An unidentified aircraft seen circling overhead for days has residents of the Canadian city of Kingston wondering if something strange could be afoot. Kingston sits along Lake Ontario at the mouth of the St. Lawrence river a few hours from the major metropolises of Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto. For days now, residents have seen an aircraft with “minimal lighting” flying over the city under the cover of darkness. Even more curious, not one law enforcement agency or branch of the military has stepped forward to claim responsibility for the craft. What’s going on in the skies over Kingston?

It’s probably just another one of those shadow government planes again turning the frogs gay with chemtrail magic.

The Kingston Whig Standard reports that the news paper has received multiple emails and calls about the unidentified aircraft. According to Kingston resident Doug Stewart, the aircraft appears to circle for hours in the dead of night:

It’s a mystery. I can hear it at 2 and 3 a.m., and I’ve only heard it after dark at about 6, 7, 8 p.m. Some nights it’s constant … it seems like it’s circling.

Other witnesses have estimated that the aircraft is flying fairly low around 3,000 to 5,000 feet and appears to circle the same area every five minutes or so. Naturally, many Kingston residents assumed that the nearby Canadian Forces Base Trenton, Canada’s busiest Air Force base, was to blame. However, Public Affairs Officer Capt. Graeme Scott reports that the aircraft isn’t theirs.

Many law enforcement agencies now operate spy aircraft equipped with incredibly high-resolution video cameras.

Likewise, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have issued a rather opaque, somewhat passive aggressive statement denying any knowledge of the aircraft:

The RCMP’s primary concern is the safety and security of Canadians. We have multiple aircraft that support our mandate in Ontario and elsewhere in the country. To maintain the integrity of our investigations and operations, the location of our aircraft is not disclosed. We therefore have no additional information to share with you at this time.

With such little information to go on, Kingston residents are left in the dark about the plane circling their homes and who it might belong to. While many see this as an invasion of privacy, deciding who owns the airspace above privately-owned homes has proven tricky for federal governments. Should undisclosed, unidentified aircraft be able to loiter in the sky despite the public’s concern or alarm?

An asteroid belt is full of asteroids, so a collision in this narrow and crowded orbiting highway of rock wouldn’t seem to generate anything more than a “Duh!” from astronomers. However, a recent crash in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter caught their attention because of its violent impact which seems to have turned one of the asteroids into a comet with an extremely long tail. Doh?

“On 9 Jan. 2019, the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams issued an electronic telegram reporting that the inner main belt asteroid (6478) Gault had a tail. This made the object a very important target to monitor and we managed to get a few images on two nights.”

That electronic telegram (nice to see someone is still using telegrams) was read by The Virtual Telescope Project – an advanced service provided by the Bellatrix Astronomical Observatory in Italy providing remote Internet access to several robotic telescopes for the general public – and distributed worldwide. 6478 Gault is already somewhat famous, having been discovered in 1988 by the astronomer couple Carolyn and Eugene Shoemaker at the Palomar Observatory in California. The Shoemakers are best known for discovering the Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9, whose collision with Jupiter in July 1994 was televised worldwide.

Asteroid Gault (named for American planetary geologist Donald Gault, a pioneer in the field of impact cratering processes – coincidence?) is part of the Phocaea family of space rocks created 2.2 billion years ago by another collision which resulted in Gault (a large asteroid 3.7 km/ 2.3 miles in diameter, countless other little space rocks and 25 Phocaea, a huge asteroid about 75 km/46 miles in diameter. Researchers with the ATLAS project (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) spotted the sudden appearance of a tail on Gault in late December/early January observations.

View image on Twitter

British astronomer Alan Fitzsimmons tweeted that the tail is over 400,000 km/240,000 miles long and would stretch from Earth to the Moon and then some. Astronomer Gianluca Masi posted on the Virtual Telescope Project blog that the tail was most likely created by a collision that blasted a part of Gault into the smithereens that now make up the tail. (See the pictures here.) No one seems to know which rock – if it still exists – collided with 6478) Gault somewhere in November 2018. What the astronomers do know is that an asteroid with a tail is an extremely rare condition that they still don’t seem to fully understand – as evidenced by all of the conflicting stories about whether tail-streaming ’Oumuamua is a comet, an asteroid, a space ship or something else.

