If you want a definitive answer on the question of whether aliens have visited Earth, would you ask a politician, an astronaut, a philosopher, your neighbor who claims he’s an abductee or a NASA scientist? If you picked that last one but you don’t know any NASA scientists, we bring you Silvano P. Colombano, a computer scientist at NASA Ames Research Center in California who says he believes they’ve already been here … we just didn’t recognize them.

“I simply want to point out the fact that the intelligence we might find and that might choose to find us (if it hasn’t already) might not be at all be produced by carbon based organisms like us.”

In a new paper entitled “New Assumptions to Guide Seti Research,” Professor Colombano posits that extraterrestrials may not fit our conventional wisdom … or even our unconventional wisdom. Beyond being composed of something other than carbon, he proposes that beings who have the ability to travel long distances to get here may have lifespans far longer than ours, so that the ones who left their planet many light years away are the same ones who landed here. Not only that, the idea that they’re about our size (so we can put the benevolent ones on our bikes and punch out the evil ones) may not hold either.

“Our typical life-spans would no longer be a limitation (although even these could be dealt with multi-generational missions or suspended animation), and the size of the ‘explorer’ might be that of an extremely tiny super-intelligent entity.”

Is Colombano just thinking outside of the space box or does he know something about aliens that we don’t? It sounds more like he knows there’s something there and he wants both the scientific community and the general public to work together to get beyond our current assumptions so that we can see them.

“In the very large amount of “noise” in UFO reporting there may be “signals” however small, that indicate some phenomena that cannot be explained or denied. If we adopt a new set of assumptions about what forms of higher intelligence and technology we might find, some of those phenomena might fit specific hypotheses, and we could start some serious enquiry.”

Getting beyond the “noise” – that sounds like what many in the ufology field have been calling for lately. To accomplish this, Colombano believes the scientific community must accept the possibility of interstellar travel and the public must look beyond the “hoaxes, mistaken perceptions or even psychotic events in UFO phenomena.” Psychotic events? Does he have a certain rock star in mind?

While Colombano’s field is SETI, he recommends that his fellow scientists consider “speculative physics” that “stretch possibilities as to the nature of space-time and energy.” He also wants sociologists to speculate on new societies and how they might communicate with us … not to mention how we might communicate with them.

That all sounds great and it’s highly unusual to be coming from a NASA scientist, but in order to keep from getting lumped into pseudoscience or “psychotic events,” we need a catchy slogan that everyone can latch onto and put on a T-shirt to wear at “talk to the aliens” rallies. Colombano has the perfect candidate:

“Find the signal in the noise.”

As Sally sang in “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,” that’s my new philosophy. Scientists, ufologists and people looking for alien life forms on Earth … the rest is up to you.

Archaeologists have found two new caves near Qumran in the West Bank that they think may hold some Dead Sea Scrolls. The newly found caves, which are called 53b and 53c, are located close to other caves where some scrolls have already been found.

The previously found Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in twelve caves that were near Qumran and included 900 manuscripts. It is thought that a group of people called Essenes lived in Qumran and that they were the ones who wrote a lot of the scrolls. The Essenes ended up leaving the area around 70 A.D. when a revolt began against the Romans.

The first eleven caves were found between the years 1946 and 1956. Those eleven caves held the majority of the scrolls. The twelfth cave, however, was discovered much later in 2017 and only one blank scroll was found inside. They archaeologists did, however, find jars, textiles, string, and rope that were used to store the scrolls. By finding the remains of items used to store them, but not finding the actual Dead Sea Scrolls, it would indicate that they were more than likely stolen at some point.

• To see a picture of the Dead Sea Scrolls found in 1947, click here.

The two new caves that have been recently discovered are close in proximity to the twelfth cave and they also contain evidence that indicates scrolls were indeed there in the past. Unfortunately, archaeologists have yet to find any remaining scrolls but they still have a lot of investigating to do.

Inside of cave 53b, researchers found several artifacts from humans visiting the cave years earlier, which included a bronze cooking pot and an oil lamp. In a paper written by archaeologists Randall Price of Liberty University in Virginia and Oren Gutfeld of Hebrew University of Jerusalem, they wrote that researchers found “large amounts of pottery representing store jars, flasks, cups and cooking pots, and fragments of woven textiles, braided ropes and string.”

