A pair of strange discoveries this month shows that there is still plenty of mystery left at the bottom of the deepest parts of the world’s oceans – but not all of it is the good kind. First, scientists announced a grim but fascinating discovery when it was revealed that radioactive fallout was discovered at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest natural trench in the world. If nuclear fallout has managed to make it all the way down there, what does this mean for us surface dwellers?

The discovery of fallout in the Mariana Trench was made when marine biologists collected amphipods from the trench in order to analyze which, if any, radioactive isotopes might be present in the tiny creatures. Amphipods are diminutive crustaceans that feed on microscopic plankton, making them a perfect way to measure levels of ambient isotopes found in the world’s oceans. Prior to this most recent study, it was presumed that amphipods in the deepest parts of the world would be free from radioactive isotopes due to their isolation, yet scientists found high levels of carbon-14 anyway, similar in fact to levels of carbon-14 found on the ocean’s surface.

Most amphipods are only a few millimeters in length or less.

Above-ground nuclear tests conducted between 1955 and 1980 released dramatic levels of carbon-14 into the atmosphere and biosphere, making this isotope perfect for testing for radioactive fallout. This is the first time scientists have reported the presence of radioactive fallout in the Mariana Trench, and shows that radioactive material from nuclear tests can pass through the food chain to reach even the smallest, most remote creatures. It’s still unknown what effects this residual radiation could have on ecosystems in the long term. Can’t stop progress, though, am I right?

In less depressing ocean trench news, scientists with the Five Deeps Expedition may have discovered an entirely new species living in the deepest known part of the Indian Ocean. Five Deeps is the world’s first manned expedition to the deepest point in each of the five oceans and was exploring the Java Trench off the coast of Indonesia when it caught a strange creature on one of its submersible’s cameras. The team called the unidentified creature an “extraordinary gelatinous animal” which “does not resemble anything seen before.” See the footage of the creature for yourself.

A gold-mouth sea squirt

Preliminary analysis suggests the animal may be an unknown type of sea squirt, but it’s difficult to tell from just photographic evidence, not to mention the fact that sea squirts are usually anchored to the sea floor. While it was initially believed the creature was a new jellyfish, Five Deeps chief scientist Alan Jamieson now believes it may be a specially-adapted sea squirt which is able to relocate itself in the event of seismic activity. “Trenches are quite seismic — and normally tunicates would be attached to the sea floor. And, now, if it’s quite a seismic environment, you run the risk of being buried,” Jamieson says, “so an adaptation to destructive environments is to raise yourself off the seafloor and in this case using this big long tentacle.”

We’ve only begun to peer into the world’s deepest oceans, and NOAA estimates only around 20% of the world’s oceans have been explored to date. Who knows what may lie in the darkness of the unfathomable depths below miles and miles of water?

Things much bigger and scarier than sea squirts and radioactive shrimp, I know that much.

According to the Mayans, it wasn’t exactly a gate. The portal though which the dead passed into the underworld of their next life was believed to be a water medium, which is why enterprising Polish archeologists have spent their time searching lake beds and in underground reservoirs for Mayan artifacts. Their waterlogged quest reached fruition on an island in a Guatemalan lake where recently found relics of possible human sacrifices and evidence that this was also the location of a different kind of passing in the surface worlds – the last battle between the Maya and Spanish invaders.

“The Maya resisted the conquistadors for a very long time. Nojpetén – the last independent fortress of the Maya – was captured in 1697 after a great battle. The Spaniards attacked the island on ships, from which they shot their weapons at the Maya.”

Science in Poland is slowly releasing news of recent Polish archeological discoveries in late 2018 near Nojpetén, the capitol city on what is now called Flores Island in Petén Itza Lake in Guatemala. The first surprise was that there were so many ceramic artifacts and they were in such excellent, non-broken condition. That led the archeologists to believe they were not tossed carelessly into the water but lowered using nets as offerings to the gods. Those offerings in the ceramic vessels included animal bones and obsidian blades. (Photos of the artifacts here.)

