In France, they’re called “cercles de culture,” although a better name might be “cercles de ooh la la” after a couple was found naked in one by the farmer whose field had already been trampled once by whatever it is that’s making these crop circles that have suddenly started cropping up all over the French countryside. The count is up to at least six and there may be many more now that one group has revealed how they made theirs. No, it wasn’t “extraterrestres,” although the juries are still out on the other five circles.

The first French cercle de culture appeared early in the growing season on June 6 in Baillet-en-France in northern France. It was spotted by a pilot in the Enghien-Moisselles flying club and posted on their Facebook page. The club reported that the pictures got more views than any other posts on their page and other pilots saw plenty of spectators – but no naked couples trying to get into the Crop Circle Club. As can be seen in the pictures, it was a fairly simple design.

Baillet-en-France. C’est un pilote de l’aéroclub d’Enghien-Moisselles qui a repéré le dessin. Frédérick Blacher

The second crop circle was the big one found on June 12 in Saint-Hippolyte in northeastern France near the German border where the farmer found the nude couple doing the crop circle strut. That one was much larger – covering  parts of two fields – but still fairly simple in shape. (See it here.)

Agroglifo em Saint Hippolyte, França. Reportado em 12 de Junho, 2019. 
Créditos: Ilona Bonjean

The next one was reported on June 14 in a ‘cereal’ field at Menetou-Salon in central France. The owner of the field said it could have been there for up to two weeks because some of the crop was sprouting again in the paths that he believed were created by humans using tractors and boards. Again, a typical set of circles and lines and fairly plain. (See it here.)

That can also be said of one in the field of a man of La Manche on the English Channel in the northwest coast of France. The circles and crescents found on June 13 cross multiple tractor paths that could have been used for access. The count was now up to four – twice as many crop circles as had been seen in a single year in France. Whoever or whatever was making them may have been new at it because the patterns were simple in comparison to many of those that appear annually in England. (See it here.)

That changed somewhat on June 17 with a small but elaborate tight cluster of circles and triangles in a field in St-Jean of Bassel in northeast France. It was only 20 meters across (a third the size of some of the others) but geometrically pleasant. Even casual observers can see the tractor path leading up to its side. (See it here.)

That brings us full circle to the last one (for now) which was discovered on June 17 in Blaesheim in northeastern France on the German border near cercle de culture found in Saint-Hippolyte. This had a more elaborate design than the rest (see it here) 

… and a good reason why. DNA.fr reported almost immediately that the circle was created by local students from the Jean Sturm Gymnasium in Strasbourg as a geometry project. Their math teacher contacted the local mayor and his brother who were also owners of a farm – thus getting both a field and access in one call. The students used the classic ropes-and-stakes crop circle strategy seen in many instructional videos and were successful in creating a nice one, that was quickly photographed by a pilot and uploaded to the Internet.

This better get me an A

The math teacher of the students in Blaesheim said they were inspired by the crop circle in Saint-Hippolyte (for purely geometric reasons – not to attract naked couples). Is imitation the reason for the crop circle-palooza in France this summer? The simple designs, obvious tractor marks and occasional confessions push the skeptic needle towards that side, although the honesty of the students keeps the needle from plunging into the deep red ‘hoax’ area. Nonetheless, it’s an interesting phenomena.

Will it continue through the summer? Will anyone else join the French Crop Circle Club? Do the French really need crop circles for a naked rendezvous?

May 22, 1949 was the date on which the first U.S. Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal, died. Specifically at 1:50 a.m. As will quickly become apparent, the circumstances surrounding Forrestal’s final hours are swamped in controversy. All that we know with absolute certainty is that in the early hours of the 22^nd, Forrestal’s body was found on a third-floor canopy of the Bethesda Naval Hospital, Maryland. Did he take a fatal leap out of the window of the 13^th floor of the hospital, his mind in turmoil and suicide on his mind? Was it an accident? Or, was Forrestal terminated? Let’s have a look at this strange and disturbing affair. We’ll begin with a bit of background on the man himself. Forrestal was born just eight years before the dawning of the 20^th century, in Dutchess County, New York. After after completing his education at Princeton University, he took a job with a Wall Street-based company, William A. Read and Co. A skilled figure in the field of economics, Forrestal quickly made for himself a significant amount of money. At the age of thirty-four he got married, to a journalist with Vogue, Josephine Ogden. It was hardly the ideal situation. Ogden was an alcoholic and someone who flew off the handle at just about any given moment. Forrestal had his flaws too. He was a very unemotional person: for Forrestal, getting close to people was incredibly difficult. To the point where he pretty much gave up trying. In 1940, however, things changed for Forrestal; massively so.

