Let’s get the obvious out of the way right up front – the Violent Blinking Black Holes would make a GREAT name for a metal band.

On the other hand, it doesn’t sound like something you want to find in your galaxy. Guess what, fellow Milky Wayans – a low mass X-ray binary black hole in our home galaxy a mere 10,000 light years away has been discovered sending out intense blinking beams of visible and X-ray light that are described as “violent,” “crackling” and “flaring.” Is this hyperbole or a true description of what black holes are really capable of?

“The HiPERCAM and NICER instruments however let the researchers record ‘movies’ of the changing light from the system at over three hundred frames per second, capturing violent ‘crackling’ and ‘flaring’ of visible and X-ray light.”

NICER (NASA)

HiPERCAM and NICER are unintentionally cutesy names for the tools used by John Paice, an artist and graduate student at the University of Southampton and the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy & Astrophysics in India, to create a realistic movie of MAXI J1820+070, a black hole in the Milky Way with the mass of about seven of our Suns in a small area the size of a large city, eating its companion star with such intensity that the flares rapidly belching out of it are brighter than the star itself, with some that are “the output of a hundred Suns and more being emitted in the blink of an eye!” An obviously excited Paice describes the discovery in a new study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and summarized in a press release by the Royal Astronomical Society.

“An animation of the black hole system MAXI J1820+070, based upon observed characteristics during a rapid accretion episode in March 2018. Purple denotes X-ray radiation seen by the NICER instrument on the ISS, and the rest of the colours show visible light seen by HiPERCAM in La Palma. The video is shown at roughly 1/10th of the true speed.”

Fortunately for us, John Paice is a unique combination of artist and astronomer, so the real gift he’s given the world is not the study but an animation of MAXI J1820+070’s “rapid accretion episode” (watch the animation here). NICER is the Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer on the International Space Station which looks at rotation-resolved spectroscopy of the thermal and non-thermal emissions of neutron stars in the soft (0.2–12 keV) X-ray band. HiPERCAM is the high-speed, multicolour camera, capable of taking more than 1,000 images per second, installed on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands. NICER and HiPERCAM produced images at over three hundred frames per second, which Paice “slowed down to 1/10th of actual speed to allow the most rapid flares to be discerned by the human eye” – flares that lasted only a few milliseconds yet were brighter than “the output of a hundred Suns and more.”

But wait … there’s more!

The fastest visible flashes of light occurred a fraction of a second after the X-ray flares, and the rise and fall of intensities alternated between the two. This is an indicator of the presence of distinct plasma caused by electrons being stripped from atoms – a process which occurs deep inside the black hole and is too small to see. Is this a big deal? Dr. Poshak Gandhi of University of Southampton and a co-author of the study thinks so.

The fact that we now see this in three systems strengthens the idea that it is a unifying characteristic of such growing black holes. If true, this must be telling us something fundamental about how plasma flows around black holes operate. Our best ideas invoke a deep connection between inspiralling and outflowing bits of the plasma. But these are extreme physical conditions that we cannot replicate in Earth laboratories, and we don’t understand how nature manages this. Such data will be crucial for homing in on the correct theory.”

OK, it’s a big deal to astronomers and astrophysicists like Gandhi and Paice. It’s also a big deal to the developers of new telescopes and cameras like HiPERCAM and NICER. It should be a big deal to the rest of us because the more we understand about our universe, the better we can comprehend where we came from and where we’re going.

Unfortunately, it may be down the throat of a violent blinking black hole.

Violent Blinking Black Hole would make a great name for a beer too!

One of the more intriguing, but unfortunately lesser known, of the 1950s-era Contactees was Sonja Lyubicin. She was a woman who had a background and a full life filled with mystery, adventure, fun and intrigue. In 1956, she claimed to have been taken on a trip to Saturn by the Space Brothers. To her eternal delight, Lyubicin found that the people of the huge, ringed planet were highly “sexually active” and particularly liked hosting swinging parties. That’s a far and welcome cry from the grim encounters that people report with today’s small, black-eyed “Grey” aliens! Sonja also had a connection to the ultimate Contactee, George Adamski. The whispered word on the galactic grapevine was that during a wild orgy in Australia, Sonja got nailed by none other than the legendary extratererstrial Orthon himself!

