Just a few days ago I was asked an interesting question. It basically went something like this: are there any really good “cold cases” (so to speak) that might advance our knowledge of the UFO phenomenon? Well, there’s one case in particular that I have addressed occasionally – as have various other researchers of the UFO subject, too. It’s a case that goes back to 1978. The location: Bolivia. It’s an eye-opening case for one particular reason: there is a substantial body of official, U.S. government documentation on the mysterious affair. Yes, 1978 is a long time ago; but, the Roswell event was quickly forgotten when it occurred, and wasn’t resurrected by Bill Moore, Stan Friedman and Charles Berlitz until the mid-1970s. And, although I don’t think that aliens crashed outside of Roswell, you’ll get my point: old cases can often result in the discovery of fascinating data and startling testimony. To a major degree, the 1978 incident has largely been forgotten. But, it doesn’t have to be. So, with that said, perhaps someone will decide to tackle this case and see if anything new surfaces.

It was on May 15, 1978 that the story began to take off. We know this thanks to documentation that has surfaced through the terms of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. In a U.S. State Department titled “Report of Fallen Space Object,” the following was stated: “The Bolivian newspapers carried this morning an article concerning an unidentified object that apparently recently fell from the sky.  The object was discovered near the Bolivian city of Bermejo and was described as egg-shaped, metal and about four meters in diameter. The Bolivian Air Force plans to investigate to determine what the object might be and from where it came. I have expressed our interest and willingness to help. They will advise. Request the department check with appropriate agencies to see if they can shed some light on what this object might be. The general region has had more than its share of reports of UFOs the past week. Request a reply ASAP.”

Whether the object was a UFO, the remains of a satellite, or something else entirely, someone at least was looking at things from a UFO perspective. The story was far from over. On May 15, 1978, the CIA prepared a document on what its staff had learned about the incident. Again, the documentation surfaced via the FOIA: “Many people in this part of the country claim they saw an object which resembled a soccer ball falling behind the mountains on the Argentine-Bolivian border, causing an explosion that shook the earth. This took place on May 6. Around that time some people in San Luis and Mendoza provinces reported seeing a flying saucer squadron flying in formation. The news from Salta confirms that the artificial satellite fell on Taire Mountain in Bolivia, where it has already been located by authorities. The same sources said that the area where the artificial satellite fell has been declared an emergency zone by the Bolivian Government.”

The CIA had much more to say. On May 16, the agency prepared a second document. Its title: “Reports Conflict on Details of Fallen Object.” It reads as follows: “We have received another phone call from our audience requesting confirmation of reports that an unidentified object fell on Bolivian territory near the Argentine border. We can only say that the Argentine and Uruguayan radio stations are reporting on this even more frequently, saying that Bolivian authorities have urgently requested assistance from the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration in order to determine the nature of that which crashed on a hill in Bolivian territory.”

Even more was to come from the CIA: “Just a few minutes ago Radio El Espectador of Montevideo announced that there was uncertainty as to the truth of these reports. Argentine sources indicated that the border with Bolivia had been closed but that it might soon be reopened. They also reported that an unidentified object had fallen on Bolivian soil near the Argentine border and that local Bolivian authorities had requested aid from the central government, which, in turn, had sought assistance from the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration to investigate the case. A La Paz newspaper said today that there is great interest in learning about the nature of the fallen object, adding that local authorities for security reasons had cordoned off 200 km around the spot where the object fell. The object is said to be a mechanical device with a diameter of almost 4 meters which has already been brought to Tarija. There is interest in determining the accuracy of these reports which have spread quickly throughout the continent, particularly in Bolivia and its neighboring countries. Is it a satellite, a meteorite, or a false alarm?”

May 18 was the day on which the U.S. Embassy in La Paz got involved in the very strange story. The recipient of the findings of the Embassy’s staff was the U.S. Secretary of State: “Preliminary information provided has been checked with appropriate government agencies. No direct correlation with known space objects that may have re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere near May 6 can be made; however, we are continuing to examine any possibilities. Your attention is invited to State Airgram A-6343, July 26, 1973 which provides background information and guidance for dealing with space objects that have been found. In particular any information pertaining to the pre-impact observations, direction of trajectory, number of objects observed, time of impact and a detailed description including any markings would be helpful.”

The U.S. Defense Attaché Office in La Paz reported: “This office has tried to verify the stories put forth in the local press. The Chief of Staff of the Bolivian Air Force told DATT/AIRA this date that planes from the BAF have flown over the area where the object was supposed to have landed and in their search they drew a blank. Additionally, DATT/AIRA talked this date with the Commander of the Bolivian army and he informed DATT that the army’s search party directed to go into the area to find the object had found nothing. The army has concluded that there may or not be an object, but to date nothing has been found.”

