From the “What could possibly go wrong?” file comes yet another report that the US military is working to create robotic warriors that move more like humans than one of those robotic New York police dogs trying to walk on two legs and carry a gun. The latest technique under trial is something called ‘biohybrid robotics’, which in this case means replacing rods, gears and shock absorbers with real human muscle tissue. Are you ready for robots with bigger biceps than yours … or Arnold’s?

“We look at a wolf in nature: It probably weighs about the same, can pull much more and can travel hundreds of miles without really eating, take a nap and do the same thing the next day.”

Instead of building a better wolf with technology, Dr. Dean Culver, a research scientist at the Army Research Laboratory, told NextGov.com that the lab’s strategy would be to make the robotic wolf better with biology – using real tendons and ligaments to give the robot real wolf speed, spring and agility, and replace its batteries with a chemical system that could be replenished on the run rather than shutting down the robot for recharging. The same strategy is behind building a better robotic soldier for combat. Current robots on wheels powered by batteries are reaching their physical limits. More concerning however are current attempts to make human-like walking robots, which Culver says work well on flat terrain but fall down, literally and figuratively, on gravel and rougher terrain.

“But if you run through a field, and your footsteps into a rabbit hole, even before the signal from your foot has reached your brain to say, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m in a rabbit hole,’ your body is already moving to accommodate that sudden change. Part of that is the way that control systems are designed in organisms—that’s obviously really amazing—but another part of that is the ability of muscles and tendons to bend and flex a little bit, and offer those control systems an opportunity to adapt.”

Adapting means joining roboticists with biologists to understand how muscle tissue works and converting them to a metal skeleton that provides electrical impulses for power, ions for signals to make decisions and chemicals to replace the nourishment from blood and oxygen. All of that collapses, literally and figuratively, if it’s not durable – they don’t need to last 80 years like human muscles but definitely longer than mechanical robots.

Our days are numbered.

“We’re going to learn how to build things from the ground up, and not only offer robots and devices and mechanisms, the capabilities that we see in nature—but just revolutionize the way that we think about it and push the horizons on what we’re capable of way further back. And that disruption is precisely the kind of thing that we want to lead, and that [ARL] should be front-runners in.”

After World War II, when was the US Army revolutionary in anything … other than getting involved in other countries’ revolutions? Culver sees this as a chance for the Army Research Laboratory to be leading-edge in “biohybrid and bio-inspired engineering.” What could possibly go wrong? Well, other than blurring the line between humans and robots, the fact that the primary purpose of these biohybrids is warfare is always disconcerting at best, scary at worst. If the technology can be shared with industries other than defense – medicine, for example – this may be a good idea. We’ll just have to wait and see .. and hope a war doesn’t drive the development first.

There are some UFO witnesses that are more reliable than most, and certainly counted among these are pilots and astronauts. Since we have stepped into the realm of space, there have been reports from these brave explorers of things out there that seem to lie beyond our understanding, serving to incite speculation and debate. Make no mistake about it, these pioneers out into the next frontier have often reported strange things out in the void, and here are some of such truly bizarre accounts.

One early report of strange UFO activity in space comes from the legendary astronaut John Glenn, who was a key player in NASA’s early space flight programs. A true pioneer of space travel, Glenn was among the first astronauts, the third American into space, and the first to orbit the Earth aboard the Friendship 7 mission, as well as the oldest person to fly in space when he flew aboard Space Shuttle Discovery’s STS-95 mission at the age of 77. Receiving the NASA Distinguished Service Medal in 1962, the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978, and inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1990, he seems to be about as reliable a witness as they come, and he was also one of the first to see some strange things up there. On Feb. 20, 1962, Glenn took off into low Earth orbit on the Friendship 7 space capsule. At some point during his three passes around the planet, the amazed Glenn explained that he could see “fireflies” buzzing about and orbiting his craft out there, and he would say of the strange phenomenon to Mission Control:

This is Friendship Seven. I’ll try to describe what I’m in here. I am in a big mass of some very small particles that are brilliantly lit up like they’re luminescent. I never saw anything like it. They round a little; they’re coming by the capsule, and they look like little stars. A whole shower of them coming by. They swirl around the capsule and go in front of the window and they’re all brilliantly lighted. They probably average maybe 7 or 8 feet apart, but I can see them all down below me, also. They’re very slow; they’re not going away from me more than maybe 3 or 4 miles per hour. They’re going at the same speed I am approximately. They’re only very slightly under my speed. Over. They do, they do have a different motion, though, from me because they swirl around the capsule and then depart back the way I am looking.