Comet or asteroid?

What is 6478 Gault now? If it keeps the tail, and astronomers will be monitoring it closely, then it’s definitely turned into some form of comet. If it loses the tail, it’s still an asteroid. If the collision knocked it hard enough to put it on a collision path with a planet (hopefully not Earth), it will make the Shoemakers famous once again.

Place your bets now.

Mysterious forces destroy asteroid as amazed scientists watch

Back in the 1970s, Paul Bennewitz – who died in 2003, in Albuquerque, New Mexico – had his own company that stood adjacent to Kirtland Air Force Base, also in Albuquerque. Its name was Thunder Scientific. All was good, as Bennewitz had a number of solid contracts with the military. And living and working so close to the base made things comfortable and handy for Bennewitz. It was the perfect relationship. Until, that is, it wasn’t. In shockingly quick time, Bennewitz’s life began to fragment in chaotic fashion. But, how and why did such a thing happen?

It’s important to note that by the late 1970s Bennewitz had been interested in UFOs not just for years but for decades. He had a large library of books on the subject and subscribed to a number of newsletters and magazines on the subject. On occasion, Bennewitz had seen – late at night and in the early hours of the morning – strange, unidentified objects flying over Kirtland Air Force Base and the nearby, huge Manzano Mountains. They could have been early drone-like craft being tested secretly. But, for Bennewitz they were alien craft.

Bennewitz’s head spun: he came to believe that aliens were in league with the U.S. Air Force, and that much of the secret program was run out of Kirtland. And he shared his views with staff at Kirtland, the CIA, the NSA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon, his Senator, his Congressman, and just about anyone and everyone in a position of power and influence. It was all but inevitable that by firing off lengthy letters about a secret alien-human operation at Kirtland someone would take notice. That’s exactly what they did.

While one school of thought suggests that Bennewitz was indeed tracking the movements of UFOs in the skies over Kirtland, another suggests that Bennewitz had actually stumbled on test-flights of new and radical aircraft, of the aforementioned drone kind. In the latter scenario, the government (as a collective term for all of those agencies and individuals that Bennewitz approached) decided to first politely, but quietly, request that Bennewitz bring his research to a halt. This was like a red rag to a bull. Bennewitz would hear none of it. He was primed and ready to go after the U.S. Government and to confirm what he saw as the dark and sinister truth of Uncle Sam’s liaisons with aliens. One man against the government? It was clear who was going to win; although Bennewitz couldn’t envisage such a thing at all.

Manzano Mountains

In ingenious fashion – but from the perspective of Bennewitz, in terrible fashion – a plot was initiated to, in essence, give Bennewitz exactly what he wanted to hear. So, well-placed government agents, intelligence operatives, and experts in the fields of counterintelligence and disinformation, all fed Bennewitz fictitious tales of dangerous ETs, of thousands of people abducted and mind-controlled in slave-like fashion by the aliens, of terrible experiments undertaken on people held below a huge “underground base” in the town of Dulce, New Mexico, and of a looming confrontation between the human race and the deadly creatures from another galaxy.

That the data was all coming to him from verifiable insider sources impressed Bennewitz and led him to believe their every word – which is precisely what the government was gambling on. The government then tightened the noose even tighter around Bennewitz’s neck: they fed him more and more horror-stories of the alien variety. And, slowly and bit by bit, Bennewitz’s paranoia grew. He couldn’t sleep, he became stressed to the point where he required medication, and eventually had a nervous collapse and was hospitalized. The result: he walked away from UFOs, secret projects, and cosmic conspiracies as a crushed man. Which may well have been the intent of the government, anyway.

