Of the many and varied documents that have surfaced under the terms of the U.S. government’s Freedom of Information Act, one of the most fascinating is a 33-pages-long report on psychic phenomena titled “Paranormal Phenomena — Briefing on a Net Assessment Study.” Written in January 1973 by P.T. Van Dyke and M.L. Juncosa (of RAND) for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), it makes for notable reading. It should be noted that over the years and decades, U.S. military- and intelligence-agencies have (A) tried to use dogs to psychically locate landmines on battlefields; (B) studied out-of-body phenomena; (C) attempted to determine if both animals and people have souls; and (D) studied the possibility of that psychic phenomena can cause heart-attacks. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. But, now, let’s get back to that “Paranormal Phenomena — Briefing on a Net Assessment Study.”

Without doubt, the most intriguing section of the document is the one that is titled Possible Military Applications. The section is split into four different parts. The first is titled “Long- and Short-Distance Information Transfer.” It states: “For a variety of reasons, including apparent violations of some basic principles of communication theory, the probability of long-distance telepathic communication being confirmed as a real phenomenon appears rather low; however, these considerations may not apply with equal force to the possibility of short-range information transfer by telepathic means (of the order of a few meters). It should be noted, though, that long-distance telepathic phenomena occupy a paramount place in modern experimental research, but that their confirmation and theoretical explanation would require a modification of known laws of physics.”

The second part goes by the heading of “Equipment Control and System Damage.” It provides the following: “It would not be conceptually difficult, for example, to imagine the utility of psychokinesis (if feasible) in disrupting the electrical systems associated with an ICBM’s guidance program.” This is particularly intriguing as,  in some ways, it ties in with some of the incredible claims that have been made concerning how, in decades past, UFOs have been able to disable ICBMs and affect nuclear-missile-launch facilities. Now, let’s move on.

Part-three has an eye-opening title: “Man-Machine Interactions.” We are told that, “These entail an application of both telepathy and psychokinesis to produce a quasi-symbiotic relationship between man and, say, computing equipment on a more intimate basis than is presently feasible.” Although I don’t buy into the story that the late Philip J. Corso presented in his 1997 book, The Day After Roswell, he certainly addressed this matter: “Were all of this to be true, could it not be argued that the silicon wafers we recovered from Roswell were the real masters and space travelers and the EBE creatures their hosts or servants? Once implanted successfully on Earth, our culture having reached a point of readiness through its development of the first digital computers, would not the natural development stream, starting from the invention of the transistor, have carried us to the point where we achieve a symbiotic relationship [italics mine] with the silicon material that carries our data and enables us to become more creative and successful?”

“Body Control and Healing” is the title of part-four. In relation to those “possible military applications,” Van Dyke and Juncosa said: “One may envision an application of both autogenic phenomena (voluntary control of the autonomic nervous system) and what is traditionally known as ‘faith healing’ to battlefield injuries. There is, in fact, some evidence that certain individuals may accelerate organic healing processes through various psychosomatic effects. The ability to resist normally intolerable conditions, such as torture or brainwashing in captivity, might be another application of these phenomena.”

The conclusions were driven by the concerns that the Soviets might have gotten ahead of the U.S. The “general conclusions” of Van Dyke and Juncosa were as follows: “Over forty years of research in the United States have failed to significantly advance our understanding of paranormal phenomena; in several areas, U.S. research is beginning to track Soviet research; there is much Soviet interest in U.S. work, especially in possible military-oriented research; visible U.S. and Soviet levels of effort appear roughly equal;  there is some evidence of Soviet government funding of certain areas of research; published information on Soviet experimental design and analysis tends to be vague and incomplete; Soviet research is much more oriented toward biological and physical theorizing than is U.S. research; if paranormal phenomena do exist, the thrust of Soviet research appears more likely to lead to explanation, control, and application than is U.S. research.

As if Elon Musk needs yet another reason for people to hate his guts, here’s one more that has nothing to do with Teslas, Mars, cave rescues, politics or the dangers of artificial intelligence. Beginning in January, Musk’s SpaceX will conduct regularly-scheduled launches of batches of 60 communications satellites at a time, with a goal of about 1500 by the end of the year, joining the two batches of 60 launched in 2019. Those two raised the ire of astronomers and star-gazers – especially the second batch which are in a low 280 km orbit and clearly visible in the night sky. (Video here and here.) If astronomers think 60 is bad and 1,500 is worse, SpaceX already has approval for a total of 12,000 satellites and has filed paperwork to launch 30,000 more. THIRTY-THOUSAND! No wonder they’re angry.