It wasn’t just elements of the U.S. Government who were following this story. So were UFO researchers. Leonard Stringfield was someone who collected numerous stories of crashed UFOs from the mid-to-late 1970s  to the early 1990s, said. In the summer of 1979, Stringfield corresponded with an Argentinian UFO researcher named Nicholas Ojeda. He told Stringfield:  “There is a report of a group of investigators who vanished mysteriously in the area. I really think something big happened in Salta. NASA investigated, but there was no news of it. I have to tell you that in La Paz, Bolivia, a huge Hercules C-130 carried ‘something’ from the area where the UFO crashed.”

Yes, this is – as I said at the beginning – very much a case that could still go far. There are more than a few leads to follow up. There may well be more documents on the case that have still not surfaced via FOIA, but which just might appear if someone is prepared to do the research. And opening some doors may result in even more doors opening. How about digging into the words of Nicholas Ojeda? What about the NASA connection? It’s clear that this story is rich in data and government records. Who is up for the challenge?

Among all of the alleged UFO encounters out there, some of the most spectacular are those that have been reported by pilots and aviators. After all, these are people who have a firm grasp as to what to expect to see up in the sky, and know when something is wrong with this picture. There are numerous such accounts to be found, but one of the weirder is the time a Spanish airliner was actually forced to land due to a stubborn and very aggressive UFO.

One of the weirdest UFO incidents in Spanish history began on the evening of November 11, 1979, when Transportes Aéreos Españoles Flight JK-297 took off from Salzburg, Austria on a commercial flight to Las Palmas, in the Canary Islands. Aboard the TAE Super Caravelle airliner were 109 passengers, an experienced crew, and it was meant to be a totally routine flight. The plane made it to its refueling stop at the island of Majorca without incident, but as they headed out towards their final destination things would begin to get odd indeed. It started with a sudden request from ground control to pilot Francisco Javier Lerdo de Tejada to switch to his emergency channel because an emergency beacon had been detected in their general area. The pilot obeyed, and that’s when he and his crew noticed something very unusual to the left of their aircraft. Out in the night sky they could see two red lights, which seemed to be moving at great speed, and unsettlingly looked to be headed right towards them. It was alarming enough that Tejada immediately contacted the flight control center in Barcelona to get more information on the approaching lights, but they could see nothing on their radar to explain it. An original transcript of this initial conversation between the flight (TAE-297) and ground control reads:

– Barcelona, this is TAE 297
-TAE-297 tell me?
– Can you confirm me that we have a traffic next to us, to our left, more or less four five miles?
– TAE-297 negative. No traffic reported..
– We see two signals, red lights now. About three miles to ten in our position.. Approximately the same height..
-at ten of your position, three miles left now?
-yes
-TAE-297 received, thank you.
-(voice starting to panic) when you can, inform me about that traffic.
– 297 we Are not aware of any traffic on that route, you are the only one from Ibiza to Alicante.
-thank you very much (it is possible that traffic, yes)
-TAE-297 confirm me, those lights are on the sea or in the air?
-I repeat, is a traffic and it is in our high!
-TAE-297, received, thanks.
-Barcelona, this TAE 297, confirm me the type of aircraft that it could be that traffic!
-TAE-297 confirm me if it’s in the same direction?
-yes! We got closer and closer! … I can only see two red lights, no flashes
-TAE-297 we have no reported traffic around, we have also called Palma(Mallorca) to see if it’s a “lower level 240” and they told us they had no reported traffic either.

The military radar of Torrejón de Ardoz in Madrid could also not detect anything on radar except the airliner,there were no other flights scheduled to be in the area, and in the meantime, those lights were closing the distance fast. Tejada decided to take evasive maneuvers to avoid what he believed to be an incoming collision, rapidly lowering his altitude, but the lights mirrored this movement to stay on the same level as them, and at this time they were reported as no longer closing in, but rather maintaining an uncomfortably close distance of approximately half a kilometer from the airliner. If  this was another plane it was shamelessly ignoring safety precautions, and at this distance further evasive maneuvers were considered too dangerous, so Tejada requested to make an emergency landing at the airport in Manises, Valencia, which was granted.