It was in that year that Forrestal decided to take his career in a very different direction: with the U.S. government. Amazingly, it wasn’t too long before he was offered the prestigious position of Under-Secretary of the Navy. Hardly surprisingly, Forrestal quickly accepted the prestigious position. From there, things really took off: he was soon given the job of Secretary of the Navy. Things were taken to an even greater scale when, in 1947 – the year in which the National Security Act was passed and the CIA was created – Forrestal was approached by the presidential office no less, to take on the role of Secretary of Defense; in fact, the very first U.S. Secretary of Defense ever. President Harry S. Truman was more than happy with his choice for the position. Matters soon began to change, however, and not at all in a good way – to say the very least.

President Truman presents a Medal of Merit to Secretary of Defense James Forrestal in the Oval Office

It wasn’t long at all before Forrestal began to exhibit psychological problems. Depression, caused by his huge workloads, were said to have been the main cause. Matters only got worse: the depression deepened, anxiety attacks kicked in, and a notable dose of paranoia overwhelmed him. For the U.S. government, Secretary of Defense Forrestal was a major asset to the infrastructure of the United States. His psychological issues, however, had him secretly marked by President Truman as a potential danger to the orderly running of the Department of Defense. Bit by bit, and throughout 1948, Forrestal’s state got even worse. Eventually, action had to be taken. And, it was. Forrestal was relieved of his job as the Secretary of Defense. The next thing for the government was to try and help Forrestal get well. So, a decision was taken to have Forrestal admitted to the aforementioned Bethesda Naval Hospital. Most worrying for Truman’s team, however, was the genuine fear that a destabilized Forrestal just might go off the rails and spill the beans on some of the U.S. government’s most guarded secrets. It was a dangerous and unpredictable time. It would soon turn deadly.

April 2, 1949 was the date on which Forrestal was taken to the hospital – for his good and that of the government too. It was apparent to the doctors and nurses that Forrestal was in a dangerous state. Forrestal suspected – in fact, he was absolutely sure – that dangerous characters were watching his every move. Who those same characters might have been all very much depended on Forrestal’s frame of mind: sometimes it was Russian agents. On other occasions it was spies in the U.S. government. As for the latter, Forrestal thought it was J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. Forrestal’s mind was spinning – and far from in a good way. On top of that, Forrestal stopped eating for a while. Not a good sign. It’s important to note that when Forrestal was admitted to Bethesda he was in what amounted to solitary confinement, and the windows of the room were modified so they couldn’t be opened. Notably, when Forrestal’s family inquired why such actions had been taken, Captain George N. Raines, the chief psychiatrist at Bethesda, said it was to prevent Forrestal from leaping out of the windows and killing himself – which, some believe, is exactly what happened on the fateful night that Forrestal’s life met its end.

After a few weeks in the hospital, there was a clear, welcome, improvement for Forrestal. Both the doctors and the nurses concurred. On top of that, his appetite started to return. To the point where – in the presence of Rear Admiral Morton Willcutts, who had come to see his old friend – Forrestal chowed down a huge steak. It really did appear that good times were finally ahead. That all changed, however, only two days later. Or, rather, two nights. Death was just around the corner. It was a death shrouded in mystery. Let’s see what we know for sure about those final hours for the man who held some of the U.S. government’s most important secrets. The man assigned to keep a careful watch on Forrestal was Edward Prise. He was a U.S. Navy corpsman. Such was the length of their time spent together, the pair became good friends. As the night got longer, Forrestal told Prise that he didn’t need a sleeping pill and was going to dig into a book for a while. That too was a good thing. Or, at least, it seemed to be. After Prise’s shift was over, he was replaced by another military man, Robert Wayne Harrison, Jr.Forrestal’s end was almost upon him.

