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.
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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...
21-11-2024
“We Do Have Some Very Anomalous Objects,” New Director of Pentagon’s UAP Investigations Tells Lawmakers
Dr. Jon Kosloski, Director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office
(Senate Armed Services Committee)
“We Do Have Some Very Anomalous Objects,” New Director of Pentagon’s UAP Investigations Tells Lawmakers
The new director of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office(AARO) confirmed to lawmakers on Tuesday that the U.S. is investigating what he characterized as “some very anomalous objects,” while providing an update on the Defense Department’s ongoing investigations into unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP).
In his opening statements, Kosloski pledged that his office would continue to share information about AARO’s findings at the unclassified level, discussing several UAP cases his office has investigated, including a series of incidents which AARO says have now been resolved.
One of these, referred to as “The Puerto Rico Object,” involved a video of a purported UAP filmed in April 2013 from a U.S. Customs and Border Protection aircraft near Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. The video has been been a subject of independent public investigation and debate now for many years.
A still from a video captured by a U.S.-operated drone in 2018 while flying above Mt. Etna appears to show an anomalous object, but the Pentagon's UFO chief says his office was able to solve the case.
(Image credit: AARO/DOD)
Kosloski told lawmakers the object in the video was assessed with high confidence by his office not to display any evidence of anomalous speeds or flight characteristics, and was “likely a pair of balloons or sky lanterns,” which Kosloski said had been “floating at about seven knots over the airport.”
Examples of AARO’s resolved reports also included a now-famous U.S. Navy video commonly known as “Go Fast” that first came to public knowledge in 2017, which Kosloski says represents an example of parallax.
“Through a very careful geospatial and intelligence analysis using trigonometry, we assess with high confidence that the object is not actually close to the water, but is rather closer to 13,000 feet,” Kosloski said.
“A trick of the eye called parallax makes it look like the object is moving much faster,” Kosloski added, referencing a report on parallax previously uploaded to AARO’s official website.
Another resolved UAP case, filmed in the Mediterranean from a drone observing the eruption of Mount Etna in 2018, appears to show a small object passing through the plume of superheated gas and ash produced by the volcano.
“This was a rather difficult case to resolve,” Kosloski said. “Through very detailed 3D modeling and pixel by pixel analysis of the object as it’s traversing across the clouds, the assess that the object was actually 170 meters away from the plume, and not flying through it.”
However, while many cases have been resolved by AARO, Dr. Kosloski cautioned against any perception that his office does not find at least some of the reports it receives genuinely anomalous.
A still from a video reportedly showing a "transmedium" UAP that appears to travel between air and water and split in half. During testimony on Nov. 19, the head of the Pentagon's UFO office says it actually shows an infrared camera's inability to tell two objects' temperature apart from the ocean behind them.
(Image credit: AARO/DOD)
“To be clear, AARO does not believe that every object is a bird, a balloon, or a UAV,” Kosloski said, adding that “we do have some very anomalous objects.”
Kosloski also said that his office has worked to ensure that U.S. personnel with information related to UAP or alleged U.S. government programs associated with such phenomena feel comfortable coming forward and speaking to AARO.
“We take that responsibility and those authorities very seriously,” Kosloski said, adding that he and his staff “have been reaching out to the broader community, encouraging folks who had talked to AARO personnel in the past, and maybe felt uncomfortable to come back to us.”
Prior to Kosloski’s appointment as AARO Director, the office’s investigations were led by Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, who is currently the Chief Technology Officer for Defense and Intelligence Programs within the National Security Sciences Directorate (NSSD) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
It was unclear during Tuesday’s hearing whether Kosloski’s references to past instances where U.S. personnel may have felt uncomfortable speaking with AARO investigators had occurred during Kirkpatrick’s tenure. However, Kosloski told lawmakers that AARO has recently been “making great progress,” adding that several firsthand witnesses his office had spoken to about their UAP sightings “do feel comfortable coming back to us.”
Asked by Senator Gillibrand about UAP cases that merit further investigation, Kosloski explained that while some cases with insufficient data are placed into an active archive, there are others involving reportedly anomalous objects that AARO deems to be worthy of additional analysis.
One particularly intriguing unresolved case that Kosloski described involved a large orange orb or sphere observed floating several hundred feet above the ground by a law enforcement officer in the Western United States. As the officer approached the location believed to be directly beneath the object, he observed another object described as “blacker than black” and roughly the size of an automobile.
“As he got 40 to 60 meters away from the object, it tilted up about 45 degrees and then it shot up vertically,” Kosloski said, “and then it shot up vertically, he says 10 to 100 times faster than any drone he’s ever seen before.
“And it did that without making a sound, as far as he could tell from inside his vehicle,” Kosloski said. The object reportedly emitted very bright red and blue lights as it departed the scene, which illuminated the inside of the officer’s vehicle.
Another unresolved case involved a stationary cylinder that was observed for a short period hovering over a U.S. facility in the American southwest before abruptly disappearing. The object, observed by U.S. government contractors who were leaving the facility at that time, was described as being comparable in size to a commercial airplane, and was accompanied by a very bright white light.
“Obviously, an object that large [and] stationary—unless it’s a blimp—is unusual,” Kosloski said. “But then disappearing, we can’t explain how that would happen.”
In another instance, an aircraft flying parallel to another aircraft while filming it captured imagery of a much smaller object that appears to have passed between them at high speed.
Kosloski said AARO may be nearing a resolution with one of these three cases, but added that there are several others that are still currently under analysis by his office.
Asked by U.S. Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) what the U.S. needs to be doing about UAP and what precautions should be taken by U.S. officials, Kosloski warned about stigmas that have long prevailed against the subject, which he said “opens the opportunity for an adversary… to come in and conduct some activity.”
“We need to do that, and we need to have more persistent monitoring,” Kosloski also told lawmakers of the challenges AARO faces with regard to collecting information about UAP, adding that in particular, monitoring at high security facilities should be a main priority.
“Whether it is a UAP, or it is a counter-UAS issue, that we need to have that complete domain awareness around our national security facilities,” Kosloski said.
Next year, Kosloski said AARO plans to roll out a public reporting mechanism at AARO’s website where members of the general public can download a reporting form and submit details about possible UAP sightings, along with attachments such as imagery. This simple reporting interface, Kosloski said, was chosen due to its cost effectiveness, in addition to being a system that he said could ensure the privacy of those members of the public who file reports.
“I think that the authorities that we have are remarkable,” Kosloski said at the conclusion of the short public session, thanking Gillibrand and other lawmakers, and adding that he believes AARO to be “well-resourced as an office.”
“The only ask that I would have is that you continue to champion us, particularly with witnesses,” Kosloski said. “Encourage them to come forward and report to us so we that we can have a more fulsome investigation of the potential historic or ongoing legacy programs,” Kosloski said.
Speaking with members of the media on a call last week following the release of AARO’s new report, Kosloski said that his office currently has “several particularly interesting cases.”
“We’re working on within the office, working with our partners to downgrade several of those cases, so we can talk about them publicly,” Kosloski said during the call.
“But there are interesting cases that I, with my physics and engineering background and time in the IC, I do not understand.”
“And I don’t know anybody else who understands them either,” Kosloski added.
VIDEOS
'I do not have an explanation': Pentagon official shows video of unidentified object
UFO hearing: Eyewitnesses describe encounters with "non human" entities to Congress | FULL
Luis Elizondo discusses new book "Imminent" and the Pentagon's UAP investigations
The latest congressional UFO hearing featured testimony from former military personnel who said that government secrecy hides the fact that we are not alone in the cosmos.
UFO whistleblower tells Congress the US government is hiding evidence of 'non-human intelligence'
UFOs came to Washington again last week.
The U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Oversight and Accountability held a hearing titled "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth" at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C. at 11:30 a.m. EST (1530 GMT) on Wednesday, Nov. 13. Unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) is a relatively new catch-all term that includes sightings of unexplained objects or events that take place in the air, underwater, in space, or that travel between those domains.
Like previous congressional UFO hearings, the event featured testimony from current U.S. military personnel who claim the American government has for decades hidden evidence of advanced technologies and otherworldly visitors from the public. A multitude of anecdotes were presented about flying orbs coming out of the ocean, disc-shaped objects, and craft "exhibiting flight and structural characteristics unlike anything in our arsenal." While such claims are nothing new, what is noteworthy about the hearing are the pedigrees of some of the whistleblowers who testified, including a former U.S. counterintelligence officer, a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral and a former NASA associate administrator. All of them stressed the need for more government transparency, less stigma about the UFO topic and new policies to bring UAP data out of the "black" classified world and into the public domain.
A still from a video titled "Go Fast" recorded by a U.S. Navy aircraft reportedly showing a UAP that was discussed in the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Oversight and Accountability hearing titled "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth" on Wednesday (Nov. 13). (Image credit: U.S. Dept. of Defense)
This isn't the U.S. government's first attempt to investigate the recent wave of UFO claims that began in 2017. A similar hearing was held last year, in which a whistleblower told Congress the U.S. government is hiding evidence of 'non-human intelligence.'
The Pentagon also created the All-Doman Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) in 2022 to investigate UAP reports and government data about UFOs, but critics, including some government officials, are skeptical of the office's aims and methods.
"AARO is unable, or perhaps unwilling, to bring forward the truth about the government's activities concerning UAPs," Representative Nancy Mace (R-South Carolina) said during the hearing's opening remarks. "I'm disturbed that AARO itself lacks transparency; even its budget is kept from the public. So if there is no 'there' there, then why are we spending money on it? And by how much? Why the secrecy?"
Other representatives stressed the need for transparency and data analysis, a common theme of other recent UAP studies. "We have evidence that what we are detecting things, and we know that we don't understand them, and this is worth investigating," Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) said. "I believe we can always be more transparent. To me, this hearing and others are simply about the truth and getting to the facts of what these UAPs actually are."
Luis Elizondo, a former U.S. counterintelligence officer who has been vocal about such claims in recent years, told the assembled representatives at the hearing that "excessive secrecy has led to grave misdeeds against loyal civil servants, military personnel and the public — all to hide the fact that we are not alone in the cosmos."
We are "in the midst of a multi-decade, secretive arms race — one funded by misallocated taxpayer dollars and hidden from our elected representatives and oversight bodies," Elizondo stated during his testimony.
Elizondo, who claims to have previously investigated UFOs as part of a secret Pentagon program, suggested that the U.S. government create a "whole-of-government" approach to studying UAP, create a national UAP strategy and offer protections so that whistleblowers who are "desperate to do the right thing can come forward without fear."
During questioning, Elizondo was asked if some of the "advanced technologies" that have been seen monitoring sensitive military installations around the globe could be operated by aliens or private companies. "Maybe both," Elizondo replied.
Elizondo also stated point-blank to Rep. Mace's questioning that the U.S. government has programs to retrieve crashed UAP and reverse-engineer them, but avoided giving any specifics in an unclassified public setting such as the hearing.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) then questioned Elizondo, asking the former counterintelligence agent about a document he signed that limits him from speaking publicly about crash retrieval programs. "The document said you can't talk about crash retrieval. Well, you know, you can't talk about Fight Club if there's no Fight Club, correct?"
Like other witnesses, Elizondo stated that the alleged excessive government secrecy around UFOs harms national security. In response to questioning from Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN), Elizondo stated that, if UAP sightings turned out to be technologies operated by adversarial nations, it would be "an intelligence failure eclipsing 9/11 in order of magnitude."
A still from footage shot by an MQ-9 reaper drone showing an unidentified spherical object soaring through the air shown to the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services during an April 2023 hearing. (Image credit: U.S. Dept. of Defense)
Retired U.S. Navy rear admiral Tim Gallaudet offered similar testimony as Elizondo. "We know from last year's UAP hearing and recent statements and publications by credible whistleblowers that UAP, NHI [non-human intelligence], and their technology of unknown origin (TUO) represent a new realization that we are not the only advanced intelligence in the universe," Gallaudet said on Wednesday, according to his published remarks.
"Unelected officials in the U.S. government do not have an exclusive right to this knowledge about the nature of reality. The American people have a right to that knowledge," Gallaudet said. The retired rear admiral also stressed the national security and airspace safety concerns related with UAP sightings, calling them "extensive."