The discoveries could place final battle between the Maya and Spanish conquerors on the lake's island Flores, rather than a location further west.The photo shows an incense burner found in Lake Petén Itzá on the lake-bed

Hundreds of Mayan artefacts have been found in a lake in Guatemala by polish underwater archaeologists. A stone mace head (pictured) was also discovered which could be is related to the final battle that saw Guatemala being colonised by the Spanish, say archaeologists. 

A stone mace head was also found which researchers say is related to the final battle that saw Guatemala being colonised by the Spanish. The image above shows a pot found at what is known as the 'sacred spot' in Lake Petén Itzá

The archaeological evidence could place the last battle with the Spaniards on the lake's island Flores, rather than further west, where most written sources say it took place. Among the finds was an obsidian blade (pictured) was found that may have been used for blood sacrifices

Water has special significance in Mayan mythology, and bodies of water are often believed to be the gateway to the underworld. The image shows an incense burner on the lake bed 

Lake Petén Itzá, Guatemala, at the time of its conquest by the Spanish Empire in 1697.

(credit: Simon Burchell)

“Ancient Maya used blades like this during their rituals. They could make blood-letting offerings or even kill somebody to offer human blood to the gods.”

Project leader Magdalena Krzemień of Poland’s Jagiellonian University says weapons found in the underwater cache served two purposes – the obsidian (a glassy volcanic rock) blades were used to kill and carve offerings to the gods, while a well-preserved stone head of a mace – the deadly club of warfare in many cultures – was evidence that the last battle to preserve the culture, which ended in 1697, occurred here. Bringing the upper and lower worlds together in one piece was a large shell found near the nearby El Hospital island which was from the Caribbean and used for a variety of rituals covering the full circle of Mayan life from birth and maturation to sacrifice, war and death.

Not all Mayan artifacts are above ground

“That is a great beginning to the process of better learning their customs, beliefs and culture.”

Krzemień revealed that this large cache of artifacts was found on the surface of the lake bed, making them easy to recover. She expects that more will be found with some digging. That could explain why the news of this 2018 discovery is only trickling out now – the archeologists want to protect this historic and sacred site from reckless and unscrupulous recovery efforts.

The ancient gate to the underworld still attracts underworld characters – what a shock.

There is an old Chinese curse (at least according to one former British statesman) which goes, “may you live in interesting times.” I think few would doubt that these are interesting times, particularly as it relates to the subject of UFOs.

No matter where you stand on the issue, it can’t be denied that there is a renewed interest in unusual aerial phenomenon at present. The subject has continued to receive credible attention in the popular media in the last several months, with publications like The New York Times, Washington Post, Bloomberg, and Politico all reporting on potential “unknowns” in our skies with mostly straight faces.

More impressive are the recent statements by the U.S. Navy, who announced last week that they would be upping their game in relation to study of unexplained aerial phenomenon, or UAP.

And why wouldn’t they? If there are unidentified aircraft which could pose a potential threat to national security operating in our airspace, I think it would be safe to say that most Americans would want their government to take such matters seriously. Most people elsewhere around would probably like their governments to do the same.

If what the U.S. Navy has had to say on the subject lately is any indication, this appears to be precisely what’s going on. “There have been a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated air space in recent years,” read one portion of a recent Navy statement on the issue, as reported by Politico.

Quite obviously, there has been a shift in attitudes lately (or at very least this is the appearance being given publicly). Brian Bender, who authored the piece for Politico, noted that “To be clear, the Navy isn’t endorsing the idea that its sailors have encountered alien spacecraft. But it is acknowledging there have been enough strange aerial sightings by credible and highly trained military personnel that they need to be recorded in the official record and studied — rather than dismissed as some kooky phenomena from the realm of science-fiction.”

