“A champion named Goliath, who was from Gath, came out of the Philistine camp. His height was six cubits and a span. He had a bronze helmet on his head and wore a coat of scale armor of bronze weighing five thousand shekels; on his legs he wore bronze greaves, and a bronze javelin was slung on his back. His spear shaft was like a weaver’s rod, and its iron point weighed six hundred shekels. His shield bearer went ahead of him.”
—  Samuel 17

For those not up on their biblical measurements, “six cubits and a span” is 9 feet 9 inches or 2.97 meters (some say this is was a transcription error because other texts list Goliath’s height as four cubits and a span – a still giant 6 feet 9 inches or 2.06 meters). For those not up on their biblical geography, Gath or Gat was a Philistine city-state mentioned often in the Hebrew bible and thought to be buried under the archaeological mound (tell) known as Tell es-Safi, a former Palestinian village located inside Tel Zafit National Park 35 kilometers (22 mi) northwest of Hebron. For those not up on their biblical history, you should still be familiar with the story of young David slaying the giant Goliath. An archeological team has recently discovered an ancient settlement under the remains of Gath with structures so large that they may be the reason behind the legendary giant stature of Goliath.

“The discovery suggests that Gath was at the peak of its power much earlier than previously thought, putting its heyday around the time when the city features heavily in the biblical narrative as a fierce rival of the early Israelites as well as the hometown of Goliath and other outsized biblical warriors.”

Bar-Ilan University professor and head of the Gath Archeological Project Aren Maeir tells Haaretz that recent digs just a meter below Gath have uncovered the older settlement that matches the time period of the biblical Gath. The differences between the older Gath and what was built over it are obvious.

“Over the summer’s digging campaign, which ended last week, archaeologists decided to investigate the foundations of large terraces located in Gath’s lower city, which was only inhabited during the Iron Age. The dig revealed that those terraces were resting on massive fortifications and larger buildings made of huge stone boulders and fired bricks – a method that makes them stronger than traditional sun-dried mud bricks. In some areas these walls are four meters thick or more, and the pottery associated with them dates to the early Iron Age, to the 11th century B.C.E. or possibly earlier. No comparably colossal structures are known in the rest of the Levant from this period – or even from the later incarnation of Philistine Gath.”

Gath has been destroyed and rebuilt a number of times, so the discovery of an older version is not much of a surprise. However, the size of the structures is a big one, and it may be why the Philistines were believed to have giant warriors.

“When people see remains of very impressive architecture and say, ‘Wow, how could someone have built that?’ one of the explanations they sometimes offer is ‘This must have been done by giants of the past’.”

Before you wonder how an experienced archeologist like Maeir could have missed doing the obvious, he says:

“There are no skeletons of people who are taller than NBA centers.”

It’s just a theory, but it’s the best we have in lieu of the actual skeleton of Goliath or the rest of his team. Maeir plans to continue digging in hopes of determining why there was such a difference in architectures between the two Gaths. He’s obviously excited about what he might find:

“But one thing is certain, we are slowly awakening a sleeping giant.”

I like this guy’s sense of humor.

A couple of days ago I wrote an article here at Mysterious Universe titled “The Russians were behind the Majestic 12 documents.” The article was focused on a very controversial set of Majestic 12 papers that surfaced in 2017 from Heather Wade. As I noted in my article, there are very good reasons for concluding that the Russians were behind these documents. In fact, there are several angles in the documents that are very much pro-Russian. Take a careful look and you’ll see. It should be noted though that the documents provided to Heather Wade were just the latest set of Majestic 12 papers. As many of you will know, there were two additional significant, and earlier, collections of  such Majestic 12 papers. One was the collection of papers that the team of Bill Moore and Jaime Shandera received in the early-to-mid-1980s and that appeared in 1987, in Timothy Good’s book, Above Top Secret: The Worldwide UFO Cover-Up. For those who may not know, Majestic 12 is alleged to be a highly classified group created in the late 1940s and buried deeply within the U.S. Government. So the story goes, the Majestic 12 team sits on some of the most secret of all UFO cases – such as the notorious Roswell affair of July 1947.