A close encounter or several of the sexual kind? To be sure! If we are to take Sonja’s at her word, that is. Lyubicin also claimed deep contacts within the very heart of the U.S. government, even maintaining that she had spent time attending top secret meetings on UFOs at the White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico. How much of Sonja’s story was true is anyone’s guess. It’s notable, though, that the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) decided to open a file on her. In part, that dossier provides these words from the ASIO: “A member of the [Queensland Flying Saucer Research] Bureau who was extremely active during the visit of George Adamski was a Sonja Ljubicin [sic], a naturalized Australian of Yugoslav origin, who previously resided at…Ann Street, Valley. This person was carried away to the extent that she believed she had traveled in space craft to other planets. On the 16^th July 1959 she left her employment and traveling on an Australian passport No. K235116 issued on the 29^th June 1959 at Brisbane traveled by Qantas Flight EM. 742 from Sydney on the 21^st July 1959 to the United States of America to join George Adamski.”

UFO investigator Hakan Blomqvist, said of Lyubicin that she, “…continued living in California and on July 12, 1979 married William Paul Appleton. She then changed her name to Sonya Appleton. They eventually settled in Honolulu, Hawaii where the marriage ended. Sonya died in Honolulu, just before her 63rd birthday, July 2, 1989.” It should be noted that the primary reason why the ASIO had Lyubicin in their sights – and kept abreast of her activities – was because of her background. Namely, that she was born and, until the age of twenty, lived in Yugoslavia, that in 1946 became the communist Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia. While Lyubicin and her family fled Yugoslavia in 1947, there were some agents of the ASIO who pondered on the possibility that she might have had Communist leanings. This was, of course, during the Cold War. It was a period when just about anyone who had what was perceived by old suit-and-tie-wearing geezers in government as an “alternative lifestyle,” might have had a file opened on them.

Whether or not this was a case of the ASIO reaching just a bit too far, we’ll likely never know. But, it’s an undeniable fact that Australian intelligence agents ensured that they knew where and when Sonja went – and why. How deeply, exactly, did the surveillance go? Well, put it like this: we can see from the now-available ASIO material on Sonja that the ASIO knew all about her plans to fly to the United States and hang out with Adamski. They had the names of the relevant airlines. They even knew the flight-numbers and had her Australian passport number on file. Whatever the truth behind Sonja Lyubicin’s controversial claims about flying saucers, they were certainly enough to make the ASIO sit up and take notice. And that’s exactly what its agents did – and for a number of years.

It seems that there are some places in this world that just seem to draw UFOs to them. For reasons not yet understood these locations are positively overflowing with such unexplained phenomena, and in many cases they have gone on to become noted hot spots of UFO sightings. One such area lies in the country of Scotland, and it is an area steeped in tales of UFOs, alien encounters, and high strangeness.

What has come to be known as the “Falkirk Triangle” is an amorphously defined area in central Scotland generally accepted as stretching from the the small, quaint town of Bonnybridge, going off east to Fife, and then spanning back west to Stirling, although the borders are rather malleable and are often also seen as enveloping some of the surrounding towns and villages as well. The area itself is mostly rural farmland, rolling hills, moors, and mining villages, not really much to see typically, but the area is know as an absolute hotbed of UFO activity, and ground zero for this seems to be the little village of Bonnybridge itself, which lies not so far from Edinburgh and is often called “The UFO Capital of Scotland.”

Bonnybridge, Scotland

It certainly earns its nickname, as there are allegedly around 300 UFO reports a year from this one little town, with 1 in 3 town residents claiming to have seen something odd in the sky at one point or other, and this phenomenon can be traced back to at least the 1980s, when some high profile sightings put Bonnybridge on the map. One of the earlier big reports came from a fire crew who were fighting a blaze in 1989 when a red glowing orb of light allegedly flew right up to one of the fire trucks before shooting off into the sky, after which a second UFO, this one an intense white light, came down to float over the nearby Loch Ellrig. The objects were witnessed by numerous people who all described the exact same thing.

