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.
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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.
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Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
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BEDANKT!!!
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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...
16-06-2021
Navy Pilot Who Filmed the ‘Tic Tac’ UFO Speaks: ‘It Wasn’t Behaving by the Normal Laws of Physics’
Photo: Chad Underwood
Navy Pilot Who Filmed the ‘Tic Tac’ UFO Speaks: ‘It Wasn’t Behaving by the Normal Laws of Physics’
In the 15 years since Chad Underwood recorded a bizarre and erratic UFO— now called “the Tic Tac,” a name Underwood himself came up with — from the infrared camera on the left wing of his F/A-18 Super Hornet, he’s become a flight instructor, a civilian employee in the aerospace industry, and a father. But he has not yet spoken publicly about what he saw that day, even now, two years afterhis video made the front page of the New York Times. As he explained before speaking with Intelligencer, Underwood has mostly wanted to avoid having his name “attached to the ‘little green men’ crazies that are out there.”
The story of the Tic Tac begins around November 10, 2004, when radar operator Kevin Day first reported seeing odd and slow-moving objects flying in groups of five to ten off of San Clemente Island, west of the San Diego coast. At an elevation of 28,000 feet, moving at a speed of approximately 120 knots (about 138 miles per hour), the clusters were too high to be birds, too slow to be conventional aircraft, and were not traveling on any established flight path, at least according to Day.
In a military report made public by KLAS-TV in Las Vegas, another crew member with 17 years of experience on similar cruisers would later observe that the objects “exhibited ballistic-missile characteristics” as they zoomed from 60,000 feet to 50 feet above the Pacific Ocean, alarmingly without producing sonic booms. All told, radar operators with the Princeton spent about two weeks attempting to figure out what the objects were, a process that included having the ship’s radar system shut down and recalibrated to make sure that the mysterious radar returns were not not false positives, or “ghost tracks.”
Eventually, David Fravor, commanding officer of the Black Aces, made visual confirmation of one of the objects midair during a flight-training exercise. An hour later, Underwood made his infrared recording on a second flight. “That day,” Underwood recalls, “Dave Fravor was like, ‘Hey, dude. BOLO.’ Like, be on the lookout for just something weird. I can’t remember the exact terms that he used. I didn’t really think much about it at the time. But once I was able to acquire it on the radar and on the FLIR [forward-looking infrared camera], that’s kind of where things — I wouldn’t say ‘went sideways’ — but things were just different.”
Photo: Department of Defense/Department of Defense
The footage appears to depict what Fravor had identified as a 40-foot-long, white, oblong shape (hence “Tic Tac”), hovering somewhere between 15,000 and 24,000 feet in midair and exhibiting no notable exhaust from conventional propulsion sources, even as it makes a surprising dart leftward in the video’s final moments. Of the three UFO incidents captured by U.S. Navy airmen via infrared gun-camera pods, Underwood’s footage remains unique for its lack of cross talk between the pilots — a fact that has led to some speculation about its authenticity. But “there wasn’t anything on it that was protected,” Underwood’s retired former commanding officer Dave Fravor told Intelligencer. The missing audio, he says, “just didn’t make the copy that was taken from the storage drive.”
A former fighter pilot who served on the Nimitz in 2004, who spoke to Intelligencer on condition of anonymity, recalled an exhilarating group screening of the FLIR1 video inside the Nimitz’s Carrier Vehicle Intelligence Center (CVIC): “Debriefs were usually pro forma in the CVIC, but this one in particular was so odd,” the former pilot said. “There weren’t really a lot of skeptics in that room.” Years later, Fravor told ABC News that he didn’t know what the Tic Tac was, but that “it was really impressive, really fast, and I would like to fly it.” In the CVIC that day, the anonymous pilot told Intelligencer, “We all had that. We all wanted to fly it.”
Of the many people to have spotted or recorded the objects, a handful, like Fravor or Princeton’s (retired) Chief Master-at-Arms Sean Cahill, who reported seeing what appeared to be another grouping of the objects from the missile cruiser’s deck, have spoken to journalists or documentarians. Others have not: Lieutenant Colonel “Cheeks” Kurth, a Marine Hornet squadron commanding officer who was also asked to intercept the Tic Tac, still has not done an on-the-record interview. (Three years after the sighting, however, Kurth did take a job as a program manager at Bigelow Advanced Aerospace Space Studies in Las Vegas, whose owner Robert Bigelow has been a well-known private funder of UFO and paranormal research for decades. It was during this same period that Bigelow became a military contractor working on the Pentagon’s once-secret UFO investigation program, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.)
Underwood now joins Fravor, Cahill, and others, in speaking about his experience with the Tic Tac. This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
What did you think of Dave Fravor’s appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience?
I’m glad Dave went on Joe’s show. He nailed every detail. At the time of the incident, he was essentially my boss, my commanding officer. I was just a pilot in his squadron. Are you familiar at all with how aircraft-carrier air operations work?
Probably not.
So, usually, we fly for about an hour, hour and a half, and then land. Then there’s the next wave of folks that take off and do their mission, blah, blah, blah. That day, Dave Fravor was landing at the same time I was getting my gear on, and we crossed paths just after he’d seen it. I really don’t want to get into what Dave saw, specificallyTo summarize Fravor’s eyewitness account to the New York Times, the pilot reported seeing a large submerged object that was causing the ocean to churn. Hovering about 50 feet above that churn, the 40-foot Tic Tac zipped erratically around the submerged object. Fravor observed the Tic Tac as he banked his F/A-18 in a spiral descent to get a closer look. As he told the Times, the Tic Tac “accelerated like nothing I’ve ever seen” and left him “pretty weirded out.”, because I didn’t see it with my own eyeballs. But I told him, “The Princeton” — again, which has got a really good sophisticated radar — “is reporting that there’s an object out there that they wanted us to see if we could find and, if we’re able, track.”
So, we go out to where our designated training area is. We’re not necessarily looking for something, but the Princeton had a specific object that they wanted us to hunt, for lack of a better word. And all of a sudden, I got this blip on my radar.
The “Tic Tac.”
The term “Tic Tac,” I actually coined that. So, any time you heard the term, “It looked like a ‘Tic Tac’ out there in the sky,” I was the one that kind of coined that.
Was that named based on what you saw with your own eyes, or from looking at the screen on the camera?
No. I was more concentrated on looking at the FLIRAdvanced Targeting Forward Looking Infrared (ATFLIR) is an optical electric- and thermal-imaging system that was developed for U.S. Navy pilots by Raytheon in the late 1990s, mainly for the detection and identification of tactical targets and the delivery of autonomous precision targeting to smart weapons. In the mid-2000s, as well as today, ATFLIR was capable of detecting and tracking targets within a range of 40 nautical miles.. It was inside of 20 miles. You’re not going to see it with your own eyes until probably 10 miles, and then you’re not going to be able to visually track it until you’re probably inside of five miles, which is where Dave Fravor said that he saw it. So, at that point I didn’t see anything with my eyeballs. I was more concerned with tracking it, making sure that the videotape was on so that I could bring something back to the ship, so that the intel folks could dissect whatever it is that I captured.
The thing that stood out to me the most was how erratic it was behaving. And what I mean by “erratic” is that its changes in altitude, air speed, and aspect were just unlike things that I’ve ever encountered before flying against other air targets. It was just behaving in ways that aren’t physically normal. That’s what caught my eye. Because, aircraft, whether they’re manned or unmanned, still have to obey the laws of physics. They have to have some source of lift, some source of propulsion. The Tic Tac was not doing that. It was going from like 50,000 feet to, you know, a hundred feet in like seconds, which is not possible.
And it was doing that during your engagement too?
Yes. That was the thing that was the most interesting to me: how erratic this thing wasJim Gillingham, an engineering consultant who worked on ATFLIR for Raytheon, suggested in an interview with Intelligencer that “if there were several things in the sky to look at, but none were quite where the pilot was trying to look,” it might produce erratic results, a glitch he’d experienced using the ATFLIR to track planes from the ground during development testing. “We ran into this when trying to get a lock and there were two aircraft climbing out. (LAX has four parallel runways). Sometimes the image would switch back and forth vigorously until we took steps to bias the lock some way.”. If it was obeying physics like a normal object that you would encounter in the sky — an aircraft, or a cruise missile, or some sort of special project that the government didn’t tell you about — that would have made more sense to me. The part that drew our attention was how it wasn’t behaving within the normal laws of physics. You’re up there flying, like, “Okay. It’s not behaving in a manner that’s predictable or is normal by how flying objects physically move.”
From looking at the video at the time and more recently, do you get a sense as to how much heat this thing was giving off?
Well, normally, you would see engines emitting a heat plume. This object was not doing that. The video shows a source of heat, but the normal signatures of an exhaust plume were not there. There was no sign of propulsion. You could not see the thing that the ATFLIR pod should pick up 100 percent of the time: the source of heat and exhaust that a normal object flying would give youFormer Navy F/A-18 fighter pilot Vincent “Jell-O” Aiello expressed a similar reaction to the object in the FLIR1 video during a telephone interview. “Where it looks different to me is that it has no wings like an aircraft, and there’s no perceptible heat signature from the engines or from intakes like an aircraft,” he said. “If you’re close enough to an actual aircraft and you’re tracking it, you can see heat spots at different places either leading edges of wings, where it’s hotter because of friction, or exhaust ports from where bleed air comes out, and, of course, the actual exhaust of the engines themselves.”. Does that make sense?
Yeah, it does.
Like, no method of propulsion or exhaust — and the exhaust part of it was the thing that kind of made me raise my eyebrows and be like, “Okay, this is interesting.”
Were you approaching the Tic Tac head-on? Some people have suggestedThe main source for this theory is a longtime contributor to the Skeptical Inquirer, retired Air Force Major James McGaha, whose primary flight experience, per his bio with the skeptic’s group, is with large C-130 military transport aircraft. Not fighter jets, in other words, nor their instruments. that the Tic Tac’s rapid leftward movement toward the end of the video was actually the result of your F/A-18 banking to the right and dragging the camera along with it.
We were pointed nose-on to it. Maybe 10 to 20 degrees of azimuthAzimuth is a horizontal angular measurement between a fixed direction, which in this flight navigation case is straight-ahead of the aircraft, and an object or location. In aviation, azimuth is paired with a vertical angular measurement called altitude, which should not be confused with the more common use of the word as a synonym for elevation., either left or right.
Ergo, when the object kind of darts away to the left—
I was not aggressively maneuvering the aircraft in the manner that would make the FLIR pod would do thatUnderwood’s recollections on this were corroborated by Steven T. Cummings, a former technical director for Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems who worked on ATFLIR in its R&D phase and reviewed the FLIR1 video for this story. That said, Cummings made a point of adding that he will remain skeptical about most of the Nimitz UFO witness’ accounts until the military releases more electronic data from the incident.. But look: At that point, I did not actually see the object aggressively accelerate to the left, as the video shows, to actually prove that.
Because you were at a distance where you couldn’t make visual contact with your own eyes—
Right.
And so what’s happening in the video is a little ambiguous as a result.
