UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

Sometimes complexity can be the opposite of interesting. We’ve all read things that are just manage to use 500 obscure five-dollar-words without saying anything at all, and we’ve all heard guitar solos that use every single possible note without hitting any emotional resonance whatsoever. Complex is not always what you need. The same is true for anomalous sightings. What’s weirder, a flying craft with all sorts of bells and whistles, lights and widgets sticking off its sides, or just a big pink square sitting in the middle of the ocean?

It’s certainly debatable, but there’s something especially strange about geometric shapes and solid colors. While that last sentence reads like the internal dialogue of an infant musing over the mobile hung above his crib, it remains true. Certain things don’t show up in nature all that much, and when they do it can spark a sense of awe, excitement, and even fear, despite the likely mundane explanation. It’s just strange. Such is the case for a recent piece of footage, filmed in the middle of the Pacific ocean.

Uploaded to the YouTube channel Disclose Screen ‘The Grimreefar,’ the video (which you can watch in full here) was allegedly captured somewhere in the western Pacific by a crew of fishermen. It shows a very bright pink rectangle on the horizon that seems to morph and change shape. The cameraman and the rest of the crew are shouting excitedly. They aren’t speaking English, so I have no idea what they’re saying. However, the Disclose Screen narrator is. He calls the video the one of the weirdest pieces of footage he’s seen, and refers to the glowing rectangle as “a massive energy” (sic). He also says that it looks like a Viking ghost ship, despite it being nowhere near Viking territory. He says it could also be aliens or “the government” (which government? It’s the middle of the ocean.) The narrator also says that he sees “Loch Ness monster-type things” popping out of the water, and other strange anomalies in the sky, including UFOs.

Wrong color scheme for a ghost ship, dude.

When the video is slowed down and these other anomalies are circled, there are a couple of dark saucer shapes that appear, however briefly, in the sky. They appear too briefly to give any reasonable analysis. That’s not the case for the rest of the claims, which we will now tackle one by one.

First, the Loch Ness monster-type things. What are they? We can answer that question with another: what do fishermen do? They fish. Those are fish. Or dolphins. Or birds. Or any other animal that lives in a part of the sea specifically targeted by fisherman, presumably on the knowledge that a lot of animals live there.

Next, the “massive energy” itself. You know, I think he’s right. It is “a massive energy.” It’s the sun! It looks like it’s changing shape because of the rolling of the waves, the reflection off the water, and the low resolution footage. It’s a beautiful sunset poking through the clouds on the horizon, captured by fisherman who are freaking out because it’s a stunning and beautiful natural phenomenon. If you can’t recognize when people are gushing about a fantastic sunset, then that is the canary in the coal mine, choking out it’s death rattle, telling you to go outside once in a while, for the love of all that is holy.

Look, on the horizon, a massive explosion of nuclear energy!

But that’s the thing. Sometimes nature appears in a way that seems utterly alien to us. It’s human nature to stand in awe and wonder when we see it. Otherworldly phenomena may indeed exist, but don’t let the search for it cheapen your appreciation for beautiful sunsets.

The unicorn might be a fantastical creature found only within the pages and filmstrips of fiction, but at least one real-life unicorn has walked the Earth before – that we know of at least. The Elasmotherium sibiricum, or “Siberian unicorn,” is an extinct type of one-horned ancient rhinoceros which once roamed the area that is now Eurasia from about 2.5 million years ago to right up until the Stone Age. In fact, there is some archaeological evidence that the Siberian unicorn and humans once lived side-by-side on the steppes of Western Siberia

The Siberian unicorn (light gray) would have dwarfed even the largest humans.

While scientists have known about the Siberian unicorn for around a century, they have had only a few scattered fossil records to go on. As a result, the creature has remained somewhat of a mystery. However, an international team of researchers were recently able to assemble a collection of 23 different Siberian unicorn bone specimens in order to try and uncover more about this relatively unknown creature. After performing radiocarbon dating and DNA analyses on the specimens, the team has now published a new study on Elasmotherium sibiricum which sheds some light on the lives of this “unicorn.”

Not exactly the cuddly rainbow-pooping unicorns of Lisa Frank.

According to the study, most of the Siberian unicorn fossil specimens were found to date to time rangers long after the animals were thought to be extinct, as recent as 35,000 years ago. Furthermore, the study determined that Elasmotherium sibiricum is not closely related to modern rhinoceroses as was previously thought, but instead split off of the rhino’s evolutionary lineage over 40 million years ago.

Paleolithic cave art from as far west as France suggests the animals may have roamed a much larger area than previously thought, too.

The new timeline for the Siberian unicorn also sheds some light on the likely cause for its extinction. During the time to which the most recent specimens were dated, a period of colder winters meant there was far less grass for the animals to graze on throughout Eurasia. According to Alan Cooper of the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA at the University of Adelaide, the unicorn’s extreme specialization in eating grass meant that was its main food source died off, the animals likely starved to death:

It looks like this unicorn thing was so specialised to eat grass it couldn’t survive. Its head was a whopping great big thing, it was kind of extended really really low, sitting right at grass height, so it really doesn’t have to lift its head up. There’s question of whether it could even lift its head at all! It was highly specialist so once the environment shifted it appears to have died out.

Yikes. While the Siberian unicorn might have died out tens of thousands of years ago, this new timeline makes you wonder: if these “unicorns” and humans lived side-by-side for thousands of years, is that why unicorns are such a common legendary creature around the world? Depictions of unicorns are fairly ubiquitous worldwide. Like all beasts of lore and legend, the unicorn likely has its roots in the ancient human consciousness.