UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

My previous article was titled “Retrieved UFOs and Dead Aliens: Have Their Ever Been Any? Nope.” I was focused on why I don’t think there have ever been any real, crashed UFOs. In that same article I made a brief reference to deceased ETs. Like the cases that I think were actually “crashed UFOs that never were,” the same can be said for tales of dead aliens and extraterrestrial autopsies. Of course, the most well known alien autopsy saga was that of Ray Santilli that surfaced in 1995. Such was the interest in Santilli’s story (and film-footage, too), it still interests some people in Ufology to this very day. It was in the heady, X-Files-dominated days of 1995 that Ray Santilli let loose upon an unsuspecting world the infamous “Alien Autopsy” film. More than a decade later, and after a seemingly never-ending period of controversy and debate, Santilli finally ‘fessed up to the fact that the controversial footage was nothing more than a, ahem, “restoration.” So Santilli’s highly convoluted story went, he really did have in his possession 1947-vintage U.S. military film that showed the secret autopsy of a bald-headed, pot-bellied alien who had had the unfortunate bad driving skills to crash to earth deep in the harsh deserts of New Mexico. Ironically, however, Santilli elaborated, the real footage had supposedly degraded to the point where it was both unwatchable and unusable from a broadcasting perspective; and so he enlisted the expert help of special-effects chums to work on that aforementioned restoration. Hmm. There are, however, other – lesser known – tales of alien autopsies.

A still from the “Alien Autopsy” video

For decades, the now-late Ufologist Leonard Stringfield collected reports of crashed UFOs. One such case involving an alien autopsy (or, rather, an alleged alien autopsy) reached the eyes and ears of Stringfield in 1980. The story came from a typical “unknown source.” Ho-hum. In Stringfield’s case, the source was a Mr. “T.E.” The story told to Stringfield went as follows: it was 1953 when T.E., only twenty at the time, held a military position in the New Jersey-based Fort Monmouth. On one day at the base, T.E. and his buddies were ordered to go a specific room. They did so, then sat down,. A piece of black-and-white footage began to play. According to Stringfield, “Without any briefing, the 16mm movie projector was flicked on and the film began to roll on the screen…the film showed a desert scene dominated by a silver disc-shaped object embedded in the sand.” And, then, suddenly, “…there was a change of scenes. Now in view were two tables, probably taken inside a tent, on which, to his surprise, were dead bodies. T.E. said the bodies appeared little by human standards and most notable were the heads, all looking alike, and all being large compared to their body sizes…They looked Mongoloid.”

What I find particularly interesting about this story is that T.E. and his friends were advised to “think about the movie.” Not long later, the guys were told the footage “was a hoax.” It was added that: “The 5-minute long movie certainly was not a Walt Disney production. It was probably shot by an inexperienced cameraman because it was full of scratches, and had poor coloring and texture.” Then, there is the little-known story of Pennsylvania-based UFO researcher Joan Jeffers who – having read the “T.E. Report” – stated in a letter to Stringfield on February 6, 1979 that she, too, had spoken with a military source who claimed to have seen what sounded suspiciously like the same film – but, at a “radar facility” in Maine, USA around 1956. I have to say that T.E.’s story of the footage being a hoax – and that the guys should think about it – makes me think of the National Security Agency “plant” story relative to an alleged crashed UFO off Spitsbergen, Norway in 1952 that was mentioned in my previous article. Someone in the intelligence community, I suspected, wanted these stories to get out into the world for reasons that, so far, are unclear.

Two years after the T.E. story reached Stringfield, there was another development, as Stringfield said: “On a tip from Bill Hamilton of Phoenix, Arizona, at the MUFON Symposium in Houston, June, 1980, I was soon in communication with Ms. C.M. of Los Angeles, a successful freelance writer who knew about a secret movie allegedly showing a freshly recovered alien craft with occupants, filmed inside an Air Force hangar. The movie, in color with sound, and of 17 minutes duration, said CM, was in the possession of a person formerly in government service, whom she did not identify…one scene showed the removal of five alien dead bodies.” We now have to turn our attentions to the terrible Challenger Space Shuttle disaster that occurred in January 1986. Aboard the shuttle was astronaut Ellison Onizuka. He said that back in 1973, he’d seen film footage – at McClelland Air Force Base – that showed “alien bodies on a slab.”

Also in 1986, U.K.-based ufologist Jenny Randles was told of an alien autopsy. In the latter part of the year, Randles was approached by a man she referred to as “Robert.” He was on his way out of the military, so the story went, so he wanted to share with Randles what he knew. Supposedly, Robert had seen photos, rather than footage. And there was more than just one dead alien. There were several of them. When I interviewed Randles about all this in the 1990s, she said the following to me: “…there was a very detailed account that was mostly filled with medical jargon about the autopsy which he didn’t understand, and there was a photograph of this entity with a slit right down the middle from the neck to the navel.” Randles had more to say to me:

“One of the things Robert said was that the aliens were very human-looking. He said that the head was completely bald, but the most unusual feature of the face was the nose, which was almost flush into the face – almost unnoticeable. He couldn’t tell from the photographs, but the autopsy report made it clear that the beings were slightly smaller than average human size – about five feet in height. Bearing in mind, 1986 was years before the autopsy film [from Ray Santilli] surfaced. In fact, the connections with the autopsy film and with what Robert told me are chillingly similar. One of the impressions that you get from the alien autopsy footage is that the body is very human-like; and is around five foot in height. I have to say it struck me as soon as I saw the footage that this was very similar to what Robert had described.”