Yes, if there is any reasonable potential that these unidentified aircraft or objects–whatever their nature or origins might be–could pose a security threat to the United States and other nations, then surely the matter warrants serious attention. But as Bender noted in his article, all-too-often such things have been dismissed in the past “as some kooky phenomena from the realm of science-fiction.”

Since their arrival on the cultural scene in the late 1940s, the objects that had first been dubbed “flying saucers” immediately captured our imaginations. What else could these objects be, if they don’t appear to be anything of our own, and greatly exceed the capabilities of known technologies here on Earth? However, as the U.S. Air Force and other agencies around the world began to take the matter seriously, it quickly became evident that not all of the flying objects were saucers. In fact, it might be argued that reports of disc-shaped craft were in the minority, and merely one area in a broader emerging mythos of peculiar things seen in the skies. For this reason, Edward Ruppelt, the first chief of the USAF’s Project Blue Book, coined the term unidentified flying object or UFO, in order to promote the concept in more ambiguous terms.

This might have helped somewhat at the outset. However, with time the subject became steadily more sensational, with stories of the “saucers” flooding the pages of popular books and magazines. Far-out claims from opportunists like George Adamski further insinuated that “Space Brothers” were behind the non-existent saucers he had claimed to photograph, as told to him telepathically by a pleasant chap from Venus who dropped in for a visit with him in 1952. With time, and further outlandish claims about the “saucer people” made by other would-be UFO cultists following in Adamski’s footsteps, it was only a matter of time before the subject would be relegated to the lunatic fringe.

We don’t need to go into a detailed history of UFOs here in order to get the point across that a subject which otherwise should have been of great interest to the military and science communities became co-opted by fringe claims and, over time, steadily delegitimized. The entire blame can’t be laid on the shameless opportunists though; there were plenty of serious UFO researchers that sprang forth in advocacy of their extraterrestrial origins, and in equal measure, there were plenty of skeptics who, from the outset, were unwilling to entertain any ideas about anything so seemingly outlandish as “flying saucers.”

In terms of popular opinion, while various polls over the years have continued to show both interest, and belief in UFOs, the consensus majority in the scientific community has largely been that UFO research is a form of pseudoscience; an opinion offered mostly in response to popular writing on the subject. With the recent statements by the U.S. Navy about its updated UFO reporting procedures, which noted similar expected practices on part of the US Air Force, it does at least seem that the subject is being taken seriously again by some government groups.

Writing for Open Minds, Alejandro Rojas commented on the Politico piece, noting that, “[I]t would seem this stigma has caused the military to do a lot of linguistic gymnastics in the past when it comes to UFOs. It seems intuitively obvious that the military would be interested in aircraft entering U.S. airspace that cannot be identified.”

While there are probably a lot of reasons why government agencies might steer clear of the UFO subject, I agree with Alejandro that the stigmas associated with the subject, and the skepticism that has often resulted from it, hasn’t helped. Which brings us to an interesting question: could unwarranted skepticism pertaining to UAP studies actually do more harm than good?

In many ways, I count myself as a “hopeful skeptic” when it comes to subjects like UFOs. I don’t profess to know what they might be, so I suspend judgment on the matter until data forthcoming warrants having an opinion. On the other hand, I wish to have little to do with movements or ideologies associated with “Skepticism” (note the capital “S” here… for more on the inherent problems with such groups, see John Horgan’s excellent blog at Scientific American on why it’s sometimes necessary to apply a bit of healthy skepticism to Skeptics). While I’m intrigued by the idea that our Navy and Air Force have monitored unknown aircraft in our skies and express some concern about them, I am by no means convinced that this is equivalent to “proof” that extraterrestrials are visiting Earth. I simply have no way of knowing, or proving conclusively, what the origins of these objects might be.

However, if they are apparent enough to our military that they continue to be studied, that alone should say something. Further, I worry about ideological skeptics who might dispute such apparent phenomena, based mostly on lingering stigmas of the past rather than information being conveyed in a serious manner at the governmental level. At least in any official capacity, there appear to be few making any claim to the fact that these things are “alien” technology… not our spokespeople at the Navy, nor the Air Force, nor those journalists at The New York Times, Washington Post, Bloomberg, and Politico who have all been gradually inching toward career suicide in order to report on a “forbidden” subject that, based on the military’s aforementioned attitude, should absolutely be taken seriously. 