As for those 1980s-era Majestic 12 documents, can we make a case that the Russians were behind them, too? Yes, we can. In 1999, Gerald K. Haines – in his position as the historian of the National Reconnaissance Office – wrote a paper titled “CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90.” It is now in the public domain, thanks to the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. It can be read at the CIA’s website. Haines’ paper detailed the history of how, and why, the CIA became interested and involved in the phenomenon of UFOs. Although Haines covered a period of more than forty years, I will bring your attention to one particular section of his paper, which is focused on the 1970s-1980s. Haines wrote: “During the late 1970s and 1980s, the Agency continued its low-key interest in UFOs and UFO sightings. While most scientists now dismissed flying saucers reports as a quaint part of the 1950s and 1960s, some in the Agency and in the Intelligence Community shifted their interest to studying parapsychology and psychic phenomena associated with UFO sightings. CIA officials also looked at the UFO problem to determine what UFO sightings might tell them about Soviet progress in rockets and missiles and reviewed its counterintelligence aspects.”

The Soviets, then, were camouflaging their secret rocket tests by spreading false and fantastic tales of UFOs. Haines also noted something that is absolutely key to the story that this article tells and particularly so with regard to the Majestic 12 papers: “Agency analysts from the Life Science Division of OSI and OSWR officially devoted a small amount of their time to issues relating to UFOs. These included counterintelligence concerns that the Soviets and the KGB were using U.S. citizens and UFO groups to obtain information on sensitive U.S. weapons development programs (such as the Stealth aircraft),the vulnerability of the U.S. air-defense network to penetration by foreign missiles mimicking UFOs, and evidence of Soviet advanced technology associated with UFO sightings [italics mine].”

This final point from Haines is the most important one of all. It is indeed a fact that in the late 1970s and early 1980s, “the Soviets and the KGB,” as Haines words it, approached a number of UFO researchers who also just happened to work on classified U.S. Department of Defense programs, including the Stealth projects. The goal of the Russians was to dangle sensational UFO-themed documentation in the faces of those same UFO researchers with U.S. government ties. And, in return – the Russians hoped – they would get something significant in return from the Americans they were secretly trying to “turn.” The reality of the situation, though, was that those Americans working in government and who might have been tempted to take up the Russian offer were fed nothing but faked UFO documents (guess which ones?). As for the Russians, we may never know to what extent they succeeded in getting their hands on highly classified materials of a Stealth-based nature. It’s important to note that Moore and Shandera were not caught up in this Russian plot in any way at all. Their copies of the documents – mailed to Shandera in December 1984 – came from a completely different source, one within U.S. intelligence and who was concerned about who had created the documents. There is, however, very little doubt that the Majestic 12 documents of the 1980s were Russian creations. You don’t think so? Well, keep the following in mind:

In 1988, the FBI launched an investigation into the Majestic 12 documents. Such were the twists and turns in the story, even the FBI came away baffled. If the FBI learned anything further about Majestic 12 in the post-1988 period, then that information has not surfaced under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act. We do know something of deep interest though, thanks to a man named Richard L. Huff. He served as Bureau Co-Director within the Office of Information and Privacy. In correspondence, Huff informed me of the existence of an FBI “Main File” on Majestic 12, which is now in what is termed “closed status.” The title of the file is not something along the lines of “Potentially leaked documents” or “Questionable documents,” as one might imagine, given the strange story that is detailed in this article. Rather, the file title is nothing less than – wait for it – “Espionage.” While we’re admittedly forced to speculate, that one, eye-opening word alone strongly suggests that the Majestic 12 saga really did revolve around those very same components that appear in this article: spies, counterintelligence operations, the words of Gerald K. Haines, and the interference of the Russians. And espionage.

In the third installment of this series of “The Russians created Majestic 12” articles, we’ll take a look at another batch of “leaked” Majestic 12 documents. They surfaced in the 1990s and were provided – under clandestine circumstances – to a man named Timothy Cooper.

With the recent arrival of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo moon landings, Americans and people all around the world were reminded of the remarkable achievements half a century ago that took humans to an alien world. It was, as astronaut Neil Armstrong famously said, “a giant leap for mankind.”

And yet it was also merely a small step, and not just for Armstrong, but also in terms of humanity’s future space missions. Current plans to return to the moon were reiterated by Vice President Mike Pence, who spoke at the recent “One Giant Leap” celebration, an event marking the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing.

Pence said to an audience that included astronaut Buzz Aldrin, “I am proud to report at the direction of the President of the United States of America, America will return to the moon within the next five years, and the next man and the first woman on the moon will be American astronauts.”

