates of 13,000 years before present,” says Duncan McLaren, lead author of the study. “This finding provides evidence of the seafaring people who inhabited this area during the tail end of the last major ice age.”
At the end of the last ice age, sea level was 2-3 meters lower than it is today. This provides evidence that peoples in the Americas were using watercraft and exploring and thriving in coastal areas, McLaren told ZME Science. Along with the footprints, archaeologists also found several artifacts, indicating that people were passing through the area.
“We found a few stone tools with the footprints. We found them while subsurface testing for archaeological deposits dating between 14,000 and 10,000 years ago use the local sea level history as a guide,” McLaren added for ZME Science.
This finding adds to the growing body of evidence supporting the hypothesis that humans used a coastal route to move from Asia to North America during the last ice age. The authors suggest that further excavations with more advanced methods are likely to uncover more human footprints in the area and would help to piece together the patterns of early human settlement on the coast of North America.
Currently, researchers are carrying out preservation work around the footprints, also looking for similar areas which might yield valuable traces of ancient civilizations.
“We have stopped excavating the footprint to preserve them }for future generations. Our research now turns to finding other areas on the coast that may have been ice free during the last ice age,” McLaren concluded.
Journal Reference: McLaren D, Fedje D, Dyck A, Mackie Q, Gauvreau A, Cohen J (2018) Terminal Pleistocene epoch human footprints from the Pacific coast of Canada. PLoS ONE 13(3): e0193522. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0193522
Photograph of one of the tracks beside a digitally-enhanced image of the same feature. Note the toe impressions and arch indicating that this is a right footprint.
Image credits: Duncan McLaren.
Canada’s Pacific Coast isn’t the nicest place to go looking for archaeological remains. It’s covered by thick, lush forests, and much of it is only accessible by boat. But scientists weren’t deterred by this. They excavated intertidal beach sediments on the shoreline of Calvert Island, British Columbia.
After a painstaking analysis, they identified 29 human footprints of at least three different sizes in these sediments. Using enhanced photography, they were able to clearly distinguish the footprints, and conclude that they probably belonged to two adults and one child, all barefoot.
“This article details the discovery of footprints on the west coast of Canada with associated radiocarbon dates of 13,000 years before present,” says Duncan McLaren, lead author of the study. “This finding provides evidence of the seafaring people who inhabited this area during the tail end of the last major ice age.”
At the end of the last ice age, sea level was 2-3 meters lower than it is today. This provides evidence that peoples in the Americas were using watercraft and exploring and thriving in coastal areas, McLaren told ZME Science. Along with the footprints, archaeologists also found several artifacts, indicating that people were passing through the area.
“We found a few stone tools with the footprints. We found them while subsurface testing for archaeological deposits dating between 14,000 and 10,000 years ago use the local sea level history as a guide,” McLaren added for ZME Science.
This finding adds to the growing body of evidence supporting the hypothesis that humans used a coastal route to move from Asia to North America during the last ice age. The authors suggest that further excavations with more advanced methods are likely to uncover more human footprints in the area and would help to piece together the patterns of early human settlement on the coast of North America.
Currently, researchers are carrying out preservation work around the footprints, also looking for similar areas which might yield valuable traces of ancient civilizations.
“We have stopped excavating the footprint to preserve them }for future generations. Our research now turns to finding other areas on the coast that may have been ice free during the last ice age,” McLaren concluded.
Journal Reference: McLaren D, Fedje D, Dyck A, Mackie Q, Gauvreau A, Cohen J (2018) Terminal Pleistocene epoch human footprints from the Pacific coast of Canada. PLoS ONE 13(3): e0193522. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0193522
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
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