How do you wipe out an entire species of 60 ft long giant sharks? Blow up a star, of course. According to a recent paper, supernovas may have been the cause of a number of unexplained mass extinctions throughout earth’s history, including the monstrous and fantastically named giant shark species Megalodon, a relative of the great white shark, whose mysterious extinction some 2.6 million years ago has long puzzled scientists.

There are enough out there to confidently say that stars are exploding all the time. Luckily for us, space is big and our lives are relatively short, so the chance of us getting blasted by a supernova are pretty small. Still, sometimes it happens (roughly every 100 million years) and the earth gets whacked by a cloud of radiation that once made up some other poor solar system’s sun. Scientists have been looking for evidence of how cosmic events like supernovas impact earth and the recent study attempts to discover the role that they play in the rise and fall of species here on earth and the impact that they might have had on evolution. If you guessed that an exploding star would be really good at killing things, you’re right!

Fossilized Megalodon tooth.

According to Adrian Melott, astrophysicist at the University of Kansas and the author of the new paper, the mass extinction of megafauna like the Megalodon lines up with evidence of a supernova impacting earth. Isotopes of iron-60, which is extremely rare on earth yet common in supernovas, were found on the sea floor and the surface of the moon. Dating these isotopes reveals that, if they were dropped here by a supernova, that supernova rolled through our solar system 2.6 million years ago—right about when the Megalodon checked out. According to Melott:

“A lot of things would not leave a definite residue. [Iron-60] is smoking-gun evidence of something happening.”

The blast from a supernova could end species in a few ways. Other theories on how supernovas could impact mass extinctions point to indirect causes. The blast from a supernova could strip the earth’s ozone layer, for example, leaving species vulnerable to solar radiation and destroying ocean food sources like plankton and coral reefs. Cosmic rays could also seed clouds and create a “cosmic-ray winter,” according to Henrik Svensmark of the Technical University of Denmark, which would also result in the destruction of food sources.

Melott thinks that the supernova may have been a much more direct cause of the extinction, however. Supernovas release highly charged radioactive particles called muons. Getting hit by a cloud of muons probably wouldn’t feel like much at first, but the radiation exposure would soon cause irreparable genetic damage and mutations that, depending on the species, could be catastrophic. The bigger the animal, the worse the impact would be. For an animal the size of a human, the muon storm would increase cancer rates by 50 percent. Considering that the Megalodon was about the size of a school bus, it would get hit pretty hard.

Artist’s depiction of a supernova.

As evidence for his theory, Melott points to the sudden extinction of 36 percent of ocean species 2.6 million years ago at the end of the Pliocene era and the beginning of the Pleistocene. The extinct species were largely coastal dwelling, where the impact from muon radiation would be the most devastating. Unfortunately, highly radioactive particles like muons don’t leave any record of their presence, so it’s hard to tell just how catastrophic an impact it was. Yet there does seem to be a correlation between a supernova and a mass extinction, so it is likely that there was some sort of connection.

So, if you have a fear of shark infested waters, just remember: there’s always something bigger and badder on its way (but probably not for another 97 million years).

A radar mystery that began in the skies over parts of the United States late last year has some experts questioning whether the government is involved in secret tests, while others think odd weather might be to blame.

In early December, the National Weather Service reported on what they termed an “anomaly” over parts of the midwestern United States. Here at MU Brett Tingley reported on the incident, which was observed on radar over parts of Illinois, Kentucky, and Indiana. “Whatever was on radar appeared to be as dense as a thunderstorm,” Brett wrote, “but with the night clear and temperatures low, that theory was ruled improbable.” It was determined that the likely cause of the radar traces had been chaff, a substance composed mostly of aluminum that is released from aircraft during military operations and exercises to “confuse enemy radar.” However, as Brett noted at the time, meteorologist Greg Meffert with the NWS stated that he had “never seen [chaff] quite this hot.”

