For the want of a nail the shoe was lost,
For the want of a shoe the horse was lost,
For the want of a horse the rider was lost,
For the want of a rider the battle was lost,
For the want of a battle the kingdom was lost,
For the want of $14,000 the alien skull was lost.

Wait … what?

A science fiction author (red flag #1) and amateur UFO hunter (red flag #2) has revealed what he claims is an alien skull brought to him by an unnamed collector (red flag #3) who allegedly bought it from a Mongolian trader (red flag #4). Now he needs $14,000 (red flag #5) to pay for DNA tests on the skull. Should this parade of red flags stop his march to proving the greatest discovery ever? Did it stop the three-fingered Peruvian mummy investigators?

” I welcome questions and skepticism, but if you decide to challenge me, be sure to bring along evidence.”

Where did I lose that skull?

In an extensive article on the Chinese media site jqknews.com, 55-year-old Li Jianmin explains that the “collector” bought the skull at a roadside stand in Inner Mongolia. (Pictures of the skull and Li can be seen here.) The collector decided to show it to Jianmin after reading one of his science fiction books and seeing an illustration which looked like his roadside acquisition, which is brown with a curved top and measures 16 cm (6.2 inches) in diameter. The skull also resembles a human cranium with skull lines and hippocampal grooves. Unlike a human skull, it is divided into distinct upper and lower layers. The “collector” claimed to have taken it to various “paleontologists” without success before bringing it to Jianmin.

Li Jianmin claimed he studied the skull for four months. He conducted Raman spectroscopy, a technique used in chemistry to identify molecules and study chemical bonding and intramolecular bonds, and atomic force microscopy, a very-high-resolution type of scanning probe microscopy said to be over 1000 times better than that of optical microscopes. He then claims he compared the results with others claiming to have alien skulls in their possession (sorry, I’ve run out of red flags). The end result of four months of work was a 103-page report with pictures and drawings which he presented at a UFO conference held in Beijing in October, along with his conclusion: the skull definitely belonged to an alien.

“DNA analysis alone costs around 100,000 yuan ($14,398).”

OK, despite saying the skull belongs to an alien, Li Jianmin doesn’t really have the definitive proof a DNA test would produce since it costs over 14 grand and he claims he’s already spent that much just completing the report. He’s certain it would back him up because the Raman test showed that it doesn’t match any known earth organism. He also speculated that the skull was anywhere from 2.5 to 400 million years old.

What is this thing Li Jianmin is so certain to be an alien skull? One observation was that it’s a “sea monster monk,” which probably refers to the so-called “sea monk monster” reportedly caught off the coast of Denmark in 1546 and so named because it resembled a monk. Later speculation pointed towards it being an angelshark (often called a monkfish) or a giant squid.

Illustration of a Sea Monk Monster

Want to know what it really is? You’ll have to wait until a “collector” shows Li Jianmin how to collect money using crowdfunding. Meanwhile, I’m setting one up to buy more red flags.

By using solar satellites to melt ice on Mars, it could be the only way to save humans from possible extinction. If we don’t want to go extinct like the dinosaurs, we need a “plan B” and creating a new world on Mars may be our best option according to top theoretical physicist, Michio Kaku.

While colonizing on the Red Planet seems like a far-fetched idea, humans may have no other choice in order to avoid future extinction. “Look at the dinosaurs,” Kaku explained, “The dinosaurs did not have a space program, and that’s why they are not here today to talk about it.” He went on to say “Extinction is the norm. We think of Mother Nature as being warm and cuddly, which is partly true. But nature is merciless when it comes to wiping out inefficient life forms.”

Many scientists, including Kaku, strongly believe in “terraforming” which is the process of turning the surface and atmosphere on Mars into the same as the conditions here on Earth. There are several theories on how they can make the Red Planet habitable for humans and one of those theories is that they could melt the polar ice caps using “solar satellites” to heat up the planet. These solar satellites would beam sunlight on the ice caps and once the temperature on Mars rises six degrees, the process would then continue in a way that would be similar to a greenhouse effect. In fact, some scientists believe that there’s a way to import greenhouse gases to Mars that would help maintain carbon dioxide, therefore creating a type of greenhouse warming effect.