Right. Yeah. And that part kind of sucks, because I can’t confirm that the object aggressively accelerated that way. But I have my feelings, based off of my experience with my equipment — and also just logic, when it comes to, you know, physics.
I want to ask you some questions based on theories that America’s armchair skeptics have put forward — like whether it was birds, or whether it was some sort of thermal weather event. I mean, I’m sure you have had enough flight time that you’ve seen birds.
Yup. Birds normally fly close to the surface of the ground. So, for example, you’re not going to see birds flying at 5,000 feet. You’re going to see them more down at like 2,000 feet and below, like down to the surface. That’s just kind of how birds normally operate. And they’re typically not alone. So you can you can physically see them, in a flock or whatever. You don’t see birds at 5,000 or 10,000 or 20,000 feet. That’s just not how birds operate. So birds are out of the question.
And just so that I anticipate your next question: There are weather balloons that people launch, but this was not a weather balloon — because a balloon, it just ascends and floats from low to high altitude; it doesn’t behave erratically. I mean, it’s just a damn balloon. So that was out of the question.
It wasn’t — to the best of my knowledge — a cruise missile or any other kind of test aircraft that we possibly may have not known about, just because of the way it was behaving. Like I said, it was just very erratic. It would go from like 50 feet off the ground, which when you’re out in the open ocean, you know, off the coast of San Diego, it looked like it was just hovering over the water. But there was no method of propulsion that was keeping it airborne: no wings, no heat, keeping it airborne or aloft.
Have you ever seen a weather event on an ATFLIR?
I would say if I captured this object on my sensors independently, like I was the only one that saw it or tracked it, I might have blown it off as something like a weather event. But the amount of people and sensors from other independent sources who found it — given the time period Dave Fravor saw it, and an hour and a half later I went out and saw it, and we captured basically an object with the same description — leads me to believe that a weather event would be unlikely.
Did it surprise you or provide any kind of relief seeing the Navy officially declare the Tic Tac video genuineBefore the New York Times vetted and published the FLIR1 video, the short clip floated around samizdat-style on various online UFO forums, a situation that had led skeptics and “galaxy brain” conspiracy theorists to suspect that the video was a hoax perpetrated by the first known group to host the video on its servers, a German 3-D animation company called Vision Unlimited. In an interview with a German paranormal-news website, Vision Unlimited manager Philip Schneider said the video was not its work product, but could not explain why its servers were hosting it all the way back in 2007. and a genuine UAP when that happened in the Washington Post last September?
No, not surprised. Validation for sure.
This might be a good time to talk about what the mood was on the Nimitz after all of this.
Once I landed, I saw one of my buddies from my sister squadron. He said, “Hey, did you see something out there too?,” in a very jokey manner. And I was like, “Actually, MFer, because I know you want to make fun of me, I got it here on video.” Although, I didn’t say “MFer.” I said the actual term. He’s a good friend of mine, so it was in jest. We pop the tapes into the playback machine. I’m like, “Here, this is where it is.” Those little video cutsIn a podcast interview earlier this year, Sean Cahill (Princeton’s Chief-Master-at-Arms) recalled that the name of this shortened FLIR1 video, the only version that the public has seen, was named “14November_condensed or something like that.” As Cahill told the podcast’s host, Alejandro Rojas, the video file was shared widely by crew members of the Nimitz and the Princeton using the carrier group’s low-bandwidth, circa 2004 Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet), before much later being published by the New York Times in December 2017. — that you see of my FLIR recording — were taken there at the intelligence center. What they do with it from there, I don’t have a whole lot to deal with.
When I was still in my flight gear, so probably within about 20 minutes or so, I spoke to someone that I assume was from NORAD. I described it exactly as I just told you. I didn’t get debriefed. The interesting thing was, normally, if you see something out in the middle of the ocean that’s a test project, we would get debriefed on it, one-on-one, in a dark room. Whether it’s from the folks at Edwards test siteSince the end of World War II, Edwards Air Force Base has been one of the premiere testing sites for new U.S. military aircraft, and later home to NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center for the testing of advanced spacecraft. Naturally, Edwards has been a perennial subject of American UFO lore — including an extended October 7, 1965 sighting in which base personnel struggled for over five hours to identify a series of mystery objects invading their airspace. Some fun, less intuitive trivia: The base also has its own folklore about a desert Bigfoot creature they call Yucca Man. or something like that. “Hey, yes, we were testing a project. This is what you saw.” Without going into great detail, it will be like, “Yes. This is project ‘Umptysquat’” and, basically, “This is what you saw. Don’t talk about it.” That never happened, which leads me to think that it was not a government projectA former fighter pilot currently working with the Tailhook Association, who spoke on condition of anonymity, corroborated this idea that the lack of a formal debrief for Underwood describing a top-secret aircraft would be suggestive of something more unusual than a classified test-flight program..
Or, at least, not one—
Not one that they wanted to give any acknowledgment of. And, you know, I’ve got top-secret clearance with a ton of special-project clearances. So, it’s not like I wasn’t cleared to know. But, as I’m sure you’ve found in your research, to have clearance to know something, you have to have both the clearance that it’s elevated to and you have to have the “need to know” it. And, clearly, whatever it was, if it was a government project, I did not need to know.
Yeah. Understood. Here’s something I’m curious about, because of this NORAD aspect: Did it come up that this telephone debriefing was maybe involved with something called an Operations Event Incident Report or NORAD’s OPREP-3 reporting system?Documents made public via the Freedom of Information Act, alongside other government documents including “Air Force Instruction 10–206 Operational Reporting” (AFI 10–206) published by the Secretary of the United States Air Force (SEC–USAF) on October 15th, 2008, have indicated that a US military–wide secured reporting channel dubbed OPREP-3 for “operational report category 3 Event/Incident” have become a primary means of delivering realtime information on UFO incidents up the national security chain of command, from the service members tracking the object up through to the White House. Documents released via FOIA have shown the OPREP-3 channel used to deliver information about a spate of Oct, 30th, 1975, UFO events at Wurtsmith Air Force Base in Michigan, and overlapping sightings at Loring Air Force Base in Maine, among others.
Honestly, Matt, I have no idea. Like like what level up to who I was talking to. I just wanted to answer them. I was just basically handed a telephone and said, “Hey. Answer these questions.”
Fair enough. So, Between talking to the NORAD guy and Fravor going public, there’s a several-year period where this is just like a thing that happened in your life. Did it come up very often at all?
There would be associations. I would be sitting at lunch five years later with some of my colleagues. Rumors tend to have legs. “Hey, you were out on the Nimitz in ’04. Someone told me about some alien spacecraft.” And I’m like, “Well, (1) the video that you see is my video. And no, I’ve never said that this is what I think it was or speculate as to what I think it was. That’s not my job. But I saw something. And it was also seen, via eyeballs, by both my commanding officer, Dave Fravor, and the Marine Corps Hornet squadron commanding officer who was out there as well.
When did you find out Fravor was going to go public? Did a lot of people approach you during that reporting or afterward?
It’s funny, seeing your boss’s name and face on the news, given what he was putting out there. You know, obviously, our encounter happened in 2004 — so a while back — but everything that Dave has put out there in the interviews is absolutely, 100 percent, exactly what happened on that day. And we’re still good friends to this day, so I started texting him. We had about a two-hour-long phone call and I’d be like, “Dude. Like what made this pop up?” Like, “Where was this like, you know, 12, 14 years ago?” Now it’s 15 years ago. And, I guess, that was when the Pentagon released — whatever project they called it. I can’t even remember it.
AATIP.
Yeah. AATIPThe Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) ostensibly ran from 2007 to 2012 with a budget of about $22 million. It was preceded by, and may have overlapped with, another Defense Intelligence Agency program, dubbed the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP), with a wider and weirder purview that included “dark energy and the manipulation of extra dimensions.” In October 2017, New York Times reporter Ralph Blumenthal and longtime UFO researcher Leslie Kean met with a former employee of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (OUSDI), Luis Elizondo, who had been involved with AATIP — and depending on which reporters and low-level Pentagon spokespeople you care to trust, may have led the program. Working with several other individuals from the U.S. military and intelligence world, and however improbably with Blink-182 front man Tom DeLonge, Elizondo and the Times brought news of AATIP — and with it, David Fravor’s account of the Tic Tac — to the public that December. The extent of the Pentagon’s official involvement declassifying this material is unfortunately still one of the more frustrating, unresolved, and contentious aspects of this story two years later..
Did the New York Times reach out to you? Ask for background just to confirm anything?
No.
Interesting.
Not that I really care. At no point did I want to speculate as to what I thought this thing was — or be associated with, you know, “alien beings” and “alien aircraft” and all that stuff. I’m like, “No. I do not want to be part of that community.” It is just what we call a UFO. I couldn’t identify it. It was flying. And it was an object. It’s as simple as that.
Yeah.
I’ll let the nerds, like, do the math on what it was likely to be. I just happened to be the person that brought back the video.
This story originally identified the man who quoted in the military’s report as reporting that the objects “exhibited ballistic-missile characteristics” as Kevin Day. The identity of this man has not yet been publicly reported. We regret the error.
NASA has approved the Near-Earth Object Surveyor space telescope (NEO Surveyor) to move to the next phase of mission development after a successful mission review, authorizing the mission to move forward into Preliminary Design (known as Key Decision Point-B). The infrared space telescope is designed to help advance NASA's planetary defense efforts by expediting our ability to discover and characterize most of the potentially hazardous asteroids and comets that come within 30 million miles of Earth's orbit, collectively known as near-earth objects, or NEOs.
"NEO Surveyor will have the capability to rapidly accelerate the rate at which NASA is able to discover asteroids and comets that could pose a hazard to the Earth, and it is being designed to discover 90 percent of asteroids 140 meters in size or larger within a decade of being launched," said Mike Kelley, NEO Surveyor program scientist at NASA Headquarters.
Following completion of the goal to discover 90 percent of all NEOs larger than 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) in size in 2010, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Act of 2005 (Public Law 109-155) directed NASA to discover 90% of NEOs larger than 140 meters (459 feet) in size. The agency is diligently working to achieve this directive and has currently found approximately 40% of near-Earth asteroids within this size range.
"Each night, astronomers across the globe diligently use ground-based optical telescopes to discover new NEOs, characterize their shape and size, and confirm they do not pose a threat to us," said Kelly Fast, program manager for NASA's NEO Observations Program. "Those telescopes are only able to look for NEOs in the night sky. NEO Surveyor would allow observations to continue day and night, specifically targeting regions where NEOs that could pose a hazard might be found and accelerating the progress toward the Congressional goal."
Discovering, characterizing, and tracking potentially hazardous NEOs as early as possible is crucial in ensuring that deflection or other preparations for impact mitigation can be carried out in time. NASA will test one deflection technology—the kinetic impactor—with its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, to be launched later this year. While there are no known impact threats to Earth for the next century, unpredicted impacts by unknown NEOs—such as the 2013 Chelyabinsk event in Russia—still pose a hazard to Earth. Using sensors that operate in the infrared, NEO Surveyor would help planetary scientists discover NEOs more quickly, including ones that could approach Earth during the day from closer to the direction of the Sun—something that is not currently possible using ground-based optical observatories.