Further, while there is no evidence that our military’s interactions with UAP they have observed or engaged have presented any kind of a threat, their presence alone–as unidentified objects in military airspace–nonetheless presents a security concern. Hence, again I think it is fair to argue that unwarranted skepticism toward this subject may actually conflict with logical national security interests. Fortunately, the military doesn’t appear to be maintaining this attitude themselves… not anymore, at least.

Interesting times indeed… although to add a final thought to all of this, my intention is not to dismiss skepticism, nor is it to attack those who are critical of the UFO subject. I actually think that a critically-minded approach is the best way to engage such subjects. A simple look at some of the classic books on UFOs–or any subject generally deemed “paranormal”–usually offers a number of fringe claims that haven’t aged very well; time, and accessibility to better information, often causes us to have to rethink old ideas (there are dozens of examples of this, although Nick Redfern gives a good summary of one of my favorites in his article here, where a hoax that was taken out of context became a pillar of “evidence” for many authors in the cryptozoology genre).

We need skepticism, quite simply, because getting to the bottom of our world’s mysteries also requires critical thinking and logic. However, we also need to be able to determine instances where some of our inherent skepticism may be unfounded; I think the recent military discussion of UFOs–whatever they might represent–and the security concerns they have raised presents such an occasion.

It’s been a few weeks since the first actual photograph of a black hole was released and the new love affair with the light-sucking space orifices has many people thinking they may not be so bad after all. That may change with the news this week that another group of astronomers has found a black hole so large and powerful that it’s dragging space and time behind it as it moves across its galaxy. Not only that, the black hole is traveling at 60 percent of the speed of light and wobbling as it goes. Is there a galactic speed cop who can pull it over and give it a stellar breathalyzer?

“Typically, radio telescopes produce a single image from several hours of observation. But these jets were changing so fast that in a four-hour image we just saw a blur.”

Alex Tetarenko, an East Asian Observatory Fellow, co-authored a new study published in the journal Nature describing new observations of V404 Cygni, a binary system in the Cygnus constellation consisting of a microquasar (a compact region surrounding a black hole) with a mass of about 9 times our Sun and an early K giant star with a mass slightly smaller than the Sun. The “V” in the name indicates that it is a variable star which repeatedly gets brighter and fainter over time. V404 Cygni has been studied extensively since it was discovered in 1989, but it was only recently that study co-author James Miller-Jones from the Curtin University noticed something unusual.

“Like many black holes, it’s feeding on a nearby star, pulling gas away from the star and forming a disk of material that encircles the black hole and spirals towards it under gravity. What’s different in V404 Cygni is that we think the disk of material and the black hole are misaligned. This appears to be causing the inner part of the disk to wobble like a spinning top and fire jets out in different directions as it changes orientation.”

That wobble is what makes the existence of V404 Cygni an Einsteinian moment. In his theory of relativity, Albert E. predicted this phenomenon called frame-dragging which is caused by the black hole spinning faster at its center and pulling spacetime along with it. In this case, it’s traveling so fast that it was a blur to the radio telescopes watching it. In order to see it, the astronomers took 103 high-resolution, low shutter speed radio images each 70 seconds long and strung them together in a video (see it here) and then used it to produce an explanatory animation (see it here).

As always, more research is needed. Study co-author Dr. Gemma Anderson from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) at Curtin University, says more misaligned black holes will undoubtedly be found doing other strange things.

“That could include a whole bunch of other bright, explosive events in the Universe, such as supermassive black holes feeding very quickly or tidal disruption events when a black hole shreds a star.”

Fortunately, they’re too far away to frame-drag us and spacetime behind them. So they won’t mind if some Earth garage band calls itself The Wobbly Black Holes.

