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

Everything that happens in space is generally considered to be a “first.” While we’ve no confirmed verification of it, there’s probably even been a first sex act in space. What we haven’t had is the first crime in space … until now. The spouse of an astronaut is accusing her of stealing her identity while serving on the International Space Station and using it to illegally access her bank account while the couple is in the process of getting divorced. Who is responsible for policing space? NASA? The FBI? Interpol? The Space Force? Robocop? And who is responsible for handling the ensuing personal scandal that the accusation brought to light? NASA? Dr. Phil? Oprah?

“Just because it’s in space doesn’t mean it’s not subject to law.”

Mark Sundahl, director of the Global Space Law Center at Cleveland State University, told The New York Times he believes this crime in space is unprecedented. The accused is astronaut Anne McClain, who was onboard the ISS from December 3, 2018, to June 24, 2019, and achieved a bit of space notoriety when the first all-female spacewalk she was scheduled to be part of had to be scrapped due to a lack of two spacesuits small enough for women.

Astronaut Anne McClain

The accuser is Summer Worden, a former Air Force intelligence officer, who married McClain in 2014, filed for divorce in 2018 and complained to NASA in 2019 that McClain had sent her threatening emails and accessed her files illegally from space. The complaint was reported last week in The New York Times, effectively outing McClain and making her the first known gay astronaut of either sex. Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, was also gay but that was not revealed until after her death.

“The more we go out there and spend time out there, all the things we do here are going to happen in space.”

Sundahl certainly is right about that, although it appears NASA isn’t too happy about either the alleged identity theft nor the outing. McClain’s attorney says his client did nothing wrong, and the astronaut was interviewed under oath by the inspector general, where she explained that accessing Worden’s bank accounts was something she’s always done while away in order to make sure Worden had the finances available to care for their six-year-old child – a child they’re now fighting for custody of. McClain is a decorated Army pilot who flew over 800 combat hours in Operation Iraqi Freedom and is on a list of candidates NASA is considering to be the first woman on the moon. Worden is a former Air Force intelligence officer, so she should know about breaking into accounts and crimes. This sounds like an epic space crime battle the likes of which has never been fought before. Where will it take place and who will be the judge?

According to a 2014 interview with NASA engineer and instructor Robert Frost, the question first goes to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. In Article VIII of the treaty states that:

“A State Party to the Treaty on whose registry an object launched into outer space is carried shall retain jurisdiction and control over such object, and over any personnel thereof, while in outer space or on a celestial body.”

International Space Station

That governs a spacecraft where all of the crew members are from the nation that launched it. However, the ISS has its own rule because its crew members come from so many different countries. For a crime committed there, we turn to an Intergovernmental Agreement signed by all parties in 1998. With regard to criminal conduct, it states:

“Canada, the European Partner States, Japan, Russia, and the United States may exercise criminal jurisdiction over personnel in or on any flight element who are their respective nationals.”

So the nation of the accused has jurisdiction over him or her. But which court would handle it? Worden filed her complaint with the Federal Trade Commission while McClain works for NASA. Based on how things have been going lately in lower courts, should this case go right to the Supremes?

Or higher? Oprah?

The universe is waiting to find out.

With the pace of everyday life in the modern world, it can become easy to forget the more fundamental questions we have about who we are, and what it means to be a part of the great enigma that is humankind.

To borrow the words of historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, “As evolution slowly grinds out species, who’s human? Who’s to say? It is tempting to reserve the term human for ourselves—members of the species we call Homo sapiens.” Along similar lines, the late Philip Adler of East Carolina University acknowledged that “Paleoanthropologists continue to dig up specimens that challenge believers in human uniqueness,” and cause us to have to consider what, precisely, it means to be “human.”