"By searching for NEOs closer to the direction of the Sun, NEO Surveyor would help astronomers discover impact hazards that could approach Earth from the daytime sky," said Amy Mainzer, principal investigator for NEO Surveyor at the University of Arizona. "NEO Surveyor would also significantly enhance NASA's ability to determine the specific sizes and characteristics of newly discovered NEOs by using infrared light, complementing ongoing observations being conducted by ground-based observatories and radar."
NEO Surveyor's approval to move to this next mission milestone brings the telescope one step closer to launch, which is currently scheduled for the first half of 2026. The mission is being developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and managed by NASA's Planetary Missions Program Office at Marshall Space Flight Center, with program oversight by the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO). NASA established the PDCO in 2016 to manage the agency's ongoing efforts in Planetary Defense.
With the looming release of a national intelligence report detailing U.S. military encounters with “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” or “UAP,” the People’s Republic of China has announced there has been an increase of mysterious and unexplained aircraft in Chinese airspace, with the PLA establishing its own UFO task force to investigate sightings.
The South China Morning Post reports Chinese analysts “have been overwhelmed in recent years by rapidly mounting sighting reports from a wide range of military and civilian sources” by what the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) are calling “unidentified air conditions.”
The PLA’s use of the term “unidentified air conditions” mirrors the Department of Defense’s preferred parlance of “unidentified aerial phenomena,” seemingly a concerted effort to avoid the more stigmatized term “unidentified flying objects,” or UFOs.
“The frequent occurrence of unidentified air conditions in recent years … brings severe challenges to air defence security of our country,” said Chen Li of the PLA’s Air Force Early Warning Academy, in a 2019 report cited by SCMP.
The U.S. Director of National Intelligence is set to release a report detailing military encounters with UAP in the coming weeks. According to the New York Times, the report is expected to say that “the vast majority of more than 120 incidents over the past two decades did not originate from any American military or other advanced U.S. government technology.”
Citing unnamed intelligence officials, the Times also reports that some sightings could be attributed to advanced Chinese or Russian military platforms. However, the Pentagon appears to also be baffled by a number of not-easily explainable incidents. In some cases, objects are said to demonstrate extreme acceleration, changes in direction, and the ability to operate underwater, which do not comport with any known technologies.
Heading up the current efforts to examine these UAP is the Pentagon’s “UAP Task Force,” which was officially announced in mid-August of 2020.
Recent reports by Chinese press say the PLA equally has its own UFO task force dedicated to investigating mysterious airborne encounters over Chinese airspace. According to SCMP, China’s “unidentified air conditions” task force has been turning to Artificial Intelligence to help get to the bottom of recent UFO sightings.
“One advantage of AI is that it can ‘think outside the box’ – checking crumbs of information scattered across many datasets created at different times and locations, and drawing links unseen by human eyes – to help determine whether sightings were caused by a hostile country, amateur aviation enthusiasts, nature, or ‘other reasons,’” Li told SCMP.
China has had its fair share of reported UFO sightings. According to Chinese state media, in 2010, Hangzhou’s Xiaoshan airport was shut down, and flights were diverted, due to an object hovering above the runway. Airport officials told reporters that the object was seen around 8:00 PM local time.
“We’ve received orders to shut down the airport until the sky is cleared,” a representative for the airport said. The object eventually disappeared and the airport resumed operations around 10:00 PM. Locals reported seeing a round glowing object that resembled a comet. Further information regarding this case is unavailable.
SCMP reports the PLA’s UFO task force has a multi-tier reporting system to handle unknown aerial sightings.
The first tier reportedly consists of military radar stations, air force pilots, police stations, weather stations, and Chinese Academy of Sciences observatories, gathering as much data as possible on UFO or UAP events. This raw data is said to then be processed by the PLA’s regional military commands to conduct a preliminary analysis, before transferring data on to a national database.
From there, PLA headquarters assigns a “threat index” to sightings based on the observed behaviours, frequencies, aerodynamic design, radioactivity, possible make and materials, along with any pertinent information.
China’s “threat indexing” is said to be aided by AI programs to help examine patterns that may not be easily identifiable to researchers and determine an object’s purpose.
Chinese researchers say that some unusual and unexplained sightings near the South China Sea and “other sensitive waters near China” could be the results of increased U.S. military activities.
While China may be interested in the UFO phenomenon, neighboring Japan has also become more involved in tracking unknown aerial objects in the Pacific. Last September, Japanese Defense Minister Taro Kono instructed Japanese military personnel on what to do if they spot UFOs that could potentially pose a threat to national security.
Meeting with then U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper in Guam, the two leaders agreed that Japan would be a strong ally in monitoring the South Pacific for incursions by unknown aerial objects. Earlier that year, in April, Japan began changing its guidelines surrounding how its military personnel would report sightings of unidentified objects.
Kono personally admitted that he did not believe that these objects were of otherworldly origin, and it has led to speculation that China itself may be a perpetrator of several of these UAP-related incidents.
With many officials and members of the public in the United States and Japan believing that advanced Chinese drones are swarming around American military targets, it is humorous that China points the finger at U.S. technology as being the cause of their own UFO sighting events. No one seems to be saying that it’s aliens.
Puerto Rico: Biggest Hub For UFOs, Undersea Alien Bases, & Shocking NASA UFO Footage
Puerto Rico: Biggest Hub For UFOs, Undersea Alien Bases, & Shocking NASA UFO Footage
Jorge Martín is one of the few investigative journalists who spent a whole life studying the UFO phenomenon. He has been investigating the UFO phenomenon and extraterrestrial activities in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean islands for more than 30 years. For years, different anomalies had been spotted in the skies of Puerto Rico including crafts emerging out of clouds. Martín is famous for the alleged UFO sightings in El Yunque Forest during the 1990s.
Martín was born in 1952 in New York City to Puerto Rican parents. His parents returned to Puerto Rico when he was only 5 years old. He has been actively working as a UFO investigator since 1975.
Back in the 1980s, the residents of Ponce City in Puerto Rico felt disturbance and vibration like someone drilling underground. They even heard loud noises and buzzing sounds for several nights. Being worried about it, they asked local and state authorities to investigate the matter. The locals had done peaceful protest for several nights but unfortunately, the media stopped covering the issue. Subsequently, the noises stopped and the case was forgotten.
This incident triggered Matin to pursue an investigation which later became an interesting case. According to him, the group of islands near Puerto Rico was the hot spot for UFOs and extraterrestrial activities. He claimed to have discovered mysterious structures (artificially created) at the seafloor, in the south of the city of Ponce, extending to the east of Vieques island in Puerto Rico.
Image from NOAA showing Puerto Rico and other islands of the Caribbean and the continental shelf of the region.
Interestingly, he found submerged tunnels that connect with the continental shelf in the south of the city of Ponce. He wondered if there was an underground facility. Officially, the US navy exited from Roosevelt Roads Naval Station in the town of Ceiba, Puerto Rico in 2000. Anyway, Martín was skeptical about the US military activities in the region. He argued that the mysterious structures he discovered using NOAA images were impossible for humans to build with the current technology. He was confused about who could have built such enormous structures underwater: were they built by ancient civilizations or the secret hiding place built by extraterrestrials?
Shocking UFO footage, Taken by NASA astronaut
The evidence of the existence of extraterrestrial activities in Puerto Rico was recorded in a camera by astronaut Story Musgrave from outer space during NASA’s mission STS-80 in 1996. The video clip shows a craft, emerging out from nowhere over Puerto Rico with a speed of 680 miles per second, that disappeared into deep space.
Martín received shocking details from fishermen about the secret undersea canyon and UFO sightings on the island of Vieques. The fisherman named Carlos Ventura said that he believed there was an empty space underwater in a deep submarine canyon south of Vieques. Another fisherman named Alicio Ayala also confirmed the same and claimed to have seen UFOs in that area multiple times.
He said: “As it was sinking in the water you could still see the glow of its light, until it disappeared. I remained waiting to see if it came back out, but it did not. This was south of Vieques, in the zone of the South Depth, looking in the direction of the tip of the town of Maunabo, in the main island, where the lighthouse of Maunabo is located at, over there.
Many others say they have seen exactly the same things out there, and also in the area close to the El Yunque, in the Big Island.”
Dead Alien Corpse
Many residents of Vieques had often seen the creaturs like grey aliens, coming out of the sea and returning back. Additionally, in 1996, a story of the discovery of an alien corpse was published in Magazin 2000 by German journalist Michael Hesemann, forwarded by Jorge Martín.
The incident occurred in the 1970s in the Cerro Las Tetas Peak in Puerto Rico. One night, Jose Chino Zaya and his friend went fishing when they discovered a series of mysterious caves in the area. They were terrified after they saw several small creatures in one of the caves.
During an encounter with small beings, Zaya killed one who grabbed his leg. He took the dead alien body and preserved it in formaldehyde. Subsequently, Officer Osvaldo Santiago examined the strange-looking being. Besides, it was studied by a professor from the University of Puerto Rico who called it extraterrestrial. The creature was described as over 12 inches tall with an extremely thin skull and big eyes.
Jose Martín unraveled dozens of such mysteries in Puerto Rico, appeared in several TV shows and traveled to other countries for researching the UFO phenomenon. He is the author of the book: “Vieques: Shooting Range of the 3rd. Kind.”
1976 Canary Island UFO Sighting: Sphere Encounter With Alien Beings
1976 Canary Island UFO Sighting: Sphere Encounter With Alien Beings
One of the most bizarre reports of unusual phenomena occurred in 1976 in the Spanish Canary Islands. Although the case features a most extraordinary description of aliens and their craft, the occurrence is extremely reliable in that it includes multiple witness reports which agreed in all aspects of the case.
The phenomenon began on the night of June 22, 1976, as residents of Tenerife, La Palma, and La Gomera began reporting the sighting of unusual lights in the sky. These lights and their maneuvers were different from anything residents of the area had seen before.
Newspaper headlines the next morning proclaimed that “thousands of people” had witnessed a “spectacular phenomena” which lasted “twenty minutes.” The most sensational aspect was the sighting of the aforementioned “sphere” occupied by strange alien beings.
Three days later, the Commanding General of the Canary Island Air Zone named an “Investigative Adjutant” to make sense of the events. His findings were forwarded by a Spanish Air Force General to journalist J. J. Benitez in 1976, and the details of the case quickly reached beyond the scope of the Islands to the outside world. Benitez’s investigation would be the basis of his book, “UFOs: Official Documents of the Spanish Government.”
The case would regain momentum in 1994, when files of the investigation were released as part of the unveiling of Spanish records, a type of “Freedom of Information” act.
The 1976 report was massive, containing over one hundred pages of testimony, evaluations, drawings, and more. The official Air Force report of the incident was headlined by depositions of fourteen witnesses. A type of standard was established with witness reliability based on social status.
A doctor’s report was considered a high priority, whereas a common laborer’s report was given little, if any, weight. In this particular case, this unfair standard did not take away from the acceptance of the facts, since all involved were in full agreement as to what they saw. The report was very detailed, and presented chronologically.
The initial report of the Canary Island UFO came from the Navy’s armed escort ship, the “Atrevida.” The ship was located off the coast of Fuerteventura Island. The ship’s captain gave a detailed report of what he and his crew observed at 9:27 P.M. on June 22.
