Nineteen-eighty-seven was one of the most important years in the field of UFO research. That was the year in which Whitley Strieber’s book, Communion, was published. The alien abduction-themed book became a huge bestseller – even a New York Times bestseller, no less. Strieber’s book was an important one because it didn’t follow the same pathway that so many other abduction books did. Strieber postulated that the black-eyed, dwarfish creatures known as “the Greys” are far from being just entities from another world and who have come to visit us. Strieber’s work suggested something far more than that; something that has deep relevance to the world of robots. Some people were excited and intrigued by the story that Strieber told. Others were puzzled, some appalled by the fact that brought into Communion matters relative to magic, to the human soul, to immortality, and to life after death – and all in one big mix. Indeed, Strieber put forth the distinct possibility that the Greys have the ability to operate in both a physical state and a soul-based situation. As for that physical form, Strieber came up with a fascinating theory – based upon his very own experiences with the Greys. He strongly suspected that when not in spirit/soul form, the Greys had the ability to be “downloaded” into physical form. And, in that particular form, they were far more like biological robots than the aliens that the UFO research community embraced.

Mac Tonnies went down that pathway, too. He said: “Given the vast number of out-of-body and near-death experiences, I find it difficult to reject the prospect of ‘nonlocal’ consciousness; perhaps a sufficiently advanced technology can manipulate the ‘soul’ as easily as we splice genes or mix chemicals in test tubes. If so, encounters with ‘extraterrestrials’ may help provide a working knowledge of how to modify and transfer consciousness – abilities that seem remote to the current terrestrial state-of-the-art, but may prove invaluable in a future where telepresence and virtual reality are integral to communication. Already, the capabilities of brain-machine interfaces are tantalizingly like the popular perception of telepathy, often thought of in strictly ‘paranormal’ or even ‘magical’ terms.” It should be noted that this is very much like what has become known as Transhumanism. Basically, it’s a case of being in a state of post-human, rather than present-human. Or, post-alien, rather than alien.

This very much all revolves around what is known as the Transhumanist Party. All of this brings us very close to – if not right into the very heart of – what is known as Transhumanism. We’re talking about us, as a species, becoming something amazing; a new type of human. Becoming post-human and, potentially, immortal. We’re even talking about the merging of man and highly advanced technology in ways that, right now, are difficult to understand, but that are currently seen as a viable way to ensure we have far more than our measly eighty years, or thereabouts, and, instead, possibly even living forever. It’s hard to get one’s head around the concept, today. But, that may not be the case for the people of another century away. For them, immortality may just be an everyday thing. The man who has flown the flag for Transhumanism is Zoltan Istvan, who is determined to become immortal and President of the United States. In which particular order hasn’t been confirmed yet.

The BBC say of this: “Transhumanists dream of achieving immortality and physical perfection through futuristic technologies like mind uploading, cyborg body augmentation, and genetic manipulation; they want us to evolve into a race of post-human super-beings. While the other presidential candidates are claiming they know best how to deal with Iran, the economy, and immigration, Istvan is trying to appeal to the US electorate with more ambitious goals. He wants to eradicate death, and for everyone in America to live forever.” Istvan has said that all of this “literally means beyond human. Transhumanists consist of life extensionists, techno-optimists, Singularitarians, biohackers, roboticists, AI [artificial intelligence] proponents, and futurists who embrace radical science and technology to improve the human condition. The most important aim for many transhumanists is to overcome human mortality, a goal some believe is achievable by 2045.” It’s a fact that 2045 isn’t too far away. Some of us will get to see what the future offers.

A jaw-dropping 301 newly confirmed exoplanets have recently been added to the total of worlds outside of our Solar System. These planets are just the latest to be added to the staggering number of 4,569 that have already been confirmed.

As for why such a large number of planets were found in a relatively short amount of time, we can thank a new deep neural network named ExoMiner for that help. In fact, ExoMiner has been trained to pick out actual exoplanets from a variety of other space objects or “false positives”. ExoMiner is a huge help considering the tons of data collected by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft and K2 mission which observed thousands of stars – each with the potential of having at least one planet orbiting them.

And it certainly isn’t an easy task as there are confirmed exoplanets and those that are validated, which have two very different meanings. Based on different data statistics, a world can be validated on how likely or unlikely it is to be a planet. But when numerous different observations show definitive planetary features, it is categorized as a confirmed exoplanet.