Indeed, with time we may have to drastically rethink the uniqueness of humans in relation to the long line of ongoing hominin discoveries. A more remote possibility—but one which may nonetheless prove to be true—is the discovery of new hominin types that may have existed far more recently, or which might even still exist in small numbers today; a tantalizing, though increasingly unlikely prospect as time goes on. Technologies that are ever-steadily mapping remote corners of the world, in addition to issues like climate change, deforestation, population growth, and other environmental issues would no doubt present considerations in terms of the discovery of any new species, let alone those that might be large mammals resembling humans.

Nonetheless, several archaeological discoveries in recent years do suggest that unique kinds of early humans probably did, at very least, exist more recently than once believed.

As far back as 1979, a discovery was made in a cave in the Guanxi region of China that, decades later, would prove to be of remarkable significance in our broader understanding of human ancestry and the curious persistence of hominid types into recent times. Found at Longlin Cave a similar discovery was made one decade later at the Red Deer Cave site in Yunnan Province, China.

Charcoal remnants extracted from the same areas the fossils were tested in 2012, and found to be of remarkably recent ages: the fossils from Red Deer Cave yielded dates of between 14,300 and 12,600 years, while the earlier Longlin Cave discovery dated to even more recently at around 11,500 years ago.

Partial skull (reconstructed) found in Longlin cave in 1979

(Credit: PLOS One, Wikimedia Commons).

Named after the Red Deer Cave, which became the type site for the discoveries, this mysterious group of hominins bore a number of unique features that seem to place them in between modern humans and those of an earlier archaic variety. With the prevalence of Denisovan DNA remnants that exist among human populations in Southeast Asia, it has been proposed that the Red Deer Cave people might have been human-Denisovan hybrids.

The remains bear remarkable similarities to early archaic human types such as Homo erectus; however, since attempts at extracting DNA from the Red Deer Cave fossils have proven unsuccessful thus far, anthropologists have been at odds over whether to classify these as a new species.

Mandibles recovered from Red Deer Cave in Yunnan Province, China in 1989.

(Credit: PLOS One, Wikimedia Commons).

Opinions on the matter are wide and varied. Darren Curnoe, and evolutionary biologist with the University of New South Wales, Australia, gave an enthusiastic statement on the discovery to National Geographic in 2012.

“We have discovered a new population of prehistoric humans whose skulls are an unusual mosaic of primitive features, like those seen in our ancestors hundreds of thousands of years ago… In short, they’re anatomically unique among all members of the human evolutionary tree.”

Alternatively, some critics have argued that the fossils may simply be modern humans with an odd appearance.

Erik Trinkaus, Professor Emeritus of Physical Anthropology at Washington University in Saint Louis, called the discovery “an unfortunate over-interpretation and misinterpretation of robust early modern humans, probably with affinities to modern Melanesians,” stating that the finds were “nothing extraordinary.”

While attempts at gathering genetic information about the Red Deer Cave people have proven unsuccessful so far, could there actually be evidence for similar human relatives in our own DNA?

Recent genomic studies also seem to point to mysterious archaic human types that can also be traced in modern human DNA, but which remain unknown in the archaeological record. In other words, we can prove that in addition to Neanderthals and Denisovans, there are at least two other unknown archaic human types that anatomically modern humans met, lived alongside, and even interbred with within the last several tens of thousands of years.

Homo habilis skull reconstruction, which has been compared to certain features present with the Red Deer Cave specimens

(Public Domain).

Recently, I reported on a study published in the journal PNASwhich detailed genetic evidence for two unrecognized hominin species that existed in Asia. According to the study’s authors:

“At least 3 different hominin groups appear to have been involved in Asia, of which only the Denisovans are currently known. Several interbreeding events are inferred to have taken place east of Wallace’s Line, consistent with archaeological evidence of widespread and early hominin presence in the area.”

In other words, if this recent DNA evidence is any indication, we’re already certain there are indeed “missing links” in our evolutionary past, waiting to be corroborated in the fossil record.

Whether those fossils will be found or not, and later corroborated with evidence found in DNA remains to be seen. However, it is clear enough already from the data discussed here that there are plenty of mysteries about humanity’s past to keep us busy for some time to come.