The entire crew saw an extremely bright yellow-blue light moving from the shore in the direction of the ship, located three and a half miles at sea. Several of the crewmen at first thought they were seeing a conventional aircraft with its landing lights on.
The lights soon faded, and a type of beam began to rotate, similar to a lighthouse effect. Afterwards, an intense halo of yellow and blue could be seen from the fantastic craft. Amazingly, the crew watched the craft for a full forty minutes.
The craft seemed to be playing tricks with its lights, as they constantly changed from one form to another. Even though the light show was observed for a long period of time, no signature was evident on the ship’s radar of any flying craft.
Actual transcript-Captain of Atrevida:
“At 21:27 (Z) hrs. on 22 June, we saw an intense yellowish-bluish light moving out from the shore towards our position. At first we thought it was an aircraft with its landing lights on. Then, when the light had attained a certain elevation (15 – 18 degrees), it became stationary.
“The original light went out and a luminous beam from it began to rotate. It remained like this for approximately two minutes. Then an intense great halo of yellowish and bluish light developed, and remained in the same position for 40 minutes, even though the original phenomenon was no longer visible.
“Two minutes after the great halo, the light split into two parts, the smaller part being beneath, in the center of the luminous halo, where a blue cloud appeared and the part from which the bluish nucleus had come, vanished. The upper part began to climb in a spiral, rapid and irregular, and finally vanished.
“None of these movements affected the initial circular halo in any way, which remained just the same the whole time, its glow lighting up parts of the land and the ocean, from which we could deduce that the phenomenon was not very far away from us, but was close.”
Only a few minutes later, this same object was seen by residents of Canary Island proper. The bulk of the sightings were by citizens of three villages; Galdar, Las Rosas, and Agaete. A cross section of professions were involved; medical doctor, schoolteacher, farmer, taxi driver, and housewife, among others.
A thorough search of records by the Investigator Adjutant determined that there were no reports of “aerial traffic or military exercises at the time of the reports” that could possibly account for the sightings of the unknown object . The Adjutant, for the sake of clarity, divided the investigation into two different categories.
One was the larger craft observed by ship crewmen and others, and the second the smaller globe with the aliens aboard. By his own admission, and consistent with human nature, the Adjutant had no problem believing the reports of the larger craft, but had reservations accepting the orb since occupants were observed which were not consistent with human beings.
The Investigator General’s last word on the subject was: “The fact that a very strange and peculiar aerial phenomena occurred on the night of 22 June is a true and proven fact, as incredible as its behavior and conditions may seem.”
The incredible account of the sphere was submitted by Doctor Francisco Padron Leon, who lived in the city of Guia. His report is the most voluminous of the entire investigation. His background was thoroughly investigated, and he was found to be an upstanding, sane professional, whose word was considered truthful.
Padron had been summoned to make a house call, and commissioned a cab to take him to the location; the town of Las Rosas. As they rode along, the doctor and cab driver were engaged in light conversation. Suddenly, the car lights pointed out a slightly luminous object in the shape of a sphere.
The object was either landed, or hovering just above the ground. The object was made of a totally transparent and crystalline-like material. The doctor and driver both observed stars through the sphere. The object was bluish in color, with a radius of about 100 feet.
The lower part of the orb contained a platform of aluminum-like material with three consoles. At each side of the center there were two huge figures from eight to ten feet tall. They were dressed in red, and always faced each other. The beings were humanoid in shape, with large heads covered with a type of helmet. The doctor, hardly believing his own eyes, asked for confirmation from his cab driver.
“Are you seeing what I am?” he asked. The driver exclaimed, “My God! What is that?”
The cab was only a short distance from the patient’s house, and upon arriving, the doctor observed a type of bluish smoke coming from a tube rising through the center of the object.
The doctor stated:
“We were talking about hunting… as we entered the last part of the road, the car lights pointed at a slightly luminous sphere that was stationary and very close to the ground, although I can’t say for sure if it was touching it.
It was made of a totally transparent and crystalline-like material, since it was possible to see through it the stars in the sky; it had an electric blue color but tenuous, without dazzling; it had a radius of about 30 m. [100 ft.], and in the lower third of the sphere you could see a platform of aluminum-like color as if made of metal, and three large consoles.
“At each side of the center there were two huge figures of 2.50 to 3 m. [8.5 to 10 ft.] tall, but no taller than 3 m. [10 ft.], dressed entirely in red and facing each other in such a way that I always saw their profile.
“Then I observed that some kind of bluish smoke was coming out from a semi-transparent central tube in the sphere, covering the periphery of the sphere’s interior without leaking outside at any moment.
Then the sphere began to grow and grow until it became huge like a 20-story house, but the platform and the crew remained the same size; it rose slowly and majestically and it seems I heard a very tenuous whistling.”
The sphere grew to an enormous size as it began to ascend into the sky. The doctor ran into the house, and told the family about what he had seen. Running outside, they observed the orb, which was now extremely high in the sky. It reached an enormous speed, accelerating toward Tenerfie.
Finally it dissolved into a smaller size, and disappeared. Another witness, a lady who was a relative of the patient, was watching television when suddenly the screen went blank, and her dogs began to bark outside. Running to a window, she saw the doctor’s cab, and the blue sphere above it. She also noted that the sphere was transparent, with two beings inside. Shocked, she closed the windows and doors, and began to pray.
There were several other sightings of a similar nature throughout the year of 1976 on the Island. The final “official” report was ambiguous at best.
The observance of the craft by all who saw it was accepted as genuine, although no “earthly” explanation was offered for its unique look and behavior. On the other hand, although the witnesses of the smaller orb with aliens were classified as totally reliable, the actual presence of the beings was questioned. In other words, the witnesses were telling the truth, but what they saw was too far fetched to believe.
No other explanation was forthcoming on an official level, and the Canary Island phenomenon remains today as an authentic, well documented sighting of an unidentified flying craft with occupants.
If there’s any person in the world who should know about UFOs, it would be the president of the United States – allegedly, the most powerful person in the world. Yet none of them, whether in or out of office, has given a definitive answer on what they might be nor have they positively stated that Earth has been visited by extraterrestrials. Yet the media – and by the ‘media’ here we mean talk show hosts — keeps asking, hoping one might slip up and spill the beans from Alpha Centauri and beyond. The latest former president in the UFO hotseat is William Jefferson ‘Bill’ Clinton, who sat down on “Live with Kelly and Ryan” to promote his new novel with co-author James Patterson but instead had to explain if UFOs were fiction or non-fiction.
Hurry up! Bill Clinton is talking UFOs on Live with Kelly and Ryan!
“The truth is that we’ve never proved on, but there are things that are flying there that we have not yet fully identified, and keep in mind that there are billions of galaxies in the ever-expanding universe.”
Host Ryan Seacrest didn’t like that answer and probed for “data” that Clinton must have seen. The former president responded with:
“I think the probability is that there’s something you would call life somewhere else.”
Then host Kelly Ripa tried to embarrass Clinton, pointing out he’s a “Rhodes scholar” who should know these things. That’s when Clinton went full political and said we should focus on protecting ourselves from ourselves and clean up the Earth and our country first. That’s different than what Clinton told Jimmy Kimmel a few years ago when he admitted he had gone looking for data on UFOs and aliens while in office and that, if he had found some, would have released it. He certainly would have had help in his hunt – his chief of staff John Podesta has long admitted he regretted not digging deeper and was hoping to get another chance if Hillary Clinton had been elected president. Clinton’s former CIA daily briefer John O. Brennan recently admitted he’d seen evidence of aerial phenomena he couldn’t explain.
Whew! We’re safe … for now.
And yet … the only two presidents who have admitted seeing anything the slightest bit UFO-ish were Jimmy Carter, who claimed he saw one before he became governor of Georgia and later president, and Ronald Reagan, who claimed he, his pilot and two other witnesses saw one while he was governor of California.
Is President Joe Biden ready to answer the tough questions if and when the government UFO report is finally released? He may want to avoid Kelly, Ryan and Jimmy for a while.
After writing articles in the last few days on UFO researchers being the subjects of government files, getting knocks on the door from “The Man,” and strange phone calls, there’s one more aspect to this particularly sinister part of Ufology: namely, those mysterious black cars that the mysterious M.I.B. drive. The number of reports that fall in this category are huge, and I don’t exaggerate. Indeed, I could write an entire series of articles on the “Cars in Black” phenomenon. One of the people whose M.I.B. experiences feature in my 2015 Men in Black book is a friend of mine, Steve Ray. After reading the book, and just a few days after it was published, Steve experienced something unusual. In his very own words to me: “I read the whole Kindle version of the book Sunday and Monday. Monday night I came home and found two black cars parked – headlights out – in non-assigned spaces directly facing my assigned parking space. When I came upstairs, I found my living-room lamp had been switched from its normal setting to the spookier black-light setting – which I have no memory of doing, and I was the last one here.” I told Steve I was not surprised. He was not comforted by my words; not at all. He wasn’t meant to be. I tell it as it is: good, bad, or worse still. Now, let’s take a look at some more cases.
Nick Redfern and one of those black cars
Dr. Josef Allen Hynek, a well-renowned UFO authority who died in 1986, was provided with the details of a fantastically-strange MIB encounter that occurred in a small Minnesota town in late 1975, and that falls firmly into just such a category. Ironically, no UFO was seen on this particular occasion, but the chief witness was harassed by the driver of a large, black Cadillac on a particular stretch of highway, and who nearly forced the man into an adjacent ditch. The irate man quickly righted his vehicle and headed off in hot-pursuit, only to see the black Cadillac lift into the air and, quite literally, disappear in the blink of any eye. Moving on: Gareth Medway has put together an excellent document on M.I.B. cases, some of which involve those black cars. As Gareth notes: “George Smyth of Elizabeth, New Jersey, went to visit two teenagers who had seen a mysterious green entity [in 1966]. The boys were surrounded by a crowd. He noticed two men emerging from a large black car, leaving a third behind the wheel. They had a slight slant to their eyes. Later, when Saucer News investigators went to visit one of the lads, Smyth noticed the same black car parked nearby, and the same two men get out and watch the house while the interview was going on. Two weeks later he received a phone call telling him to give up UFO investigation.”
Now, onto a story given to me in September 2016 at the annual Mothman Festival: one of the people who came to chat with me, as I sat at my vending table, was Irene, a woman who related a very bizarre story; one with clear M.I.B. / Women in Black overtones attached to it. As Irene revealed, she is now-retired and had a very strange experience while living in Pasadena, California in the late 1970s – in either 1978 or 1979. In the early hours of the particular morning in question she inexplicably woke up and felt compelled to go to the bedroom window. On doing so, she was shocked to see a car-sized, oval-shaped UFO – of a bright blue color – that hung in the air for a few seconds, before vanishing into the dark sky above. She raced back to the bed, terrified by what she had just seen. On the following evening, however, something even stranger occurred.