On December 29, 2012, a meteorite fell from the heavens to crash into an area near the city of Polonnaruwa in Sri Lanka, after having travelled who knows how far across the sea of stars. One of the first to arrive on the scene was Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, director of the Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology at the University of Buckingham in England, who collected the fallen shard and had it studied. The meteorite was thoroughly scanned and analyzed before the team came to the conclusion that this piece of space rock harbored within it one of the most groundbreaking discoveries in human history – that of life beyond the stars.

After carefully studying the rock with electron microscopes, Wickramasinghe’s team claimed to have found something that had never been seen before. There, embedded in the rock, which he would dub “Polonnaruwa,” were supposedly fossilized phytoplankton of some type, basically microscopic aquatic algae called diatoms, meaning that if these findings were correct then they had found the first solid physical evidence ever of extraterrestrial life. Indeed, the team itself went about boldly proclaiming it to be such, touting the discovery as the first indisputable concrete proof of life beyond the confines of planet Earth, they immediately went about publishing papers on their findings in papers such as the Journal of Cosmology, which were met with quite a lot of speculation and debate. It is interesting to note that Wickramasinghe is a big proponent of the theory of “panspermia,” which entails the seeding of life across solar systems through biological life carried upon comets and meteorites, and he has said of the finding:

We conclude that the identification of fossilized diatoms in the Polonnaruwa meteorite is firmly established and unimpeachable. Since this meteorite is considered to be an extinct cometary fragment, the idea of microbial life carried within comets and the theory of cometary panspermia is thus vindicated.

The Sri Lanka meteorite

There was of course plenty of criticism of these findings, such as that of diatom expert Patrick Kociolek, who speculated that the sample had been merely contaminated with regular freshwater here on earth and showed no signs of fossilization. Another evolutionary biologist named PZ Myers pointed out that the “fossils” were remarkably similar to Earth diatoms, and said:

Why a space organism would evolve to look exactly like a species that evolved in a completely different environment, and how it could have converged in all its details on such remarkable similarity to a specific Earthly species? Why, we might even suggest that it clearly looks like contamination.

In response, the team that had found the meteorite defended their position by asserting that the algae were too deeply embedded into the surrounding mineral matrix to be the result of mere contamination, and that any similarities to Earth diatoms was the result of convergent evolution, or the tendency for disparate lifeforms to evolve similarly in response to similar environmental demands. They also pointed out that tests for nitrogen content and oxygen isotope analysis showed that the anomalous fossils originated well off Earth, probably from a passing comet. Yet other scientists have not been so eager to believe it all. Astronomer Phil Plait has been quite vocal about the case, criticizing the methods employed by Wickramasinghe’s crew and saying:

They provide lots of technical data that gives their work a veneer of credibility, but when you look a bit deeper you find they didn’t do a lot of critically necessary tests to establish the veracity of their claims. All the technical stuff obfuscates the fact that they missed the boat in some very basic ways.

Indeed, there are many who have said that it is not even a meteorite at all, but rather just a piece of terrestrial rock that has been misidentified, possibly altered by lighting strikes, which was the verdict handed out by such esteemed research organizations as the Peradeniya University Geology Division, the Department of Forensic Medicine, and the Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Modern Technologies in Sri Lanka. In the end, it hasn’t even been established if this rock is even a meteorite at all, let alone whether it holds evidence of actual alien life. Phil Plait has said of this:

They examined the rock using various methods, but none of them establish the sample as being a meteorite. Quite the opposite, in fact. One method was an oxygen isotope analysis. Basically, there are different isotopes of stable oxygen—ones with eight, nine, or ten neutrons in the atomic nucleus. In general, the ratios of these isotopes will be different from rocks that have origins in different parts of the solar system. If you collect a bunch of Earth rocks and get the ratio, and compare it to the ratios from rocks from, say, Mars, you’ll get different ratios. This allows you in principle to say that a given rock must not have formed on Earth.