Radio telescope

Dhara Patel, an astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, vented disdain to the BBC. Dr. Dave Clements, an astrophysicist from Imperial College London, explained that the moving satellites will mess with telescopes that are taking large surveys of the sky, comparing it to “like someone’s walking around firing a flashbulb every now and again.” The bright lights will also hide anything and everything behind them “whether that’s a nearby potentially hazardous asteroid or the most distant Quasar in the Universe.”

Musk’s mayhem in the midnight sky is already causing problems for ufologists. On December 23rd, a number of people in northern Italy reported seeing a line of at least 25 UFOs. Dr. Jen Golbeck of the Italian astronomical observatory actually sounded excited when she tweeted the explanation for the UFOs:

@jengolbeck
If you saw a row of UFO like lights in the sky in IL, IA, MI (like this but spaced out), that was SpaceX Starlink Satellites! You’ll be able to see them in the next few days, too!
Check here for a map (and set the time back to see their track today)
https://t.co/wtkU9xSFY9

This still sucks.

Who will win this fight for the skies? SpaceX claims it is working on a special coating to make the satellites less reflective, although less is still more when you’re talking 42,000 satellites. The UK company OneWeb is looking to put as many as 2,000 satellites in orbit. While touting its work with astronomers to minimize their influence on the skies, Ruth Pritchard-Kelly, vice president of OneWeb, may have given the best answer to the “Who will win?” question:

“There is no question that the entire world is entitled to be connected to the internet…. So it’s going to happen. And probably three or four of these systems are going to happen.”

So … it’s going to happen. Perhaps Musk can make peace with astronomers by giving them and their telescopes a free trip to nearly-satellite-free Mars.

Archaeologists found an ancient Mayan palace that was probably used by elite members of society over 1,000 years ago. The palace was discovered in the ancient city of Kuluba which is not far from Cancun, Mexico.

The large structure was found in the eastern part of the Kuluba archaeological zone which is a pre-Hispanic site located in the Yucatán state. Excavations at the site revealed the large palace that measured 180 feet long by 50 feet wide and 20 feet in height. According to the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), it was inhabited by locals during two lengthy time periods between 600 and 1050 A.D.

In addition to the palace, four other structures were discovered. They found an altar, remains of two residential buildings, and a round shaped structure which they think was an oven. There is still much more work that needs to be done, though. “This work is the beginning, we’ve barely began uncovering one of the most voluminous structures on the site,” archaeologist Alfredo Barrera said in a video statement.

Chichen Itza

According to the INAH, conservationists are looking to reforest certain parts of Kuluba in order to protect the site against sun and wind damage.

The ancient city of Kuluba had very important connections with other Maya cities like Ek’ Balam and Chichen Itza as it was part of their network of trade and territory.

The Mayan civilization prospered in Central America for approximately 3,000 years – reaching their peak between 250 and 900 A.D. Today, their descendants still live throughout different Maya areas. The Mayans created very advanced architecture and art in addition to having the only completely developed written language in that area during that time.

Mayan calendar

They are also famously known for their astronomical and mathematical systems. In fact, they had extensive knowledge of the stars and relied on astrological cycles in order to figure out when to plant their crops. It is believed that they even built their cities to coincide with the stars. The pyramid at Chichen Itza, for example, was constructed in accordance to the position of the sun during the spring and fall equinoxes. When the sun sets on those two days, the pyramid casts a shadow upon itself which aligns perfectly with the head carving of the Mayan’s serpent god. The serpent’s body is created by the shadow which makes it look as though it’s crawling towards the ground during the setting of the sun.

This new discovery of a Mayan palace is just one of the many astonishing remains that have been found throughout the years created by an incredibly fascinating civilization. Pictures of the palace can be seen here.

It looks like Russian President Vladimir Putin got what he wanted from Santa for Christmas – a working hypersonic missile that can travel at up to 27 times the speed of sound. At that speed (33339.6 km/h or 20716.3 mph), which arrived on Putin’s roof first – Santa or the missile?

