Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS NEARLY 13 YEARS AND 4 MONTH.
ON /30/09/2024 MORE THAN 2.230.520
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
22-02-2024
U.S. NAVY TO EQUIP GAME-CHANGING UNDERWATER SENSOR SYSTEM THAT MIMICS BIOLOGY TO DETECT AND TRACK ANOMALIES
( Credit U.S. NAVY )
U.S. NAVY TO EQUIP GAME-CHANGING UNDERWATER SENSOR SYSTEM THAT MIMICS BIOLOGY TO DETECT AND TRACK ANOMALIES
A sophisticated new underwater sensor system is currently in development for the United States Navy that will aim to replicate the capabilities and detection range of one of nature’s most unique aquatic mammals.
The innovative sensor array, currently in development by researchers at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) with funding from the Naval Research Laboratory, reportedly aims to replicate the “superior design and detection range” possessed by harbor seals.
Inhabiting the ocean waters of the North Atlantic and Northern Pacific, harbor seals are renowned for their prowess as swimmers and aquatic hunters. Now, according to Xudong Zheng, an associate professor in RIT’s Kate Gleason College of Engineering, a unique capability these ocean mammals possess is also serving as inspiration for the development of a new sensor array for the Navy that will possess “biological-level sensitivity, accuracy, and intelligence.”
The Navy says such an advanced underwater sensor system could be used to track anomalies, in addition to aiding scientific exploration of our oceans and advancing the robotic capabilities it uses during stealth operations at sea.
Zheng says the new system he and his team are building will be “the next stage of development of stronger sensors,” adding that early results already indicate that it could help facilitate new capabilities that will help to allow “more smart perceptions and better reasoning regarding the signal pattern and how it corresponds to flow patterns.”
Additionally, Zheng and his team say they hope to improve the way the Navy’s underwater sensors can be used to collect information on the three-dimensional aspects of objects, enabling better and more consistent recognition. The team also plans to leverage artificial intelligence in ways that will further enhance the sensor system’s capabilities when operating within a variety of marine environments.
Above: Zheng (center) appears with his wife and fellow researcher Qian Xue (right) and researcher Dongfang Liu, as he displays a harbor seal’s whiskers, which inspired the team’s research (Credit: Travis Lacoss/RIT).
To achieve this, Zheng’s team drew inspiration from one of nature’s best existing underwater sensor systems.
“We are trying to mimic seals’ highly sensitive sensors using the bio-inspired shape of their whisker array,” Zheng said in a statement, adding that these marine mammals have the ability to detect disturbances nearby at an astounding rate of 254 microns per second. This is made possible in part due to the lengths and placement of their whiskers, which allow the creatures to gauge everything from speed, distance, movement, and location with astounding speed and accuracy.
Although Zheng’s team isn’t the first researchers to draw inspiration from seal’s whiskers, existing systems that work on similar principles only provide individual measurements. By mimicking a harbor seal’s natural sensor capabilities, Zheng’s team hopes they consolidate each of these detection mechanisms into a single game-changing underwater sensor array.
Current sensors that are only capable of single measurements are greatly limited in the detection of spatial information, which involves the visualization of objects from several perspectives and provides information about their relationship to their surroundings.
Zheng says the integration of comprehensive spatial recognition, paired with artificial intelligence, will be two of the primary keys that will allow the new system he and his team are designing to improve sensor accuracy overall.
The new effort is an outgrowth of Zheng’s past work, which involved studies in biomechanics and flow physics in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Kate Gleason College.
Aided by his wife and research partner Qian Xue, also a Rochester Institute of Technology associate professor of mechanical engineering and an expert in flow-structure interaction, the duo says they are “designing very sensitive sensors that can be tightly packed into smaller spaces and that can extract spatial information,” which allows the sensors to “recognize the surrounding environment with an algorithm to accurately predict the shape of an object.”
“Based on this information, we can understand why this signal corresponds to certain types of bodies, or objects,” Zheng said in a statement, adding that their designs will implement additional technologies being undertaken at RIT to help broadly improve the capability and accuracy of the new sensors they are developing.
Zheng and the team’s current findings are outlined in the latest edition of the journal Frontiers in Robotics and AI.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:SF-snufjes }, Robotics and A.I. Artificiel Intelligence ( E, F en NL )
21-02-2024
US Military Has Machine That Can Levitate UFO Metal, Confirms Stanford Top Scientist
US Military Has Machine That Can Levitate UFO Metal, Confirms Stanford Top Scientist
Professor Garry Nolan is one of the most reputable experts examining the enigma of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs). He has been studying UAP materials for many months and has made numerous astonishing statements about UFOs. His contributions lend credibility to this particular mystery, which many mainstream scientists hesitate to discuss.
Dr. Nolan works at Stanford University as a professor of Immunology. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize, which is a big honor. He is known as one of the best immunologists in the world. He has many patents and has written a lot of research papers. He has also started two companies listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange because of his successful inventions.
In June 2022, Australian investigative journalist Ross Coulthart interviewed Dr. Nolan and learned from him shocking UAP information that the U.S. government had been investigating for the past few years. Dr. Nolan said that one thing he is sure about is that we do not know what UAPs are: “We do know that there is something here something that I think defies explanation but that something can be studied from a scientific Viewpoint.”
Although this interview was recorded in 2022, Dr. Nolan adheres to David Grusch’s statement that the U.S. government has been lying about UAPs for the last 60-70 years. He believes the reason behind this is that the U.S. government itself does not know what they are dealing with. “Absolutely, there is a cover-up,” says Dr. Nolan. “I mean, there has been both a cover-up and a disinformation campaign to make people appear as if they were crazy.”
Coutlhart questions the potential dangers of admitting one’s thoughts on these mysterious events, to which Dr. Nolan responds, “I think it’s dangerously necessary… ignoring the physics of what these things are capable of doing.” Coutlhart further asks, “Let’s talk about ‘It.’ What is it?”
Dr. Nolan replies, “You know, I wish I knew… Whatever it is appears to be so far advanced from us that it beggars understanding.” When pressed further by Coutlhart if he believes the phenomenon to be of human origin, Dr. Nolan decisively states, “I’m sure it’s not human..I think it’s whatever it is it’s been here a long time so and certainly it’s been here longer than we’ve been civilized so at the very least who really owns the planet who was here first uh I’m not sure it was.”
Dr. Nolan explained he studied the brains of pilots who claimed to have encountered the phenomena. After their UAP/ UFO encounters, they all got damaged or hurt such as buzz noises in their head, got sick, etc. Most of them have had similar kinds of bad things. He showed the MRIs of some people that revealed damage in the middle of the basal ganglia – an area responsible for motor control and other core brain functions, including intuition.
Dr. Nolan said the damage should have killed those people, yet they were alive. He obtained MRIs of some prior to their encounters and they had the damage, so they were most likely born with it. “These are all so-called high-functioning people. They’re pilots who are making split-second decisions, intelligence officers in the field, etc,” he said.
Alleged UFO material
Former Pentagon UFO official Lue Elizondo shared a truly eye-opening statement in his interview with James Iandoli of Engaging The Phenomenon on June 11, 2021. They discussed crash retrievals and materials related to unidentified flying objects (UFOs) or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs). Elizondo acknowledged the sensitivity of the topic and the potential consequences of discussing it openly.
However, Elizondo expressed his belief that the US government does possess exotic materials but could not provide further details due to the lack of transparency from the government. He mentioned the three layers of analysis that can be conducted on a piece of material, namely physical, chemical, and atomic or nano-level research.
Coulthart asked the Stanford professor about this research on a peculiar material known as Bismuth magnesium. Dr. Nolan described it as a layered substance consisting primarily of bismuth, with traces of lead and magnesium. Despite his assessment of its isotope ratios showing nothing out of the ordinary, he expressed his intent to study a significantly larger sample in the future. This expanded sample size would allow him to conduct more comprehensive tests, potentially shedding light on its properties.
Terahertz Transmistter
Coulthart speculated on the material’s ability to levitate when exposed to a specific waveform. While Nolan acknowledged hearing about such claims, he had not personally witnessed or tested the phenomenon. When pressed by Coulthart about whether he had attempted any experiments, Nolan clarified that the required waveform for levitation would be “Terahertz Waves,” which he had not utilized.
Coulthart highlighted that the U.S. Army possessed the necessary terahertz transmitter for potential experiments with the Bismuth magnesium material. However, Dr. Nolan remained tight-lipped about the specifics, stating he could not discuss whether such research had been conducted.
Coulthart mentioned that Tom Delonge’s To the Stars Academy (TTSA) worked with the U.S. Army to study this material using the right equipment. Coulthart wondered why the U.S. government keeps such materials if stories about flying objects are just made up. Nolan thinks there is a lot of false information out there but believes there might be real materials that we should know about. He wants the government to tell us clearly if those special materials are real or not.
In 2019, Tom DeLonge claimed that his UFO research organization had acquired “potentially exotic materials featuring properties not from any known existing military or commercial application.” “The structure and composition of these materials are not from any known existing military or commercial application,” Steve Justice, TTSA’s COO and former head of Advanced Systems at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works said in a statement. (Source)
According to the press release, some of these materials were in the possession of investigative journalist and UFO researcher Linda Moulton Howe, who, in 2004, gave a presentation at the Xcon Conference regarding these materials. In her lecture, a video of which has been on the Internet for years, she suggests that the material could become a “lifting body” with the right amount of electromagnetic static and certain RF frequency. These are undoubtedly the same materials mentioned by Tom DeLonge on his Joe Rogan interview where he stated, “if you hit it with enough terahertz, it’ll float.”
In this video, Dr. David Chester, a scientist from Quantum Gravity Research, makes several references to pulsed terahertz waves. Towards the end, he mentions that pulsed terahertz waves in a metamaterial can slow down the speed of light. He further explains that this is beneficial for anti-gravity engineering. According to him, due to the way everything couples together in the equations, a reduced speed of light requires less energy to achieve the desired anti gravitic effects.