When Rep. Garcia asked Gallaudet and other witnesses what UAP might represent, the retired rear admiral said he believes they are evidence of a "non-human higher intelligence."
Former NASA Associate Administrator for Space Policy and Partnerships Michael Gold also testified at the hearing, and previously served on NASA's UAP study team. Gold's testimony was more grounded; for example, he stressed the need for NASA to contribute its authority and expertise toward analyzing what UAP data it might already possess and helping dispel the stigma associated with the UFO topic.
"Our best tool for unlocking the mystery of UAP is science, but we cannot conduct a proper inquiry if the stigma is so overwhelming that just daring to be part of a NASA search team elicits such a vitriolic response," Gold said during the hearing. "Therefore, one of the most important actions that can be taken, relative to exposing the truth of UAP, is to combat the stigma, and this is where I believe that NASA can be eminently helpful."
Gold added that NASA has a massive archive of data that could possibly contain evidence of UAP, and suggested that artificial intelligence/machine learning algorithms could help sort through the agency's trove of data to help shine light on the UFO phenomenon. In addition, the former NASA associate administrator said the agency should develop specialized instruments that might be able to gather useful data about UAP.
UFO whistleblower says U.S. recovered nonhuman "biologics" from crash sites
Journalist Michael Shellenberger also testified, telling the representatives that there's a "growing body of evidence that the government is not being transparent about what it knows about unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), formerly called UFOs, and that elements within the military and IC [intelligence community] are in violation of their Constitutional duty to notify Congress of their operations."
Shellenberger stated that there is a secret program within the U.S. government known as "Immaculate Constellation" whose sole purpose is to collect UFO and UAP reports from military personnel and sensor data and quarantine them away from the rest of the government and military. While he noted that a Pentagon spokesperson has stated no such program exists, Shellenberger recounted prior examples in which the Department of Defense has initially denied knowledge of UAP-related information only to later change its stance and either admit the information exists or release it to the public.
"The U.S. government appears to know significantly more about UAPs than it is revealing," Shellenberger said at the hearing. "But even those who believe the U.S. government has revealed all that it knows should have no objection to Congressional demands for greater transparency."
To conclude the meeting, Rep. Mace asked each of the witnesses to define what non-human biologics or non-human intelligence mean to each of them.
"I don't think it's a stretch, when you look at the diversity of life on this planet and the size of this universe, to think that there will be more diverse, higher-order, non-human intelligence throughout the universe, and that's probably what's visiting us," Gallaudet said.
Elizondo stated he would take a scientific approach: "The definition would be the ability to react to a stimulus in a manner that requires an intellectual thought process."
Gold, meanwhile, questioned whether non-human intelligence necessarily implies life, suggesting sophisticated artificial intelligence might be responsible for some UAP encounters. Shellenberger simply stated he did not know what they might be.
In the hearing, as in other UFO hearings, there was a lot of telling and not a lot of showing. One of the core tenets of these whistleblower testimonies is that much of the credible UFO data is classified and can't be revealed to the public based on the military capabilities that some of that data could reveal.
Whistleblowers have attested for years that, because advanced or classified sensors and satellites sometimes capture footage or photos of unexplained phenomena or advanced craft, those photos or videos are likewise classified by the U.S. government in order to not reveal America's full surveillance or sensing capabilities.
Such was the case in 2023 when U.S. military aircraft shot down a mysterious object off the coast of Alaska. The American government has yet to release any imagery from the event, but a Canadian freedom of information request unveiled a photograph earlier this year of a balloon-like object.
Those incidents and others like it, such as a weeks-long drone incursion above Langley Air Force Base in Washington, D.C., were discussed in the hearing. "The origin of these drones and their operators remains a mystery," Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) said. "This incident and other sightings near sensitive military installations highlights the complexity of the UAP challenge facing our intelligence, defense and homeland security committees."
Starship’s Booster (and Donald Trump) Make a Splash With Sixth Flight Test
SpaceX’s Starship launch system went through its sixth flight test today, and although the Super Heavy booster missed out on being caught back at its launch pad, the mission checked off a key test objective with President-elect Donald Trump in the audience.
Trump attended the launch at SpaceX’s Starbase complex in the company of SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who has been serving as a close adviser to the once and future president over the past few months. In a pre-launch posting to his Truth Social media platform, Trump wished good luck to “Elon Musk and the Great Patriots involved in this incredible project.”
Starship is the world’s most powerful rocket, with 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines providing more than 16 million pounds of thrust at liftoff. That’s twice the power of the Saturn V rocket that sent Americans to the moon in the 1960s and early ’70s. The two-stage rocket stands 121 meters (397 feet) tall, with a 9-meter-wide (30-foot-wide) fairing.
Super Heavy had an on-time launch at 4 p.m. CT (22:00 UTC) and was set up to fly itself back to the launch tower to be caught by the giant “Mechazilla” arms that were successfully used during last month’s flight test. But four minutes after liftoff, mission controllers said the booster had to be diverted instead to make a soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.
In a recap of the flight, SpaceX said that “automated health checks of critical hardware on the launch and catch tower triggered an abort of the catch attempt.”
“It was not guaranteed that we would be able to make a tower catch today,” launch commentator Kate Tice said during today’s webcast. “So, while we were hoping for it … the safety of the teams and the public and the pad itself are paramount. We are accepting no compromises in any of those areas.”
While the booster settled majestically into the Gulf, the Starship second stage — known as Ship for short — continued on a track that sent it as high as 190 kilometers (120 miles). A plush banana was placed in Ship’s cargo bay as a zero-gravity indicator, and Tice wore a T-shirt bearing the words “It’s Bananas!” to play off the lighthearted theme.
Ship successfully relit one of its methane-fueled Merlin engines while in space, which was a key objective for today’s suborbital test. Relighting the engines under such conditions will be required in the future for Ship’s orbital maneuvers.
A little more than an hour after launch, Ship’s engines fired for a final time to make a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean. The daylight visuals, plus other data collected during the flight, will help SpaceX’s team fine-tune Starship’s design for future tests.
SpaceX plans to use Starship to accelerate deployment of its Starlink broadband satellites, as well as to fly missions beyond Earth orbit. The company has a $2.9 billion contract from NASA to provide a version of Starship that’s customized for lunar landings, starting as early 2026. And Musk has said Starship could take on uncrewed missions starting that same year — with the first crewed mission set for launch in 2028 if everything goes right.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson referred to those future flights in a message on Musk’s X social-media platform:
Check out these other postings tracking the progress of the flight test:
The Lafayette Meteorite was chipped off the surface of Mars and then sped through space for roughly 11 million years. It eventually found its way into a drawer at Purdue University in 1931 and has since been teaching scientists about Mars. (Photo provided by Purdue Brand Studio.)
11 million years ago, Mars was a frigid, dry, dead world, just like it is now. Something slammed into the unfortunate planet, sending debris into space. A piece of that debris made it to Earth, found its way into a drawer at Purdue University, and then was subsequently forgotten about.
Until 1931, when scientists studied and realized it came directly from Mars. What has it told them about the red planet?
11 million years ago, the Himalayas were rising on a warmer, more humid Earth. Early ape species made their home in an Africa covered by tropical forests. Diverse mammal species roamed the continents.
At the same time, on Mars, the frigid wind blew across a desiccated, forlorn world. The planet’s thin atmosphere is a weak barrier to meteorites, and the planet’s cratered surface bears witness to its nakedness. Some impacts were powerful enough to launch debris into space beyond the planet’s gravitational pull. The meteorite in the drawer is one such piece of debris.
“Many meteoroids are produced by impacts on Mars and other planetary bodies, but only a handful will eventually fall to Earth.”
Marissa Tremblay, Purdue University
The meteorite was long forgotten in its storage place until 1931. Scientists identified it as a piece of Mars, and now new research is uncovering clues about Mars’ past hidden in the 800-gram piece of rock.
This image shows a page from an article published in Popular Astronomy in 1935. Image Credit: Popular Astronomy.
11 million years ago is not a long time in geological and planetary terms, and the number fits neatly into most people’s imaginations. But rock has deep temporal roots, and the meteorite that reached Earth is an igneous rock that dates back 1.4 billion years. That much time is more difficult to understand, but science is at its best when it opens human minds to a more fulsome understanding of nature.
The meteorite, named “Lafayette” after the city in Indiana that’s home to Purdue University, is the subject of new research published in Geochemical Perspectives Letters. It’s titled “Dating recent aqueous activity on Mars,” and the lead author is Marissa Tremblay. Tremblay is an assistant professor with the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) at Purdue University.
There’s ample evidence that some minerals on Mars formed in the presence of water. Though Lafayette itself is an igneous rock 1.4 billion years old, some of the minerals it contains are younger.
“Dating these minerals can therefore tell us when there was liquid water at or near the surface of Mars in the planet’s geologic past,” Tremblay said. “We dated these minerals in the Martian meteorite Lafayette and found that they formed 742 million years ago. We do not think there was abundant liquid water on the surface of Mars at this time. Instead, we think the water came from the melting of nearby subsurface ice called permafrost, and that the permafrost melting was caused by magmatic activity that still occurs periodically on Mars to the present day.”
Lafayette is one of the Nakhlite meteorites, an igneous rock that formed from basaltic lava around 1.4 billion years ago. Scientists think these rocks formed in one of Mars’ large volcanic regions: Elysium, Syrtis Major Planum, or the largest one, Tharsis, which is home to the three shield volcanoes, Tharsis Montes.
A colourized image of the surface of Mars taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The line of three volcanoes is the Tharsis Montes, with Olympus Mons to the northwest. Valles Marineris is to the east. The researchers think that the Lafayette meteorite came from the Tharsis volcanic region, or one of Mars’ other, smaller volcanic regions. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ Arizona State University
Ancient rocks and their embedded minerals contain information about Mars’ ancient past. The history of Mars’ hydrological cycle is a key objective in our ongoing study of Mars. This research is focused on a particular mineral in Lafayette called iddingsite. It forms when basalt is weathered in the presence of water.
The difficulty with meteorites and the clues they contain about ancient Mars is that they’ve been exposed to and potentially altered by the heat of the initial impact and the heat of entry into Earth’s atmosphere. The chemical signals inherent in rock can become muddied. But Lafayette is different. It’s clear that it was blasted off of Mars 11 million years ago.
“We know this because once it was ejected from Mars, the meteorite experienced bombardment by cosmic ray particles in outer space that caused certain isotopes to be produced in Lafayette,” Tremblay says. “Many meteoroids are produced by impacts on Mars and other planetary bodies, but only a handful will eventually fall to Earth.”
“The age could have been affected by the impact that ejected the Lafayette Meteorite from Mars, the heating Lafayette experienced during the 11 million years it was floating out in space, or the heating Lafayette experienced when it fell to Earth and burned up a little bit in Earth’s atmosphere,” Tremblay said. “But we were able to demonstrate that none of these things affected the age of aqueous alteration in Lafayette.”
Study co-author Ryan Ickert is a senior research scientist in Purdue’s EAPS. Ickert uses heavy radioactive and stable isotopes to study geological processes over time. He showed how isotope data used to date water-rock interactions on Mars were problematic and that the data had likely been polluted by other processes. According to Ickert, he and his colleagues got it right this time.
“This meteorite uniquely has evidence that it has reacted with water. The exact date of this was controversial, and our publication dates when water was present,” he says.
This figure from the research shows a cross-section of the Lafayette meteorite. Ol is an olivine grain surrounded by augite crystals (Px). Iddingsite (Id) is present in veins that travel through the rock. Though Lafayette formed over 1.3 billion years ago, the Iddingsite veins formed later, about 742 million years ago, when water seeped through the cracks. Image Credit: Tremblay et al. 2024.
The researchers used a novel technique involving the isotopes Argon 40 and Argon 39 to date Lafayette’s exposure to water and its formation of Iddingsite. That showed them that the exposure occurred 742 million years ago. Their explanation is that magmatic activity melted subsurface ice, and the water subsequently found its way into cracks in the igneous rock, altering some of the olivine into Iddingsite.
All this from a meteorite that was lost in a drawer.