“The Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation, Army General Sergei Shoigu, reported to Russian President Vladimir Putin on setting up on December 27 from 10:00 on combat duty the first missile regiment armed with the latest strategic missile system with the Avangard hypersonic planning winged warhead.”

Interfax reports that the first Avangard missile is in the Yasnensky Missile Division, which is deployed in the Orenburg region at the southern end of the Ural Mountains in southwestern Russia. That’s very close to Europe, although its range is likely to be farther than that. The Moscow Times reports that the Avangard was tested in December 2018 and hit a practice target 6,000 km (3,728 miles) away. But the Avangard is much more than just the world’s fastest missile. It’s a ‘boost-glide’ system, which means it’s launched like a ballistic missile but then quickly re-enters the atmosphere at a lower trajectory and glides unpowered for thousands of kilometers.

It was there a blink of an eye ago.

But wait … there’s more!

“It is not so much the speed of the hypersonic weapon alone that counts. It is its extraordinary maneuverability as it glides towards its target. This poses a huge problem for existing anti-missile defense systems. Indeed the glide vehicle’s trajectory, “surfing along the edge of the atmosphere” as one expert put it to me recently, presents any defensive system with additional problems. Thus, if Russia’s claims are true, it has developed a long-range intercontinental missile system that may well be impossible to defend against.”

Jonathon Marcus, the BBC’s defence correspondent says the Avangard could put Russia ahead of both China and the U.S. in this technology. As Vladimir Putin himself put it:

“Not a single country possesses hypersonic weapons, let alone continental-range hypersonic weapons. The West and other nations were “playing catch-up with us.”

Being the nice guy that he is, Putin allowed a team of U.S. inspectors to see a demonstration of the Avangard as part of transparency measures under the New START nuclear arms treaty with the U.S., which is up for renewal in 2021. According to Aljazeera, U.S. defense secretary Mark Esper says the Pentagon is working on the development of hypersonic weapons but it will be “probably a matter of a couple of years” before one is tested – after the New START treaty is renewed … or not renewed.

Say it again — who’s Number 1?

What does Russia’s deployment of the Avangard mean? Jonathon Marcus puts it bluntly.

“With a whole new generation of nuclear weapons at the threshold of entering service, many believe not just that existing agreements should be bolstered, but that new treaties are needed to manage what could turn into a new nuclear arms race.”

Merry Christmas from your pal Vladimir.

The Denver Post first reported them on December 23rd. Most expected the organization or people behind them to be discovered and hopefully revealed by the authorities within a day or so. Nearly five days later, the mysterious fleet of at least 17 large non-Christmas-present drones with six-foot wingspans continues to fly in formation every night over a sparsely populated area spanning Yuma and Phillips counties in northeast Colorado. Unleash the conspiracy theories!

“They’ve been doing a grid search, a grid pattern. They fly one square and then they fly another square.”

Phillips County Sheriff Thomas Elliott observed the drones and reported them to the FAA (no information) and the U.S. Air Force (not ours). The Denver Post called the Drug Enforcement Administration (not ours either), the U.S. Army Forces Command (unaware of any military drones in that area) and the Department of Defense (no response). Undersheriff William Myers witnessed eight drones flying near the intersection of U.S. 385 and County Road 54 and received calls at the same time of one hovering motionless 25 miles away over Paoli and eight more ten miles from Paoli over Haxtun. They appear to be at an altitude of 200 feet to 300 feet, fly at steady speeds of up to 40 mph, appear regularly at about 7 pm and disappear by 10 pm. While all of this sounds pretty suspicious, Undersheriff Myers is cautiously openminded.

“They do not seem to be malicious. They don’t seem to be doing anything that would indicate criminal activity.”

He also warns any residents who see the giant drones not to shoot them down – while the drones themselves don’t appear to be breaking any local or federal laws, destroying one is a federal crime and can cause a fire … or worse, if it’s some sort of secret weapon.

While Denver-based aerial photographer, drone pilot and drone school operator Vic Moss thinks it’s probably a local drone company, he’s suspicious that they haven’t notified local authorities – something he claims all of the ones he knows would do. Tyler Rogoway over at The Drive, who keeps a close watch on suspicious military activities, is especially doubtful about this being routine land surveillance.