A perhaps even more well-known account from the town came in 1992, when local businessman James Walker was driving between Falkirk to Bonnybridge on his way home from work and noticed some strange lights in the sky. Walker stopped his car to watch these enigmatic lights move about in the sky, wondering what they could possibly be. He then continued on his way but the lights then allegedly formed a larger, star-shaped object that descended to ominously hover over the lonely road leading off before him, and he stopped his car to look on in puzzlement. As he sat there wondering what to do, the mysterious object then shot off into the night at exhilarating, amazing speed, remaining completely silent the entire time. This report really seemed to open up the floodgates on UFO sightings in the area, and sighting reports began to pour in at an incredible rate. People began to see UFOs prowling the roads outside of town, buzzing cars, hovering in the skies above, and even one reported as landing on a golf course, and suddenly Bonnybridge was getting a reputation as being a UFO magnet.

Another notable case from here supposedly happened in March of 1992, when the Sloggett family was out on a walk in the early morning hours. As they walked along they noticed some strange lights in a ring formation over the moor not too far away, which was enough to spook them into heading back to their home nearby. They would claim that a bright blue light shaped like a football would then pursue them to block their path, and a craft about the size of a house would land right in front of them, after which a door on the craft slid open and from within issued what sounded like a deep roar or growl. The family ran as fast as they could away from this unearthly sight and when they looked back the lights were gone.

Over the next five years, from 1992 to 1997, there would be hundreds of UFO reports in and around Bonnybridge, and there were numerous videos taken of these objects as evidence, with one resident named Craig Malcolm claiming to have taken over 18 hours of video footage of strange lights in the area. Another piece of strange footage was taken by a Mrs. Bonnetti, who filmed a bizarre black triangle flying above her neighbor’s house. The UFO activity became so intense that Cllr. William Buchanan of Falkirk District Council began writing letters to the Prime Minister and the Ministry of Defense expressing his concerns and seeking advice about what to do. It is perhaps no surprise that these pleas fell on deaf ears, and Buchanan would lament, “I have tried to get an answer for the people and have been ridiculed for it.” In the meantime, media attention was fully focused on the little town of Bonnybridge, and UFO talk was all the rage. However, the strangeness was not just confined to this one town, but rather seemed to extend to the surrounding areas as well, and this is where the Falkirk Triangle would begin to come into focus, and it seems that the phenomena even predated the Bonnybridge incidents.

One of the most well-documented and strangest UFO cases in Scottish history came from this area even before all of these encounters began in the area of Livingston, West Lothian. In 1979, a forester named Robert Taylor was at a place called Dechmont Woods, near the M8 motorway, when a “flying dome” appeared over the tree line, so close that Taylor would be able to make out that it was made of a metallic black material. He would then allegedly smell a burning odor, after which two smaller objects dropped from the main craft. At this point the two smaller objects fired a pair of metal rods at him, which attached to his hips, after which Taylor was overcome with the unsettling sensation that he was being pulled towards the strange object.

Shortly after this he awoke on the forest floor and the menacing objects were gone. Disoriented and not knowing whether he had dreamed it all or not, he was soon convinced that something was very wrong when he noticed that his clothes were torn and that he was covered with bruises, as if he had been attacked by someone, but he could not remember anything after that pulling sensation he had felt. He would find that his car would not start, and so he was forced to walk all the way back home, where he would tell of what happened and claim that a UFO had attacked him. Police would go to investigate the scene, and although they did not find any further evidence the torn clothes and Taylor’s general standing as an honest person and reliable witness have made sure that his story has been discussed and debated up to this day, with many holding it up as a genuine case of alien abduction, and the West Lothian area has been a hot spot of UFO activity ever since.

One place within the triangle that would prove to be very odd is the motorway called A70 road, which runs a route between Edinburgh and Ayr, passing right through the Falkirk Triangle. In August of 1992, witnesses Garry Wood and Colin Wright were driving along a stretch of A70 through West Lothian when they had a rather bizarre and terrifying experience near the Harperrig reservoir. It started when they experienced 2 hours of missing time which neither of them could account for, leaving them puzzled as to what had happened. They underwent hypnosis, upon which it was revealed that during that 2 hours they had been taken aboard an alien craft and then brought to some sort of underground base lined with people frozen in glass jars, where they were experimented upon and then released. Weird stuff, indeed.