The Solar System is a puzzle. It’s an artifact of Nature’s ordered complexity, but at the same time, it’s shaped by Nature’s steadfast chaos. Each molecule, each tiny piece of rock, including the Lafayette meteorite, is a part of it. Each piece holds a clue to the puzzle.
“We can identify meteorites by studying what minerals are present in them and the relationships between these minerals inside the meteorite,” said Tremblay. “Meteorites are often denser than Earth rocks, contain metal, and are magnetic. We can also look for things like a fusion crust that forms during entry into Earth’s atmosphere. Finally, we can use the chemistry of meteorites (specifically their oxygen isotope composition) to fingerprint which planetary body they came from or which type of meteorite it belongs to.”
Dating these rocks, these pieces of the puzzle, is difficult. However, this research has made progress by developing a novel way to date minerals in the Lafayette meteorite.
“We have demonstrated a robust way to date alteration minerals in meteorites that can be applied to other meteorites and planetary bodies to understand when liquid water might have been present,” Tremblay concluded.
Mysterious and rare meteorite from Mars at the Smithsonian
Mighty Martian meteorite lands at the Museum | Natural History Museum
EXCLUSIVE - NASA claims it has FINALLY debunked one of the most famous UFO videos that was captured by Navy fighter jets off the coast of Florida - but not all scientists are convinced
EXCLUSIVE - NASA claims it has FINALLY debunked one of the most famous UFO videos that was captured by Navy fighter jets off the coast of Florida - but not all scientists are convinced
NASA estimated that GOFAST UFO coasted at 40 mph 'consistent' with wind
But critics point out that Navy UFO witnesses recorded a 120-knot wind speed
A simulation of the GOFAST event, created by UFO skeptics, contradicts NASA
NASA report admits it 'neglected wind effects' ignoring publicly available data
NASA expert now tells DailyMail.com '100-knot' 115mph UFO speed is 'plausible'
It was one of the pivotal UFO videos captured by the US military that helped thrust the once-fringe topic into the mainstream — the so-called 'GOFAST' infrared video filmed by US Navy fighter pilots off the coast of the Atlantic in January 2015.
But NASA claims it has debunked any exotic or extraterrestrial theories for GOFAST, boasting new analysis that 'reveals a less extraordinary interpretation.'
In a landmark advisory report released Thursday, the US space agency said — among other findings — that the GOFAST UFO was 'most likely' nothing more than a conventional object 'drifting with the wind.'
But meteorological records, climate scientists, US Navy witnesses, and even computer simulations developed and tested by diehard UFO skeptics have cast doubt on the likelihood that NASA's GOFAST explanation will hold fast much longer.
At the heart of the issue: NASA's experts, by their own admission, failed to check their math on the UFO's possible 'wind drift' against the global climate science community's public wind-speed data from the likely time of the GOFAST sighting.
Public interest in UFOs heightened in 2017 with the leak of three Navy pilot infrared videos that captured 'unidentified anomalous phenomena' (UAP). Above, a still from one of these videos, GOFAST, which NASA's expert UAP advisory panel attempted to explain as terrestrial this week
NASA UAP panelist Josh Semeter, director of Boston University's Center for Space Physics, used technical details from the military infrared video's user interface to calculate the altitude and speed of the 'GOFAST' UFO. But Semeter's analysis 'neglected' wind data from the event
To be sure, despite their own skepticism, NASA's UFO advisory panel did otherwise leave plenty of room for UFO true believers, noting in their final report that 'alien technology operating in Earth's atmosphere' was 'at least plausible.'
But, while the panel expressed hope that their efforts would help reduce the stigma around the reporting and scientific analysis of UAP, NASA's experts put forth a theory in their final report apparently intended to bring GOFAST back down to Earth.
In doing so, the space agency ignored voices from the squadron of Navy pilots that filmed GOFAST and the no-less-famous GIMBAL infrared UFO video, recorded that same evening in January 2015.
At the NASA group's open meeting last May, one of its UAP advisory panel members Josh Semeter — an engineering professor and director of Boston University's Center for Space Physics — presented his preliminary analysis of the GOFAST video.
Semeter made his case that the GOFAST was likely an object coasting in a strong breeze primarily by working with data present on the infrared video's display: the same intel a Navy weapons systems officer would use in the backseat of a fighter jet.
'Fortunately the information needed to determine the altitude and velocity of this object is contained on the display,' Semeter explained.
NASA's study group of 16 experts ranging from physicists to astronauts was formed in June 2020 to study unclassified UFO sightings from civilian, government and commercial sectors
Based on his trigonometric calculations of the fighter jet's flight path as the jet filmed the 'GOFAST' UAP, itself a moving target, Semeter estimated that the mystery object was cruising at just about 40 miles per hour (mph).
'That's a velocity that is consistent with wind speeds at 13,000 feet,' Semeter told his fellow NASA-appointed advisors this May. And, in fact, the calculated altitude for the GOFAST UAP, according to Semeter and others, was indeed about 13,000 feet.
Semeter's calculations emerged largely unchallenged in the NASA panel's final UFO report published this past Thursday — except for one significant caveat.
'Our calculation has neglected wind effects on the aircraft,' NASA's UFO report stated, 'and thus there is uncertainty in this result.'
But this dry note of caution might drastically understate the importance of these wind effects, to judge from both Semeter's critics and his allies.
Crucially, the Navy pilot witnesses heard in the GIMBAL video, which was filmed in the same area within approximately 15 minutes of the GOFAST video, state that the wind at their altitude of about 25,000 feet was then blowing '120 knots to the west.'
The skeptic's most conservative run of the simulation would have the GOFAST UFO traveling at 100 knots or 115 mph.
'This suggests that the object could not be a balloon,' as one Metabunk poster noted, 'because it needs intrinsic speed in addition [to] wind speed at 13,000 ft.'
As the US National Weather Service notes, 'wind speed generally increases with increasing height,' and the Metabunk simulation estimates that 120 knots of wind at 25,000 feet could correspond in this case to 50-to-80 knots of wind at 13,000 feet.
But even with this 50-to-80 knots of wind helping the GOFAST sail along, the UFO would still be going too fast: twice as fast as the air pushing at its back.
While Mick West praised Semeter's work for NASA last May, calling it a rare example of 'peer review' in UFO research, the prominent UFO skeptic also felt compelled to note that the wind issue left the GOFAST case still far from identified.
'There are some open questions (and unknowns) re wind,' West posted to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, 'but I think this basic analysis is correct.'
While the prominent UFO skeptic Mick West praised NASA UFO advisor Josh Semeter's work last May, calling it a rare example of 'peer review' in UFO research, West also felt compelled to note that the wind speed issue left the Navy's GOFAST UFO case far from resolved
Other observers, however, were less forgiving of the gaps in this NASA analysis.
One, a former Obama-era appointee to the US Department of Defense named Marik von Rennenkampff, called Semeter's omission of the reported wind conditions a 'significant error.'
'The 'GOFAST' video shows a small, sphere-like object with no wings, engines or thermal signature demonstrating 'very interesting apparent maneuvers.'' von Rennenkampff wrote in an opinion piece for The Hill.
But accurate wind speed data for the time of the GOFAST sighting need not be investigated solely via computer models and the recorded statements of the pilots present themselves that day.
Meteorologists and climate science researchers use ERA5 to obtain reliable, global, hour-by-hour weather information for academic research, commercial aviation and government policy making purposes.
It was exactly this kind of data that NASA's UAP advisory panel leader, astrophysicist David Spergel, referenced when introducing the panel's final report this Thursday.
'We looked at NASA's assets,' Spergel said. 'While they provide a comprehensive picture of the ocean, the Earth's surface and atmosphere for studying our evolving planet, they typically do not have the resolution needed for UAP events.'
'However,' he added, 'by providing data on environmental conditions, they can complement other data on UAP.'
In this case, such data would have complimented the infrared video data taken by the Navy and the Navy pilots' witness testimony.
It is not clear from NASA's UFO report whether or not they even tasked the agency's military liaison Mark McInerney, now NASA's first director of UAP research, with requesting more detailed information on the time or place of the GOFAST event.
Such efforts might have assisted the panel in obtaining ERA5 data proximate to the date, region and elevations of the GOFAST UFO episode — like those obtained by the DailyMail.com from a PhD climate researcher who wishes to remain anonymous.
Data from the ERA5 reanalyzed climate dataset, for both January 21st (left) and January 24th (right), show that only the later date had wind speeds approaching 120 knots near the region or cruising elevation of 25,000 feet reported by the Navy pilots
The ERA5 maps are marked with a red dot off the lower Eastern seaboard near Naval Station Mayport in Jacksonville, Florida — in an effort to approximate where the Navy fighter pilots reported witnessing the GIMBAL and GOFAST UAP in January 2015
Two likely dates have emerged as the most probable candidates for the Navy's GIMBAL and GOFAST UFO events, which occurred in late January 2015.
In a 2019 statement to Freedom of Information Act researcher John Greenewald, an official spokesperson for the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare, Joseph Gradisher, stated that both sightings occurred on January 21, 2015.
But metadata embedded within the original GIMBAL video, as well as an unclassified Department of Defense email, reviewed for a conference paper presented to the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics place both sightings on the evening of January 24th, 2015.
The DailyMail.com can confirm the likelihood of these two dates from previous interviews with retired Navy fighter pilot Lt. Ryan Graves, whose squadron reported the GIMBAL and GOFAST events.
Data from the ERA5 reanalyzed climate dataset, for both the 21st and 24th of January, show that only the later date had wind speeds approaching 120 knots near the region or cruising elevation of 25,000 feet reported by the Navy pilots.
The ERA5 maps are marked with a red dot off the lower Eastern seaboard near Naval Station Mayport in Jacksonville, Florida — in an effort to approximate where the Navy fighter pilots reported witnessing the GIMBAL and GOFAST UAP in January 2015.
These ERA5 maps, alongside the DoD email and the infrared video metadata, help to corroborate the Navy witness heard in the GIMBAL video who describes the wind speed at 25,000 feet as '120 knots to the west.'
The period for high winds at high altitude persisted from, at least, 4:00 PM ET (21:00 UTC) to 8:00 PM ET (01:00 UTC).
The ERA5 data helps confirm pilot testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee that the sightings occurred 'toward the end of one of the night flights.' These records were obtained by Freedom of Information Act researcher John Greenewald, owner of theblackvault.com
When the agency first announced its UAP advisory panel in June 2022, NASA's Assistant Deputy Associate Administrator for Research Daniel Evans told CNBC that the budget would be 'certainly no more than $100,000.'
Evans said that NASA's budget for the UAP study would be 'very consistent' with standard grant review panels.
It's unclear how much of the 16-person team's modest six-figure budget went toward Semeter's analysis of the GOFAST UAP video.
Perhaps significantly, Semeter's trigonometric analysis (right) largely echoed work that had already been previously posted to the skeptics' forum Metabunk in 2018 (left)
Josh Semeter of NASA's UAP advisory panel told the DailyMail.com via email (above), 'Yes, a 100-knot object ground speed is within the range of plausible solutions.' Semeter noted that NASA's report was meant to 'highlight challenges and limitations in current UAP investigations'
Christophe Spitzer Isbert — a French UFO researcher whose work on a UAP event near Hessdalen in Norway was cited by the French government's UFO research body Geipan — told the DailyMail.com that he believes NASA should have not rushed its GOFAST opinions into publication
'A small set of assumptions replaced hypothesis testing,' Isbert said.
'Assuming the object was lighter than air because it was slow and did not radiate heat does not constitute evidence to support the balloon hypothesis,' he added.
Isbert expressed his opinion that the US space agency should have attempted to collect a wider set of undisputed evidence on the GOFAST case, perhaps in the form of an official Navy report, before leveraging its stature with these public comments.
As an example, he recommended one possible method to help confirm NASA's wind-blown hypothesis, a method that also used only data available in the video itself.
'Tumbling on any axis would be visible as aspect ratio changes (length vs height),' Isbert noted. 'This would also be predicted by the balloon hypothesis since the object is not [perfectly] spherical.'
When reached for comment Monday morning, Josh Semeter of NASA's UAP advisory panel told the DailyMail.com via email, 'Yes, a 100-knot object ground speed is within the range of plausible solutions.'
