Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS NEARLY 13 YEARS AND 4 MONTH.
ON /30/09/2024 MORE THAN 2.230.520
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
10-06-2021
Huge black tower on Moon, Photos, UFO Sighting News.
Huge black tower on Moon, Photos, UFO Sighting News.
Date of discovery: Jun 7, 2021 Location of sighting:Dark Side of Moon NASA source:
I found a dark tower on the moon today using the LROC moon map at Arizona State University. The online program reveals a lot about the moon that they don't teach you in any classroom, unless you are in my classroom. I am a ESL teacher in Taiwan and yes, I tell kids the truth. That aliens exist.
This structure is very big and again...is not just a structure, but a mobile structure. Much like a mobile home can move from place to place...so can these structures. Makes them much more useful. Why oh why do they abandon them in craters so often? Well it sure makes them easier to find for anyone searching for parts. Like humans...even aliens like to recycle...so leaving the ship out for others to use is considered both recycling and helping to all species who need it.
Mysterious Glowing Sphere Caught on Video in North Carolina
Mysterious Glowing Sphere Caught on Video in North Carolina
A short video of a light circular object passing the skies of North Carolina Beach has made the rounds online.
A couple took the footage as they were boating off the coast of America on May 16. Both saw a bizarre glowing sphere object similar to reported UFOs spotted in both New York and Colorado in the past.
In the clip, the object is easily recognized against the bright blue sky and appears to move slowly in front of the clouds. According to the eyewitnesses, the UFO also had a dark circle or spot in the middle.
A witness is heard explaining in the video saying that the object seems to rise above and drop below the clouds in around the same spot for hours.
According to UFO enthusiasts who have watched the video, the object is possibly an alien orb surveillance drone that has come into Earth’s atmosphere to observe our response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Legendary Emerald Tablet and its Secrets of the Universe
The Legendary Emerald Tablet and its Secrets of the Universe
The origins of Western alchemy can be traced back to Hellenistic Egypt, in particular to the city of Alexandria. One of the most important characters in the mythology of alchemy is Hermes Trismegistus (Hermes the Thrice-Great). The name of this figure is derived from the Egyptian god of wisdom, Thoth, and his Greek counterpart, Hermes. The Hermetica, which is said to be written by Hermes Trismegistus, is generally regarded as the basis of Western alchemical philosophy and practice. In addition, Hermes Trismegistus is also believed to be the author of the Emerald Tablet.
Legends of the Emerald Tablet
The Emerald Tablet is said to be a tablet of emerald or green stone inscribed with the secrets of the universe. The source of the original Emerald Tablet is unclear; hence it is surrounded by legends. The most common story claims that the tablet was found in a caved tomb under the statue of Hermes in Tyana, clutched in the hands of the corpse of Hermes Trismegistus himself.
And the creator of the Emerald Tablet has been provided in myth as the Egyptian god Thoth, who Armando Mei writes “divided his knowledge into 42 plates of emerald, codifying the great scientific principles ruling the Universe. The legend tells that after the gods’ fall, the Hermetic tablets were cleverly hidden so that no human being might find them. Only Thoth, on his return to that dimension, was able to recover the mysterious book.”
Another legend suggests that it was the third son of Adam and Eve , Seth, who originally wrote it. Others believed that the tablet was once held within the Ark of the Covenant . Some even claim that the original source of the Emerald Tablet is none other than the fabled city of Atlantis.
While various claims have been made regarding the origins of the Emerald Tablet, as yet no verifiable evidence has been found to support them. The oldest documentable source of the Emerald Tablet’s text is the Kitab sirr al-haliqi (Book of the Secret of Creation and the Art of Nature), which was itself a composite of earlier works.
This was an Arabic work written in the 8th century AD and attributed to ‘Balinas’ or Pseudo-Apollonius of Tyana. It is Balinas who provides us with the story of how he discovered the Emerald Tablet in the caved tomb. Based on this Arabic work, some believe that the Emerald Tablet was also an Arabic text and written between the 6th and 8th centuries AD, rather than a piece of work from Antiquity, as many have claimed.
While Balinas claimed that the Emerald Tablet was written originally in Greek, the original document that he purportedly possessed no longer exists, if indeed it existed at all. Some say the text burned up in the Library of Alexandria . Nevertheless, Balinas’ version of the text itself quickly became well-known, and has been translated by various people over the centuries.
For instance, an early version of the Emerald Tablet also appeared in a work called the Kitab Ustuqus al-Uss al-Thani (Second Book of the Elements of the Foundation), which is attributed to Jabir ibn Hayyan. It would, however, take several more centuries before the text was accessible to Europeans. In the 12th century AD, the Emerald Tablet was translated into Latin by Hugo von Santalla.
The Emerald Tablet would become one of the pillars of Western alchemy. It was a highly influential text in medieval and Renaissance alchemy, and probably still is today. In addition to translations of the Emerald Tablet, numerous commentaries have also been written regarding its contents.
For instance, a translation by Isaac Newton was discovered among his alchemical papers. This translation is currently being held in King’s College Library in Cambridge University. Other notable researchers of the Emerald Tablet include Roger Bacon , Albertus Magnus, John Dee , and Aleister Crowley . And today knowledge of the legendary Emerald Tablet (at least one interpretation of it ) is reaching new audiences with its presence in the surreal German-language series Dark.
An imaginative 17th century depiction of the Emerald Tablet from the work of Heinrich Khunrath, 1606.
The interpretation of the Emerald Text is not a straightforward matter, as it is after all a piece of esoteric text . One interpretation, for instance, suggests that the text describes seven stages of alchemical transformation – calcination, dissolution, separation, conjunction, fermentation, distillation and coagulation. Yet, despite the various interpretations available, it seems that none of their authors claim to possess knowledge of the whole truth. Furthermore, readers are encouraged to read the text and try to interpret and find the hidden truths themselves.
Top Image: Representation of what the Emerald Tablet may have looked like. Source: info consapevole
MUFON CASE : 116090 Rachel, Nevada ( June 6, 2021 )
Mutual UFO Network : MUFON SUBMISSIONS : Flashing light/floating orb Long Description of Sighting Report
Family and I were traveling from Zion to Reno. About 20 min after turning on 375 my wife wanted to photograph a joshua tree. After several minutes a circular object shining light suddenly appeared above us. I grabbed my cell phone from my car and took a video. We had no clue we were near area 51 and had never even heard of the ET highway and I am not a believer in aliens but all four of us are positive in what we saw and cannot explain it. We learned later when we arrived at our hotel where we were located.
Date Submitted : 2021-06-06 Date of Event : 2021-06-06 / 9:50AM MUFON SUBMITTER FILE : trim.888F0BF2CE804C708423B9022D969A2F.MOV
UFOs Sighted Over Bangor, Wales, UK ( May 17, 2021 )
Spinning UFOs were sighted over North Wales, UK on May 17, 2021
STATEMENT : Anyone know what these TWO seperate objects are?? This was in North wales.
credit : Owen BobSan Sandra
note : no audio
UFO Sighted Over Liverpool, England ( June 7, 2021 )
UFO sighted over Liverpool, England on June 7, 2021
STATEMENT : Saw this last night sorry its out of focus till near the end.
credit : Dave Mcgrath
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Rectangle UFO Sighted Over Leech Lake Reservation, Minnesota ( June 7, 2021 )
STATEMENT : Ok here's the video that had me tripped out lastnight. I recorded multiple videos of lightening and I got nothing like this. It could be a illusion or glitch in the camera but after I was recording I went back to watch it and this was in it. I was recording it on snap and I went back to see the lightening and it was there twice 2 separate times in the video within like 24 seconds of each other I was outside on my deck outside my house. Between Cass and Bemidji
Just five years ago, who could have predicted that The New York Times would become the main mainstream source of UFO revelations – putting pressure on government officials to reveal what’s in secret files on sightings? Or that three eccentric billionaires would replace both the U.S. and Russia in transporting people, cargo and satellites into space? In 2016, those predictions might have been classified as ‘weird’, yet they happened and we now consider them to be the ‘new’ normal. Now, a new kind of weird has come to the space race that once again involves The New York Times and the three eccentric billionaires, Will we look back in 2026 and change our minds once again?