And while some experts believe that Mars is on the outer edge of the habitable zone of our solar system, they also think that water should be able to be supported on the planet. As a matter of fact, it is strongly believed that many years ago Mars had an Earth-like atmosphere which makes it a great option for terraforming.

While scientists aren’t saying that humans should completely abandon Earth, it is a reasonable second option – or plan B – for people to go temporarily in case a catastrophic event occurs on our home planet.

Kaku also believes someday soon humans will have the option to spend their honeymoon on the Moon. It’s “only three days away,” he explained.

While it’s highly doubtful that newlyweds will opt for spending their honeymoon on the Moon, it’s still a fun thought. And it’s pretty exciting to think that one day humans could be labelled “Martians” as well as being “Earthlings”. I wonder how much luggage they’ll be allowed to carry and if they’ll need a passport to travel from one planet to the other?

Over the next several weeks, I’ll be conducting interviews with leading UFO researchers from countries around the world in an effort to paint a picture of global UFOlogy today.

This week, our global UFO trek takes us to Romania, and to Dr. Dan D. Farcas. Born in 1940 in Reşiţa, Romania, Farcas holds an MSc in mathematics and physics and a Ph.D. in mathematics and computers. He was formerly a project manager for several countrywide information systems, mainly in health and science management. In 1993 he was elected as a full member of the Academy of Medical Sciences of Romania. Since 2011 he has been the President of the Association for the Study of Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena (ASFAN) in Romania. He has published more than 25 books in Romania (on IT, philosophy of science, Extraterrestrials, UFOs etc.), and more than 1,200 articles. He has also participated in numerous radio and TV debates.

Dan D. Farcas, Ph.D.

RG: Who have been the defining figures in Romanian UFOlogy over the past 70 years (for better or for worse), and why?

DF: A major personality in Romanian ufology was Ion Hobana (1931-2011). Writer, journalist, editor, literary critic, essayist, translator, theorist of science fiction literature. Hobana established good relations with science fiction writers and critics in the West at a period in time when such relations were rare and difficult. Around 1967, he began understand that the UFO issue is much more serious than it seems. A UFO “wave” in 1968 had good media coverage in Romania and had sparked a general interest in UFOs. In 1971, Ion Hobana took the initiative of organising a “Scientific UFO Circle” at the Culture House of University Students, in Bucharest, which ran for several years and attracted a great number of young people as well as specialists. Later that same year, Hobana and the Belgian author Julien Weverbergh published the book OZN: o Sfidare Pentru Raţiunea Umană (UFO: A Defiance for Human Reason). It was the first book by a Romanian writer about UFOs. The second Romanian UFO book was published in 1973 by the engineer Florin Gheorghiţă, who was deeply involved in the investigation of the 1968 cases. Ion Hobana with Julien Weverbergh also published UFO books abroad, among themUFOs from Behind the Iron Curtain (1974), first in English and later translated into French and Spanish.

Pioneering Romanian UFO researcher, Ion Hobana.

Another Romanian passionately involved in the investigation of the unexplained occurrences was Călin Turcu. In 1977 he organized an informal group called RUFOR (“Romanian UFO Researchers”) as a means of information exchange. Between 1979 and 1986, this group published 27 issues of a “samizdat” magazine with the same name: RUFOR. Neither the organization nor the publication were officially allowed, but they were tolerated by the authorities as they were not considered as subversive. Several years later, from 1994-1996, in a completely changed political environment, members of the same group would publish the only widely marketed Romanian UFO magazine, also with the title “RUFOR”. It ran for 21 months. Since then, there was no printed UFO periodical in Romania.