There is also the nearby mining village of Gorebridge, also mostly considered to lie within the confines of the Falkirk Triangle, and possessing its own tales of strangeness. Here there is an old coal mine called the Blinkbonny Mine, from which some strange reports have come in, such as that of two people hunting for Christmas trees who claimed to have been chased by a “luminous, floating, green eye” coming from the mine. Throughout the 1990s there were numerous reports of UFOs plaguing the residents of Gorebridge, most of it centered around that mine, and it was widely featured in the media at the time. The town was also the origin of several compelling pieces of UFO footage, such as three glowing orbs over a field and another buzzing a 737 jet on its way into Edinburgh Airport, the incident apparently reported by the pilots as well.

Another area of the Falkirk Triangle is the town of Grangemouth, just 3 miles east of Falkirk. In 1991 two photographers at the BP chemicals plant in Grangemouth saw flashing lights circling the Kincardine Bridge, which they at first took to be a helicopter. The object drifted over to the nearby Grangemouth Stadium, where it hovered for several minutes before suddenly dropping with astonishing speed to come rushing right over to hover 300 feet above the witnesses, emitting a pulsing hum before shooting off. This was obviously no helicopter. In 1994, there was also an entire team of cleaners at the Grangemouth oil refinery who would report having seen flashing lights cavorting about in the sky above them.

Other areas of the Falkirk Triangle with numerous weird reports of UFO activity are the town of Larbert near Bonnybridge, the Rosslyn Chapel, and a place called “Newton of Falkland,” near Falkland in Fife, from where there was a truly outlandish 1996 report of a field full of ant-like aliens commanded by taller white entities, the whole scene overshadowed by a massive black triangle covered in twinkling lights, apparently some sort of bizarre mass landing. Interestingly, despite all of this alarming UFO activity in and around the Falkirk Triangle, the government has long been rather nonchalant and uninterested about it all, and indeed in 2009 the Ministry of Defence closed its file on UFO investigations altogether, with one briefing prepared for Defence Minister Bob Ainsworth reading:

[The MoD] should seek to reduce very significantly the UFO task which is consuming increasing resource, but produces no valuable defence output. In more than 50 years no UFO sighting reported to [the MoD] has ever revealed anything to suggest an extra-terrestrial presence or military threat to the UK [and] there is no defence benefit in [MoD] recording, collating, analysing or investigating UFO sightings. Investigations into UFO sightings, even from more reliable sources, serve no useful purpose and merely divert air defence specialists from their primary tasks. Accordingly, no further investigations should be carried out into UFO reports received from any source.

It seems that whatever is going on in the Falkirk Triangle is either being ignored or covered up by the Ministry, and yet enough sightings and encounters come in from the region that it has continually incited discussion as to why this area should have so much such phenomena gravitate towards it. One idea is that the area, for reasons not full understood, serves as some sort of portal through which these beings and their craft can easily travel through from place to place, perhaps even allowing inter-dimensional interlopers to come through the veil into our reality. It could also be that there is some mystical property to the land itself, steeped in history and legend as it is, full of tales of imps, fairies, and other supernatural entities, making this all perhaps more of a paranormal phenomenon dressed up and morphed by our own modern sensibilities and the popularity of UFOs. Andrew Hennessey of Stargate Edinburgh Tours has mused on this, saying:

Is there some ancient connection between history and mythology, between land use of the Falkirk Triangle to the alien-looking events that are unfolding before our very eyes here today, on the ground, under it and in the skies? Is there some sort of timeless pageant or battle being waged between beings of Light and beings of Darkness within this same mysterious Falkirk Triangle?

Of course there are the more mundane explanations. The area is home to several military bases, as well as two busy airports in Edinburgh and Glasgow, so perhaps it is just misidentified aircraft or even experimental craft being tested by the military. The area also has several large oil and chemical plants, the flames of which could perhaps be at the root of some of the reports. Some have even suggested that it is a trick of atmospheric phenomena combined with traffic on the motorways that meander through or even just hallucinations. None of these really fully explain these reports, though. Whatever the case may be, the Falkirk Triangle has remained an intense center of UFO activity in the UK, and continues to stir debate and the imagination.