It is pointed out that there are no mentioned efforts or constraints at preventing contamination by earthly sources even if it is a meteorite, and the rock itself was found in a rice field, which would have been in the water and perfectly open to some sort of biological contamination. Wickramasinghe’s team’s claims that the fossils are too deeply embedded into the rock to be this have had holes poked in them with the fact that these small lifeforms can worm their way surprisingly deeply into such a matrix through tiny cracks, bubbles, and fissures. It doesn’t help that there is little elaboration on how the sample was collected at all, and the journals in which the team has published their findings is rather notorious for making sensational claims that have proven to be unsupported by stringent evidence. In the end, Phil Plait says:

Their claims are, down to a one, extraordinary, with pretty underwhelming evidence to support them. So the idea that these are ordinary rocks found in wet conditions under no control that have been sitting around a long time and are therefore loaded with diatoms that evolved here on good ol’ planet Earth seems just a tad more likely to me. In my opinion, Wickramasinghe and his team are not just wrong, they are precisely wrong: Life didn’t crawl from this rock onto the Earth, life crawled into this rock from the Earth.

The debate still rages from those who doubt the original findings and the original team who made it and their believers. Did a meteorite really fall down into this place, and if so did it really hold the answer to the question of whether we are alone in the universe? Is this a genuine groundbreaking discovery or a miscarriage of science and the result of sensationalism? It seems to have not been adequately settled, and is left for the readers to decide for themselves.

The faces of the Earth and all of the other observable celestial bodies make it clear: things that zoom through space tend to bump into one another from time to time. A meteor impact likely killed off the dinosaurs, and there’s no reason to believe that another world-ending impact couldn’t happen again at any moment, particularly given that there have been plenty of near-misses and minor impacts in the last decade alone.

Luckily, the U.S. government has begun taking the threat of near-Earth objects seriously over the last several years, releasing asteroid preparedness plans and conducting impact simulation drills. This year’s drills just took place amid dire warnings from NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, warnings which add to the gravity of these simulations and what they may foreshadow. During a speech at the 2019 IAA Planetary Defense Conference in Maryland last month, Bridenstine told his audience that major asteroid impacts tend to happen about every 60 years; thus, while we haven’t had any major impacts recently, we’re likely due for one soon. “I wish I could tell you that these events are exceptionally unique,” Bridenstine said, “but they are not. We have to make people understand this is not about Hollywood, it’s not about movies. This is about ultimately protecting the only planet we know, right now, to host life and that is the planet Earth.”

We’ve been lucky so far in recent history, but we’ve had our share of close calls like the Tunguska Event of 1908 and the Chelyabinsk meteor of 2013 just to name a few. If a major impact happened in a heavily populated area, the outcome could be catastrophic. To simulate what would happen in such an impact, NASA and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) held drills this week to test strategies for responding to a potential strike. The test began at the moment a hypothetical asteroid the size of a small skyscraper was detected by astronomers, allowing the asteroid emergency team to calculate risk of impact.

After that, the team simulated an impact in which a 300-meter asteroid enters Earth’s atmosphere on April 29, 2027, producing a massive fireball that released up to 20 megatons of energy in a catastrophic air burst that scorched 32 square miles (68 sq km) of the ground below and anyone who happened to be in them.

Curiously, European Space Agency scientists at this simulation placed “coordinate pre-impact access to the area by scientists placing sensors to monitor the impact” before “prepare for any casualties & recovery” in their list of priorities for pre-strike preparations once a strike location had been determined. Let’s make sure we appoint some experts from the humanities to balance out these teams out whenever the real thing happens.

Every time these drills occur, I can’t help but think back to a paper published in 2018 by theoretical physicist, inventor, and former Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft Nathan Myhrvold. Myhrvold published an article claiming NASA engaged in scientific misconduct by releasing false data about near-Earth objects like asteroids that may have downplayed the risk we currently face. Could there be any truth to his claims? Do any other recent events suggest that someone may already be planning for such an impact and its aftermath?