Throughout the 1980s, dozens of UFO books were published in Romania. Among the Romanian authors were: Florin Gheorghiţă, Dan D. Farcaş, Doru Davidovici (fighter pilot 1945-1989), Dan Apostol and György Mandics. The number of Romanian UFO books increased dramatically after 1990. Many were written by Călin Turcu, Florin Gheorghiță, Adrian Pătruţ, general Emil Străinu and some of those above. But most of the titles in this period were translations. Călin Turcu’s books are the most complete inventory of UFO cases in Romania, starting around the year 1500. He also organized a library with over 500 UFO books, which was donated by his family to the Association ASFAN.

After 1990, Ion Hobana returned to UFOs, publishing several important books. In 1998, he became the president of the ASFAN, dedicated to studying the UFO phenomenon, a post held until his death in 2011.

RG: What do you consider to be the most compelling Romanian UFO incident on record, and why?

DF: It is difficult to choose. But certainly one of the most interesting cases (which I helped to investigate) was a close encounter which occured on the night of July 8-9, 1996, at around 12.30am in a village named Cerţeşti (pronounced Tchertzeshty) in the South of the Moldavian Region of Romania. Police sergeant Marian Mancu and Maricel Rusu, a voluntary guard, were patrolling in the centre of the village when they separated for a short time. When they saw some colored lights on the road, they headed towards them from different directions, both thinking it was a police car. The sergeant, getting closer, realised that it was an object hovering half meter above the road, flashing with blue and red lights and making a humming sound. A small, very strange person was moving around outside of it. The horrified guard hid under a small bridge over a ditch. He whispered to his colleague: “Mister Marian, it’s the Devil!”

After less than two minutes the UFO rose vertically. At that moment its lights became much brighter and the streetlights went out. When the object reached a height of around 30 meters, it changed direction and turned north-west.

Rural Romania

Rusu later reported that he saw three small ugly human-like creatures moving around. They were about one meter high, had a big head, elongated behind, with no hair. Their face was white and they had big eyes and big pointed ears. Gray scales like those of a fish covered their body. Their belly was relatively big and limp. The arms were not thicker than two fingers. None of the witnesses remembered the nose, the mouth or any footwear. The witnesses could not tell for sure if the creatures were walking or floating above the ground, but they felt the latter was more likely. Rusu said they moved “as if they were drunk.”

Both witnesses agreed that the object had the form of a flat hat, 5-6 meters across and 2-2.5 meters high and was hovering half a meter above the ground. Around the edge it had a continuous girdle of light, like a rainbow. At the bottom of the object was a bright white light. None of the witnesses saw any doors, portholes or other marks of any kind, and could not explain where the little people descended from and re-entered.

In the following days, sergeant Mancu felt sick and powerless and he was of the opinion that he was suffering from some kind of radiation poisoning. Rusu had repeated nightmares. He told us: “I was dreaming for several nights about how I was hiding myself in the ditch and then I woke up frightened mainly because the beings were so ugly.” I questioned both of them about the possibility of a loss of memory or of a missing time period during the encounter. None of them had any such impression.

The physical traces were weak. A huge sweet cherry tree nearby had around 15% of its leaves affected as if by an extreme heat, and, allegedly, after the encounter, many leaves and broken limbs were spread on the road at the site.

The witnesses to this event are very credible. The police sergeant Marian Mancu (30 years old at the time) was, for a while, a veterinary technician, before graduating at a police school. He was healthy and sane and was married with two children. The majority of the village population, including the village mayor, considered him a serious person, not likely to lies or hoax. The watchman Maricel Rusu (then 41 years old) had never heard anything before about the UFO phenomenon. He had no recorded psychiatric disorders and he had served in the army as sapper. The villagers could not remember any lies or tall tales from him in the past. It is unlikely the witnesses could invent the very peculiar details, and to make them public in such a highly natural and convincing manner. It also is unlikely that it could be a delusion staged by someone else. Also, we did not discover anybody with any kind of motivation to invent such a story. Additionally, several villagers noticed a blackout and other strange phenomena on the night of the UFO encounter.