It only goes to show what exciting times these are to be living in, and there may be no field where that is more evident than in aerospace, with the current push by private companies like Blue Origin and others to take humankind to the stars. In addition to the many benefits for humankind that may result from our desire to push further out into the cosmos, there are other landmark discoveries that could be made as well.

Arguably, the greatest of these may be to finally learn the answer to the age-old question, “are we alone?”

As our earthly technology improves, many astronomers and astrobiologists feel that it’s only a matter of time before we find evidence of “life out there” too, whether through evidence of technosignatures (that is, evidence of life found through the detection of advanced technologies they may be using), or even the discovery of simpler forms of life during our eventual travel to other worlds, whether in manned trips, or with the help of robotic systems we send in our place.

Diagram displaying the basic orientation of a Dyson Sphere-like megastructure surrounding a habitable star

(Credit: Wikimedia Commons).

It is interesting, therefore, that with all the interest in the potential discovery of alien life, the American Space Agency NASA actually puts very little funding into technologies that may aid us in finding life out there.

At least that’s the case, according to Jason Wright, an astronomer with Pennsylvania State University, who recently spoke with The Conversation about the silly plan to “storm Area 51”, among other things (Wright said he hadn’t even heard about the latest Area 51 meme until AlterNet asked him about it).

However, far more interesting than the discussion about Area 51 and alien theories that have been raised about it over the years were Wright’s thoughts on the search for alien life.

“The search for life in the universe is a major priority for NASA and American science,” Wright told The Conversation. “Many of our missions to Mars and our space telescopes are designed with the detection of biosignatures in mind – ‘biosignatures’ being signs of life like microfossils or evidence of metabolism in the atmospheres of distant planets.”

However, Wright also said that despite all the interest there is in finding life, funding those programs continues to be a problem:

But despite the billions of dollars spent on these missions, I think many members of the public would be surprised to learn that NASA and the National Science Foundation spend next to nothing looking for intelligent life in the universe, including technological life that might, after all, be easier to find. I think the level of funding for the field should be determined the way the rest of science is, by competitive peer review of proposals for research. So, I don’t know what the “right” level is, but I know it’s not zero.

In a paper earlier this year titled “Searches for Technosignatures: The State of the Profession,” Wright called for greater interest by NASA and the National Science Foundation in the furtherance of searching for technosignatures of alien life.

“The search for life in the universe is a major theme of astronomy and astrophysics for the next decade,” wright argued. “Searches for technosignatures are complementary to searches for biosignatures, in that they offer an alternative path to discovery, and address the question of whether complex (i.e. technological) life exists elsewhere in the Galaxy.”

Wright argues that the space agency and other agencies and organizations capable of leading the charge in this field have not done so, in part due to stigmas that have become associated with the idea of alien life, and what avenues might lead to their eventual discovery. According to Wright, NASA has avoided the topic, “as a result of decades-past political grandstanding, conflation of the effort with non-scientific topics such as UFOs, and confusion regarding the scope of the term “SETI.”

SETI, or the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, remains somewhat controversial today. Although having been endorsed by the likes of Carl Sagan and many other notable science advocates over the years, it has become a shadow of the once ambitious and coordinated effort that it was decades ago, and is largely independently funded today.

“The Astro2020 Decadal should address [NASA’s lack of involvement] by making developing the field an explicit priority for the next decade,” Wright says. “It should recommend that NASA and the NSF support training and curricular development in the field in a way that supports equity and diversity, and make explicit calls for proposals to fund searches for technosignatures.”

As Wright notes, discovering alien life may require little more than finding evidences of alien technology, a process that can begin right now, with technologies already at our disposal, and without ever having to leave Earth. The question that remains is whether we can we get past the highly stigmatized idea of “alien life” for long enough to see through with new and innovative plans for the future. These plans are every bit as important as any current plans for future space missions; and ultimately, they could provide answers about whether or not we are indeed all alone in this strange and mysterious universe.

The news that there are no hotel rooms available for miles around Area 51 hasn’t deterred the millions who have sworn in Facebook commitment blood that they will storm it on September 20th. Those planning a Burning Man-style campout have no doubt heard that Lil Nas X has offered to perform there, and more music is planned. Now all they need is some food and adult beverages for themselves and any aliens they may liberate during the storming – not to mention to share with any soldiers who don’t shoot them first.

“We can’t confirm if there are aliens at Area 51. But, if they do show up, they deserve the best meats on Earth. If not, Arby’s will still be there serving the planet’s best meats to everyone else attending this historic event.”