This is some really interesting information on terahertz, thanks to Observing The Anomaly.
AAWSAP commissioned 37 scientific papers that are now public. Someone FOIA’d about UAP materials being studied and DIA responded with 5 of these papers. One paper was on spintronics and another on metamaterials. TTSA bought an alleged sample of Roswell crash material and gave it to the Army to study in 2019. According to Puthoff it appeared to be a metamaterial that acts as a waveguide at the terahertz frequency. The two papers on spintronics and metamaterials also touches on creating materials that operate at this frequency and specifically that such materials would be radiation resistant and ideal for long space travel.
Hal Puthoff also discusses the sample with UFO Joe. Notice the bolded statement below. (Source)
So the answer is, we don’t, yet, really know where it came from. And it’s true that ten years ago Linda Howe provided us with a sample. And we did a lot of tests. Got electron microscope pictures and irradiated it with various gigahertz frequencies, megahertz frequencies and so on. We couldn’t make anything out of it. So it kind of went on the shelf. And it was only after this paper on meta-materials was published, we said, “Oh my gosh. The claim here, that this could have some real utility as microscopic waveguides, would actually fit the structure, you know, that we see there.” Okay, well where do we go with that?
Well, the truth of the matter is, that piece is actually pretty mangled and what you’d really like to do is say, “Okay, well let’s have a nice, clean piece of this, and let’s irradiate with terahertz frequencies, first of all, to see if it really does act as a microscopic waveguide for terahertz frequencies. And then, if that works, we’ll iradiate it with other kinds of fields and see if there are any unexpected responses and so on.” So it is still, despite the fact it gets unbelievable publicity out there, it’s still an absolutely unknown. It does range all the way from…this was a fraud of junk material sent to us, to…no, this came off the wedge of an ET craft.
We don’t know the answer to that, and the only way we are going to get something of value is to determine its properties or maybe reproduce it under nice conditions and determine its properties. So, it is still a giant question mark out there. So even though it’s, you know, it’s like…a few percent of our effort at TTSA, it’s like 99% of our criticisms (laughs). That’s just what you get in this field. That’s the way it goes. Some of us have developed very hard skins. Another question?
Puthoff elaborates further in another interview: (Source)
Well, years later, decades later actually, finally our own science moves along. We move into an area called metamaterials, and it turns out exactly this combination of materials at exactly those dimensions turn out to be an excellent microscopic waveguide for very high frequency electromagnetic radiation terahertz frequencies. So, the wavelength is 60 microns, which is a pretty small size. But it turns out because of the metamaterial aspect of this material, those bismuth layers that act as waveguides can be one twentieth the size of the wavelength, and usually when you make a waveguide it’s gotta be about the size of the wavelength. So, in fact this turned out to be a material that would propagate sub-wavelength waveguide effects. Why somebody wants to do that we still don’t know the answer to that.
Dr. Nolan is said to have a good friendship with Jacques Vallée, Kit Green, Eric Davis, and Colm Kelleher. They all came to him to analyze the UAP materials after he had developed some wonderful instruments using mass spectrometry.
“Some of the objects are nondescript, and just lumps of metal. Mostly, there’s nothing unusual about them except that everywhere you look in the metal, the composition is different, which is odd. It’s what we call inhomogeneous. That’s a fancy way of saying ‘incompletely mixed.’ The common thing about all the materials that I’ve looked at so far, and there’s about a dozen, is that almost none of them are uniform. They’re all these hodgepodge mixtures. Each individual case will be composed of a similar set of elements, but they will be inhomogeneous,” he explained.
Dr. Nolan found out that some of the fragments from the so-called UFO crash in Brazil have extraordinarily altered isotope ratios of magnesium. He explained:
“It was interesting because another piece from the same event was analyzed in the same instrument at the same time. This is an extraordinarily sensitive instrument called a nanoSIMS – Secondary Ion Mass Spec. It had perfectly correct isotope ratios for what you would expect for magnesium found anywhere on Earth. Meanwhile, the other one was just way off. Like 30 percent off the ratios. The problem is there’s no good reason humans have for altering the isotope ratios of a simple metal like magnesium. There’s no different properties of the different isotopes, that anybody, at least in any of the literature that is public of the hundreds of thousands of papers published, that says this is why you would do that. Now you can do it. It’s a little expensive to do, but you’d have no reason for doing it.”
Dr. Vallée collected purported metal from the UFO cases dated back to 1947 and brought them to Stanford University for analysis. Dr. Gary Nolan, a Stanford microbiologist analyzed the 3-D atomic structure of the unknown metal with a state-of-the-art Multiparameter Ion Beam Imager (MIBI) capable of discerning the precise composition of matter at the level of its isotopes.
The result might be shocking for non-believers, as when he put the sample in the vacuum chamber of the machine, he found out that their composition was unlike any other known metal on Earth.
“If you’re talking about an advanced material from an advanced civilization you’re talking about something that I’ll just call it an ultra material right it’s something which has properties where somebody is putting it together again at the atomic scale so we’re building our world with 80 elements somebody else is building the world with 253 different isotopes,” Dr. Nolan said.
Could humans be altering the isotopes in these strange objects for unknown purposes? Dr. Nolan speculates that it is possible, but proving it requires getting down to the atomic level, possibly with a super quantum interference device (SQUID). However, neither his budget nor the budgets of the groups analyzing UFO/UAP encounters have that kind of funding yet.
34 years later, we still don't know what really happened during the Belgian UFO wave
34 years later, we still don't know what really happened during the Belgian UFO wave
A months-long wave of reports culminated with two Belgian Air Force F-16s chasing mysterious objects through the skies
At first, the witnesses claimed, all you noticed were the lights.
Eupen, Belgium, November 1989
They were so bright you could read by them, so brilliant that a policeman described them as "like lights on a huge football field." Only gradually did you notice the object they emitted from — a hulking triangular shape, with three enormous spotlights pointed toward the ground, and a red, flashing light at its center. "The whole thing," recalled the policeman, as if barely able to believe it himself, "was floating in the air."
It was a clear November night in 1989, near the town of Eupen, Belgium, which sits some seven miles from the German border. Heinrich Nicoll, the policeman, and his partner, Hubert Von Montigny, called their dispatcher to report the object they'd stumbled on while on a routine patrol. "Suddenly, they told me they were seeing a strange object in the sky," Albert Creutz, who was on the receiving end, told Unsolved Mysteries in a 1992 episode. "It made no noise. We joked about it and said it might be Santa Claus trying to land."
A little after 5:30 pm on the 29th November 1989 in the town of Eupen, patrolling police would inform their switchboard operator, Albert Creutz, of a huge airborne object hovering over a field in front of them. According to their report, it was “so bright it was lighting up the field like a football stadium!” [1]
Creutz, given that it was almost Christmas, returned with a quip that “it might be St. Nick!” However, the on-site officers urged him to go to the top floor of the building and look out of the window to see it for himself. Realizing the report was not a prank by his colleagues he did as suggested. Once there, he could see the mammoth craft “looking like a boat floating in the sky!”
By the time Creutz was back in position at the switchboard, residents were swamping the system with calls of the strange, bright object. When police officer, Dieter Plumanns, and his partner made their report of visual contact with the craft, Creutz told him to follow it. They did so for several minutes before it came to a stop and hovered over a retirement home.
They too stopped their vehicle and watched the bizarre scene unfold in front of them. The object was a distinct triangle with three orange/brown lights in each corner. In the middle of the underside was a bright red light that flashed at regular intervals. As Plumanns and his partner looked on, a small drone-like object left the main craft, constantly flashing in unison with the middle light above. It surveyed the area, before rejoining the triangle, which then left with great alacrity.
Thirteen reports of sightings would come from police officers alone that evening. Over sixty more would come from citizens.
The video below is a news report from 1993.
But by the time the evening was over, at least 30 different groups and three separate pairs of police officers would allege to have seen the unidentified flying object. And they wouldn't be the last. Belgium's months-long "UFO wave" culminated 30 years ago today — on March 30, 1990 — in a physics-defying chase through the skies over Europe as two Belgian Air Force F-16s pursued mysterious objects on their radars that they couldn't even see.
The Petit-Rechain Photograph
But, okay okay, did aliens really visit Belgium?
It certainly seems deeply, deeply unlikely. Yet three decades later, it's still hard to entirely dismiss the 2,000-odd sightings that took place in the country between November 1989 and April 1990. As Patrick Ferryn, the president of the Belgian committee for the study of space phenomena, SOBEPS, told The Telegraph, "You must know that most of these sightings will have the most banal explanation but there is a residue, which we simply can't explain. And of those, there may be two or three where we may have questions over where they came from."
Lots can be ruled out, though. For example, a classic photograph of the triangle-shaped aircraft, known as the "Petit-Rechain picture," is without a doubt a hoax — the forger admitted as much when he came forward in 2011. "We made the model with polystyrene, we painted it, and then we started sticking things to it, then we suspended it in the air ... then we took the photo," the prankster confessed to Reuters. Brian Dunning, the writer and producer of the podcast Skeptoid, also refutes a number of the sightings, arguing that the November apparitions were in fact a helicopter, and that the police officers were interviewed by a biased ufologist. Conflicting information, published by Reuters, claims instead that the lights over Eupen were from "a Soviet satellite breaking up."
Regardless, where things really start to get strange is in March 1990. At that point, there had been months of sporadic sightings throughout Belgium, including by an army colonel, André Amond, who claimed to have seen the lights while driving in his car with his wife in December. The Belgian military, needless to say, was well aware of the descriptions pouring in from across the country, and it had little in the way of answers.
Before we look at that, the video below features a recent interview with De Brouwers. He also discusses the aforementioned photograph, which we will look at next.
Then-Chief of Operations of the Air Staff, General Wilfried De Brouwer — who offered his account to investigative reporter Leslie Kean for her 2010 book UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record — said that his initial belief was that the American military must have been testing some sort of experimental aircraft over his country. He went as far as to file inquiries with the U.S. Embassy in Brussels, prompting the Americans to create a memo, dryly titled "Belgium and the UFO Issue," which confirmed that "no USAF stealth aircrafts were operating in the... area during the periods in question."