Bethesda Tower

At some point into his shift, Harrison, Jr. left the room to run an errand. From that point onward, everything very much becomes murky and unclear – and probably something that will never be fully resolved to the satisfaction of everyone. When Harrison, Jr. got back to the room he was shocked to the core to see that Forrestal was not in his bed. And, the room’s windows were open. Harrison, Jr. raced to the window: the cord of Forrestal’s dressing-gown was tied to the radiator near the window. Clearly, the goal was death by strangulation. It turned out, however, that Forrestal’s weight caused the cord to snap and Forrestal fell ten floors to his death; something that absolutely no-one could survive. The official theory is that Forrestal – left alone – took his own life, possibly in a brief moment when his mind swung back to that state of depression and anxiety. The big question, however, is: could Forrestal have been pushed? The reason: to make sure he could never, ever reveal what he may have been exposed to in government.

It should be stressed that at the time of his death Forrestal was in one of his best states of mind of the last few months. Moreover, Edward Prise revealed that Forrestal had told him he would like Prise to take on the job of his, Forrestal’s, personal driver. In other words, Forrestal seemed to be making plans for a good future – and not plans for the end of his life. Then, there’s the matter of Forrestal’s brother, Henry. On the day of Forrestal’s death, Henry marched into the hospital, demanding that Forrestal be released into his, Henry’s, care. If someone on “the inside” wanted Forrestal dead, then allowing Henry Forrestal to take his brother home would have been disastrous. Forrestal would have been totally out of the control of those who may have wanted him dead; something that powerful players may not have wanted. It is, then, rather telling that Forrestal died the very night before Henry was due to take his brother back to his house. That’s not all, though: there’s also the matter of why, precisely, Robert Wayne Harrison, Jr., left the room. That was completely against the grain: official orders were that Forrestal was never, ever to be left alone. And, yet, on the very night that Forrestal died, he was left alone. Henry Forrestal was deeply concerned about the circumstances surrounding his brother’s death, to the point that he came to believe that his brother had indeed been murdered.

Seventy years later, the mystery remains precisely that: a mystery.

While Navy pilots and politicians are looking on Earth for UFOs and evidence of extraterrestrial life forms (unless they’ve already found them and aren’t telling us – that’s a different article and conspiracy theory), astronomers continue to scan the skies for what they believe is the best sign of other life forms – those mysterious fast radio bursts of cosmic radio waves. Only 85 have been picked up since the first ones were discovered in 2007 and most have been single bursts, making it impossible to trace them back to their source galaxy. That changed recently when a new technology allowed astronomers to catch a burst in the act of bursting and follow it back to its home. Yes, this is a REALLY big deal.

“This is the big breakthrough that the field has been waiting for since astronomers discovered fast radio bursts in 2007.”

In a press release announcing the publication of the details in the journal Science, lead author Dr. Keith Bannister described how astronomers in Australia used the new CISRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope in Western Australia that had been equipped with even newer technology to freeze and save the telescope’s data less than a second after a burst was detected. The fast radio burst was named FRB 180924 and the team fed the captured data into three of the world’s largest optical telescopes at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, the Gemini South telescope in Chile and the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), also in Chile. Those three monsters followed the burst back to the edge of the DES J214425.25?405400.81 galaxy, a Milky Way-sized formation about 3.6 billion light-years away.

No, that’s not it.

How did they do it? ASKAP is an array of dish antennas, which means the burst traveled a slightly different distance to reach each one. The technology was able to split the differences and determine not only the galaxy the FRB came from but the origin’s distance from the galaxy’s center – about 13,000 light-years.

“It comes from a massive galaxy that is forming relatively few stars. This suggests that fast radio bursts can be produced in a variety of environments, or that the seemingly one-off bursts detected so far by ASKAP are generated by a different mechanism to the repeater.”

Dr Adam Deller of Swinburne University of Technology points out another of the revolutionary discoveries about this FRB – that the bursts can originate from any type of galaxy. The “repeater” he refers to is the only other FRB – in this case, a group of repeating bursts – that has been traced back to its galaxy, which was a tiny one that was generating a lot of stars.

No, that wasn’t it either.

Why else is this a big deal? Fast radio bursts are altered by the matter they encounter in space. By tracing them back their source, astronomers can more accurately measure the amount of matter in space. Still not impressed? Here’s Dr. Bannister describing the accuracy of these billions of light years measurements:

“If we were to stand on the Moon and look down at the Earth with this precision, we would be able to tell not only which city the burst came from, but which postcode – and even which city block.” Dr Bannister said.