As the plane approached its new destination, those eerie red lights continued to follow them with inscrutable purpose, still not showing up on radar anywhere, but very visible to the crew and passengers. These lights would follow them until they were nearly at Manises, after which they broke off to fly away just as mysteriously as they had arrived. At this point the lights were close enough to the airport that personnel on the ground were able to make visual confirmation of the anomalies, and then there were sudden radar signatures picked up of three more large flying objects estimated as measuring around 200 meters in diameter circling about. It was thought that there was perhaps an unregistered flight coming in for an emergency landing, but all efforts to hail what they believed to be an aircraft were met with silence.

This was all enough to put the Spanish Air Force on high alert, and they began scrambling a Mirage F-1 fighter jet at the Los Llanos airbase in order to get a closer look and see what was going on. The fighter pilot, Spanish Air Force captain Fernando Cámara, reported that the object was moving very rapidly, forcing him to speed up to mach 1.4 just to keep up. He then made visual contact with the mysterious object, which he described as a “truncated cone” with multi-colored flashing lights on it. This was about all he was able to make out, as the strange craft then sped away out of sight faster than he could possibly keep up. At that moment things got even more intense, when there was a report of another object that had appeared near Valencia, which the pilot dutifully went to intercept, yet as he drew closer he was forced to break off when his electronic flight systems were inexplicably jammed and his system additionally gave him an ominous warning that he was being locked onto by missile radar. Alarmed, he aborted his chase as the object allegedly sped off in the direction of Africa, after which his systems returned to normal.

After the harrowing incident, the crew of Flight JK-297 was allegedly strictly forbidden to speak about it to the press and public, but the story got out into the wild nevertheless, and it was indeed curious enough that a full government investigation was launched into what has come to be known as the “Manises UFO Incident.” For his part, pilot Tejada would adamantly deny that what had been seen was another conventional aircraft, although he stopped short of claiming that it was an alien spacecraft. As the media was picking up on the case there were some conspiracies popping up among passengers, many of whom had not actually seen the UFOs and believed it was all a story to get the airline out of having to give them a refund for the delayed and aborted flight. Of course, the airline denied this, saying that an unusual aerial situation had definitely played out on that evening. However, what exactly that was is open to debate.

The government would do its best to explain it through the usual suspects of mundane phenomena, such as the planet Venus, stars, even the lights from a distant chemical plant, but it seems highly unlikely that an experienced crew would all make that misidentification. As for the experience of the fighter pilot Cámara, it was suggested that his electronic systems had been disrupted by “powerful electronic warfare equipment” being used in military exercises being carried out in the area at the time by the United States Sixth Fleet. The pilot completely rejects this possibility, as the fleet was too far away and the disruption had only occurred as he tried to engage the unidentified flying object. Regardless of these arguments by the witnesses, the official explanations still stand, and the Spanish military, government, and the airline involved had constantly tried to downplay the whole affair.

Yet, the pilots and those involved, experienced airmen who know what they are doing, insist that this is wrong. So what are we to think of all of this? Was this misidentified planets and stars, a UFO, or perhaps even some sort of secret military experiment being carried out by the U.S. fleet? How can the government stick so strongly to the mundane explanations when none really seem to fit? What is going on here? As we search for answers, the Manises UFO Incident has attracted much discussion, and remains the earliest and perhaps only account of a commercial airliner being forced to land because of a UFO.

When we can finally get back to having family gatherings again (won’t that be a wonderful day?), three things that will still be (or perhaps even more) taboo to discuss are politics, religion … and the existence of a Planet 9 — especially if the other party guests are still mourning and/or protesting the demotion of Pluto to dwarf planet status. This rule applies for Planet X or Nibiru as well – both of which can prompt saucer throwing of the plate kind. However, if you’re brave enough to test the subject, a new study may help defend the position of denial or doubt in the existence of Planet 9. Let’s get ready to rumble!

“We test whether the population of “extreme” trans-Neptunian objects (eTNOs) detected in the Y4 Dark Energy Survey (DES) data exhibit azimuthal asymmetries which might be evidence of gravitational perturbations from an unseen super-Earth in a distant orbit. By rotating the orbits of the detected eTNOs, we construct a synthetic population which, when subject to the DES selection function, reproduces the detected distribution of eTNOs in the orbital elements a,e, and i as well as absolute magnitude H, but has uniform distributions in mean anomaly M, longitude of ascending node Ω, and argument of perihelion ω.”