The reports were credible enough, though, that Belgium's Air Force, federal aviation authorities, and police devised a plan to try to catch one of the unidentified intruders in action by preparing F-16s to quickly take off if a sighting was ever reported by both the police and a radar station at the same time. Sure enough, as De Brouwer recounts in UFOs, that night came on March 30, when "several policemen" and "two military radar stations" spotted an unknown object. "Once aloft, the [Belgian] pilots tried to intercept the alleged crafts, and at one point recorded targets on their radar with unusual behavior, such as jumping huge distances in seconds and accelerating beyond human capacity," De Brouwer writes.
But frustratingly, the pilots never managed to see the object they were pursuing. After analysis of the aircraft's readings, "the Air Force's decision was that the evidence was insufficient to prove that there were real crafts in the air on that occasion," De Brouwer reports. Still, throughout 1990, the Air Force was asked — and could never specifically account for — the sightings, which, all told, numbered in the thousands by the time they quietly started going away again in April.
Three decades later, explanations are still in short supply, although some scientists now consider the event to be an example of mass hysteria. Dunning, quoting UFO skeptic Philip Klass, writes, "Once news coverage leads the public to believe that UFOs may be in the vicinity, there are numerous natural and man-made objects which, especially when seen at night, can take on unusual characteristics in the minds of hopeful viewers. Their UFO reports in turn add to the mass excitement, which encourages still more observers to watch for UFOs."
But De Brouwer still believes otherwise. "I can conclude with confidence that the observations during what is now known as the Belgian wave were not caused by mass hysteria," he says in UFOs. "The witnesses interviewed by investigators were sincere and honest. They did not previously know each other. Many were surprised by what they saw and today ... they are still prepared to confirm their unusual experience."
What we do know for certain is that there is a lot we don't yet understand about our universe. Even the U.S. Army has multiple stories of chasing strange, impossible objects through the sky. While the Belgian UFO wave likely wasn't a visitation by little green men, it remains without a satisfying answer even all these decades and technological advances later. "Today there is not yet any explanation!" Amond, the colonel who saw the lights with his wife, told Kean. "That is a pity, because I want to know before dying. Give me a correct explanation of my sighting; that is all I can ask."
The video below looks at the Belgian Wave in a little more detail.
UFO sightings are usually dismissed as hoaxes or reports of misguided individuals.
Such derision arises, in part, from a psychological need to predict and control our fates.
Discounting possibilities that make us uncomfortable can make us vulnerable to those same possibilities.
I knew an intelligence officer who, decades ago, returned from the field with strong evidence that an adversary might be employing extremely unorthodox techniques to mask their activities. When he presented his suspicions to superiors, the response was: “Keep your theories to yourself. That’s so bizarre, the giggle factor will destroy your reputation.”
This "giggle factor" applied to any topic such as UFOs, ESP, or far-out theories that were so far removed from normal experience that serious intelligence professionals would snicker at both the idea and whoever advanced the idea.
Psychological Roots of the Giggle Factor
A present-day example of the giggle factor surrounds the US Defense Department’s (DOD's) investigation into UFOs, now called unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs). Despite establishing a formal office to investigate UAPs and encouraging DOD employees to report sightings without fear of the consequences, the reality is that many officials working in national security privately (or not so privately) snicker at the possibility that UFOs are “real,” viewing anyone who takes the topic seriously as part of the “tinfoil hat brigade.”
I learned this from conversations with current and former officials familiar with the Pentagon’s UFO investigations while researching my new book, co-authored with Chris Gilbert, MD, Ph.D.: The New Science of UFOs: New Insights Into an Old Mystery.
One individual told me, “Yeah, the Pentagon set up the UAP investigation group, but it was all window dressing to get members of Congress who want answers about UFOs off their backs.”
Lue Elizondo, who led the Pentagon UAP investigations until 2017 said that he wanted to alert Secretary of Defense Mattis to flight safety and potential military hazards of UAPs, but the “Praetorian guard” around the Secretary wouldn’t allow it. In frustration, Elizondo resigned to continue his investigations outside the government.
Elizondo and others who took UFOs seriously were not victims of a sinister coverup or conspiracy but a fundamental psychological need to believe we have control of our lives in the present and to predict what will happen to us in the future.
Research on the roots of emotional stress demonstrates that feeling out of control in the present and uncertain about the future are two of the biggest drivers of chronic stress.1,2
As a result, we unconsciously adjust our perception of events to remain inside a low-stress comfort zone where we have at least the illusion of control and predictability of our fates.3,4
Thus, when presented evidence of uncontrollable or unpredictable changes to our lives, we tend to discount (and even giggle at) looming disruptions like climate change, COVID-19, UFOs, and other circumstances far outside our normal experience.5
In this light, the Pentagon’s persistent UFO “giggle factor” is simply the deep-seated desire most of us have to remain inside our comfort zone. And social pressure reinforces our tendency to discount improbable looming events, as no one wants to be labeled the Boy Who Cried Wolf or Chicken Little.
Military Dangers of the Giggle Factor
Although UFOs may all turn out to be misidentifications of benign human activity (errant party balloons or drones), natural phenomena (e.g., ball lightning), or perceptual errors (optical illusions), credible reports, video, and radar information captured by the US Navy in 2004 and 20153 suggest that something more exotic and unexplained is behind a few of the reports.
“Something exotic” does not necessarily mean ETs but could indicate that a foreign adversary has leapfrogged the United States in aerospace technology, which has occurred before when Russia surprised us with the first satellite (Sputnik) and both China and Russia fielded hypersonic missiles long before we did. If some UFO sightings are indeed foreign actors surveilling us or testing our responses and military capabilities (UFOs are frequently reported around U.S. military ranges and nuclear areas), then UFOs merit more than a giggle from defense officials.
But the long-standing association of UFOs with aliens will continue to cause potentially real, nonalien threats to national security from UFOs to be the “baby that is thrown out with the bathwater” and continue to be discounted. If a foreign actor surprised us in a future conflict using leapfrog technology, it’s hard to say what would happen on the battlefield, but one thing is certain: No one in the Pentagon would be giggling anymore.
The Larger Danger of the Giggle Factor
The UFO giggle factor raises a far bigger issue than the origins of mysterious flying objects that may or may not pose a threat.
Unconsciously adjusting our perceptions to reduce stress associated with potentially disruptive phenomena is normal, and even healthy under most circumstances, because stress is a big driver of both physical and mental illness.6
But the pace of change from technology, globalization, demographic shifts, and other factors is accelerating, so that unfamiliar and uncomfortable disruptions to our jobs, our relationships, and our well-being are likely to come at us at an ever-increasing rate.
Ridiculing the prospect of the most extreme of these looming disruptions will keep us in our comfort zones for a while but, sooner or later, leave us ill-prepared for the next 9/11, pandemic, war, or capitol riot.
Yes, we should not overreact to the prospect of low-probability/high-impact disruptions, but neither should we giggle, lest someone else enjoy the last laugh.
ANCIENT MEGALITHIC STRUCTURE OLDER THAN THE EGYPTIAN PYRAMIDS DISCOVERED IN THE PERUVIAN ANDES
A team including University of Wyoming anthropologists works at the site of a circular plaza that was built around 4,750 years ago in the Cajamarca Basin of northern Peru.
CREDIT: Jason Toohey.
ANCIENT MEGALITHIC STRUCTURE OLDER THAN THE EGYPTIAN PYRAMIDS DISCOVERED IN THE PERUVIAN ANDES
A team of anthropologists from the University of Wyoming (UW) and the University of California, Santa Barabara, has discovered an ancient megalithic structure in the Peruvian Andes that is older than the Great Pyramids of ancient Egypt.
Dated to around 2,750 B.C., using radiocarbon dating techniques, the circular stone plaza was built using massive vertical stones placed in upright positions. This construction method is similar to other ancient sites from the ancient world, like Stonehenge, which is approximately the same age as the newly discovered stone plaza. However, the researchers say it is a construction style “previously unseen” in the Andes.
“This structure was built approximately 100 years before the Great Pyramids of Egypt and around the same time as Stonehenge,” explained UW Associate Professor Jason Toohey, who is the lead researcher on the project, in a post announcing the team’s findings.
Research on the unique site, which is located at the Callacpuma archaeological site in the Cajamarca Basin of northern Peru, started as far back as 2015. But the actual excavations of the megalithic structure and its surroundings didn’t begin until 2018. Since then, numerous artifacts “related to life in the past” have been discovered, along with charcoal samples that provided the radiocarbon dates.
Measured at around 60 feet in diameter, the ancient megalithic structure consists of two concentric circles of massive stones placed upright. Significantly, the huge stones are held in place without any mortar. The researchers say that this method of construction is not only extremely unusual compared to other Stone Age sites previously discovered in the Andes but is one that has never been seen before in the local area. The researchers also point out that the ancient site is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, megalithic structures ever found in the Andes, predating many more famous sites from around the world.
While no inscriptions describing the intended function of the ancient megalithic structure have been found at the site, the researchers say that they have retrieved many clues as to its purpose and origin.
“It was probably a gathering place and ceremonial location for some of the earliest people living in this part of the Cajamarca Valley,” explained Toohey. “These people were living a primarily hunting-and-gathering lifestyle and probably had only recently begun growing crops and domesticating animals.”
A biological anthropologist specializing in bioarchaeology who has been working in the area since 2003, Toohey was joined by fellow project leader Patricia Chirinos Ogata from the University of California-Santa Barbara as well as fellow UW staffer Professor Melissa Murphy. Together, the researchers have been working to reconstruct Peru’s ancient past while also collaborating with local authorities to preserve the history of the indigenous peoples.
University of Wyoming Associate Professor Jason Toohey stands at the Callacpuma archaeological site in the Andes.