'But based on uncertainties in wind vectors and trajectory model,' Semeter noted, 'a speed below 40 knots cannot be ruled out.'
The NASA panelist emphasized that the advisory group's intention by including this top-down or overhead 2-dimensional analysis of the GOFAST video, 'with wind effects left as an uncertainty, range data assumed reliable, etc.' was intended to 'highlight challenges and limitations in current UAP investigations.'
In the GOFAST, as in many other tantalizing and vexing UAP cases, Semeter said, 'critical data and confidence intervals are lacking.'
'This is, in fact, a central theme of the report.'
The unknown object was captured in the grainy, black and white 'Go Fast' video taken by a fighter pilot's head-up display, with him saying: 'Ohhh, go it!'
Dr Jon Kosloski, director of the Defense Department's All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), testified under oath in a hearing held by the Armed Service Committee, saying the infrared UFO video showed nothing more than 'a trick of the eye.'
He attributed the UFO's apparent high-speed skimming over the ocean to an optical illusion, called 'parallax,' but the office did not identify the object otherwise.
Kosloski only discussed the UFO's apparent speed, citing unspecified information contradicting public meteorological data.
'The Go Fast,' Dr Kosloski testified under oath, 'looks like an object flying very fast over the water, very close to the water.'
However, climate scientists, meteorological data, veteran Navy witnesses and even a computer simulation continue to cast doubt on the validity of the government's 'parallax' theory.
'I don't think everything is being taken into account,' former US Navy lieutenant and F/A-18F fighter pilot Ryan Graves said of AARO's new explanation.
'If the AARO office actually spoke with the pilots that were involved in that incident, they would know the objects were part of a larger formation of objects, and thus very anomalous to be operating 300 miles off the coast and within 50 miles of a US aircraft carrier.'
Public interest in UFOs heightened in 2017 with the leak of three Navy pilot infrared videos that captured 'unidentified anomalous phenomena' (UAP). Above, a still from one of these videos, 'Go Fast,' which the Pentagon tried to explain this week as a prosaic object blowing in the wind
Dr Jon Kosloski (above) - the new director of the Defense Department's All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) - told lawmakers that the US Navy's famous 'Go Fast' infrared UFO video shows nothing more than 'a trick of the eye called 'parallax''
The 'Go Fast' footage was made public two years after pilots captured it from the USS Theodore Roosevelt off the east coast of Florida.
Lt Graves told NBC News after the AARO hearing that the 'Go Fast' UFO was just one of multiple swarms of UFOs cited by aircrew with the USS Roosevelt as a flight safety risk, including the equally famous 'Gimbal' UFO video.
But Kosloski assured the court that there was a reasonable explanation for what the pilots saw that day.
The Pentagon official said a geospatial intelligence analysis, using trigonometry, what 'very carefully done.
'We assess with high confidence that the object is not actually close to the water, but is rather closer to 13,000 feet,' he continued.
The speed of the F/A-18 Navy fighter jet that recorded the 'Go Fast' video, Kosloski argued, created the illusion that the object was traveling at an inexplicably high speed.
Dr Kosloski - a former scientist with the National Security Agency (NSA) - is the second person to serve as director of the Pentagon's UFO hunting All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). Above, the new AARO boss shows the Senate a slide of 'trigonometry' analysis
Above, the key slide on the 'Go Fast' UFO from AARO's presentation before the US Senate
Data from the ERA5 reanalyzed climate dataset, for both January 21st (left) and January 24th (right), show that only the later date had wind speeds approaching 120 knots near the region or cruising elevation of 25,000 feet reported by the Navy pilots
'As the platform is flying and capturing the object, if it is closer to the platform at a higher altitude,' Dr Kosloski told the Senate, 'a trick of the eye called 'parallax' makes it look like the object is moving much faster.'
'Analysis of contemporaneous weather patterns in the area at the time of the event,' according to one of the AARO director's slides, which were presented under oath, 'indicate winds were approximately 60 knots at 13,000 feet.'
Crucially, however, Navy pilot witnesses heard in the GIMBAL video, filmed in the same area roughly 15 minutes after the 'Go Fast' video, stated that the wind at their altitude of about 25,000 feet was then blowing '120 knots to the west.'
The skeptic's most conservative run of the simulation would have the UFO traveling at 100 knots or 115 mph.
Public wind speed data from the time and place of the 'Go Fast' sighting confirms this analysis collated from multiple systems by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.
The data is publicly available through the organization's ERA5 reanalyzed climate dataset, which is used by researchers to obtain reliable, global, hour-by-hour weather information.
The ERA5 maps are marked with a red dot off the lower Eastern seaboard near Naval Station Mayport in Jacksonville, Florida - in an effort to approximate where the Navy fighter pilots reported witnessing the GIMBAL and GOFAST UAP in January 2015
ERA5 data proximate to the date, region and elevations of the 'Go fast' UFO episode were obtained by the DailyMail.com in September of 2023 by a PhD climate researcher who wished to remain anonymous.
When this ERA5 data pointing toward a 100-knot 'Go Fast' UFO was shown to Josh Semeter of NASA's UAP advisory panel, the Boston University professor told the DailyMail.com via email: 'Yes, a 100-knot object ground speed is within the range of plausible solutions.'
'But based on uncertainties in wind vectors and trajectory model,' Semeter added, 'a speed below 40 knots cannot be ruled out.'
Regardless of the object's speed, Lt Graves noted that the object was not only still a UFO but that its presence with 'a whole fleet' of other UFOs in restricted US airspace remains not only a mystery but a serious flight safety concern.
'I would argue that [...] specifically the 'Go Fast' video itself was never really interesting because it was 'going fast,'' Lt Graves said.
'The pilot certainly didn't say that, nor did they name the video,' the veteran Navy fighter pilot added. 'If anything, the Pentagon simply debunked their own naming for that video.'
Planetary Scientists Create Geological Map of Moon’s Oriental Basin
Planetary Scientists Create Geological Map of Moon’s Oriental Basin
Researchers at the Planetary Science Institute have compiled a 1:200,000-scale geological map of the lunar Orientale basin, focusing on identifying the most widespread and accessible occurrences of impact melt deposits from the basin-forming impact to help guide sample-return missions.
1:3M mapping (originally mapped at 1:200,000) of a portion of the Orientale basin. The small craters near ‘Pa’ (red and yellow stars) excavate Orientale melt from beneath the mare and serve as a useful type example for similar small craters in similar basins. Maunder, the large crater in the NW part of the map, is Eratosthenian in age.
Image credit: Runyon et al., doi: 10.3847/PSJ/ad862f.
Billions of years ago, a giant asteroid struck the Moon with so much energy that it melted rock until it was super-heated and white-hot, or what scientists call impact melt.
This eventually cooled and hardened, creating a multi-ringed impact crater that is known today as Orientale basin.
Having samples of impact melt is valuable because scientists can use laboratory techniques to determine the exact time of the melt’s solidification, and therefore the age of the impact.
The problem is, geologic processes after impact — such as lava flows and smaller impacts — have buried and mixed up much of the original impact melt.
But parsing out the impact crater from which a rock originated is worth the effort because that knowledge can help scientists understand how the impact rate changed throughout the Solar System’s history, as well as how impacts shaped the Moon, the Earth and early life on our planet.
To identify original basin impact melt, Planetary Science Institute researcher Kirby Runyon and colleagues created a new high-resolution geologic map of the Orientale basin.
“We chose to map Oriental basin because it’s simultaneously old and young,” Dr. Runyon said.
“We think it’s about 3.8 billion years old, which is young enough to still have its impact melt freshly exposed at the surface, yet old enough to have accumulated large impact craters on top of it as well, complicating the picture.”
The Moon’s Orientale basin is a massive lunar crater that looks like a bullseye and is about the size of Texas. Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
“We chose to map Orientale to test melt-identification strategies for older, more degraded impact basins whose ages we’d like to know.”
The scientists used BFsc — shorthand for smooth, cracked basin floor material — to map original, unpolluted impact melt from the Orientale basin’s formation.
Those rocks record the age of the basin, and parts of this melt deposit would have been buried beneath other geologic units, such as the lava flows mapped in red.
Stars mark rims and debris from smaller impact craters that have unearthed previously buried Orientale melt.
So, if rocks from starred locations turn out to be the same age as rocks from the BFsc areas, geologists know they can rely on rocks from similar small craters on other, more degraded basins to record the ages of those basins’ formation.
“We hope that our mapping method can be used in other impact basins across the Moon so that future sample return missions could test this approach by sampling rocks from areas similar to those highlighted on the map,” the authors said.
“If samples collected from any of the starred areas on our map are the same age as samples collected from the BFsc areas that denote original impact melt, then we have confidence that we can apply the impact melt sampling technique to other basins.”
The Moon: Mare Orientale
The team’s map appears in a paper published in the Planetary Science Journal.
Kirby Runyon et al. 2024. Orientale Basin as a Guide for Identifying Lunar Basin Datable Impact Melt and Assessing Impact Melt Differentiation. Planet. Sci. J 5 (11): 249; doi: 10.3847/PSJ/ad862f
This article is a version of a press-release provided by the Planetary Science Institute.
Mystery in Arkansas: Alien Lights, Bigfoot, and Underground Bases Revealed!
Mystery in Arkansas: Alien Lights, Bigfoot, and Underground Bases Revealed!
The Ozark region of Arkansas is no stranger to peculiar tales, but the events surrounding the Broad Camp Crystal Mine take the concept of strangeness to a new level. From glowing orbs to claims of underground alien bases, the mine has become a hotspot for paranormal enthusiasts. The story doesn’t end there—it intertwines with near-death experiences, Bigfoot sightings, and unexplainable phenomena, painting a surreal tapestry of mystery and intrigue. Let’s dive deeper into the unfolding enigma.
The Mysterious Broad Camp Crystal Mine
Located in the heart of Arkansas, the Broad Camp Crystal Mine was initially purchased by Cheryl and Orville Murphy with the intention of developing a campground and music venue. However, plans shifted when they discovered that their property was rich in quartz crystals. Along with the crystals, the couple began experiencing unexplained phenomena that led them to reimagine their venture as a crystal tourism destination.
Their experiences began in 2017 when beams of light inexplicably appeared on the hilltop. These lights defied conventional physics, emitting no shadows and displaying unusual magnetism, which left fence posts and other metallic objects magnetized.
Levitating Rocks and Magnetic Mysteries
Adding to the intrigue, levitating rocks have been reported at the mine. These aren’t mere optical illusions; videos have captured objects inexplicably moving or hovering. The phenomenon has led some to speculate about an energy source beneath the ground, potentially linked to the region’s quartz-rich geology.
Researchers and witnesses have also noted the absence of shadows around these mysterious beams of light. Additionally, metallic objects in the vicinity have shown evidence of magnetization, further fueling theories about advanced, unearthly technology or natural geological forces at play.
A Link to the Paranormal
The events at the Broad Camp Crystal Mine are not isolated. Witnesses have reported glowing orbs and strange occurrences, phenomena often associated with other paranormal hotspots. Josh White, the son of the Murphys, described seeing orbs appearing and disappearing among the trees—a common feature in areas linked to high strangeness.
Furthermore, the phenomenon extends beyond Arkansas. In Bailey, Colorado, another site tied to paranormal activity features a “portal tree” linked to alleged interdimensional gateways. Researchers suggest that these sites may be connected through a vast underground network of energy points, adding another layer of mystery to the puzzle.
The Role of Bigfoot
Bigfoot has also made its presence felt in the Arkansas saga. Visitors to the mine have reported sightings of Sasquatch-like creatures. One notable account described a creature peering into a truck before disappearing up a hill with ease. Others have claimed encounters with entities resembling Bigfoot that exhibit red eyes and appear to guide or interact with humans.
The connection between Bigfoot and orbs has been noted in other paranormal research, suggesting a possible link between these enigmatic beings and the unexplained energy phenomena observed at the mine.
Underground Bases and Alien Connections
A recurring theory among investigators and witnesses is the presence of an underground base beneath the Broad Camp Crystal Mine. Some, like Navajo medicine man Garrett Fowler, claim the site houses an ancient “star base” powered by crystal technology. According to Fowler, this base utilizes the energy of the quartz crystals to support advanced systems, including anti-gravitational technology.