A few days later, Joseph Trevithick over at The Warzone wrote about a second radar incident, reporting that similar anomalous traces had appeared over parts of Maine and Florida just two days later. The National Weather Service confirmed on their Twitter account that the new radar anomalies also resembled chaff, although Trevithick noted that the December radar blips seemed to last longer than chaff typically does.

Chaff, as depicted on a radar visual display

(Wikimedia Commons).

“We have already reached out to the National Guard Bureau,” Trevithick wrote, “but at the time of writing, we have not received any additional information about this new incident over Maine. We’re reaching out to additional commands regarding the plume in Florida, as well.”

Since that time, little else was reported about the incidents. That is, until today, when Jon Webb with the Evansville Courier & Press wrote about the peculiar December incidents. While they do appear to be related to military operations involving chaff, a few questions do remain.

“Whatever it is, it’s exceedingly strange,” Webb wrote, citing an email exchange he had with a member of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) who told him, “We believe there is more to the story than what the FAA and military and publications such as ‘The War Zone’ are telling us.” (Does it matter to the unnamed MUFON investigator that even The Warzone’sTrevithick noted having some problems of his own with the chaff theory? Maybe they didn’t read to the end of the article… who knows.)

“More NWS hubs will get confused,” Webb concluded, “And more conspiracies will be born.”

So what was going on back in December, and does the assertion by Trevithick and others that certain aspects of the incidents didn’t resemble “typical” military exercises involving chaff amount to anything?

A pair of B-1B Lancers, 28th Bomb Squadron, deploy chaff and flares during a military exercise

(public domain).

According to a Department of National Defense study from 2008, chaff is described as “a radiofrequency countermeasure released by military aircraft (ships and ground vehicles) to confuse enemy radar.” At the time this report was produced, chaff was used in approximately 26 U.S. states.

The report states that “the effective use of chaff can be maintained only by practicing in-flight deployments during training issues.” It goes on to say that, “The release of chaff into the environment during these exercises has raised concerns among both public-interest groups and the government regarding the fate and environmental impact of chaff particles.”

Concerns about the environmental effects of chaff go back to at least 1993, resulting in a military report that indicated that there were few–if any–significant environmental risks associated with its use in military exercises. However, a 1998 report by the congressional General Accounting Office continued to argue that chaff could have negative environmental effects, in addition to potentially interfering with civilian ATC radar systems.

More recently, controversies arose over the use of chaff last year in relation to the companies that produce it, and their potential future ownership by foreign entities. Presently, Esterline Defense Technologies (also known by the name Armtec) is the only company in the United States that produces chaff for use in military activities. In 2018, it was reported that Esterline/Armtec would be acquired by the UK-based TransDigm Group Inc. The news prompted a bipartisan letter from Congress to Jim Mattis, then-U.S. Defense Secretary, calling for the U.S. government to block the deal.

“TransDigm has repeatedly purchased companies that are the sole providers of Department of Defense items and engaged in price gouging,” the letter, co-authored by California Democratic representative Jackie Speier and North Carolina Republican Walter Jones, argued. “The abuses have been sufficiently common and severe enough to warrant a DoD inspector general investigation. Unsurprisingly, Esterline is the sole DoD chaff provider and one of two flare providers. The alarm bells should be ringing.”

In essence, the controversies surrounding chaff and its use seem to have been an ongoing point of contention for decades. But in sum, do military exercises account for the odd radar returns that were occurring late last year? Also, could it be possible that the military is testing a new kind of chaff or similar substance, following the news that Esterline/Armtec could be acquired by TransDigm? There is no proof that this is the case, but if we were to speculate, it might account for some of the more unusual aspects reported with the December incidents, as well as why so many were reported around that time.

Then again, for all we know maybe the December radar incidents were just good old, Esterline/Armtec chaff that was clouding up radar systems over the Midwest and parts of the East Coast. At present, no further information about the incidents has been made available to the public, nor have any similar radar anomalies been reported… so the rest is left (as per usual) to our imaginations.