Think about it: if the government knew that an asteroid was going to wipe us out ten years from now, would they tell us? Would they want the world to devolve into anarchy as people give up any incentive for paying their mortgages, staying in school, wearing pants, obeying the law, etc.? Of course they wouldn’t. They’d want things to go on as planned as long as possible so that the elite have a chance to move into inflatable space station pods where they can safely watch the rest of us burn down below.

I gotta get one of those pods.

Each red dot is a potential path the fictional asteroid might take as it passes the Earth in 2027. Clearly, this would be an asteroid worth worrying about.

Image: NASA

After they’ve exhausted all other available means—abduction, engaging military aircraft, shutting off our nuclear missiles—maybe the aliens finally figured out how to get our attention: Facebook live. Everyone and their uncle seems bent on broadcasting themselves into the uncaring void that is the internet, so it’s about time the aliens jumped on board as well.

Daniel Patterson of Liberty, North Carolina was filming one such Facebook live broadcast earlier this year when a UFO briefly flew overhead. According to WMFY 2 News in Greensboro, North Carolina, Patterson didn’t see the object as he was filming, but was made aware of it afterwards. Patterson says:

“I didn’t know it was there it was brought to my attention by someone else that’s on in the video and said, ‘Hey Dan, did you see the UFO?’ and I said no.”

The UFO in question only appears briefly in the video. A bright light appears over Patterson’s head and flies away.  It lasts only a couple of frames in the 13-minute video.  WMFY slowed the video down and took some screen shots, and it does look like it could be an object. It also looks like it could be a spot of glare. The incident is being investigated by MUFON, but they have not yet released a determination of what the object is.

If it’s actually a UFO in the video, then the closest thing to what it looks like is this bad boy.

For Daniel Patterson, the incident was a spiritual experience. He says:

“For me, the Holy Spirit was present in those moments.”

In the video, Patterson stands on his property and says he doesn’t have much to say but felt compelled by God to film a video. He talks about his love for his family and decries the tendency of people to judge others. It’s a video of a man appreciating his life, giving thanks, and hoping to do good. It’s pretty heartwarming. It’s also fairly interesting that of all the times a UFO could show up on a Facebook live video, it does so when the person felt compelled by a higher power to start filming and talking about that sort of stuff. Of course, that added spiritual weight may have contributed to the interpretation of the object as a UFO. If it was just a guy showing off his property, would the UFO be immediately and automatically written off as a spot of glare?

Considering that the video was filmed with the sun directly behind Patterson’s head, I’m inclined to believe that the UFO is just glare from the sun. But who knows? Maybe if we all just start streaming every waking moment of our lives, we’ll finally have some definitive proof. So get out there, hit record, and maybe a UFO will show up and I’ll grossly misrepresent you as a person.

The original Star Wars Death Star (for any of you just emerging from 35 years in a cave) was a massive moon-like space station armed with a superlaser capable of vaporizing a planet. Could there possibly be a more useful purpose for such a powerful tool? We may find out soon, as engineers in Romania announced the successful test of a 10-Petawatt laser. That’s 10 million billion watts or 1/10th the energy produced by the sun on Earth. We’re still here, so it’s not capable of destroying a planet … yet. But China (uh-oh) is already working on a 100-Petawatt laser. Is life (or death) about to imitate sci-fi again?

“After demonstration of a beam delivering pulses of 7 PW for more than 4 hours continuously, the Thales system generated its first pulses with a record power level of 10 PW on 7 March 2019. Thales has thus achieved an unprecedented level of performance, which means that the Romanian National Institute of Physics and Nuclear Engineering (IFIN-HH) and ELI-NP now have the most powerful laser in the world.”

In a press release that is mysteriously just now getting attention, Thales – a French multinational company that designs and builds electrical systems for the aerospace, defense, transportation and security markets – announced the successful test of the Extreme Light Infrastructure for Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP) at a facility in Măgurele near Bucharest. The 10 PW pulse was the most concentrated power ever generated.