CREDIT: Sarah Stagg
“As part of our community outreach, we collaborate and work with the residents of the towns on and adjacent to the site of Callacpuma about our findings and their importance,” Toohey says. “We highlight the importance of cultural heritage and, working together, we can continue the scientific investigations and help to preserve the site.”
A detailed accounting of the team’s findings and methods is published in the journal Science Advances under the title: ‘A monumental stone plaza at 4750 B.P. in the Cajamarca Valley of Peru.’
Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org
Plan of the circular plaza and its construction.
Credit: Toohey et al., Science Advances (2024)
One of the entrances to the plaza.
Credit: Toohey et al., Science Advances (2024)
Detailed example of the stratigraphic layer from which the dated samples were collected.
Danny Sheehan: The Legal Force Behind UFO Disclosure and Alien Abduction Research
Danny Sheehan: The Legal Force Behind UFO Disclosure and Alien Abduction Research
In the vast and mysterious world of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), few names are as pivotal as Daniel Sheehan. A Harvard-educated attorney renowned for his involvement in landmark cases such as the Pentagon Papers and Watergate, Sheehan’s legal journey took a turn towards the extraterrestrial when he represented Dr. John Mack, a Harvard psychologist and alien abduction researcher. This partnership not only thrust Sheehan into the heart of UAP advocacy but also positioned him as a key figure in the push for government transparency regarding extraterrestrial phenomena.
Dr. John Mack’s research into alien abduction phenomena, which involved detailed interviews with individuals claiming to have had direct encounters with extraterrestrial beings, drew significant scrutiny and controversy, particularly from Harvard University. In 1994, Mack enlisted Sheehan’s expertise to navigate the turbulent waters of institutional pushback. Sheehan, leveraging his legal acumen and deep understanding of the academic environment, embarked on a rigorous defense of Mack’s academic freedom and the legitimacy of his research.
Sheehan’s involvement in Mack’s case was not just a matter of legal representation; it was a deep dive into the world of UAP research. He engaged with key figures in the field, from Stanton Friedman to Steven Greer, and met firsthand with individuals who had reported extraordinary experiences. This comprehensive exposure not only fortified his legal strategy but also solidified his belief in the significance of the UAP issue as a matter of public policy.
One of Sheehan’s notable efforts was his attempt to organize a Grand Rounds at Harvard, financed by philanthropist Lawrence Rockefeller, to present Mack’s findings and evidence. Despite facing institutional resistance, Sheehan’s persistence highlighted the challenges faced by researchers in the field and the institutional barriers to exploring and acknowledging UAP phenomena.
VIDEO:
Danny Sheehan: Dr John Mack’s UFO Defense Attorney Explains Alien Abduction Phenomena
Throughout the legal battles, Sheehan encountered a web of secrecy and opposition from various quarters, including the legal and academic establishments. His experiences revealed a concerted effort to marginalize and discredit those seeking to explore and understand UAP-related encounters. Despite these challenges, Sheehan’s legal expertise and dedication to transparency and academic freedom helped to protect Mack’s research from being silenced.
Sheehan’s contributions to the UAP field extend beyond the courtroom. He played a crucial role in the Disclosure Project, advocating for the public release of classified information related to UAPs. His efforts have been instrumental in fostering a more open dialogue on the subject, encouraging researchers, witnesses, and government officials to come forward with their experiences and knowledge.
Moreover, Sheehan’s work has implications for the broader conversation about human experiences that defy conventional understanding. By defending the legitimacy of alien abduction research, Sheehan challenges the boundaries of accepted scientific inquiry and the societal mechanisms that govern the pursuit of knowledge. His advocacy for Dr. Mack’s work underscores the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to exploring the unknown, one that embraces rather than shuns the extraordinary.
In the end, Daniel Sheehan’s legacy in the field of UAP research is defined by his unwavering commitment to truth, transparency, and the defense of those who dare to explore the fringes of human understanding. Through his legal battles, public advocacy, and personal exploration of the phenomena, Sheehan has paved the way for a more open and inclusive examination of the mysteries that lie beyond our current grasp.
Volgens een nieuw NASA-onderzoek, uitgevoerd in samenwerking met de Universiteit van Hawaï, zou een oscilatie in de baan van de maan verschrikkelijke gevolgen kunnen hebben over de hele wereld. Dat zou vervolgens NASA kunnen leiden tot nooit eerder geziene, verwoestende overstromingen.
Een trilling of oscillatie is een periodiek herhaalde omkering van de bewegingsrichting. Een trilling wordt vaak veroorzaakt door de verstoring van een stabiele evenwichtssituatie.
Hoewel er een verandering in de baan van de maan wordt aangekondigd, zou het jaar 2030 catastrofaal kunnen zijn voor de wereldbevolking en vooral voor de kustbevolking. In een recent persbericht verklaarde NASA-onderzoeker en -beheerder Bill Nelson: “Gecombineerd met klimaatverandering zou dit maanfenomeen verwoestende overstromingen kunnen veroorzaken aan kusten in alle uithoeken van de wereld. De cumulatieve effecten van de zwaartekracht van de maan, de stijgende zee- en oceaanspiegels en de klimaatverandering zullen een toch al sterk gecompromitteerde huidige situatie nog erger maken. Zo bericht 7sur7.
De verandering in de maanbaan is een fenomeen dat elke 20 jaar voorkomt en natuurlijk is. De WordsSideKick.com-site wijst erop dat de oscillatie van de baan van de maan tijdens een regelmatige cyclus (18,6 jaar) de positie ten opzichte van de aarde zeer licht wijzigt. Volgens NASA “veroorzaakt het fenomeen gedurende de helft van deze cyclus zwakkere hoogwatertijden en sterkere laagwateren. Tijdens de andere helft van de cyclus worden de getijden versterkt, met sterker hoogwater en zwakker laagwater”, meldt 7sur7. Over een paar jaar zal de stijging van de zeespiegel significanter zijn en “dit effect, gecombineerd met andere, zou wel eens zelfs nog catastrofaler kunnen blijken voor de kustbevolking.”
JWST Sees a Milky Way-Like Galaxy Coming Together in the Early Universe
The ancient Firefly Sparkle galaxy is precursor to galaxies like the Milky Way. The JWST found ten separate clusters in the galaxy that show how the galaxy is growing through mergers. Image Credit: Mowla et al. 2024.
JWST Sees a Milky Way-Like Galaxy Coming Together in the Early Universe
The gigantic galaxies we see in the Universe today, including our own Milky Way galaxy, started out far smaller. Mergers throughout the Universe’s 13.7 billion years gradually assembled today’s massive galaxies. But they may have begun as mere star clusters.
In an effort to understand the earliest galaxies, the JWST has examined their ancient light for clues as to how they became so massive.
The JWST can effectively see back in time to when the Universe was only about 5% as old as it is now. In that distant past, structures that would eventually become as massive as the Milky Way, and even larger, were only about 1/10,000th as massive as they are now. What clues can the powerful infrared space telescope uncover that show us how galaxies grew so large?
A new paper presents JWST observations of a galaxy at redshift z~8.3. At that redshift, the light has been travelling for over 13 billion years and began its journey only 600 million years after the Big Bang. The galaxy, called the Firefly Sparkle, contains a network of massive star clusters that are evidence of how galaxies grow.
“The Firefly Sparkle provides an unprecedented case study of a Milky Way-like galaxy in the earliest stages of its assembly in only a 600 million-year-old Universe,”
From Mowla et al. 2024
Despite the JWST’s power, this distant, ancient galaxy is only visible through the gravitational lensing of a massive cluster of foreground galaxies. The lensing makes the Firefly Sparkle appear as an arc. Two other galaxies are also in the vicinity, called Firefly BF (Best Friend) and Firefly NBF (New Best Friend.)
This image shows the Firefly Sparkle galaxy and its two neighbours, BF and NBF. The Firefly Sparkle’s mass is concentrated in 10 clusters that contain up to 57% of its entire mass. Image Credit: Mowla et al. 2024.
“The Firefly Sparkle exhibits the hallmarks expected of a future Milky Way-type galaxy captured during its earliest and most gas-rich stage of formation,” the authors write. The young galaxy’s mass is concentrated in 10 clusters, which range from about 200,000 solar masses to 630,000 solar masses. According to the authors, these clusters “straddle the boundary between low-mass galaxies and high-mass globular clusters.”
These clusters are significant because they’re clues to how the galaxy is growing. The researchers were able to gauge the ages of the clusters and their star formation histories. They found that they experienced a burst of star formation at around the same time. “The cluster ages suggest that they are gravitationally bound with star formation histories showing a recent starburst possibly triggered by the interaction with a companion galaxy at the same redshift at a projected distance of ~2 kpc away from the Firefly Sparkle.”
There are two candidates for the interacting galaxy: Firefly Best Friend (BF) and Firefly New Best Friend (NBF). But NBF is about 13 kpcs away, while BF is about two kpcs away, making BF the likely interactor. “Faint low-surface brightness features are visible at the corners of the arc close to the neighbour, hinting at a possible interaction between the two galaxies <FS and BF> which may have triggered a burst of star formation in both of them,” explain the researchers.
This figure from the study illustrates the star formation histories of each cluster, as well as each galaxy. In the top right, “The Firefly Sparkle and FF-BF both show a recent burst of star formation in the last ~ 50 Myr indicative of recent interactions,” the authors explain. Image Credit: Mowla et al. 2024.
The researchers paid special attention to the central cluster. They found that the temperature is extremely high at about 40,000 Kelvin (40,000 C; 72,000 F.) It also has a top-heavy initial mass function, a signal that it formed in a very metal-poor environment. These observations and other evidence show that Firefly Sparkle is very likely a progenitor of galaxies like ours. For these reasons, “… the Firefly Sparkle provides an unprecedented case study of a Milky Way-like galaxy in the earliest stages of its assembly in only a 600 million-year-old Universe,” the authors write.
Fortunately, the researchers behind these results have a powerful supercomputer simulation to compare observations with. It’s called Illustris TNG. It’s a massive cosmological magnetohydrodynamical simulation based on a comprehensive physical model of the Universe. Illustris TNG has made three runs, called TNG50, TNG 100, and TNG 300. The researchers compared their results with TNG 50.