“The airspace where this is occurring is peculiarly desolate, as well, making it ideally suited for such a task, but the flights are not legally occurring, which makes the whole affair quite suspicious. The fact that the activity is happening after sundown is even more intriguing and adds to the notion that whoever is doing this knows it is outside the bounds of FAA regulations.”

He points out that this could be a nefarious group rehearsing for a drone operation similar to the “game-changing attack on Saudi oil facilities in September” and points out that drones with 6-foot wingspans are capable of carrying weapons and explosives. They’re extremely difficult to follow or track because they can fly without lights – illegal but possible. He also notes that seventeen drones could swarm one location or hit up to 17 separate targets.

Uh-oh.

Colorado is home to numerous military bases, the U.S. Air Force Academy … and a number of people who like to hide out in the mountains. These suspicious giant drone operations have been going on for five days without ending and with no resolution. They’re worth keeping an eye on.

In 1997 I interviewed the well-known British UFO investigator, Jenny Randles, regarding a strange series of events she found herself in, back in late 1986 (you can find the story in Randles’ From Out of the Blue book). It was a very curious saga involving allegedly classified documents, dead aliens, crashed flying saucers, and much more. It all began in October 1986, when Randles came into contact with a man who had then recently left his employment with the British Army. According to the man, he had in his possession a large stash of still-classified material on UFOs that he had acquired under very controversial circumstances. The story that “Robert” told was as remarkable as it was inflammatory. Roughly a year or so earlier, an American individual, employed by the U.S. military and working at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio, came across the computerized files while engaged in repairing one particular system at the base. And we’re not talking about just a few pages of material. According to what Robert told Randles and Hough, the number of pages was huge. The man allegedly printed around six hundred pages of material, which wasn’t even anywhere near the overall total. It turns out that – allegedly – the man in question was friends with Robert’s commanding-officer in the British Army; the two having met on an exchange-program. Fearful about what he had got himself into, the computer-specialist gave the hundreds of pages of material on those aforementioned crashed saucers and alien autopsies to the CO. From there, they reached Robert.

One of the papers referenced the autopsy of a strange body. Randles also said: “There was a lot of material about Roswell, including photographs of the UFO and of the aliens. One of the most detailed files was an autopsy report – that ran close to 200 pages in length – of the bodies recovered from the Roswell crash. Robert remembered the name of the doctor who had written it. His name was Dr. Frederick Hauser, a name I’d never seen connected with UFOs in any way whatsoever. Robert said that there was a very detailed account that was mostly filled with medical jargon about the autopsy which he didn’t understand, and there was a photograph of this entity with a slit right down the middle from the neck to the navel.”

And there was still more to come, as Jenny Randles demonstrated to me: “One of the first things Robert said was that the aliens were very human-looking. He said that the head was completely bald, but the most unusual feature of the face was the nose, which was almost flush into the face, almost unnoticeable. He couldn’t tell from the photographs, but the autopsy report made it clear that the beings were slightly smaller than average human size – about five feet in height.” Time to look into that Dr. Hauser, methinks. So far, I’ve not seen anyone dig deep into the man and his life.

Moving on, there’s the matter of an undeniably controversial document that surfaced in the 1990s from UFO researcher, Timothy Cooper. He, Cooper, claimed to have received a large number of old, secret documents that were focused on crashed UFOs, dead aliens, and the usual UFO conspiracy fodder. As for that document, it is titled the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit Summary. It states that on “…3 July 47, radar stations in east Texas and White Stands Proving Ground, N.M., tracked two unidentified aircraft until both dropped off radar.” Still with the IPU summary paper, we are told the following concerning the bodies: “From what descriptions the team was able to learn and from photographs taken by intelligence photographers, the occupants appear in most respects human with some anatomical differences in the head, eyes, hands and feet. They have a slight build about five feet tall, with grayish-pink skin color. They have no hair on their bodies and clothed with a tight fitting flight suit that appears to be fire proof (some of the bodies looked as if they had been burned on head and hands). Their overall stature reminds one of young children. It is believed that there were male and female genders present, but hard to distinguish.”