John Glenn

At first Mission Control was worried that what he was really seeing was pieces of the capsule’s heat shield disintegrating, but this would turn up to not be the case, and none of the described objects ever made contact with the craft. Although it is unknown exactly what Glenn was seeing out there, is has been speculated that it was likely illuminated frost flakes from the outside of the capsule falling away. Interestingly, astronaut Scott Carpenter would report the same phenomenon later that year aboard the same capsule. Was there a mundane explanation for this or was it something stranger?

The following year there was an encounter in space that is even harder to explain. Another space flight pioneer is Leroy Gordon “Gordo” Cooper Jr., who was the youngest of the seven original astronauts in NASA’s first human space program, Project Mercury. In 1963, Cooper was on a solo mission to fly the longest and last Mercury spaceflight, Mercury-Atlas 9, which would last 22 days and make Cooper the first American to spend an entire day in space and the first to sleep in space. During his final orbit aboard the spacecraft, he would report seeing a  glowing, greenish object ahead of him quickly approaching his capsule, which was also picked up on radar at the tracking station at Muchea, near Perth Australia. Interestingly, Cooper would go on to claim various other sightings of UFOs, including ones he had had in 1951 as a test pilot flying over Europe, diring which time he had seen flights of mysterious objects flying in formation, and another incident in 1957, in which he saw a “strange-looking, saucer-like” aircraft that did not make a sound either on landing or take-off at a dry lake bed near Edwards Air Force Base, He would claim that the object at Edwards was seen by other personnel, and had hovered and landed on an array of landing gear like a tripod. In yet another encounter, he claims to have actually seen alien beings, saying:

I was furthermore a witness to an extraordinary phenomenon, here on this planet Earth. It happened a few months ago in Florida. There I saw with my own eyes a defined area of ground being consumed by flames, with four indentations left by a flying object which had descended in the middle of a field. Beings had left the craft (there were other traces to prove this). They seemed to have studied topography, they had collected soil samples and, eventually, they returned to where they had come from, disappearing at enormous speed…I happen to know that authority did just about everything to keep this incident from the press and TV, in fear of a panicky reaction from the public.

Indeed, Cooper claimed that he was met with resistance from the government at every turn when trying to report such encounters, claiming that after filing his report of the Edwards Air Force Base incident the Pentagon had confiscated the photos he had taken of the encounter and had then brushed it under the carpet. He also claims that although astronauts and military pilots frequently saw them, they were discouraged from reporting UFOs, and that there were constant efforts made to make sure that word of strange things in the sky did not get out to the public. Cooper has said of this:

I believe that these extra-terrestrial vehicles and their crews are visiting this planet from other planets… Most astronauts were reluctant to discuss UFOs. I did have occasion in 1951 to have two days of observation of many flights of them, of different sizes, flying in fighter formation, generally from east to west over Europe. For many years I have lived with a secret, in a secrecy imposed on all specialists in astronautics. I can now reveal that every day, in the USA, our radar instruments capture objects of form and composition unknown to us. And there are thousands of witness reports and a quantity of documents to prove this, but nobody wants to make them public. Why? Because authority is afraid that people may think of God knows what kind of horrible invaders. So the password still is: We have to avoid panic by all means.

Cooper would cover much of his UFO experiences and conspiracy theories in his autobiography Leap of Faith, and it makes one wonder just what is going on here. The year 1965 would prove to bring a few high profile reports of UFOs from astronauts. In June of 1965, astronauts Ed White and James McDivitt were aboard the Gemini 4 mission, which was the second crewed spaceflight in the Gemini program and the tenth American spaceflight. On the second day of their mission, they were passing in orbit over Hawaii when they witnessed something very odd, which they would describe as a metallic object with long “arms” sticking out of it. McDivitt would say of the bizarre sighting:

At the time I saw it, I said there was something out in front of me or outside the spacecraft that I couldn’t identify and I never have been able to identify it, and I don’t think anybody ever will. We were in drifting flight and my partner, Ed White, was asleep. I couldn’t see anything out in front of me except just the black sky. And it was rotating around, I noticed something out in front that was a white cylindrical shape with a white pole sticking it out of one corner of it – it looked like a beer can with a smooth pencil sticking out. I grabbed two cameras and took pictures of it. As the sun shone on the window, I could no longer see out and the thing just disappeared.  They checked NORAD records to see what they had up on radar and there wasn’t anything within very close range of us.

