NASA has just revealed that there were once thousands of “super eruptions” from volcanoes on Mars. They were able to confirm this based on evidence found at a location called Arabia Terra in the northern part of the planet. These “super eruptions” occurred approximately 4 billion years ago and lasted for a period of about 500 million years.

These massive eruptions released a gigantic amount of molten rock and gas that ended up covering the surface of the planet for thousands of miles with a thick blanket of ash. To understand this better, the molten rock and gas that was spewed out of the volcano was equivalent to 400 million Olympic-size swimming pools. After the eruptions occurred, the volcanoes collapsed, creating a massive hole called a “caldera”.

Arabia Terra imaged by THEMIS.

(Via Wikipedia)

Patrick Whelley, who is a geologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and who led the Arabia Terra analysis, went into further details, “Each one of these eruptions would have had a significant climate impact — maybe the released gas made the atmosphere thicker or blocked the Sun and made the atmosphere colder.”

At first, scientists thought that the depressions were the cause of asteroids impacting the planet; however, they found that they were not roundly shaped, causing them to wonder whether they were in fact ancient calderas. At that point, Whelley and his colleagues, with help from Alexandra Matiella Novak, who is a volcanologist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, searched for evidence of volcanic ash from Arabia Terra by using images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

They were able to find volcanic minerals that were turned into clay from water (these included montmorillonite, imogolite, and allophone) in canyon walls and craters located as far away as thousands of miles from the calderas. Furthermore, the layers of ash were exceptionally well preserved as if it had just happened.

An ice sheet in Oxus Patera which is a caldera in Arabia Terra.

(Via Wikipedia)

This new research, combined with a previous study conducted in 2013 that originally found the calderas, allowed the experts to confirm that there were thousands of powerful eruptions. But this is only the beginning as Jacob Richardson, who is a geologist at NASA Goddard and who worked with both Whelley and Novak, stated, “People are going to read our paper and go, ‘How? How could Mars do that? How can such a tiny planet melt enough rock to power thousands of super eruptions in one location?’” “I hope these questions bring about a lot of other research.” This latest research was published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters where it can be read in full.

Another picture of several craters in Arabia Terra can be seen here.

Mysterious booms are back in the news in Clarksville, Tennessee, and in Helsinki, Sweden, and after many days with no explanations, residents are demanding answers while their imaginations and fears run wild. Secret weapons? Climate change? Aliens?

“The 911 Dispatch Center received numerous calls around 9:50 pm last night (9/4/21) about a “loud explosion” being heard and several individuals reported that they felt the “ground shake”. The sound was heard across many parts of Montgomery County but there have been no reports of any injuries or property damage. The Clarksville Police Department, Fire Department, Montgomery County Sheriffs Office and Emergency Medical Services (EMS) searched for a couple of hours but were unable to locate the source. Fort Campbell is on a Four Day weekend due to the Labor Day holiday, and does not appear to be conducting any type of training or exercise.”

If it’s not a sonic boom, what is it?

The Clarksville Police Department investigated the reports coming in from many parts of Montgomery County but uncovered nothing. Numerous surveillance cameras picked up the boom, some witnesses claimed to have seen a bright light like a meteor, and one reported an odd smell, possibly from fireworks set of to celebrate the Labor Day holiday – although most of the reports indicated the explosion was louder than fireworks. However, the U.S. Geological Survey didn’t register any earthquakes or seismic activity at the time. There was speculation it could have been trapped gas exploding (although no craters were found) or dried-up water pockets collapsing (although no sinkholes were found). Crossing those off of the list leaves … aliens? It’s been nearly two weeks with no updates or explanations.

Meanwhile, in Helsinki …

“The current opinion is that it was most likely not caused by a meteor, but of course that can’t be ruled out.”

“In all probability, it was not any type of earthquake. We still have a more detailed analysis of that day [to examine], but we looked at it quickly over the weekend and it doesn’t show any clear [seismic activity] at our stations in Helsinki.”

On September 13th, a loud explosion was reported in the Helsinki neighborhoods of Oulunkylä, Kumpula, Käpylä, Arabia, Kulosaari, Metsälä, Meilahti and Kulosaari at around 11:45pm. Initial speculation centered on earthquake, meteor or military-caused sonic boom, but all of those were quickly ruled out by local authorities, astronomers and military personnel. Seismometers picked up nothing, and investigations found no craters, debris or other evidence of conventional explosions. After four days, the Helsinki boom also has no updates or explanations.