“Fields of Watermelons Found on Mars, Police Say.”
“Authorities say rise of fruit aliens is to blame for glut of outer space watermelons. The FBI declined to comment on reports of watermelons raining down, but confirmed that kiwis have been intercepted.”
Martian watermelon?
That was the headline and the lede of an online article which appeared on The New York Times website yesterday, June 8. While this was also a day the Internet suffered some massive outages, they were not related to the Martian watermelon announcement in the NYT. The article was written by ‘Joe Schmoe’, an obvious pseudonym, but it still reverberated throughout both the UFO and mainstream media before it was quickly taken down and replaced with the message “This article was published in error.” Was it? A Times spokesperson told The New York Post in an e-mail, “Earlier today, a mock article intended for a testing system was published on our site in error. The article has since been removed.” Will this hurt the credibility of The New York Times in the UFO disclosure movement?
Meanwhile, the website Parabolicarc.com reported that Sir Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic (not to mention other Virgin companies) is working on a plan to make a suborbital flight aboard one of his VSS Unity SpaceShipTwo rocket planes over the July 4 holiday weekend, beating rival Jeff Bezos’ flight in HIS Blue Origins New Shepard spaceship on July 20 by over two weeks. At the time Parabolicarc.com broke the story, its anonymous source said the flight is contingent upon obtaining an operator’s license from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). That quickly prompted this response from a Virgin Galactic spokesperson:
“We are in the process of analyzing the data from our successful May 22nd flight. As previously announced, we expect to complete the final test flights this summer through to early fall. At this time, we have not determined the date of our next flight. An objective from the last flight was to collect data to be used for the final two verification reports that are required as part of the current FAA commercial reusable spacecraft operator’s license.”
You need a license? You also need a working spaceship. VSS Unity and its VMS Eve WhiteKnightTwo mothership would have only 44 days to get space ready, less than the 72 days it normally takes. Besides a license and a space-worthy ship, you also need the right altitude. Bezos plans to reach 100 km (62.1 miles), the ‘Karman line’ – the boundary of space recognized by The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, the world’s keeper of aviation and space records. The FAA recognizes 50 miles (80.4 km) as the boundary of space. VSS Unity has made three flights above 50 km, but has not yet hit 100 km and there’s some question whether it can reach that height. Finally, VSS Unity and VMS Eve are still in their test phase and are expected to be upgraded before starting commercial lights next year. Would Sir Richard risk his project (and possibly his life) just to win the space billionaire entrepreneur race with Jeff Bezos?
Has Elon Musk weighed in yet? How about Matt Damon? Would a lifetime supply of Martian watermelons be an appropriate billionaire wager?
Located within the Chihuahuan Desert in northeastern Presidio County of far West Texas is the dusty desert city of Marfa. Founded as a water stop in the early 1880s, Marfa sits like an oasis surrounded by sprawling desolate desert, but despite its inhospitable location it has become a sort of center for minimalist art, and is known for its galleries, artisan shops, and historical architecture. Yet the town has become famous for something else as well, and here out in the desert badlands there has long been a mysterious, possibly paranormal light show that has never really been explained.
Marfa, Texas
What have come to be known as the Marfa Lights typically appear as orbs of light about the size of a basketball, that materialize out in the desert wasteland of Mitchell Flat looking towards the Chinati Mountains, to hover, fly, and dance about in the night before vanishing. They come in many colors, including white, yellow, pink, blue, and red, and can be very bright or faint, steadily illuminated or twinkling or flickering. The lights feature a wide range of movement and behaviors, either flying in a straight line or conversely bobbing up and down, darting about erratically, doing aerial acrobatics, accelerating or decelerating, or even merging together into larger orbs or disappearing and reappearing. They sometimes move slowly, at other times hovering stationary, or on other occasions travelling at great speed, often all of the above. One local by the name of James Bunnell has said of the Marfa Lights:
You might just see mysterious orbs of light suddenly appear above desert foliage. These balls of light may remain stationary as they pulse on and off with intensity varying from dim to almost blinding brilliance. Then again, these ghostly lights may dart across the desert or perform splits and mergers. Light colors are usually yellow-orange but other hues, including green, blue and red are also seen. Marfa Mystery Lights usually fly above desert vegetation but below background mesas.
The lights also don’t seem to follow any rhyme or reason to their appearances, emerging at all times of the year and in all kinds of weather, and they have been baffling those who see them for a very long time. Although the Native Americans had long known of the lights, perhaps the first historical record of the Marfa lights by settlers was in 1883, when a rancher named Robert Reed Ellison reported seeing a group of glowing orbs as he drove his cattle through Paisano Pass. He assumed that they were Apache campfires, but no evidence of any fires or campsites could be found the following day. After that, more and more people began reporting the mysterious lights, and over the decades there would be so many sightings that during World War II there was even an air search conducted by pilots from nearby Midland Army Air Field to find the source of the lights, but they came back empty-handed and puzzled. On some occasions there have been reports that the lights seem to show some sort of intelligence, sometimes coming closer as if out of curiosity or seeming to investigate certain areas, or to react to sound, and there are even stories of people lost in the desert being led to safety by the lights. But what are they and where do they come from? That depends a lot on who you ask.
There have been numerous theories as to what the lights may be. One is that they are some sort of atmospheric phenomenon, in particular one called a Fata Morgana, which is an optical illusion that causes far away objects to appear closer and distorted through light passing through air layers of different temperatures in a steep thermal inversion, in which a defined layer of warm air is resting on a layer of much cooler air. Another idea is that these are the similarly distorted lights car headlights on the nearby Highway 67, made to look fuzzy and wavering by light scattering due to the air being unevenly heated by the ground, but this would not explain why they are most often seen well away from the highway, why they display such erratic and aberrant movements, why they have so many different appearances, or how they would have been seen so much back in 1883. Other ideas include static electricity produced by geological activity, ball lighting, illuminated gases from the natural gas and other petroleum hydrocarbons in the area, and of course alien UFOs and even ghosts, perhaps even all of the above. No one really knows for sure.
In the meantime, Marfa has embraced the lights and sought to turn them into a tourist attraction. There is a roadside parking area nine miles east of Marfa on U.S. Highway 90 specifically built for passing motorists to view the curious phenomenon, complete with a Marfa Lights viewing platform, and there is even an annual Marfa Lights Festival that features live music, food and a parade. What is going on with these lights? What are they? Are they just distant car headlights morphed into something more mysterious by atmospheric phenomena or are at least some of them something stranger? For now the Marfa lights still occasionally come out to do their dance, and no one is entirely sure of what they truly are.