There was a knock at the door. It was a very pale-faced woman in black who claimed to work for a company that offered aerial photographs of peoples’ homes – taken by an expert photographer, then framed, and that would look very nice on the living-room wall. There was, however, something that made Irene think things were just not quite right, not at all. Her instinct proved to be right on the money. When the woman, somewhat oddly, offered to show Irene one of the cameras that the company used, she agreed to see it – although why she would need to see it at all makes very little sense. If any sense at all. The woman proceeded down the drive and got in the backseat of the black car she had arrived in. In a few seconds, however, she was back out of the car. Irene could see the camera, but was very surprised by what happened next: the woman quickly took a photograph of the front of Irene’s house, jumped back into the car, and in seconds was out of sight.
Now, onto another Irene. This one being Irene Bott, who, in the 1990s, ran the U.K.-base Staffordshire UFO Group. Shortly after establishing her group in 1995, Irene found herself plunged into a situation involving a witness to a UFO encounter – a witness who believed they had a period of so-called “missing time.” Expressing a desire to learn more about what occurred, the witness contacted Irene and related the details that surrounded his viewing in the early hours of a 1995 morning, a brightly lit aerial object. The witness was certain that there was far more to the case than he could consciously recollect, and expressed a keen desire for help in unraveling what had taken place. As a result, Irene referred the witness to a colleague in her group and the two discussed the details over the telephone. Crucial to the issues under discussion, however: shortly after returning home from work on one particular day, the witness found that a note had been pushed through his letterbox warning him not to proceed any further with his investigation.
Naturally concerned, the man asked his neighbors if they had seen anyone lurking in the vicinity of his house that might have conceivably been responsible for the strange and somewhat unsettling note. Fortunately, one such neighbor had seen something unusual on that very day. Shortly after the witness had set off for work, a black car had pulled up outside his house. A man dressed entirely in black and carrying a briefcase exited the vehicle, marched up the driveway, shoved a piece of paper through the letterbox, returned to the car and drove off at speed. One of our mysterious characters had struck again. And, no doubt, those mysterious drivers will be with us as long as the UFO phenomenon is around.
If you think you have problems getting your government to disclose the truth about UFOs and aliens, it’s nothing compared to what the frustrated residents of Sedgley in Dudley, West Midlands, England, appear to be going through. Amid claims of three recent alien abductions with no explanation or local response, someone put up a sign asking for help. A local official agreed to look into it, claimed to have found no sign and blamed the whole thing on tabloids getting Sedgley and the Philadelphia area of Sedgley Woods confused. It turns out Sedgley Woods has had its share of flying disc sightings, but at least it has an explanation.
“3 alien abductions — here in one week — when are the council going to do something?”
The Daily Star this week published a photo of a sign carrying this message in big block letters (see it here) and reported it to be in Sedgley in the West Midlands. To support its validity, the Star listed a number of UFO sightings in the area, but didn’t seem to find the person or persons who erected the sign, nor any report of recent alien abductions. Nonetheless, Councillor Karen Shakespeare, Dudley’s cabinet member for public realm, agreed to look into the matter, and said:
“We have been made aware of the sign which will be removed.”
Not so fast, Councillor. Don’t you have to find it first? Neither The Daily Star nor the know-it-all social media were any help, and Councillor Shakespeare had to come up with a reason why she didn’t find it. She told the Dudley News:
“We have checked for the sign and are confident it is not in Dudley borough. We think there may be some confusion between the borough town of Sedgley and Sedgley Woods, in Philadelphia.”
Really? It’s hard to tell from the photo where the sign is located, but the wording – “when are the council going to do something?” – sounds more like the UK than Philly, where they probably would have demanded an answer from ‘city hall’ and included a few choice four-letter words. In fact, Philadelphians who live near Sedgley Woods already know why so many flying discs are seen in that area.
“Established in 1977, Sedgley Woods is one of the oldest permanent disc golf pole hole courses in the world.”
The Sedgley Woods website says it is a 27 hole disc golf course located in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, and is “lovingly maintained by The Friends of Sedgley.” No UFOs or aliens here – just disc golfers and their flying discs.
Back in Sedgley, Dudley, there’s still no explanation for the mysterious sign demanding answers about alien abductions. A Freedom of Information request by the Dudley News turned up 12 police reports of UFO sightings in West Midlands between February 2015 and December 2018, but none in Dudley and no abductions. Was this all a hoax? Kudos to Councillor Karen Shakespeare for following up on the report and the Dudley News for getting in a quick FOI request. Can you imagine that happening if a similar sign was found in the U.S.? We’re still waiting for that government UFO report which insiders are already saying is disappointing.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
Scientific Evidence for the Many Myths of the Great Flood
Scientific Evidence for the Many Myths of the Great Flood
Have you ever heard about Noah’s Ark story? This story of the great flood is one of the most popular stories from the Bible. But it is far from the only great flood story to be found in history. Christians are quite familiar with Noah’s story when God destroyed all of creation through the great flood owing to the wickedness of men. While many people perceive all this as the great flood myth, scientists have found evidence of the great deluge. Before going to the scientific evidence, let’s take a look at the known mythologies that relate to the flood myth.
The Great Flood: Myths in the Bible, Hindu Texts and More
Noah’s story in the Hebrew Bible is probably the most well-known myth relating to the great flood. However, a number of other myths related to this event also exist.
According to the Gilgamesh flood myth, Enlil, the highest god, decided to completely destroy the whole world by means of a great flood as the humans had increasingly become noisy. Ea, the god who created human beings of divine blood and clay, warned Utnapishtim secretly about the flood and gave him instructions to build a boat and be saved.
In the Bible’s Book of Genesis , it is written that Yahweh (the name of the monotheistic god of the Israelites), who created man from dust, decided to bring the great flood to Earth because of mankind’s increasing corruption.
Yahweh was, however, pleased with Noah and instructed him to create an ark for saving humans and animals. On completion of the ark, Noah, his entire family, and two of every type of animal on earth entered the ark. Once the door of the ark was closed, the destructive flood started and cleared all other living beings from the face of the earth. After the flood ended, everyone inside the ark came out, and Yahweh promised never to subject humans to something like the great flood again. The rainbow is known as the symbol of Yahweh's promise.
A 3D illustration of Noah’s Ark in a storm during the Great Flood. Reality or myth?
According to Hindu mythology there is a story about "manvantara-sandhya," a great flood. In the story, Vishnu's Matsya Avatar warned Manu, the first man, about the impending flood and instructed him to construct a giant boat.
According to Zoroastrian Mazdaism, Ahriman tried to destroy the whole world by means of a drought. It is believed that Mithra shot an arrow at a rock, and the flood poured out. Only one man, along with his cattle, survived the flood in an ark.
As per Plato, Timaeus describes a flood myth that is quite similar to the other versions of the great flood. In the Timaeus version, the Bronze race of humans made Zeus angry with constant warring. Zeus decided to cause a flood to punish humanity. The Titan Prometheus , who created humans with clay, shared the plan with Deucalion and advised him to build an ark. It took nine days and nights for the water to recede, and the ark landed on a mountain.
Researchers study a ship graveyard discovered in the Black Sea that may be linked to the Great Flood.
Scientific Evidence of the Occurrence of the Great Flood
While there are a number of stories or myths relating to the great flood, scientists have recently found evidence of the flood. The scientists believe that the great flood did take place around 7,000 years ago in the Black Sea region.
In a book named "Noah's Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries about the Event that Changed History," two marine biologists Walter Pitman and William Ryan, describe a flood that took place several thousand years ago, before the Biblical story was written by the ancient Hebrews .
According to the two marine biologists , nearly 12,000 years ago, after the last Ice Age, the Black Sea was a partially dried freshwater lake. It was separated from the Mediterranean Sea by the Bosporus Strait , which is a land strip.
The shore of the Black Sea was fertile and was used by the people to start large farming societies. When the ice sheets that covered the Northern Hemisphere started melting, the levels of the sea began rising. It is believed that the Mediterranean Sea broke through the Bosporus Strait about 7,600 years ago.
With a force about 200 times that of Niagara Falls, the seawater had started rushing in. The level of the Black Sea was increasing by 6 inches (15 cm) every day. Within one year, about 60,000 square miles (15,539,929 hectares) was engulfed and disappeared beneath the rising waters. The settlers of the land moved to different high grounds and never returned.
Pitman and Ryan hypothesize that this trauma story was handed down for about 3,000 years and has been recorded in the form of myths and songs. One of the versions is believed to be the story of Noah's Ark found in the Bible.
The hypothesis of the two marine biologists is mainly based on the sediment cores of the Black Sea as well as seismic profiles. The cores did tell a strange and unique story. Pitman and Ryan discovered a single mud layer that was typically left after the great flood.
It lay over sediment layers that were at one time land surface. The surface contained mud cracks, plant root fossils, and freshwater mollusks that were similar to the dried-out lakeshore. The ancient shoreline was submerged about 460 feet (140 meters) below the Black Sea.
The marine biologists have also pointed out that according to the study of ancient civilizations made by archaeologists, during the flood several peoples with new customs appeared at different places. They were even found in Egypt, as well in the foothills of the Himalayas, and around Paris and Prague. The majority of these “new” people were Indo-European speakers. According to Ryan and Pitman, these peoples might be the Black Sea farmers who had to leave their homes due to the great flood.
The Great Flood (Die Sintflut, Suendflut), a painting by Lesser-Ury (1861-1931), depicts the “horror” of what the deluge of the Bible might have looked like.
In addition to the evidence offered by Pitman and Ryan, there are also other pieces of evidence that support the occurrence of the great flood. One such significant piece of evidence was provided by the world-famous underwater archaeologist Robert Ballard. He is especially known for locating and exploring the Titanic wreck.
Ballard found evidence of people who had perished in the great flood that took place in the Black Sea and linked it with Noah's Ark story.
Ballard and his team made use of advanced robotic technology to find evidence that might support the Noah story. They were able to unearth an ancient coastline that was about 550 feet (168 meters) under the water surface. It was considered significant proof of the catastrophic event. Ballard took some samples including saltwater and freshwater mollusks from the ancient beach for testing.
When radiocarbon dating of the samples was done, it was revealed that the freshwater mollusks were relatively older in comparison to the saltwater ones. All the freshwater mollusks that were taken for sample testing were of the same age.
It could be assumed that all the mollusks died due to the occurrence of a sudden flood. This is because if they had died due to the slowly rising water, the ages would have differed. It was found that the mollusks died somewhere around 5,600 BC. It is approximately the same time when the great flood during Noah's time is believed to have occurred.
About 310 feet (94 meters) below in the Black Sea, Ballard and his team were also able to find an ancient house that had collapsed. In addition to the house, they also unearthed a number of stone tools, storage vessels made of ceramic, and ancient mud. The archaeologists believe that the culture found at the bottom of the sea was thousands of years old.
The evidence collected by Robert Ballard and his team suggests that the traumatic great flood story was handed down from generation to generation. This eventually inspired Noah's Ark story that is mentioned in the Bible.
"The Deluge" drawing was used as the frontispiece to Gustave Doré's illustrated edition of the Bible. Based on the story of Noah's Ark, the drawing shows humans and a tiger doomed by the flood futilely attempting to save their children and cubs.
While there is scientific evidence that supports the occurrence of the great flood, there is also scientific evidence that argues against it. Some believe that the great flood may have occurred during Noah's time, but that it happened over the entire Earth rather than some regional parts.