Orville Murphy himself described an otherworldly experience when he encountered a mysterious beam of light. He claimed the light transported him through a tunnel-like structure filled with vibrant colors and dropped him off at a different location. Both he and a companion reported disorientation and described being “tagged” by human-like beings during the event.
The Worldwide Meditation Event
One of the most recent and dramatic incidents occurred during a worldwide meditation event in 2023. Participants, including Orville, lit bonfires as part of the collective ritual. During the event, a massive column of light appeared, captured on trail cameras. Witnesses described the light as otherworldly, emitting an intense glow that failed to illuminate its surroundings—a stark contrast to normal light sources.
Science, Speculation, and Skepticism
While the stories are undeniably compelling, skeptics question the validity of the claims. Some suggest the lights and magnetism could be natural phenomena, such as piezoelectric effects from the quartz crystals. Others remain unconvinced, pointing to the possibility of hoaxes or elaborate marketing tactics.
However, the recurring themes of portals, underground bases, and interdimensional beings are consistent with accounts from other global hotspots of high strangeness. The consistency of these reports adds weight to the idea that something extraordinary may indeed be happening in Arkansas.
The Broad Camp Crystal Mine stands as a beacon of mystery, drawing those intrigued by the paranormal and the unexplained. Whether the events are the result of geological anomalies, advanced extraterrestrial activity, or interdimensional phenomena, the mine continues to captivate and mystify.
For now, the Broad Camp Crystal Mine remains a place of questions rather than answers. Its beams of light, magnetized objects, and alleged underground base challenge our understanding of reality and invite further exploration into the unknown.
Underground Bases and Alien Lights – What’s Really Happening in Arkansas? - 32.19 - MU Podcast
The Bigfoot Alien Connection Revealed - Full Movie
The topic of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) and the possibility that some form of alien or non-human intelligence is visiting Earth has captured immense public interest in recent years.
However, in a thought-provoking paper accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union, Scottish philosopher, and professor at King’s College London, Dr. Tony Milligan, argues that this increased belief in alien visitation is fast becoming a widespread societal issue, posing challenges to science communication, government policy, and even cultural integrity.
In his forthcoming paper, Equivocal Encounters: Alien Visitation Claims as a Societal Problem, Dr. Milligan suggests the rise of social media and the increasing influence of UAP claims in public and political discourse demands a more robust response than the periodic debunking efforts traditionally employed by the scientific community.
“This belief is slightly paradoxical as we have zero evidence that aliens even exist,” Dr. Milligan wrote in an article published by The Conversation. “If beliefs of this sort, in conspiracy, concealment, and collaboration, have made it into the mainstream, then periodic debunking has simply not worked.”
Dr. Milligan contends that the alien visitation narrative, once confined to countercultural fringes and conspiracy theorists, is now making serious inroads into the political mainstream.
In the past year, the belief in alien visitation has only intensified, largely fueled by several former government officials who have claimed that the U.S. government has secretly recovered crashed vehicles of non-human origin.
In 2023, The Debrief was the first media outlet to report that David Grusch, a former Air Force officer and intelligence specialist with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), had filed an official complaint with the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG).
Grusch alleges that the U.S. government has recovered several vehicles “of exotic origin—attributed to non-human intelligence, whether extraterrestrial or otherwise unknown—based on their unique vehicle morphologies, material science analyses, and distinctive atomic arrangements and radiological signatures.”
In July 2023, Grusch reiterated his claims under oath before the Congressional Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs. In response, the Pentagon has denied that the Department of Defense (DoD) has recovered any “exotic technologies” or operates secret alien reverse engineering programs.
Because Grusch’s assertions of recovered alien craft are closely tied to classified information and national security programs, it remains virtually impossible for journalists, scientists, or the general public to verify or refute his statements.
While much of the fascination with aliens is harmless or confined to bickering on social media, Dr. Milligan argues that its expansion into mainstream belief systems can also have troubling consequences.
The persistence of these beliefs—and the increasing pressure on governments and scientific institutions to address them—has stretched beyond simple curiosity into a problem that touches various societal sectors.
Dr. Milligan suggests that the traditional approach to handling alien visitation claims—periodic public debunking—is no longer sufficient. He further argues that dismissing alien visitation narratives without engaging in deeper discourse may even be counterproductive.
“If we hold that the practice of science in a democratic society requires the answerability of the science community to sustained public concerns, then something more robust may be due,” Dr. Milligan asserts. “This will be the case even if the end story that is told (‘no aliens, no cover-up, no conspiracy’) is likely to be the same.”
The exponential rise in social media platforms has amplified the potential for unsubstantiated claims, making it harder for scientific facts to break through the “background noise” that detracts from serious scientific discourse. The focus often shifts to debunking sensational claims rather than fostering meaningful scientific dialogue.
Dr. Milligan acknowledged that social media or news outlets, like The Debrief, have played a particular role in shaping the conversation surrounding alien visitation beliefs. However, he says that science, as a whole, could do a better job addressing unscientific populism.
“There are responsibilities that all of us have. I don’t think that we could police social media even if we wanted to. It’s too big, too varied and too entrenched,” Dr. Milligan explained to The Debrief in an email. “But people from the sciences could do much more outreach and aim for a stronger ongoing presence so that people can start to see the difference between real science and plausible imitations.”
“I also think that analytic skills (especially argument building and recognition of the difference between good and bad arguments) could be taken more seriously across academia,” he added. “In recent years, it has been watered down. Pseudoscience thrives upon bad argumentation, weak analogies, fallacies, and grudge argumentation. But without a solid analytic background, it is hard for younger academics to recognize the box of tricks that get used, and so rather than being easily recognized as bad reasoning, pseudoscience can sound a lot like fearless thinking.”
In fields like biology and astronomy, where public understanding is already limited, the intrusion of alien visitation narratives can further complicate the communication of scientific findings.
“Particular difficulties get in the way of astrobiology outreach,” Dr. Milligan notes. “We are making progress towards understanding the origins, emergence, distribution, and survival of rudimentary life forms. However, discussions about ‘life’ and ‘space’ can easily be confused with storytelling about aliens crashing into hillsides.”
For Dr. Milligan, this is particularly concerning in the context of cultural astronomy—where astronomy intersects with indigenous cultures. He points out that Indigenous storytelling, which is deeply respected by many astronomers, is increasingly being muddled with alien visitation narratives. This fusion of indigenous origin stories with modern UFO claims can distort traditional narratives, making it difficult to separate fact from fiction.
“Astronomy faces a specialized problem because it requires ground infrastructure in indigenous areas where local people may have been worked over pretty badly by the ‘ancient aliens’ people and convinced that ‘the scientific establishment’ is concealing the truth about ancient indigenous technologies,” Dr. Milligan said. “Responsible siting of astronomy infrastructure draws upon a sense of the importance of cultural astronomy, but that becomes really tough when authentic cultural astronomy gets intermingled with new age tales and suspicions.”
Despite his criticisms, Dr. Milligan does not call for an immediate dismissal of the legitimate study and investigation of unidentified aerial phenomena or possible near-Earth evidence of alien life.
Instead, he advocates for a more measured yet engaged response. He suggests that while current responses may not be sufficient for much longer, it is not yet time for a full-scale paradigm shift in how science tackles the issue.
In his paper, Dr. Milligan points to scientists like Harvard’s Dr. Avi Loeb, and his establishment of the Galileo Project, or Dr. Martin Elvis, who have advocated for scientific research programs exploring alien visitation claims in a more structured manner.
In his paper, Dr. Milligan notes about the Galileo Project and Dr. Loeb, “Rather than targeting the wilder horizons of dubious testimony about abduction, they have focused upon equivocal material evidence in forms such as possible derelict craft and possible physical residues.”
Critics have suggested that Dr. Loeb’s scientific approach to hunting for alien visitors is “shaped too much by wanting to believe” and “too entangled in the kinds of populist narratives.”
However, Dr. Milligan points out that based on current attitudes towards topics like UAP or alien visitation, “it may simply be difficult to build any robust SRP program dedicated to [the] evaluation of artifact claims without involving a disproportionate number of people who also want to believe, and who have a certain attitude towards the conservatism of more mainstream lines of scientific research.”
Belief in alien visits to Earth is spiraling out of control – here's why that's so dangerous
While Dr. Milligan does not necessarily endorse scientific research programs focused solely on hunting for near-Earth alien life, he acknowledged that such programs could have merit, provided they maintain scientific rigor.
“If someone comes to me and says, ‘I have a research group of properly trained people, none of us are here because we believe in a range of weird stuff. Everyone has been screened, and nobody believes in parapsychology, Bigfoot, or a conspiracy at Roswell. What we are going to do is to look at objects like ‘Oumuamua and ask ‘is this an artifact or natural object?’ Well, that sounds ok, and they might turn out decent conference papers,” Dr. Mulligan told The Debrief. “Research programs of this sort are fundable, they add to a sense within the science community that we really have looked at what should be looked at. Really, it is just an extension of SETI, with a broadly similar set of limited expectations.”
“But this sort of program does not need massive or questionable levels of funding. The research does not need a big consortium, or the colossal effort required to image black holes,” Dr. Milligan adds. “I wouldn’t recommend that anyone devote their career to this sort of monitoring, but it would be scientific monitoring rather than pseudoscience, and even when it keeps saying ‘we looked and there is still nothing to see,’ it would still contribute to our wider understanding of why some celestial objects move in odd ways.”
Although Dr. Milligan expresses skepticism about the likelihood of alien contact, he stresses that societal beliefs around these matters are social phenomena worthy of serious attention. Even in the absence of actual visitation, the fact that so many people believe in the possibility creates ripple effects in science, government policy, and public discourse.
The philosopher cautions that any scientific programs dedicated to investigating alien visitation claims should remain firmly within the boundaries of natural science.
He proposes that future scientific inquiries meet specific minimal requirements. First, any such endeavor must hold independent value and contribute to scientific knowledge, even if no alien artifacts are found.
Second, efforts must minimize the noise surrounding these claims, maintaining a clear and objective communication strategy to prevent further sensationalism. Finally, evidential standards must be high, ensuring that any scientific claim of alien visitation adheres to the rigorous standards typically demanded by scientific inquiry.
In other words, any scientific inquiry into alien visitation should be rigorous and grounded in the same evidentiary standards applied to any other area of research. With this rigor, such programs avoid becoming entangled in pseudoscience and speculation, which would only exacerbate the societal problem he believes needs to be addressed.
Still, Dr. Milligan warns that any scientific effort to seriously examine alien visitation claims must tread carefully to avoid fueling further sensationalism. He highlights the risk that initial phases of research could inadvertently give credence to unfounded claims, leading to more noise and misinformation.
“Legitimizing pseudoscientific beliefs is a real risk. Anything that we can do might go bad. But it may be easier now, rather than later, to separate out legitimate scientific inquiry from everything else,” Dr. Milligan told The Debrief. “One way to do this is to take the most likely option for a human-alien encounter and then investigate it in line with proper scientific norms.”
Dr. Milligan concludes that while we may not need a full-scale paradigm shift just yet, scientists and policymakers must start thinking seriously about how to respond to the growing influence of alien visitation claims. The challenge, it seems, will be to address these societal beliefs without lending them undue credibility.
In an age where misinformation spreads faster than facts, Dr. Milligan’s call for a more thoughtful, robust response to alien visitation claims is more relevant than ever.
Dr. Milligan’s paper is expected to attract criticism from steadfast believers who assert that alien visitations to Earth have already occurred or are currently taking place. Recent data indicates that this group of “believers” may comprise as much as 34% of the U.S. population.
However, his core argument emphasizes the need for more verifiable scientific evidence and a reduction in unsubstantiated beliefs surrounding alien visitations. He advocates for a disciplined, evidence-based approach that prioritizes empirical data over anecdotal accounts and speculative theories.
Dr. Milligan asserts that this focus on rigorous scientific inquiry is essential not only for skeptics and debunkers who seek factual accuracy but also for devoted alien “believers” who desire credible proof to support their convictions.
By calling for a shift away from belief-driven narratives and toward systematic research, Dr. Milligan advocates for a more informed and rational discourse that benefits all parties interested in the truth behind alien visitation claims.