But there are many other interesting UFO encounters in Romania. George Pârvu, Ph.D., who had a remarkable career in geology and authored more than 15 books, had a remarkable UFO encounter with some of his schoolmates in his native village 50 km north-east of Bucharest. This was 1939; he was 9 years old at the time. Pârvu and his friends saw a strange egg shaped UFO and two of its occupants. More recently, in the north of Romania, there was a case of alleged alien abduction involving with two witnesses and the sighting of a 2.5 meters-high fairy woman–a feared character, well known in the area. We have also several repeated abduction cases, one starting from cradle, as well as many interesting military cases.

All cases presented in this interview, along many others, are detailed in my book, UFOs over Romania (Flying Disk Press, UK, 2016).

RG: What is the Romanian government’s official stance on UFOs? When was the last time it issued a statement on the subject?

DF: Following a wave of observations in 1968, Communist-controlled state media exhibited a favorable attitude towards the UFO issue. This was because, in other countries of the “socialist camp,” the UFO subject was quite taboo, and the regime of president Ceausescu wanted to show that the Romanian authorities had a different, more open and progressive attitude.

After 1990, in a completely changed environment, a huge number of books about the UFO phenomenon were translated and published. From the year 2000 until now, public interest in UFOs has diminished considerably. I am not aware of any official statement by the Romanian Government about UFOs during this period.

RG: Does the Romanian Ministry of National Defence have an official UFO investigations unit?

DF: I have no knowledge of the existence of such a unit. Military cases have come to light mostly from retired officers. Among them, we examined the case of commander Mihai Barbutiu, who in 1966 was ordered to fire a volley to force a UFO to land in Timișoara; or the case of a huge V-shaped UFO witnessed by many pilots at a military airport near Constanța in 1989; or the case of a huge, red, spherical UFO in 1992 near Buzău, which disturbed and halted an exercise involving three military helicopters, as well as several other strange encounters. All of the witnesses made reports and signed documents prohibiting them from divulging what they saw.

The Romanian Ministry of National Defence building in Bucharest.

RG: Has the Romanian government shown more or less transparency on the UFO subject than the US government?

DF: In 2014, in preparation of a UFO Conference, our association, ASFAN, officially asked several institutions to provide access to the data on unidentified aerial phenomena occurred in Romanian airspace. The request was made under the law No 544/2001 on free access to information of public interest. The Romanian Aeronautical Authority, Department of Security, directed us to the Centre for Analysis and Aviation Security, which gave no reply. We have not received an answer, either from CN Bucharest Airports or from Romanian Administration of Air Traffic Services (ROMATSA).

We also made enquiries with the Ministry of Defence, which responded that: “The Ministry of Defence has no data and no information on unidentified aerial phenomena” but “for future cooperation” a senior officer was nominated as a contact person. ASFAN members had direct contacts with this person, who showed interest in further cooperation. But, after a while, we received some excuses saying that the international situation, especially that of the Ukraine, put other priorities before military aviation.

The attempt by ASFAN was not isolated. Some tabloids made earlier attempts to obtain access to military data about UFOs. The response was that the defence structures of Romania have no resources even for much more important issues than UFOs.

The Palace of the Parliament in Bucharest, Romania.

RG: Does Romania have a national UFO investigations organisation today, and how many smaller Romanian UFO groups are you aware of?

DF: The Association for the Study of Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena (ASFAN) is a nongovernmental and nonprofit organization which obtained juridical status in 1998. It has been the main UFO oriented organization ever since. Its first chairman was Ion Hobana, and I have held the chairman position since Hobana’s death. For the 21 founding members (demanded by the law at that point in time), highly skilled individuals were selected: mathematicians, astronomers, engineers, specialists in radar, aeronautics, meteorology, photo-imaging, medicine, as well as interdisciplinary oriented personalities.

Now, ASFAN has around 10 active members who are involved mainly in receiving and examining UFO sightings and the administration of our website. An ASFAN member participated in the editorial board of the “European Journal of UFO and Abduction Studies” (2000-2003). They had, in 2012, a collaboration for the National Geographic Channel documentary “UFOs in Europe: The Untold Stories.”