In the last couple of years we’ve seen more and more information coming out of the U.S. government on the matter of UFOs. In fact, it’s practically impossible to avoid the incredible amount of UFO data that has been pouring out lately. But, some may be wondering, when was it that the government really got involved in the matters of UFOs and Flying Saucers? Let’s take a look. It was in the summer of 1947 that the UFO controversy began. On June 24, 1947 a pilot named Kenneth Arnold encountered a squadron of strange-looking, boomerang-like aircraft flying near Mt. Rainier, Washington State. As an experienced pilot, Arnold was puzzled by the fact that he was unable to figure out what, exactly, the craft were. On landing, Arnold shared his story with the media and told them that the objects flew like a saucer skimmed across a body of water – in a kind of up and down motion. In literally only hours, the term “Flying Saucer” was coined. The big irony is that the “Saucer” part came from Arnold’s observation of how the object flew, rather than their shape.
Kenneth Arnold
The U.S. military quickly moved to investigate the case, as well as a wave of quite literally hundreds of additional sightings throughout the remainder of 1947 and into 1948. Thus was born the government’s first UFO program, Project Sign. Interestingly, Project Sign staff concluded that there really was a UFO phenomenon, but they were unable to state with any degree of accuracy what the objects actually were. Theories posited by Sign personnel included Russian craft, and the creations of a secret group within the U.S. Government. Some of the Sign staff favored the extraterrestrial hypothesis. In 1948, Project Sign was replaced with Project Grudge. Just like Sign, Grudge had its personnel who championed the alien angle, while others suggested military aircraft of some kind – and either the product of Uncle Sam or the Soviets. Certainly, the most well-known of all the UFO programs was Project Blue Book.
Let’s see what the government says about all this:
“On December 17, 1969, the Secretary of the Air Force announced the termination of Project Blue Book, the Air Force program for the investigation of UFOs. From 1947 to 1969, a total of 12, 618 sightings were reported to Project Blue Book. Of these 701 remain ‘Unidentified.’ The project was headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, whose personnel no longer receive, document or investigate UFO reports. The decision to discontinue UFO investigations was based on an evaluation of a report prepared by the University of Colorado entitled, ‘Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects;’ a review of the University of Colorado’s report by the National Academy of Sciences; past UFO studies and Air Force experience investigating UFO reports during the 40s, ’50s, and ’60s.”
The Air Force continues: “As a result of these investigations and studies and experience gained from investigating UFO reports since 1948, the conclusions of Project Blue Book are:(1) no UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force has ever given any indication of threat to our national security;(2) there has been no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as “unidentified” represent technological developments or principles beyond the range of present-day scientific knowledge; and(3) there has been no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as “unidentified” are extraterrestrial vehicles. With the termination of Project Blue Book, the Air Force regulations establishing and controlling the program for investigating and analyzing UFOs were rescinded. Documentation regarding the former Blue Book investigation has been permanently transferred to the Military Reference Branch, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC 20408, and is available for public review and analysis.””
There is also this from the Air Force: “Since Project Blue Book was closed, nothing has happened to indicate that the Air Force ought to resume investigating UFOS. Because of the considerable cost to the Air Force in the past, and the tight funding of Air Force needs today, there is no likelihood the Air Force will become involved with UFO investigation again. There are a number of universities and professional scientific organizations, such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which have considered UFO phenomena during periodic meetings and seminars. In addition, a list of private organizations interested in aerial phenomena may be found in Gale’s Encyclopedia of Associations (edition 8, vol-. 1, pp. 432-433). Such timely review of the situation by private groups ensures that sound evidence will not be overlooked by the scientific community. A person calling the base to report a UFO is advised to contact a private or professional organization (as mentioned above) or to contact a local law enforcement agency if the caller feels his or public safety is endangered.”
And, finally, there is this from the Air Force: “Periodically, it is erroneously stated that the remains of extraterrestrial visitors are or have been stored at Wright-Patterson AFB. There are not now nor ever have been, any extraterrestrial visitors or equipment on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.” This last piece, of course, is a nod to the notorious “Roswell UFO crash” of July 1947, and claims that strange bodies found outside of Roswell were secretly sent to Wright-Patterson for analysis and autopsy. Of course, since the Air Force wrote this summary, there have been a great deal of new developments. No doubt, and particularly in this period of strange uncertainty we’re in right now, it’s highly likely we’ll see far more and more revelations surfacing soon.
Scientists in a Russian lab have brought back to life miniature “zombies” that were frozen about 3.5 meters (11.5 feet) beneath the Siberian permafrost for 24,000 years (in the Alazeya River). These multicellular microscopic creatures, which are called bdelloid rotifers (or wheel animals), have been living in freshwater locations for approximately 50 million years.
Rotifers have miniature hair-like features called a cilia ring that circles its mouth. They have a lorica around their body for protection as well as a foot. Their tiny organs include a brain, eye-spot, jaw, kidneys, stomach, and urinary bladder.
In previous studies, researchers confirmed that rotifers could be frozen at a temperature of minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 20 degrees Celsius) and then brought back to life 10 years after. While that is incredible, the most recent study produced even more jaw-dropping results as the researchers were able to bring back the rotifers that were alive during the Pleistocene Epoch and were frozen for 24,000 years. When these creatures were thawed out, they started reproducing asexually through parthenogenesis and even created genetic duplicate clones.
The rotifers were found in Siberian permafrost.
In an email to Live Science, Stas Malavin, who is a researcher at the Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems in Soil Science in Pushchino, Russia, explained their experiment in more detail, “We put a piece of permafrost into a Petri dish filled with [a] suitable medium and wait until organisms that are alive recover from their dormancy, start moving, and multiply.” After they cloned themselves, they were so genetically identical that the researchers could not tell the difference between the new and old ones.
The fact that this creature was resuscitated from a suspended metabolic state (called cryptobiosis) is astonishing but actually quite normal for rotifers as they have evolved to be able to use cryptobiosis because of where they live – the waters could dry up or freeze over. Furthermore, they can restore any DNA that may get harmed and can protect their cells from damaging molecules. The study was published in the journal Current Biology where it can be read in full.
Pictures and a video of the rotifer can be seen here.
Rotifer recovering from week-long cryptobiosis in the lab.
(Image credit: Lyubov Shmakova)
Bdelloid rotifers can enter cryptobiosis to survive extreme conditions such as freezing temperatures and drought. (Image credit: Michael Plewka)
Lateral view of rotifer. (Image credit: Michael Plewka)
Essential Politics: Are we closer to understanding UFOs? What to know about the congressional report
Essential Politics: Are we closer to understanding UFOs? What to know about the congressional report
Then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in 2013.
(Jacquelyn Martin / Associated Press)
By LAURA BLASEY - MULTIPLATFORM EDITOR, NEWSLETTERS
This is the June 2, 2021, edition of the Essential Politics newsletter. Like what you’re reading? Sign up to get it in your inbox three times a week.
In a time where Americans and their leaders agree on almost nothing, who would have thought UFOs would unite us?
The truth is out there and former President Obama, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and even former President Trump are interested.
UFOs were a political and cultural force in midcentury America and the ‘90s. Now, as we await a Pentagon report on the subject, they’re back in vogue, generating segments on “60 Minutes,” making their way into interviews with former presidents and trending across the internet.
Here’s what you need to know, no tin foil hats required.
Why is everyone talking about UFOs right now?
Air and Space Magazine dubbed 2019 “the Year of UFOs,” but it may actually be 2021.
The Pentagon is expected to release a report this month on UFO sightings, the result of a program designed to record and investigate sightings by the U.S. military.
Defense officials and some lawmakers are publicly pushing for the release of information, including Rubio, the highest-ranking Republican member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
“We cannot allow the stigma of UFO’s to keep us from seriously investigating this. The forthcoming report is one step in that process, but it will not be the last,” he said in a statement to the Tampa Bay Times.
But we probably wouldn’t be here without former Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada. Reid is among the loudest voices calling for information on UFOs.