“I think that the first thing we do is to address the spread of these ideas within the scientific and broader academic communities by separating out what we can do real research around from all the other stuff,” Dr. Milligan explained. “We probably need a couple of working groups with interdisciplinary skills (expertise in populism and its spread, some people from the space sciences, and so on) looking at the spread of this stuff.”
“Beyond that, we can certainly have worthwhile programs looking at novel interstellar objects like ‘Oumuamua, or considering how we might remotely detect an advanced technological civilization across the immense distances of space. Work of this sort has value even when it turns out that all objects are naturally occurring objects and no known star system is showing known signs of intelligent life.”
“That’s all Carl Sagan stuff rather than Mulder stuff.”
Tim McMillan is a retired law enforcement executive, investigative reporter and co-founder of The Debrief. His writing typically focuses on defense, national security, the Intelligence Community and topics related to psychology. You can follow Tim on Twitter:@LtTimMcMillan. Tim can be reached by email: tim@thedebrief.org or through encrypted email:LtTimMcMillan@protonmail.com
Space is not what we see at night or what NASA has shown us for years. Amid stars, planets, and other celestial bodies, there are much more vivid, bizarre, and strange things hidden from our eyes. Several astronauts strongly believe in the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations including Gordon Cooper, Buzz Aldrin, and Story Musgrave.
Many conspiracy theorists believe that NASA knew that Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong had an encounter with aliens, which is why they erased 40 rolls of film from the Apollo 11 mission. It was claimed by Bob Dean, a United States Army Command Sergeant Major.
The crew Of Sts-80, Seated (From Left-to-right) Kent V. Rominger, Pilot; Kenneth D. Cockrell, Commander. Standing (Left To Right) Mission Specialists Tamara E. Jernigan, F. Story Musgrave, And Thomas D. Jones. Photo Credit: Nasa
According to a report shared by Gaia, there is a transcript between Aldrin and Armstrong where the two had witnessed extraterrestrial activities on the Moon during the Apollo 11 mission.
Apollo 11: “Those are giant things. No, no, no, this is not an optical illusion. No one is going to believe this.”
NASA: “What… what…. what? What the hell is happening What’s wrong with you?”
Apollo 11: “They’re here, under the surface.”
Apart from this, what former NASA astronaut Franklin Story Musgrave said about his experience in space would shock anyone. He claimed to have seen an 8-foot-long snake, white in color, floating through space. It is hard to explain how a snake could reach space, but Musgrave has never denied it.
Here is Musgrave’s quote from the TV series “Sightings, ” Sunday, April 9, 1995:
“On two of my missions, and I still don’t have an answer, um, I have seen, a snake out there, six seven eight feet long. It is rubbery because it has internal waves in it and it follows you for a rather long period of time. The more you fly in space the more you see an incredible amount of things out there and THAT sorta brings to you, really a certainty, that other living creatures are out there. Some incredibly primitive, more primitive, some just ah just proteins coming together, amino acids and some just single-cell organisms and other civilizations that have been around for a million years that are doing unimaginable kinds of things.”
Fig 1: Alleged Photograph of snake-like UFO captured during NASA STS-61 mission
Fig 2: Alleged Photograph of snake-like UFO captured during NASA STS-61 mission
There is even a video (see below) where a snake-like creature is floating in the Earth’s stratosphere. Musgrave said: “Some are incredibly primitive – some just proteins coming together, amino acids, and some just single-celled organisms. And other civilizations have been around for millions of years that are doing unimaginable kinds of things.”
Musgrave (85) is also a retired colonel of the United States Marine Corps, physician, and mathematician, holds six academic degrees, and is simply a legendary figure in US history. He spent a total of 1,281 hours, 59 minutes, and 22 seconds during his six space shuttle missions in space including 27 hours of spacewalk. Besides, he developed a spacesuit for space shuttle astronauts.
This is not the end of strange anomalies watched by the astronauts in space. Retired astronaut Leroy Chiao, a commander of Expedition 10, along with his crew members witnessed a set of bright lights in the formation of an upside-down tick mark in space.
The description of an unknown snake-like creature or craft given by Musgrave was also spotted in March 2019, when one of the passengers on a commercial airline flight from Phoenix to Portland captured two long dark objects, having long tails or tentacles. Some viewers compared it with the squid lime sentinels from the Matrix series, while others believe that it was possibly something from another dimension that slipped through momentarily.
Similarly, the New York Post shared a video of a UFO in 2018, shot by a passenger while cruising over the Aegean Sea that also shows a creature with a long tail. The opinions were divided into two groups, where people from one group believed it was just a hoax while others also witnessed the same encounter while flying in the plane.
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Listen to the 'scariest sound in the world': Ancient Aztec Death Whistle that sounds like the 'scream of 1,000 corpses' STILL terrifies people to this day, study reveals
Listen to the 'scariest sound in the world': Ancient Aztec Death Whistle that sounds like the 'scream of 1,000 corpses' STILL terrifies people to this day, study reveals
The wail of the Aztec Death Whistle was the last thing many human sacrifices ever heard before they met their untimely end.
The chilling noise is described as the 'scariest sound in the world', and is somewhere between a spooky gust of whistling wind and 'the scream of a thousand corpses'.
Now, a study has found that this instrument is just as terrifying for people today as it was 500 years ago.
Scientists from the University of Zurich played the sound of the Aztec Death Whistle to a group of volunteers and recorded how their brains responded.
Participants who heard it reported feeling frightened, while the brain scans showed that the sound puts the listener on high alert, activating neural regions associated with core emotions like rage, fear, and grief.
Researchers believe the whistles could have been used to frighten victims and onlookers during human sacrifice rituals.
Lead author Professor Sascha Frühholz told MailOnline: 'The sound is rough and high-pitched, and as listeners, you usually do not like such sounds.'
So, are you brave enough to listen to it?
Aztec Death Whistles are clay instruments typically shaped like skulls which have been found in grave sites of ritual sacrifice victims dated from 1250 to 1521 AD
Aztec Death Whistles, or Skull Whistles, are a type of unusual musical instrument found in grave sites dating from 1250 to 1521 AD.
Their unusual skull-like shape baffled archaeologists for years until one plucky researcher decided to blow into the opening at the top of one artefact.
When played with force, the resulting sound was a cacophonous, piercing wail reminiscent of human screams.
Archaeologists aren't yet sure what these unusual instruments were used for but some suggest they could have either been used to terrify the enemy during battle or as part of human sacrifice rituals.
To learn more, the researchers decided to test how modern listeners who weren't familiar with the Aztec Death Whistle would respond to the sound.
Professor Frühholz said: 'Since the Aztec skull whistle sounds close to a human scream, we wanted to investigate if humans have the same negative and aversive response to Aztec death whistle sounds.'
A group of European participants were played recordings of genuine Aztec Death Whistles, replicas, and whistles of the researcher's own creation alongside a set of other recorded sounds.
The participants were then asked to describe what they heard and how it made them feel while their brain activation was recorded by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
Why is the Aztec Death Whistle so scary?
The Aztec Death Whistle produces a rough and piercing sound with a high-pitched frequency.
Researchers say these sounds are typically registered as 'alarm signals' which cause a strong reaction in our brains.
Since we have evolved to respond quickly to alarms the whistle triggers a strong desire to make the sound stop.
The sound also appears to temporarily confuse the brain, leaving the hearer momentarily reeling in shock.
This combines to create a strong sense of fear which might have been used during human sacrifice rituals.
Almost universally, the sound produced a strong negative emotional response as well as a sense of urgency and arousal.
In terms of the effect on the listener, the Death Whistle was found to be most similar to firearms, sirens, angry voices, and shouts of pain or fear.
The researchers suggest that the Aztec Death Whistle might have been built to mimic some natural sounds like screams and reproduce the effect that this has on the listener.
Previous studies have shown that the death whistle works by producing multiple tones at once as air collides within its different chambers.
By analysing the acoustic profile of different whistles, the researchers found that the resulting 'noisy and rough' sound profile contains effects usually found in primate screams and 'terrifying music'.
The fear factor is made more intense by including tones typically found in human speech and shouts.
However, the researchers also noticed another interesting detail in the listeners' responses.
In addition to reporting how the sound made them feel, each participant was also asked to come up with a description for the sound.
Participants who heard the Aztez Death Whistle (labelled in red as SW) reported experiencing high levels of negative emotions (valence), strong emotional arousal, and an intense feeling of urgency
A human scream was the most common comparison.
However, participants also referred to a number of artificial sounds like kettles, chainsaws, trains, or machines.
In their paper, published in Communications Psychology, the researchers suggest that this unusual mix of natural and unnatural could be part of why the Aztec Death Whistle is so scary.
Professor Frühholz says: 'With fMRI we found that the sounds have both an affective [emotional] nature and they have a more abstract and symbolic nature, which triggers associative mechanisms in the brain.'
When a listener heard the Death Whistle, this set off a flurry of activity in the brain's auditory processing regions as it tried to determine the origins of the sound.
This sudden activation tended to confuse the brain, leaving it momentarily stunned and confused.
The Aztecs may have exploited this shocking impact as a way of creating fear in an audience.
However, archaeologists are still unsure whether that audience was intended to be an approaching enemy army or a congregation of worshipers in a human sacrifice cult.
Researchers have found that the terrifying sound of the Aztec Death Whistle (pictured) is just as terrifying to modern listeners as it would have been to the Aztecs more than 500 years ago
Since the sound is so scary it could be the the case that the Death Whistle was used in warfare but Professor Frühholz and his co-authors believe that the ritual explanation is more likely.
Aztec Death Whistles have been found in the hands of victims of ritual sacrifice in temples such as the Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl temple in Mexico City.
Likewise, the skull imagery synonymous with the Aztec Death Whistle could portray Mictlantecuhtli, the Aztec Lord of the Underworld.
In their paper, Professor Frühholz and his co-authors write: 'Given both the aversive/scary and associative/symbolic sound nature as well as currently known excavation locations at ritual burial sites with human sacrifices, usage in ritual contexts seems very likely, especially in sacrificial rites and ceremonies related to the dead.
'Skull whistles might have been used to scare the human sacrifice or the ceremonial audience, but further cross-documentation is needed here.'
The Mexica, later known as the Aztecs, were a migrant people from the desert north who arrived in Mesoamerica in the 1300s.
This previously nomadic tribe was not welcomed by the local inhabitants who viewed them as inferior and undeveloped.
Legend says that, as a result the Aztecs, wandered waiting for a sign to indicate where they should settle.
In 1325 AD this sign, an eagle and serpent fighting on a cactus, was seen at Lake Texcoco - prompting the Aztecs to found their capital city, Tenochtitlan.
By 1430 AD the Aztecs had assimilated aspects of the surrounding tribes and developed into a structured society.
Their military became powerful and campaigns were fought and won.
The Triple Alliance was created with the lords of Texcoco - situated on the eastern shores of Lake Texococo - and Tlacopan - sometimes referred to as Tacuba, situated on the western shores of Lake Texococo - further strengthening Aztec power.
The Aztecs went to war for two main reasons; to exact tribute and to capture prisoners.
They needed prisoners because they believed that the gods must be appeased with human blood and hearts to ensure the sun rose each day.
Conquering new regions brought the opportunity to capture slaves who were an important part of Aztec society.
Prosperity and unity within the Aztec peoples brought confidence. Under a succession of rulers armies were sent further across Mexico.
By the start of the 1500s the Aztec empire stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific and into Guatemala and Nicaragua.
The arrival in 1521 AD of Hernan Cortés with Spanish soldiers brought about the end of the empire.
Source: The British Museum
Hear the Aztec 'Death Whistle' That Mystified Scientists | Sound Mysteries
Aztec Death Whistle Day of the Dead scariest ancient instrument discovered
The Bible details how Jesus brought a man back from the dead using the sound of his voice, but ancient artwork may show that Christ used a little bit of magic.
A fourth-century painting of the story discovered in Rome shows Jesus holding what some archaeologists claimed is a magician's wand.
Other paintings dating around the same time also depicts Christ holding a wand-like object while performing famous miracles like multiplying loaves of bread and healing the sick.