Rather strangely, the photos that McDivitt had taken were released but did not show what he had described, a fact that baffled him as he insisted that it had been there. This led him to believe that the photos had been tampered with, and in the meantime, there was speculation as to what he might have seen. One was that he had witnessed a secret Soviet satellite, and of course there is the idea he saw an actual UFO, but another possibility is that he simply saw orbital debris from the Gemini 4 launch. McDevitt would deny that he had misidentified debris, but James Oberg, a former space engineer and rocket scientist. Has said of it:

McDivitt, more than a decade after the fact, refused to believe he could have misidentified that object – but both his degraded eyesight and different viewing angle at the time of the sighting eliminate any reliability from that claim – and years of UFO research have taught us the surprising lesson that pilots are, in truth, among the poorest observers of UFOs because of their instinctive pattern of perceiving visual stimuli primarily in terms of threats to their own vehicles. Lastly, this coincidence must be considered: that Gemini 4 was the only one of 10 manned flights in which a rendezvous was attempted (and nearly accomplished) with a beer can-shaped target; and that Gemini 4 was the only flight on which a crewman reported seeing an unidentified beer can-shaped object. Tracking data released by NORAD via NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center found the spent rocket stage has spent about 50 hours in space. During this time, the debris and the Gemini 4 crew were within NORAD’s 1,000 miles range. It is, therefore, likely the astronaut witnessed the Titan’s booster stage.

In that same year we have the report of veteran NASA astronaut Walter “Wally” Schirra alongside his copilot Thomas Stafford, who in December of that year were engaged in the rendezvous of the Gemini 6 and Gemini 7 spacecraft in space, the first ever manned orbital rendezvous in history. Schirra and Stafford were on the Gemini 6, and the Gemini 7 was flown by astronauts Jim Lovell and Frank Borman. On December 15, both spacecraft successfully completed their missions, and after that they would all report a “bogey at 10 o’clock,” which Mission Control thought might be the booster, but the astronauts claimed that the booster was still in sight and that they could see a fast-moving object at that position. They would later joke that they had seen Santa Claus.

By far the most well-known and also most controversial astronaut sightings of UFOs supposedly comes from astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin during their historic landing on the moon in July of 1969 on the Apollo 11 mission. According to the story, they saw strange lights not long after making their landing, and although there is no official record of the audio exchange of this with Mission Control, in later years unnamed radio hams with their own VHF receiving facilities would claim that they had bypassed NASA’s security censors and picked up what was actually going on. The alleged transcript reads in part:

These “Babies” are huge, Sir! Enormous! OH MY GOD! You wouldn’t believe it! I’m telling you there are other spacecraft out there, Lined up on the far side of the crater edge! They’re on the Moon watching us!

Armstrong would later refuse to talk about the incident when confronted with it, further adding to the mystique of it all. A former chief of NASA Communications Systems by the name of Maurice Chatelain would in 1979 confirm that Armstrong had indeed reported seeing these craft on the moon, and that “The encounter was common knowledge in NASA.” Chatelain would even say that astronaut reports like this were common on the Gemini and Apollo missions, but that they were suppressed, saying:

All Apollo and Gemini flights were followed, both at a distance and sometimes also quite closely, by space vehicles of extraterrestrial origin – flying saucers, or UFOs, if you want to call them by that name. Every time it occurred, the astronauts informed Mission Control, who then ordered absolute silence.

Astronaut Scott Carpenter would concur with this, at one point saying, “At no time, when the astronauts were in space were they alone: there was a constant surveillance by UFOs.” What is going on with cases such as these? Is there anything to them at all, or is this all just misidentification and elaboration? There are certainly reliable witnesses if any of it is true, and it leaves us to wonder just what is going on up there above our heads.

In September 1963, a fascinating UFO event occurred in the skies over the U.K. It was a case that involved both members of the public and the military. And, as well as that, the event was carefully recorded. It took place at Peterborough, England. The facts were set forth in a two-page Restricted report from a Sergeant T.G.M. Kendall, who was employed at a base called Royal Air Force Wittering, Northants., who carefully relayed to the Air Ministry everything that took place. Due to the fact that this particular report is of some significance, I have reproduced its contents in total. Sergeant Kendall started as follows: “Sir, I have the honor to report the following facts for your consideration. I was NCO [Non-Commissioned Officer] in charge [of the] Operations Room at 2240 hours on 26^th September, 1963 when I received a telephone call from Mr. Strickson of [witness’s address] who, in company with Mr. Quantrell of the same address, saw what he considered to be two unidentified flying objects.” For sure, that’s not the kind of situation most military personnel find themselves involved in. Recognizing the potential importance of all this, Sergeant Kendall continued:

“The objects were in view in the first instance from 2000-2100 hours. During that time two orange colored balls of light traveled from the South to the East in a zig-zag fashion, then were seen again moving from West to East. They were then seen to orbit overhead for some ten minutes during which time three or four objects left the two first mentioned and then rejoined them. Mr. Strickson was not able to estimate the range or the altitude of the sightings, but considered them to be ‘higher than an aeroplane but lower than a star.’ I received a further call from Mr. Strickson at 2250 hours reporting two objects blue in color, higher than the previous sighting, and traveling very quickly. At 2320 hours Mr. Strickson informed me of two sightings which had taken place at 2305 hours when two objects were seen to move west to east in close formation one behind the other, the one in front being appreciably brighter than the one behind.”

There was still more to come: “At 2330, 2340 and 2350 hours, I received calls from S.A.C.W. [Senior Aircraftwoman] Marshall, the Duty PBX Operator, who had seen a bright orange light moving north to south which had turned south in the first instance and subsequently orbited overhead. At one time she thought that she had heard engines but was not sure. As a result of these calls, I joined S.A.C.W. Marshall outside the PBX building and saw at 0010 and 0020 hours two orange lights approx. 30 seconds apart which appeared from W.S.W. at a constant altitude heading approx. 100 degrees, flying what I considered to be a left hand race track pattern. I lost sight of the objects as they described a descending left hand turn onto the reciprocal of the visible leg. The sightings were exactly 10 minutes apart and speed, direction and altitude appeared to be constant. Flying Officer Gastrell was Duty Operations Officer when these sightings were reported. On his instructions I informed the Duty Operations Officer No.3 Group of the various reports. He in turn contacted the Duty Operations Officer at Air Ministry.”

The report came to an end: “The Duty Operations Officer at Air Ministry required a full report to be submitted to Air Ministry D.D.I. Tech [Deputy Directorate of Intelligence, Technical] giving full particulars of all witnesses. A met. Report giving the conditions at two specimen times during the period of sightings is attached to this report. I have the honor to be, Sir, Your obedient Servant, T.G.M. Kendall, Sergeant.” The Air Ministry rapidly came up with an answer to the puzzle. Each and everyone of them (that including well-trained Air Force personnel) had been fooled by an air-to-air refueling operation. However, an examination of the files pertaining to the case show that, in reality, this was simply the Ministry’s best theory, as no such refueling operation was ever officially confirmed as having taken place.

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There are certain people from history who have managed to gather about them plenty of mysteries and conspiracies. These are the individuals who have created all manner of talk of miracles and marvels, only to fade into history to leave nothing but enigmas behind. One such man was a scientist, thinker, philosopher, and inventor who cam up with groundbreaking theories on technology, to go on to be employed by the Nazis to create actual functioning UFOs and then fade into history just as mysterious as ever.

Viktor Schauberger was born in Austria in 1885, and had a background that one might not immediately equate with someone who would later develop UFO-like technology. He grew up in a family of foresters, living on a vast swath of remote wilderness in Holzschlag, Upper Austria. He spent much of his youth and informative years tending to more than 10,000 hectares of land, and during this time constantly out in nature he began to make many observations that would profoundly change his life and philosophies. In particular, he became absolutely fascinated by water, which he saw as a living organism in its own right, calling it the “Blood of the Earth” and the origin of all life. He would especially focus on the many behaviors of water, such as its spiraling forms, vortices, flumes, currents, whirlpools, and its effortless harmony with the world around it.

He would obsessively study the movements and effects of water, going on to form many theories and inventions, such as groundbreaking new types of log flumes, his own system of hydrodynamics, in which he believed the inward moving and twisting water vortex could be harnessed for power and propulsion, and the beginnings of his revolutionary new idea for a new type of engine that would rely on implosions rather than explosions. He was entirely self-taught, never attending formal university training, yet he was soon attracting international acclaim with some of his ideas, patents, and inventions, as well as controversy. He was critical of many of the inventions available in his era, thinking that they worked against the laws of nature and were destructive, instead embracing the idea that humankind and nature could live together through the use of alternative sources of power such as harnessing the natural processes and living in harmony with them, with his motto being “Kapieren und kopieren,” or “comprehend and copy nature.” To him, many of mankind’s inventions were at odds with nature, and he would indeed later state that even the propeller was a flawed invention, saying:

As best demonstrated by Nature in the case of the aerofoil maple-seed, today’s propeller is a pressure-screw and therefore a braking screw, whose purpose is to allow the heavy maple-seed to fall parachute-like slowly towards the ground and to be carried away sideways by the wind in the process. No bird has such a whirling thing on its head, nor a fish on its tail. Only man-made use of this natural brake-screw for forward propulsion. As the propeller rotates, so does the resistance rise by the square of the rotational velocity. This is also a sign that this supposed propulsive device is unnaturally constructed and therefore out of place.

