Get ready to rumble, conspiracy theorists … this story has something for everyone to worry about, no matter which side of Reddit you reside on. Scientists at Cambridge University are studying various forms of geoengineering and weather control for ways to stop climate change, and one involves placing highly-reflective clouds over the North and South poles in an effort to force them to freeze over again. What could possibly go wrong?

“What we do over the next 10 years will determine the future of humanity for the next 10,000 years. There is no major centre in the world that would be focused on this one big issue.”

Sir David King, then UK’s long-serving and now retired chief science adviser to prime ministers Blair, Brown, Cameron and May, told the BBC this week that he wants the new Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge to be that center. It’s part of the Carbon Neutral Futures Initiative, whose mission, according to Dr. Emily Shuckburgh, is to “solve the climate problem.” Nothing like starting at the top, right?

Actually, for Sir King, it means starting at the bottom too. His most radical plan involves sending specially-modified unmanned ships with tall, hollow masts to the poles to suck in seawater and blast it into the atmosphere through extremely fine nozzles. Those nozzles will isolate the salt from the tiny water droplets, creating clouds of salt crystals that will supposedly reflect sunlight back into space, leaving the area underneath them to chill and eventually reform the ice that’s been melting for years —  calving monstrous icebergs, sending cracks through the Antarctic surface ice, melting glaciers and keeping the Arctic Ocean from freezing in the winter. Sounds like a good idea … as long as those clouds stay over the poles.

Sir King wants to sprinkle salt in other places as well. Another proposal involves fertilizing the ocean with more salt – iron or ferrous salts like ferrous fumarate, ferrous gluconate, ferrous succinate, and ferrous sulfate – to promote the growth of plankton, which will then absorb more CO2 – the main cause of climate change (unless you don’t believe it exists). Sounds like a good idea … as long as the plankton doesn’t get out of control and take over the oceans, or create monster whales and other sea creature that feed on it.

King is not ruling out more conventional solutions. He supports carbon capture systems to collect and store greenhouse gases, developing viable nuclear fusion technology and improving renewable energy sources. But he obviously wants to think outside the box and ignore the consequences. Dr. Shuckburgh is open to considering everything Sir King proposes – no matter how wild or unconventional the ideas might be.

“In assessing such ideas we need to explore all aspects, including the technological advances required, the potential unintended consequences and side effects, the costs, the rules and regulations that would be needed, as well as the public acceptability.”

“Unintended consequences.” Isn’t that what got us climate change in the first place?

What could possibly go wrong … again?

It seemed to be aware that we were there.

That’s the way one Navy pilot described the now-infamous U.S.S. Nimitz UFO encounter which happened over a two-week period in 2004. Several versions of the events have been put forward, and the accompanying footage which accompanied the initial disclosure has been called into question. Still, the disclosure of the incident remains one of the most significant events in modern ufology, regardless of how much truth there is behind it.

Now, we have at least one more account – albeit short one – to add to the list of eyewitness reports of the Nimitz event. In the latest trailer for the History Channel’s upcoming series Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation, an anonymous pilot is shown sharing her recollection of the events. The quote above is all we got in the trailer from this most recent pilot to come forward, but it suggests that the History Channel’s new program may actually offer compelling new evidence about what our military and government have encountered in the skies.

The History Channel’s series is the latest endeavor of Tom Delonge, self-proclaimed face for modern ufology and co-founder and President of To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science. In the series, Delonge and Luis Elizondo present evidence gathered as a result of Elizondo’s former Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. Several current and former pilots, including the pilot quoted above, have been shown in the series’ various trailers. The series is set to debut May 31 on the History Channel.

The History Channel says the series will “reveal newly authenticated evidence and footage, interviews from eyewitnesses and former military personnel,” and “expose a series of startling encounters and embark on fascinating new investigations that will urge the public to ask questions and look for answers” concerning unidentified aerial phenomena.

Of course, there are those who argue that Delonge and Elizondo are either wittingly or unwittingly carrying out a hidden, subversive agenda intended to push a controlled narrative about these incidents. Members of the entertainment industry have in the past been used by governments as tools for spreading misinformation or disinformation to sway public belief or opinion, and there’s no reason to believe it doesn’t still occur. Will this program lead to disclosure, or muddy the waters? Let’s face it: cable TV is little more than the propaganda arm of a vast corporate machine. The History Channel is owned by the Walt Disney Company, itself known to have had ties to intelligence agencies in the past, not to mention the fact that this is the network that airs Ancient Aliens. I know which one I’m going with.

Up until 1952, much of the coverage of “flying saucers” in the American media remained unsympathetic to the idea that some unusual new phenomenon was appearing in our skies. That was the case, at least, until Saturday Night Fever erupted over our nation’s capital, marking one of the most well known, and often written about UFO flaps in American history.