This figure compares Firefly Sparkle’s current mass with the TNG 50 simulations of galaxy growth and with the growth rate of the Milky Way, according to an upcoming paper. Image Credit: Mowla et al. 2024.
Finding these ancient star clusters is intriguing, but we can’t assume they’ll survive intact. There are tidal and evaporative forces at work. The authors examined the stability of the individual star clusters and how they’ll fare over time.
“Most of these star clusters are expected to survive to the present-day universe and will expand and then get ripped apart to form the stellar disk and the halo of the galaxy,” the authors explain. “The only way they survive is to get kicked out to large distances, away from the dense tidal field of the galaxy.” The ones that get kicked out may persist as globular clusters.
One of the JWST’s primary science goals is to study how galaxies formed and evolved in the early Universe. By finding one in which clusters are still forming, the space telescope is reaching its goal.
“The Firefly Sparkle represents one of JWST’s first spectrophotometric observations of an extremely lensed galaxy assembling at high redshifts, with clusters that are in the process of formation instead of seen at later epochs,” the authors conclude.
This artist’s impression shows the record-breaking quasar J059-4351, the bright core of a distant galaxy that is powered by a supermassive black hole. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser
It’s an exciting time in astronomy today, where records are being broken and reset regularly. We are barely two months into 2023, and already new records have been set for the farthest black hole yet observed, the brightest supernova, and the highest-energy gamma rays from our Sun. Most recently, an international team of astronomers using the ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile reportedly saw the brightest object ever observed in the Universe: a quasar (J0529-4351) located about 12 billion light years away that has the fastest-growing supermassive black hole (SMBH) at its center.
First observed in 1963 by Dutch-American astronomer Maarten Schmidt, quasars (short for “quasi-stellar objects”) are the bright cores of galaxies powered by SMBHs. These black holes collect matter from their surroundings and accelerate it to near the speed of light, which releases tremendous amounts of energy across the electromagnetic spectrum. Quasars become so bright that their cores will outshine all the stars in their disk, making them the brightest objects in the sky and visible from billions of light-years away.
As a general rule, astronomers gauge the growth rate of SMBHs based on the luminosity of their galaxy’s core region – the brighter the quasar, the faster the black hole is accreting matter. In this case, the SMBH at the core of J0529-4351 is growing by the equivalent of one Solar mass a day, making it the fastest-growing black hole yet observed. In the process, the accretion disk alone releases a radiative energy of 2 × 1041 Watts, more than 500 trillion times the luminous energy emitted by the Sun. Christian Wolf, an ANU astronomer and lead author of the study, characterized the discovery in a recent ESO press release:
“We have discovered the fastest-growing black hole known to date. It has a mass of 17 billion Suns, and eats just over a Sun per day. This makes it the most luminous object in the known Universe. Personally, I simply like the chase. For a few minutes a day, I get to feel like a child again, playing treasure hunt, and now I bring everything to the table that I have learned since.”
But what was most surprising was that this quasar was hiding in plain sight. “All this light comes from a hot accretion disc that measures seven light-years in diameter — this must be the largest accretion disc in the Universe,” said ANU Ph.D. student and co-author Samuel Lai. “It is a surprise that it has remained unknown until today, when we already know about a million less impressive quasars. It has literally been staring us in the face until now,” added co-author Christopher Onken, who is also an astronomer at ANU.
As Onken explained, J0529-4351 showed up in images taken by the ESO Schmidt Southern Sky Survey dating back to 1980. It was only in recent years that it was recognized as a quasar, thanks to improved instruments and measurements. Finding quasars requires precise observations from large areas of the sky, resulting in massive datasets that often require machine learning algorithms to analyze them. However, these models are somewhat limited because they are trained on existing data, meaning candidates are selected based on previously observed objects.
This image shows the region of the sky in which the record-breaking quasar J0529-4351 is situated. Credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2/Dark Energy Survey
Since J0529-4351 is so luminous, it was dismissed by the ESA’s Gaia Observatory as being too bright to be a quasar and was ruled to be a bright star. Last year, the ANU-led team identified it as a distant quasar based on observations using the 2.3-meter telescope at the Siding Spring Observatory in Australia. They then conducted follow-up observations using the X-shooter spectrograph on the ESO’s VLT telescope to confirm their results. The quasar is also an ideal target for the GRAVITY+ upgrade on ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI), designed to accurately measure the mass of black holes.
In addition, astronomers look forward to making observations with next-generation telescopes like the ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). This 39-meter telescope, currently under construction in the Atacama Desert in Chile, will make identifying and characterizing distant quasars easier. Studying these objects and their central black holes could reveal vital details about how SMBHs and galaxies co-evolved during the early Universe.
You’ve probably already seen this viral footage of an alleged UFO zooming past a cockpit window. It was released in 2023, but now a ufologist is confirming the authenticity of this alien technology.
When the footage of this UFO was released by pilot Jorge Arteaga, it was described as the “best UFO footage ever.” It shows a strange object that looks like a flying saucer whizzing right past the window of Arteaga’s plane, which most people assumed was a birthday balloon gone astray, according to LadBible.
Jaime Maussan — best known for telling the world that two alien corpses were found in Mexico in 2023 — has decided to tell everyone that this clip is real. And, honestly, it’s kind of hard to argue with him after watching this video.
Arteaga took the video while flying above Antioquia, Colombia with a co-pilot. The video shows the UFO appearing through the clouds as a black mass before it rapidly approaches the cockpit. Arteaga was quick to grab out his cell and capture the strangely-shaped object, as it was initially stationary before zooming out toward Medellin and Santa Fe.
Arteaga then allegedly followed the UFO in the plane, but didn’t manage to track it down. He did say it didn’t move like a balloon, drone or plane, the outlet noted.
So, is this thing legit? My gut says this is either a very good computer-generated video or some type of government-developed technology that we’ll be introduced to in the coming years. Or, perhaps the little green men will come down in the next year or so to reveal themselves to us. Though at this point, I can’t imagine why any extraterrestrials would want to deal with our species. We are such a silly bunch.
A Florida Congresswoman says she believes that some of the UFO sightings that have made headlines in recent years are 'of non-human origin' and possibly 'inter-dimensional beings.'
She revealed to The Grant Mitt Podcast this week that after a classified meeting with Air Force whistleblowers, she 'absolutely believes' that the aircrafts they and others have described are 'of non-human origin.'
Luna also claimed that at that same meeting she was 'men-in-blacked,' first by officials from the Pentagon who attempted to cancel the visit, and then by CIA agents who were inexplicably shadowing her meeting with the Air Force personnel.
Representatives Matt Gaetz (left), Tim Burchett (center), and Anna Paulina Luna (right) recently traveled to Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, Representative Luna said. There, they received classified information about UFOs from a whistleblower
Her phrase referred to the pop-culture conspiracy-theory image of government agents in black suits, who are sent to keep people quiet about UFO sightings.
'Being a member of Oversight, we follow up with whistleblowers, and we also can conduct our own investigations,' she told Mitterlehner.
In the course of one of these investigations, she said, Luna and two other US representatives went to Eglin Air Force Base, on the Florida panhandle, where they met with one such whistleblower.
The other two representatives who came along on the visit were Tim Burchett of Tennessee, who is also a member of the Oversight and Accountability Committee, and Matt Gaetz of Florida, who is on the House Armed Services Committee and the House Judiciary Committee.
She came away from that visit with strong conclusions:
'I can tell you, based on my investigations, not in a classified setting, that I absolutely believe that there is things that are advanced technologies not of human origin,' she told Mitterlehner.
Luna claimed that the Pentagon tried to cancel her visit to Eglin Air Force Base, which she made as part of a delegation to investigate whistleblower claims that the Air Force was covering up information about UFOs
Her view is increasingly shared among lawmakers and the American public, as a series of high-profile disclosures and hearings in the last few years have brought UFOs out of the conspiracy theory realm and into the arena of political debate.
Luna, Gaetz, and others have pressed the Pentagon to declassify material related to UAP (unidentified aerial phenomena).
Pilots at Eglin had come forward to Representative Gaetz's office to say that the Air Force was covering up UAP activity, and that Congress needed to look into it.
'We coordinated the meeting,' Luna said. 'The Pentagon tried to initially cancel the first one. We got it back on the books. We show up there, and we get in, and the base commander tried to basically tell us that we didn't have authorized clearance to look into and speak to some of the witnesses.
US Representative Anna Paulina Luna could not disclose classified details from her meeting with military officials at Eglin, but she told Grant Mitterlehner that she 'absolutely believes' the footage of UAPs are 'not of human origin.'
'You don't tell Congress that we don't have the authorized clearance,' she said, 'especially members of House Armed Services, Oversight, and Judiciary.'
READ MORE:
Whistleblower David Grusch suggests people have been murdered as part of conspiracy to keep alien craft a secret
David Grusch - a former high-ranking intelligence official - is one of three military whistleblowers who testified under oath that they know firsthand about secret programs involving technology far surpassing the US' capabilities
So she had it out with the base commander, Luna said. And in the middle of the meeting, he took off on leave, 'Which never happens with a delegation going to a military base,' she added.
There were also attendees at the meeting who Luna was 'pretty sure' were from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), an unusual occurrence.
'Why would a intelligence agency need to be there on a meeting for whistleblowers?' she asked.
Luna also spoke about the congressional hearing from July 2023, where whistleblower David Grusch outlined under oath how the US government has been aware of UFOs for nearly a century and has been misinforming the public about them.
That hearing, which followed Luna's visit to Eglin, contained information she found 'particularly alarming,' because of the allegations that people may have been murdered to keep the UFO story secret.
'Have you received classified information?' Mitterlehner asked Luna.
'Yeah, but I can't talk about that,' she replied
When asked about whether she had believed in aliens before she became a member of congress, Luna corrected the record.