If it’s not a meteor, what is it?

These mysterious booms continue to occur worldwide. In a sense, they have become audio UFOs – Unidentified Audio Occurrences. Like UFOs, many van be explained quickly. Like UFOs, some cannot. Like UFOs, they seem to be increasing. Unlike UFOs, governments and militaries don’t seem to be concerned. Perhaps THAT should be a cause of concern for the rest of us. The mysterious booms are probably not alien related. However, unlike UFOs, the sounds are witnessed by many, physically and psychologically disturbing, and dismissed too easily.

Is it time to move the needle on booms from mysterious to sinister? Is it time for a Department of UAOs?

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A new de-extinction company called Colossal that is being led by entrepreneur Ben Lamm and geneticist Dr. George Church say that they are hoping to resurrect the extinct woolly mammoth within the next six years. While the last of the woolly mammoths went extinct about 4,000 years ago, the new plan is to change the genome of Asian elephants in order to create modern mammoths.

In a press release, Lamm discussed their intentions, “Never before has humanity been able to harness the power of this technology to rebuild ecosystems, heal our Earth and preserve its future through the repopulation of extinct animals,” adding, “In addition to bringing back ancient extinct species like the woolly mammoth, we will be able to leverage our technologies to help preserve critically endangered species that are on the verge of extinction and restore animals where humankind had a hand in their demise.”

So, how exactly do they plan on resurrecting the mammoth? They would have to add mammoth genes to DNA from Asian elephants in order to create curved tusks, tinier ears, subcutaneous fat stores, and a thick shaggy coat that would allow them to live in the Arctic Circle. This combination would create an Asian elephant/woolly mammoth hybrid.

Asian elephants

There are several issues regarding the resurrection of an already extinct animal as noted by Dr. Victoria Herridge who is a researcher at the National History Museum, “There are a lot of questions raised by this project. The key ethical points are the aspects of animal experimentation and husbandry – what is this creature? Is it a new species? How many do you need?” “Then if they succeed, what will the needs be of an intelligent social creature? And what are our obligations to it?”

There in fact two different ways animals could be resurrected. The first is cloning where the DNA in the cell of one animal is inserted into a fertilized egg and put into a surrogate mother – there hasn’t been a complete mammoth genome that has been found yet so that poses a problem. The second manner is finding individual genes of one animal and inserting them into the genome of another – this could possibly work for bringing the mammoth back as the modified genome would be put into a fertilized elephant egg and then put into a surrogate elephant. Artificial wombs have been suggested but there’s no proof that those would work either.

“At that point you have to start asking questions about the ethics of experimentation on elephants. You won’t know whether or not there is an issue with your chimeric creature until further down the line,” Dr. Herridge pointed out.

Mural by Charles R. Knight in 1916.

(Via Wikipedia)

As for whether or not resurrecting the woolly mammoth would actually reverse climate change, the company stated that they hope to “re-wild extinct species to their original habitats so they can revitalize lost ecosystems for a healthier planet.” There is a theory that mammoths aided in fighting climate change by bringing back and maintaining the plentiful grassland steppes in the Arctic but after they went extinct, the area turned to forests. Since forests absorb heat from the sun, the grassland would help to cool the planet.

While it would be interesting and a little eerie to see a woolly mammoth roaming around, this new company is focused on bringing even more extinct animals back from the dead – what could possibly go wrong?

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Those are questions I’ve been getting in the last few months. The sheer level of UFO activity that has been mentioned online and in other media (the only one for me being CNN) has clearly demonstrated that. Frankly, in my view if, tomorrow, the U.S. Government chose to reveal a bunch of dead, mangled, rotted alien bodies before the world, I don’t think that anyone would be worried, scared or even terrified. I think most people would be amazed, and eager to see what aliens really look like. That’s how I feel. But, it hasn’t happened. And, as I see it, there are only two options: (a) there will be disclosure; or (b) there  won’t be disclosure. But you knew that, right? Right! So, here’s how I see it: the reason why we aren’t getting full disclosure is because there’s something that is so monumentally bizarre or terrifying that no-one wants to reveal it. And because no-one in government wants to reveal it. The approach of the government may simply be: “We don’t know how to say it, or how reveal it, so let’s just hide it. Forever. ” I sometimes think that really is why we don’t have disclosure and may never will. Possibly, it can’t be told without fucking up all of human civilization.