As per the Bible, the rain during the great flood lasted for 30 days, and the Earth was flooded for 150 days. Only after one year, two months, and twenty-seven days, did the Earth dry and thus Noah, his entire family, and all the animals were able to move out of the ark.
The great flood was intended to completely destroy all life on Earth. As the sedimentary rocks over all the continents do contain fossils, the great flood could represent the destruction of all living beings. Thus, the story of the global flood mentioned in the Bible might have been true.
However, the sedimentary rocks have interlayers of gypsum, evaporite rock salt, anhydrite, and magnesium and potash salts. All these are related to red beds that contain fossilized mud cracks. The red beds and mineral compounds have a measurable combined thickness on various continents.
The red color of the red beds is mainly due to the presence of hematite, an iron oxide that is formed from oxidized magnetite grains when the mud gets exposed to oxygen present in the open air. Mud cracks can only occur under severe drying conditions that result in the shrinking of mud and the formation of polygonal cracks.
The evaporite deposits are believed to occur when a marine sea that existed disappears and becomes completely dry. In such a case, the evaporites are expected to be found at the top of the flood deposits of the great flood. However, the evaporites were found in different layers and not on the top of the flood deposit. This makes certain scientists believe that the great flood never took place.
Moreover, it is written in the Bible that at some time the flood waters started receding and left the ground completely dry. There were no repeated cycles of floods of this size. According to this, it is quite logical that the red beds and evaporite deposits in different levels of the flood deposit could only be formed in local climates having desert drying conditions.
However, it is not possible this was formed at the same time the great flood covered the surface of the whole Earth. On this basis, it can be said that a massive regional flood could have occurred but not a whole-Earth flood.
The Matsya Avatar of Vishnu Uttar Pradesh, India. Matsya is an avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu. Often described as the first of Vishnu's ten primary avatars, Matsya is said to have rescued the first man Manu from a great deluge. The Matsya Avatar is often depicted as a giant fish.
While much debate surrounds the “truth” of the great flood, it is quite hard to say whether it actually occurred or not. As per the Bible, Noah used to live in the Mesopotamian desert , but the coastline of the Black Sea was forested and lush back then.
More and more geologists are coming up with different revised theories and trying to build solid proof for an event that occurred during ancient times. Geological expeditions continue to search the Black Sea. These very expensive geological expeditions are also getting funded by people who are interested in knowing the truth of the Noah's Ark story mentioned in the Bible.
Scientists and archaeologists are still trying to locate ancient villages beneath the surface of the seas. It will be very interesting to see what additional evidence for the great flood is revealed in the coming years.
Top image: The Deluge (1840), a painting by Francis Danby, part of the Tate Gallery collection, which shows how horrible the Great Flood must have been, if, and when, it happened.
Face to Face with Invisible Flying Creatures… Even NASA has Captured Them on Film
Face to Face with Invisible Flying Creatures… Even NASA has Captured Them on Film
COAST TO COAST AM INSIDER Archived Show – author and historian Trevor James Constable discussed his work tracking the reality of huge, invisible flying creatures. Constable detailed his initial discovery of invisible flying creatures in the 1950′s, when he was visiting contactee George Van Tassel and was, himself, “extremely sensitive.”
During this encounter, Constable said he could feel the disturbances in the atmosphere created by these creatures, aimed his camera at them, and photographed the oddities. He alleged that these invisible entities were later captured on ultraviolet film by NASA in the infamous 1996 video release known as the “Tether Incident.”
Based on this footage, Constable surmised that “the whole of outer space is just crawling with these things.”
Navy Pilots Close Encounter With An Alien Craft Over Australia
Navy Pilots Close Encounter With An Alien Craft Over Australia
AUGUST 31, 1954…………..NOWRA AUSTRALIA
One of the most controversial radar visual reports of the fifties occurred on August 31st, 1954. The story leaked out in December, 1954, and made front page headlines.
The official navy file on the event remained classified until the Directorate of Naval Intelligence released a copy upon my request in 1982.
During his 1973 visit to Australia, Dr. Hynek was able to interview the pilot involved in this famous incident, which became known as the “Sea Fury” encounter.
Dr. Hynek made his notes on this interview available to me during my 1984 visit to the Chicago headquarters of his organisation, the Centre for UFO Studies (CUFOS). I, in turn, provided Dr. Hynek with a copy of the official file on the incident.
Lieutenant J.A. O’Farrell was returning to Royal Australian Navy Air Station Nowra after a night cross country in a Sea Fury aircraft. After contacting Nowra at about 1910 hours, O’Farrell saw a very bright light closing fast at one o’clock.
It crossed in front of his aircraft taking up position on his port beam, where it appeared to orbit.
A second and similar light was observed at nine o’clock. It passed about a mile in from of the Sea Fury and then turned in the position where the first light was observed.
According to O’Farrell, the apparent crossing speeds of the lights were the fastest he had ever encountered. He had been flying at 220 knots. O’Farrell contacted Nowra who in turn confirmed that they had two radar “paints” in company with him.
The radar operator, Petty Officer Keith Jessop, confirmed the presence of 2 objects near the Sea Fury on the G.C.I. remote display.
The two lights reformed at nine o’clock and then disappeared on a north easterly heading. O’Farrell could only make out “a vague shape with the white light situated centrally on top.”
The Directorate of Naval Intelligence at the time wrote that O’Farrell was “an entirely credible witness” and that he “was visibly ‘shaken’ by his experience, but remains adamant that he saw these objects”
In a recent interview, “Shamus” O’Farrell described the incident:
“I said, “Nowra, this is 921. Do you have me on radar?” “And a few seconds later they came back and said, “Affirmative 921. We have you coming in from the west. We have another two contacts as well. Which one are you.” “I said, “I think I’m the central one.”
And so they said, “Do a 180…for identification.” So I did a quick 180 and then continued on around and made it a 360 back to where I was going.
“They said, “Yes, we’ve got you. You’re the centre aircraft.” I said that’s correct. They then said to me, “Who are the other two aircraft,” and I said, “I don’t know. I was hoping you would tell me, because I didn’t think there was anyone up here. “They said, “Well there shouldn’t be, and they certainly shouldn’t be that close to you.”
“So the conversation went on like this and I was very pleased to be talking to somebody because it gave me a lot of reassurance. With that these two aircraft came in quite close to me and I could really see the dark mass and that they were quite big, but I couldn’t make out any other lights or any other form of an aircraft. With that they took off and headed off to the north east at great speed.
“I was about to press the button and tell them at Nowra that the two aircraft were departing when Nowra called me up and said, “The other two aircraft appear to be departing at high speed to the north east. Is that correct?” and I said, “Yes!”. And they said, “Roger, we’ll see if we can track them.”
They tracked them for a while and then lost them. “I came in and landed at 7.30 (1930) and when I got there there were quite a few people waiting for me. I thought it was a bit strange and so they came over, and they said, “You sure you had aircraft out there!” and I said yes.
The Surgeon Commander came over and spoke to me. He said did I feel sick, or was I upset. I said no. He ran his hand over my head to see whether I had any bumps. He had a look at me and decided I was okay. So then he said, “Perhaps you’d like to come to the sick bay after you’ve changed and we’ll do an examination.”
So after I was finished I went up to sick bay and he gave me a more thorough medical, and said, no, I appeared to be alright. I found out later, that at the same time, they checked to make sure I hadn’t been drinking before I took off and all that sort of thing.”
During this interview, Dr. Hynek’s involvement came up:
“This man (Hynek) – a professor – had made a study of thousands of sightings all around the world and he had decided my sighting was one of those that he had not been able to explain away by other means.
Any way I had a talk with him. He was a very interesting chap and he made the comment that there were about 13 or 15, I don’t remember, sightings that he was aware of over the years that were like mine and could not be explained away. The interesting thing he said was that all of these sightings had been made by professional people in aviation.
By that he meant they were military pilots, military air crew, civil aviation operators, air traffic controllers, and the like, or airline pilots. These were the ones he was now (1973) going around meeting the people themselves and investigating.
All the others he had written off and had been able to explain down to some other phenomena. It came to the point where he said, “Your sighting cannot be explained away.” And he left it at that. To this day I wouldn’t know where it came from or where it went.”
I have had the opportunity to talk extensively with Shamus O’Farrell. I was particularly interested in how the interview with Dr. Hynek in 1973 came about:
“It was done through Sir Arthur Tange, who was secretary of the Department of Defence at the time. Hynek contacted him direct… Sir Arthur Tange contacted me and said Hynek was coming out. He had written to him, through the US Embassy, to set up a meeting.
And the next thing I knew I had a telephone call one day from Sir Arthur Tange saying that Hynek was coming and he would like me to met him. I said, well, I haven’t got all the facts, there all a bit hazy. So he sent me the two Defence Department files over to read, to refresh it all.”
Bill Chalker: “That seems to indicate a high level of interest in Hynek’s visit at the time?”
“Yes, well, I don’t think so. All that happened was that it was more of a courtesy because he was a very important guy, Hynek, and they wanted to show him the courtesies etc. As far as Defence was concern it was dead and forgotten but they had not got rid of the files. They kept them.
Normally when files like that are written off they are either decided they’ll put them in Archives or dispose of them and destroy them. But they had done neither. They had remained in the JIO. They’d kept them. I don’t know what they had in mind about it, I never questioned it. I just used them as a means to refresh my memory.
“Later the guy who became the chief Defence scientist, John Farrands, was very interested in it too, and he had done a lot of early investigations in most of the reports when he was chief defence scientist and in the period just before he became chief defence scientist. He had a talk with me.
I was a friend of his. I used to meet with him at lunch. He went over it in great detail. He knew it all. He agreed it was something that couldn’t be refuted. No matter how hard they tried, and they tried very hard to knock it all back. They checked everything from medical, down to when was the last time I had had a drink…”
Bill Chalker: “That must have been a bit of a concern to you?”
“Well, I wanted to hush it all up. That sort of investigation made me look a bit of a fool. I was worried it wasn’t going to do my career any good. “(Apart from the radar witness) it locked in a sighting over the NDB (non directional beacon) at Narulan, at the same time. There happened to be a guy working on the NDB.
It was down at the time.
He had gone to repair it. He happened to look up at the time because he saw these lights fly overhead. Also the air traffice control officer in the tower at Mascot saw them approaching him. “It was all investigated by the then RAAF guy who did it and later it was also investigated by the Joint Intelligence Bureau.”
In 1993 I assisted The Extraordinary television programme with a recreation of the Sea Fury incident. Shamus O’Farrell, Keith Jessop and I were interviewed on the show. The case stands as one of the best unexplained radar visual UFO cases on record in Australia. NOTE: The above image is CGI.