Sorry, it’s not proof of extraterrestrials … yet. But it’s definitely a REALLY big deal.

This week, the Moscow Times has reported that the Russian military has developed bizarre ‘cyborg’ drones shaped like snowy owls. The avian drone was unveiled at the Russian Defense Ministry’s annual military expo in Moscow this week. Images of the drone shared by the Moscow Times show a massive, menacing owl with a creepy dome-shaped lens where its beak should be. According to the Defense Ministry, the owl drone can be equipped with cameras and other surveillance equipment as well as lasers to help guide artillery and guided air-to-surface weapons.

Snowy Owl in flight. Or is it a cyborg owl spying on us? It may soon be impossible to tell.

While the owl is sure to fool absolutely nobody with normal vision up close, at a distance the drone could easily be mistaken for an owl gliding in flight. The drone owls weigh just 5 kilograms (11 pounds) and have a range of 20 kilometers (12 miles). The body of the owl can also be swapped out for different bird species such as falcons, making it adaptable for different environments.

While this ‘cyborg’ spy owl may just seem like a kooky prototype, these drones likely represent the future of surveillance and reconaissance, at least in some small part. If the Russians and the Chinese have developed these robotic bird-shaped drones, rest assured that other nations have as well. The U.S. military has been testing their own bird drones since at least 2013. Last year, the South China Morning Postreported on the development of creepy dove-shaped dronesbeing used by the Chinese Communist Party to spy on Chinese citizens in at least five different Chinese provinces. 

As if snowy owls weren’t already terrifying enough.

Just wait until these things go full-on biohybrid. In 2016, some of the biggest biomedical engineering stories concerned half biological, half robotic creatures which combined living flesh and cells with electronics. How much longer until these bird-shaped drones are actually ‘wrapped’ in actual bird blood and guts or other types of biomimicry?

The world’s superpowers already have a long history of attempting to use animals as spies. It now seems as if we can no longer trust any of our seemingly feathered friends flying overhead. Is it time to start shooting every bird out of the sky?

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Just off the northeastern coast of the United States is a huge freshwater aquifer underneath the Atlantic Ocean. The exact size of the aquifer is still unknown, but what is known is that it stretches from Massachusetts to the southern part of New Jersey and includes the coastlines of New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. And around 670 cubic miles of it could possibly contain a bit of salty water.

It is believed that the freshwater aquifer came from the last Ice Age. Back in the 1970s when several companies were drilling for oil off the coast, they occasionally hit pockets of freshwater. However, at that time, they were unclear as to whether they were just small pockets or if they were part of a much larger area of fresh water.

Study co-researcher Kerry Key (the study can be read here), helped oil companies find oil hotspots around twenty years ago by using electromagnetic imaging on the bottom of the ocean’s floor.

Recently, he decided to change the technology in order to detect underground pools of fresh water. And in 2015, he and his study co-researcher, Rob Evans, went out into the waters off the coast of southern New Jersey and Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts to examine the areas with fresh water. They put equipment into the water that measured the electromagnetic fields to find out which areas had salt water and fresh water.

What they found was that the fresh water began at the shoreline and ended up 75 miles offshore in some places, meaning that there definitely weren’t pockets that were scattered around, but instead one large uninterrupted area. It’s also quite deep, beginning at around 600 feet under the floor of the ocean and finishing at approximately 1,200 feet under the seafloor.

As for how the freshwater aquifer ended up beneath the ocean, it probably happened during the last Ice Age. Since a lot of the planet’s water was made up of glaciers around 20,000 to 15,000 years ago, the water levels were quite a bit lower than they are today. When Earth’s temperatures finally got warmer, the ice which covered the land melted which meant that much of the water washed away large amounts of sediments, forming river deltas. When the fresh water from the glaciers melted, it got trapped in the river deltas. So when the sea levels began to rise, the fresh water was stuck underneath the ocean.

Since the aquifer mixes with seawater slowly over time, the further away it is, the saltier it becomes. While the water would need to be desalinated prior to people using it, it would still be less expensive than trying to purify normal salt water. Key explained, “We probably don’t need to do that in this region, but if we can show there are large aquifers in other regions, that might potentially represent a resource” for dry locations around the planet, such as the Mideast, Saharan Africa, Australia, or Southern California.