'I wouldn't call them aliens,' she said. 'I really like what Grusch calls them: He says that they're inter-dimensional beings, and he's very specific about that.'
This still image is from a previously released unclassified US government video taken by an Air Force pilot. Representative Luna said that pilots no longer feel as hesitant to speak up when they see unexplained phenomena in the sky
What this means, Luna clarified, was that 'they're not necessarily a biological entity from another planet per se.'
The case she alluded to was likely the one from last year, in which Gaetz had described seeing footage of 'an orb' hanging over the Gulf of Mexico, moving in a way that was 'not of any human capability.'
He saw the footage during a visit to Eglin AFB, where Air Force pilots described a diamond formation of aircrafts that they saw on radar.
'One of the pilots goes to check out that diamond formation and sees a large, floating, what I can only describe as an orb,' he said at the time. 'Again, like I said, not of any human capability that I'm aware of.'
She talked, too, about what a huge change the country has experienced in recent years, away from the stigma that used to be attached to talking about extraterrestrial beings or UFOs.
When I was stationed at Portland Air Guard unit a number of years ago, I remember there was a incident that occurred, and the pilots kind of back and I asked one of them what he thought it was, and he couldn't really talk about it,' she recounted. 'He didn't want to because the stigma that the military has is that you're crazy.
'But we're seeing that with, especially technology that we have, even your iPhone for example, you can record things and it's not going to be classified.'
'We hope that more people come forward,' she added.
Luna also noted how she is heartened by the bipartisan push for transparency on the topic, which makes it ironic that other government officials or offices seem to be blocking her and her colleagues' efforts to learn what is happening with UAPs.
'If congress is writing the bills to fund these programs, yet we don't have authorized access and oversight into it, then that's not necessarily something that happens in a free country, right?' she said. 'So we continue to push.'
Titan Most Likely Non-Habitable, Astrobiologists Say
Titan Most Likely Non-Habitable, Astrobiologists Say
Saturn’s moon Titan has an organic-rich atmosphere and surface with a subsurface ocean that may represent a habitable environment. In a new study, astrobiologists determined the amount of organic material that can be delivered from Titan’s surface to its ocean through impact cratering. Unless biologically available compounds can be sourced from Titan’s interior, or be delivered from the surface by other mechanisms, their calculations suggest that even the most organic-rich ocean world in the Solar System may not be able to support a large biosphere.
An artist’s rendering of the surface of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan.
Image credit: Benjamin de Bivort, debivort.org / CC BY-SA 3.0.
The identification of life in the outer Solar System is a significant area of interest for planetary scientists, astronomers and government space agencies like NASA, largely because many icy moons of the giant planets are thought to have large subsurface oceans of liquid water.
Titan, for example, is thought to have an ocean beneath its icy surface that is more than 12 times the volume of Earth’s oceans.
Life as we know it here on Earth needs water as a solvent, so planets and moons with lots of water are of interest when looking for extraterrestrial life,” said first author Professor Catherine Neish, an astrobiologist at the University of Western Ontario.
In the study, Professor Neish and her colleagues attempted to quantify the amount of organic molecules that could be transferred from Titan’s organic-rich surface to its subsurface ocean, using data from impact cratering.
Comets impacting Titan throughout its history have melted the surface of the icy moon, creating pools of liquid water that have mixed with the surface organics.
The resulting melt is denser than its icy crust, so the heavier water sinks through the ice, possibly all the way to Titan’s subsurface ocean.
Using the assumed rates of impacts on Titan’s surface, the researchers determined how many comets of different sizes would strike Titan each year over its history.
“Life as we know it here on Earth needs water as a solvent, so planets and moons with lots of water are of interest when looking for extraterrestrial life,” said first author Professor Catherine Neish, an astrobiologist at the University of Western Ontario.
In the study, Professor Neish and her colleagues attempted to quantify the amount of organic molecules that could be transferred from Titan’s organic-rich surface to its subsurface ocean, using data from impact cratering.
Comets impacting Titan throughout its history have melted the surface of the icy moon, creating pools of liquid water that have mixed with the surface organics.
The resulting melt is denser than its icy crust, so the heavier water sinks through the ice, possibly all the way to Titan’s subsurface ocean.
Using the assumed rates of impacts on Titan’s surface, the researchers determined how many comets of different sizes would strike Titan each year over its history.
This allowed them to predict the flow rate of water carrying organics that travel from Titan’s surface to its interior.
The authors found the weight of organics transferred in this way is quite small, no more than 7,500 kg/year of glycine, the simplest amino acid, which makes up proteins in life.
“One elephant per year of glycine into an ocean 12 times the volume of Earth’s oceans is not sufficient to sustain life,” Professor Neish said.
“In the past, people often assumed that water equals life, but they neglected the fact that life needs other elements, in particular carbon.”
Other icy worlds in the Solar System have almost no carbon on their surfaces, and it is unclear how much could be sourced from their interiors.
“This work shows that it is very hard to transfer the carbon on Titan’s surface to its subsurface ocean — basically, it’s hard to have both the water and carbon needed for life in the same place,” Professor Neish said.
The team’s paper was published online this month in the journal Astrobiology.
Catherine Neish et al. Organic Input to Titan’s Subsurface Ocean Through Impact Cratering. Astrobiology, published online February 2, 2024; doi: 10.1089/ast.2023.0055
Astronomers Spot Hundreds of Massive Gas Clouds Escaping Milky Way’s Center
Astronomers Spot Hundreds of Massive Gas Clouds Escaping Milky Way’s Center
Using new 21-cm radio observations made with NSF’s Green Bank Telescope, astronomers have discovered over 250 neutral gaseous clouds being blasted out of the center of our Milky Way Galaxy into interstellar space. These clouds are likely a product of the same phenomenon that created the Fermi Bubbles.
An artist’s conception of the clouds flowing out from the center of the Milky Way, entrained in a very hot wind that has accelerated them to velocities of many hundreds of km per second.
Image credit: NSF / GBO / P. Vosteen.
It has been known for some time that energetic processes in the center of the Milky Way have created fast, hot winds expanding into intergalactic space with temperatures of millions of degrees and velocities of thousands of km per second. Most large galaxies have winds like this.
The accidental discovery that some of this outflowing hot gas has entrained cold hydrogen clouds was made by the Australian ATCA telescope measuring the 21-cm radio emission emitted by interstellar hydrogen atoms.
This implied that there could be an undiscovered population of clouds carrying matter out of the nucleus of the Milky Way.
The hydrogen clouds are important on their own, but they also serve as probes of the hot wind.
It is difficult to measure conditions within the very hot wind, but the cool clouds can trace it in the same way that on Earth, a handful of leaves tossed upwards can show the direction and speed of the local wind.
The sensitivity of the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) make it the ideal instrument for detecting faint signals from interstellar hydrogen, but mapping these clouds, and realizing their true extent, was no easy feat.
“It took years using the GBT to systematically map hundreds of square degrees in search of faint hydrogen emission,” said Dr. Felix James ‘Jay’ Lockman, senior astronomer at the Green Bank Observatory.
“Once we identified some promising candidates, we could follow up with targeted observations at other telescopes to show us more.”
“The clouds must have been ripped from an area near the very center of the Milky Way and flung outward, either by a burst of star formation or activity of a black hole.”
Some of these clouds have the highest outflow velocity of any clouds ever observed in the Milky Way, and may escape the Galaxy.
In an unexpected twist, the new data from the APEX telescope revealed that some of the hydrogen clouds contain molecules and dense cold gas.
“No one would have expected that clouds violently ejected from the Milky Way could harbor relatively fragile molecular material, but there it is,” Dr. Lockman said.
Astronomers using the MeerKAT array recently mapped the hydrogen in a few clouds at high angular resolution, showing them evolving and being shredded as they flow into interstellar space.
“These new results open the door for more discoveries,” Dr. Lockman said.
“How the clouds remain stable as they are accelerated to more than 400 km per second is a mystery.”
“The chemical processes in these clouds are quite unusual and unexplored.”
Dr. Lockman and his colleague, Dr. Enrico Di Teodoro from the Università degli Studi di Firenze, presented the findings at AAS243, the 243rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in New Orleans, Louisiana, the United States.
Felix Lockman & Enrico Di Teodoro. 2024. A New Census of Neutral Clouds in the Milky Way’s Nuclear Wind. AAS243, abstract #2851
De Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie NASA zoekt kandidaten om uit te testen hoe het leven op Mars is. Maar de vereisten zijn zeer strikt: om te beginnen mogen enkel Amerikanen deelnemen aan de tests.
Nu de rakettechnologie steeds meer op punt staat, lijkt exploratie op Mars dichterbij te komen. De levensomstandigheden zijn echter heel anders dan op aarde. Vandaar dat er getest moet worden of het wel verstandig is om mensen te sturen.
In het nieuws: De simulatiemissie Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA 2) moet NASA een beeld geven van het leven op Mars.
Vier personen zullen zich vanaf de lente van 2025 begeven in een ge-3D-printe omgeving van bijna 160 vierkante meter in de thuisbasis van NASA in Houston. Daar wordt het leven op Mars nagebootst. Er wordt onderzocht hoe je voedsel kan kweken of hoe ruimtewandelingen zouden zijn. De missie duurt een jaar.
Op dit moment is er al een crew aanwezig voor het CHAPEA 1-project. Zij zitten halverwege hun periode. Het gaat er hard aan toe: de levensomstandigheden zijn niet evident. De job is betaald, maar NASA wil niet zeggen hoeveel precies.
De details: De toelatingsvoorwaarden zijn niet min.
Om te beginnen zoekt NASA voor CHAPEA 2 uitsluitend Amerikaanse burgers die tussen de 30 en 55 jaar oud zijn. Ze moeten een masterdiploma in een STEM-richting hebben, plus minstens twee jaar werkervaring in een dergelijke richting.
Verder zijn ook nog minstens 1.000 vlieguren als piloot of twee jaar doctoraatswerk in een STEM-richting bepalende factoren.