Jim Taylor, Chief Marketing Officer for Arby’s, announced via Twitter that the “We have the meats” people will be sending their ‘Arby’s Roadside Meathouse’ to Area 51 on September 20th to feed the storming masses (hopefully before they get shot) from a “secret menu” developed especially for the event. While some reports suggest that the sandwiches will be free, that hasn’t been confirmed – although it seems likely that aliens will certainly eat free – providing there’s anything left if two million people show up.

You shouldn’t storm on an empty stomach

For the adult beverages, Anheuser-Busch announced a “Screw it. Free Bud Light to any alien that makes it out” promotion offering free Area 51 Special Edition Bud Light in a specially-designed can for any aliens liberated who have a taste for “a light bodied space lager with a fresh taste, a crisp, clean finish, and a smooth drinkability.” It’s a safe bet that there will be some additional cans/cases/truckloads for sale for the hot stormers who might need to cool down while cooler heads prevail (although getting drunk won’t help that).

For those who aren’t fans of country rapper Lil Nas X, Matty Roberts – the infamous college student who came up with the Storm Area 51 idea – is trying to make amends by repainting the event as an EDM festival and is recruiting artists from the electronic dance music world to perform there. He says he’s also been contacted by indie rock bands and other performers, but hasn’t named names nor announced a schedule yet.

Play Freebird!

Finally, if you have a conflict on that date or fear being shot or not getting an Arby’s sandwich or Bud Light but still want to experience the thrill of the storming, you can stay home and play the ‘official’ Storm Area 51 video game from Keemstar.

“Can you survive the break in, find the helpless alien captives and get them safely to their UFO to pilot them out of Area 51 and show the world what the government has been hiding all these years? Find and explore hidden back routes and enter the legendary Area 51, avoid the guards using classic stealth mechanics, locate the captured aliens and escort them to their mothership! Utilise the other runners as human cover or provide the ultimate sacrifice so that others might succeed!”

Add your own fast food, beer and gunshots and it’s just like being there – although reviews of the early access version are “mostly negative” at Steam. Then again, maybe “mostly negative” WILL be just like being there.

If there’s one thing for certain about the Storm Area 51 event, there’s money to be made and plenty of non-aliens lining up to get their piece.

The PR people at To the Stars Academy sure know how to keep their name in the headlines, even if they’re only good at rehashing worn out, unsubstantiated claims or repackaging previously reported incidents. Now that the buzz of the first season of Unidentified has died down, the company which claims itself to be at “the forefront of socializing the UFO conversation through entertainment media in the public” has now revived a decades-old claim about possessing and studying alleged exotic metamaterials. 

While many similar claims have been made in the past about what appear to be the exact same samples, I can’t help but notice that some of the language in their press release and accompanying social media posts sounds oddly familiar to descriptions of other recent strange developments loosely related with TTSA and the Navy’s ongoing UFO “revelations” or whatever you want to call them.

The latest press release claims that TTSA is now in the possession of “multiple pieces of metamaterials and an archive of initial analysis and research” of their properties. Accompanying that announcement are statements by Steve Justice, current director of TTSA’s Aerospace Division and the former director of Advanced Systems at Lockheed Martin’s “Skunk Works.” In the press release, Justice claims that while the claims surrounding these materials still cannot be substantiated, these metamaterials could completely revolutionize science as we know it – if they are ever able to be manufactured:

The structure and composition of these materials are not from any known existing military or commercial application. They’ve been collected from sources with varying levels of chain-of-custody documentation, so we are focusing on verifiable facts and working to develop independent scientific proof of the materials’ properties and attributes. In some cases, the manufacturing technology required to fabricate the material is only now becoming available, but the material has been in documented possession since the mid-1990’s. We currently have multiple material samples being analyzed by contracted laboratories and have plans to extend the scope of this study. TTSA will also seek to engage the potential partners who have expressed interest in helping accelerate ADAM [Acquisition and Data Analysis of Materials] research and development. 

If the claims associated with these assets can be validated and substantiated, then we can initiate work to transition them from being a technology to commercial and military capabilities. As noted in our October 2017 TTSA kickoff webcast, technologies that would allow us to engineer the spacetime metric would bring capabilities that would fundamentally alter civilization, with revolutionary changes to transportation, communication, and computation.

