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

Let’s get the obvious out of the way first … Spikes of Methane would make a great name for a band. However, it would have to play really well to produce the excitement that real spikes of methane are generating amongst the space exploration community over an announcement by NASA that its Curiosity rover has detected definitive proof of methane on Mars with the discovery of two distinct surges of the life-related gas and it has pinpointed their locations for future missions to sniff, study and solve. Is this the missing stink?

“Here, we report a firm detection of 15.5 ± 2.5 ppb by volume of methane in the Martian atmosphere above Gale Crater on 16 June 2013, by the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer onboard Mars Express, one day after the in situ observation of a methane spike by the Curiosity rover.”

In a report published this week in Nature Geoscience and reviewed by Space.com, lead author Marco Giuranna of Rome’s Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica in Rome announced that Curiosity found the methane in the large (96 mile (154 km) wide) Gale crater that many scientists believe was once a Martian lake. When the spike was confirmed in the atmosphere by the Mars Express orbiter a day later, this was the first ever multiple detections of a single methane presence on the planet.

But wait … there’s more! Another spike was detected in the Gale crater in late 2013 which lasted into 2014, and the researchers were able to pinpoint the location of the June 2013 spike to a region about 310 miles (500 km) east of the Gale crater. All of these discoveries are the result of a new technique developed by Giuranna for analyzing data collected by the Mars Express’ Planetary Fourier Spectrometer instrument (PFS), which has been sniffing Martian air since 2003 but whose discoveries have been doubted previously due to errors and malfunctions.

When Curiosity landed in the Gale crater in 2012, Giuranna began coordinating its sampling of Martian air with that of the Express. He and his team then divided the area in and around Gale into 250 km (155 miles) wide squares and used computer simulations to compute the probabilities of each one as the source of any methane plumes. In addition, they looked for geological features like faults that could have released the methane.

“Remarkably, we saw that the atmospheric simulation and geological assessment, performed independently of each other, suggested the same region of provenance of the methane, which is situated about 500 km east of Gale. This is very exciting and largely unexpected.”

Did cows beat humans to Mars?

But … is this a sign of life on Mars? Being a good scientist, Giuranna admits this methane isn’t the smoking gas. It could still have been the result of a chemical reaction and there’s no way to determine if it was created recently or has been trapped underground for millions of years … yet. Curiosity and Mars Express have teamed up with the ExoMars methane-sniffing Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) to collect and compare even more Martian methane data. Nothing is as easy as Elon Musk wants us to believe, says Giuranna.

“Follow-up is very important to better understand methane on Mars. We are collecting pieces of a puzzle and need more pieces to understand better what is going on.”

In the meantime, the Spikes of Methane should continue practicing their covers of Bowie songs.

There can be absolutely no doubt at all that one of the most controversial of all the various whistleblowers who have come forward with startling revelations concerning Area 51 was a man named Boyd Bushman. He revealed data that was not just controversial, but arguably beyond controversial. You’ll soon see what I mean by that. Although many of Bushman’s claims stretched credibility to the absolute max, the intriguing fact is that he really was plugged into the secret world of Area 51 and advanced technologies. As we shall now see. Bushman, who died on August 7, 2014, left an amazing and controversial legacy behind him. It was a filmed statement from him on what he knew about an alien presence at Area 51, anti-gravity technology in the hands of personnel at the base, one on one contact with ETs, and much, much more. Was Bushman telling the truth? Was he nothing but an outright liar? Or, was he spreading disinformation on behalf of those who run Area 51 – and as a means to muddy the waters of what really goes on there? Or, do all three scenarios have some degree of validity attached to them? Let’s take a look at the life and work of Bushman and his incredible revelations – if that’s what they really were.

First, it’s important to note that Bushman was no fantasist. He was a respected figure in the world of aviation, having worked as a senior scientist with Lockheed Martin. He also had more than a few patents to his name. He also claimed to have worked on top secret anti-gravity-based programs for the U.S. Government. To a degree this has been confirmed, since his heavily redacted, declassified FBI file references his research in the field of anti-gravity. Magnetic drives and a thermally energized electrical power source were also patented by Bushman. Bushman made a number of claims that sounded plausible, but he also revealed to the UFO research community and to the world’s media tales that were downright bizarre. In 2007 – which was seven years before he passed away – Bushman was filmed speaking about what he knew (or what he claimed to know) about all things alien, and a great deal about Area 51.