It was almost midnight on the evening of Saturday, July 19, 1952. Air-traffic controller Ed Nugent (not to be confused with a particular raucous guitarist with a similar name) was working the tower at Washington National Airport, when he observed something odd on the radar screen in front of him: it appeared to be a group of six or seven slow-moving objects moving together over the region, well outside the flight paths of any known aircraft, military or civilian, in the area at that time.

At that time, it had been treated as something of a joke (Nugent reportedly told his supervisor, tongue planted firmly in cheek, that he had just spotted an entire “fleet of flying saucers”). However, shortly thereafter another of the ATC operators noticed something odd and out of place: a strange light in the distance, which appeared to accelerate and disappear “at incredible speed.”

Thereafter, the incident received notable coverage in the press, with many articles emphasizing the USAF’s apparent interest in the matter. This was particularly the case following a statement given to the press by Major General John A. Samford, who appeared on camera on July 31, 1952, addressing the “flying saucers” seen over Washington, DC:

“The Air Force today investigated reports that several ‘flying saucers’ had been spotted by radar virtually in its own backyard on the outskirts of the nation’s capital,” journalist Jack Rutledge later wrote of the incident for Louisiana’s Monroe News-Star. “Not only were unidentified objects seen on radar–indicating actual substance instead of merely light–but two airline pilots and a newsman saw lights fitting the general description of flying saucers the same night.”

Indeed, a number of pilots claimed to have seen lights similar to those observed from Washington National Airport. However, among the most notable accounts had been that given by Captain S. Casey Pierman of Detroit, who was flying Capital Airlines Flight 807 on the night in question, headed southbound from National Airport, who observed seven objects while en route from Washington to Martinsburg, West Virginia. Pierman described the objects as at times “hanging motionless” like stars, while at other times “moving at tremendous speed” and resembling “falling stars without tails.”

In a statement Pierman gave to the press, he noted that “In my years of flying I’ve seen a lot of falling or shooting stars… but these were much faster… They couldn’t have been aircraft. They were moving too fast for that. They were about the same size and as the brighter stars, and were much higher than our 6000-foot altitude.”

Many years have passed since this now famous incident, allowing plenty of time for questions to be raised as far as what, precisely, might have been observed on the night in question (which, in truth, had been one of several similar incidents occurring near Washington at that time). However, even in the years shortly after the series of sightings over Washington took place, there were those who were of the mind that the phenomenon had stemmed from secret U.S. military activities, rather than extraterrestrial “saucers” from another world.

Leon Davidson, Ph.D, an early proponent of the idea that UFOs were largely a result of technologies and misdirection from our own government, noted that radar technology had existed by 1950 that would have allowed the creation of “false positives” that could easily have explained the radar traces observed by ATC controllers at Washington National. The question, rather than being one of what the “objects” were, was one of who might be behind such activities, which were apparently intentionally aimed at confusing the public, the media, and even members of the military?

Davidson wrote an interesting article on this, which appeared in the Saucer News in 1959, titled “ECM + CIA = UFO, or How to Cause a Radar Sighting.” In it, Davidson wrote:

By about 1950, ECM (electronic countermeasures) was standard equipment on our advanced bombers and was being developed for missiles. Advertisements started to appear about 1956 showing that this equipment could be used for creating simulated targets for training radar operators. I quote from an article in Aviation Research and Development, March 1957, pg. 22: 

“A new radar moving target simulator system — which generates a display of up to 6 individual targets on any standard radar indicator — has been developed … to train radar operators … and for in-flight testing of airborne early-warning personnel… Target positions, paths, and velocities can … simulate … realistic flight paths… Speeds up to 10,000 knots (about 11,500 mph) are easily generated… The target can be made to turn left or right… For each target there is … adjustment to provide a realistic scope presentation.”

The reader should keep this quotation in mind when reading about radar sightings of high speed UFOs.

Davidson raises a number of good points, and the description he provides does resemble the circumstances presented in a number of the better known UFO radar reports from over the years. However, if the objects in question had indeed merely been the result of such experimental “war games” being carried out covertly, as Leon Davidson suggested (the CIA was a favorite culprit for this in Davidson’s narratives), can the idea of physical lights observed by pilots be similarly explained in some way?

We may never know the full story behind the objects seen and tracked on radar over Washington in 1952. However, when it comes to military technologies used for misdirection of the public, nothing can be ruled out, as Davidson was already suggesting within years of when the initial sightings took place. In the ever complex annals of Ufology, one thing that should always be kept in mind is that if there’s a will, there’s a way… or as cases like this may indicate, if there’s a way, then someone can find an excuse for a will. 