This opening argument comes from “Testing the isotropy of the Dark Energy Survey’s extreme trans-Neptunian objects,” a new study submitted to the journal Astrophysics by Pedro Bernardinelli, a Ph.D. student at the University of Pennsylvania working on solar system science. Bernardinelli and his co-authors were using data from the Dark Energy Survey, a visible and near-infrared survey using the Victor M. Blanco Telescope in Chile. Over a six-year period from August 2013 to January 2019, DES imaged the southern sky multiple times in five photometric bands. They were primarily interested in extreme Trans-Neptunian Objects (eTNOs) – those large enough to be a planet that can exert gravitational pressure on smaller TNOs, forcing their orbits to be strangely aligned. Such an object should be bright enough to be picked up, travel large distances across the sky and be seen over multiple consecutive days – all good criteria for disqualifying just about everything out there … except for seven objects.

“The DES data taken on their own are thus consistent with azimuthal isotropy and do not require a “Planet 9” hypothesis. The limited sky coverage and object count mean, however, that the DES data by no means falsify this hypothesis.”

It won’t bring back Pluto

When the team modeled a population of 40 million TNOs and plugged in the real seven eTNOs, they found that their strange alignments could all have occurred randomly with no influence by a Planet 9. In four different cases, this was the result – although they note that the fourth case, using only 3 eTNOs, it was hard, but not impossible, to randomize the alignment.

Will this win an argument with your uncle who strongly believes there’s a giant planet beyond Neptune? Probably not, since the study uses a very small sample in simulations, not actual images from a spaceship like New Horizons or an extremely powerful telescope with a panoramic view. Still, it’s probably strong enough to produce a stalemate, allowing you to turn the discussion to something less controversial – like sports.

Until then, practice social distancing, wear a mask and hide your saucers.

“Here today, gone tomorrow.”

It’s a common expression, one that dates back to John Calvin’s 1549 “Life and Conversion of a Christian Man.” Unless you’re watching Star Trek or a Star Wars movie, it’s not something generally heard when discussing a planet … until now. Astronomers watching a Jupiter-sized exoplanet discovered in 2008 and tracked for years with the Hubble space telescope announced this week that it has disappeared. Did they look around for a Death Star?

“The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken the first visible light snapshot of a planet circling another star. Estimated to be no more than three times Jupiter’s mass, the planet, called Fomalhaut b, orbits the bright southern star Fomalhaut, located 25 light-years away in the constellation Piscis Austrinus (the Southern Fish).”

ESA image of Fomalhaut b

In 2004, astronomers created the first-ever resolved visible light image of a large dust belt surrounding Fomalhaut. In 2005, Hubble astronomer Paul Kalas of the University of California, Berkeley proposed that the ring was being gravitationally modified by a planet lying between the star and the ring’s inner edge, and in 2008 a point source of light was photographed which was named Fomalhaut b. Its unusual brightness suggested it either had a Saturn-like ring or multiple moons, and its orbit followed a strange, non-elliptical path. Still, astronomers were confident Fomalhaut b was a large exoplanet.

“To my surprise, it was not present on the latest images. So, I went through all the data and started to analyze it and noticed a pattern: it was fading.”

Astronomer András Gáspár of the University of Arizona told Vice.com that he was looking for something else when he noticed that Fomalhaut b had disappeared from Hubble images in 2014. Going back through older images, Gáspár also saw that the planet was visibly fading and its strange orbit was no longer an orbit but an “escape trajectory” sending whatever it was out of Fomalhaut’s star system. The new data was fed into models, which showed only one thing could have caused all of these anomalies to happen.

“We do have evidence of such collisions in other systems, but none of this magnitude has ever been observed. This is a blueprint for how planets destroy each other.”

Did it look like this?

This was not a confrontation between a giant planet and a Death Star but a collision between two asteroid-sized bodies orbiting Fomalhaut – a collision that likely occurred just prior to the discovery of the dust cloud by Hubble astronomers in 2004. Neither of these space objects were planet-sized, but the resulting debris cloud was and it fooled them into thinking they had discovered exoplanet Fomalhaut b.

“Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”

That saying dates back to 1651 when it appeared in “The Court and Character of King James” by Anthony Weldon, and it applies to Fomalhaut b and its star. Fomalhaut can be described by yet another more recent adage: “Live fast, die young.” That one dates back to the 1947 book Knock on Any Door by Willard Motley (actually “Live fast, die young, and have a good-looking corpse”). Fomalhaut is a very hot star, which means it will have a short life in star terms. Its heat will keep its dust and debris ring agitated, so there could be more of these asteroid collisions, which means astronomers will be watching it carefully with the Hubble telescope and eventually the James Webb Space Telescope scheduled to launch in 2021.

Meanwhile, Fomalhaut b is fading fast into a massive cloud of dust, soon to be just a memory … and without a good-looking corpse. Perhaps Billy Joel wrote the best epitaph for this unusual space event.

“Only the good die young.”