KEN PFEIFER WORLD UFO PHOTOS AND NEWS
SPECIAL THANKS TO BILLY BOOTH AND HIS WEB SITE HTTP://WWW.UFOCASEBOOK.COM ONE OF THE TOP UFO ORGANIZATIONS IN THE WORLD
Storm Makes Apocalyptic Sounds Over Slovakia ( June 14, 2021 )
Storm Makes Apocalyptic Sounds Over Slovakia on June 14, 2021
STATEMENT : Another storm accompanied by a mysterious Apocalyptic soun
Slovakia credit : kruhy v obili a ine zahady
UFO Sighted Over Kingsley, Michigan ( June 11, 2021 )
STATEMENT : UFO sighting in Kingsley last week. No noise except crickets and a cow going crazy. The camera would not pick up the shape. I tried everything. It was as big as 3 buses side by side and had about 30 circle shaped lights on the bottom. I saw it with my own eyes! They’re here!
credit : Daniel Tolin
UFO Sighted Over Kingston upon Hull, England ( June 4, 2021 )
UFO was sighted over Kingston upon Hull, England on June 4, 2021
STATEMENT : Just seen a Masive UFO over Hull right now, My lad filmed this. Any ideas?
credit : Paul Frederick
UFO Sighted Over Moon From Miami, Florida ( June 14, 2021 )
STATEMENT : Video evidence of alien spacecraft or an unknown Aerial phenomenon passing between the moon and earth. I took this with my own telescope fitted with the iPhone telephone eyepiece mount.
credit : Jay Bugs
UFO Sighted Over Ontario, California ( June 14, 2021 )
STATEMENT : Filmed in Ontario Ca Just before our 6:30am safety meeting, at first we thought it was a balloon but it was moved side to side
credit : Allen Herrera
Strange Lights Sighted Over Nagoya, Japan ( June 13, 2021 )
Strange lights were sighted over Nagoya, Japan on June 13, 2021
STATEMENT : The Mysterious Light the shooting location is Nagoya, Japan.
UFO Over East London, England May 31, 2021, Video, UFO Sighting News.
UFO Over East London, England May 31, 2021, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: May 31, 2021
Location of sighting: East London, England
The eyewitness goes by the Youtube name Orion. He saw a long cocoon shaped UFO over the train tracks and began recording. The footage is only 25 seconds, but I tried to make a close up and slowed it down 3X at the second half of the video. Still a bit shaky, but better. The object has a bronze tint to it, and I can see a black eye like window on one end, possible the pilots cockpit. The shape is more like an insect cocoon than anything else. Very rare shape of UFO and being seen in broad daylight makes is very exciting.
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Eyewitness states:
Mysterious object hovering over Lea Bridge London. Sighted on the 31 of may 2021 at 19:01 Lea Bridge, North East London.
Glowing Object Over Seoul, South Korea June 4, 2021, UFO Sighting News.
Glowing Object Over Seoul, South Korea June 4, 2021, UFO Sighting News.
Below I enlarged the UFO and added contrast to focus the sphere. On the below left is original untouched version of the UFO.
Date of sighting:June 4, 2021
Location of sighting:Seoul, South Korea
This raw footage reveals a lot to me. The object is a sphere shaped UFO and it is self illuminated. This is on the boarder of South Korea and North Korea, which means it's a military danger zone. Aliens are frequently seen flying over such areas. Even more than in any other location on earth. The UFOs will appear and any military aircraft sent after them will be unable to get a lock, launch missiles and even a few instances of pilots disappearing from the aircraft itself. The UFOs will fly over installations and missile silos, shutting them off permanently, making repairs impossible. Aliens are constantly sending world military a clear message...that fighting is not the solution to humanities problems.
China’s Zhurong rover has been snapped by powerful cameras aboard several spacecraft circling Mars. One of the images — a high-resolution colour shot (above) taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) — offers scientists an extremely detailed view of the landing site.
“It’s incredible!” says Peter Grindrod, a planetary scientist at the Natural History Museum in London. The image, taken on 6 June, also reveals Zhurong has made reasonable headway, travelling 22 metres from the lander. “Driving on Mars appears to be going OK,” he says.
The image, snapped by the MRO’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), offers the best look so far at hazards and scientific targets on the surface, says Alfred McEwen, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, and principal investigator for HiRISE’s camera.
Further images in black and white, released by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) on 7 June, were taken by the Tianwen-1 spacecraft that carried Zhurong to Mars. At lower resolution than NASA’s image, they show the rover’s landing site, both before and after it arrived. And today, the CNSA released another series of images, including one of the rover and lander taken by a detachable camera that the rover released ten metres from the platform (below). Other images taken by cameras fitted on the rover include a 360-degree panorama from atop the lander, and another of the platform from some six metres away.
Zhurong landed on 15 May and is nearly one month into its mission. On 22 May it drove off a ramp on the lander, and the CNSA confirmed its instruments were operational.
Spotting features of interest
NASA and the CNSA are not collaborating on this mission, but McEwen says the HiRISE image could be used by Chinese researchers to help plot Zhurong’s route. “Maybe they will see something of interest,” he says.
The HiRISE image shows the lander and rover, in false colour, as green specks in a sea of red dust. A darker patch around the lander is probably a blast pattern created by engine plumes during landing.
Brighter curved features are probably sand dunes known as transverse aeolian ridges. In an uncropped version of the image (not pictured), HiRISE also captured the discarded parachute, as well as the remains of the entry capsule.
In the CNSA image (above, right) the lander and smaller orbiter are visible as two white specks in the darker ink splat of the blast pattern. Bright spots lower down in the image are the capsule, heat shield and a parachute, which helped slow its descent through Mars’s atmosphere. Small craters and bright dunes stud the landscape — these are also visible in the new images taken by Zhurong.
Within Zhurong’s range
Both the CNSA and NASA images reveal features of interest, says Joseph Michalski, a planetary scientist at the University of Hong Kong. To the east of the rover is a small crater and a half-metre-sized boulder, probably ejected from the crater.
Some 50 metres south is a large, bright sand dune, of a type that has not been closely studied before, says Xiao Long, a planetary geologist at the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan, who hopes this will be Zhurong’s first stop.
Michalski says that a larger, 200-metre-wide crater a few hundred metres to the north is scattered with rocks ejected by the impact that created it, which could reveal what is present just below the planet’s surface.
And this is probably within the rover’s range, he says. A similar Chinese rover on the Moon, known as Yutu-2, has travelled more than 700 metres in more than 2 years, offering a sense of what might be possible for Zhurong (see image below).
McEwen says his team soon plans to publish a stereo-pair image, showing two slightly different views of the landing area, which can be combined to reveal the three-dimensional shape of the surface. They also plan to capture features west of the existing image, including a pitted mound some 7 kilometres away that could be a mud volcano.
In 1992, in a privately-published paper titled: Have You Checked Your File Lately?Robert Durant, a UFO researcher and pilot, discussed the theme of an all-encompassing, Government-sanctioned-and-controlled operation designed to covertly monitor the activities of the public UFO research community: “You, the reader, are among the approximately 4,000 Americans who subscribe to ufological journals or newsletters, buy UFO books through the mail, attend conferences, or spend time with others who engage in such activities. Not a large group. We are only 3% of the total number of citizens the government admits to watching with intense care. A very easy group to track. Building your file is so much easier than compiling one on a Russian spy or a Mafioso. There is a file on you at the Internal Revenue Service, the Social Security Administration, the driver’s license bureau of the state in which you are licensed, the commercial credit card companies that do business with your bank and your lenders, your doctor’s office, and so forth and so on. Is it really unreasonable to suspect that a UFO file would be created?” With that said, read on:
My previous article here at Mysterious Universe was titled “In the U.K. Government, it’s not just the Ministry of Defense that is tied to UFOs.” In part, I revealed how, in the mid-1990s, English ufologist Robin Cole was visited by government agents because he dug a bit too deep into the UFO connection to the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the U.K.’s equivalent of the United States’ National Security Agency. With that in mind, I thought I would share with you other examples of UFO researchers getting knocks on the front-door from “the man.” Back in the early 1950s, the FBI opened a file on “Contactee” George Van Tassel, who created the Integratron and ran an outdoor UFO event for years – an event that attracted thousands of people. Van Tassel’s file runs to 319 pages and has now been declassified. But, what about Mrs. Van Tassel? It wasn’t just George who got a visit. His wife did, too. In a face-to-face meeting at the Van Tassel home, the FBI recorded the following:
“Relative to her husband and herself, Mrs. Van Tassel claims that she and her husband practice a metaphysical religion. She declared this religion is based on an occult principle in that she and her husband sit in a room in dead silence and receive thought transfers from one another and from other individuals who are not psychically present in the room. She declared that it was through this type of practice that her husband has learned or prophesied the coming of World War III and a gigantic explosion on the East Coast. She mentioned that at the present time she and her husband have undertaken a special project. This project is the founding and organizing of the College of Universal Wisdom. The purpose of the college is to promote and carry out interplanetary communication and the dissemination of Universal Wisdom gained through the median of space beings.” The two agents thanked Mrs. Van Tassel and left, satisfied with what they heard.
As the CIA note, in a very amusing fashion, in 1955, two elderly sisters in Chicago, Mildred and Marie Maier, reported in the Journal of Space Flight their experiences with UFOs, including the recording of a radio program in which an unidentified code was allegedly heard. The sisters taped the program; and other ham radio operators also claimed to have heard the “space message.” The CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence duly became interested and asked its Scientific Contact Branch to obtain a copy of the recording. Field officers from the Contact Division, one of who was a man named Dewelt Walker, made contact with the Maier sisters at their home, who were “thrilled that the government was interested,” and set up a time to meet with them. In trying to secure the tape recording, the Agency officers reported that they had stumbled upon a scene from Arsenic and Old Lace. “The only thing lacking was the elderberry wine,” Walker told Headquarters. After reviewing the sisters’ scrapbook of clippings from their days as entertainers on the stage, the bemused and amused officers secured a copy of the recording. OSI analyzed the tape and found it was nothing more than Morse code from a US radio station.
Moving on: In 1977, the late Graham Birdsall – editor of the now-defunct British-based UFO Magazine – and his brother, Mark, investigated a major UFO sighting near to Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England, that involved a number of witnesses who had viewed strange, aerial objects in the vicinity of Menwith Hill – a vast “listening-post” controlled by the American National Security Agency. The Birdsall brothers duly approached the staff at Menwith Hill for comment and, at one point, were actually allowed on base. This led to a curious series of events. Soon after visiting the base, Graham received a telephone call from a Mr. Mills, the senior NSA security officer at the base, who had just taken up his post at Menwith Hill and was keen to cement good, local relations. Graham engaged the NSA official in conversation for approximately one hour – something that few civilians can claim. Not only that, Graham was visited by an NSA employee who asked him more than a few questions about “motivations” when to came to UFOs – as well as Graham’s beliefs in the UFO phenomenon. The man soon left.
One of my own particularly memorable experiences occurred in 2001. After writing an article on MI5 whistleblower, David Shayler, for Mark Birdsall’sEye-Spy magazine, I received a telephone call from a highly concerned and nervous Birdsall. He informed me that he had been visited – at his home – in North Yorkshire by “two lads from the Metropolitan Police.” Mark advised me that the two officers informed him that while publication of the article was not deemed to have harmed the national security of the country, there was a pressing need on their part to obtain the tape-recording of the interview I had conducted with Shayler. For a while I mused upon this and did nothing. Not long after, however, I was contacted by a representative of Special Branch, who advised me, in no uncertain term}s that I would hand over the tape, like it or not. Based upon what I was told, I was left with little choice, and I did indeed hand over the original recording. I should stress, though, MI5 were fine with the text of the interview being included in the pages of Eye-Spy. It was a surreal situation.