After analyzing the bronze cooking pot, it was determined that it dates back from between 100 B.C. and 15 B.C. which is also the same time that people were living at the archaeological site of Qumran. Also, the oil lamp that was found in the cave looks quite similar to the lamps that were found at Qumran which would indicate that the people who inhabited the site more than likely used the caves as well.

Price told Live Science, “We have not analyzed all of the pottery from this cave, so we do not know if a scroll jar was present.” But since the rope, string, and textiles found in cave 53b are quite similar to the ones previously found in cave 12, it may have also been used to store the scrolls as well.

As for the second newly found cave, called 53c, researchers found a piece of a scroll jar which indicates that scrolls were stored in that cave at one time. They are currently excavating the cave to see if they can find any evidence of hidden scrolls.

And so it arrives: Jeremy Kenyon Lockyer Corbell’s much-anticipated feature documentary about one of the most controversial UFO stories ever told—a story that, along with the infamous Roswell Incident of 1947, has arguably done more than any other to shape the landscape of modern UFO mythology.

In November of 1989, a thirty-year-old scientist by the name of Robert Lazar was interviewed exclusively by the respected investigative reporter George Knapp for the Las Vegas-based KLAS TV station. The topic of the interview was Lazar’s alleged recent employment at a top secret facility in the Nevada desert called S-4, which was located close to another top secret facility called Area 51 (unknown to the public at the time). The story Lazar told was jaw-dropping, and he stands by it—word-for-word—to this day, despite continuous harassment by incredulous journalists, UFO buffs, and, apparently, various government agencies.

Bob Lazar today, sketching the flying saucer he claims to have worked on at a facility called S-4, near Area 51.

For those with an open mind (okay, a very open mind), it is perhaps easier to believe Lazar than one might imagine. He has always come across as absolutely sincere and has always resisted encouragement to embellish his original testimony. I am of the opinion that Lazar has never spoken untruthfully about his recollections of Area 51 and S-4. However, I have also never doubted that the story that he tells is untrue—which is to say that the circumstances and events of Lazar’s story were carefully orchestrated and staged for him specifically as part of a sophisticated and ongoing UFO perception management campaign, which likely has counterintelligence purposes far beyond the UFO subject.

As has been documented by George Knapp and others, there is good reason to believe that Lazar really did work at and/or near Area 51 for a short time in the late 1980s. But it appears he was cherry picked for his job based on his psychological profile and his spotty personal and business history. In other words, it was known and desired that he would blow the whistle when the time came, and that it would be easy to publicly discredit him after he did so, ensuring that his story would not be accepted by all, but by just enough to engrain it into a rapidly expanding subcultural belief system.

The Emmy-Award-Winning investigative reporter, George Knapp, who broke Lazar’s story to the world in 1989.

Lazar told Knapp how he had been recruited to work at S-4 for just a few weeks in 1988 and 1989. Everything was cloaked in secrecy and the atmosphere at the base was oppressive. Information was shared there strictly on a need-to-know basis and his every move was closely monitored by armed security personnel. He claimed that he was tasked with helping his employers at S-4 to understand the propulsion system of a highly advanced air/space vehicle, which was being stored in one of nine camouflaged hangars at the facility.

When Lazar first set eyes on the craft—which was classic saucer-shaped and which he later dubbed ‘the sport model’—he assumed it was man-made. He had not been a believer in flying saucers. As the days and weeks went by, however, Lazar came to the conclusion that the craft must have been extraterrestrial in origin. Its technology was far too advanced to have been of human design, and, furthermore, its seats were far too small to accommodate human adults. They were child-sized, he said.

A close up of Lazar’s saucer sketch, which he explains in detail in Corbell’s documentary.

While at S-4 on another occasion, Lazar was taken into an office and shown weighty briefing documents, which he was told to study. They described how aliens from Zeta Reticuli—the classic big-eyed Grays—had been interacting with humanity for at least 10,000 years. Literally everything Lazar read in the documents regarding human history, alien biology, and political events supported the disinformative narrative that had been actively sown into the UFO community since the early-1980s by US intelligence operatives in the form the fraudulent MJ-12 documents and by the highly questionable testimony of Mirage Men with names like “Falcon” and “Condor.”