(Nick Redfern)

I should stress I don’t have any new, secret rumors to support what I’m about to say now. None, at all. But, there is one picture that I believe could be the one that ensures we never get to know the complete, full picture. I’ll say this: I’m not a religious person. I have no particular stance on life after death, deities, gods, Hell, Heaven, reincarnation, and so on. Although, dogs just have to have souls. A greater animal was never created. Far better than us. Like most people, I occasionally wonder about it all, but that hardly makes things any clearer. It just means I occasionally have opinions on such controversies. There is however, one issue – directly related to all that Heaven and Hell stuff  – that I think would be the key issue that would prevent us (all of us) from being informed.  It’s a story that revolves around the human soul. Now and again, I’ve been told of tales concerning the human soul and its supposed links to the UFO subject. I started to get a lot of information on this issue in 2007 when I was researching my book, Final Events, and interviewing a few people from the so-called Collins Elite group.

Some of the C.E. members told me of a belief (not proof) in their ranks that the human soul was suspected of being a form of “fuel” for the black-eyed Grays of Ufology. In simple terms, the scenario was very similar to the picture in The Matrix: that our souls are nothing less than fodder to the aliens. Rather than being reliant on electricity, as is the picture. And, that’s why we can never be told, so it goes for some. Because it’s too terrifying: kind of like the classic words of Charles Fort: “We are someone else’s property.” I didn’t have long and lengthy conversations with the Collins Elite about all of this (I wish I did), but I can say that most of them had bought into that angle of soul-stealing ETs. And, when I did bring it up, it caused a lot of awkwardness. In some cases, fear. I’m hardly religious, but it even made me feel a bit clammy and cold when it was first shared with me.

Of course, there’s nothing new about this theory of aliens really being demons. When, however, you get the picture of it from a guy in his seventies, who worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency, and who was talking, in serious tones, about how the story cannot be told – and while leafing through the pages of Kurt Seligmann’s 1948 book, The Mirror Magic – things start to get a bit serious – and surreal. With that said, let’s take a look at what sounds eerily similar to some of the things I was told from 2007 to 2010. Probably the one person, more than any other, who concludes that the alien presence on our planet is driven by the “soul-scenario” is Nigel Kerner. He has written two books on the subject. They are The Song of the Greys and Grey Aliens and the Harvesting of Souls. Combined, they make a worryingly persuasive argument for the theory that aliens somehow “use” the human soul. Danielle Silverman, Kerner’s assistant, prepared the following for me on his theories and conclusions. She stated that Kerner,  “…went on to delineate a fascinating concept, explaining that a ‘soul’ might be a derivational information field that comes out of a natural cadence that came into the Universe with the big bang. This field holds the power to maintain information in what he called a morphogenetic electro-spatial field with an eternal scope of existence in whatever form circumstance allows. The soul is thus an ancestrally contiguous and coherent mechanism for holding information.”

(Nick Redfern) My copy of the Seligmann book

It’s also worth noting the experience of Sergeant John Healey, of the U.S. Army Reserve. On the night of October 18, 1973, he encountered a brightly-lit UFO, as he and his colleagues were on-board a UH-1H helicopter, rapidly closing in on Cleveland Hopkins, Airport, Ohio. In the aftermath of the encounter – which, in essence, was a near-collision between the two craft – Healey had several weird out-of-body experiences, as he told to UFO investigator, Jennie Zeidman. It was, he explained, as if he was dead in his bed, and that his spirit was above him, staring down at his sleeping form in the bed. That Sergeant Healey’s experiences occurred not in relation to the abduction phenomenon, but to a UFO sighting, suggests that other components of the UFO issue come into play when it comes to the relationship between UFOs, life after death, and our souls. Notably, several members of the helicopter crew were later contacted by representatives of the Department of Defense, who exhibited interest in – and deep concerns about – the UFO / soul-ingestion angle. This suggests a disturbing scenario: that certain elements of the U.S. Government may know something of the origins and agenda of the paranormal parasites.