According to Bushman, aliens were both working and living at Area 51. We’re not talking about just dead aliens recovered from crashed UFOs – such as those allegedly recovered from outside of Roswell, New Mexico in the summer of 1947. This, to a degree, you may know, echoes a brief aside made by Bob Lazar back in 1989, when he claimed to have very briefly seen a small, humanoid figure at the S-4 site. It’s important to note that Lazar himself suspected that this may have been a deliberate, fabricated, stage-managed incident, designed to make Lazar think there were aliens at Area 51. Obviously, this has a bearing on the Bushman story, too, specifically in relation to the possibility that Bushman may also have been deliberately fed faked data by disinformation specialists at Area 51. Still on the matter of Bob Lazar, it’s intriguing to note that – to a degree – Bushman backed up Lazar’s claims of having worked on the anti-gravity systems of the alleged UFOs held at S-4. According to Bushman, such research was indeed actively and secretly underway at Area 51. Interestingly, Bushman also asserted that both the Chinese and the Russians had been brought into the fold, to a certain degree, anyway. This too mirrors the words of Bob Lazar, way back in the 1980s, when he said that while working at Area 51 he heard whispers of the Russians having been invited to work on the program, but who at some point were slung off the project.

As for the aliens themselves, this is where Bushman’s story got really weird. He claimed they came from a planet called Quintumnia (on some occasions he called it Quintonia), which is said to be around sixty-eight light years away. Incredibly, Bushman maintained that the aliens were able to make the journey from their world to ours in less than an hour. Their lifespan, said Bushman, was far in excess of ours. Indeed, he said that the average Quintumnian lived on average to around 230 of our years. They were not too dissimilar to us, with hands and feet like ours. As for their height, it was around five-feet. They didn’t speak English, though. Or, in fact, any Earth-based language. They didn’t need to. They communicated solely by telepathy. Certainly, one of Bushman’s most controversial claims (and there were many of them…) was that he had interacted with the ETs personally, and to the extent that he said he gave them a camera so that the aliens could take pictures of their home planet and bring the pictures back to him! Whether Bushman preserved those priceless pictures in a dedicated photo album is anyone’s guess. He also maintained that the Quintumnians were the alien race responsible for the ongoing cattle-mutilation phenomenon on our world.

Certainly, the most outrageous aspect of the Bushman affair came when he revealed a color photo of what was said to have been one of the Quintumnians. In no time at all, the UFO research was able to offer a definitive “Gotcha!” The photo which Bushman touted as proof of alien visitations to Earth in general and to Area 51 specifically, was not evidence of anything of an extraterrestrial nature at all. It was actually a picture of a quite sophisticated alien doll sold by none other than Wal-Mart! For many people in the field of Ufology, the issue of the “Wal-Mart alien” (as it quickly and inevitably became known) was enough for them to walk away from the controversy and brand Bushman as either a liar, a joker, or someone descending into a state of senility. Maybe, one of those scenarios was indeed the correct one. On the other hand, though, one has to give some thought to the distinct possibility that Bushman was still highly astute and not suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Significant thought must be given to a theory that cannot be ruled out. In fact, we might very wise to rule it in. It goes as follows.

Let’s say that Area 51’s overlords were concerned by the ever-increasing attention paid to the secret base. After all, it had appeared in The X-Files, in Independence Day (something which senior personnel at the Pentagon were far from happy about), and in the movie, Area 51, which was released in 2015. Add to that, the growing number of people who have been detained and fined for getting too close to Area 51 and one can see that the personnel at Area 51 might have come up with an intriguing plan. Perhaps, a “plot” would be a far better term to use. It’s not at all unlikely or implausible that Bushman was groomed by personnel at Area 51 to divulge an amazing and astounding faked story of aliens at Area 51, of crashed UFOs, of cattle mutilations, and even of alien-human interaction at the installation. The staff at the secret facility would surely know how the UFO research community works. They could have made a good guess that certain elements of the more gullible and paranoid side of Ufology would be jumping up and down with excitement. More importantly, those same ufologists would likely spread the story here, there and everywhere on social-media and radio shows. Which is exactly what happened. But, then when the Wal-Mart angle surfaced, for many people in Ufology (if not the vast majority) the entire saga collapsed. The result? Ufologists were laughed at and derided by fellow ufologists. And, the mainstream media poked fun at the field of UFO research. That just may have been the desired result.

All we can say for sure is that the Boyd Bushman revelations surfaced for a reason. Whether that reason was designed to shed further light on a genuine extraterrestrial presence at Area 51, or if the plan was to give Ufology a solid punch in the face – and to make the domain of UFO research look stupid – is still open to debate. Whatever Boyd Bushman really knew about Area 51 and its UFO links went with him in 2014. Just perhaps, this was Bushman’s “last hurrah,” still secretly working for his Area 51 masters to the very end – to confuse the truth of what really goes on at Area 51.