The ASFAN website: www.asfanufo.ro

For three years (2000-2003) ASFAN organised public conferences on a monthly basis in central halls in Bucharest. A more ambitious, one-day UFO Conference was organised in May 2014. Some ASFAN members were invited to appear on all of the main Romanian TV channels and radio stations for debates on current UFO events and related issues. Some ASFAN members have or had permanent UFO columns in Romanian popular science magazines. Unfortunately, the funding and the time available for the members was always very limited, so the achievements of ASFAN were lower than expected, and, in time, most of members became inactive with no one to take their place.

Apart from ASFAN, an informal but rather active organization on the internet is the Romanian UFO network – RUFON. I have no knowledge of other active UFO organizations in Romania. Since 1995, there is also no periodical about the UFO phenomenon in our country, only columns in publications of popular science or the paranormal.

The regions of Romania.

RG: What are the most active regions of Romania for UFO sighting reports (hotspots)?

DF: Judging by the list of known cases, we can not emphasise special UFO areas in Romania. There are observations from all regions. There have also been investigators in all corners of the country to examine and highlight these observations.

RG: Have you personally had any UFO sightings? 

DF: I have some strange early childhood memories. Later I saw some unusual lights on the sky, but I am not sure they were UFOs. On the other hand, I have seen and filmed several false UFOs.

RG: How long have you been involved in the UFO subject; roughly how many cases have you personally investigated; and what conclusions, if any, have you drawn about the underlying nature of UFO phenomena?

DF: I graduated in mathematics and physics in 1960, and I obtained later a Ph.D. in mathematics and computers. Also, I was always interested in astronomy. Therefore, I have a longstanding interest in the idea of extraterrestrial intelligence. I came close to the UFO phenomenon only after 1980, understanding that statistics on observations made by competent persons are a serious argument that the phenomenon is real.

I directly investigated only several dozen cases, some of them quite complex, but I spent a lot of time comparing them with the plenty of similar cases in the literature worldwide, and also I feel it is my duty to popularize the phenomenon among the readers in Romania. After so many years, my personal opinion is that, above us, a powerful “control system” manifests itself, which could be a hypercivilization, possibly even one billion years old, monitoring us for many millions of years, intervening extremely discreetly in our evolution.

RG: How can Romanian UFOlogy better itself?

DF: Two main aims of ASFAN are to persuade more young people to join us, which in the current pragmatic context will be difficult, and we should be able to get better funding to allow us to better investigate cases and to bring them to wider attention.

The fact that we have tried in the last few years to improve the collection and recording of cases is reflected by an increase in the number of investigated observations as follows: 2015 (6), 2016 (15), 2017 (23), 2018, 10 months (28). But there is still room for improvement.

• To learn more about the history of UFOs in Romania, read Dr. Dan D. Farcas’ book, UFOs Over Romania.

Here it is: the moment historians will look back upon as the dawn of Homo sapiens superior and the moment when us natural-borns get knocked down a peg on the social hierarchy. For decades, science fiction writers have foretold a future in which genetically-superior humans made possible by gene modification techniques will rise above us lowly normies with their enhanced intelligence and physiology, greater resistance to diseases, and stunning good looks of course. The prospect of editing the human genome has remained taboo, though, for longstanding ethical and moral reasons. Naturally, human-rights-optional China has ignored these and blazed ahead and given the world its first two genetically-modified superbabies whether we want them or not. It begins.

Evolution is just too slow.

This isn’t the first time Chinese scientists have tested CRISPR on humans. As early as 2015, Chinese researchers were already altering the genomes of human embryos in laboratories – embryos which were never gestated. Now, geneticists Southern University of Science and Technology, in Shenzhen have taken these techniques one step further by modifying the genomes of two embryos which were implanted into a human womb via in vitro fertilization. Those embryos are now two happy and healthy baby girls, Lulu and Nana. Scientists led by He Jiankui altered the girls’ genomes so that they will be immune to HIV – in theory. In statements made this week, He assures that the only changes made to the girls’ genomes were to the “doorway” which would allow HIV to potentially infect the girls. Who knows what unforeseen consequences might arise from the editing process, though?