In a bipartisan effort in 2007, he and late Sens.Ted Stevens(R-Alaska) andDaniel Inouye(D-Hawaii) secured $22 million in funding for the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. Intelligence officials claimed it was disbanded in 2012, though former employees later told the New York Times thatit was still operationalthrough 2017.
Meanwhile, Reid continues to give interviews about UFOs. “Congress should make this an ongoing program. I don’t think the report is going to tell us too much,” he told the Guardian in an interview published Tuesday. “I think they need to study it more and not just have one shot at it.”
What’s in the report?
Passed in December, the Intelligence Authorization Act for the 2021 fiscal year directs the task force to deliver a report to Congress within 180 days on collected reports, with information on how it will analyze and track future sightings. And that report must be unclassified.
But it may not contain the validation some are looking for. While much of the program’s details remain classified as research is conducted, what has emerged indicates a growing military interest in UFOs as a national security threat.
They’re taking UFOs literally — unidentified flying objects that could have come from anywhere, such as another country. In other words, the threats they’re looking for are of the more terrestrial variety.
Still, new details might emerge about the events that have been reported. Military pilots describe erratic movements and lights that seem to defy physics, and aircraft shaped like a “Tic Tac.”
What’s different about 2021?
As with many conspiracy theories, UFO devotees have claimed for decades that government disclosure is imminent. The government has repeatedly dismissed discussion of UFOs.
The Times’ archives and those of other papers are full of officials downplaying reports of sightings. Sincere believers in the extraterrestrial are framed askooky punchlinesacross news, TV and film.
In 1977, NASA denied a request from President Carter — who said he had seen a UFO years earlier — to open a government investigation, calling the idea “wasteful and probably unproductive.”
The denial came after the Air Force shut down an investigative program called Project Blue Book in 1969, saying it uncovered little in two decades at “considerable expense,” according to an Associated Press story.
But there’s something different about this round of UFO mania. Now, it seems, Americans and their elected officials are on the same side (though President Biden has not indicated his stance). And the government has an actual deadline.
It’s also not an unexpected resurgence in public interest: We’re in the midst of a national reckoning with what it means for something to be true, prompting new demand for disclosures about everything from policing to ballot counting.
Belief in conspiracies (many much more dangerous) surged during Trump’s presidency, aided in part by the president. He also introduced a space element, establishing the Space Force and the new task force.
Hollywood and internet culture have also helped resurrect the UFO in public imagination. The “Storm Area 51” meme, which began as a Facebook event page, went viral and ended with about 2,000 people gathering in the Nevada desert in 2019 to joke about “rescuing” aliens and taking pictures.
Friends gather for photos on the perimeter fence at Area 51 near Rachel, Nev., on Sept. 20, 2019.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
What about aliens?
Americans love aliens. Perhaps you grew up watching a galaxy far, far away in “Star Wars” (1977), Sigourney Weaver fighting to survive in Ridley Scott’s “Alien” (1979) or Steven Spielberg’s “E.T.” (1982).
Not your speed? Maybe you listened to Blink-182’s “Aliens Exist” (1999) or loved the 1964 cult holiday classic “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians,” or consider yourself a fan of “The X-Files,” a landmark in the our-government-is-hiding-aliens storytelling tradition.
There’s a story for every interest group and time period, often with a trademark flying saucer and an undercurrent of distrust in authority. But the more information that becomes public, the more it becomes clear that what a UFO is and whether extraterrestrial life exists are two distinct questions.
— Biden traveled to Tulsa, Okla., on Tuesday to mark a shameful and largely forgotten part of American history, calling for racial reconciliation on the 100th anniversary of the violent destruction of the city’s thriving Black community by a white mob, Eli Stokols writes.
— Biden also announced that Vice President Kamala Harris would steer the administration’s efforts to bolster voting rights, a daunting and challenging task that Democrats and voting rights advocates say is urgent, writes Noah Bierman.
— The Supreme Court overturned a rule used by the 9th Circuit Court in California that presumed immigrants seeking asylum were telling the truth unless an immigration judge had made an “explicit” finding that they were not credible, David G. Savage reports.
— The Biden administration dispatched Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken to Costa Rica on Tuesday to take Central American officials to task on corruption in their countries and to examine how they can more efficiently block migration to the U.S. He could face a tough crowd, Tracy Wilkinson writes.
— Texas Democrats pulled off a dramatic last-ditch walkout from the state House of Representatives on Sunday night to block passage of one of the most restrictive voting bills in the U.S. But it could still be resurrected in a special session.
The view from California
— A Northern California county has voted to rename Jim Crow Road after a debate over the racist implications of the name and accusations of “woke cancel culture,” Brittny Mejia reports.
— From Taryn Luna: A historic California task force met for the first time Tuesday with the ultimate goal of recommending reparations for descendants of enslaved people and those affected by slavery.
— Democratic leaders of the California Legislature unveiled a state budget blueprint that would boost public schools and small businesses beyond the proposal made last month by Gov. Gavin Newsom, John Myers reports. It’s a move that is likely to set the stage for friendly but detailed negotiations.
— California lawmakers are considering legislation that would require hospitals, clinics and skilled nursing facilities to pay medical professionals $10,000 in “hero pay” for their work during the COVID-19 pandemic, Melody Gutierrez writes.
Ingenuity snapped a photo of its own shadow during its second flight on April 22.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
There were some tense moments with NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter last month when it went wonky during its sixth flight. But the plucky chopper survived the in-flight anomaly and set itself down safely, setting the stage for a seventh flight.
NASA announced on Friday that it was aiming for no earlier than Sunday, June 6, for the next flight. It takes time to get data and updates from Mars, so we're waiting to hear the details and whether or not Ingenuity took off over the weekend. "Regardless of flight date, data will be returned to Earth over the subsequent three days," the agency said.
While the tech glitch was concerning, the Perseverance rover was able to confirm that Ingenuity landed itself in a safe spot. The next journey will take the rotorcraft to a new location 350 feet (106 meters) away.
The seventh flight will mark the second time the helicopter will set down on a landing site it hasn't previously surveyed from the air. The Ingenuity team is using data from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter "that suggests this new base of operations is relatively flat and has few surface obstructions."
Ingenuity was designed as an experiment, a technology demonstration. It has proven that powered, controlled flight is possible on another planet and is now in a new phase of operations in which NASA is exploring how it can be used as a scout and assistant for the Perseverance rover.
Ingenuity is already considered a success, and each new flight is a bonus
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A SpaceX Dragon cargo ship arrived at the International Space Station today (June 5) to deliver new solar arrays along with tons of fresh research experiments and NASA supplies as part of the company's 22nd cargo resupply mission.
The uncrewed Dragon autonomously linked up with the orbiting laboratory at 5:09 a.m. EDT (0909 GMT), parking at the zenith, or space-facing, side of the station's Harmony module. Docking occurred approximately 40 hours after the Dragon's launch on a Falcon 9 rocket Thursday (June 3) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. At the time of docking, both spacecraft were sailing about 258 miles (415 kilometers) over the South Pacific Ocean.
"It was a great approach and was awesome watching it come on in, and we're glad it's here," NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough told flight controllers after docking. "Looking forward to all the science and other goodies that it brought up along with our EVA solar arrays. It's going to be a great few weeks as we get into Dragon and get things out."
The SpaceX CRS-22 Dragon cargo ship approaches the International Space Station on June 5, 2021 during docking operations to deliver more than 7,300 lbs. (3,311 kg) of supplies to the orbiting laboratory. (Image credit: NASA TV)
SpaceX's Dragon CRS-22 mission is the second upgraded supply ship to dock with the International Space Station (ISS) without the help of astronauts, who typically use the station's Canadarm2 robotic arm to grapple incoming cargo vessels and manually attach them to the station. However, two Expedition 65 crewmembers — Kimbrough and fellow NASA astronaut Megan McArthur — did monitor the docking from inside the station's Cupola observatory.