Geïnteresseerden kunnen zich aanmelden op de NASA-website en krijgen een indrukwekkende vragenlijst voorgeschoteld. “Ben je bereid om geen communicatie te hebben voor een jaar behalve met je crewleden, met een vertraging van maximaal 20 minuten?” en “Ben je bereid uitgebreide cognitieve, sportieve en gedragstests te ondergaan?” geven een beeld van wat je kan verwachten.
UFO sighting video: Cigar-shaped UFO over Lucca, Italy 18-Feb-2024
UFO sighting video: Cigar-shaped UFO over Lucca, Italy 18-Feb-2024
On February 18, 2024, an intriguing video surfaced on the “Latest UFO Sightings” Facebook group, capturing the attention of UFO enthusiasts and skeptics alike. The footage, recorded during daylight hours, showcases a remarkable sighting above the historic city of Lucca, located in the heart of Tuscany, Italy. This video has ignited a flurry of discussions and analyses within the community, offering a fresh glimpse into the ever-evolving mystery of unidentified flying objects.
The object in question is described as a thin, long cylindrical UFO, distinguished by an unusual feature: a ring on either side of its body. This distinctive characteristic sets it apart from the more commonly reported shapes of UFOs, sparking curiosity and speculation about its origin and purpose. The clarity of the footage, combined with the object’s unique attributes, has made this sighting a significant point of interest.
Lucca, the backdrop of this extraordinary event, is a city revered for its rich history and cultural heritage. Nestled on the Serchio River in a fertile plain near the Ligurian Sea, Lucca boasts a population of about 89,000 residents. This “Città d’arte” (City of Art) is encircled by intact Renaissance-era city walls, a testament to its historical significance and enduring beauty. The city’s well-preserved historic center is home to architectural marvels such as the Piazza dell’Anfiteatro, the Guinigi Tower, and the Cathedral of San Martino, making it a treasure trove of Italian art and history.
Moreover, Lucca has been the birthplace of several world-renowned composers, including Giacomo Puccini, Alfredo Catalani, and Luigi Boccherini, further enriching its cultural landscape. The sighting of a UFO above such a historically and artistically significant city adds an intriguing layer to its already fascinating narrative.
As the video garners views and shares across social media, it raises numerous questions about the nature of the object and its origins. Could this be evidence of extraterrestrial technology, an experimental aircraft, or simply a misunderstood natural phenomenon? The clear daytime conditions under which the footage was captured provide a rare opportunity for detailed analysis, offering both believers and skeptics alike a chance to explore the possibilities.
The sighting in Lucca contributes to the global catalog of UFO encounters, reminding us of the vast, unexplored mysteries that lie beyond our current understanding. As investigations into the footage continue, this event stands as a captivating chapter in the ongoing quest to unravel the enigma of UFOs. Whether this sighting will eventually be explained or remain an enduring mystery, it undeniably adds to the allure and intrigue of Lucca’s rich tapestry of history and art.
Odysseus Moon Lander Sends Back Selfies With Earth in the Picture
Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lander has beamed back a series of snapshots that were captured as it headed out from the Earth toward the moon, and one of the pictures features Australia front and center. The shots also show the second stage of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched the spacecraft, floating away as Odysseus pushed onward.
The pictures were taken on Feb. 16, the day of the launch.
“Payload integration managers programmed the lander’s wide and narrow field-of-view cameras to take five quick images every five minutes for two hours, starting 100 seconds after separating from SpaceX’s second stage,” Houston-based Intuitive Machines explained in a posting to X / Twitter. “Out of all the images collected, Intuitive Machines chose to show humanity’s place in the universe with four wonderful images we hope to inspire the next generation of risk-takers.”
If Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 mission is successful, Odysseus is due to become the first commercial spacecraft to make a soft landing on the moon, and the first U.S. spacecraft to do so since NASA’s Apollo 17 crewed mission in 1972.
The lander, which is about the size of an old-fashioned telephone booth, is carrying six science payloads for NASA, plus six commercial payloads — including a miniaturized camera system that would be dropped off just before landing to record the touchdown.
Odysseus is scheduled to reach lunar orbit on Feb. 21 and descend to Malapert A crater, near the moon’s south pole, on the 22nd. The mission’s objective is to test out spacecraft systems and assess the environment in the south polar region, in advance of a crewed landing that could take place as early as 2026.
Assuming all goes well, Intuitive Machines is in line to receive $118 million from NASA through the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, which was created to take advantage of private-sector innovation and reduce NASA’s costs.
In a Feb. 18 mission update, Intuitive Machines reported that Odysseus “continues to be in excellent health, and flight controllers are preparing planned trajectory correction maneuvers to prepare the lander for lunar orbit insertion.”
Success isn’t guaranteed: Just last month, a NASA-supported commercial lander built by Astrobotic fell back to Earth after missing its chance to make a moon landing due to a propellant leak. Over the past few years, other robotic moon landing missions planned by Israel’s SpaceIL team, Japan’s iSpace and the Russian Space Agency have also ended in failure.
That being said, failure isn’t inevitable: In the past year, India and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency have successfully put landers on the lunar surface to send back science data.
If Odysseus survives its landing attempt, Intuitive Machines expects the solar-powered robot to be in operation for seven days. The mission is expected to end when the sun sinks below the lunar horizon.
Look at How Much the Sun Has Changed in Just Two Years
The solar cycle has been reasonably well understood since 1843 when Samuel Schwabe spent 17 years observing the variation of sunspots. Since then, we have regularly observed the ebb and flow of the sunspots cycle every 11 years. More recently ESA’s Solar Orbiter has taken regular images of the Sun to track the progress as we head towards the peak of the current solar cycle. Two recently released images from February 2021 and October 2023 show how things are really picking up as we head toward solar maximum.
The Sun is a great big ball of plasma, electrically charged gas, which has the amazing property that it can move a magnetic field that may be embedded within. As the Sun rotates, the magnetic field gets dragged around with it but, because the Sun rotates faster at the equator than at the poles, the field lines get wound up tighter and tighter.
Under this immense stressing, the field lines occasionally break, snap or burst through the surface of the Sun and when they do, we see a sunspot. These dark patches on the visible surface of the Sun are regions where denser concentrations of solar material prohibit heat flow to the visible surface giving rise to slightly cooler, and therefore darker patches on the Sun.
A collage of new solar images captured by the Inouye Solar Telescope, which is a small amount of solar data obtained during the Inouye’s first year of operations throughout its commissioning phase. Images include sunspots and quiet regions of the Sun, known as convection cells. (Credit: NSF/AURA/NSO)
The slow rotation of the Sun and the slow but continuous winding up of the field lines means that sun spots become more and more numerous as the field gets more distorted. Observed over a period of years the spots seem to slowly migrate from the polar regions to the equatorial regions as the solar cycle progresses.
To try and help understand this complex cycle and unlock other mysteries of the Sun, the European Space Agency launched its Solar Orbiter on 10 February 2020. Its mission to explore the Sun’s polar regions, understand what drives the 11 year solar cycle and what drives the heating of the corona, the outer layers of the Sun’s atmosphere.
Solar Orbiter
Images from Solar Orbiter have been released that show closeups of the Sun’s visible surface, the photosphere as it nears peak of solar activity. At the beginning of the cycle, at solar minimum in 2019, there was relatively little activity and only a few sunspots. Since then, things have been slowly increasing. The image from February 2021 showed a reasonably quiet Sun but an image taken in October last year shows that things are, dare I say, hotting up! The maximum of this cycle is expected to occur in 2025 which supports theories that the period of maximum activity could arrive a year earlier.
Understanding the cycle is not just of whimsical scientific interest, it is vital to ensure we minimise damage to ground based and orbiting systems but crucially understand impact on life on Earth.
A team of archaeologists from Germany has discovered a submerged Stone Age megastructure in the Western Baltic Sea at a water depth of about 21 m. The structure was likely constructed by hunter-gatherer groups more than 10,000 years ago and ultimately drowned around 8,500 years ago; since then, it remained hidden at the seafloor, leading to a pristine preservation that will inspire research on the lifestyle and territorial development in the larger area.
An artist’s reconstruction of the Blinkerwall in the Bay of Mecklenburg, Germany.
Image credit: Michał Grabowski.
The Stone Age megastructure was discovered in the Bay of Mecklenburg, about 10 km northwest off Rerik, Germany.
The stonewall is made of 1,673 individual stones which are usually less than 1 m in height, placed side by side over a distance of 971 m in a way that argues against a natural origin by glacial transport or ice push ridges.
Dubbed Blinkerwall, it was built by hunter-gatherers that roamed the region after the retreat of the Weichselian Ice Sheet.
Enlarge/ Morphology of the southwest–northeast trending ridge that hosts the Blinkerwall and the adjacent mound.
Running adjacent to the sunken shoreline of a paleolake (or bog), whose youngest phase was dated to 9,143 years ago, the structure was likely used for hunting the Eurasian reindeer (Rangifer tarandus).
“At the time, the entire population across northern Europe was likely below 5,000 people,” said Dr. Marcel Bradtmöller, a researcher at the University of Rostock.
“One of their main food sources were herds of reindeer, which migrated seasonally through the sparsely vegetated post-glacial landscape.”
“The wall was probably used to guide the reindeer into a bottleneck between the adjacent lakeshore and the wall, or even into the lake, where the Stone Age hunters could kill them more easily with their weapons.”
Morphology of the southwest-northeast trending ridge that hosts the Blinkerwall and the adjacent mound.
Image credit: Geersen et al., doi: 10.1073/pnas.2312008121.
The Blinkerwall represents one of the oldest documented man-made hunting structures on Earth, and ranges among the largest known Stone Age structure in Europe.
“Our investigations indicate that a natural origin of the underwater stonewall as well as a construction in modern times, for instance in connection with submarine cable laying or stone harvesting are not very likely,” said Dr. Jacob Geersen, also from the University of Rostock.
“The methodical arrangement of the many small stones that connect the large, non-moveable boulders, speaks against this.”