ExoMiner found the 301 planets by combing through data on planetary candidates in the Kepler Archive. The planets were discovered by the Kepler Science Operations Center pipeline and then the Kepler Science Office categorized them as planet candidate status. Then ExoMiner validated them.

Jon Jenkins, who is an exoplanet scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, discussed the project by explaining, “Unlike other exoplanet-detecting machine learning programs, ExoMiner isn’t a black box – there is no mystery as to why it decides something is a planet or not,” adding, “We can easily explain which features in the data lead ExoMiner to reject or confirm a planet.”

While hundreds of new explanets have been confirmed, experts don’t think that any of them are located in the habitable zone or similar to Earth. Nevertheless, the discovery is certainly very important as Jenkins noted, “These 301 discoveries help us better understand planets and solar systems beyond our own, and what makes ours so unique.”

ExoMiner will also be able to help in other projects as explained by Hamed Valizadegan, who is the ExoMiner project lead and machine learning manager with the Universities Space Research Association at Ames, “Now that we’ve trained ExoMiner using Kepler data, with a little fine-tuning, we can transfer that learning to other missions, including TESS, which we’re currently working on.” “When ExoMiner says something is a planet, you can be sure it’s a planet.”

The study can be read in full here.

Since the 1980s, sightings of large, triangular-shaped UFOs, usually described as being black in color, making a low humming noise, and very often with rounded rather than angled corners, have been reported throughout the world. The sheer proliferation of such reports has led some ufological commentators to strongly suspect that the Flying Triangles (as they have come to be known) are prime examples of still-classified aircraft, the development of which was secretly begun in the 1980s by elements of the U.S. Department of Defense. Largely, UFO researchers are split into two camps: that the Flying Triangles are the creations of the American military or that have been flown by extraterrestrials. There is, however, another theory for all of this mystery. It’s a theory that pops up now and again; however. It is tied to the issue of nothing less than time-travel. I must stress that the theory was addressed in the early part of the 1990s, but faded away. The theory also kind of vanished into the woods – so to speak, and quite literally – of England’s Cannock Chase expansive woods.

The late Omar Fowler, a UFO expert who died in 2017, had a theory that the so-called Flying Triangles just might be nothing less than the aerial vehicles of time travelers. Fowler had a good reason for that. On one occasion, in September 1992, over a large area of woodland in central England called the Cannock Chase, Omar secured a piece of testimony from a man named Alan Ball. He agreed to meet Ball on the Chase one morning. Incredibly, Ball claimed that he was taken on-board a huge, black, Flying Triangle late one night – and while he was driving home – when he was “beamed into” the craft and subjected to a series of medical experiments by three small, humanoid figures in what “looked like a medical lab.”

(Nick Redfern)

The late U.K. researcher, Omar Fowler, with a model of a “Flying Triangle”-type UFO

Ten or fifteen minutes into the experimentation, Ball claimed that his mind was flooded by images of the U.K., in ruins. It was a definitive Armageddon: buildings, in all directions, were destroyed; charred human bodies lay everywhere; and it was clear that a nuclear event occurred. And the assumption was that the event was not alone. That the U.K. – and possible everywhere else – had been destroyed. After having the terrifying vision, Ball was dropped off the craft – literally, from a door about five feet above the woods. Ball was in a state of terror – and for several days. Particularly of interest is the fact that Fowler had in his files two extremely similar cases – and also at the Cannock Chase woods – of people taken onto Flying Triangles and exposed to images in their minds of a massive apocalypse. Fowler was still open on the idea that the Flying Triangles could be extraterrestrial in nature. However, he wasn’t able to shake off the disturbing possibility the craft were piloted by time travelers, and that what Ball and the two other people were seeing was a future still to come – and that all three victims had been taken to the future and then returned to in 1992. Should we consider those who pilot the Flying Triangles to be us, but from a faraway time?Maybe, so. To a degree, Omar Fowler did.

(Nick Redfern)

The lair of the Flying Triangles at England’s Cannock Chase

Admittedly, there is no reason why such a theory should be dismissed and tossed away. And, indeed, there is the intriguing fact that the Flying Triangles look like next-generation versions of our “Stealth” bombers and “Stealth” fighters. Moreover, the very fact that the FTs look like they came from our world – but from an Earth far ahead of us, time-wise – is yet another reason to think the Flying Triangles are flown by people just like us. Could they be historians? Looking to prevent us from destroying ourselves? The theories are many. The answers, though, are most definitely not.

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