One area of the greater UFO phenomenon that doesn’t seem to get as much attention as others is that of what are called USOs, which stands for “Unidentified Submersible Objects” or also “Unidentified Submarine Objects.” In such cases we have strange craft traveling beneath the waves through the water, and at other times seen to spectacularly enter the water or erupt from beneath, suggesting that these things are just as at home in the sea as they are in the skies above us. Here we will look at a collection of such exceptionally weird cases, pointing at an underseas dimension to the UFO phenomenon that has largely been ignored, but which has been gaining greater attention in recent years.

Our first odd report comes from 1947, off the coast of Malta. In June of that year, a fishing vessel was about 20 miles off the southern coast, engaged in the routine business of pulling in their nets. As the nets came up, one of the crew alerted the others to something strange bobbing about out on the water’s surface, which appeared to be what they described as a “black submarine” floating about in the waves. It was an unsettling enough sight that the crew finished hauling in their nets and went about starting up the engines to get out of there, and at that moment there was a bright flash of light from the anomalous black shape. This light was bright enough to illuminate the object and the surrounding vicinity, showing it to be smooth, black, and metallic, and there were also small figures now visible upon it, which seemed to be wearing some type of apparatus around their waists and were described as “little men.” As the frightened fishermen looked on, these diminutive figures, described as about the size of 10-year-old children, seemed to scramble into the craft, after which it began to glow so brightly that they could barely look directly at it. The object then quickly submerged and disappeared under the waves to not be seen again.

There are several similarly strange cases of UFOs entering or exiting the ocean from the 1970s. One of these comes from a reader submitted report to the site UFO Casebook, and apparently transpired in January of 1971 off the coast of Puerto Rico. The witness claimed that he frequently surfed, and that he and other surfers would often see strange things beneath the waves, glowing objects that would shoot about through the water at high speeds. One particularly interesting account would happen one morning, of which he says:

On one occasion, around 6.30. A.M. that is the best time to surf by the way, several silver-colored objects came out of the water about half a mile from where we were waiting to catch a wave. These objects were round and hovered in one position, then they took off straight up at a speed that I cannot explain, but they disappeared so fast it was incredible. About a half hour later, the objects came back, I think it was around 6 or 7 of them, and went into the ocean. We never reported it to anybody, we just thought it was a military practice or other things that we did not know about. This all happened in the year of 1971, January, I do not remember the exact date. I am only reporting this one event but we had many more sightings of this kind since we surfed in the west coast of Puerto Rico. By the way, this event happened in Rincon in a beach known to surfers as Tres Palmas, and there were about 8 to 10 surfers that day.

In 1973, we have the case of a UFO that seems to have come down to enter Rainbow Lake, in New Hampshire, in the United States. According to The Derry News, on October 4, 1973, several local residents saw multiple bright objects in the sky over the lake, “yellowish in color,” which hovered over the water. The size of the objects was given as several feet in diameter, and then one suddenly came down to crash into the waves while the other one shot straight up into the sky. The East Derry Fire Rescue Squad was notified, and actually sent a boat to search the lake, but nothing could be found. Whatever the objects were, they were apparently seen by numerous witnesses throughout the area, as the police department would receive a deluge of over 40 calls about them, which were persistent enough in insisting that something had come down into the lake that a team of divers was subsequently sent in. A follow-up report would read:

At the request of Chief (redacted), two divers descended into Rainbow Lake Friday afternoon in an attempt to resolve reports of an unidentified flying object that three witnesses claim splashed into the lake on Oct. 2. The divers swept the silty lake water with powerful searchlights, but their vision was impaired by the murky water, and they could not see more than a few inches ahead at any time. Said one of the divers, “The only way they’re going to get anything out of that lake is if they drag it. Chief (redacted) said he has no plans to drag the bottom and considers the matter closed.

A very weird series of events would play out in 1977 in the vicinity of Mayaquez, Puerto Rico, the country’s third largest city, where there was much talk of two massive glowing objects that would on many occasions enter and exit the ocean. It happened in September of that year, with a report of the two UFOs passing over the city to head out about a half a mile off shore and drop down into the water in a controlled manner. These two objects would on several occasions exit and then enter the water again, all while an estimated one thousand people looked on in astonishment. Many of them were superstitious, and were overcome by an intense terror that the world was coming to an end. One fisherman named Rafael Lopez and his half-brother, Arturo Rivera, were out in their boat that day and got a good look at the object coming down into the ocean, and he would explain:

It just appeared close to us. We didn’t see where it came from. We just all of a sudden noticed it close to us in the water, and when we first saw it, it looked small, and then it seemed to grow very large. In the beginning we weren’t afraid. We were glad because we thought there was another boat coming close to us. Then we realized it wasn’t a boat and we started to get frightened. We were hearing a sound like a cricket screeching. I had the impression it was a cricket inside the boat. I’ve had crickets in the boat before and all you have to do is pound on the sides of the boat and they usually shut up. But as much as we pounded, it didn’t quiet. It kept on making sounds.

As long as we didn’t move, the object stayed steady in the water and seemed to get smaller and then larger. And when it got larger, it got much brighter and then it would change colors. When it would grow brighter, it would get from like yellow to an orange color. Then we got frightened and decided to leave. But the boat had run out of gasoline. We had a little bit of gas in a bottle but we were really nervous by that time. We were trying to get the cap off the motor to put the gasoline in and we couldn’t because we were real nervous. And all this time the object kept getting closer and closer to us and we were getting more and more nervous. We finally got the cap off, and it finally started and we were able to start toward the beach. Once I got to the beach, I wasn’t even able to stand up at first because I was trembling. My whole body was trembling. I was pretty shook up. When I got back to my house, which is very close to the beach, I started to watch the object again. This time it was moving around real fast. It would seem to disappear and reappear again at a great distance from where it had disappeared from, darting back and forth. I’ve been a fisherman for a long time and I’ve been out on that water for a long time and I’ve never seen anything like what I saw that night. In my opinion, it was a UFO, a flying saucer.

Other witnesses were reporting the same thing, with one of the mystery objects coming down into the water. One local by the name of Luis Baez would say of what he saw:

I was playing pool and someone said, ‘Look!’ I came outside with my pool stick and I see this thing. It was something nice to see. It was round looking, like an apple. Nice, round, beautiful. It went toward the beach. I put my pool stick away and went down to the beach and looked. A friend said, ‘That thing that’s waiting over there is not a fishing boat.’ I said, ‘Sure it’s a boat’ and he said, ‘It’s not!’ So then the one that came by overhead was coming down near the other one. They stayed like that for three or four minutes maybe a thousand yards apart. The bigger one, the one that was waiting, tipped on its side and BLOOM! Into the water! The small one stayed for a while. After half an hour or so I went up to the roof of this garage and laid down and watched. I wanted to make sure if it moved or not. And I could see this thing goes up… down… this way to the right, back again and a few times it went this way into the water. You could see the water flashing. It never went all the way down in the water. It did that a few times, it goes up, comes down, moved toward the beach but not too close and it goes back. At one o’clock in the morning I went home to sleep. I have to be up early in the morning. So I slept, went to work and when I come back I asked a few friends of mine what happened to the one that was up there. Well at three o’clock in the morning it disappeared. There were about a thousand people at the beach where he was.

As all of this was going on, police were making sure that no one else headed out onto the water, prohibiting any vessels from going out to investigate. While they were doing this, there would be sightings made by police officers as well, and one of these was Mayagüez Police Lieutenant Cesar Grácia, who would say of his own sighting:

I saw something in the sky that I didn’t know what it was. It was over Highway Two about fifteen hundred feet, a large, lighted ball about six feet in diameter. It was going toward the beach very slowly. I was in the parking lot of the Hilton when they called me from the police department. They told me to go to the beach because a great many people were watching this object. When I got there, the object was already hovering over the water about two or three miles off the beach. There were about five hundred people watching. There are about four public housing areas right there and all the people from the housing areas were there. I saw one light coming down but when I got to the beach I noticed there were two objects in the water, not together but about a mile away from each other. They were hovering over the water, right about at the water level.

Because of the distance I couldn’t tell if it was a few feet over the water or if they were actually touching the water. The first object stayed about an hour but the second one lasted at least four hours. I wasn’t able to stay because I had other obligations, but I was there for quite some time. Later I returned again and it was still going on. And I left once more. When the first one disappeared, I saw it go. When the second one disappeared, I was no longer there. I stopped more than one time that evening for maybe five minutes at a time to watch. I couldn’t say exactly that it hadn’t moved but it was more or less in the same area. There were maybe five hundred people in the area where I was watching and all along the whole coast there were other people watching. A group of officers on duty that night also saw it, between five and ten. We called the Coast Guard but the Coast Guard didn’t come. The answer they gave us was that the police had to verify it first, that if there was a real emergency then the Coast Guard would be dispatched.

Other police officers would see the UFOs as well, and the whole area was experiencing a bit of a mass hysteria at the time. One Police Sergeant Ramirez would describe what he saw as follows:

I saw people gathering along the beach so I stopped my car. I was very curious, not only because there were people there but also because they were looking up. So I stopped and saw the light, which was very bright. When I got out of the car, I saw the object fall into the water, very bright and it like divided. It was pretty high, like an orange-yellow light. I don’t know exactly the size. As it came down it got larger. It was pretty good sized. First one sank into the water. About twenty seconds after, the other one went into the water also. It zigzagged a little before it went down and turned off. That was about nine thirty. I stayed around to keep traffic moving and see what the people were doing in case there was an accident or anything. Word got around and there were over a thousand people watching these things. People came out of their houses to see the view and people came in cars, parked on the side of the street and went to the beach to see what was happening. I stayed until midnight, mostly keeping an eye on the group so there wouldn’t be any problems. The police got many, many phone calls, all night. We called the Coast Guard but they didn’t come. They said it wasn’t an emergency.

There were numerous other reports along these lines, yet oddly the Coast Guard did little to act, and it seems like it was all mostly swept under the carpet. What was going on here and why were these objects repeatedly entering and leaving the ocean? We may never know. In 1990 another strange incident occurred in Turkey on the coast of the Aegean Sea. The encounter was reported by a Mr. Erol Erkmen, who was wreck diving with a friend at a site at 57 meters deep in the Saros Bay at approximately 2 PM. At one point they looked ahead to see a greenish glow in the water, which seemed to be emanating from an orb of light that appeared to be circling them and maneuvering around them. They observed it for around 3 minutes, during which time Erkmen took a photo with an underwater Kodak camera, which the object seemed to realize because it then went dark. Shortly after this, low oxygen forced the two divers to head to the surface. Upon examination, Erkmen would say that his photo had managed to capture a greenish glowing disc-shaped object, although what it is he cannot say.

Finally, we have a recent case from 2012, from Panama Beach Florida in a report filed with MUFON. On July 15 of that year, the witness says she was sitting out on the patio of her beachside residence where she was throwing a party, watching the sunset when she observed something very strange out in the water near the horizon. She explains:

I was sitting on my patio watching the sunset. On the horizon I saw this object that looked like it was coming out of the ocean. I made a comment to my customer to look. No one could figure out what it was. By now there are about 30 people outside looking. It came straight up out over the water very slowly, and made no sound. It was round looking and like it had windows with red lights in the middle and one solid white light under the bottom; they did not blink, but they were bright. When it got over the land it continued for another 7 to 10 minutes. It was almost dark. We wanted to get a picture but no one had a camera. One of my workers did take a picture with his cell phone but it just looked like a light and we could not make it out. Then the object took a right turn and flew for another 3 or 4 minutes, then in matter of seconds it was gone.

The phenomenon of these reports of UFOs entering and exiting the water are far rarer than those of the more conventional type, yet they add a layer of mystique to the lore of UFOs that is very intriguing to say the least. It hints at the possibility that these mysterious objects are not only using our skies, but also beneath the surface of our lakes and seas for inscrutable purposes we may never understand, and it all only furthers the mystery of UFOs in general, pushing it out into the far realms of the odd.

Today’s article is on a subject that has been around for decades and that peaked in the 1970s. It caught the attention of the FBI, the media, and the UFO research community. And, there are more than a few theories as to who, or what, is behind all of this. I’m talking about cattle mutilations. Since at least 1967, reports have surfaced throughout the United States of animals – but, chiefly, cattle – killed in bizarre fashion. Organs are taken and significant amounts of blood are found to be missing. In some cases, the limbs of the cattle are broken, suggesting they have been dropped to the ground from a significant height. Evidence of extreme heat, to slice into the skin of the animals, has been found at mutilation sites. Eyes are removed, tongues are sliced off, and, typically, the sexual organs are gone. As the FBI states at its website, The Vault: “Animal/Cattle Mutilation, In the mid-1970s, reports of scattered animal mutilations in western and mid-western states concerned many people. The FBI was asked to investigate, but was unable to do so because of a lack of jurisdiction (except when such mutilations were found on Indian lands). These files consist mainly of press clippings and correspondence concerning the issues between 1974 and 1978.” Now, let’s get to aliens.

A newly-published edition of Keith Wolverton’s book, Mystery Stalks the Prairie

It was 1967 when the UFO-mutes issue took off. There’s no doubt in my mind, at all, that the extraterrestrial angle was (and still is, now and again) carefully and secretly put into place by agencies to keep researchers and sleuths away from far more disturbing issues of a terrestrial nature. Consider these words: “On September 7, 1967, near the town of Alamosa in the San Luis Valley, Snippy, a 3-year-old Appaloosa, failed to return to the Harry King Ranch where she was stabled. Two days later, Mr. King (the ranch owner) discovered Snippy’s remains roughly a quarter-mile from the ranch house. According to his account, the neck and head had been completely stripped of flesh, leaving nothing but bare, seemingly sun-bleached, white bone, while the remainder of the mare remained unscathed.” Aliens and mutilations were now fused together – and to the careful plans of certain agencies that wanted things just like that.

When, at conferences, I bring up the issue of cattle mutilations not being the work of aliens, something happens time and again: arms quickly become folded in the audience, and in defensive fashion. I point in the direction of the true-believers and demonstrate to them that mutilations and cattle have had a long, secret history – and with not a single alien in sight. Sadly, so many people don’t want to hear that. Why? Because it’s not so exciting as UFO conspiracies, that’s why. Let me show you how and why the U.S. cattle herd has been secretly watched since the early part of the 1940s. Yes, that far back. Bacteriological Warfare in the United States is a fascinating FBI document – declassified into the public domain via the terms of the Freedom of Information Act – that covers the years 1941 to 1950. Notably, of the file’s original 1,783 pages, no less than 1,074 have been firmly withheld from declassification by the FBI. The file reveals a wealth of illuminating and disturbing data on cattle disease and death in the U.S., and their links to bacteriological warfare and sabotage by enemy nations and individuals.

The FBI documentation continues: “It has been brought to the attention of this division the possibility in the immediate future of an attempt on the part of the enemy to plant bombs containing germs or to endeavor to create an epidemic, such as hoof and mouth disease, among cattle and other livestock. It is requested that should any information concerning the above come to the attention of the Directors of Intelligence of the Service Commands or the A.C. of S. [Assistant Chief of Staff], G-2 [Army Intelligence], Western Defense Command, that the same be transmitted by the most expeditious means to the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2 War Department.” And what did the government do? I’ll tell you: they very carefully began to take a look at the cattle herd to determine who those “enemy nations and individuals” might be. And the secret investigations were undertaken whenever and wherever it seemed the cattle were being subjected to viruses by our enemies. In the 1940s it was the Nazis. And in the Fifties onward, during the Cold War, it was the Russians.

Now, let’s leap forward a couple of decades: In 1967, a contingent from the Atomic Energy Commission headed into Dulce, New Mexico and put into place what was called Project Gasbuggy. It was a sub-project of a much bigger program called Plowshare. The plan was to detonate – way below the surface – a small nuclear device, as a means to try and extract natural gas. The operation went ahead on December 10, 1967 – and it worked well. The bomb was detonated at a depth of more than 4,000 feet. Years later, certain paranoid figures in the UFO field suggested that the natural gas scenario was a cover for something else: to destroy a huge, underground “alien base” at Dulce with an atomic bomb. That, of course, is total garbage. There was no underground alien facility. Government agencies were, however, very concerned by the extent to which the radiation from Gasbuggy might have affected the cattle in the area – something that could have had significant repercussions. Not only that, a lot of beef from northern New Mexico got its way into the food-chain. Our food-chain. And, something had to be done about it. See what I mean?

So, from the late 1960s onward, a secret operation was put together to monitor the potential damage done to the herds in the area – and further areas, too. The result of the secret studies (much of it done by black helicopters, late at night on huge, darkened ranches) was the birth of the phenomenon of what became known as “cattle mutilations.” And, not just in New Mexico, but also in Colorado, Arizona and Utah. Hence the reason why the UFO issue was secretly inserted into the story: to keep people away from a terrifying, down-to-earth situation that had to be hidden. Tales of UFOs, aliens and extraterrestrial underground facilities proved to be the perfect, collective camouflage.

Approximately two months from now we’ll hit the 60th anniversary of the famous Betty and Barney Hill “alien abduction.” They were a husband and wife who, on the night of September 19, 1961, and while driving home from Canada to New Hampshire after completing a fun vacation, had a significant number of hours erased from their minds. It all happened near Indian Head, New Hampshire. It was there they saw a strange light in the sky that appeared to be carefully shadowing them from above. Concern and anxiety set in, which is no surprise. Finally, they made it home. Something very strange and disturbing happened to the Hills, but such was the state of their minds, they weren’t sure what it was. But, they certainly wanted to know. There’s no doubt that the case, itself, remains – to this day – the definitive alien abduction. But, was it really what it seemed to be? There’s a reason why I put that question forward. I suggest that with the sixty-year mark now looming large, someone ought to focus on one of the most controversial, alternative scenarios for the case: namely, that yes, Betty and Barney  were abducted. But, maybe, not by extraterrestrials. The fact is this: a case can be made that something of a very “down to earth” nature occurred, rather than something from outer space.

Someone who recognized this alternative possibility was the late Philip Coppens. Had Philip not died at such a young age, there’s no doubt in my mind that he would have continued to pursue this angle and to try and find out what really happened to Betty and Barney – and to Delsey the dog, too. Let’s see what Philip had to say about all of this: “It is clear that the Hills were being monitored by USAF [U.S. Air Force] Intelligence before the encounter took place, through Major James MacDonald, who had befriended them some time earlier. Betty Hill wrote to [UFO researcher / author] Donald Keyhoe who, despite the fact that he received over a hundred letters a day, homed in on this initially unremarkable case. Within twenty-four hours, Keyhoe had arranged for the Hills to be visited by top-level scientists, including C.D. Jackson, who had previously (definitely not coincidentally) worked on psychological warfare techniques for President Eisenhower.. Stretching coincidence far beyond breaking point, Jackson already knew Major MacDonald, with whom he next interviewed the Hills.” Philip continued on: “It seems that Betty and Barney Hill were at the center of a web that involved USAF Intelligence and top military experts in psychological warfare. The evidence suggests that the Hills were the subjects – victims – of a psychological experiment [italics mine].”

Too extreme to believe? Nope, not at all. Check out the “alien abduction” story of Antonio Villas Boas in Brazil in 1957, and the very strange saga of Gerry Irwin (of 1959), the latter told in the pages of David Booher’s book, No Return. Strong cases can be made that both incidents were staged. And, all three cases were relatively close to each other in terms of the time-frames: 1957, 1959 and 1961. Although Betty and Barney didn’t look for professional help for what happened until sixty-three, just a handful days after the incident they shared the details they could remember with a man who was a good friend of Barney. His name was James MacDonald. More correctly, Major James MacDonald, USAF, Retired. It turns out that MacDonald did clandestine work with none other than the CIA. Betty Hill’s niece, Kathleen Marden, says of this curious affair: “[MacDonald’s] tie to the intelligence community has led to speculation among researchers that his presence at the meeting was more than social.” Betty rejected this theory, but it is, without doubt, worth noting.

Now, we come to the matter of John G. Fuller, the man who wrote the classic book on the Hill case: The Interrupted Journey, that was published in 1966. As for Fuller, he was an intriguing character. When he died in 1990, at the age of seventy-six, the New York Times ran an obituary on him. It was written by a Times journalist, Edwin McDowell, who stated: “Mr. Fuller was sometimes criticized by reviewers for not using footnotes in his books and for what they judged was the implausibility of his topics. But as Jeff Greenfield wrote in The New York Times Book Review in reviewing ‘The Poison That Fell From the Sky,’ Mr. Fuller ‘keeps raising the most unsettling of questions.’ Moreover, even before passage of the Freedom of Information Act, he had a facility for somehow obtaining Government documents, which he incorporated in some of his books.”

Back in 1957, Fuller had a decidedly clandestine meeting with a Dr. Karlis Osis. As now-declassified CIA documents on Osis show, he was deep into a wide range of fringe sciences and technologies, including out-of-body experiences, how to alter brain wave frequencies, the means to affect “various biophysical changes,” and mind manipulation. It’s no wonder that Osis was also secretly consulted by the CIA’s MK-ULTRA teams. Days after their first meeting, Osis introduced Fuller to a CIA man named Robert Lashbrook. It turns out that Lashbrook was the very last person to see scientist Frank Olson alive before he took a deadly, violent shove out of the Hotel Statler in Manhattan in November 1953.  Osis also made Fuller an unforeseen, amazing offer: how would he, Fuller, like to be the very first investigative journalist to break at least a part of the MK-ULTRA story to the Unites States’ media? Clearly, Osis was recklessly playing both sides at the same time – the government and the media – for reasons that, today, are lost and not at all clear. Osis also made a way for Fuller to speak with one Andrija Puharich. He was an American of Yugoslavian extraction, someone who was deeply interested in the mysteries of the human mind, and who, in the 1950s, just happened to work at the Edgewood, Maryland-based U.S. Army Chemical Center. The Edgewood Arsenal being a place where controversial mind-manipulation-based experiments were undertaken on military personnel during the Cold War.

I should stress, there is no hard evidence to show that Betty and Barney were victims of a high-tech “MK-ULTRA“-type test. But, with the 60th anniversary of the case looming large, maybe someone will decide to get to the heart of all this and put the pieces together. And, maybe, surprises will be found. Big and shocking surprises.

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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 13^th, NASA engineers were finally able to repair it on July 17^th 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.

Both of the images can be seen here.

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.