While many hopeful ufologists and believers take this press release to be evidence of extraterrestrial technologies, note that Justice never mentions anything about aliens or advanced civilizations. Instead he says merely that “the structure and composition of these materials are not from any known existing military or commercial application” (emphasis added). The fact that Justice states these samples are “not from any known existing military or commercial application” leaves open the possibility that they could be from a highly classified program not yet made public outside of highly compartmentalized special access programs. 

Writing for The War Zone, I previously reported on a series of strange patents patented assigned to the Navy which concern new forms of energy production and incredibly advanced hybrid craft which are claimed to travel at incredibly high speeds and maneuver with disregard for their own inertia equally well through air, water, or the vacuum of space thanks to a radical new form of electromagnetic propulsion. Despite the claims made in those patents, I’ve yet to speak with one physicist who believes the underlying mechanism for that type of quantum physics-bending electromagnetic propulsion is possible.

Still, in a 2019 aeronautics conference presentation describing one of those patents, the inventor Salvatore Pais claimed that these new Navy patents represent “a highly disruptive technology, capable of a total paradigm change in Science and Technology,” and adds that their “military and commercial value is considerable.” Notice the curious similarities with the language of Justice’s statements in the press release.

Even more curious is the Harold Puthoff connection. Harold Puthoff has traveled among the hard sciences and the fringe sciences for years, making somewhat out-there claims at times. Puthoff isn’t mentioned anywhere in this latest press release, but is acknowledged in several of Pais’ publications and Navy patents. Puthoff now sits on the TTSA board, is listed as a co-founder, and is the Vice President of TTSA’s Science and Technology division. Puthoff has for years published theoretical research into so-called “Space Time Metric Engineering,” the same type of physics-bending propulsion described in the Navy’s advanced aerospace patents – patents the Chief Technology Officer of the U.S. Naval Aviation Enterprise claims are already operable.

In a presentation given in 2018 at a Conference for the Society for Scientific Exploration (SSE) and the International Remote Viewing Association (IRVA), Puthoff says that while he’d “love to talk about really fancy materials,” he can’t do so because “they’re classified.” However, Puthoff adds that there are plenty of examples of such metamaterials “provided even in the public domain.” A sample of one such material he’s studied, Puthoff claims, is an “excellent microscopic waveguide for very high frequency electromagnetic radiation.” 

Images of two of the Navy’s patented aerospace craft.

Again, the language Puthoff used in that speech to describe the properties of these materials echoes the language of the Navy’s strange electromagnetic propulsion patents, and during the same presentation Puthoff claims the objects observed in the alleged Navy sightings behaved “as if the craft didn’t have any inertial mass” – the exact language used to describe the abilities of the “hybrid aerospace-underwater vehicle” patented by the Navy. Is this proof of any connection between TTSA’s research and the Navy’s patents? There are only so many words for describing these types of theoretical propulsion methods and alleged aeronautical abilities after all, so it’s likely a coincidence. Still, the Puthoff connection between the patents and these alleged metamaterials is odd. 

What’s odder still is why someone like Steve Justice would now throw his name into the ring with fringe scientists or even pseudoscientists who for decades have made what some would describe as dubious, unfounded claims about alien metamaterials. Justice never goes so far as to say that these materials are in fact legitimate or extraterrestrial in origin, though, only that TTSA has received them and will study them.

I’m also drawn to Justice’s statement that the “manufacturing technology required to fabricate the material is only now becoming available.” Could this be why the Navy suddenly decided to patent such radical-sounding technologies and appeal them so forcefully with the U.S. Patent Office? I’ve been toying with an idea lately and it’s still nothing but a flight of the imagination, so take it for what it is.

Imagine that the U.S. government has indeed been researching electromagnetic propulsion methods, advanced metamaterials, and hybrid craft for years and has encouraged the extraterrestrial hypothesis in order to keep these projects a secret. What if they were finally ready to go public with these new advances, but the new administration elected in 2016 decided to keep it under wraps in order to continue kowtowing to the fossil fuel industries? Could that be why Steve Justice, Chris Mellon, and others decided to form TTSA to take these technologies into the private sector or as a means of leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for the public? Could that be why the Navy made their curious patents available to the public? Just a thought.

Returning to TTSA and this latest press release, be sure to take into account how the “Invest Now” button is now permanently anchored to the TTSA website’s masthead, so as usual, take everything they say with a shaker of salt or two. Until they cough up anything more than a cable TV program and social media buzz, there is no way of knowing if they are any better than any other charlatans who have for years made unfounded claims of exotic technologies for profit.