Ancient paintings of Jesus holding what appears to be a wand has led some researchers to believe early Christians thought of him as a magician. This image was painted in the fourth century, although the exact date is unknown, and was found at the Via Anapo catacomb in Rome
However, some researchers have suggested that these masterpieces actually depict Jesus holding a staff, which was likely portrayed as a way to connect him to the prophet Moses who was more well known at the time.
Regardless, historians believe early Christians saw their Lord and Savior as a magician.
According to the Bible, Jesus performed miracles through the power of God and his ability to heal people and bring them back from the dead while also producing food and drink elevated him above Roman gods in the eyes of Christians.
The fantastical feats may have caused some people to turn to the superstitious belief that Jesus was a magician to explain his actions.
'I mean, here's this group that gets together in the morning and drinks wine and says it's blood and eats bread and says it's flesh,' Lee Jefferson, the chair of the religion program at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky told Live Science in 2020.
'You can probably understand why people thought it was superstitious.'
The belief that Jesus was a magician may have translated into paintings dating back to the early third century that depict Christ holding a wand, experts explained.
One of the earliest records of wands being used was in the 9th Century BC when people who practiced the ancient religion Zoroastrianism used wand-like objects made from small rods or sticks during sacred rituals.
One of the most referenced artworks was a fourth-century AD painting found in the Via Anapo catacomb in Rome, showing Jesus multiplying seven loaves of bread.
In one painting, Jesus holds a wand over the cadaver of Lazarus before he performs the miracle of raising him from the dead. This image was painted in the fourth century, although the exact date is unknown, and was found at the Catacomb of Via Latina in Rome
A carving is displayed on the door of the Santa Sabina Church in Rome showing Jesus using a wand to raise Lazarus from the dead and turning water into wine. The carving was created on a wooden door in 432 AD which is displayed in the Santa Sabina Church in Rome
In the painting which was discovered in 1578, he appears to be waving a wand over the bread, pointing it down toward the objects.
Another fourth-century painting was found in the Via Latina catacomb showing Jesus holding a thin wand in front of a shrine that contained the cadaver of Lazarus.
This is one of the most popular scenes depicted in early Christian funerary art, according to Biblical Archaeology.
In John 11:4, the story says that Lazarus became sick and died, but when his sister Mary called on Jesus to come heal his friend, he told his disciples: 'This sickness is not to end in death, but for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by it.'
Jesus chose not to heal Lazarus but to let him die so he could later raise him from the grave and the miracle would force his disciples to believe he was the son of God.
A similar carving was also displayed on a wooden door on the Santa Sabina Church in Rome that depicts 18 scenes from the Old and New Testament.
The door was created in 432 AD, showing Jesus using a long object to perform miracles, including raising Lazarus from the dead and turning water into wine.
Despite the images, evidence suggests that most of Jesus' followers didn't perceive his actions as magic, but rather as miracles performed through God.
'You would not want your demigod to be called a magician because it makes them seem less powerful,' Jefferson told Live Science.
Christian figures, like the third-century scholar Origen, who was the head of a Christian university in Alexandria, defended Jesus against the philosopher Celsus' who was a vocal critic of Christianity and spread accusations that he was a magician.
Origen 'spilled a lot of ink talking about how Jesus' wondrous deeds weren't magic because they were aimed at things like moral reformation and salvation instead of the sorts of parlor trickery displayed by marketplace sorcerers,' Dr Shaily Patel, a professor of early Christianity at Virginia Tech told the Daily Beast.
It is likely, however, that the artwork doesn't portray a wand at all but is a staff recognizant of other notable figures, according to experts.
Moses was one such person portrayed for using a staff to part the Red Sea and later used it to provide drinking water to Israelites during their escape from Egypt.
At the time, people would have been familiar with Moses but wouldn't necessarily have known who Jesus was, experts have explained.
To combat this, paintings may have been created of him performing miracles with a type of staff to connect him to the prophet.
'He's kind of like a new Moses,' Jefferson told Live Science.
A staff was recognized as a symbol of power, similar to how a scroll would have been associated with someone wise or well-read.
'They see that person holding the object and they can understand,' Felicity Harley-McGowan, an art historian at Yale Divinity School told the outlet.
'The staff is a sign of [Jesus'] authority.'
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The earliest inscription declaring Jesus as God - deemed 'the greatest discovery since the Dead Sea Scrolls' - was uncovered beneath the floor of an Israeli prison and is now on display in America.
The 1,800-year-old mosaic, discovered by an inmate of the Megiddo prison, features the ancient Greek writing: 'The god-loving Akeptous has offered the table to God Jesus Christ as a memorial.'
The 581-square-foot mosaic decorated the world's first prayer hall in 230 AD, confirming Christians believed Jesus was the son of God from the very beginning.
The Megiddo Mosaic also included some of the earliest images of fish, which experts believe reference the story in Luke 9:16 when Jesus multiplied two fish to feed a crowd of 5,000 people.
The floor has been hidden under the prison since it was discovered in 2005, but has now been lent to a museum in Washington, DC, until July 2025.
Carlos Campo, CEO of the museum, hailed the mosaic as ' the greatest discovery since the Dead Sea Scrolls,' while his colleagues noted it was 'the most important archaeological discovery for understanding the early Christian church.'
'We truly are among the first people to ever see this, to experience what almost 2,000 years ago was put together by a man named Brutius, the incredible craftsman who laid the flooring here,' Campo said at the opening of the exhibition.
The Megiddo Mosaic (pictured) was unearthed during the expansion of a high-security prison in Israel. The mosaic had an inscription at the top (pictured) that said: 'The god-loving Akeptous has offered the table to God Jesus Christ as a memorial'
The Megiddo Mosaic is currently on display at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC (pictured until July 2025
Alegre Savariego, curator of the exhibition, said: 'The mosaic presents groundbreaking physical evidence of the practices and beliefs of early Christians, including the first archaeological instance of the phrase, 'God Jesus Christ.''
The Megiddo Mosaic was found in the Jezreel Valley where Christians believe the final battle of the Biblical Armageddon in the Book of Revelations will occur.
The excavation, conducted by archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), took four years to recover the 581-square-foot mosaic floor.
The mosaic included the name of the Roman officer who commissioned the tile during the Roman occupation of Judea.
Researchers suggested that could prove Romans coexisted with Christians to some degree, despite the numerous stories of war and slaughter at the time.
An inscription on the mosaic read: 'Gaianus, a Roman officer, having sought honor, from his own money, has made the mosaic.'
The team also found a nearby Roman camp, providing more support of the peace between the two groups.
The prayer hall, or church, was likely abandoned and covered up because the Roman Empire's Sixth Legion was transferred to Transjordan - a region located to the east of the Jordan River.
The mosaic also contained the names of five women, highlighting the important role women played in the church.
Aside from Akeptous, who was mentioned for her donation of a table to the prayer hall, the mosaic's inscription also says to 'remember Primilla and Cyriaca and Dorothea, and lastly, Chreste.'
Bobby Duke, director of the Scholars Initiative at the Museum of the Bible, said: 'This is arguably one of the most important archaeological discoveries for understanding the early Christian church.'
The mosaic was discovered while expanding a maximum-security prison located near the ancient city of Megiddo in the Jezreel Valley in 2005
The mosaic featured some of the earliest images of fish being used to represent Christianity, mirroring the story told in Luke 9:16 when Jesus multiplied two fish to feed a crowd of 5,000 people
'For example, the mosaic underscores the crucial role of women in the early church by the fact that five women are mentioned in it by name,' he continued.
'Truly, the mosaic presents a wealth of new data for church historians, like the Dead Sea Scrolls did for Bible scholars.'
The IAA said there isn't any information that explains why these women were mentioned, but it is highly unusual because God wasn't typically asked to remember individuals.
'While they were clearly important to the community, the inscription does not tell us whether they were patrons of the community (like Akeptous), or martyrs, or honored for some other reason,' the Museum of the Bible said.
After the major archaeological find, the conservation department of the IAA cleaned and stabilized the mosaic, grouted and re-laid any loose tesserae and filled in the empty spaces with mortar and reburied the mosaic while they carried out their research.
IAA had to separate the floor, placing pieces in 11 crates that were shipped to the US earlier this year for the exhibit titled: 'The Megiddo Mosaic: Foundations of Faith.'
'You couldn't just lift the whole floor up,' Duke said.
'So ... they very intricately cut different pieces of the mosaic so that they didn't destroy any of the artwork. So, not all the pieces were the same size.
'So, even one of the crates that came into this gallery was about a thousand pounds.'
The Megiddo mosaic will return to Israel after the exhibit concludes and put on a permanent display at the exact site where it was discovered.
The Megiddo inmates will be relocated to another prison upon the mosaic's return.
The mosaic contained Greek inscriptions that include the names of five women, highlighting the importance of women in the church
In the year leading up to the mosaic's move to the Museum of the Bible, the IAA received criticism for allowing the a major piece of Christian history to be displayed at the museum.
Since it's doors opened in 2017, the museum has been forced to return thousands of artifacts including an ancient Mesopotamian tablet and thousands of clay scrolls that were looted from Iraq.
It was also forced to admit that several of the Dead Sea Scroll fragments displayed in its collection were modern forgeries.
'While some of the founders and actions of the museum are questionable, and the museum clearly has a very ideological agenda, I don't think a 'purist' agenda is very helpful here,' Prof. Aren Maeir, an archaeologist at Bar-Ilan University told Haaretz.com.
'As long as everything is done by the letter of the law, I see no problem.'
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Commercial pilots have captured 'multiple UFOs' in the night sky as the passenger jet flew above Egypt
A video taken from inside the cabin showed several glowing orbs that the crew of the Boeing 747 said were 'dancing' around the plane.
Captain Van Pangemanan shared the clip on his YouTube channel, saying the UFOs flashed, 'as if they wanted to give a message.'
'We thought the light was a plane, but it wasn't on our radar,' the pilot said. 'Then we thought maybe it was a star, but the stars twinkled quickly and the stars didn't move.'
In his video, captured around 5am local time after the plane departed from Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, the UFOs can be seen swaying or wobbling in midair before appearing to go dark or duck into the cloud cover below.
Some have suggested that meteors from the Perseid meteor shower produced the lights, but Capt Van Pangemanan believes the UFOs' movements were too 'various' to be explained by a falling star.
'The light of the UFO in front of us moves freely,' he said. 'The UFO light shone for a long time and moved.'
Captain Ruud Van Pangemanan, who vlogs about his life flying Boeing 747 passenger jets, emphasized that he and his crewmates scrutinized the odd light hoping to find some kind of explanation for the unusual movements they were seeing: 'What is it, in the sky and dancing?'
According to Capt Van Pangemanan, the orb-like UFO lights showed up around 30 minutes into the flight after a 'normal take-off and cruising' — and after he had enjoyed an early breakfast in the jet's cockpit.
Typically, the Perseid meteor shower begins in mid-July, according to astronomer and Old Farmer's Almanac editor Bob Berman, intensifying deeper into the summer until the storm of shooting stars peaks between August 11-13.
The apparent origin or radiant point for Perseid meteors is roughly northeasterly near the constellation Perseus, from which the annual event gets its name.
However, the celestial events actual origins are in debris left behind by the comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, whose path intersects with Earth every summer.
Given that Capt Van Pangemanan and his Max Air Ltd flight were traveling roughly southwest in their Boeing 747 from Jeddah to Abuja, Nigeria, the UFO outside the starboard side of their cockpit would be pointing in the general direction of the meteor shower.
'We also thought [about] the possibility the light was a satellite,' Capt Van Pangemanan continued, 'because right now there are a lot of Starlink satellites that have just been launched by Elon Musk.'
In the post to his YouTube channel, Capt Van Pangemanan opened the floor to his fans to help solve the mystery, asking: 'Please figure it out yourself, maybe you can Identify this Flying Object.'
'Guys, this is not a joke, or a 'picture' that was made,' witness and pilot Captain Ruud Van Pangemanan said in his video. 'This is my experience of seeing something strange'
Commercial pilots with a Nigerian airline recorded what one described as 'a UFO anomaly... in the sky and dancing' during an overnight flight above north Africa (pictured)
The pilot and vlogger also gave some additional details on timing of the sighting, stating that it occurred 30 minutes after takeoff.