The arrival of this upgraded Dragon CRS-22 cargo spacecraft will bring the total number of SpaceX vehicles to two. A different Crew Dragon spacecraft, which brought four astronauts to the space station in April on the Crew-2 mission, is also currently docked at the Harmony module.
"Hard capture is complete and it's a great day seeing another Dragon on ISS [International Space Station]," spacecraft communicator Leslie Ringo radioed the station crew after docking from NASA's Mission Control in Houston.
The SpaceX CRS-22 Dragon cargo ship approaches the International Space Station on June 5, 2021 during docking operations to deliver more than 7,300 lbs. (3,311 kg) of supplies to the orbiting laboratory.
(Image credit: NASA TV)
The SpaceX CRS-22 Dragon cargo ship approaches the International Space Station on June 5, 2021 during docking operations to deliver more than 7,300 lbs. (3,311 kg) of supplies to the orbiting laboratory.
(Image credit: NASA TV)
The SpaceX CRS-22 Dragon cargo ship approaches the International Space Station on June 5, 2021 during docking operations to deliver more than 7,300 lbs. (3,311 kg) of supplies to the orbiting laboratory.
(Image credit: NASA TV)
This Cargo Dragon is SpaceX's second supply-toting vehicle to autonomously dock itself with the space station. That is a new feature thanks to some redesigns that SpaceX has made to its workhorse Dragon cargo spacecraft. The upgrades allow the vehicle to not only dock with the station (its predecessor was grappled by the station's robotic arm and berthed to the station with the help of astronauts on board) but also increased the craft's cargo capacity by about 20%, enabling more science.
This Dragon will be the second to splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean following a month-long stay attached to the ISS. This change allows researchers to receive their precious cargo shipments much faster than before.
On board the Dragon CRS-22 spacecraft is 7,300 lbs. (3,311 kilograms) of supplies and science investigations, including two brand new roll-out solar arrays that will help boost the space station's power supply. Built by RedWire and Boeing, the arrays are the first two in a set of six that will be installed on the station in the coming months.
Dubbed iROSA (ISS Roll-Out Solar Array), the first set of flexible solar panels will be installed this month as part of a series of spacewalks performed by Shane Kimbrough and Thomas Pesquet, on June 16 and 20. The design was first tested as part of a technology demonstration on a previous resupply mission.
In addition to the ISS, the solar arrays will be used on future missions, such as the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (or DART), which is set to launch on a SpaceX rocket later this year. It will also be used on NASA's planned Lunar Gateway, a part of the agency's Artemis moon program.
The Dragon CRS-22 mission marks the second cargo mission the company has flown under its second Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA, called CRS-2.
SpaceX signed its first such contract with NASA in 2008, originally agreeing to launch 12 cargo missions to the space station between 2012 and 2016. NASA extended that contract to include a total of 20 Dragon cargo flights, for a total cost of about $700 million in 2015. (Northrop Grumman, formerly known as Orbital ATK, also received a contract to fly NASA cargo on its Cygnus cargo spacecraft.)
According to Montalbano, the cargo Dragon will remain docked with the space station until July. Once Cargo Dragon departs, the Crew Dragon currently docked with the station will switch parking spots, opening up a port on the ISS for an uncrewed Boeing Starliner spacecraft, which is scheduled to launch on its OFT-2 test flight to the station on July 30.
Follow Amy Thompson on Twitter @astrogingersnap. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
No probe has gotten a good view of Jupiter's largest moon since 2000, when NASA's Galileo spacecraft swung past the strange world, which is the largest moon in the whole solar system. But on Monday (June 7), at 1:35 p.m. EDT (1735 GMT), NASA's Juno spacecraft will skim just 645 miles (1,038 kilometers) above Ganymede's surface, gathering a host of observations as it does so.
"Juno carries a suite of sensitive instruments capable of seeing Ganymede in ways never before possible," principal investigator Scott Bolton, a space scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, said in a NASA statement. "By flying so close, we will bring the exploration of Ganymede into the 21st century."
Ganymede is a fascinating world for scientists. Despite its status as a moon, it's larger than the tiny planet Mercury and is the only moon to sport a magnetic field, a bubble of charged particles dubbed a magnetosphere. Until now, the only spacecraft to get a good look at Ganymede were NASA's twin Voyager probes in 1979 and the Galileo spacecraft, which flew past the moon in 2000.
The massive Jovian moon will be a main target of the European Space Agency's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer mission, known as JUICE, which is due to launch next year and arrive in the Jupiter system in 2029. But that's a long time to wait, and Juno, which launched in 2011, carries significantly more powerful technology than the Voyagers and Galileo spacecraft did.
So scientists are thrilled to make use of the Juno opportunity. During the flyby, several of the spacecraft's instruments will observe Ganymede, including three different cameras, radio instruments, the Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS), the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instruments and the Microwave Radiometer (MWR).
That last instrument's measurements are particularly intriguing for scientists, who hope to use them to identify the different ingredients in the lighter and darker patches of Ganymede's ice shell.
And among the cameras studying the moon will be, of course, the same JunoCam that has snapped such stunning portraits of the gas giant throughout the mission. However, because the icy moon will appear and fade in just 25 minutes, mission scientists expect the instrument will be able to take only five images of Ganymede during the encounter.
But despite the excitement of the unusual moon flyby, Juno scientists can't lose sight of a milestone coming close on the heels of the Ganymede investigation, when the spacecraft makes another flyby of its usual target, Jupiter itself.
"Literally every second counts," Matt Johnson, Juno mission manager at JPL, said in the same statement. "On Monday, we are going to race past Ganymede at almost 12 miles per second (19 kilometers per second). Less than 24 hours later, we're performing our 33rd science pass of Jupiter — screaming low over the cloud tops, at about 36 miles per second (58 kilometers per second).
That means Juno will zoom by Ganymede at a speed of about 43,200 mph (69,523 kph) and then whip around Jupiter at a whopping 129,600 mph (208,571 kph). But Juno's ready for it, Johnson said.
"It is going to be a wild ride."
Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow uson Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
Photos and videos show alleged objects and living things on Mars
Photos and videos show alleged objects and living things on Mars
UFO hunters have found everything from ‘lizards’ to ‘bears’ by combining images of Mars taken by rovers like Perseverance.
It may be touted as humanity’s main cosmic destination but, if UFO hunters are to be believed, Mars is already home to a vast collection of animals.
Some theorists have found everything from ‘crabs’ and ‘lizards’ to ‘bears’ and ‘rabbits’ by combining images of the red planet taken by rovers like Curiosity.
Of course, most experts believe that they are simply rocks of interesting shapes and it is a clever trick of the mind that makes us think that we are seeing creatures.
Last year, several UFO hunters saw a “baby bear” on Mars and claimed that it would be alive, based on its “hair” and the shadows that were seen around its body.
It was identified by YouTube user “Paranormal Crucible” among photos of Gale crater taken by NASA’s Curiosity rover, who alerted the UFO Sightings Daily website.
Site editor Scott C Waring said: “There is a reason NASA puts the photos in black and white. To hide living beings and plants that are of an obvious color ”.
“This creature has real hair as seen from the shadows around its body. That means it is not a statue, but a living creature. “
“Paranormal Crucible” called his find a ‘possible hybrid rodent’ rather than a bear and exaggerated certain characteristics, including a tail, in his video.