The research has not yet been submitted for peer review and publication, so many scientists remain skeptical of the Chinese team’s claims. Jennifer Doudna, a biochemist at the University of California, Berkeley who helped develop CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing, warns that this trial is a “break from the cautious and transparent approach of the global scientific community’s application of CRISPR-Cas9 for human germline editing” adding that she and other scientists around the world are still “struggling to figure out what was done and also whether the process was done properly. We just don’t know yet.”

What will the future bring us now that we have the potential to alter the human genome as we see fit?

Many nations experimented with eugenics and other controlled breeding programs throughout the 20th century, but the advances made by CRISPR and other recent technologies let scientists remove all uncertainty from the equation (in theory) and edit the human genome on a gene-by-gene basis, opening the doors for all sorts of modifications with unknown long-term consequences.

While removing the chance for these girls to contract HIV can’t possibly be seen as a bad thing, this trial is the first to go over the apex and start sliding down the slipperiest of slopes. What’s next? Removing all cancer genes? Sure. Eradicating mental illnesses through removing their gene markers? Go right ahead. Creating an army of genetic Übermensch (more like 超人) capable of crushing genetically inferior opposing forces?

I, for one, welcome our new genetic overlords.

When Johnny Carson was host of the Tonight Show, comedians knew that they had made it to the top when the iconic comedy figure laughed and invited them to sit on his couch and talk. That happened to Jerry Seinfeld, David Letterman and the comic who took Johnny’s place, Jay Leno. Today, the host is Jimmy Fallon and, while he’s not the designated bestower of success to comedians, he may be one to robots. On November 21st, Fallon sang a duet of “Say Something” with Sophia, the most sophisticated humanoid robot to date, and it was sufficiently impressive, creepy and frightening. Was this the sign that AI has made it? If not, how about the news from Houston that a scientist has created a HAL 9000, the villainous computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey? Has the takeover begun … or is it already over?

Say something, I’m giving up on you
I’m sorry that I couldn’t get to you
Anywhere, I would’ve followed you
Say something, I’m giving up on you

After watching a demonstration of the latest robotic animal doing back flips and being made a fool of by a robot feeding him a tomato while he’s jogging (yes, AI has already taken over Letterman’s Stupid Human Tricks — see the entire video here), Hanson Robotics’ Sophia rolled out. She’s not a walking robot but her facial expressions and human hand and arm motions more than make up for the option that will undoubtedly be available soon, if the Little Sophia which was also brought out is any indication. Fallon is of course a good actor and looked like he was enjoying his duet with Sophia … or was he covering up his realization of what was actually happening?

“I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

Meanwhile, AI and robotics developer Pete Bonasso from Houston-based TRACLabs unveiled his new robot in the current edition of Science Robotics. In CASE: A HAL 9000 for 2021 and in an interview with Space.com, he explains how CASE — “cognitive architecture for space agents” – is “an intelligent agent, like HAL 9000, can plan and manage activities for a planetary base and can interact with users through a dialog management system.” And that’s just the prototype!

CASE is designed to plan and control activities and technological operations for a planetary colony base on three levels: hardware (life-support, power, transportation, pod bay doors), software (the AI for the hardware) and daily maintenance and emergencies (gas leaks, pod bay doors stuck, alien invasion). CASE is also able to interface with humans via visuals and speech and can make judgement calls (handy for refereeing Martian football games).

“Our colleagues and NASA counterparts are not concerned that our HAL might get out of control. That’s because it can’t do anything it’s not programmed to do.”

Bonasso has demonstrated CASE to NASA in a four-hour simulation of managing a planetary space station and no humans were harmed in the making of the model. However, it hasn’t yet been tried in the ultimate test … Beer Pong with Jimmy Fallon.

Should we be worried? Is it too late? If it is, who will help us fight back?

“I’m sorry, Jimmy. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }