The Russian space agency Roscosmos has been talking about building its own space station and moving out of the ISS, but it doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to do so. Perhaps it’s time for NASA to put some pressure on them … or possibly even send an eviction notice. Why? Well, after a pesky leak in the ISS in 2018 turned out to be a botched patch job on a docked Soyuz capsule, a leak in 2020 turned out to be a hole in the Zvezda service module (are you detecting a pattern here?), and the recently docked Nauka module accidently fired its jet thrusters and spun the entire ISS around, Russian cosmonauts have yet ANOTHER problem – this time they found cracks in the Zarya module. Good luck getting your security deposit back, Roscosmos!

“Superficial fissures have been found in some places on the Zarya module. This is bad and suggests that the fissures will begin to spread over time.”

Zarya launched atop a Russian Proton rocket

Vladimir Solovyov, chief engineer of rocket and space corporation Energia, delivered the bad news to the RIA news agency, which was picked up by Reuters. The Zarya module, known to the astronauts as the Functional Cargo Block is probably overdue for an overhaul – it was the first component launched for the International Space Station back in 1998. However, its history – and who is ultimately responsible for it – is complicated. Zarya, Russian for “sunrise” or “dawn,” was built in in Moscow by the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center under a subcontract to The Boeing Company for NASA. Zarya was launched in November 1998 on a Russian Proton rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome and was attached in December 1998 to the Unity module which connects the Russian and U.S. segments. The Zarya module had been originally designed for Russia Mir space station with a lifespan of 15 years, so the warrantee has obviously expired. As Reuters explains:

“The space official (Solovyov) has said previously that much of the International Space Station’s equipment is starting to age and has warned there could be an “avalanche” of broken equipment after 2025.”

Solovyov also stated that he didn’t know if the cracks were leaking any oxygen. Based on past history plus the age of the module, that would be a safe bet. Despite that, The Russian space agency, Roscosmos has said it will remain part of the ISS until 2024 and is open to staying longer. Meanwhile, the Chinese space agency is building a brand new space station and developing plans for an ultra-large kilometers-long mega-spacecraft that would be would be 10 times the length of the International Space Station and a little over three times the length of Star Trek’s USS Enterprise.

Zarya docking with Unity

These recent problems point out the obvious – the International Space Station is not aging gracefully and could become a dangerous place to live and work. Perhaps it’s time for NASA to move out too. But then what? Turn the business of space station operation over to private space companies? Ask Congress for funding to build a new one? Enter a new spirit of cooperation like it had with Russia in 1998 and join forces with China, the ESA and other space-faring nations to pool talent and resources so that humanity – not just nations – venture into space and benefit from it?

A leak is never a good thing in space. Maybe this one in the Zarya module will change that.

There are plenty of reports of UFOs up in the sky above our heads, and they can take many shapes and sizes, often inspiring debate, wonder, and awe. Yet even more amazing than such cases are those times when these enigmatic objects drop down from their place in the clouds to descend to earth and land, often entailing alien beings and a whole new list of high strangeness. UFO landing cases also go way back in time, and here we will look at some of the weirder ones from the 1960s.

On April 24, 1964, a farmer by the name of Gary Wilcox was doing his daily chores out on his rural 300-acre farm in Newark Valley, New York, on what was up until then a usual, uneventful day. At around 10 a.m., something very weird lying on the ground by the edge of the woods nearby caught his attention and he drove his tractor in that direction for a better look. Whatever it was looked somewhat oblong in shape, and about 20 feet long and 4 feet high, but most strangely of all was that it seemed to not be lying on the ground, but hovering just very slightly over it. Throwing all caution out the window, Wilcox apparently bravely approached it to find that it was smooth and metallic, and he even touched it and kicked at it, noticing there were no vibrations emanating from the mysterious device. This was when things would get bizarre.

According to Wilcox, two diminutive 4-foot-tall humanoids in white metallic overalls suddenly appeared from underneath the object, holding trays filled with what the farmer would say were “alfalfa, roots, soil, leaves and brush.” The beings spoke to him and told him not to be afraid, and Wilcox would describe their voices as singularly strange and beyond description. They then began interviewing him about the tractor, what he had been doing out in the field, and many other aspects of farming, especially about how fertilizer worked, allegedly talking to him for a full two hours before they made preparations to head out. Wilcox apparently asked them if he could go with them, but they informed him that he would not be able to survive on their world. They asked him for a bag of fertilizer but he had none on him at the time, so they merely nodded, climbed upon their craft, and shot up into the sky. That afternoon, he would leave a bag of fertilizer at the same spot and it would disappear by the following morning. What in the world was going on here? Why would they want fertilizer? Was this just the ramblings of a derailed mind or is there something more to it?

In 1965 we have a case from East Fort Myers, Florida, where on March 14 of that year a man named James Flynn was out hunting in the Everglades with his hunting dogs. That evening his dogs ran off into the wilderness in hot pursuit of something, perhaps a deer, and he shortly after heard a sound like a booming gunshot. Thinking that something had happened to his dogs, he went out to investigate and came across a large mysterious object like an upside-down cone, an estimated 200 feet in the air above some cypress trees in the near distance, which was slowly moving away. It then returned to hover over the wilderness before shooting away and then returning once again. It then seemed to drop down beyond the trees. Flynn crept closer and observed the craft through his binoculars, describing it as sitting upon the ground and being around 25 feet high and 50 feet in diameter, with four levels of windows along its side emanating a yellow glow. The bottom of the craft had a reddish light along it, which illuminated the ground below, but he couldn’t discern more than this because he suddenly blacked out and lost consciousness.

Flynn woke up on the muddy ground sometime later, experiencing blurry vision and unable to move. As he regained the function of his limbs and the vision came back to his eyes, he realized that it was now late afternoon and he had no recollection of what had happened during his lost time. When he got home and had his eyes checked, his vision was far worse than it had been before, and his right eye seemed to have no retina. Flynn also complained that he had numbness throughout his limbs but there could be found no physical cause for these symptoms. Out of curiosity, Flynn would return to the site of his encounter with some others to find that there was a burned circle in the earth measuring around 72 feet in diameter, and there were several cypress trees that had been scorched by a high heat. Although Flynn would believe that this must have been some sort of secret military experimental aircraft, it has never really been solved.

In July of 1965 a very weird series of events went down in the quaint region of Valensole, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, France. It all started near the small village of Valensole, and on July 1, 1965, a farmer by the name of Maurice Masse was taking a cigarette break before starting his morning chores. As he puffed out wisps of smoke into the air, something caught his attention through the haze of cigarette smoke, and he could see some sort of strange object descend from the sky to land in a field of lavender flowers not too far away. At this point he did not take it to be a UFO, thinking it instead to be a helicopter, but when he extinguished his smoke and took a look out across the field, his eyes met with an oval shaped object perched up on four leg-like apparatuses. Stranger still was that there appeared to be two humanoid figures standing in front of it.

The figures were described as standing approximately 4 feet high, and dressed in tight gray-green clothes, seemingly not human. Their heads were oversized and bald, holding within them large, almond shaped eyes and small, pointed chins, and they seemed to be making some sort of low grumbling noise. As the farmer stood there mouth agape in awe, one of these curious figures allegedly turned to him and raised into the air a device of some kind, which looked cylindrical and “pencil-like” in nature. Before Masse could even really register what was going on he says that the device projected some sort of beam that caused him to lose all control of his limbs and go crumpling to the ground in a heap. He would claim that as he lay there in a daze the figures boarded their craft and then flew off at great speed. It would later be found that the ground had a deep indentation in it and a hardened area like concrete. It would also be found that Masse was honest, very sincere, and was considered to be telling the truth.

Moving along to 1966 there is a case from the children of Westall High School, in Melbourne, Australia. On this day the students were going about their daily business and out playing in the school yard. There was nothing at all that marked this as anything other than an ordinary day, until something very strange appeared in the sky above them. Coming in from the distance was a greyish saucer-shaped craft with a slight purple hue, also described as “a round humped object with a flat base,” which then came in low over the high school’s south-west corner to disappear behind a nearby stand of trees, beyond which was a paddock and an overgrown field and wilderness area called the Grange. After a few moments it then popped up over the trees again and moved off into the distance, with some witnesses later claiming that it was then pursued by what appeared to be several military aircraft, and the entire bizarre scene played out in front of over 300 students and teachers.

As more witnesses came forward, a clearer picture began to emerge about what happened. It would be discovered that some witnesses had actually seen more than one of the objects, and that it seemed as if the military craft had been chasing any trying to engage them, although there could be found no records of any aircraft scheduled to be in the area, either commercial or military. It was also found that the UFO had left a mark in the ground, which appeared as a circle of yellowed grass with a “swirly pattern,” and that some witnesses had seen official looking men in blue uniforms inspecting this mark. One of the most interesting pieces of the puzzle uncovered was during an interview with one of the witnesses at the time, a science teacher from the Westall school by the name of Andrew Greenwood. In a recorded interview with UFO researcher Dr. James E. McDonald, Greenwood would divulge a good amount of information on what was seen that day.

McDonald would describe what Greenwood had told him:

Greenwood told me the UFO was first brought to his attention by a hysterical child who ran into his classroom and told him there’s a flying saucer outside,” McDonald says on the recording. He thought this child had become deranged or something so he didn’t take any notice, but when the child insisted that this object was in the sky he decided to go out and have a look for himself.   He called it the most amazing flying he had ever seen in his life. The planes were doing everything possible to approach the object and he said how they all avoided a collision he will never know. Every time they got too close to the object it would slowly accelerate, then rapidly accelerate and then move away from them and stop. Then they would take off after it again and the same thing would happen.

Greenwood would explain that the whole spectacle had lasted around 20 minutes, and that shortly after the headmaster had warned the faculty and students not to talk about what they had seen with anyone, even going so far as to threaten to fire or expel anyone who did. Some even spoke of some sort of military-looking figures lurking about. According to him, this was enough to get many of the witnesses to shut up about it all, and is one of the main reasons the whole story just sort of fell off the media’s radar, only really being unearthed years later. Yet, even now decades later, the witnesses have stuck to their stories and insist on what they saw, leaving us to try and figure out what it could have been. To this day one can still see an information board at the school commemorating the event, although it seems to be just as obscure a case as ever. What did these people see that day and why exactly were they so reluctant to talk about it? Did the military have some hand in trying to cover this up? There are not many answers, and it remains a very curious mass UFO sighting that has been sort of mostly forgotten.

A particularly harrowing case comes from 1966, in Roaring River, Missouri, where a landing UFO seems to have caused quite a lot of damage. On November 22, 1966, two hunters were out looking for deer in the wilderness of the area when they saw a strange object descend from the sky right onto their camp. They ran to see what was going on, and as they did, they could see smoke billowing up from the location. Upon reaching the camp, they saw that their tent and all of their equipment was either burned to a crisp, on fire, or still smoldering, with the aluminum cots in the tent having actually been warped and melted. Rather strangely, nothing else around the camp had been affected, the trees still in pristine condition. They then heard a low humming noise and saw the object rise up over the trees and shoot off out of sight. The witnesses would later claim that the object had intentionally wrecked their camp, although why this should be is something we will never know.

Such cases are certainly intriguing and spectacular, taking the UFO phenomenon down from the skies to plop it right down in front of our faces, often to completely bizarre results. What truth do any of these cases have and just what did these people see? Were these misidentified mundane phenomena, figments of the imagination, or something else? Whatever the case may be, reports of landing UFOs rank high among the most bizarre accounts of UFOs there are, and there are no solid answers.

ALL RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

For most of 2017 and 2018, the hot news out of Nazca, Peru, was not about the Nazca lines but some strange three-fingered mummies discovered in nearby caves. The group studying the mummies eventually became know as the Alien Project for obvious reasons – three fingers, three toes, a female carrying what appeared to eggs, DNA tests that showed they were not human nor any known mammal, bones similar to birds, and more. The Peruvian government and the World Congress on Mummies rightly got involved, to protect the dignity of the remains of past Peruvians, whatever they might be. After all of the research, hours-long video conferences with pictures, X-rays and experts to interpret them … the three-fingered mummies suddenly dropped off the face of the Earth or whatever planet they came from. Fortunately, UFO researcher Giorgio Piacenza has been staying on top of the three-fingered mummies (figuratively, of course) and finally has an update on their status. Drum roll, please.

“Hello everyone I’m Enrico, I am Italian and live in Ica in Peru in the city where the Tridattili Mummies of Nazca are kept. The bodies that have been found to date are divided into two completely distinct breeds, a high 160 with hybrid characteristics very similar to homo sapiens and a high only 60 cm with unique features never encountered before. Since these beings have been delivered to the University of Ica I have personally been in contact with the professors who are studying them and we have managed to donate with the Association of Italians in Peru of which I am a part (PeruItalia.com) the first 500 Dollars to help research. I was able on several occasions to see the bodies and even touch them while interviewing the study staff.”

Enrico Cantori is a mummy researcher in Ica, Peru, and he posted the above update on PeruItalia.com and on the Facebook page “Extraterrestrial mummies of Nazca” after appearing on a YouTube video interview with anthropologist Dr. Zuñiga Aviles, professor of the San Luis Gonzaga University of Ica and one of the researchers of the mummies “in situ”, and researcher Yosef de Salou to discuss the latest status of the mummies. It is also posted on Giorgio Piacenza’s Facebook page, and both have excellent photos of the mummies. His summary on Facebook is more detailed. (Rough Google translation)

“Breaking revelations! We have a first confirm even from the studious of why the Nazca aliene mummies were biological alive and complete. 60 cm small mummies were full and functional live with organs, possess internal structures and items. They were like us living and feeling.

The implant found in the pet of one of the small mummies cannot be any antical artifact created for aleation by the Paracas people in the modern ′′ homemade ′′ understanding ′′ cold transmutation “. É infacts composed by two supposed lamines that they create internal cells similar to the batteries odierns.

The perforation of a egg found into one of these beings (oviparies and submittilian nature) with an odontric instrument reveals that the internal has a non-omegena density compatible with the density of a mummified egg.

We also talked about a specular specular rotrovement or the strange 15 cm humanoid being found in the near desert of chile tacama. A sun dry and not mummified being studied confirming that even being a completely alive and functional being.”

According to Cantori, the researchers have confirmed that all of these beings were once alive. They actually inserted a needle into one of the alleged eggs in one female and it managed to penetrate it, allowing them to extract material – what it might be was not discussed. A barbell-shaped implant was found in the chest of that female did not appear to belong to the ancient Paracas people of Peru, but in another post Cantori says it was “consistent with the pre-Columbian era and is made up of 85% copper.” He also points out that the tomographs show “how the bones are evenly and harmoniously covered by the skin, joints and ligaments” – making it hard to believe some theories that the mummies were assembled by ancient hoaxers.
Finally, they determined that a strange sun-dried body only 15 cm (6 inches) long was also once alive.

“The Peruvian state that before decreted that nazca’s mummies were fake now declared them national patrimony with the intention to the University of Ica that is studying them.”

Cantori also reveals that the Peruvian government is now interested in the three-fingered mummies – a change from their long-time stance that they were fake, protecting them only because they were national antiquities. What does the government think they are now? We’ll have to wait for an answer on that one.

Does this bring us any closer to determining what the three-fingered mummies of Nazca are? Perhaps a little. The new photographs show much more detail than previous ones, and the skeletons definitely look like they came from some strange thin, long-armed, big-headed, three-fingered beings. The ‘eggs’ would imply reptilian rather than mammalian, but the results of the needle biopsy were not revealed. Unfortunately, there appears to be no supporting evidence for these beings being aliens – no wall paintings of landings, no spaceship parts, no uniforms, no Nazca lines showing their arrival.

Ah, the Nazca lines. Some theories suggest they are messages to aliens or maps and directions to be seen when they fly over. Could these be those aliens?

On the other hand, none of the new information definitively proves this is a hoax. While the government or the researchers could be covering that up to keep the interest alive, this is an awful lot of effort to maintain a ruse.

Either way, the three-fingered mummies of Nazca remain an interesting story. Welcome back!

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

It might seem hard to believe in this day and age, but there was a time when photographs of UFOs held some amazement and awe, a rime before photoshop and video manipulation made fakes and hoaxes commonplace and ruined the veracity of photographic evidence in general. I have recently done some articles on UFO photos and footage from the 1950s, as well as from the 1960s, going back in time to a sort of golden era of UFO photography. Here we will look at a selection of some compelling such cases from the 1970s and the 1980s, still before the dawn of mass manipulation of photographs.

In 1970, an unnamed couple were out boating at Tagish Lake, in Yukon Territory, Canada, when they had a strange experience they would never forget. They were out on the lake with another couple in a separate boat, with the two men involved identified in the original report by just their first names, Jim and George, and at 10 a.m. Jim and his wife reportedly saw seven eerie glowing yellow spheres floating over the lake and on the mountainside, each one described as being around 4 feet in diameter. Three of the orbs were apparently hovering about further back on the mountain while the other four moved slowly over the water before joining the others, after which they moved off out of sight. Luckily, Jim was able to snap a photograph of the strange objects, but it would turn out that his friend George and his wife had not been paying attention and had not seen the objects.

Jim went about making slides of the photograph and gave one to George, who was amazed by what he saw and sent a duplicate to the Weather Office, who then submitted it the Department of National Defence in Ottawa, and after that this particular slide seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. For a full year nothing more was heard on the matter, and when George contacted the Department of Defence to ask about what they had found in their analysis, they ominously told him it was classified and would say nothing more about it. Another slide was analyzed by the ufobc in great depth, and they were unable to explain it away as just a trick of light or reflections off the mountain rocks. As to what the photos show and what happened to the slide given to the Department of Defence, it remains unknown. You can read a detailed analysis of the photos here.

The Tagish Lake photo

Close-up of the alleged UFOs over Tagish Lake

From 1971 there is a curious photograph taken by a witness named Rudi Nagora, of Munich, Germany, who on May 23, 1971 was vacationing with his wife near St. Lorenzen, Austria, when he had a rather bizarre experience. At about 12:30 p.m., they stopped their car and Nagora got out to walk around a bit, and that’s when he allegedly heard a strange whizzing sounds from above. When he looked up to the sky, he saw a metallic silver disc reflecting the sunlight as it flew along in an erratic zig-zag pattern. It was weird enough that he quickly grabbed his camera and snapped a full roll of 12 exposures of the object before it suddenly shot up into a bank of clouds above it and disappeared. What would go on to be known as the Nagora photographs would go on to be widely touted as some of the best photos of a UFO ever taken and have never been fully explained.

One of the Nagora photos

Some of the most controversial UFO photos ever taken come from the 1970s, originating with a man named Eduard “Billie” Albert Meier. A purported alien contactee from the age of 5 years old, he claims that he had been regularly visited by humanoid aliens from the Pleiadian star cluster, taught about all manner of wisdom and wonders and assigned as their representative on Earth. Being a mediator for them seems to have had its perks, because according to him they regularly allowed him to photograph their spaceships, to the tune of a total of over a thousand crystal clear photographs of them. When they were first released they were impressive for their clarity and the sheer number of them, but of course they were picked apart by skeptics and quickly deemed to be a hoax. Meir himself has always defended them as genuine, and although today they are mostly regarded as fake even within the UFO community, at the time they were a big deal and caused a lot of waves, being perhaps the most instantly recognizable and most famous UFO photographs of not only the 1970s, but any era. You can read more about Billy Meir and his photos in much more detail in my article on it here.

One of Meir’s many, many photos

Going into the 80s we have another famous and very clear photograph taken by a Mrs. Hannah McRoberts, of Campbell River, British Columbia, Canada. In October of 1981, she was on vacation with her family on the rugged east coast of Vancouver Island, and their weeklong stay would turn out to be far from just a normal family trip. For the first few days, things went normally, they went hiking and took various photos of the surrounding scenery, but then on October 8 they looked out towards one of the mountains and noticed that there was something very odd about it, in that it seemed to have a crown of anomalous looking clouds at its peak, which reminded them of a “volcano issuing steam.” At the time they took a photograph of the strange sight and then didn’t think much of it, thinking it to just be an odd cloud formation. However, things would get very weird when the photos were developed.

When the picture of that cloud-wreathed mountain came back, they were astounded to see that the photograph had also captured an unidentified object to the right of and above the peak and the cloud. It was very clear in contrast to the blue sky, and appeared to be a disc-shaped solid object, not a camera artifact or trick of light, and it was very strange indeed. The photo would find its way to Richard F. Haines, Editor of the Journal of Scientific Exploration for analysis. Haines would deduce that indeed the object was not a result of “emulsion deformity or optical illusion of the camera’s inner mechanisms,” and he would not be able to find any evidence of trickery or of a hoax. Haines would also interview the family in depth and deem them to be reliable and unlikely to be perpetrating a hoax. Haines would say:

Analyses of the original negative included micro-densitometry, computer enhancements, and other measurements intent upon showing a support thread, atmospheric disturbance, or other evidence of a hoax. These analyses suggest that the disc was a three dimensional object located at a distance of at least 30 feet from the camera; the object’s surface albedo was diffuse and of lower luminance than a sunlit cloud. Extensive interviews with the photographer (who never saw the aerial object), her husband, and daughter and site survey tended to support the entire narrative account. If this event had been a deliberate hoax, it is more likely that some overt action to capitalize on it might have been taken soon after the disc had been discovered, and not almost a year later. Of course this is not a conclusive argument to support this contention. The author found the photographer and her husband to be middle-class, hard-working people. Their property was well kept. Nothing could be found which pointed to a deliberate hoax. Both displayed genuine puzzlement about the origin of the disc on the photograph. Mr. and Mrs. D.M. were not defensive nor did they ever attempt to cover up anything as far as could be determined. The identity of the disc object remains unidentified.

The Hannah McRoberts photo

Moving on to 1989 we have another very intriguing photograph supposedly taken by a photographer on the night of July 14, 1989 in Nashville, Tennessee. On this evening, the unnamed witness was driving along a remote rural road when he noticed a a bright illumination beyond the trees. Since this was the middle of nowhere and there was no town there, he stopped the car and got out to investigate this weird light, taking his camera along with him. As he drew closer, the light rose up over the trees around 4 miles away, showing itself to be a bright flying object with some sort of coronal discharge around it, as well as shooting beams or flames of some sort below it, before slowly moving towards him as he began taking pictures of the amazing sight until he was out of film, after which the object flew off and went behind a mountain. A report on the incident by the National UFO Center would say of it:

The photographer states, “I had a feeling that the craft was behind the mountain waiting for me and when it appeared it felt like I was in another world, the sounds were far, far away.” He looked at the object but could not see any definition, the light was far too bright and too far away. When he looked through the lens the craft was sharp and vivid. The craft was visible for more than five minutes, but less than ten. It seemed like forever. He changed the lens package from the T-90 to the AE-1 camera and continued shooting using all his film. He felt he was not in control of what was happening. He remembers constantly pushing the buttons on the back of the T-90, each time he made a change it sharpened the image. There were other witnesses, but they have been reluctant to come forward. They also were taking pictures, but the field around the craft interfered with the film as the craft moved away. They did not have high magnification lens so there was not enough definition to make the craft identifiable. The photographer has had a recent heart attack and an auto accident and does not want his name revealed.

One of the Tennessee photos

The photos would eventually by the photographer to his friend Commander Graham Bethune, of the US Navy, who would examine them and hold to them for a time before handing them over to the National UFO Center for their own analysis. The National UFO Center would deduce that the object was solid, about 100 feet in diameter, and at a distance of approximately 5 miles from the camera. One analysis describes the object in the photos as follows:

Analysis of the film shows unusual colors not normally seen in any lighted object. The colors indicate a coronal discharge similar to the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights.) The photographs show a craft with approximately 32 red, white and blue perimeter lights. These lights are not used in normal aircraft configuration. At times they appear all red. At other times they are all white. Sometimes outer perimeter lights appear mixed in color indicating they may have the ability to change color. Inside the outer perimeter lights are panels of lights. These also appear to have the ability to change color. Although they are predominantly white they are sometimes seen as partially red or black. Assuming the craft is 100 feet in diameter these outer panels take up about 40 feet or 20 feet on each side. Below the center of craft there appears to be a crystal or lights with crystal like appearance. Generally, these lights appear blue. craft appears to rotate in the photos.

Graham gave me his word that these were authentic photographs of an actual flying craft to the best knowledge. He has known the photographer for 24 years and the man worked for him for ten years. He has always been known to tell the truth and was of high character. The lights themselves have an unusual depth of color. When you look at a colored light it is normally a white light covered by a lens of red, yellow, green, blue etc. The lights on the craft appear as if the light contain the actual color. There is a vividness of color that is difficult to describe that appears to be in these photos. The fog or plasma is penetrated by the powerful lights shining downward. The lights extend down for an estimated seventy-five feet to one hundred plus feet and seem to stop abruptly. Duplication of this capability is exceptionally difficult to accomplish with any normal lights. I have never seen lights that have these properties except on a UFO, nor have I seen comparable photography.

These have just been a selection of some of the more interesting supposed UFO photos coming out of the 1970s and 80s, still in an era when photo doctoring techniques like photo shop were not available and when pictures were taken more seriously than they are now. We are perhaps beyond the days when any photo of a UFO means any thing at all due to the ease with which they can be faked, and indeed those we have looked at here could very well be faked too, but it was an a different era when photos seemed to carry more weight. While those days are over it is interesting to look back at some of these photos and think that there was a time when these types of photos were not so common and not so easily faked. Real or not, they are a glimpse back in time to another age of ufology that is very much gone.

ALL RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

A new report released by the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) has revealed which states in America you would be most likely to witness a UFO. According to the report, the best place to see an unidentified flying object is on the west coast of the United States and the best time of year is during the spring.

For those living in California, you may want to keep your eyes on the sky as that state has the most UFO sightings with a jaw-dropping 619 encounters just in 2020. The first four sightings of last year were all on January 1^st when someone in El Centro noticed a red orb floating in the sky before changing direction and vanishing; a person in Bakersfield spotted three yellow circles in the sky; an individual in Los Angeles saw a disk/saucer-shaped object over a forest; and someone in Cambria witnessed a dome-shaped cylinder over Highway 1. The last encounter of the year was on New Year’s Eve in Palm Springs where four orange lights located one behind the other were spotted before a fifth came into view. Then each of their lights turned off one by one.

People living in Florida, Washington State, Pennsylvania, and Texas may also want to keep a watchful eye on the sky as these states round out the top five with the most reported UFO sightings.

As for what time of year would be best to see an unidentified flying craft, the spring months seem to be the most active with 1,873 total sightings in the country between March and April of last year. Additionally, you have a better chance of spotting a visiting alien in between the hours of 8pm and midnight. The worst time of year to spot extraterrestrial activity is in the month of December as there were only 370 reports during that month in 2020. Perhaps the winter months are too cold for the aliens?

With that being said, if you wish to encounter a UFO, your best bet is to get to California during the spring months and stare up at the sky for 4 hours after it gets dark. On the other hand, if you have absolutely no interest in encountering a UFO, you may want to stick to Washington, D.C. as there was only one sighting there last year.

NUFORC’s full list of UFO sightings for each state can be read here.

National UFO Reporting Center
Report Index by State / Province
Click on links for details

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UFO videos and footage have come and gone over the years, ranging from the somewhat compelling to the downright obviously fake. In more recent times the wide availability of photoshop and other means of doctoring photos and footage has made such evidence all but pointless, but there was a time before the advent of computer trickery, when photos and footage could be taken more at face value, and one of the more astounding of the pieces of footage of a UFO from the time is not only one of the earliest films of a UFO, but also one of the most intriguing and oft-discussed.

On August 15, 1950, an unassuming minor-league baseball manager by the name of Nick Mariana, of Great Falls, Montana, was going about a usual day. On this day he went to the baseball stadium to inspect the site before a big game for his team the Great Falls Electrics, and it was completely routine, no reason to suspect that the day was about to get very strange, indeed. He was there with his 19-year-old secretary, Virginia Raunig, and as they went about their inspection at around 11:30 a.m. a bright flash in the sky caught Mariana’s attention. When he looked up, he saw two bright silvery objects that seemed to be rotating and speeding along at an estimated speed of between 200 and 400 miles per hour, with each of the objects around 50 feet in diameter. Raunig had seen the strange objects as well, and for a few moments they just stared in disbelief. Incredibly, Mariana was able to overcome his awe and fascination to remember that he had a 16mm camera back at his car, and he ran to get it.

Upon returning to the field, the anomalous objects were still up there moving in a formation and keeping a steady distance of around 50 to 100 feet between them. Mariana started up his camera and was able to take 16 seconds of color footage of the mysterious objects, which the very next day was doing the rounds in the news, appearing in the local paper the Great Falls Tribune, and from there it would attract a great amount of attention from all over. The footage went on to get nationwide coverage, with Mariana further spreading the word through private showings at various local community groups. At the time, UFOs were a hot topic, with the late 1940s really kicking off the craze of “flying saucers” and stories about alien invasions all the rage, so what was being called the “Mariana footage” really hit a nerve and sparked much excitement, controversy, and fear. At the time the footage was a pretty big deal. You can see some of the footage here.

A shot from the Marianas footage

Among those who took an interest in the footage was the U.S. Air Force, and U.S. Air Force Captain John P. Brynildsen arrived in Great Falls to interview Mariana on the incident. He would learn that both of the witnesses had also seen two jet fighters fly over the stadium shortly after taking the footage, which they had assumed to be the military perhaps pursuing the objects. This was a curious detail, as it suggested to Brynildsen that perhaps what they had seen were just the two jets. He managed to procure a portion of the footage and send it to Wright-Patterson AFB for analysis, where it was quickly written off as merely the reflections of the two F-94 jet fighters that were officially confirmed to have been flying over at the time. However, this explanation did not sit well with everyone.

In 1952, the United States government had launched an official investigation into unidentified flying objects called Project Blue Book, which evolved from another study of UFOs started in 1949 called Project Grudge. Although Project Grudge had agreed that the Mariana footage was just fighter jets, when Air Force officer Edward J. Ruppelt took the reigns of the newly minted Project Blue Book, he wasn’t so sure, thinking that perhaps the footage had been written off prematurely. Interestingly, as all of this was going on, Mariana would complain that sections of the footage he had submitted to the Air Force were missing, specifically frames which proved that the objects were rotating or spinning, something the military denied.

Ruppelt was not only able to arrange for another, more detailed analysis to be done on the film, but also get Mariana’s permission to resubmit the footage again. This time, analysts came to the conclusion that the objects seen in the film were not birds, balloons, or meteors, and they also ruled out the original idea that these were just F-94 jets. Ruppelt was also able to ascertain that the jets were nowhere near the stadium at the time of the sighting, making it even less likely that they could have accounted for what was seen in the film. Whereas the first analysis had quickly explained it all away, this time the Air Force had no choice but to concede that it was “an unknown.” In 1954 the footage was under the microscope again when it was used in a UFO documentary for Greene-Rouse productions. The documentary hired a scientist and engineer for the Douglas Aircraft company by the name of M.L. Baker, Jr. to take a look at the film, who also rejected the hypothesis that the objects were reflections of fighter jets. Baker would conclude in a Congressional hearing on UFOs concerning the Mariana footage:

Preliminary analysis excluded most natural phenomena. More detailed study indicated that the only remaining natural phenomenon candidate for the Utah film was birds in flight, and for the Montana film it was airplane fuselage reflections of the sun. After about 18 months of rather detailed, albeit not continuous, study using various film-measuring equipment at Douglas and at UCLA, as well as analysis of a photogrammetric experiment, it appeared that neither of these hypothesized natural phenomena explanations had merit.

In the end, in Baker’s opinion, the objects were an unknown. For the next decade the Mariana footage was much discussed and debated, and then in 1966 it became the subject of another official investigation, this time by an Air Force funded study of the UFO phenomenon based at the University of Colorado at Boulder and run by the physicist Dr. Edward U. Condon. Called The Condon Report, the study looked at all manner of UFO reports, and this time they had their sights set on the Mariana footage. Condon recruited physicist Dr. Roy Craig and psychologist Dr. David Saunders to re-examine the footage and they would come up with mixed results. While Saunders thought the footage had merit, Craig was mostly skeptical of the whole thing, doubting several elements of Mariana’s story, including when it was actually taken and his claims that parts of the film had been taken by the Air Force. Another specialist called in by the Condon report was Dr. William Hartmann, an astronomer for the University of Arizona, who also analyzed the footage and could not rule out that the objects seen are airplanes.

Indeed, the identity of the objects in the Mariana footage has never been adequately resolved, and even now it is picked apart and debated. That a piece of footage from so many decades ago is still unsolved and discussed to this day is fairly impressive, especially since these were the days before photoshop and digital manipulation of film, and the Mariana footage is still of much interest in the UFO field. Copies of the film reside at the US National Archives and it still gets heavy play in UFO documentaries and TV shows, and whether real or not, it has earned a high place among the countless pieces of UFO footage out there. Real or not, the Marianas footage has its place in the UFO lore, and has never been fully explained.

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For decades, astronomers have employed the most powerful telescopes in the world in search of answers to what may be the greatest scientific question of all: are we alone?

Evidence that life might exist elsewhere in the universe remains elusive, but scientists have not yet given up hope that within the next few decades, a definitive answer to this longstanding question may finally present itself.

However, some proponents of unidentified aerial phenomena–more commonly known since the 1950s as UFOs—maintain their convictions that evidence of extraterrestrial life may be found here within Earth’s atmosphere, rather than on distant worlds.

The extraterrestrial hypothesis—that is, the idea that UFOs might represent alien visitation, and thereby evidence of extraterrestrials lurking right beneath our noses—has remained a popular idea since the earliest days of UFO sightings. Beginning shortly after World War II, even as Kenneth Arnold’s story of sighting “saucers” over Mount Rainier, Washington, was making headlines, articles and opinion editorials had begun to appear which (often mockingly) poked fun at the idea of “Martians” or other extraterrestrial sources for the objects.

The idea continued to gain traction during the ensuing decade, and even today the extraterrestrial hypothesis remains a popular explanatory model that many proponents use in an attempt to explain what the UFO phenomenon might represent.

With the issuance of a preliminary assessment by the Navy’s UAP Task Force delivered to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in late June, 2021, no explicit references to extraterrestrial craft were made in the document. Despite this, many pointed to the fact that although the words “alien” or “extraterrestrial” never made any appearances in the nine-page report, they couldn’t be ruled out either. Such logic had been the focus of a New York Times article published weeks before the report’s delivery to the ODNI, which stated that the U.S. government “could not definitively rule out theories that the phenomena observed by military pilots might be alien spacecraft.”

Of course, until proven otherwise, we are left with the presumption that some UFOs (or UAP, depending on what one prefers to call them) might indeed represent extraterrestrial craft, and that if so little as one instance of inexplicable aerial phenomena represented such a possibility, we could conclude that Earth has indeed been visited by other forms of intelligent life.

(Credit: Unsplash)

If so, another question that springs to mind is “why?”

We often tend to think of extraterrestrials in terms of the only other kinds of life forms we know about: earthlings. While it might seem reasonable to assume that alien life would take forms that at least bear a passing resemblance to organisms we recognize on Earth, this may not necessarily be the case at all. In fact, it could be far off base, and any number of different unforeseen factors might have influenced the stages that life on other worlds might go through over time. If any alien life persisted long enough to evolve into intelligent forms with technological capabilities comparable to, or even exceeding our own, their attitudes and appearance may end up being far different from anything we could imagine. Equally unpredictable are the kinds of motivations they might have for visiting Earth, although science fiction has done a fine job conditioning us into black and white thinking along the lines of friendly, “take me to your leader” space brothers, or violent invaders bent on capturing our planet.

Something else that seems apparent is the way that science fiction has influenced the attitudes of scientists who have weighed in on the matter of extraterrestrial visitation, and whether it seems likely that this is what UFOs might represent.

“If the aliens can actually come here – whatever their motivation – then they have technology that’s enormously beyond our own,” wrote SETI Institute senior astronomer Seth Shostak last August, who said that drawing comparisons between Earth technologies and those of aliens capable of reaching us “would be like comparing the U.S. Air Force to an Australopithecus raiding party.”

Shostak, drawing from the science fiction influence that permeates the UFO debate, goes on to ask, “do you honestly think Captain Picard would ever spend time checking out piles of slingshots or pikes on some primitive planet because, after all, those are state-of-the-art weapons for the local residents?”

In Shostak’s view, the current evidence being collected by the Navy is “actually an argument against visitors from another star system,” in that the fact that it appears so often around military sites betrays the likelihood that these objects belong to an adversarial nation like China or Russia.

Offering an alternative perspective, Robert Powell of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies, a scientific organization interested in the study of unidentified aerial phenomena, says that deductive reasoning leads one to conclude that the extraterrestrial hypothesis may be useful both in determining the origins of mysterious aerial objects, as well as what might bring them to Earth.

“We know that there are now thousands of extrasolar planets,” Powell recently said in an interview. “We know that many of those are in Earth ‘goldilocks’ type orbits. We believe that there is high likelihood that there is intelligence, and that life is ubiquitous throughout the universe, and even SETI agrees with that; that’s why they’re doing what they’re doing.

“So then, if you believe all that, the next thing you have to look at in deductive reasoning is ‘do they know we’re here?’ And the answer absolutely would be yes; if there’s life out there, it knows we exist.”

Powell says that in addition to evidence aliens would be capable of spotting from afar that would indicate Earth to be habitable, they would likely also be able to detect technosignatures representing the presence of intelligent life.

“Not only is there oxygen, but if they were looking back at us, they would see hydrocarbons that are artificially produced. They would see that there are isotopes of uranium and plutonium, which are artificial. They would know that there is life on this planet that is advanced to a certain extent.”

As far as what, precisely, would bring alien life to Earth, it’s anybody’s guess. Although if they are anything at all like us, the range of possibilities might include scientific studies, perhaps by extraterrestrial researchers wishing to observe—but not interfere—with Earthly happenings. This scenario might even account for why UFOs appear to remain so evasive; it could be that they do not wish to have direct communication with Earthlings, or perhaps even that they have reasons for fearing what might happen if they did.

While questions may remain about whether alien life have ever visited, and what might have brought them here if so, the longstanding UFO issue seems to present a good case for why exploring that possibility is more important now than at any time previously.

“The only question left is, ‘can they get here?’,” says Powell.

“By deductive reasoning it would make sense that we start looking out in our solar system, out in our outer atmosphere to say, is anyone observing us?”

In fact, given the calamity that often ensues on our planet, aliens may require no other reason for visiting than merely to observe us. One only needs to read the news any given day of the week to see Earthlings would have no problem providing all the entertainment they’d ever need.

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Throughout the decades there have been many photos presented as evidence of UFOs and aliens. Such photos and films are countless, and they go way back through time, to before any sort of the photo manipulation methods we have at out disposal today. Here we will look at a selection of curious photos from the 1960s, which real or not have managed to make their mark.

In 1960 there is a case from the country of Argentina, which would soon become one of the most well-known UFO incidents in a country already considered a hotspot for the phenomenon. On July 3, 1960, Hugo F. Niotti, then a captain of the Argentinean Air Force (AAF), assigned to the Air Force School for Sub-officers located in the city of Cordoba, was out driving from Yacanto toward Cordoba when near the area of Villa General Belgrano he noticed a bizarre object hovering off the side of the road to his right. Niotti stopped his car and had the presence of mind to snap off a single photograph of the object before it suddenly shot off at astounding speed out of sight. He would say of what he had seen;

The object was conical in shape, with a height of 7-8 meters and a base diameter of 3-4 meters, with its axis almost parallel to the ground and its base facing the witness. The color of the object was a uniform dark gray. The surface was perfectly smooth without joints or rivets and had a definite metallic aspect. It was at a distance of 80 to 100 meters from his location and moving very slowly toward the south, perhaps at 10 KPH, always parallel to the ground. It was rotating, also very slowly. It then accelerated very rapidly, attaining a speed of perhaps 200 KPH in 3 or 4 seconds, and disappeared into the low cloud bank. This sudden acceleration without any sound was inexplicable.

The Yacanto photograph

The confused and awed Niotti would continue on to Cordoba, turning over what he had seen in his head over and over along the way, and as soon as he arrived, he had his film processed. What he saw in the picture astounded him, but he was not willing to release it because he did not want to tarnish his military reputation and career, but he eventually was persuaded to release it to the Servicio de Informaciones de Aeronautica (SIA), which deemed them to be authentic and then passed them along to the Air Force. The photos gradually leaked to the public and were widely dissected and discussed. UFO Dr. Willy Smith would conclude that the photograph was very compelling, and would give his own thoughts as follows:

A case with a single witness usually is not even considered, but in this instance we have two circumstances that allow an exception to the rule. First, we have a competent witness, trained by his profession to observe details, who did not lose his presence of mind when confronted with the unknown. On the contrary, he reacted promptly, snatching his camera and jumping out of his car to obtain a unique graphic document. And second, the photograph by itself lends enough credibility to the case to make it deserve serious consideration. Not only has the photo repeatedly been shown to be genuine, but it is inconceivable that the Air Force officer would compromise his career with a fabrication that would bring him nothing but problems and discredit. For those who know Vice-commodore Niotti, this option is unthinkable.

What does this photo show? Is it a hoax, and if so, why would a well-respected, high ranking military official do that? Or perhaps he was hoaxed himself? We may never know for sure. In 1965 there is another piece of photographic evidence from a traditionally reliable source. On August 2, 1965 in Sherman, Texas, a television cameraman named Robert Campbell was interviewing policeman Peter McCollum in the wake of a spate of sightings in the area of a massive glowing UFO that had caused a deluge of calls from panicked residents. Campbell had been alerted to this through scanning short wave radio conversations between two police highway patrols. Before long, during that interview the two men saw it for themselves as the glowing cylindrical object hovered in a stationary position nearby. Campbell was able to get a series of four photographs of the thing before it flew off. Unfortunately, the photos would come out overexposed, but no explanation has been forthcoming. Interestingly, the object was witnessed by numerous solid witnesses, including Highway patrolman Bill Quires and Department of Public Safety Dispatcher Jim Faglia. What does the photo show? It is hard to say.

The Sherman, Texas photo

Rather weirdly, just the following day there was another unrelated case from Tulsa, Oklahoma, where at 1:30 a.m. a Mr. A. L. Smith, his 14-year-old son Alan, and three other witnesses saw a brightly glowing, multicolored object in the sky. The mysterious object moved slowly towards the witnesses, before hovering nearby as if watching them, and it is then that Smith would snap off a photo of it before it shot off into the night. The resulting photo would heavily make the rounds at the time, appearing in Life Magazine and generating a lot of excitement due to its clarity, and many analyses done on it have been unable to conclude what it actually is.

The Oklahoma photograph

The 1960s can also claim perhaps one of the most famous supposed alien images ever taken. On 24th May 1964, Jim Templeton, a fireman in Carlisle in the North of England, was out with his wife and young daughter at a place called Solway Firth. They would report that the day had been a bit odd in that they had been constantly aware of a sort of electrical charge in the air, almost like a storm was coming despite the clear, calm weather at the time. The spent the day there taking various photos but despite that creepy electrical charge they didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. It was only when they got home and had the film developed that things would get weird.

In the photo was seen to be a figure in some sort of silvery white “space suit” looming in the background over the daughter as she sits there holding a bunch of flowers smiling and completely oblivious to its presence. It was completely odd, as the Templetons would insist that there had been no one else there at the time and no rational explanation for it. When police were notified and the photo was examined, it was found to not be a double exposure, making it all very mysterious indeed. Making it even weirder still is that Templeton would claim that he was being visited by shadowy men who would pass by his house wearing black suits and driving a black car, and eventually come to his doorstep. These two men would act bizarrely, refer to each other with numbers, and allegedly ask Templeton about the photograph and the conditions that it was taken under, before telling him that he had merely taken a picture of a guy walking by to essentially photobomb the shot, something Templeton denied. The two mysterious men then became agitated and drove off in their unmarked car.

The Solway Firth Spaceman

The photo has since been widely picked apart and is mostly thought of as a hoax or a shot of someone simply walking by in the background, but what has come to be called the “Solway Firth Spaceman” has nevertheless gone on to be one of the most instantly recognizable and iconic supposed photos of an alien there is.  It joins the ranks of mysterious photographs that have, whether real or not, set the stage for supposed photographic evidence from then on out, and whatever one wants to believe we can expect photos like this to continue coming in for the foreseeable future.

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