He wrote: “The anomaly that was photographed near the gale crater appears to show a small mammal-like creature, possibly a hybrid species of gundi or prairie dog.”
Months earlier, another blogger claimed to have seen “a lizard roaming Mars.”
The claim, published again in UFO Sightings Daily, made some theorists fearful that NASA could be planting life on the planet for scientific testing.
“With the existing water on Mars in small amounts, it is possible to find desert animals roaming around … although it is very rare,” Waring wrote on his site.
While all of these ‘animals’ may be living on Mars according to UFO hunters, scientists have explained that their presence is a trick of the mind called pareidolia.
Seth Shostak , director of the Center for Seti Research, said it is the psychological response to seeing faces and other important, everyday items in a random stimulus.
It is a form of apophenia, which is when people see patterns or connections in random, unconnected data.
Human eyes can detect faces within their environment and help them to recognize friends in a crowd, calculate how fast a car is traveling, and see patterns.
Scientists claim that we also tend to use this ability to ‘enrich our imaginations’ and recognize meaningful shapes, even when they are not there.
“Those who send me [images] are generally quite excited, as they claim that they often look like something you wouldn’t expect to find on the rusty and dusty surface of the red planet,” Shostak said.
On the evening of November 17th of 1986, Japan Airlines flight 1628, a Boeing 747-200F cargo aircraft, was en route from Paris to a layover in Anchorage, Alaska on its way to Tokyo. The three-person crew was led by pilot Kenju Terauchi, who would go on to report a seemingly inexplicable encounter in the skies over northern Alaska as they approached the airport in Anchorage.
The story told by Captain Terauchi, potentially corroborated by his First Officer, Takanori Tamefuji, and his flight engineer, Yoshie Tsukuba, would go on to become the stuff of legends. On account of this, anyone with even a moderate interest in the UFO/UAP topic has likely heard of the incident, which became one of the more hotly debated reports of an encounter with unexplained craft in our skies by a commercial airline pilot. The incident has been featured in multiple television programs and docuseries, and touted as one of the most compelling UFO reports in modern history. In addition to the eye-witness testimony given by all three crew members when they were interviewed during the investigation that followed, the FAA eventually provided radar data from the event and transcripts of radio tower chatter with the plane.
Questions about the event quickly arose, however, leading some to wonder if Captain Terauchi had truly witnessed anything extraordinary at all. Unfortunately, much of the FAA information seemed to go missing as the years went by, though various bits and pieces could still be found online. The debunking of UFO reports was already a thriving industry by the mid-80s, and the Japan Airlines flight 1628 incident was subjected to the same skeptical inquiries as all the rest.
However, this month FOIA government records archivist John Greenewald, proprietor of The Black Vault, completed a 17-year quest to acquire the full package of FAA records from that investigation, much of which had purportedly been destroyed. Following an update he published this week, The Debrief pored over this trove of documents to see if any more definitive answers regarding this long-standing case might be uncovered.
WHAT WAS IT THE PILOT CLAIMED TO HAVE SEEN?
You can read much lengthier recountings of the tale online, but we’ll provide the thumbnail version of the story here to get our readers started. On the evening in question, while approaching Anchorage, the crew of JAL1628 (primarily Terauchi) reported seeing two brightly illuminated objects off to the left of their aircraft. After initially ignoring them, assuming it was just random commercial or military traffic in the area, the objects reportedly moved closer to the cargo jet and began pacing alongside it.
At that point, Terauchi radioed the control tower in Anchorage to ask if there was any other traffic in the area. He was told there was not, but the tower did tell the captain that they were picking up other craft in his vicinity, though only intermittently. The pilot was granted permission to undertake a series of course and altitude changes to avoid a possible collision, but the objects continued to track the jet. At their closest approach, Captain Terauchi reported that the plane’s cabin was lit up brightly and the crew could feel heat emanating from them.
The two objects eventually departed, but they were then replaced by a much larger craft that Terauchi would later describe as a “mother ship” trailing behind them. That “chase” continued until shortly before Japan Airlines 1628 was approaching the airfield at Anchorage. The flight then landed safely and without incident.
ISSUES SOON AROSE OVER THE CREW’S REPORTS
Reading through all of the FAA documents, numerous details pop up, some of which appear to support the accounts of the crew members while others provide fuel for skeptics of their accounts. The FAA is traditionally very guarded about discussing anomalous sightings, but they conducted what appears to be a very thorough investigation in this case. Of potential interest is the fact that the government retained and highlighted an article published by Philip J. Klass in the magazine Special Reports in the summer of the following year.
Klass was well known as a skeptic of UFO encounter accounts and studied all of the data seeking mundane explanations as to what had actually happened. True to form, he cited numerous issues with the information that had been supplied and developed alternate explanations for some of the accounts of the crew as well as the data collected by the control tower.
The final determination that Klass reached was that the first two brightly lit objects seen by the crew were most likely bright stars peeking through the sporadic cloud cover and the “mother ship” behind the flight was probably the planet Jupiter. The public affairs officer for the FAA in Alaska seemed more than content to accept Klass’ analysis. He went on record saying that his agency “does not have the resources or the Congressional mandate to investigate sightings of unidentified flying objects.”
CONFUSION ARISES IN INTERVIEWS WITH THE JAPAN AIRLINES 1628 CREW
Some of the initial problems in the fine details of the investigation come with the transcripts of the interviews done with the crew. For example, the interview with Captain Terauchi conducted by Richard Gordon, the manager of the regional Flight Standards District Office, seems fairly coherent. But despite having an interpreter present, the interview appears to have been conducted in English and the Captain’s command of the language seems limited at best. He describes the various lights he saw and the events he remembers, but much of it is garbled. He also describes attempting to take a picture of the objects with his camera.
But the interviewer spends a lot of time asking him about previous UFO sightings he had reported. This was something Klass picked up on, describing Terauchi as a “UFO repeater” because he’d had two previous sightings. Klass describes this as a red flag, implying that, as a believer, Terauchi may have simply seen what he wanted to see. Of course, others might argue that Terauchi was a repeat experiencer and more likely to have such encounters. The captain later provided an extensive set of notes about his experience where he waxed poetic on the subject of UFOs.
Other problems arise with the interviews done with the other two crew members. The interview with First Officer Takanori Tamefuji was similarly done in English despite the presence of an interpreter. Much of it is barely understandable, but he does explain that he couldn’t see much of what was going on to the left of the plane because of his position on the right side of the cockpit. When the objects were directly ahead of the plane he describes them as being “only lights” and he couldn’t say they were distinguishable from stars.
The interview with flight engineer Yoshie Tsukuba is far more concise. The first question from Tsukuba is “may I speak Japanese?” The interpreter handles it from that point on and the record is presented in a quite clear and coherent fashion. He seems to lend at least some credence to the captain’s account, describing two types of “lights” that were not “town lights.” But he also could not make out any sort of craft or structure. They were just lights. That’s quite different from the captain’s descriptions.
THE HARD DATA PAINTS MORE OF THE PICTURE
Perhaps the best piece of data in this collection is the transcription of the radio traffic taking place during the entire event. It covers a period of more than half an hour, starting when Captain Terauchi first reports the unexpected “traffic” in his vicinity and lasting until the plane lands in Anchorage. It includes input from JAL1628, two air traffic controllers in the tower, the local military Regional Operations Command Center ROCC), and two other aircraft that were eventually pulled into the action.