What I find intriguing about this whole saga is the fact that these incidents all seemed to have been staged. For example, “T.E.” was told to think about the footage he’d seen, but was later informed it was a hoax. Onizuka said he’d seen footage of dead aliens back in the early 1970s. No reason was made as to why Onizuka was allowed to see the film. And, as far as the 1986 affair of Jenny Randles goes, that, too, smacked of a staged event. Someone, I suspect, wanted Randles to spread the story here and there. To her credit, Randles chose to stay quiet for a number of years. I say we’re not looking not at any real autopsies. I say: models, films and dummies created by U.S. intelligence to freak out the Russians during the Cold War. Such a thing would not surprise me at all.

Of all the planets in our solar system, Uranus is arguably one of the most unique and mysterious. Its discovery by astronomer William Herschel in 1781 marked the first location of a planet using a telescope, although ironically, Herschel initially thought the planet had merely been a star, or perhaps a comet.

Subsequent observations by astronomer Johann Elert Bode would eventually confirm the planetary status of the mysterious celestial object, which Herschel proposed naming Georgium Sidus in honor of King George III. The idea was vetoed, and Bode’s choice of naming the planet after the Greek god of the sky won out in the end.

Astronomer William Herschel

(Public Domain).

Along with Neptune, Uranus is one of two planets known as ice giants—a planet composed of elements heavier than hydrogen or helium—whose mass is comprised of materials that include methane, ammonia, and water surrounding a rocky core. Despite its status as an “ice giant,” the composition of Uranus is mostly rather warm and fluid, and there is hardly anything about the temperature of its core, which clocks in at an estimated 9,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

Despite this, Uranus remains a cold and windy locale. Possessing the third largest diameter in our solar system, the planet is also curious on account of its rotation at what is almost a 90-degree angle to relative to its orbit. Thus, the plant has the appearance of a “rolling” motion with its orbit, rather than the vertical spin of our own planet.

Uranus is host to 27 small moons, as well as 13 rings which, arguably, are its most curious feature. In fact, some astronomers have called the planet’s rings nearly invisible, and seemingly impossible on account of the way that they seemingly defy the expectations of astronomers.

Uranus and its rings, as seen through the Hubble Space Telescope, with both its rings and an aurora visible

(NASA/Public Domain).

The planet’s 13 rings are divided into two sets — the inner rings of which are mostly dark and narrow, while its two remaining outer rings are a striking rusty red ring encircled by an outermost ring resembling Saturn’s blue E ring. Belts of dust particulate also rest outside some of the planet’s larger rings.

Despite the fact that so much is known and can be observed about the rings of Uranus, astronomers have experienced ongoing difficulties accounting for their appearance and behavior. One problem has to do with their composition: if the rings are composed of tiny bits of matter, it would have been expected that within a mere few decades that these rings would have continued to spread into a series of much wider rings.

Of course, in the centuries since its discovery, the rings of Uranus appear to have remained intact, although they have only been officially known to exist since 1977 when a trio of astronomers, James Elliot, Jessica Mink and Ted Dunham, made the discovery from aboard the Kuiper Airborne Observatory, which at the time had been fitted with a special infrared telescope. Despite this being the occasion of the “official” discovery of Uranus’s rings, earlier observations date as far back to Herschel, who also claimed to have seen them. In an entry dated February 22, 1789, the astronomer had written of his observations of the planet that “A ring was suspected.” An additional claimed observation of rings encircling Uranus also occurred again in 1847, though this account remains somewhat more questionable.

The Uranian rings, photographed by Voyager 2 in 1986

(NASA/Public Domain).

Indeed, if observations of the rings of Uranus appear to have been made for more than two centuries, it would seem unlikely that they were a recent formation, at least by human standards of the passage of time. Another curiosity has to do with the fact that the rings are nearly invisible, as their “official” discovery required the use of an infrared telescope. Astronomers have long contended that the rings of Uranus should be brighter and easily visible like those of its neighbor, Saturn.

The peculiar darkness of the rings encircling Uranus have prompted some astronomers in the past to consider whether they might actually not be rings at all, but instead tiny single satellites (i.e. moons) producing trace amounts of gas as they coast along in their orbits. This idea, proposed in the later 1970s by Thomas Van Flandern, would seemingly have accounted for some of the curious features noted about the planet’s rings.

Notably, Van Flandern had also been an early proponent of the idea that the so-called “Face on Mars” had indeed been a construction of ancient extraterrestrials and other less conventional ideas related to modern astronomy, and following the Voyager 2 probe’s visit to Uranus in 1986, images clearly detailing the Uranian rings seemed to have confirmed their identity once and for all.

Color enhancement of the rings of Uranus, photographed by Voyage 2 in 1986

(NASA/Public Domain).

Today, astronomers believe that the rings are indeed a recent formation, celestially speaking. Sometime in the last 600 million years, the rings are likely to have originated from collisions that broke apart several of its past moons, the particulate remains of which are believed to constitute the faint rings that are visible today.

And yet, astronomers still can’t determine what, precisely, holds the rings in place. An early theory bearing some similarity to that of Van Flandern had involved the presence of so-called “shepherd moons” near each ring which exerted enough gravity to help them maintain their placement. However, by 1986 with the Voyager 2 probe’s visit to the planet, only one pair of shepherd moons were detected around the planet’s brightest ring.

Despite our growing body of knowledge about our solar system and its unique qualities, many characteristics of our planetary neighbors remain mysterious, and arguably, Uranus remains a very special case in this regard.