“This laser will support research in nuclear physics and help advance human understanding of the physics of matter.”

Not to mention the physics of vaporizing matter. The ELI project was started in the mid-2000s by French scientist and Gérard Mourou, the 2018 Nobel prize winner for his work on high-energy laser pulses, and was initially funded by the European Commission to build the world’s largest lasers in Romania, Hungary, and the Czech Republic.

“It may help investigating and controlling aging processes in materials under extreme conditions, such as in nuclear reactors, and help protecting the environment by offering new ways to treat nuclear waste.”

Vaporizing nuclear waste sounds like a good thing, until one thinks about what else a power of that magnitude could vaporize. In fact, how did it not vaporize its own lab – or at least the wall it was pointed in the direction of? The answer is somewhat vague. ExtremeTech quotes Dr. Nicolae Zamfir, project director at ELI-NP, saying that “The beam is focused on mm2 only in the interaction [chamber].” We’re still here and there’s no hole in the wall because the pulse was infinitesimally brief.

That will change soon by an order of magnitude. While the ELI project has plans for a fourth lab with a 100 PW laser, is hasn’t even chosen a location for it. Meanwhile, Chinese physicists are said to already be building a 100 PW laser at the Shanghai Superintense Ultrafast Laser Facility (SULF). Using a single cylinder of titanium-doped sapphire about 12 inches wide, the researchers believe it will be long enough (possibly a minute) and powerful enough to break a vacuum and create antimatter. Testing is estimated to begin in 2023.

That’s not all. Laser testing is going on around the world in quests to harness its tremendous power. Are the goals noble or just paths to a real Death Star? Only time will tell.

In the meantime, The Titanium-Doped Sapphires would make a great name for a band.

Something strange is in the skies above New Zealand. Over the last few weeks, multiple eyewitnesses have reported seeing a red or orange glow either in the skies or just on the horizon out at sea. It all began on March 31 when a couple in west Auckland on New Zealand’s North Island had what they described as the “craziest experience.” Reddit user ufomystery123 described the experience to the New Zealand subreddit, writing that the experience left the couple terrified:

We were on the beach, my boyfriend and I, and saw two bright orange/red lights far on the other end of the beach. In a matter of seconds, one of the lights started moving at full speed, in a straight line, no more that 200m above the water until directly in front of us. The UFO had changed from having a red light to a bright white light, somewhat like a torch, shining directly at us. We were lying down looking at the stars for a while and then stood up to leave, before realizing there were five surrounding us in different areas of the beach. One of them was flying up and down and another from side to side. The others were just still switching between red and white spotlights. This was when we decided to leave, scared shitless.

Reddit users were characteristically cynical about the description of the events, arguing that the couple likely saw a balloon or some form of LED toy. However, the New Zealand Herald reports that other witnesses have seen similar lights in recent weeks.

Mysterious lights in the sky are some of the most commonly-reported unidentified aerial phenomena.

Much farther to the south in Dunedin and Oamaru on the South Island, eyewitnesses have described similar lights along the coast. After several reports of a “mysterious red light in the sky” came in early this month, law enforcement and public safety officials were dispatched to the coast to search for stricken boats. Oamaru Police Sergeant Tony Woodbridge says that enough reports came in for police to take the case seriously, although nothing has been found.

The famous Moeraki Boulders on New Zealand’s South Island.

”Through investigation, we’ve had another resident of Kakanui who was out walking and someone from Hampden Beach who have both seen a bright orange-red light in the sky about the same time,” Woodbridge told reporters. “We’ve got no reports of anybody missing, so it’s a bit of a mystery what was seen, but we’ve been out and had a good look.”

So what do we have? Multiple eerily similar reports of red lights in the skies above New Zealand, given weeks apart. Could these reports be related? Is this someone having fun with drones, or might there be something more mysterious afoot? For now, with little else to go on, these reports remain a mystery.