It’s a fact that most people who have studied the claims of Bob Lazar focus their attentions on what he had to say about the UFOs allegedly held at S-4, as well as his statements concerning Element 115. There is one issue that doesn’t get the attention that it really should. It’s a part of Lazar’s story which takes things down a path that is filled with disturbing revelations involving the afterlife. One of the many briefing papers that Lazar said he read at S-4 stated that the aliens refer to us, the human race, as what we would call “Containers.” But, containers of what? Well, that’s where things get really controversial. Lazar told KLAS-TV’s George Knapp “religion was created so we have some rules and regulations for the sole purpose of not damaging the containers.” As for the “Containers,” the Knapp-Lazar discussion then went into the matter of human souls and their importance. How much of all this (some of it, all of it, none of it) is true, I have to say I don’t know. What I do know for sure, though, is that there are a lot of people in the U.S. government, and in the U.S. intelligence community, who do believe this is the real picture. And, from their perspective, that’s why we won’t get full disclosure. We’ll get a sanitized-type disclosure. Because, they say, it’s much easier on everyone. A case of what we don’t get won’t hurt us. Until, possibly, it eventually does.

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That question was put to me not long ago. It’s an interesting question, too. It took me a while to come up with a conclusion, but I finally did. I would say that the alleged (extremely alleged…) “UFO crash” at Aztec, New Mexico in March 1948 fits the bill. Either that, or it’s a complete pile of garbage. And, in-between, there’s some genuinely strange bits along the way. So, let’s begin. The strange story of the alleged UFO crash at Aztec, New Mexico in March 1948 – and the recovery of a number of dead “little men” at the site – is a real hotbed of lies, disinformation, and shady characters. Most of those same characters were best avoided by those with dollars to spare. The tale was made infamous in the pages of Frank Scully’s 1950 blockbuster, Behind the Flying Saucers; it was a book which turned out to be a huge seller. Today, the Aztec affair is seen by some ufologists as Roswell’s “little brother.” As its “skeleton in the cupboard” might be a far more apt description, however. Many researchers of the UFO phenomenon dismiss the Aztec incident as nothing but a hoax; one which was perpetrated by a shady businessman/conman named Silas Newton. His less-than-shining FBI file can be accessed at the FBI’s website, The Vault. When it came to stories of aliens from faraway worlds, making money was always the goal for Newton. And the only goal. Along for the ride with Newton was Leo Gebauer. He was a quasi-scientist and the Igor to Newton’s ego-driven Dr. Frankenstein.

(Nick Redfern) Aztec, New Mexico

There is, though, a very interesting and extremely odd aspect to the Newton/Aztec story. It serves to demonstrate how the UFO phenomenon was becoming the tool of manipulative disinformation specialists in the intelligence community. And not just of the Soviet Union. The United States was getting into the strange game, too. Back in 1998, the late Karl Pflock, ufologist and CIA employee (sometimes at the same time…), was approached by a still-anonymous source who had something very interesting to say about the Aztec caper, and about Newton too. It was a decidedly weird series of revelations that Pflock surely never anticipated receiving. To his dying day, Pflock refused to reveal the name of his informant in the shadows – rumors, however, were that the person may have been a nephew of Silas Newton – but, Pflock did say that all of the lunchtime meetings with his source occurred between July 11 and September 24, 1998 and took place in a restaurant in Bernalillo, New Mexico.

(Nick Redfern) The late Karl Pflock, who was both a Ufologist and an employee of the CIA

So the story goes, Pflock’s informant had in their hands twenty-seven pages taken, or rather torn, from an old and faded, lined journal. No prizes for guessing who that journal had belonged to. That’s right, sly, old Silas Newton. Pflock was told that Newton had kept journals and diaries not just for years, but for decades. They were jammed with entertaining tales of sexual conquests, of Hollywood starlets, of the fleecing of the rich and the gullible, and of wild adventures across the United States. The outcome of all this? Newton decided, around the turn of the 1970s, that it was right about time for him to write-up his version of the Aztec controversy. It would surely have been a definitive page-turner. Death, however, inconveniently intervened in 1972, when Newton passed away in his mid-eighties. What happened to all of those journals is anyone’s guess. As for those few pages that Pflock was allowed to see – and to transcribe word for word – they tell a tale of undeniable weirdness. By his own admittance, and a couple of years after the Aztec story surfaced in Frank Scully’s book, Newton was clandestinely visited by two representatives of “a highly secret U.S. Government entity,” as Pflock carefully and tactfully described it.