Schauberger sought to put his ideas into practice, coming up with an elaborate theory that water vortices could be used to build upon one another to produce larger and larger forces, which would in turn produce an opposing force to gravity, essentially anti-gravity, which he called dia-magnetism. He used these theories to create such fantastical inventions as a water implosion turbine that drew in air that spiraled to reach enormous forces, a machine which created a suctional force comparable to a typhoon in order to manipulate the temperature of a room, and a power generator that created energy from water and air using spiral pipes and jets. All of this worked on his principles of clean energy and working with nature, apparently creating little to no pollution and fully sustainable.

It may seem odd that such a radical promoter of green energy and working with nature would attract the attention of the Nazis, but attract it he did, and in 1934 he was approached by them. In 1938 he was allegedly ordered by Julius Streicher, a Nazi party member, to go about building a flying machine that could utilize a vortex engine that could be used in a disc-shaped craft that would be able to levitate, perform precise maneuvers, and move and accelerate at great speeds. They essentially wanted him to build a futuristic anti-gravity craft using his theories, and seeing as that this was the Nazis, he did not have much choice but to help them, being paid an exorbitant amount of money in the process.

In 1940, he created the first prototype of his manmade UFO, which was called the “Repulsine A,” and which used friction between vortices and the surrounding air to force the air downwards to generate an overall lifting and propulsive effect, more or less producing a sort of mini-tornado upon which the craft rode. However, it was found that the engine was unstable, and that the fan within the device wasn’t able to rotate as fast as required because the blades were displacing too much air. No way was found to get past the problem of creating more intense rotational energy at the time, and the device was considered too impractical. Indeed, during tests of the craft, although it did indeed levitate, it was almost impossible to control or move forward, usually wobbling out of control or even shooting up through the roof. Allegedly, Schauberger’s failure to produce a working prototype caused him to be imprisoned for a time, before coming under the control of Heinrich Himmler. After this, he would be forced to work on a new type of silent mini-submarine, as well as to continue work on a new version of the anti-gravity device, called the Vril-7.

It is unknown just how far along Schauberger got, as the end of World War II arrived and brought the secret research of the Nazis to a halt, with most of his work, prototypes, and plans destroyed to keep them from falling into the hands of the Allies. The Americans, knowing just how important Schauberger had been to the Germans, arrested him and brought him to the United States, interrogating him intensely but never able to get much information out of him. The fundamental principles Schauberger employed would later be developed by several projects, including the Avro Canada VZ-9 Avrocar, which was a VTOL aircraft developed during the Cold War era and others. Schauberger would work on a variety of civilian vortex technology projects such as generators, water treatment, and air purification devices, before eventually returning to Austria on September 25, 1958 nearly penniless, and died five days later, taking any secrets he had to the grave with him. There have been conspiracies about him since, including that his research was pursued much further than has been let on, perhaps even explaining many of the UFO sightings during World War II, but no one really knows for sure. He remains in many ways a specter, the true extent of his work unknown and his research mysterious and much discussed.

Just a couple of days ago I wrote an article here at Mysterious Universe on the matter of the “Flying Triangle”-type of UFO. Specifically, I focused on the issue of whether or not the FTs were the creations of us or of extraterrestrials. Or, possibly, of both. Today, I’m going to expand on all of this by sharing with you some of the more intriguing Flying Triangle-themed cases on record. I’ll begin with an incident from 1997. The details were provided to me by the late Omar Fowler. He was a Derbyshire, England-based UFO investigator who I knew well, as he often gave lectures at the Staffordshire UFO Group that I regularly attended in the 1990s and early 2000s. Omar told me of what he knew from the source of the story: “[His] attention was attracted by a noise similar to a high-revving two-stroke engine outside his home,” state. Fowler. “‘He went outside in the darkness and saw hovering lights approximately one hundred and fifty yards away and one hundred and fifty feet up from the ground. [He] went indoors and fetched his binoculars and was able to make out the shape of a black helicopter in the vicinity of the lights. [He] had a night vision scope indoors and he returned with this a few minutes later. He then viewed the aircraft again. He saw the helicopter clearly, as it was illuminated by the flashing strobe and navigation lights. He described it as being similar to the Airwolf from the TV series.”

