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!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
24-07-2021
The UFO files: exploring the findings of the Pentagon’s report
The UFO files: exploring the findings of the Pentagon’s report
The report, released last month, examines mysterious phenomena in the skies. What does it tell us?
In 2017, The New York Times publicly revealed that the US Defence Intelligence Agency had, ten years earlier, established the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Programme – a secret $22m government project to examine military encounters with unidentified flying objects, or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs), as they are officially known today.
By that time, details and footage of some particularly striking incidents had already been leaked and widely reported. There was growing interest among members of Congress, who called for greater transparency on the issue. The Senate’s intelligence committee demanded that the Pentagon – the Department of Defence – release a public report describing its findings.
What were these widely reported incidents?
In 2014 and 2015, US navy pilots from the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt described close encounters in the Atlantic off Virginia with what looked like flying spheres.
Pilots reported that the objects had no visible engine or exhaust plumes, but that they could reach altitudes of 30,000 feet and hypersonic speeds. Some incidents were videotaped, including one in early 2015 that shows an object zooming over the waves as a pilot exclaims: “Wow, what is that, man? Look at it fly!”
In November 2004, two jets from the USS Nimitz were 100 miles southwest of San Diego when they encountered a white oval-shaped craft hovering above the sea. As one of the F-18 jets descended to look, the object ascended towards it, then zipped away. “It accelerated like nothing I’ve ever seen,” said David Fravor, one of the pilots. “It had no plumes, wings or rotors and outran our F-18s.”
What did the report find?
The Pentagon examined 144 reports of UAPs made by US military pilots between 2004 and 2021. Although only nine pages long, it presents some interesting findings. One is that UAPs “probably do represent physical objects”, as opposed to technical anomalies or figments of pilots’ imaginations. Some 80 of the UAPs were observed with “multiple sensors”, for instance by radar, infrared and optical cameras as well as pilots’ visual observations.
Furthermore, in 18 of the incidents, the objects demonstrated “unusual flight characteristics”, such as manoeuvring abruptly or moving at intense speeds – potentially demonstrating advanced, as-yet unknown technologies. The report also identified 11 “near-misses” between UAPs and US pilots, concluding that they “clearly pose a safety of flight issue and may pose a challenge to US national security”.
Plastic artist Peter Coffin's ‘Flying Saucer’, a seven-meter, LED-studded, SMS-controlled flying saucer which was lifted by a helicopter over Ipanema beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
ANTONIO SCORZA/AFP via Getty Images
Did it offer explanations?
By and large, no. In one case, the Pentagon felt confident that the reported sighting of a UAP was in fact “a large, deflating balloon”. As for the other 143 sightings, it said it was unable to explain them definitively. But it did put forward five potential categories for sightings of UAPs: first, “airborne clutter”, such as birds, drones, balloons or debris; second, “natural atmospheric phenomena” such as thermal fluctuations, ball lightning or solar flares; third, classified technology operated by “US entities”; fourth, “foreign adversary systems”, i.e. secret technologies deployed by China or Russia; fifth, a catch-all “other”.
The fifth, of course, was taken by many as a code for “aliens”, but the word did not feature in the report. Essentially, the report amounts to a “giant shrug”, said The Economist, finding that the evidence on UAPs is “largely inconclusive” and that conclusions will require more data.
So was it a damp squib?
Not altogether. There was enough there to excite the UFO-watching community: “Some UAPs,” the report confirmed, “appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, manoeuvre abruptly or move at a considerable speed, without discernible means of propulsion.”
It also signalled that security officials do now take UAPs seriously, and that, as Barack Obama recently put it: “there’s footage and records of objects in the skies that... we don’t know exactly what they are”. Most significantly, the findings are potentially deeply troubling from a national security perspective.
President Biden speaks at the Pentagon in February 2021
Alex Brandon/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
Why are they worrying, security-wise?
If a “foreign adversary” is behind the aircraft seen by US pilots and radar, then the likes of Russia or China are developing craft with advanced flying abilities that not only exceed the US, but which are so far ahead that they are actually incomprehensible.
Marik von Rennenkampff, a former Pentagon analyst, said that in that case, foreign powers would have performed a breathtaking technological leap – and that US intelligence would have suffered an immense failure “orders of magnitude worse than 9/11” by failing to note and explain them. Other experts, however, questioned why a foreign adversary would risk their technological advantages being discovered by parading them in front of rivals.
What other possible explanations are there?
The Pentagon has not always been forthcoming where reports of UAPs are concerned. “There is a long history of the US government allowing UFO theories to develop to mask or hide classified programmes,” said Julian E. Barnes, an intelligence reporter at The New York Times.
Many historical UFO sightings in the US have been retrospectively explained as sightings of the Lockheed U-2 and its successors: top-secret high-altitude spy planes that the Pentagon did not wish publicly to discuss. The report is somewhat non-committal in this area, saying only: “We were unable to confirm” that classified US programmes “accounted for any of the UAP reports we collected”.
At any rate, this report is only the beginning: it advised more “consistent consolidation” and analysis of reports. Mystery objects in the skies above are now firmly on the radar of the US armed forces.
Here's What You Need To Remember: The Groom Lake facility at this time acquired the designation “Area 51” as it expanded and developed specialized facilities for the striking supersonic jets: larger additional hangars, a longer 10,000 foot runway, safer backup landing areas, over 130 housing units for personnel, and enlarged fuel stores for the exotic high-temperature JP-7 fuel used in the A-12.
Area 51, the highly secretive U.S. Air Force test facility in the deserts of southern Nevada, is enjoying a resurgence of popular interest thanks to an internet meme—as if being featured in X-File episodes, arcade shoot’em up games and films weren’t enough.
Despite the countless dubious conspiracy theories attributed to the site also known as “Dreamland” or “Groom Lake,” there’s no doubt that for over six decades the base hosted all sorts of “black project” aircraft whose existence was not formally disclosed by the Pentagon.
Though the CIA only obliquely admitted to the site’s existence in 2013, we actually know a fair bit about how Area 51 came to be—and even how it first became a subject of juicy UFO stories.
A Private Testing Ground for Eisenhower’s Top-Secret Spy Plane
In the early 1950s, the United States was super keen on monitoring the Soviet Union’s rapidly developing nuclear ballistic missile program. As the first spy satellites remained a few years away from being launched, the only way to reliably spy on these sights was to fly above them and snap pictures with giant cameras. But by the early 1950s, the Soviet Union’s new air defense system and high-flying jet interceptors made spy flights excessively risky.
To overcome these defenses, Lockheed engineer Kelly Johnson proposed a glide-liker spy plane that would simply fly too high to be intercepted at over 70,000 feet. This still involved illegally violating Soviet airspace—but as long as the spy planes couldn’t be shot down, Moscow couldn’t prove the spy flights were happening at all.
In November 1954, Eisenhower approved development of this U-2 spy plane in a program known as “Project Aquatone” to be operated by the CIA. While the plane would be built at Lockheed’s famous Skunkworks facility, an aircraft designed for illegal spy overflights needed to be tested somewhere more discrete.
Johnson asked Lockheed test pilot Tony LeVier to find a suitably clandestine airfield. As described in the bookDark Eagles by Curtis Peebles, test pilot Tony LeVier departed from the Skunkworks facility in Palmdale, California flying a Beechcraft Bonanza light plane, ostensibly on a “hunting trip.” In reality, they proceeded to survey 50 decertified sites in Arizona, California and Nevada over two weeks—but none seemed sufficiently remote.
However, Air Force liaison Col. Osmond Ritland recalled an abandoned X-shaped landing strip that had served as a gunnery field during World War II.
CIA officer Richard Bissell, LeVier and Johnson flew down to inspect the strip, which lay next to a dry Nevada salt flat called Groom Lake. Bissell described the site as “…a perfect natural landing field… as smooth as a billiard table without anything being done to it.”
Johnson indicated “We’ll put it right there. That’s the hangar.”
A fake company called CLJ, created to obscure Lockheed’s involvement, recruited contractors to build up the facilities in the sweltering summer of 1955 at a cost of $800,000.
The desolate site, deceptively nicknamed “Paradise Ranch,” started out with a nearly mile-long runway, two hangars, a control tower, fuel and water storage tanks, an access road, and trailers for onsite personnel. LeVier personally road about the lakebed to clear it of debris and spent shell casings to make it safe for landing.
Finally, on July 24, 1955, the prototype U-2, dubbed Article 341, was disassembled and stowed into a hulking C-124 Globemaster transport plane, which transported it to the “Ranch”—landing with deflated tires so as not to break through the thin runway.
LeVier took the gawky aircraft around on taxi tests, hitting 80 miles per hour on the runway—only for the aircraft’s lengthy wings to lift his plane twenty feet into the air during his second run. The U-2 flew over a quarter-mile, before LeVier was able to get the lift-prone aircraft back down on the lakebed on his second attempt—though the hard landing caused one of the jet’s tires to burst and catch fire.
The U-2 went on to see several successful flight tests and in a matter of months was deployed on spy flights over the Soviet Union with CIA pilots.
Civilian airline pilots and air traffic controllers began spotting the silvery U-2s flying at supposedly impossible heights. Given that the Air Force couldn’t explain the sightings by telling the truth, it devised weather-related incidents to explain them away. These often unconvincing explanations only fed the fervor of conspiracy theorists.
The Blackbirds: A-12, D-21 and SR-71
When a Soviet S-75 surface-to-air missile blasted Gary Powers’s U-2 in 1960, and he subsequently confessed to performing espionage flights) it became clear that altitude alone would not provide an adequate defense. Kelly Johnson had already anticipated this vulnerability in 1958, when he began exploring a new spy plane concept: combining high altitude with sustained speeds exceeding three times the speed of sound, and radar-stealth—hopefully making the jet too high and fast to ever intercept.
This CIA-Lockheed “black project”—codenamed “Project Oxcart”—spawned the futuristic-looking A-12 single-seat spy plane, the progenitor of the famous (and unclassified) two-seat SR-71 Blackbird flown by the U.S. Air Force.
The Groom Lake facility at this time acquired the designation “Area 51” as it expanded and developed specialized facilities for the striking supersonic jets: larger additional hangars, a longer 10,000 foot runway, safer backup landing areas, over 130 housing units for personnel, and enlarged fuel stores for the exotic high-temperature JP-7 fuel used in the A-12.
The first A-12s arrived in 1962 along with elite military pilots temporarily discharged and placed in the employ of the CIA, a protocol known as “sheep-dipping.” Though the White House never dispatched A-12s on overflights of the Soviet Union, they did fly thirty-two missions over Vietnam and North Korea in Project Blackshield before being retired in favor of the Air Force’s SR-71s, which had side-looking cameras that didn’t require overflight of hostile airspace.
Lockheed also devised a D-21 spy drone that resembled a miniature, single-engined Blackbird, carried on top of a Blackbird-derived carrier aircraft called the M-21.
Tragically, one of the piggybacked D-21 drones collided with its M-21 carrier during a test launch. Though both of the M-21’s crew ejected, one drowned before he could be rescued, and Johnson canceled M-21 program.
However, the CIA did later try to make use of the D-21s by launching them from B-52 bombers to snap footage of Chinese nuclear test sites. However, a series of mishaps meant the Air Force was unable to recover footage from any of the five drone missions it dispatched.
Birthplace of the Stealth Jet
While the A-12 and Blackbird had limited stealth characteristics, by the 1970s, the Air Force was interested in taking another crack at a low-radar-observable jet, this time with combat application.
In 1977, the Skunk Works used new computer modeling technology to design and build two pale aircraft with diamond-like faceted surfaces coated with radar-absorbent iron ball paint. These “Have Blue” aircraft were disassembled and flown to Area 51 in a giant C-5 cargo jet November 16, then rebuilt and test flown.
Lo and behold, the Have Blues did exhibit drastically reduced radar cross-sections—but they were also highly aerodynamically unstable, and both crashed in 1979.
Lockheed evolved Have Blue into the F-117 Nighthawk attack jet, which used computer fly-by-wire systems to correct the aircraft’s inherent instability. A YF-117 prototype too made its first flight at Groom Lake on June 17, 1981. Production F-117s were then stationed at Area 51 before being redeployed to the nearby Tonopah Test Range.
Though the Pentagon admitted to the existence of a stealth jet in 1983, the secrecy surrounding the F-117 was so effective that the public never had any inkling of the Nighthawk’s true appearance, nor even its designation (widely believed to be the “F-19”) until was finally unveiled in 1988.
Meanwhile, Northrop, too, began refining its stealth technology with the Tacit Blue demonstrator, dubbed the “whale” or “alien school bus” for its decidedly unglamorous appearance. This made its first flight at Groom Lake in February 1982—the first of 135 in all before the demonstrator was retired in 1985.
Conceived as stealthy surveillance plane with a discrete Low Probability of Intercept Radar, Tacit Blue instead pioneered the use of computer-engineered curved-surfaces in stealth aircraft which heavily informed Northrop’s forthcoming B-2 stealth bomber.
Sébastien Roblin holds a master’s degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing, and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring.
This article first appeared in 2019 and is being reprinted due to reader interest.
China’s space station is preparing to host 1,000 scientific experiments
China’s space station is preparing to host 1,000 scientific experiments
Researchers around the world are eagerly awaiting the completion of Tiangong, to study topics from dark matter and gravitational waves to the growth of cancer and pathogenic bacteria.
Chinese astronaut Nie Haisheng works inside the Tianhe module.
Credit: Jin Liwang/Xinhua/eyevine
China launched the core of its space station in April, and sent three astronauts up in June. But although it probably won’t be complete until late 2022, there is already a long queue of experiments from across the world waiting to go up. Scientists in China told Nature that the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) has tentatively approved more than 1,000 experiments, several of which have already been launched.
Before April, the International Space Station (ISS) was the only space laboratory in orbit, and many researchers say Tiangong (or ‘heavenly palace’) is a welcome addition for astronomical and Earth observation, and for studying how microgravity and cosmic radiation affect phenomena such as bacterial growth and fluid mixing.
China has landed its first rover on Mars — here’s what happens next
However, others argue that crewed space stations are costly, and serve more of a political than a scientific purpose.
“Increased scientific access to space is of scientific benefit globally, no matter who builds and operates platforms,” says Julie Robinson, chief scientist for human exploration and operations at NASA Headquarters, in Washington DC.
“We need more space stations, because one space station is definitely not enough,” adds Agnieszka Pollo, an astrophysicist at the National Centre for Nuclear Research in Warsaw, who is part of a team sending an experiment to study γ-ray bursts.
Open to the world
The ISS was launched in 1998, as a partnership between space agencies from the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada (see ‘Variations on a theme’). It has housed more than 3,000 experiments since then, but China is barred from it because of US rules that prohibit NASA from using funds for collaboration with China.
Although most experiments slated for Tiangong will involve Chinese researchers, China says that its space station will be open to collaboration from all countries, including the United States.
In June 2019, the CMSA and the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), which promotes collaboration in space, selected nine experiments — in addition to the 1,000 that China has tentatively approved — to go up once the space station is complete. Simonetta Di Pippo, director of UNOOSA in Vienna, says these involve 23 institutions in 17 nations.
China previously launched two small space labs — Tiangong-1 and Tiangong-2. These hosted more than 100 experiments, circling Earth for a number of years, but are no longer in orbit.
The space station offers brand new facilities, and China is encouraging experiments not attempted in space before, says Tricia Larose, a medical researcher at the University of Oslo, who is leading a project planned for 2026. “They’re saying, yes, build your hardware, make it brand new, do something that has never been done before, and send it up to us.”
Although most projects approved so far are led by Chinese researchers, many have international collaborators, says Zhang Shuang-Nan, an astrophysicist at the Chinese Academy of Science’s (CAS’s) Institute of High Energy Physics in Beijing, who advises the CMSA.
‘The playrooms of scientists’
The first section of Tiangong to arrive was a core module known as Tianhe (‘harmony of the heavens’). In late May, a cargo ship named Tianzhou-2 (‘heavenly ship’) was sent up and docked, delivering fuel, space suits and experimental equipment. In June, three Chinese astronauts — or ‘taikonauts’ — aboard Shenzhou-12 (‘divine vessel’) also docked, entering the 17-metre-long chamber that will be their home for the next three months.
Over the next year or more, the CMSA will send another eight missions to Tiangong. Two will deliver the Wentian (‘quest for heavens’) and Mengtian (‘dreaming of heavens’) modules, which will mainly house scientific experiments (see ‘China’s first space station’).
Image credit: Adrian Mann/Stocktrek Images/Alamy
These will be “the playrooms of scientists”, says Paulo de Souza, a physicist at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, who develops sensors used in space.
The space station will have more than 20 experimental racks, which are mini-labs with closed, pressurized environments, says Yang Yang, director of international cooperation at the CAS Technology and Engineering Center for Space Utilization in Beijing. Outside, there will be 67 connection points for research hardware facing Earth or the sky, says Yang, and a powerful central computer will process data from experiments before beaming them back to Earth.
Organoids and dark matter
The experiments being sent up to the new space station encompass numerous fields. Zhang is the principal investigator for HERD (High Energy Cosmic-Radiation Detection facility), which is a partnership involving Italy, Switzerland, Spain and Germany, slated for 2027. This particle detector will study dark matter and cosmic rays, and will cost some 1 billion to 2 billion yuan (US$155 million to $310 million), says Zhang.
Zhang and Pollo are also involved in POLAR-2, which will study the polarization of γ-rays emitted from large and distant explosions, with the goal of clarifying the properties of γ-ray bursts, and possibly even gravitational waves.
Larose plans to send up 3D blobs of healthy and cancerous intestinal tissue, known as organoids. She wants to find out whether the very-low-gravity environment will slow or stop the growth of the cancerous cells, which might lead to new therapies.
'Taikonuat' Liu Boming performs Chinese second ever spacewalk after arriving at Tiangong in June.
Credit: Jin Liwang/Xinhua/eyevine
Other projects from scientists in India and Mexico will study ultraviolet emissions from nebulae and infrared data from Earth to study meteorological conditions and what drives intense storms.
Despite many of the projects being partnerships between Chinese and Western scientists, geopolitical tensions have made collaborations more difficult, notes Larose. She says Norway has yet to sign a bilateral agreement with China that would give her project the green light. Merlin Kole, an astrophysicist at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, who is also working on POLAR-2, adds that stricter adherence to export regulations means there is added bureaucracy around sending electronic hardware to China.
But Di Pippo says that tensions have so far had no impact on the progress of projects selected by UNOOSA, adding that the agency is discussing with the CMSA to send more experiments to Tiangong by the end of next year.
Scientific bang for buck
Some scientists have argued that crewed space stations are a waste of money — the cost of Tiangong has not been made public, but the ISS cost some €100 billion (US$118 billion) to build and maintain for its first decade.
“You’d get a much bigger scientific bang for the buck with robotic missions,” says Gregory Kulacki, an analyst on China security issues for the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “Within China, as within the United States, there has been a tension between scientists who want to do the best science they possibly can, and who prefer robotic missions, and governments who want to use human space-flight programmes largely for political purposes.”
China’s daring mission to grab Moon rocks is under way
But other researchers point out that although satellites offer an alternative for some observations, for many experiments, particularly those requiring microgravity, crewed space stations are essential. They provide a home for long-term observations, data-processing capacity and access for astronauts who can perform maintenance tasks and run experiments.
Furthermore, as well as housing experiments from researchers, Tiangong is intended to test human space-travel technologies to support China’s space-exploration goals, says Zhang.
With current ISS funding only running to sometime between 2024 and 2028, it’s also possible that Tiangong will eventually become Earth’s only space station in operation.
Tiangong is projected to operate for at least a decade, and China already has plans to launch other spacecraft to work in tandem with it. The China Survey Space Telescope, or Xuntian (‘survey the heavens’), is a two-metre optical telescope that will rival NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and periodically dock with Tiangong for refuelling and maintenance. Set to launch in 2023, it will have a larger field of view for peering into the deep Universe than does Hubble.
There have been many UFO incidents over the years, involving a wide range of phenomena that cover the spectrum from the explainable to the full-on bizarre. Some of the more intriguing UFO incidents are those that involve reliable witnesses and radar and military confirmation, and these are the cases that really make the imagination go wild. One such case played out in 2017 over Northern California and Oregon, involving an airborne intruder that baffled pilots and radar crews, and which would actually be engaged by F-15 fighter jets.
On October 25, 2017, a very strange, almost surreal series of events would play out in the skies near the California-Oregon border, in the United States. At approximately 4:30 p.m. an object was picked up by radar operators flying at an altitude of 37,000 feet and travelling “very fast.” At the time it was broad daylight and whatever the aircraft was, it was dangerously zipping through an area with heavy air traffic, yet it was not emitting any transponder signals, did not respond to attempts to establish radio contact, was completely silent, and according to all records was not supposed to be there. It would later turn out that the Air Force had also been tracking the object as it sped southward, and eyewitnesses who saw it said it was a “large white object.” The object flew directly into heavy air traffic going the opposite direction, being sighted by numerous airline pilots who made panicked calls to ground control, before abruptly changing course to head northbound and disappear from radar altogether.
Although the thing had vanished from radar, for the next 30 minutes there were panicked calls from various airliners reporting the mysterious, fast-moving object, over a range of hundreds of miles, while both the FAA and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) were trying to figure out what to do. No one seems to have been able to get a good look at the thing, merely describing it as large, white, and very fast, but details such as what sort of aircraft it might be were elusive, and it moved too fast and never stayed in one place long enough for anyone to get a clear visual. However, it was obvious from the harried recordings that would later be released that these pilots did not think it was any normal aircraft, with one exclaiming “That looks crazy!” It would also be described as making maneuvers that were beyond what a normal airliner would have been capable of, making turns of which one witness would say were “Way harder/faster than what a commercial aircraft could handle at that speed/altitude without ripping the wings off.” One Southwest Airlines pilot remark that would be gleaned from audio recordings of the pilot accounts procured through Freedom of Information Act requests made by the site The War Zone, who first broke the story, would say of his own sighting:
If it was like a Lear (private jet) type airframe I probably would not have seen it this clear. This was a white airplane and it was big. And it was moving at a clip too, because we were keeping pace with it, it was probably moving faster than we were… It was a larger aircraft yeah.
Throughout all of this, although visual sightings were pouring in, radar operators could not get a lock on it. The object was also maintaining complete radio silence, ignoring all attempts to hail it, and also did not show up on crews’ digital traffic collision avoidance systems (TCAS). It was all very odd and unsettling, to the point that F-15s from the 142nd Fighter Wing based at Portland International Airport were scrambled to go investigate. From here it gets even stranger, because the fighters would first head south, despite the fact that the mystery object was reported as heading north, for reasons unknown. Also strange is that the F-15s would report not being able to find the object at all. The War Zone would say of the F-15 incident:
The F-15s first appear on radar as they climb out of Portland to the south at time index 33:33 as “Rock” flight—a common callsign used for the alert F-15s stationed at PDX. Alaska 439 asks for an update on the unidentified aircraft and the controller notes they still have nothing on him, saying colloquially that it must be in a kind of “stealth mode or something.” It’s also interesting that the F-15s first went south when it seems as if the object would have been north of PDX by the time they finally launched.
NORAD also said that the incident did result in F-15s from Portland being scrambled to investigate, but by the time they got up and “looked around” the mystery aircraft couldn’t be found. A quick note on the fighter jet aspect of this story—the 142nd Fighter Wing operates F-15Cs upgraded with the most capable air-to-air radar set in the world (AN/APG-63V3) and Sniper advanced targeting pods for long-rang visual identification. Their pilots are some of the best in the world and are highly trained in the homeland air defense mission. Once in the air the F-15s are capable of traversing the entire state of Oregon in just a matter of minutes if need be, so if they were launched promptly it seems unlikely they wouldn’t have been able to intercept the aircraft being pointed out by commercial pilots over Southern Oregon. The fact that they “didn’t find anything” is surprising to say the least. Maybe this was due to the nature of the aircraft being searched for, or the possibility that they launched long after it was first sighted, or that we simply aren’t being told the whole story.
The War Zone confirmed that all of this did indeed happen, with much recorded evidence of the conversations between the airliners, ground control, the FAA, and NORAD, as well as radio exchanges and pilot interviews, although there are parts of the audio that have been redacted, going mute in several places regarding responses to requests for information about the military’s activities, showing that indeed we may not be being told the whole story. Indeed, the FAA and NORAD have stated that they have nothing left to add, merely confirming that the incident happened and refusing to say much else on the matter, while the 142nd Fighter Wing has said nothing on the matter at all, neither confirming or denying anything. Clearly there had to have ben some follow up investigation, as this was an unidentified aircraft that does not show up on radar, acting very strangely in U.S. airspace in an area with heavy commercial air traffic for an extended period of time and able to evade F-15 fighter planes. It is a breach on national security at the very least, so it must have stirred the hornet’s nest among the military, but as to what this follow-up investigation turned up, it is currently unknown. It is all very intriguing, with tons of very reliable witnesses, with The War Zone saying:
Collectively these materials give us incredible insight not only into this incident, but also into how such an event is actually handled in real-time by those who are responsible for the safety of those in the air and those on ground below. What they don’t offer is any sort of an explanation for what happened on that fall evening. But really, the fact that all those involved, from air traffic controllers, to Air Force radar operators, to airline pilots, and even special FAA officials tasked with responding to all types of out of the ordinary incidents that occur in the sky on a daily basis seem just as puzzled with this event as we are makes the story all that much more intriguing.
Considering that there is not much more information to go on, we are forced to speculate on what could have been going on here, with all sorts of theories flying since the report broke. One idea is that the military was testing some sort of top-secret experimental aircraft, perhaps a next generation stealth bomber, but if that is true, then it seems like a strange choice to do it among heavy civilian airline traffic in broad daylight. If this was some sort of classified test, then why do that? Also, why allow it to show up on radar at all? Another idea is that this might have been illegal drug runners trying to move contraband across the Canadian border. This would explain the radio silence, but does not explain how they could perform the maneuvers they did, or how they could just disappear from radar. Drug runners would also be more likely to fly at lower altitudes, and it has been pointed out that it would probably be easier to conduct a drug run over land across the border rather than using an aircraft. Of course there is also the idea that this was aliens, and the case has been popular among UFO nuts. In the end, we just don’t know. All we know is that the incident did happen, something went speeding across the sky to baffle pilots, radar operators, and military officials, but what that might have been is anyone’s guess.
After a computer glitch caused the Hubble Space Telescope to turn off on June 13th, NASA engineers were finally able to repair it on July 17th and the new images that it captured of two very bizarre galaxies are spectacular.
The two galaxies that the Hubble was photographing are part of a program led by Julianne Dalcanton from the University of Washington in Seattle that surveys bizarre galaxies in the universe.
NASA released two photos with the one of the left showing a rare event called ARP-MADORE2115-273 of two interacting galaxies which are located in the southern hemisphere about 297 million light-years away from us. The fact that Hubble was able to capture high-resolution images of it is incredibly valuable as astronomers first thought that it was a “collisional ring” system that was formed by two galaxies merging in a head-on collision. However, Hubble’s recent observation revealed that the interaction between the two galaxies is a lot more complicated with dusty gas and countless stars.
The picture on the right is of a giant spiral galaxy named ARP-MADORE0002-503 that has very bizarre extended spiral arms that stretch out to a radius measuring 163,000 light-years. To put this into better perspective, it extends three times further than our own Milky Way Galaxy. Furthermore, the majority of disk galaxies contain an even number of spiral arms but ARP-MADORE0002-503 has three. This galaxy is located 490 million light-years away from Earth.
In a statement, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said, “I’m thrilled to see that Hubble has its eye back on the universe, once again capturing the kind of images that have intrigued and inspired us for decades,” adding, “This is a moment to celebrate the success of a team truly dedicated to the mission.” The Hubble Space Telescope was launched in April of 1990 in a joint project between NASA and the European Space Agency.
Hubble Space Telescope
Now that the Hubble is back working again, we will hopefully see even more stunning photos as those galaxy pictures were only two of numerous test pictures that it took after being rebooted. “Everyone is incredibly grateful, and we’re excited to get back to science!” Dalcanton said. I know that I’m personally excited to see what more breathtaking photos the space telescope will send back to Earth.
Mural in the pyramids of Nubia depicts a ‘Giant’ carrying two elephants
Mural in the pyramids of Nubia depicts a ‘Giant’ carrying two elephants
The pyramids of Nubia are located in the city of Meroë, former capital of the Kingdom of Kush. In these structures there is an old mural where a giant is seen lifting two elephants.
Nubian pyramids.
In the royal cemetery of the ancient Kingdom of Kush , there is a group of 50 pyramids made of sandstone and red brick.
Many of these are dilapidated, the fault of time and looters. The decorations on these monuments speak volumes about how global the kingdom was. However, there is one that is especially striking.
The giant of the ancient mural
The different pyramids found in the city of Meroë make it coveted by tourists. Among these are the famous Nubian pyramids .
This deposit was discovered by Europeans in 1821, thanks to the French mineralogist Frédéric Cailliaud. The most interesting of these pyramids is in reliefs and paintings of the burial chambers.
The one that caused the most concern in the experts was the ancient mural that represents a giant of enormous proportions lifting two elephants .
The features of this character are not characteristic of the area, but Caucasian . Many theorists have hinted that this is proof that red and white giants inhabited Earth.
This theory has been around since 79 AD. C., when the Roman historian Josefo Flavio , wrote that the last race of Egyptian giants lived in century XIII a. C. , during the government of Josué.
Flavio wrote that these were huge, their faces evoked fear, as did their thunderous voice, which they compared to the roar of a lion.
This is assumed by the different paintings found in ancient Egypt , where the pyramid builders are depicted as giants.
Experts believe that these people were over 5 meters tall and could lift up to 4 tons of blocks.
Some of those paintings also showed giant kings ruling Egypt. Others show ordinary people, very small in comparison to such characters.
This theory could be confirmed with a discovery in 1988. Gregor Spoerri , a Swiss businessman and passionate about ancient Egyptian history, found a giant finger after meeting with grave robbers.
Mural found in the burial chamber of one of the pyramids.
White giants in other cultures
The appearance of “Caucasian giants”, such as that of the ancient mural of the pyramids of Nibua, is also mentioned in other cultures.
The Paiutes , an ancient North American tribe native to Nevada, have an oral tradition that they related to settlers.
These include a race of giant, white and red-haired individuals known to their ancestors as “Si-Te-Cah”, which inhabited an ancient cave.
The Choctaw Amerindian people also tell legends where their ancestors fought against a race of Caucasian giants that inhabited the territory that is now Tennessee.
Even the first settlers who arrived in South America, said that in the Patagonia region , they saw a town of tall, white and red-haired people.
All these legends, including that of the ancient Nubian pyramid mural, could have a common origin; the Atlantis .
Historians, theorists, and alternative researchers have suggested a hypothesis about the survivors of the cataclysm . These would have fled to different regions of the world, where they settled and created different civilizations, based on the ancient Atlantean knowledge.
The Pyramids of Mero in Bazarwia, Sudan
Is this ancient mural a representation of an Atlantean giant? It’s possible. Historians assure that all these stories are simple mythology, however, it is hardly credible that so many cultures around the world have such similar legends.
NASA Perseverance Mars Rover to Acquire First Sample
NASA Perseverance Mars Rover to Acquire First Sample
A light-colored “paver stone,” like the ones seen in this mosaic image, will be the likely target for first sampling by the Perseverance rover. This image was taken July 8, 2021, in the “Cratered Floor Fractured Rough” geologic unit at Jezero Crater. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
NASA is making final preparations for its Perseverance Mars rover to collect its first-ever sample of Martian rock, which future planned missions will transport to Earth. The six-wheeled geologist is searching for a scientifically interesting target in a part of Jezero Crater called the “Cratered Floor Fractured Rough.”
This important mission milestone is expected to begin within the next two weeks. Perseverance landed in Jezero Crater Feb. 18, and NASA kicked off the rover mission’s science phase June 1, exploring a 1.5-square-mile (4-square-kilometer) patch of crater floor that may contain Jezero’s deepest and most ancient layers of exposed bedrock.
“When Neil Armstrong took the first sample from the Sea of Tranquility 52 years ago, he began a process that would rewrite what humanity knew about the Moon,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA Headquarters. “I have every expectation that Perseverance’s first sample from Jezero Crater, and those that come after, will do the same for Mars. We are on the threshold of a new era of planetary science and discovery.”
It took Armstrong 3 minutes and 35 seconds to collect that first Moon sample. Perseverance will require about 11 days to complete its first sampling, as it must receive its instructions from hundreds of millions of miles away while relying on the most complex and capable, as well as the cleanest, mechanism ever to be sent into space – the Sampling and Caching System.
Precision Instruments Working Together
The sampling sequence begins with the rover placing everything necessary for sampling within reach of its 7-foot (2-meter) long robotic arm. It will then perform an imagery survey, so NASA’s science team can determine the exact location for taking the first sample, and a separate target site in the same area for “proximity science.”
“The idea is to get valuable data on the rock we are about to sample by finding its geologic twin and performing detailed in-situ analysis,” said science campaign co-lead Vivian Sun, from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “On the geologic double, first we use an abrading bit to scrape off the top layers of rock and dust to expose fresh, unweathered surfaces, blow it clean with our Gas Dust Removal Tool, and then get up close and personal with our turret-mounted proximity science instruments SHERLOC, PIXL, and WATSON.”
SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals), PIXL (Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry), and the WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) camera will provide mineral and chemical analysis of the abraded target. Perseverance’s SuperCam and Mastcam-Z instruments, both located on the rover’s mast, will also participate. While SuperCam fires its laser at the abraded surface, spectroscopically measuring the resulting plume and collecting other data, Mastcam-Z will capture high-resolution imagery.
Working together, these five instruments will enable unprecedented analysis of geological materials at the worksite.
“After our pre-coring science is complete, we will limit rover tasks for a sol, or a Martian day,” said Sun. “This will allow the rover to fully charge its battery for the events of the following day.”
Sampling day kicks off with the sample-handling arm within the Adaptive Caching Assembly retrieving a sample tube, heating it, and then inserting it into a coring bit. A device called the bit carousel transports the tube and bit to a rotary-percussive drill on Perseverance’s robotic arm, which will then drill the untouched geologic “twin” of the rock studied the previous sol, filling the tube with a core sample roughly the size of a piece of chalk.
Perseverance’s arm will then move the bit-and-tube combination back into bit carousel, which will transfer it back into the Adaptive Caching Assembly, where the sample will be measured for volume, photographed, hermetically sealed, and stored. The next time the sample tube contents are seen, they will be in a clean room facility on Earth, for analysis using scientific instruments much too large to send to Mars.
“Not every sample Perseverance is collecting will be done in the quest for ancient life, and we don’t expect this first sample to provide definitive proof one way or the other,” said Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley, of Caltech. “While the rocks located in this geologic unit are not great time capsules for organics, we believe they have been around since the formation of Jezero Crater and incredibly valuable to fill gaps in our geologic understanding of this region – things we’ll desperately need to know if we find life once existed on Mars.”
More About the Mission
A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is the first step in NASA’s Mars Sample Return Campaign. Subsequent NASA missions, now in development in cooperation with the European Space Agency, would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
JPL is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California.
Filmmaker Reuben Langdon spoke to RT about how the government is controlling the messaging around the new information around UFOs to keep justifying its bloated military budget and terrify Americans.
For my ninth birthday, my brother got me a telescope. In rural Northern Wisconsin, on my family’s farm, I would look at the stars across the night sky with no light pollution to block the waves of patterns webbing across the dark. Michael, my older brother, patiently set up my telescope and showed me the constellations and told me their ancient names; we would also wonder about possible other worlds and UFOs.
The first time I could find the constellations on my own, I was lit up and forever transfixed by stars. My brother explained the history, “This is the Ursa major and Ursa minor, the bears, the protectors.” I looked up at him, strong and tall, Michael, like the bear constellation, was my constant protector until his death took him somewhere beyond the stars.
Recently, international media began reporting more and more stories about Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) sightings, following the release of American government information relating to secret projects on the subject. For a long while, UFOs weren’t taken seriously by mainstream media, they featured them only as clickbait for ‘cranks’ on the internet. But now, as more and more credible people have come forward with their experiences, a shift has occurred in public perception.
There was a movement for the American government to release under the Freedom of Information Act documentation relating to projects involving UFOs. Former Navy pilots and civilians have since come forward for interviews about what they witnessed in the skies and the way the military chose to conceal sightings of the advanced technology demonstrated by UFOs. Yet, for all the supposed transparency there was a message of fear creeping into the narrative.
As the American empire always seeks to justify its bloated weapons spending to the tune of trillions of dollars, the sudden release of these CIA documents seems at best suspect and at worst diabolical with a view to blaming the presence of this unrecognized technology on Russia or China. Unfortunately, instead of seeing the opportunity to expand awareness for humanity the framing of the new information became one with a thread of distrust and war.
In the words of filmmaker and actor Reuben Langdon, the corporate media gives us “fear porn.”
He added: “The people doing the work (researching UFOs) seem to have the best of intentions. It comes down to the media and forcing their hand. We have a media that is so focused on the negative news with very few positives. A lot of the researchers in the field have trouble to even bring forth the information. Like, Chris Mellon who said, first we have to have the conversation and unfortunately many will not listen unless it has that negative spin.”
Reuben began his career as a stuntman and has featured in Hollywood blockbusters including Avatar and Pirates of the Caribbean, as well as numerous video games, and became interested in UFOs following an experience he had while filming the James Cameron sci-fi epic. For over a decade he has been researching extraterrestrial phenomena amongst other things and entered a successful documentary making career.
Is the CIA controlling the messaging around this using the media to justify some other agenda? As we hear more stories about the phenomenon, the American government defaults their messaging to fear.
Several years ago, Reuben was involved in a citizen congressional hearing including former members of Congress discussing the history of UFOs and the coverup by the American government. Several high-ranking military intelligence figures shared information at this mock hearing to show what a real investigative Congressional hearing could be like if it were ever allowed. The hope was that it would raise enough awareness to force a public inquiry.
One of the highlights was watching the late Senator Mike Gravel demand that information that was hidden from the public by the US intelligence about UFOs and the history be released for everyone. As I discussed this project with Reuben Langdon, he described what it was like to coordinate the emulated hearing, quite unique in its approach.
He added: “I disagree with projecting fear with the UFO stories. It is an approach to get it in the media but not my approach to this phenomena. The national (American) media seems to be about selling fear and scaring as many people as possible because… fear sells.…”
One of the biggest challenges regarding the UFO coverage is getting it to be taken in a serious way at all. Reuben described the challenge of bringing forth information.
“I think that the Government may see this as an opportunity to put forth their agenda which is one of control of power…taking a bird’s eye, how it is approached by media… be prepared for false flags in the media, like an alien invasion.… We can choose to support people with a fear based narrative or support people with a non-fear based narrative. There is no reason to be in fear, if you are aware of it.”
Reuben had also made a documentary exploring alternative energy sources and the inventors who created them. The documentary was ultimately rejected by top executives for distribution. Undaunted, Reuben outlined how with his own equipment he embarked on the journey of two seasons of his show, Interviews with Extra Dimensionals, which ended up being a top show on the network GAIA. Reuben’s tenacity is driven by a curiosity based on his own personal experiences.
He said:“To some it may seem like the end of the world when in actuality it is humanity waking up to our true potential. The realization we are sovereign, independent beings that can create our own reality and not rely on others to do it for us.”
Reuben’s new project is a film about the adventurer F.A. Mitchell Hedges (the man Indiana Jones character was based on) and the crystal skull. It was discovered in the 1920’s at a Mayan temple, by his daughter. Reuben explores the mystique surrounding the object and its larger meaning to those who believe it has spiritual powers.
He added: “There seems to be an interaction between sacred spots and different places on the Earth, that indigenous hold in sacredness. The feature is setting up Hedges’ research and work. The film will also uncover the legend about the possibilities that there are 13 skulls around the Earth and if all found the legend says, humanity will enter a new era.”
The Crystal Skull is thought by some to be similar to an ancient computer that holds some sort of sacred knowledge like the Akashic records and other information available from ancient civilizations. People show up from all over the world to simply sit in the presence of the Crystal Skull to experience its power and report mystical attunement with multi-dimensional realms.
I imagine my brother Michael’s delight at watching the unfolding of all this new information. Near the end of my brother’s life, Michael gestured vaguely one night at the sky, took my hand in his and looked at me intently. Too weak to form all the words, I looked into his eyes and he turned his head upward to the night sky. I nodded and understood. “Look for me in the stars, I am with you.” I imagined him saying, “I will always be here to protect you. I love you.” Tears rolled down his face slowly as I kissed his hand.
Michael instilled in me the gift of wonder for discovering more about the Universe. I remain open and curious. Even now, I look up at night as I still search the same familiar constellations, I look for my protector, my brother, his smile now hidden somewhere behind the stars.
I am encircled with the thought of all the possibilities.
As Reuben Langdon suggests, “Instead of fear, why not be curious?”
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
Why the military should work with scientists to study the UFO phenomenon
Why the military should work with scientists to study the UFO phenomenon
By Chris Impey
The image from video provided by the Department of Defense labelled Gimbal, from 2015, an unexplained object is seen at center as it is tracked as it soars high along the clouds, traveling against the wind.
(Department of Defense via AP)
UFOs have been in the news a lot lately. I am a research astronomer who has written and edited books and created a free online course about the search for life in the universe. While I think we are making progress on detecting life beyond Earth, I view UFOs from a skeptical standpoint, since the evidence that they represent aliens visiting the Earth is unconvincing.
Last month, a report from the Office of the Director on National Intelligence dropped on Congress. It described 144 sightings by military personnel over a 17-year period, preferring to use the term UAP, for unidentified aerial phenomenon, in part to avoid the stigma attached to UFOs.
For those like me waiting for definitive statements, the report was a big disappointment. It declined to draw any conclusions, saying the available data is “largely inconclusive” and noting it is limited and inconsistently reported. The report worried about increased air “clutter,” and left open the possibility that some UAP sightings represent advanced technologies of foreign adversaries, with significant national security implications.
As for UFOs as alien spacecraft, the report was agnostic. It scrupulously avoided using the words alien or extraterrestrial. That will do little to discourage “true believers.” Nearly half of all Americans think aliens are visiting the Earth, and the UFO phenomenon has become enmeshed in a web of conspiracy theories that include accounts of abduction by aliens and crop circles. These conspiracy theories have undoubtedly been fueled in part by the fact that the military has been secretly investigating UFOs for decades. Any rational debate over UFOs must contend with the fact that they have taken deep root in the public consciousness.
Will the report, and increased transparency by the military, change anything? Will it help draw scientists like me into a serious study of the phenomenon?
Scientists will have to get over their reticence to engage with the sightings. We are in an awkward position. Rapid progress in finding planets orbiting other stars has led to a projection of300 million habitable planetsin our galaxy. There has been plenty of time for life on some of those planets to evolve intelligence and technology. We don’t deny the possibility of aliens traveling from their star system to ours. We are justunconvinced by the datapresented so far.Most sightingscan be attributed to weather balloons or astronomical phenomena such as meteors, fireballs, and Venus. There aremany resourcesgiving mundane explanations for UFO sightings.
There have been academic studies of UFOs before. In 1968, the Condon Report said that that no scientific knowledge had been gained from two decades of study of the phenomenon. But 20 years later, a review led by Stanford professor Peter Sturrock concluded that some sightings are accompanied by physical evidence that warrants investigation. It is telling that after decades of studies and hundreds of thousands of sightings, UFOs have not reached the gold standard in science for confirming any hypothesis: reproducible evidence.
For their part, the military and intelligence communities will have to more actively engage with scientists, and ask for their help and expertise in understanding the sightings in the report, and many others that have not been made public. There are signs that this might happen. Under Avril Haynes, the Office of the DNI has been drawing on its expert group of 500 scientists who consult with the intelligence agencies on scientific problems. A model for this type of collaboration is the two panels of scientists and medical experts that were recently set up to understand the “Havana syndrome” that has afflicted American diplomats since 2016.
What would a collaboration with scientists look like, and what kind of data would it take to “move the needle” on understanding the UAP phenomenon?
The recent report shows how difficult it is to interpret the sightings, even with expert observers and data from multiple sensors. In all but one of 144 cases, there was too little information to even broadly characterize the event. Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks acknowledged this deficiency when she called for more timely and consistent data collection on UAPs. The Defense Department has just over two months to develop a new strategy and report back to Congress.
Sensors malfunction and even expert observers can be fooled when seeing something outside their realm of experience. With optical and infrared imaging, it is extremely difficult to gauge the distance, size, and speed of an object. For example, the three Navy videos that have been in heavy circulation on the Internet seem impressive and inexplicable, but they could easily be artifacts of camera optics and tracking systems.
The military should invite a select group of experts to examine all the evidence (with suitable clearance given when the sensor technology involved is classified). It should be an interdisciplinary team, comprised to address all the observational characteristics of the phenomena. Ideally, data should be shared among our allies, since UAP appear globally. Scientists can bring their assets to bear on the problem as well. For example, civilian satellites are being used to detect and monitor UAPs and machine learning can be used to sift the data for anomalous events.
Scientists are curious and they love a challenging problem. I would lend my hand to the effort if asked. Let’s hope the government will harness scientific expertise to shine light on this decades-long mystery.
Editor’s note: This is an Op-Ed and as such, the opinions expressed are those of the author. If you would like to respond, or have an editorial of your own you would like to submit, please contact Military Times senior managing editor Howard Altman, haltman@militarytimes.com.
The real truth on UFOs is out there — and it’s only 17 pages long.
The nine-page preliminary US government report released last month did little to satisfy those seeking answers on whether alien life exists — and the classified version isn’t likely to provide much more depth with just eight additional pages, according to a report by The Black Vault, a website operated by author and podcaster John Greenewald.
Days after the June 25 report was released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, US officials declined to comment on the length of the classified version, but told Greenewald it was “substantively consistent” and had the same conclusions as the public document.
Greenewald tweeted Thursday that he had confirmed the length of the classified report, which led to much speculation online, with estimates ranging anywhere from 70 to 400 additional pages.
An email from ODNI confirms the full US government report on UFOs is “17 pages in length.”John Greenewald / The Black Vault
“The classified version of the report is 17 pages in length,” Sally Nicholson, from ODNI’s office that handles Freedom of Information Act requests, wrote to Greenewald in an email Thursday.
Greenewald, who specializes in obtaining declassified documents through FOIA requests, bills his site as the largest private online collection of declassified government reports.
Filmmaker Jeremy Corbell released footage of UFOs off the coast of San Diego in 2019.Mystery Wire
Greenewald’s inquiry into the classified report, filed the morning after ODNI delivered it to Congress, initiated a “mandatory declassification review (MDR),” according to The Black Vault.
That’s a process in which an individual or entity can request any federal agency to review classified information for declassification, regardless of age or origin, with “certain limitations,” according to the Information Security Oversight Office.
The Black Vault also requested attachments to the classified report, “wherein members of Congress received additional videos or photographs outside of the seventeen pages and whether those are confirmed to exist,” Greenewald wrote.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has only reported 144 UFO sightings by government sources since 2004.Mystery Wire
“It must be stated that this answer may only come after the case is processed, closed, and a final determination is issued, since the current state of the report and/or attachments should they exist, are classified,” the report continued.
Greenewald said many MDR cases are ultimately denied, but have led to the unearthing of a CIA document that “supposedly justified the Iraq invasion” and a National Security Agency record revealing the list of classified documents aboard the USS Pueblo before its capture by North Korea in 1968.
Luis “Lue” Elizondo, the former head of the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, told The Post last month that the ODNI report was merely the “first” of many to come.
UFO investigator John Greenewald has filed numerous FOIA requests in his pursuit for classified documents on UFO sightings.Mystery Wire
Elizondo, who claims the Department of Defense has tried to discredit him, told The Post on Friday that the classified report — funded as part of a $2.3 trillion coronavirus relief and spending package enacted by President Donald Trump in December — is considerably longer.
SEE ALSO
UFOs are real, feds’ cover-up fueled by fear: ex-Pentagon whistleblower
“Understandably, there is some confusion, but rest assured the complete report, including end notes, is over 70 pages,” Elizondo said in a statement to The Post. “I do not care to speculate about why there is confusion, nor involve myself in the debate, but the fact remains that the full and complete report is significantly longer than what is currently being stated for the record.”
Elizondo did not clarify how he knew the length of the classified report. He said last month’s public release — which didn’t find “firm conclusions” on the 144 UFO sightings reported by government sources since 2004 — left more questions than answers. Just one reported UFO was identified as a large, deflating balloon.
“This conversation is only beginning,” Elizondo told The Post late last month.
UFOs Sighted During A Plane Takeoff Over Korea ( July 20, 2021 )
This amazing video comes not only to reaffirm that ′′ they are already among us ", but that they act at such speed and reality very much beyond our senses and perceptions... Rus Choi made this extraordinary UFO activity record during a plane takeoff in Korea on July 20, 2021 Here I present the original and following with approximation and speed reduction so that you can understand the reality of a world we are not seeing. They're already here!!!
UFO Sighted Over Chile ( June 19, 2021 )
This impressive UFO was sighted over the skies of Chilie on the evening of June 19, 2021 : More evident every day
This UFO report is coming from Muan, a city located in south-west part of South Korea. On 22nd July 2021 at around 8 pm multiple cameras filmed this strange activity in the skies.
Some people consider Russell Brand to be a comedy god. Others consider the man who claims to have bedded 1,000 women to be a sexual god. Russell Brand would probably disagree (reluctantly) with both because he considers aliens to be gods and he’s not an alien. Or is he? After all, his popular 2013 comedy show was called “Messiah Complex.” Does Brand know something we don’t … or is this just another celebrity ploy for publicity?
“He says it ain’t advanced human tech, there is s**t in there that defies the laws of physics. The [US] government have known about it for ages and they are slowly making these releases.”
In an interview with The Mirror, Brand reveals that his enlightenment on the subject of aliens came after becoming friends with Jeremy Corbell – the now famous documentary filmmaker who has been slowly releasing U.S. government videos of military encounters with UFOs – encounters that the government admits it cannot explain. In the U.S., when in doubt about a subject of this magnitude, we turn to comedians and talk show hosts, so it’s no surprise that the British are doing the same with Brand, who is not only a comedy performer and media star but also a controversial and outspoken political activist.
“It is not a distraction from Covid, it is happening because there is no choice because there has been a whistleblower situation where a bunch of data is being released.”
Brand credits Corbell for pressuring the Pentagon to reveal more videos and forcing them to comment on them. At that point, he naturally turns the story back to himself.
“So it seems to me that life is out there somewhere with crazy creatures and new cultures that will come to you shortly.”
“New cultures” implies higher forms of intelligent life and, while he says they’re coming shortly, he believes they’ve “been communicating with us for years.” However, the big shocker is that Brand follows the ancient aliens theory that these communications influenced earlier humans enough to make them believe they were coming from “gods.” Is that a good thing or a bad thing, Russell?
“If you don’t choose heroes, heroes will be chosen for you, and they will not represent values that empower you, they will represent powers that will enslave you.”
Brand may have given us the answer in “Messiah Complex.” Perhaps early humans chose to make heroes or gods out of the mysterious beings communicating and possibly even inspiring them rather than the human leaders who were out to enslave them.
Far-fetched? Have you watched the news lately?
Russell Brand is certainly not someone many would consider to be a hero, a god or even just a wise sage. Then again, a sizeable portion of Americans admit they’d rather get their news and guidance from late night talk show hosts who are usually comedians. Is it time to start getting our UFO and extraterrestrial guidance from them as well?
In recent years there has been increasing coverage of military encounters with UFOs, with the U.S. government surprisingly acknowledging such incidents, and while avoiding saying these things are otherworldly, not denying it either. Yet while most people have their eyes trained to the skies, a lesser known aspect of this ongoing phenomenon is what seems to be going on underwater. One area of the UFO phenomenon that doesn’t seem to get as much coverage is that of what are called USOs, or Unidentified Submersible Objects, basically underwater UFOs, which are every bit as strange as their sky-going brethren and with which military submarines have had very bizarre encounters.
Some interesting cases of USOs have been reported by personnel within the US Navy, from which there has been footage released showing UFOs entering the water. Chief among the proposed evidence for this is a video taken off the coast of San Diego in July of 2019 by crew aboard the USS Omaha. The video, which was released by UFO researcher and investigative filmmaker Jeremy Corbell, shows a spherical object fly over the vessel before coming down to make a controlled descent into the water, with a crewmember heard to exclaim “Wow, it splashed!” The video caused quite a stir online, but it would become even more interesting when information would come out that at around the same time, US submarines were also picking up mysterious objects underwater that seemed to defy physics. The Navy confirmed that the footage was authentic and unexplained, and the Washington Examiner’s Tom Rogan has said of this in connection with the USS Omaha footage:
Relevant to this video, an area we will learn more about is the interaction between US Navy submarines – nuclear ballistic submarines and attack submarines – picking up sonar contact of things moving at hundreds of knots under the water. There is an undersea dimension to this, on top of what the pilots are seeing above water. Hundreds of knots under water? I don’t think people can even digest that. That is what I have heard from very good sources and that the US Navy has the data.
Another report concerning submarines came in the wake of the well-known USS Nimitz UFO incident, during which a fleet of US Navy vessels was constantly buzzed by unidentified flying objects. According to former United States Air Force intelligence expert Mike Turber, in one incident a US Navy submarine encountered a mysterious craft hurtling at 550mph through the water in 2008, which looked exactly like the tic-tac-shaped craft sighted by the crew of the USS Nimitz. Turber would say of the incident:
There was a submarine situation – that report will probably come out further down the line. It (the tic-tac object) was travelling at 550mph. As far as I know, it was a Los Angeles-class submarine. It was kind of in passing when someone mentioned it – I thought it was just a torpedo. But, apparently not.
Another incident came to light in 2017, when the former Blink-182 front man, avid UFO researcher, and founder of the UFO research group the To The Stars Academy, Tom DeLonge, released a previously unknown report that is allegedly a first-hand account of astronomer and UFO researcher Marc D’Antonio, who often works with the Navy and was granted a ride aboard a nuclear fast attack submarine in the North Atlantic and had a rather mysterious experience. He would say of this:
As a thank you for doing some work for them Navy asked me if I wanted to go for a ride in a submarine so I said yes. Once we got under I was sitting in the sonar station and the sonar operator was sitting right next to me. Submarines are loud – people think they are very quiet and it’s true they are on the outside because the sound doesn’t get out. But inside you hear fans, noise – it’s a constant din on a sub. I was sitting there zoning out a little because I was sea sick and all of a sudden the sonar kid shouts ‘fast mover, fast mover’ and I’m jolted awake – thinking ‘What’s happening? Is it a torpedo?’ The executive officer comes out and the operator shows him the path of the object and the officer says ‘How fast is that going?’ And the kid said ‘several hundred knots’. I start to lean forward to listen in – and the officer said ‘Can you confirm it?’ So he goes to another sonar machine and confirmed it wasn’t a machine anomaly – it was real. I thought ‘Wow that is incredible’. When the sonar guy said ‘What do I do with this?’ the officer said ‘log it and dog it’ – in other words log it and bury it.
According to DeLonge, multiple nuclear attack submarines would track the strange object through the North Atlantic for about a week. Not only this, he claims that there is a government organization devoted to tracking these underwater objects. When a few years later Marc spoke to a senior Naval officer about the incident, he was given the cold shoulder but he was able to confirm that what he calls the “Fast Mover Programme,” a military investigation of USOs, exists. He has said of this:
I asked him ‘Can you tell me about the Fast Mover Programme?’ He looked at me and said ‘Sorry Marc I can’t talk about that programme’. So he basically confirmed to me that the programme exists – he said everything without saying anything. What that told me was that USOs are common – we even have a programme in place to classify and log and determine the speed of them and it goes into a vault.
According to the site The Drive, they interviewed a veteran sonar operator and instructor turned pro gamer called ‘Jive Turkey’ and asked him about any strange experiences he had ever had with USOs, and he had this to say:
I don’t know what they are… We usually logged it as seismic or biologic. We were instructed that nothing is ever ‘unknown.’ That’s the thing, it’s so quick you can’t measure the speed. In the examples I am thinking of, it is a detection that lasts a few seconds on the towed array. There is no way to measure the speed accurately because there isn’t enough data…
The Drive is rather skeptical of the 2017 DeLonge report, though, citing that the Navy does not give out free rides aboard submarines to civilians and the release of the story was done in an amateurish way. While they come to the conclusion that Navy submarines do indeed have some unusual encounters and hear some strange things down in the deep, the 2017 DeLonge/ D’Antonio incident:
We talked with a number of sources during our investigation. What we learned is that yes, unexplained noises and even tracked contacts do pop-up on submarines’ sonars, some of which seem to move at incredible speeds, but it is rare and the data is often inconclusive as to what was actually detected. But maybe most interesting, and peculiarly so, is that the Navy doesn’t actually have a way to classify these strange sounds as unknown and tag them for further review. The biggest takeaway here is that mysterious sounds do emanate from the deep and are heard by the most talented sonar operators in the world working the most advanced underwater listening equipment ever created. But the Navy seems to have made it all but impossible to classify these events for further review as sonar operators aren’t allowed to ‘not know’ what something is. As for a quartet of American submarines pinning an impossible to identify craft down in the depths of the Atlantic, we are still waiting to see any evidence of anything like that occurring. It doesn’t do the To The Stars Academy or DeLong any favors teasing such information in such an amateurish way either. This is unfortunate considering the high aims of To The Stars Academy and the impressive brain trust they have amassed.
Americans are not the only ones who have had military submarine encounters with these mysterious USOs. British UFO investigator Philip Mantle has mentioned several such cases involving Soviet submarines in his book Russia’s USO Secrets, which is based on information coming from declassified documents and testimony from Russian military veterans. One such account comes from former nuclear submarine commander Yury Beketov, who says his submarine was doing maneuvers somewhere near the Bermuda Triangle when they had a strange encounter, of which he says:
We repeatedly observed that the instruments detected the movements of material objects at unimaginable speed, around 230 knots (400 km per hour). It’s hard to reach that speed on the surface – only in the air is it possible. The beings that created those material objects significantly exceed us in development.
A particular harrowing report mentioned in the book allegedly happened in 1951, when a Soviet submarine encountered a massive underwater object, which measured 200-250 meters long and was supposedly rising from the depths as it headed towards shore. According to the account, the captain actually ordered depth charges to be dropped on the object, which seemed to have no effect, but which nevertheless caused it to stop its ascent, change course, and head out to deeper water at great speed. What was going on here? Indeed, what is going on in any of these cases? It would seem that these craft, whatever they are, are just as active below the surface as they are above, and it leads us to wonder just what is going on. Are these some sort of misidentification, a top-secret new type of underwater vessel, or what? There is no way to tell, but it seems that whatever they are, they have baffled military officials and serve to show that the USO phenomenon is no joke, and is probably worth looking into further.
Ancient meteorite dating back 4.6 BILLION years is discovered in the imprint of a horseshoe and is likely a remnant of cosmic debris left over from the birth of the solar system
Ancient meteorite dating back 4.6 BILLION years is discovered in the imprint of a horseshoe and is likely a remnant of cosmic debris left over from the birth of the solar system
The astonishing charcoal-black meteorite was found earlier this year near Woodmancote in Gloucestershire
Scientists think it travelled more than 110 million miles from the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter
It's likely a fragment of the same meteorite that left another chunk on the driveway of a home in Winchcombe
An ancient meteorite dating back 4.6 billion years that landed in England earlier this year is likely a remnant of cosmic debris left over from the birth of the solar system, experts say.
A fragment of the priceless charcoal-black object, no more than two inches wide, was found by chemist Derek Robson on the second day of a ground search back in March, near the village of Woodmancote in Gloucestershire.
The 'incredibly delicate' sample, which resembles loosely held-together concreted dust and particles, was found lying in the imprint of a horseshoe in a field.
Experts received special permission from Tewkesbury Council to organise the search in March this year during the Covid lockdown after the meteorite was seen shooting through the skies just before 10pm on February 28.
The fragment found in Woodmancote is thought to be part of the same meteorite that deposited another 300g chunk on the driveway of a family home in nearby Winchcombe, also in Gloucestershire, which has just been assessed and valued at £100,000 and donated to the Natural History Museum in London.
Scientists think the meteorite travelled more than 110 million miles from its 'primordial home' in the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter – and that it may answer questions about how life began on Earth.
Image from Loughborough University shows the meteorite found in Woodmancote, Gloucestershire in March by chemist Derek Robson
The ancient rock is a rare example of a carbonaceous chondrite, a type of meteorite that often contains biological material. Fewer than 5 per cent of meteorites that fall to Earth belong to this classification.
'Carbonaceous chondrites contain organic compounds including amino acids, which are found in all living things,' said Robson, who found the meteorite on the morning of March 28 in muddy fields outside Woodmancote.
Robson is director of astrochemistry at the East Anglian Astrophysical Research Organisation (EAARO).
'Being able to identify and confirm the presence of such compounds from a material that existed before the Earth was born would be an important step towards understanding how life began,' he said.
The priceless charcoal-black fragment was found near the village of Woodmancote in Gloucestershire, England, which is close to Cheltenham
Scientists based at Loughborough University are analysing the small fragment from Woodmancote to determine its structure and composition, and will likely publish their results in an upcoming study.
They're using techniques including electron microscopy to survey the surface morphology at up the nanometre scale – equal to one billionth of a metre – and have released stunning new images showing its detail in high precision.
Vibrational spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction, which reveal information about chemical structure, crystallinity and molecular interactions, are helping to determine its structure and composition.
Secondary electron image of mineral chondrule embedded in the rare carbonaceous chondrite meteorite
(image taken using an electron micrograph)
So far, they have found that the meteorite never underwent the violent cosmic collisions that most ancient space debris experienced as it smashed together to create the planets and moons of our solar system.
But it possibly contains 'previously unknown chemistry' or a physical structure that's never before seen in other recorded samples.
'The internal structure is fragile and loosely bound, porous with fissures and cracks,' said Shaun Fowler, a specialist in optical and electron microscopy at the Loughborough Materials Characterisation Centre (LMCC).
Pictured is an optical micrograph of the carbonaceous chondrite meteorite, showing embedded mineral chondrules, according to Loughborough University
'It doesn't appear to have undergone thermal metamorphosis, which means it's been sitting out there past Mars, untouched, since before any of the planets were created meaning we have the rare opportunity to examine a piece of our primordial past.
'The bulk of the meteorite is comprised of minerals such as olivine and phyllosilicates, with other mineral inclusions called chondrules, which, for example, can be minerals such as magnetite or calcite.
'But the composition is different to anything you would find here on Earth and potentially unlike any other meteorites we've found.'
Secondary electron image of mineral chondrule in the meteorite revealing spherical mineral inclusions
(electron micrograph image)
Secondary electron image of the meteorite showing delicate layered leaf-like structures at 10,000x magnification.
(electron micrograph image)
Professor Sandie Dann at Loughborough University, who is involved with the analysis and has previously worked with Robson, called the meteorite 'a scientific fairy-tale'.
'First your friend tracks a meteorite, then finds it and then gifts a bit of this extra-terrestrial material to you to analyse,' she said.
'At this stage, we have learned a good deal about it, but we've barely scratched the surface.
'There is huge potential to learn about ourselves and our solar system – it's an amazing project to be part of.'
Explained: The difference between an asteroid, meteorite and other space rocks
An asteroid is a large chunk of rock left over from collisions or the early solar system. Most are located between Mars and Jupiter in the Main Belt.
A comet is a rock covered in ice, methane and other compounds. Their orbits take them much further out of the solar system.
A meteor is what astronomers call a flash of light in the atmosphere when debris burns up.
This debris itself is known as a meteoroid. Most are so small they are vapourised in the atmosphere.
If any of this meteoroid makes it to Earth, it is called a meteorite.
Meteors, meteoroids and meteorites normally originate from asteroids and comets.
For example, if Earth passes through the tail of a comet, much of the debris burns up in the atmosphere, forming a meteor shower.
Remnants of a 4.6-Billion-Year-Old Meteorite Found in a Horseshoe Imprint
Remnants of a 4.6-Billion-Year-Old Meteorite Found in a Horseshoe Imprint
Resting neatly inside of a horseshoe imprint in Gloucestershire, England, were the remnants of a 4.6-billion-year-old meteorite from the birth of our Solar System. In fact, the meteorite was around before the planets even began forming. The remnants of a charcoal-black object (approximately two inches in width) were discovered in a field close to the village of Woodmancote by a chemist named Derek Robson.
It is believed that the meteorite came from over 110 million miles away in its “primordial home” in the main asteroid belt that’s located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. This is a very significant discovery as it is a type of meteorite called carbonaceous chondrite and belongs to an incredibly rare group of meteorites that have fallen to Earth (less than 5% of meteorites). “Carbonaceous chondrites contain organic compounds including amino acids, which are found in all living things,” explained Robson, adding, “Being able to identify and confirm the presence of such compounds from a material that existed before the Earth was born would be an important step towards understanding how life began.
Asteroid belt
Scientists at Loughborough University are analyzing the meteorite fragments with X-ray diffraction and vibrational spectroscopy in order to figure out its composition and structure. Additionally, they are using electron microscopy to analyze the surface morphology and they took some pretty interesting pictures in incredible detail and precision (the photos can be seen here).
Image from Loughborough University shows the meteorite found in Woodmancote, Gloucestershire in March by chemist Derek Robson
What they have discovered so far is that the meteorite wasn’t involved in powerful collisions when the Solar System was first born which is incredible as there were countless collisions that ultimately created the planets and moons. Furthermore, it could have “previously unknown chemistry” (or a physical structure) that is unique compared to previous meteorite samples.
Shaun Fowler, who is a specialist in optical and electron microscopy at the Loughborough Materials Characterisation Centre (LMCC), explained this in further detail, “The internal structure is fragile and loosely bound, porous with fissures and cracks.” “It doesn’t appear to have undergone thermal metamorphosis, which means it’s been sitting out there past Mars, untouched, since before any of the planets were created meaning we have the rare opportunity to examine a piece of our primordial past.”
He went on to explain the composition of the meteorite, “The bulk of the meteorite is comprised of minerals such as olivine and phyllosilicates, with other mineral inclusions called chondrules, which, for example, can be minerals such as magnetite or calcite,” adding, “But the composition is different to anything you would find here on Earth and potentially unlike any other meteorites we’ve found.”
For decades, there have been people in various locations around the world who claim to be able to perceive a strange, low-frequency throbbing noise of undetermined origin.
The debate over the cause of the sound—as well as whether it exists at all—had at one time been an item of frequent debate in the scientific community. One of the earliest instances involving the curious phenomenon had been reported in the English Sunday Mirror in 1977, which began with a single account of a UK resident who claimed to be annoyed almost constantly by such a low humming sound. After the account was published, hundreds of letters in response began to flood the offices of the Mirror, with additional accounts from people who said that they also could hear this maddening humming sound at all hours of the day.
The widespread public response resulted in doctors examining some of the individuals, which did lend to the possibility that some of the sounds people claimed to hear might have internal origins, which might involve afflictions like tinnitus. While tinnitus sufferers often hear an almost whining, high-pitched sound, several of the people that doctors spoke to described hearing something much different: this was described as a low-pitched droning hum, which many believed to have an external source. The doctors agreed, attributing the roughly 40 Hz hum, modulated at 1.6 kHz, to be the result of industrial noise; yet despite this, there was never any actual industrial source determined.
A variety of other possible sources that had been suggested ranged from jet stream noises to sounds emanating from the ocean. Another novel idea involved that small percentages of the population suffered from an unusually acute ability to perceive sounds at around 40 Hz! Soon, similar accounts from other places around the world that included the United States would also begin to surface, with descriptions of the anomalous low-frequency sound being popularly associated with areas like Taos, New Mexico, among other locations.
Welcome sign at Taos New Mexico, location of an unusual hum reported by residents for decades
(Billy Hawthorn / Wikimedia Commons 3.0)
The ongoing complaints about these unusual sounds resulted in an investigation into their possible causes in the 1990s, funded by the UK Department of Energy. “The move is seen as an acknowledgment that some sufferers at least are not imagining the noise which causes them so much misery,” New Scientist reported following the DoE’s announcement that it would fund the research.
Even prior to the DoE-funded studies in the 1990s, a physicist at Chelsea College in London had been investigating the similar phenomenon afflicting UK residents and found data on the phenomenon that dated all the way back to 1973, in which a university study had identified at least 50 individuals who had experienced similar problems with hearing ongoing humming noises.
As early as 1988, the DoE had already commissioned the University of Salford to begin collecting information about the hum that so many residents claimed to be troubled by. With an estimated 500 individuals complaining about the noise on an annual basis, in 1989 the Low-Frequency Noise Sufferers Association was formed, an organization of both the afflicted and those lobbying on their behalf, which began to place additional pressure on the DoE to take action and get to the bottom of whatever had been causing the unusual sounds.
Throughout the 1990s, a range of purported causes was explored, which ranged from the existing theories about industrial noise to vehicular noise emanating from highways, and even underground pipes used to pump gas from high power turbines, which it was suggested might be capable of causing pipe organ-like sounds (interestingly, unidentified sounds reported in a variety of locales over the years have been likened to almost “ethereal” organ music, which appears to arise from someplace underground).
Aerial view of Taos, New Mexico
( Billy Hawthorn / Wikimedia Commons 3.0)
Around the same time that UK studies were underway, similar investigations into the hum reported by residents near Taos, New Mexico were undertaken, which produced very similar results. Among the takeaways had been that around two percent of the population in either location claimed to be “hummers”, the name given to those in the UK who could hear the noise. Equal percentages of male and female sufferers were reported, and the phenomenon appeared to be most prevalent among middle-aged people. The noises appeared to occur at frequencies anywhere from 32 Hz to around 80 Hz, modulated from 0.5 to 2 Hz. In the case of the Taos hum, some residents claimed that they were able to move away from the source of the hum, stating that they could no longer hear it at a distance of more than 30 miles from Taos.
Since the studies that were undertaken in the 1990s, a few additional possible explanations for the strange humming sounds have been offered. One suggests that the movement of deep ocean currents may actually be the source of the noises, which are naturally “amplified” in certain regions, making these otherwise unnoticeable sounds evident at locations like Taos and in the UK.
However, to date, there is no single proposed solution that seems to fully account for the ongoing mystery of “hummers” around the world, or the unusual—and very annoying—audible plight they suffer from.
This image, taken with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which ESO is a partner, shows wide (left) and close-up (right) views of the moon-forming disc surrounding PDS 70c, a young Jupiter-like planet nearly 400 light-years away. The close-up view shows PDS 70c and its circumplanetary disc centre-front, with the larger circumstellar ring-like disc taking up most of the right-hand side of the image. The star PDS 70 is at the centre of the wide-view image on the left.Two planets have been found in the system, PDS 70c and PDS 70b, the latter not being visible in this image. They have carved a cavity in the circumstellar disc as they gobbled up material from the disc itself, growing in size. In this process, PDS 70c acquired its own circumplanetary disc, which contributes to the growth of the planet and where moons can form. This circumplanetary disc is as large as the Sun-Earth distance and has enough mass to form up to three satellites the size of the Moon. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/Benisty et al.
Using the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is a partner, astronomers have unambiguously detected the presence of a disk around a planet outside our Solar System for the first time. The observations will shed new light on how moons and planets form in young stellar systems.
"Our work presents a clear detection of a disk in which satellites could be forming," says Myriam Benisty, a researcher at the University of Grenoble, France, and at the University of Chile, who led the new research published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. "Our ALMA observations were obtained at such exquisite resolution that we could clearly identify that the disk is associated with the planet and we are able to constrain its size for the first time," she adds.
The disk in question, called a circumplanetary disk, surrounds the exoplanet PDS 70c, one of two giant, Jupiter-like planets orbiting a star nearly 400 light-years away. Astronomers had found hints of a "moon-forming" disk around this exoplanet before but, since they could not clearly tell the disk apart from its surrounding environment, they could not confirm its detection—until now.
In addition, with the help of ALMA, Benisty and her team found that the disk has about the same diameter as the distance from our Sun to the Earth and enough mass to form up to three satellites the size of the Moon.
But the results are not only key to finding out how moons arise. "These new observations are also extremely important to prove theories of planet formation that could not be tested until now," says Jaehan Bae, a researcher from the Earth and Planets Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution for Science, U.S., and author on the study.
Planets form in dusty disks around young stars, carving out cavities as they gobble up material from this circumstellar disk to grow. In this process, a planet can acquire its own circumplanetary disk, which contributes to the growth of the planet by regulating the amount of material falling onto it. At the same time, the gas and dust in the circumplanetary disk can come together into progressively larger bodies through multiple collisions, ultimately leading to the birth of moons.
But astronomers do not yet fully understand the details of these processes. "In short, it is still unclear when, where, and how planets and moons form," explains ESO Research Fellow Stefano Facchini, also involved in the research.
"More than 4000 exoplanets have been found until now, but all of them were detected in mature systems. PDS 70b and PDS 70c, which form a system reminiscent of the Jupiter-Saturn pair, are the only two exoplanets detected so far that are still in the process of being formed," explains Miriam Keppler, researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany and one of the co-authors of the study.
"This system therefore offers us a unique opportunity to observe and study the processes of planet and satellite formation," Facchini adds.
PDS 70b and PDS 70c, the two planets making up the system, were first discovered using ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in 2018 and 2019 respectively, and their unique nature means they have been observed with other telescopes and instruments many times since.
The latest high resolution ALMA observations have now allowed astronomers to gain further insights into the system. In addition to confirming the detection of the circumplanetary disk around PDS 70c and studying its size and mass, they found that PDS 70b does not show clear evidence of such a disk, indicating that it was starved of dust material from its birth environment by PDS 70c.
An even deeper understanding of the planetary system will be achieved with ESO's Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), currently under construction on Cerro Armazones in the Chilean Atacama desert. "The ELT will be key for this research since, with its much higher resolution, we will be able to map the system in great detail," says co-author Richard Teague, a researcher at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, U.S.. In particular, by using the ELT's Mid-infrared ELT Imager and Spectrograph (METIS), the team will be able to look at the gas motions surrounding PDS 70c to get a full 3D picture of the system.
This research was presented in the paper "A Circumplanetary Disk Around PDS 70c" to appear in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
UFOs sighted over Buckinghamshire, England on July 21, 2021
STATEMENT : Spotted just now over Buckinghamshire.. 4 ufos spotted.. All flying different speeds
credit : Sam Pearcey
UFO / TR3B Sighted Over New York ( July 20, 2021 )
STATEMENT : Is this the UFO video we all were looking for ???
Oh! This is not a Chinese lantern. In fact this is no lantern at all! This is not a weather balloon. Nor the Loon. This is not swamp Gas. This is not the ISS. And this is not a passenger aircraft landing at Heathrow. It's not a military flare and it's not a reflection. Oh ! You can hear the sound of an aircraft ? Wow ! Good for you. This is an Unidentified Flying Object. Okay that we can use the abbreviation now ? U.... F....O....! Okay... So this is an actual UFO captured on video by a New Yorker. Should this not be on major news headlines around the world ? Anybody want details ??? What are we waiting for ? Oh... the new Project Deep Blue hard cover book ? Oh! That's obsolete ? Gosh ! I didn't know! What's that ??? It's now the Pentagorphological report on the UAPs is it ??? Eh!?? Really ? WTF!!! A government agency investigation report on ... What ? UAP ? What's that now ??? No more UFO ? But this is a video of a UFO !!! Okay... I will calm down! I promise!!! But... wasn't the last investigative purpose by a government led million dollar project actually a state planned initiative to debunk genuine sightings and encounters according to the ... Mmmm ... Australian government? Oh! So what exactly do we do with this video now ?
credit : P.R.E.T
UFOs Sighted Over Spain ( July 20, 2021 )
Impressive display of UFOs were sighted over the skies of Spain from a field on July 20, 2021, Similar to the UFOs over England on July 8, 2021
credit : U.S.F
Intraterrestrial Being Sighted In Waterfall in Brazil ( July 19, 2021 )
Strange Creature Sighted In Waterfall in Brazil on July 19, 2021 is this a Alien
STATEMENT : Será um ser intraterreno?
Will it be an Intraterrestrial being? (ufology) Any of a race of sapient beings who live inside the Earth and operate UFOs. microbiology) Which lives deep underground.
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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.
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