(Nick Redfern) Aztec, New Mexico: the site of a crashed UFO? It depends on who you ask

Those same representatives of the government told Newton, in no uncertain terms, that they knew his Aztec story was a complete and bald-faced lie. Utter bullshit, in fact. Incredibly, though, they wanted Newton to keep telling the tale to just about anyone and everyone who would listen. This caused Pflock to ponder on an amazing possibility: “Did the U.S. Government or someone associated with it use Newton to discredit the idea of crashed flying saucers so a real captured saucer or saucers could be more easily kept under wraps?” Far more intriguing, though, and highly relevant to the theme of this book, is the next question that Pflock posed: “Was this actually nothing to do with real saucers but instead some sort of psychological warfare operation [italics mine]?” With the Newton revelations in hand, Pflock, no later than 1999, came to believe that back in the early fifties someone in the government, the intelligence community, or the military of the United States – and maybe even a swirling combination of all three – wanted the Aztec story further circulated. The purpose: as a means to try and convince the Russians that the U.S. military had acquired, or captured, alien technology. When, in reality, it had no such thing in its possession at all. Now, you see why I consider the Aztec affair of March 1948 to have been the most complicated UFO case of all time.

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A popular sketch on The Late Show with David Letterman was “Is This Anything?”, where the host and the bandleader Paul Shaffer watched an individual or group perform an unusual stunt, then discussed whether the act was “something” or “nothing.” Archeologists excavating artifacts often seem to engage in a similar game as they attempt to figure out what is historically or monetarily valuable and what is just old stuff. A good example of this ‘game’ took place recently on the Tibetan Plateau with the discovery of hand and footprints on a wall that date back to the middle of the Pleistocene era, between 169,000 and 226,000 years ago. That’s significant, but it becomes game-changing as archeologists play a game that might be called, ‘Is This Art’? The answer could determine of this is the oldest artwork ever found or just cave kids having fun.

“The question is: What does this mean? How do we interpret these prints? They’re clearly not accidentally placed. There’s not a utilitarian explanation for these. So what are they? My angle was, can we think of these as an artistic behavior, a creative behavior, something distinctly human. The interesting side of this is that it’s so early.”

Are handprints art?

Thomas Urban, research scientist in the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell and co-author of the paper, “Earliest Parietal Art: Hominin Hand and Foot Traces from the Middle Pleistocene of Tibet,” published in Science Bulletin, tells Phys.org about his analysis of five footprints and five handprints found on a rocky promontory at Quesang on the Tibetan Plateau in 2018. The prints were found in travertine, a freshwater limestone that was soft when they were made but hardened over time. While footprints are common, handprints are rare, and Urban suspected these were examples of parietal (immobile) art similar to hand stenciling often found on prehistoric cave walls – and the children who made them had a purpose in mind. (Photos here.)

“These young kids saw this medium and intentionally altered it. We can only speculate beyond that. This could be a kind of performance, a live show, like, somebody says, ‘hey, look at me, I’ve made my handprints over these footprints.'”

The oldest confirmed examples of prehistoric art are found on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi and in the El Castillo cave in Spain and date to between 40,000 and 45,000 years ago. The famous Chauvet cave paintings in France are 30,000 years old. If the Tibetan hand and footprints are deemed to be real works of art, their age of 169,000 to 226,000 years almost pushes the others into the Museum of Modern Art, not the Museum of Natural History. Once that question is decided, an even bigger one looms. Study co-authors Matthew Bennett, Professor of Environmental and Geographical Sciences at Bournemouth University, and Sally Reynolds, Principal Academic in Hominin Palaeoecology at Bournemouth University, ask it in The Conversation:

“Were the children members of our own species, Homo sapiens, or members of another extinct archaic human species? There is nothing in the tracks to resolve this question. They may have been an enigmatic group of archaic humans referred to as the Denisovans, given other recent skeletal finds of this species on the plateau.”

As we learn more about the Denisovans, the Neanderthals and other potential archaic humans, we find more reasons to consider them as peers rather than less intelligent – and artistic — hominins.

It may have started 226,000 years ago, but there’s still a need for art in our modern world. Teach art in schools again!