In light of all the above, the day may come when you, too, get that ominous, slow knock on the door.
NOTE PETER2011: When the Belgian Triangles were observed in the years 1989 / 1990, I was also part of a study of these observations. Timothy Good asked me to devote a chapter of his new book to these observations. In the early 90s I got a phone call from a man with an American accent asking if he could come by to conduct an interview. When he got home it was in an old American car... He looked a little weird, dressed in gray, with a big scar (from brain surgery and tumor removal, he said) and no hat. He suggested some questions about the Belgian observations, to which I answered as best I could according to my personal conviction, what it was. He filmed it for a so-called documentary about UFOs and promised me a copy... I never heard from him again and his business card turned out to be fake. Was that a MIB now? I don't know, but later it came as a weird experience.
The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, was fought between the years of 1955 and 1975, officially between North Vietnam and South Vietnam, but as most know America was pulled into it starting from 1964. The catalyst for America’s entry into the war revolves around a mysterious and disputed incident that happened in early August 1964 in the Gulf of Tonkin, also known as the USS Maddox Incident, in which a U.S. destroyer was said to have been put under attack by with North Vietnamese fast attack craft. It would help serve to force the U.S. Congress to pass the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and give President Lyndon B. Johnson great authority to increase American military presence in Vietnam. This would result in a horrific trial of attrition in the jungles of Vietnam that would see an estimated 58,220 U.S. service members killed in the conflict and a further 1,626 remain missing in action by the time they pulled out in 1973, but what really happened during this initial incident has long been wrapped in mystery and controversy, and one of the weirder ideas is that this might have been the doing of underwater UFOs, also called USO (Underwater Submersible Objects) or even mysterious sea beasts.
The official version of the Gulf of Tonkin incident is that on August 2, 1964, the American destroyer the USS Maddox had been out performing a signals intelligence patrol as part of DESOTO operations when they were aggressively approached by three North Vietnamese Navy torpedo boats. In the ensuing melee, the USS Maddox was assailed by machine gun fire and torpedoes, and when the smoke cleared one U.S. aircraft was damaged, three North Vietnamese torpedo boats were damaged, and four North Vietnamese sailors were killed. This first attack is not in dispute, but there would then be an alleged second incident on August 4, 1964 that would really rile the Americans up, this time involving the USS Maddox and another destroyer called the USS Turner Joy, which furthered the U.S. resolve to enter the conflict, but there has long been some amount of doubt that the US forces had ever been under fire at all, or whether this had just been an excuse to escalate the efforts to enter the war.
USS Maddox
The North Vietnamese immediately denied that a second attack had ever happened, and in later years former United States Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara also admitted that there was never any second attack. Indeed, it was found that there were not even any North Vietnamese vessels in the area during the August 4 incident, but personnel aboard both the USS Turner Joy and USS Maddox begged to differ, insisting that it had happened, so what was going on here? According to some testimony from aboard the vessels involved, some pretty weird stuff.
In 1966, a Navy sonar engineer assigned to the destroyer USS Turner Joy came forward with a rather odd version of the events of that day. He claimed that on the day of that supposed second Gulf of Tonkin attack, he had picked up signatures on his radar that appeared to be enemy torpedoes, but which behaved erratically and as if under intelligent control, approaching the ship, even going under it, only to dart off. Both vessels reported detecting small, fast-moving objects on radar, both above and below the surface, which they took to be torpedoes and torpedo boats, but visibility was low due to a storm that had brought heavy clouds and fog. There would apparently by over 20 signatures of torpedoes on sonar, but they did not behave like torpedoes, seeming to move about at will rather than a straight line, and none of them actually hit. Some frightened crew members reported that the torpedoes seemed to be illuminated, while others swore they had seen the cockpit lights of the enemy vessels out in the gloom. Others saw what they took to be the wakes of torpedoes and there were even strange sounds heard that sounded a lot like the propellers of torpedoes, yet no impacts ever occurred.
Taking no chances at all, the two American destroyers allegedly performed evasive maneuvers and unloaded almost 650 cannon shells and several depth charges, blowing the area to absolute hell, yet when the smoke cleared there were found to be no enemy vessels, no wreckage or debris, nothing. This was despite the accounts of crew aboard the destroyers who were adamant that there had definitely been something out there and that they had been under attack. At the time it was convincing enough to propel America full on into the war, only in later years being found to have been perhaps a phantom attack that had no evidence of ever having happened at all. In 2005, the National Security Agency would declassify a trove of documents that revealed there was no second Gulf of Tonkin attack, and the at the time U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara himself would concede that there had been no enemy attack on that day. Even then president Johnson would say “For all I know, our navy was shooting at whales out there.”
Despite this, crew members aboard the two destroyers have continued to insist that there was something out there menacing them, leading to all sorts of theories. One of the main ideas is that a combination of weather, schools of fish near the surface, birds, or sensor problems had all conspired to make them misidentify phantom targets as actual ones. Another idea is that these ships were being circled by USOs, or underwater UFOs, and just as strange is the idea that the signatures and sightings were caused by underwater creatures. Todd Newberry, a professor emeritus of marine biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, believes that this can be blamed on bioluminescent cousins of sea squirts called giant pyrosomes, which are basically massive colonies of filter-feeding organisms that form long blunt-ended tubes that can propel themselves along and reach up to 60 feet in length. They also tend to light up when disturbed, and the idea here is that the crews of these ships were freaked by these giant, decidedly torpedo shaped colonies of organisms shooting about. Newberry has said of this:
These things are the size of torpedoes, so they produce the same sonar image. It all fit together, as far as the character of the colony and its behavior. They could certainly have shown up on sonar. I can totally see that if you didn’t know that something like them exist and you were looking at them in the water, your imagination could go pretty crazy with what you were seeing. Imagine telling your commander who thinks you’re being attacked by torpedoes, ‘No sir, those are Pyrosoma!’ You’d be put in the brig immediately. Here’s an angle that was never picked up at the time. It could be a perfectly natural phenomenon. It was a misunderstanding by people who had never heard of pyrosomes. It’s an irresistible story to bring up.
Whatever the case may be, this alleged second Gulf of Tonkin attack is undeniably one of the reasons America entered the Vietnam conflict. Was this just propaganda spun by a government eager to staunch the spread of communism? Or was it something else? What happened to those men out there? What were they picking up and even seeing zipping around out there in those dark waters? Was this all just a misunderstanding, USOs, sea creatures, or something even more mysterious still? Whatever the answers to these questions, it all had heavy weight on the history of war, and remains a curious historical oddity that has never seen any real concrete answers, leaving it to the realm of speculation.
If you’re interested in the UFO phenomenon, you’ll probably know that for decades the U.K.’s Ministry of Defense investigated the subject. The MoD, however, is not the only government body that has got involved. There are more than a few of them. I’ll begin with the U.K.’s Special Branch. As for what Special Branch was, there’s this: “The first Special Branch in the world was formed in London in 1883. It spread throughout the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Each British police force went on to form its own Special Branch, the largest being that of the Metropolitan Police until it was merged with the Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist Branch (SO13) to form Counter Terrorism Command or SO15 in 2006. Special Branch maintained contact with the Security Service. Although they were not part of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), they were entitled to use the prefix “Detective” in front of their ranks…It was announced, in September 2005, that the Metropolitan Police Special Branch would be merging with the Anti-Terrorism Branch of the Metropolitan Police to form a new department called Counter Terrorism Command, with the new department coming into being on 2 October 2006.”
George King’s Aetherius Society, which was very much Contactee-driven from the late-1950s onward, was the subject of a secret file created by Special Branch. That file is now in the public domain, thanks to the terms of the U.K.’s Freedom of Information Act. The papers demonstrate that Special Branch was concerned by the fact that the Aetherius Society was allying itself with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which was created in 1the 1950s. Special Branch certainly viewed King as, in their words, a “crank.” Special Branch came to quickly realize that King was highly motivated when it came to getting the word out regarding his views on nuclear weapons and the Russians. That alone was certainly a matter of deep concern to the authorities. The surveillance, hardly surprisingly, continued at a steady pace.
Now, let’s take a look at the U.K.’s Provost and Security Services. In the same way that, in the United States, claims have been made that the US Air Force’s UFO program, Project Blue Book, never got to see the really “good” UFO material (crashed UFOs, dead aliens, etc.), similar assertions were made in the U.K. A great deal has been written (some of it by me) on the way in which the Royal Air Force’s Provost and Security Services at Royal Air Force Rudloe Manor, Wiltshire, England played a role in the UFO subject for decades – a role that remains unclear to this day. Despite failed and clumsy attempts on the part of the MoD to lay the matter to rest – by calling Rudloe Manor merely a “coordination point” for the collection of UFO reports – the controversy still continues. Today, you can take a trip to the U.K.’s National Archives and see for yourself more than a few P&SS UFO files. They show that P&SS personnel were clearly doing their own UFO investigations.
How about another official U.K. body? This one is the Home Office. What makes the stories about the Home Office and UFOs so interesting and different, however, is the noted lack of attention they have received over the years. That’s not to say there isn’t an intriguing body of data available. Quite the contrary: there actually is an intriguing body of data on this matter. According to researcher and author Timothy Good, in his 1987 book, Above Top Secret: “A close friend of mine whom I have known since 1952 witnessed the landing of an unidentified flying object in Derbyshire in September 1963, and subsequently came into contact with its operators. Four years afterwards two men with Home Office identification cards turned up at my friend’s flat and politely asked a number of questions which clearly indicated that they were familiar with aspects of the incident.” Similarly, in 1982 Good interviewed an eye-opening interview with a retired police inspector, in an attempt to determine if the UFO issue was subject to the constraints of the British Government’s Official Secrets Act – a piece of legislation utilized to muzzle government employees when deemed necessary by officialdom. According to Good’s source: “What I can say to you, is that I know the subject itself was the subject of a Home Office directive.”
Aerial view of GCHQ
Now, there’s the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the U.K. equivalent of the United States’ National Security Agency. In the mid-1990s UFO researcher Robin Cole found himself in deep water when he started asking questions about the UFO connection to GCHQ. Particularly so when he prepared a fascinating report that contained everything he had found out about GCHQ’s ties to UFOs. Cole’s research showed that GCHQ had UFO reports on file, had copies of some of the United States’ Project Blue Book files, had an extensive “UFO library,” and were actively watching Cole himself in the shadows. It was almost inevitable that Cole would get a personal visit. He did. One morning after his report was published, Cole got a knock on the door from personnel in CID (Criminal Investigation Department) who interviewed him about his research. They wanted to know why he was looking into the UFO-GCHQ angle. They also asked questions about his knowledge of the aforementioned Royal Air Force Rudloe Manor. The good news was that Cole hadn’t committed any kind of crime. The Men in Black went their ways and Cole chose to quit Ufology.
What all of this demonstrates is that when we talk about UFOs and the U.K. government, things go far beyond than just the Ministry of Defense.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.