The question is: why was Lazar, who was supposedly employed strictly on a need-to-know basis as a physicist with one very specific technical task, given access to top secret documentation which had literally no bearing on that task? Perhaps the answer is that Lazar was being deliberately seeded with disinformation and was expected to later share it with the public.

The orchestrated nature of Lazar’s experience is also supported by one of his most bizarre recollections of his time at S-4, in which he set eyes on an alien entity working quite literally side-by-side with human scientists. At least, that is what he was meant to believe he saw. Lazar claims that, on the night in question, he was being escorted down a hallway by armed security personnel who had instructed him to keep his eyes forward at all times. With this instruction in mind, as they passed a doorway, naturally Lazar glanced to one side. His peripheral vision detected what he thought in that moment was one of the Gray aliens he had read about in the briefing documents. The small figure was stood between two men in lab coats. The three of them were looking at a computer console, and the “alien” had its back to the door. Lazar’s glimpse was so fleeting that no fine details were distinguishable. He was then pushed further along the corridor by one of the guards who instructed him once again to keep his eyes forward. Lazar himself has always been open to the possibility that this incident was staged specifically for him using a doll or a dummy and has speculated that someone may have been playing mind games with him.

Inside The Little A’Le’Inn in Rachel, Nevada, not too far from the gates to Area 51.

Most of the events described above are featured in Corbell’s documentary in the form of archive news footage of Lazar and in on-camera testimony of the UFO icon as he appears today, working in his lab or at home with his wife. We also get some input from his friends, family, and colleagues, all of whom fully support his story. As the reporter who introduced Area 51 to the world, George Knapp features prominently in Corbell’s film, again both in the form of archive footage and speaking from his home in the present day or as a disembodied voice on Corbell’s speaker-phone. Hollywood legend Micky Rourke is billed as narrating the documentary, but his contributions amount to little more than sporadic, largely unintelligible mumblings about the nature of truth and the universe which threaten seriously to derail Corbell’s narrative whenever it finds time to settle into a groove—which isn’t very often.

From the get go, and throughout, Corbell’s film is mired by an intrusive and over-produced electronic soundbed of pulsating intensity. It’s almost relentless, and it serves only to distract from the story itself, which is more than sufficiently compelling to be presented without whistles and bells.

For those already well-read on the Lazar case, Bob Lazar will offer few surprises, but it is fascinating nonetheless to spend time with the man thirty years on from when he rocked the world. Corbell succeeds in showing us Lazar—the man and the legend—up close and personal, revealing, ironically, a pretty down-to-earth guy who has tried his best to get on with his life as a scientist and business man, as removed as possible from the maddening world of UFOlogy. For better or for worse, he has chosen to be a largely-silent spectator to the formation of his own myth.

The film does present some circumstantial corroborative evidence for Lazar’s claims. One scene sees Corbell presenting Lazar with photographs he has acquired of the high-tech hand-scanners used at Area 51. Lazar had always maintained that these devices were used during his time at S-4, but when he described them in the late-1980s, they sounded like science-fiction. Apparently not. The look on Lazar’s face as he examines the photos is one of obvious familiarity with what he’s seeing, and his sense of vindication is palpable.

One of the most interesting and dramatic scenes see Lazar and his colleagues describing a disturbing raid on his home during the production of Corbell’s film by a parade of government agencies in search of… something (I will avoid spoilers here). On the face of it, these events add some support to the notion that Lazar is of considerable interest to the US national security apparatus—and all that that implies. Yet, frustratingly, Corbell makes little of this in his documentary. By the time the credits roll, this crucial scene is almost forgotten.

Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers makes for entertaining and thought-provoking viewing, but what’s missing is any real sense of the political and UFOlogical climate in which Lazar’s story originally came to light—we get the “what” but we don’t get the “why.” Given the recent revelations of the Pentagon concerning UFOs, which are tied in with the efforts of self-styled Disclosure hero Tom DeLonge, understanding the motivations behind UFO disinformation efforts is today more important than ever, but Corbell’s Lazar story is presented in a cultural and political vacuum, dampening its potential relevance and impact.