For the last several years I’ve been tracking and reporting on the mystery boom phenomenon, collecting hundreds of reports in the process. While reports have tapered off somewhat in the last few months, one of our MU readers reached out to me this week to share her personal experience encountering one of these unidentified sonic phenomena.

Melissa Hinegardner of Roodhouse, Illinois contacted me and told me that on Thursday, July 18 at around 12:58 pm local time, multiple people from several counties reported a loud boom. Hinegardner says people in several cities throughout Greene County all experienced the same phenomenon: an ear-splitting boom which shook the earth below their feet. Hinegardner told me that the noise was powerful enough to shake her home:

I thought one of the kids fell into the wall or something hit the front door. The house shook a little. It scared the kids and they jumped up onto the couch. When I saw the kids were fine I went on with my day. Then I got a text from my dad a few blocks away and realized it was something bigger.

Local radio station WLDS reported the incident on Facebook, writing that “a loud boom and shake was felt at 1PM this afternoon across the listening area from as far south as Carrollton and Greenfield to the north near Virginia and as far west as Winchester.” The station contacted local sheriff’s deputies and seismological surveys but found no explanation. However, a few days later the same station reported that it may have found an explanation for the incident:

BOOM! Report: WLDS/WEAI News received a return call a few minutes ago from Scott Air Force Base in St. Louis. They have confirmed that an F-35 Lightning II Fighter Jet was in the area at the approximate time of the boom. Sergeant Chris Ostomo could not confirm or deny if the pilot was attempting to reach Mach 1 speeds or not.

Facebook users have been debating whether or not it would be possible for a single aircraft to generate a sonic boom powerful enough to be heard for over 50 miles. Some anecdotal and scientific evidence supports the theory that certain atmospheric conditions can enable sound waves to propagate over greater distances than usual, but this is still a little understood meteorological phenomenon.

Far away from Greene County, Illinois, residents of Tempe, Arizona have been rattled, both literally and figuratively, by a series of powerful booms that have rocked homes in the middle of the night. Local news station FOX 10 reports that the booms have been accompanied by flashes of light, leading some to suspect that illegal explosives might be at the root of these unexplained sonic phenomena.

Neither the Tempe Police nor the Salt River Project utilities company know what’s behind the booms and/or flashes of light. “It doesn’t sound like it’s just some kids blowing up fireworks. It sounds like it’s meant to scare people. It’s in the middle of the night,” one resident told FOX 10. Other worried Tempe locals have compared the noises to the sound of a bomb. 

That comparison is worrisome given that last year a man was arrested for detonating homemade explosives, and in one case dangerously near an elementary school. Could a copycat be at work in Tempe?

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

My new book, Flying Saucers from the Kremlin, is a study of how and why the Russians – for decades – sought to take control of the UFO scene and create hysteria and paranoia in the West. And we were doing the same to them, too. The Russians certainly deserved it. As they do too now, for their outrageous meddling over the last few years. But, does such manipulation of the UFO scene still go on? Yes, it does. Certainly, the vast majority of the programs designed to use the UFO subject as a tool of manipulation took place during the height of the Cold War; that much is abundantly clear. It should be noted, though, that while the available data is limited, we can say that UFOs – or, rather, the mystique and the legend that surrounds them – are still of interest to the intelligence services of several nations.

In a strange way, the evidence for this has a link to the saga of none other than the ultimate 21^st century whistle-blower, Edward Snowden. If, prior to 2013, someone were to ask you for your thoughts on Edward Snowden, you would almost certainly reply: “Who? Huh?” His family, friends, and work colleagues aside, Snowden was unknown. Just about completely. That all changed – and it changed radically – in the summer of 2013. That was when the shocking story of the National Security Agency’s top secret programs of widespread surveillance came tumbling out into the public domain. It created shock-waves that are still reverberating to this day.

As Snowden revealed, and unbeknownst to just about everyone (the National Security Agency aside, of course), the NSA had the potential to not just spy on foreign nations but on U.S. citizens too. Landlines, cell-phones, email, Facebook, Twitter, and Skype: they had all been penetrated, very often with the witting help of some of those same companies. The data collection process was so mind-boggling and huge that it would likely have had even George Orwell himself shaking his head in disbelief; except for just one thing: Orwell’s 1984 was fiction. This was all too real.