There are several key moments in the transcript that can offer us more insight into what was taking place. At 02:25 (all times UTC) air traffic control tells Japan Airlines 1628 that they have picked up a radar hit five miles behind them and asks if they concur. The captain rejects that, saying the target is nearly straight in front of them. ROCC is asked if they have anything on radar and they say they’re getting some “surge” around the airliner but suspect it might be erroneous. Air traffic control counters that it’s not erroneous and that they are seeing two targets, but shortly after that they indicate that they’ve lost the radar track also. Another air traffic control station in Fairbanks also reports seeing nothing on radar except for the Japan Airlines flight.
This is an important clue because it takes us to the stored radar data provided by the FAA. After the returns were analyzed, the FAA concluded that what the control tower was seeing (and none of the other radar systems saw) was most likely an “uncorrelated primary and beacon target.” This is similar to a phenomenon seen with surface radar systems on naval vessels known as ghost returns. They represent an instance where the radar system’s receiver is “listening” and picks up a signal at an incorrect moment in the reception cycle, making it appear that an actual object is in a different position than it really occupies. Klass picked up on that explanation as well.
Artist’s impression of the large craft which approached Terauchi and his copilot during their flight over Alaska in 1986 (Wikimedia Commons/CC 4.0).
At 02:40, despite nobody else identifying another craft in the area, the tower asks the captain if he would like ROCC to scramble a jet to come look for the other craft. Captain Terauchi immediately responds by saying “negative, negative.” In his notes, Terauchi claims that he “recalled stories” about military planes being deployed to investigate UFOs and flying into danger, so he didn’t want to put them in that sort of a position. Later in the transcript, a United Airlines commercial cargo jet and a military C-130 are both diverted into visual range of Japan Airlines 1628 and report seeing nothing but the Japan Airlines flight in the sky.
CONCLUSION: WAS ANY OF THIS REAL?
This story has been covered so many times on “unexplained” television series and by ufology bloggers that many in ufology circles seem to take it as gospel. And the descriptions of some of these events that they rely on to make the case certainly do lend it the patina of truth. But when you poke too far into the gritty details, some of the flaws in the story become somewhat glaring.
We should not discount Captain Terauchi out of hand simply for having reported multiple incidents or being “a believer.” Many experiencers report multiple sightings. But with that said, other details found in this data should give us pause. Neither of the two crew members confirmed seeing anything except “lights” while the captain described an object with “nozzles.” The crews of two other aircraft saw nothing at all.
Out of four separate radar systems, two produced no returns, one had a momentary glitch that seemed erroneous, and the last one acquired a target briefly (if it wasn’t also a glitch) that simply disappeared. Some may argue that the technology observed in UAP is so advanced it can likely evade radar, and that’s a reasonable point. But if so, wouldn’t it evade all radar rather than just some of them?
Without seeming to throw cold water on anyone’s parade, a detailed examination of this FAA package leaves multiple holes in the story that, at a minimum, should leave us room to acknowledge the arguments being made by skeptics. What the tale of Japan Airlines 1628 boils down to is the eyewitness testimony of a single witness. Multiple other trained observers either saw nothing or reported “lights” that could have been stars or planets. And the type of technical data we all crave as supporting evidence, such as has been offered in some of the Navy encounters we’ve discussed here, is simply not in evidence. The reader is left to decide for themself, but on further analysis, this widely-popularized UFO incident doesn’t appear as strong as popular media would have us believe when subjected to close scrutiny.
Follow and connect with author Jazz Shaw on Twitter:@JazzShaw
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Scythians and other warring cultures and the archaeological remnants of their history are under attack by developers in Ukraine looking to construct new luxury country homes. There are two roadblocks in their quest for unrestricted profiteering. The first comes in the form of 4,000-5,500-year-old burial mounds, almost 100,000 in number and scattered across the countryside, which are only protected by a very thin topsoil.
The stone circle discovered within the Ukrainian burial mound.
“It has a very thin topsoil, literally 10 cm. This is very little and it is causing it to swell, deteriorate, etc. This is why it was decided to investigate it", says Dmitry Teslenko, head of the Dnieper archaeological expedition of the Ukrainian Archaeological Guard Service.
A unique Ukrainian burial mound found during roadwork in the village of Novooleksandrivka.
The second roadblock to the construction project is the nongovernmental preservation group Guardians of the Mounds , founded in 2019 under the aegis of Oleksandr Klykavka, which has become a national movement over the last 20 months. In the village of Novooleksandrivka, 10 kilometers (6.21 miles) south of the town of Dnipro in east-central Ukraine, “excavations of a unique kurgan or burial mound have been underway for more than 1.5 months” reports Archaeology News Network .
These are burial mounds that have attracted grave robbers and archaeologists in equal measure, with a variety of artifacts - which includes combs and dishes, but also heaps of golden jewelry, according to NY Times . The dimensions of the unique kurgan are astounding, 120 x 80 m (393.70 x 262.47 ft.) and 7 m (22.97 ft.) in height! Proper road clearance and construction equipment had to be employed to conduct a field survey of this unimaginable scale, including bulldozers. The excavations have revealed 24 burials from the Bronze Age, Scythians (Iron age), and the Middle Ages.
"Because of their nomadic nature, the people carried only the bare necessities. However, sometimes interesting finds are found: pots, necklaces made of wolf or dog canines. For example, a burial has now been discovered where dog toe bones were lying next to human remains. A triple grave has also been found where the skeleton of a man lay in the middle and the skeletons of a woman and child were pressed against him on each side.", says Teslenko.
"The central part is being explored now. There is a lot of manual work. We also use machinery. But I would like to point out that all the machinery works solely under the supervision of archaeologists. The bulldozer removes several centimetres of the soil layer and if we see that something is wrong, the work stops," says field archaeologist Yaroslav Yaroshenko.
Several historians postulate that the mounds served a purpose that exceeded simple religious rites. Noblemen were sent into the after-life with the luxuries and status they enjoyed when alive, along with “ sacrificed wives, servants and horses ”.
There are other interpretations of the mounds too, keeping in mind the topography of the Ukrainian countryside and land, and the ever-looming threat of Russian invasion. The mounds were perhaps erected as a show of strength and defiance against the enemy , most definitely the Russians, to deter their advance into land that was not theirs.
The Cromlech – A Ukrainian Stonehenge?
The mound was dated to 5,500 years ago, coinciding with the Eneolithic period (the transitional period between the Neolithic and Bronze Age, 2500-2000 BC). In the middle of the mound, the “Dnipro Stonehenge” was found – a series of stone blocks (like megaliths) forming an 18 m (59.06 ft.) diameter circle, called a “cromlech”. According to the archaeologist :
"As for the stone circle, it is worth noting that it had a purely structural function above all. The cromlech is an integral part of a massive complex structure. The structure consisted of a stone circle set vertically. There was a truncated cone on top of the circle. This allowed the ground to be supported and prevented the mound from sprawling outwards. The mounds could then be given other symbolic meanings. For example, one of the most famous cromlechs in the world, Stonehenge, has at various times been interpreted as a druid sanctuary or an astronomical observatory. It is also worth noting that the oldest burials on the Novoalexandrovsky burial mound date to about 3,500 BC. This potentially suggests that the cromlech near the Dnieper is older than Stonehenge."
The stone circle discovered within the Ukrainian burial mound.
The Challenge of Ukrainian Burial Mounds and Accurate Historical Reconstruction
Ukraine is coming to terms with its illustrated past, even while the Russian threat is constantly on the horizon. In this midst, a development of fascinating scientific techniques is turning up a lot of answers about ancient Ukrainian history, including DNA taken from the people within the mounds. It is imperative to preserve this history by studying it first, instead of destroying it for housing.
As it is, these mounds have been repeatedly robbed and stripped bare of their valuables, making the reconstruction of the past even more difficult. These mounds have also been reused, with new bodies being dumped in older structures to cut labor costs and effort, whilst enjoying the splendor of royal burials.