Using modern geophysical methods, the researchers created a detailed 3D model of the Blinkerwall and reconstructed the ancient landscape.
The site was also visited and inspected by a team of scientific divers from Rostock University and the State Authority for Culture and Monuments in Mecklenburg Western Pomerania on one occasion.
The dives primarily aimed at assessing the nature of the stonewall and to survey the surrounding seabed for the presence of possible archeological artifacts.
They concentrated on two locations, namely the western end of the structure and a large stone in the center where the Blinkerwall changes direction.
While neither artifacts or dateable organic material was found in the immediate vicinity of the two dive locations, a small timber sample was retrieved from the Holocene sediments about 10 m to the south of the structure.
3D model of a section of the Blinkerwall adjacent to the large boulder at the western end of the wall. Photographs were taken by Philipp Hoy, Rostock University. The scale bar at the top-right edge of the image is 50 cm.
Image credit: Geersen et al., doi: 10.1073/pnas.2312008121.
“Although numerous well-preserved archaeological sites from the Stone Age are known from the Bay of Wismar and along the coast of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, these are located in much shallower water depths and mostly date to the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods (7,000-2,500 BCE),” said Dr. Jens Auer, a researcher at the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern State Office for Culture and Monument Preservation.
“We have evidence for the existence of comparable stonewalls at other locations in the Mecklenburg Bight. These will be systematically investigated as well,” added Dr. Jens Schneider von Deimling, a researcher at Kiel University.
“Overall, the investigations can make a significant contribution to understanding the life, organization and hunting methods of early Stone Age hunter-gatherers.”
The team’s paper was published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Jacob Geersen et al. 2024. A submerged Stone Age hunting architecture from the Western Baltic Sea. PNAS 121 (8): e2312008121; doi: 10.1073/pnas.2312008121
Early on Feb. 12, 2023, at least three different flights over Quebec reported(opens in a new tab)"seeing very strange lights in the sky, high above the flight paths" that were "moving in a rapid and irregular way."
"It looks like it's more than one and sort of circling," a crew member aboard a cargo flight from Chicago to Luxembourg told air traffic controllers in Canada, according to audio obtained by CTVNews.ca(opens in a new tab). "It's a bit weird."
Selected incidents from the Civil Aviation Daily Occurrence Reporting System (CADORS), 2023
Since 2000, Transport Canada's database has logged more than 315,000 reports of civil aviation incidents. The cases below represent unusual "laser interference" and "CIRVIS/UFO" reports from 2023.
"Just to let you know there was a flight from the south… they saw the same thing roughly a half-an-hour ago," an air traffic controller told the Luxembourg-bound cargo flight on Feb. 12.
"So I guess we're not just dreaming then, huh?" the aviator said.
"No, you're not the first one tonight."
Roughly 24 hours later, air traffic controllers received another report, this time from an Edmonton to Yellowknife flight(opens in a new tab) operated by Air Tindi that "reported observing a rotating light" at 30,000 feet over northern Alberta.
Transport Canada routinely cautions that such "reports contain preliminary, unconfirmed data which can be subject to change."
"These reports have no potential for regulatory enforcement and often fall outside the department’s mandate," a Transport Canada spokesperson previously told CTVNews.ca(opens in a new tab). "Reports of unidentified objects can rarely be followed up on as they are as the title implies, unidentified."
"I suspect that these reports represent a small fraction of what pilots are seeing," Powell told CTVNews.ca. "Not only does the stigma of making a UAP report still exist, but the reporting form and the way it is handled would make it clear to any pilot that his report was simply filed away."
Most reports are provided to federal transportation officials by Nav Canada, a private non-profit company that owns and operates Canada's civilian air traffic control infrastructure.
The company's aviation guidelines(opens in a new tab)(opens in a new tab)direct pilots over Canada to immediately report "a vital intelligence sighting of any airborne and ground objects or activities that appear to be hostile, suspicious, unidentified or engaged in possible illegal smuggling activity." Known as "Communication Instructions for Reporting Vital Intelligence Sightings" or CIRVIS reports, Nav Canada even puts "unidentified flying objects" at the front of a list of examples that also includes foreign submarines and warships. When such reports are made, Nav Canada typically alerts Transport Canada and a Norad-affiliated Royal Canadian Air Force squadron in North Bay, Ont(opens in a new tab).
"Nav Canada's Aviation Occurrence Reporting Procedure is used to address instances of unauthorized or unknown aircraft in NAV CANADA managed airspace," a company spokesperson told CTVNews.ca. "Nav Canada provides all information that it receives on these incidents to the Canadian government."
"The Canadian Armed Forces and the Royal Canadian Air Force do not typically investigate sightings of unknown or unexplained phenomena outside the context of investigating credible threats, potential threats, or potential distress in the case of search and rescue," a Canadian defence spokesperson previously told CTVNews.ca(opens in a new tab).
More than half of the unusual reports filed in 2023 were classified as "laser interference" incidents, while the rest were labelled as "CIRVIS/UFO" reports.
Examples of "laser interference" from 2023 include
A Transport Canada spokesperson previously explained(opens in a new tab) that aviation reports are labelled "laser interference" when "an aircraft is targeted or reported seeing a laser beam or any other directed bright light source."
Powell, the UAP researcher, believes the "laser" label is being misapplied.
"The 'laser interference' explanation appears to be a catch-all category for pilot reports," Powell said. "Laser light sources would be below the aircraft and not above it."
CTVNews.ca has filed freedom of information requests to get more data on reports like these, which rarely feature more than a line or two of detail. For example, a publicly-available Jan. 11, 2023 report from an Exploits Valley Air Services flight(opens in a new tab) over the Gulf of Saint Lawrence simply describes "bright lights approximately 100 [nautical miles] from their position." An access to information request filed with Canada's Department of National Defence revealed a slightly longer report of "approx 4 bright lights moving around each other creating geometric shapes (triangle to hexagon)."
From drones to balloons, satellites, meteorites, flares, paper lanterns and weather phenomena, many of the reports described in this article likely have ordinary and earthly explanations. But with little sign of official investigation or follow-up from Canadian officials, most cases remain unexplained.
Donald "Spike" Kavalench is a retired Transport Canada surveillance pilot who also spent more than two decades flying for the Royal Canadian Air Force.
"Transport Canada, Nav Canada and the Department of National Defence need to work together to quickly and effectively respond to and investigate any UAP reports that could signify a potential threat to the flying public and potentially our national security," Kavalench told CTVNews.ca. "So far, that has not been done."
Bizarre UFO Encounters in the Skies: A Pilot’s Perspective
Bizarre UFO Encounters in the Skies: A Pilot’s Perspective
The enigma of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) continues to spark curiosity and debate among people worldwide. Among the most credible reports of these mysterious sightings come from those who spend a significant amount of their careers in the skies: pilots. Both military and civilian aviators have reported encounters with objects that defy conventional explanation, fueling speculation and intrigue about what really lies beyond our understanding.
One of the earliest recorded pilot encounters with a UFO dates back to June 24, 1947, when Kenneth Arnold, a pilot flying near the Cascade Mountains in Washington State, reported seeing nine bright, saucer-like objects speeding across the sky. This encounter is notable not only for its detail but also for introducing the term “flying saucers” to the public lexicon.
The credibility of pilot reports stems from their extensive training, experience, and familiarity with aerial phenomena, making them unlikely to be easily mistaken or deceived by optical illusions or known aircraft. Despite this, many pilots have faced skepticism and ridicule, often deterring them from coming forward with their experiences.
One particularly compelling incident involved a group of P-51 Mustang pilots in 1948, led by Captain Thomas Mantell, who pursued a large, unidentified object flying at a high altitude. Mantell’s tragic crash during the pursuit added a layer of mystery and speculation regarding the nature of the object he was chasing. The official explanation, attributing the sighting to Venus, was met with skepticism, fueling theories of a cover-up and further embedding the UFO phenomenon in the realm of conspiracy and secrecy.
British pilots, too, have encountered unexplained aerial phenomena. Despite the tight-lipped approach of the British Air Ministry, stories of sightings by RAF pilots have leaked, revealing encounters with objects exhibiting capabilities beyond the technology of the time. One notable report came from a BOAC Captain in 1954, who described an encounter with multiple objects, including a large one that appeared to change shape, alongside his aircraft over the Atlantic.
The phenomena are not limited to visual sightings; radar operators have corroborated pilot reports, adding a technical layer of verification to these encounters. One of the most detailed cases occurred in New Zealand in 1978, involving multiple pilots and radar operators witnessing and tracking unexplained objects over the Kaikoura coastline. The incident was extensively documented, including film footage that fueled worldwide interest and debate.
Skeptics and researchers have offered various explanations for these sightings, ranging from atmospheric phenomena and optical illusions to misidentifications of planets or man-made objects. However, many encounters remain unexplained, with the objects’ advanced maneuverability and speeds suggesting technology far beyond our current capabilities.
VIDEO:
Bizarre UFO Sightings Spotted By Pilots | Strange But True | Our Life
The persistence of these sightings, coupled with the high credibility of pilot witnesses, keeps the discussion about UFOs alive. While some sightings have been debunked or explained through natural or technological phenomena, others remain compelling mysteries, challenging our understanding of the world and perhaps, the universe. The pilots’ accounts contribute to a larger narrative that continues to intrigue and puzzle both the public and experts, keeping the door open to the possibilities of what might be out there, beyond the known boundaries of our skies.
Beste bezoeker, Heb je zelf al ooit een vreemde waarneming gedaan, laat dit dan even weten via email aan Frederick Delaere opwww.ufomeldpunt.be. Deze onderzoekers behandelen jouw melding in volledige anonimiteit en met alle respect voor jouw privacy. Ze zijn kritisch, objectief maar open minded aangelegd en zullen jou steeds een verklaring geven voor jouw waarneming! DUS AARZEL NIET, ALS JE EEN ANTWOORD OP JOUW VRAGEN WENST, CONTACTEER FREDERICK. BIJ VOORBAAT DANK...
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