The descriptions of the aliens in the IPU document sound very similar to those contained in Robert’s files, suggesting a possible (maybe likely) connection between the two, in terms of their origins. The same document states that, “…Dr. Detlev Bronk has been asked to assist in the autopsy of one well preserved cadaver .”  As for Bronk, there’s this from The Majestic Documents website: “A native of New York City, Bronk was born on 13 August 1897, attended Swarthmore College, the University of Michigan, and from 1929 to 1940 was Professor for Medical Physics at the University of Pennsylvania. Later in 1940 he was appointed Professor of Physiology and Bio-physics at Cornell Medical School, NYC. Favorable investigations were undertaken of Bronk by the FBI for government-related work in both 1941 and 1947. According to FBI papers of 1961 on Bronk, ‘…he is a member of the President’s Science Advisory Committee and has been President of Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, NYC, since 1953. He has served on many government committees in a consultant capacity and is recognized throughout the country as one of the nation’s top scientists.’ During his working life, Bronk also served as Chairman of the National Science Board, President of the National Academy of Sciences and National Research Council.”

Personally, I don’t believe that the IPU document is a real, government document – mainly because I don’t believe aliens crashed at Roswell. Either it’s a sophisticated hoax or carefully crafted disinformation to muddy the Roswell waters. So, I think we can write-off Bronk as having been involved in the autopsy of an alien in the 1940s. Maybe, though – for those who cling onto the belief that there were some real autopsies of aliens back then – it’s perhaps time to dig into the life of the mysterious Dr. Hauser, whose name popped up in those files that Jenny Randles’ was told of by her British Army source in 1986.

In an interview with New York Magazine, U.S. Navy pilot Chad Underwood finally came forward for the first time and spoke about his encounter with the infamous tic-tac shaped UFO that was filmed off the coast of California in 2004. The incident has been widely recognized as the “Nimitz UFO encounter”.

The bizarre footage of the unidentified flying object was captured on Underwood’s radar pod on the F/A-18 Super Hornet that he was flying that day. As for why it took fifteen years for Underwood to come forward with his story, he said that “at no point did I want to speculate as to what I thought this thing was – or be associated with, you know, ‘alien beings’ and ‘alien aircraft’ and all that stuff. I’m like, ‘No. I do not want to be part of that community.’”

He did, however, admit to seeing something very mysterious and unexplained that day back in November of 2004. “It is just what we call a UFO. I couldn’t identify it. It was flying. And it was an object. It’s as simple as that,” he said. Part of the reason why the encounter was so bizarre was that the object was flying at approximately 50,000 before suddenly dropping down to around a hundred feet above sea level in just a few seconds without making a sonic boom or expelling any exhaust plumes. He added that the craft had “no method of propulsion that was keeping it airborne: no wings, no heat, keeping it airborne or aloft.”

One of the many theories circulating is that they witnessed a bird, but Underwood said that it’s not possible. “You don’t see birds at 5,000 or 10,000 or 20,000 feet. That’s just not how birds operate,” he explained.

As for the theory that it was a top-secret military test craft, Underwood claimed that if it was a test aircraft, he had the clearance to know about it. “You know, I’ve got top-secret clearance with a ton of special-project clearances. So, it’s not like I wasn’t cleared to know. But, as I’m sure you’ve found in your research, to have clearance to know something, you have to have both the clearance that it’s elevated to and you have to have the ‘need to know’ it. And, clearly, whatever it was, if it was a government project, I did not need to know.”

In addition to that, there is no known aircraft on this planet that could have maneuvered in that manner. “The thing that stood out to me the most was how erratic it was behaving. And what I mean by ‘erratic’ is that its changes in altitude, air speed, and aspect were just unlike things that I’ve ever encountered before flying against other air targets,” he said, adding, “Because, aircraft, whether they’re manned or unmanned, still have to obey the laws of physics. They have to have some source of lift, some source of propulsion. The Tic Tac was not doing that. It was going from like 50,000 feet to, you know, a hundred feet in like seconds, which is not possible.”

The entire interview that New York Magazine conducted with Chad Underwood can be read in full here.

So, what exactly was the tic-tac shaped object? Nobody seems to know and the military even spent weeks attempting to figure out for themselves what Underwood and his co-workers saw that day. The mystery continues…