On November 11, 2018, a strange sort of wave circumnavigated the globe and registered on sensors more than 11,000 miles away from what was believed to be its source. These waves emanated from the Northeast corner of Madagascar and continued for nearly 20 minutes, ringing slowly and at a low-frequency as far away as Hawaii and New Zealand. The cause of these waves are still being theorized and investigated by scientists, but the strange wave was caught by a Twitter user, with the handle @matarikipax, according to a report from National Geographic. Many seismologists said they had never seen anything quite like it in response to the Twitter user’s find.

So, why were these waves so strange? During most earthquakes, there are fast-moving waves, which cause the initial rumble of the quake. Secondary waves follow, moving from side-to-side, the article states. This particular seismic occurrence, however, seemed to contain mostly the tertiary waves of earthquakes, which are described as slow, lengthy surface waves. Because of its similarity to these, the strange rumbling of the earth was not physically felt and reported by anyone.

The French Island of Mayotte was close to the source of these mysterious waves

These waves were specifically pinpointed nearest to the French island of Mayotte. The island has been experiencing something of an earthquake swarm relating to possible undersea volcanic activity since May. The largest of these events was reported to be around 5.8 on the Richter Scale. These swarms have slowed a bit in recent years, and the report in National Geographic said none of the events have been similar to the one recorded on Nov. 11.

To get to the bottom of the incident, the French Geological Survey (BRGM) is investigating possible new volcanic activity on the seafloor near the island. Mayotte was created by volcanism, but such activity has not been ongoing in that area for more than 4,000 years, geologists believe. The earlier earthquake swarms, though, could indicate a new magma pocket is opening in the earth’s crust beneath the waves just offshore of the island.

When magma pushes toward the top of the earth, new crust is formed by its cooling. Islands such as Mayotte and the Hawaiian Islands are formed by new crust being created from magma being squeezed to the surface by plate tectonics. This occurs constantly around the world, and it appears recent earthquake swarms and this recent mysterious wave were created by these processes.

During those processes, rare occurrences, known colloquially by geologists as “slow earthquakes” can occur. Slow earthquakes release the same amount of pressure as normal earthquakes, but over a longer period of time. This could explain why the waves were not felt by anyone, but registered on sensors across the globe for at least 20 minutes. If this were proven to be such an instance, this release would have been equivalent to about a five on the Richter Scale. Similar quakes occurred during the collapse of a magma chamber in 2009 at the Nyiragongo Volcano in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 

Eight limestone coffins were discovered in the area of King Amenemhat II’s pyramid that is located in the Dahshur royal necropolis which is 25 miles south of Cairo, Egypt. While it’s not entirely clear exactly when and how long Amenemhat II ruled Egypt, it is believed that his reign lasted for around 30 years around 1900 B.C.

Several other high-ranking officials and courtiers are buried in the necropolis. This area is also the location of some of the earliest pyramids on Earth, which includes the Red Pyramid and the Sneferu’s Bent Pyramid.

According to the Egyptian archaeological mission’s manager and Head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Mostafa Waziry, the mission began their work in August of 2018. The mummies were inside of limestone coffins and were wrapped in a layer of colorful painted cardboard in the shape of a human. Waziry said that three of the eight mummies were in good condition and that they were from the late period of 664 to 332 B.C.

• Click here to see pictures of the newly found coffins.

Photo credit: Egypt Today

Photo credit: Egypt Today

Photo credit: Egypt Today

Waziry also mentioned that the coffins were transported to a restoration warehouse and that the Ministry of Antiquities would show photographs of the sarcophagus at a local museum.

The Minister of Antiquities, Khaled el-Anany, said that another recent discovery happened on November 24^th when Mut Temple’s Tomb was found. An archaeological mission that’s connected to the French University of Strasbourg discovered the sarcophagus in the same general area as tomb TT33 which is located in the West Bank of Luxor.

The sarcophagus, which is from the 18^th dynasty, contains a mummy that is wrapped in linen. After researchers examined the mummy for the first time, it was determined that it was re-wrapped in linen during the late period which would explain why it was in such good condition.

Another mysterious discovery was found in the city of Alexandria when experts found an ancient “cursed” black granite sarcophagus. Inside of the huge coffin were the remains of three skeletons along with gold sheets.