Astronomically speaking, it’s tough to beat the discovery of a comet or asteroid from another solar system, as all of the hubbub over ‘Oumuamua has proven. However, this just might do it. Astronomers studying the chemical compositions of stars in our Milky Way Galaxy have discovered a star in the Big Dipper with a combination of elements that exists nowhere else in the galaxy. An invader? Interloper? Can we charge it rent?

“Here we report on the discovery of a metal-poor star with an extreme r-process enhancement and α-element deficiency. In this star, the abundance ratio of the r-process element Eu with respect to Fe is more than one order of magnitude larger than the Sun and the metallicity is 1/20 of solar metallicity.”

That’s astronomer-speak for “Hey! Put down your beer and come look at this!” According to the press release for a new study published in the journal Nature Astronomy, a group of astronomers from China and Japan using the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) in Xinglong Station, Hebei Province, China, discovered a star, now named J1124+4535, just below the bowl of the Big Dipper, also known as the Ursa Major constellation, with an unusual chemical signature. Specifically, it has a very low level of elements such as magnesium compared with an excessively high level of Europium, a soft metal similar to lead. That high-low ratio is not found in the Milky Way but matched the chemical composition of stars in dwarf galaxies orbiting our own.

So, how did J1124+4535 end up in the Big Dipper? It’s believed that there were once many more dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way, but our greedy galaxy likes to gorge on them and absorbed them completely – destroying their identities and assimilating them into its own. Somehow, J1124+4535 managed to survive. As we found with interstellar asteroids, if there’s one, there’s probably more, and that’s already the case with this prisoner from another galaxy. Astronomers have discovered non-Milky Way hypervelocity stars speeding through after being spun off by those orbiting dwarf galaxies, particularly the Large Magellanic Cloud. However, J1124+4535 seems to be the only one so far to arrive via complete absorption.

Alaska flag

Speaking of the Large Magellanic Cloud, it’s scheduled to be absorbed via collision in about 2 billion years, followed by the Andromeda Galaxy in another 2 to 3 billion years.

In space, no one can hear you scream, but someone in the future may hear the Milky Way chew, swallow and belch.

The moon doesn’t do that that much. Sure, it’s responsible for the tides and all, but that’s really a function of gravity and the messy ball of duct tape and chicken wire we call “the laws of physics.” As a celestial body, the moon just kind of hangs around. It does do some cool stuff, though. For one, it’s the perfect size to let us earthlings view total solar eclipses, which is a pretty spectacular luxury we have. Some have suggested that the perfect size of the moon in relation to the sun and Earth is a bit too much of a coincidence, and thus evidence that the moon is fake. Unfortunately, the moon is real, and just like every other real thing in this universe it’s growing up to be a disappointment. You see, it turns out the moon is shrinking.

Tectonic activity—the push and pull of tectonic plates in a planet’s mantle—in our solar system has, for a long time, seemed to be mostly confined to the Earth. We feel the results of this tectonic activity as earthquakes. We know that the moon used to have tectonic activity, but it was though to have stopped millions of years ago. According to a study published this week, the moon may still be tectonically active, and so-called “moonquakes” are shrinking Earth’s satellite like a raisin.

What if you landed on the moon, stepped out, and were just utterly disappointed? That would be awful.

These moonquakes were first recorded by the Apollo missions between 1969 and 1977. Until now, they’ve been unexplained. A study published in Nature Geoscience found that the epicenters of the mysterious moonquakes seem centered around jagged lines of cliffs called scarps. These scarps were first discovered in 2010, and while researchers suggested that they were the result of tectonic activity, they believed that it had died down around 50 million years ago.  Based of the apparent connection between these scarps and modern recorded moonquakes, the new study concludes that the moon is probably still tectonically active, which came as a shock to researchers. Co-author of the study Thomas Watters says:

“The whole idea that a 4.6-billion-year-old rocky body like the moon has managed to stay hot enough in the interior and produce this network of faults just flies in the face of conventional wisdom.”

As its interior cools with age, the moon shrinks like a raisin. Its brittle crust compresses and breaks forming the scarps we can see running along the surface. Previously we had thought that this cooling and shrinking process had completed a very long time ago, but the links between the scarps and moonquakes suggest that this shrinking process is still ongoing today. Watters says:

“The connection between the location and timing of shallow moonquakes and known young faults is further evidence that our moon is a dynamic world.”

It’s not going to shrink out of existence any time soon, of course. Rocks don’t feel time the same way we do. But it’s good to know that the moon is still doing something. It’s also good to know we won’t run out of the always entertaining fake-moon arguments any time soon either, because you can bet dollars to donuts that the moon being tectonically active 50 million years after it should be is going to be seen as proof-positive that it’s not as old as they want you to think it is.