The responses to Snowden’s revelations were interesting and thought-provoking. For some people, Snowden is the definitive American hero. For others, however, he is a man who has massively jeopardized U.S. national security, and placed our troops and agents in deep danger. There were even calls not for just his lifelong incarceration, but for his execution too, as the ultimate traitor. For many people, however, Snowden falls somewhere between both camps. And then there’s the matter of UFOs. Or, at least, the lore surrounding it. The story of Edward Snowden would never have soared to the levels that it did had it not been for the research of investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald.

Having secured Snowden’s trust, Greenwald was able to secure an astonishing amount of highly classified material on the NSA’s surveillance programs. One of Snowden’s lesser-known revelations revolved around a PowerPoint presentation produced by the U.K.’s Government Communications Headquarters, which is the nation’s equivalent of its, ahem, big brother, the United States’ NSA. The presentation was titled“How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive and Destroy Reputations.” Interestingly, the PowerPoint production – which, in part, provides ways and means to shatter the characters of people under surveillance – contained three photographs of alleged UFOs.

Mark Pilkington, a writer on, and an investigator of, the UFO subject has a particular interest in how government agencies have used the UFO controversy to their advantages. His 2010 book, Mirage Men, is subtitled: An Adventure into Paranoia, Espionage, Psychological Warfare, and UFOs. That will give you a very good idea as to where Pilkington is coming from in relation to UFOs. Journalist David Clarke asked Pilkington what he thought of all this. Pilkington said to Clarke: “We don’t know why there are UFOs in this [PowerPoint] presentation. But the fact that the saucer photos appear within the context of influencing and manipulating online communities is highly suggestive.” You can see the full story of this in Clarke’s book, How UFOs Conquered the World.

What does it mean to be a tree? It might seem like a silly question, but a mysterious phenomenon that allows the stumps of some trees to thrive–even in the absence of any new growth–is challenging our ideas about how communities of plants live and interact with each other.

By definition, trees are perennial plant organisms, meaning that they renew their growth over time. Consisting of a tall trunk from which numerous secondary stems, or “branches” protrude, each branch possesses a number of leaves that provide food for the plant by collecting energy from sunlight and carbon dioxide, which, combined with water absorbed through the roots of the tree, produces sugars in the form of glucose.

These processes are well understood, which is why it might seem odd to ask a question like “what it means to be a tree.” However, a recent study by a team of researchers in New Zealand has observed a tree stump that remains alive, despite having none of the ordinary facilities required for sustaining itself: effectively making it a “zombie” tree, in a sense.

This unique plant is able to survive sans leaves in a photosynthetically inactive state with a little help from its friends nearby: that is, it is engaged in exchanges of water, minerals, carbon, and even microorganisms necessary to survive with other plants. In this “community” root system (something known to botanists as conspecifics), even a tree without leaves can thrive.

The arrangement, rather than being likened to a “zombie” tree, might be more closely likened to a natural, botanical form of “life support” for the plant in question.

The tree stump in question “displayed greatly reduced, inverted daily sap flow patterns compared with intact kauri trees,” as stated in the paper’s abstract. Despite being a trunkless tree, the first clue as to its unconventional survival had been sap flow variations in the kauri stump, which seemed to mirror those of its surrounding neighbors.

The researchers found that rainfall and other sources of water introduced to the surrounding trees “were very rapidly and inversely mirrored in the living stump’s water status.”

“Such intimate hydrological coupling suggests a ‘communal physiology’ among (conspecific) trees with far-reaching implications for our understanding of forest functioning, particularly under water shortage,” the authors wrote.

Example of a living stump

(credit: Wikimedia Commons).

These “living stumps,” as they are appropriately called, aren’t a new phenomenon. The earliest record of a living stump dates back to the 1830s, although science articles didn’t begin to regularly appear on the subject until 1959, with the publication of

F.H. Bormann and B.F. Graham Jr.’s “The occurrence of natural root grafting in eastern white pine (Pinus strobus L.), and its ecological implications“. The article appeared in the journal Ecology, and several other articles that examined the phenomenon of “living stumps” were published in the years that followed.

The new paper, titled “Hydraulic Coupling of a Leafless Kauri Tree Remnant to Conspecific Hosts,” was co-authored by M.K.-F. Bader and S. Leuzinger of the Institute for Applied Ecology New Zealand at Auckland University of Technology. The study can be read online here.