The story continued: “He then switched on the infrared beam and immediately noticed that there was a completely blacked out, triangular craft adjacent to the helicopter. ‘I couldn’t believe my eyes!’ he commented. The triangle, which was a similar size to the helicopter, reflected light from the strobe/navigation lights and appeared to have no visible means of support in the hovering mode (no noise was heard). He began to approach the two hovering craft, while looking through his night scope. It is a foregone conclusion that the helicopter was equipped with night vision equipment, because as [he] approached, the helicopter suddenly moved away at an incredible rate of knots. It disappeared like a rocket. The triangle remained for a moment and then moved away and out of sight!”‘ In this particular instance, the presence of an apparent military helicopter in close proximity to the UFO suggests the strong possibility that the Flying Triangle was some form of wholly terrestrial aircraft undergoing secret trials.

Now, let’s head back to April 1949.  On the 22nd of that month, a UFO was seen at Vicksburg, Mississippi that was flying at a significant speed and that was distinctly triangular in shape. Indeed, in the official U.S. Air Force file on the affair – which is housed at the National Archives in Maryland – the object is actually described in the official report (by Special Agent Bernard A. Price) as a “Flying Triangle”! In September 1952, what was described as a fast-moving, large, “blue-green triangle” was seen by military personnel engaged in a NATO exercise called “Mainbrace.” On top of that, the entire exercise was dominated by UFO activity. Eight years later to the very month –  September 1960 – the sighting of what was termed “a triangular formation of lights with a red light in the center” was reported to the British Ministry of Defense, whose files on the matter are now in the public domain. The description will be instantly familiar to those acquainted with the FT puzzle.

Omar Fowler also shared with me another case, this one from way back in time. Specifically from 1956. As Fowler explained, it was at approximately 11:00 a.m. on April 19, 1956 and Robin Gibbard of Derbyshire, England – a roofer at the time – was working with a colleague at a house in Allstree, Derby. According to Gibbard, “The day was very clear, with very little cloud about. On hearing an aircraft approaching, I looked up to see a twin radial engine, propeller driven Avro Anson aircraft– which even then was becoming a rarity. The aircraft was approaching at a height of about 2,000 feet altitude or less. These aircraft were very slow fliers and used mainly for reconnaissance. I was amazed to see a delta wing plane circling fairly close to the Avro Anson, actually circling around the plane at least twice, at a speed not much more than the plane’s speed but making no audible sound – the only sound came from the Anson.

“After making two circuits, it broke away and then increasing its speed to a phenomenal amount, disappeared upwards on a long curve in about 5 to 10 seconds. My partner also saw this occurrence, but unfortunately he has since died and cannot corroborate this statement. It could not have been a glider, because of its breakaway speed and any possible Delta aircraft of that period always made plenty of noise.” To illustrate that he was unlikely to have misidentified the object, Robin Gibbard was keen to inform Omar of one important point: “At the time I was deeply involved in competition model [aircraft] flying in my spare time and was very aware of all aspects of the capabilities of model, diesel and petrol engines in every application and always had an interest in aircraft recognition during World War Two and afterwards. So I was familiar with all aircraft from that period.’

Finally, we have a particularly spectacular case. In 1989, Chris Gibson had what can accurately be termed the encounter of a lifetime. An engineer with an Honors degree in geology and someone who’s worked focused on oil-exploration, Gibson was also attached to the U.K.’s Royal Observer Corps. The work of the ROC – which closed down in December 1995, after seventy years of work to help protect the United Kingdom from attack – required its volunteers to keep a careful watch on the skies above and what was flying in those same skies, too.  As luck – or fate – would have it, and at the time when the Aurora program may very well have been compromised, Gibson was working on an oil rig in the North Sea. The name of the rig was the Galveston Key. It was August 1989, specifically, when one of Gibson’s colleagues, a friend named Graeme Winton, who went to university with Gibson, excitedly told Gibson to come with him to the deck. There was something Winton needed to show him. A startled and amazed Gibson caught sight of something incredible in the skies above. A pair of General Dynamics’ F1-11 aircraft were shepherding a very strange-looking, completely black aircraft. And, a Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker seemed to be fueling it. It was in the form of a triangle.

The mystery of the Flying Triangles goes on and on.