For example, one of the Dnipro mounds “dates to a pre-historic Indo-Iranian culture ”, but contains a coffin from around the 4th century BC. Another addition to this mound is a coffin emblazoned with a red star, probably a local Communist Party leader. A Scythian mound also witnessed a mass burial of deceased World War II soldiers, with the Soviet government building a monument on top.
"The mound's exploration has not yet been completed. The best is yet to come", says Teslenko. "In about a week, we will completely clear the cromlech and the space inside it, allowing the ancient structure to be seen in virtually pristine condition. It's estimated that in just ten days we will reach the most ancient burials inside the stone ring, if the weather permits", Teslenko adds. "Certainly it is a foregone conclusion that the individual buried and protected by the cromlech was highly respected by this society. This is the only way to explain the monumental character of the construction."
Top Image: Excavations of a unique Ukrainian burial mound found during roadwork in the village of Novooleksandrivka.
Anomalous Metallic Object Discovered Inside a 4.5 Billion-Year-Old Meteorite
Anomalous Metallic Object Discovered Inside a 4.5 Billion-Year-Old Meteorite
As meteorite dealers, my wife Linda and I have continued supplying meteorites and importing new stock throughout lockdown. On Friday, April 17th 2020, I received a parcel of meteorites I had ordered from a dependable regular source. These were twenty examples of a very well-known and popular common chondrite known as NWA 869. One of them was different and appeared to contain a metallic object inside.
For over twenty years we have been the owners of the UK’s only full-time meteorite dealership, Spacerocks UK. We both have university qualifications in astronomy and have lectured widely at many of the country’s most auspicious institutions. At any one moment we have several thousand meteorites of all types in our inventory. We are therefore completely familiar with their appearance.
The Very Ancient Origins of Meteorites
At this point, it’s worth giving a brief explanation about what meteorites are and where they come from. The solar system (the Sun, planets, asteroids and comets) condensed from a cloud of dust and gas known as the solar nebula around five billion years ago. The first solid objects were millimetric spheres called chondrules. These joined together over a few million years to form increasingly large chunks. Eventually, by collision, these accreted to form planetissimals and finally, around 4.5 billion years ago, the eight large planets and other, smaller bodies that make up the solar system.
Meteors, or shooting stars, are caused when fragments heat up as they enter the Earth’s atmosphere. If they survive to reach the Earth’s surface, they are known as meteorites.
The vast gaps between the orbits of the eight major planets are full of debris left over from these early days. Additionally, a region between Mars and Jupiter holds many thousands of smaller planetary objects known as asteroids. These occasionally collide (more so in the past), launching further rocky and metallic debris into the solar system .
If one of these fragments collides with the Earth on its passage around the Sun, it will heat up to over 6,000 degrees Celsius because of friction with the atmosphere. This is the cause of the familiar shooting stars, or meteors, we may see at night. If a chunk is large enough, it may survive and reach the surface of the Earth. This residual object is known as a meteorite.
Explaining the Types of Meteorite
There are, broadly speaking, three types of meteorite:
1) Chondrites: fragments of the original ancient stones that remain from the beginnings of the solar system. These often contain chondrules, the small spheres mentioned earlier. Chondrites are all around 4.5 billion years old.
2) Achondrites:stony material blasted off the surface of a planet, asteroid or satellite by the impact of another object. Achondrite meteorites have been proven to have originated on many bodies, including Mars, the Moon and asteroids such as Vesta.
3) Irons and stony irons are fragments of the cores of fully-formed small planets that were disrupted during collisions billions of years ago. As the first planets grew in size, heavy elements such as nickel and iron sank to their centers to form metallic cores, like that of the Earth.
Generally speaking, meteorites are named after the place where they fell or were found. That’s why the iron meteorite that made the Arizona Meteor Crater is called Canyon Diablo and that which exploded over Russia in 1947 is known as Sikhote-Alin.
A 1.7kg individual meteorite from the Sikhote Alin meteorite shower (coasrsest octahedrite, class IIAB). This specimen is about 12cm wide. Sikhote Alin meteorite shower fell on 1947 February 12 in the dense forest of eastern Siberia, and over 23 tons of meteoritic material has been recovered.
The meteorite we are discussing here, NWA 869, comes from a large strewn field which was the 869 th such to be discovered in North West Africa: hence its name. Why 869 is so prized by collectors is that most of meteorites from this field are small, complete examples, rather than fragments of larger bodies that exploded as they passed through the atmosphere (see photos).
The majority have an attractive blue-grey fusion crust (melted surfaced) and their shape reflects their attitude as they streaked downwards. This is known as ‘orientation’: a bit like the way spacecraft enter the atmosphere heat-shield first. OK, that’s the technical stuff out of the way!
This NWA 869 meteorite was like nothing the writer had seen before.
(Author supplied)
When I was processing the parcel of newly-arrived 869s, I suddenly noticed a metallic glint from one of them. This isn’t unusual: all chondrites contain nickel-iron and some (see photo) display quite obvious metallic flecks. This was different. In this case, the shiny region could be seen to be a small cylindrical feature around 6 mm (0.2 in) in diameter.
This metallic area was protruding at an angle from a region of glassy fusion crust, which, in places, could be seen to flow away from the object. Another interesting feature is that the cylinder had a small impact crater on its surface, something not uncommonly seen on iron meteorites or, indeed, spacecraft on their return from orbit.
The meteorite and its strange inclusion have been examined both microscopically and spectroscopically by a contact at the University of East Anglia. The preliminary results indicate that the silver cylinder is not composed of any of the usual accessory minerals found in meteorites. Further examination is scheduled.
Spectrograph results for the NWA 869 meteorite.
(Author supplied)
I have no doubt at all that the object embedded in the NWA 869 meteorite was in place as the stone entered the Earth’s atmosphere some time in the past. Since the meteorite itself was formed several hundred millions of years before the planets, it begs the questions: who made it, and where did it originate before becoming part of the solar nebula? A very real possibility might be that the cylinder originated on a planet orbiting a Population 2 star that exploded as a nova several billion years before our solar system formed.
Could this object have been manufactured by beings from an ancient planet?
(Author supplied)
What Could This Discovery Mean?
The oldest stars in the universe are, counterintuitively, called Population 3 stars. The “nuclear furnaces” at the heart of these were the origin of some of the elements “heavier” than hydrogen. As these ancient stars ran out of hydrogen, the larger ones would have shrunk, then exploded, releasing gas, dust and some of these heavier elements into the universe. It was this material that condensed to form Population 2 stars ten to fifteen billion years ago. The larger examples of these also underwent cataclysmic supernovae, generating regions of star formation where Population 1 stars like our Sun – and their associated planets – condensed.
It is now known that planets are very common. So far astronomers have discovered over 4,000! It is probably the case that most Pop 1 stars have planetary systems. Since the oldest of these stars were formed ten billion years ago – twice as long ago as the Sun – it would seem highly likely that life and ultimately civilizations evolved upon those in suitable locations.
Any that ended their lives as supernovae will have scattered all kinds of stellar, planetary and – possibly – archaeological debris into its galaxy. Either we are alone – unique – in the cosmos, or life occurs wherever there is the slightest possibility of it: in which case, we should expect to find alien artifacts within ancient meteorites.
You can find out more about the world of Meteoritics in David’s book, Spacerocks, available from Amazon.
Top image: The author discovered what appears to be a metallic object inside a 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite, one of a parcel sourced from NWA 869 in North West Africa. Source: David Bryant / Spacerocks
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Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
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