Unexplained Mysteries: Ancient Alien Theories Debunked or Proven?
Is there life beyond the stars? This is one of those questions that have existed for centuries, and intrigued societies and great thinkers from the dawn of civilization. “Surely there is someone else out there in the distance,” they thought, and spoke in hushed tones about the mysteries that they could not explain. And so, generation by generation, century by century, the myths of the aliens remained, until a quite peculiar theory was born - the theory of the ancient aliens. Its adherents claim that extraterrestrial beingsdo exist, and that they visited our planet at the dawn of mankind, influencing its development and creating many ancient relics whose provenance cannot be explained today. These enduring mysteries are a dividing wedge between the scientific world and those who believe in something beyond the stars. But at the end of the day, is there truth to these beliefs?
The theory of ancient aliens remains quite popular, even in our modern age when we think we have answers for many things around us. Ancient alien theorists claim that there is ample evidence of extraterrestrial visitations, scattered throughout human history. They point out mysterious artifacts, stunning architectural wonders, and traditional myths that - in their view - cannot be explained by the capabilities of ancient societies and civilizations.
But there are many who oppose these ideas, always siding with mainstream society, urging people to observe things from an empirical point of view - if there isn’t sufficient evidence to support it, the theory should be disregarded.
And then there are those who go to the extremes, claiming that we are a freak of nature, and are the only living beings in the universe, and that the places beyond the stars are simply barren.
And so the war of views continues. It has been going on for many decades now. The ancient aliens theory and the concept of extraterrestrials visiting ancient peoples gained major popularity in the 1960s and 1970s. Controversial authors such as Erich von Däniken popularized the idea during this decade. Däniken’s best-selling book, “Chariots of the Gods?”, published in 1968, became a major hit and the theory quickly gained many adherents. The author proposed that many of the world’s best-known wonders are linked to extraterrestrial visitations, such as the enormous Naza Lines in Peru, the Great Pyramids in Egypt, the Stonehenge in England, and many others. Without direct proof that they were built by humans - and without an explanation how they would do it in the first place - Däniken quickly pinned them on the aliens.
Following the release of this book, the ancient alien theory gained momentum. Further books, such as “Gods from Outer Space” and “The Gods Were Astronauts”, as well as a number of documentaries, movies, and popular series all gave their own distinct views on these theories. In time, the theory incorporated claims that not only great structures were alien-made, but also religions, mythologies, and many innovations in history. And most of all, the theory posits that the Gods of ancient civilizations were actually alien beings, misinterpreted as deities by the primitive humans. And so came to be the theory of ancient aliens.
But can it be proven?
Is There Evidence of Ancient Aliens?
Those who staunchly believe that our distant ancestors came face-to-face with beings from outer space often point to what they consider compelling evidence that this is, in fact, true. However, this evidence is often based on the interpretation of texts, ancient artifacts, and major architectural feats. One evidence that they offer is the collection of Nazca Lines in Peru. These enormous geoglyphs, situated in the deserts of southern Peru, can only be seen from a great height. Those believing in ancient aliens claim that these lines were created as “landing strips” or messages for extraterrestrial visitors, exactly because they can only be seen from the air. Could the ancient Nazca people have observed spacecraft high above them, leaving these drawings as a message?
And, of course, the unexplained architectural marvels are always offered as clear evidence of alien visitation. For example, the site of Puma Punku in Bolivia is always mentioned. It is made of enormous stone blocks, some of which weigh well over 100 tons, all of which were carved with incredible precision and fitted precisely without the use of mortar. How was such precision achieved? These theorists say that the stones could not be carved like that, not without the use of very advanced machinery and technology, which could have only arrived from beyond the stars.
Without a doubt, the myths of the Anunnaki are the most frequently offered evidence of extraterrestrial ancients. These ancient Sumerian texts speak of the so-called Anunnaki, a group of deities described as arriving on Earth to create humanity. Ancient alien theorists propose that this is the unopposable evidence that extraterrestrials genetically engineered humans for their own purposes and pushed forward the formation of the world’s first civilizations.
Akkadian cylinder seal dating to circa 2300 BC depicting the deities Inanna, Utu, and Enki, three members of the Anunnaki.
The same goes for the Great Pyramids of Giza, which are usually the first to pop-up in talks of ancient aliens. The sheer size, perfect alignment with the cardinal directions, and incredible precision with which it was made and aligned with the celestial bodies, could have only been achieved with extraterrestrial assistance.
Science v. Belief: Who Wins?
The ancient alien theory became a proper trend in the recent years, but even so modern science continues to adamantly discredit it, unconvinced. Most scholars simply dismiss these claims, pointing out that they were built upon misinterpretation of evidence, misunderstanding, and underestimating our ancestors. A key counter argument to these theories is simply human ingenuity and ability. Archaeologists have long pointed out that our ancestors were not as primitive or clueless as we might think, and when presented with ample time and workforce, they could have achieved some truly stunning achievements. Are we simply underestimating them?
Many engineers and archaeologists stepped forward and demonstrated the construction techniques that were used to build many ancient structures, such as Stonehenge or megaliths. They all agree that such structures were well within the capabilities of ancient societies. Even though they used rudimentary materials and tools, they were still capable of organizing a massive workforce for their projects and coming up with innovative methods that would make their work easier and feasible.
Sunrise at Stonehenge on the summer solstice, 21 June 2005.
Scholars also try to provide a logical interpretation and explanation of the texts and myths that are commonly seen as connected to aliens. For example, they argue that many of the ancient religious and mythical texts are symbolic or metaphorical, and not literal descriptions of events. And many of the similarities that are shared amongst ancient cultures, such as their ideas, myths, beliefs, gods, and art, are not necessarily explained by extraterrestrial meddling. Instead, we can safely conclude that they were spread through cultural diffusion, through migration, trade, and conquest. There is also the independent invention of the same thing - in completely different cultures. This explains the appearance of pyramids in many ancient civilizations: this is a common architectural form that advanced cultures could have “invented” without anyone’s intervention.
Skepticism and Inquiry
To those who teeter at the edge, not knowing what to believe at the end of the day, it is crucial to offer advice. Sure, the idea of ancient alien visitors and superior high-tech innovations in the neolithic is definitely captivating. But it should still be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism. After all, such extraordinary claims require equally extraordinary evidence. However, much of the evidence that ancient alien theorists provide is rooted in speculation, conjecture, assumption, or free interpretation. And it always ends on the note that our ancestors were simply incapable of achieving any great feats, even when presented with ample time and many laborers.
But it is important to note that science bases everything on evidence - and truth is its only driving force. Repeatedly it has proven many things from our history and given explanations for many things that we previously had no knowledge on. From the secrets of the universe to the relics of our past, science seemingly pierced every mystery. But some evidence simply does not exist, even in the scientific world. And that is the evidence that extraterrestrials exist, and that they visited planet Earth in the past.
In the ongoing clash between the scientific world and the adherents of the ancient alien theory, the former always urges the latter to view our ancestors in a different light. To give credit where credit is due, and to understand that ancient humans were great thinkers, and observed the nature around them in a logical and innovative way, which allowed them to come up with many great inventions and creations. The Baghdad battery, the Antikythera mechanism, the hydraulics, navigation, sailing - the list of ancient achievements is never-ending, and the idea of extraterrestrial involvement is completely unnecessary in any of them. That is simply because those that came before us were not so feeble after all.
“If we want to set out on the arduous search for the truth, we must all summon up the courage to leave the lines along which we have thought until now and as the first step begin to doubt everything that we previously accepted as correct and true. Can we still afford to close our eyes and stop up our ears because new ideas are supposed to be heretical and absurd?”
― Erich von Däniken, Chariots of The Gods
When there is something which we cannot explain, we cannot understand, or cannot comprehend at all, we often reach for the stars to find the answers, as if all the truth of the world lies in that distant space. And yet, the answers never come - only speculation, only daydreams, and only imagination. The scientific world fires back with its factual data, the sheer evidence, and the unearthed, tangible history. In it, there are never extraterrestrials. There are only the achievements of mankind, fueled by natural knowledge gathered for hundreds of thousands of years before the emergence of the first civilizations.
Yet even so, there are those things from history that not even science can confirm or explain. There are those creations that defy all sense of reason and logic, leaving us neither amongst the stars nor on the hard ground - but somewhere in between. Where, then, do we search for answers, if not in the great beyond?
Top image:AI image of a flying saucer coming out from clouds on pyramids. Source: JackBoiler/Adobe Stock
U.S. Experts Testify Before Congress on Secret UFO Programs
In a rare joint hearing titled "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth," members of the U.S. Congress recently convened to explore whether the government is hiding information about Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs), also known as UFOs.
The hearing, led by the House Oversight Committee’s cybersecurity, IT, and innovation subcommittees, came as public and political pressure mounts for the government to address the increasing reports of unexplained aerial objects. While the Pentagon has consistently found no evidence of alien technology in UAPs, new witness testimonies point to a deeply classified and potentially wide-ranging investigation into these phenomena, reports NPR.
Explosive Testimonies from Four Key Experts
Four experts provided written and oral testimonies at Wednesday’s hearing, each stressing the need for greater transparency. Journalist Michael Shellenberger, author Luis Elizondo, former NASA administrator Michael Gold, and retired Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet offered distinct insights and called for an end to secrecy around the U.S. government’s UAP investigations.
Michael Shellenberger presented a 214-page document chronicling UAP incidents from 1947 to 2023 and cited sources alleging that the Department of Defense operates a covert project, code-named “Immaculate Constellation,” dedicated to tracking and studying UAPs. Shellenberger argued that secretive programs like this could erode public trust and demanded transparency legislation from Congress to provide clarity on UAPs.
Luis Elizondo, former head of the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, asserted that some UAPs are not of human origin and that governments worldwide are engaged in a high-stakes arms race to reverse-engineer these technologies. In his written testimony he writes:
"Let me be clear: UAP are real. … Advanced technologies not made by our Government — or any other government — are monitoring sensitive military installations around the globe. Furthermore, the U.S. is in possession of UAP technologies, as are some of our adversaries."
When asked directly by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) if the U.S. is running secret crash retrieval programs designed to reverse-engineer alien craft, Elizondo responded, "Yes."
Retired Admiral Tim Gallaudet recounted his personal experience with UAPs, referencing the “Go Fast” video, a 2015 Navy recording showing a fast-moving, unidentified object that displayed "flight characteristics unlike anything in our arsenal." He further alleged that the video file mysteriously vanished from Navy accounts soon after it was shared.
Michael Gold, a former associate administrator at NASA, emphasized the need to normalize scientific inquiry around UAPs, lamenting the stigma attached to discussing such phenomena. He called for NASA to receive dedicated funding to develop new tools for examining UAPs, which could lead to groundbreaking discoveries.
“It's hard to imagine four people this different passionately agreeing on something as controversial and career-jeopardizing as a massive, government cover-up on UFOs — and yet they do.”
“Immaculate Constellation”: A Secret Program with Far-Reaching Implications?
Shellenberger’s testimony revealed that “Immaculate Constellation” allegedly utilizes advanced tools to capture high-quality imagery of UAPs and even coordinates with fighter jets like the F-22 to intercept these objects.
According to Shellenberger, a whistleblower report alleges that an F-22 was once surrounded by a group of UAPs that boxed in the jet, suggesting an organized response from the unidentified objects.
The entire report on 'Immaculate Constellation' - the allegedly illegal 'Unacknowledged Special Access Program' (USAP) about UFOs that was leaked to Shellenberger — has now been posted online. Shellenberger told his followers on X that the hearing's co-lead, Rep Nancy Mace, was responsible for the decision to release this eleven-page document [PDF], reports the Daily Mail.
Shellenberger underscored the dangers of secrecy surrounding such incidents and argued that UAP transparency aligns with both national security interests and bipartisan values.
Congressional Pressure and the Push for UAP Transparency
Lawmakers, led by Rep. Nancy Mace, pressed for answers on secret UAP programs and crash retrieval efforts. Mace and other committee members questioned witnesses on the origins of these objects, asking if private companies, adversarial nations, or nonhuman intelligences were responsible. Elizondo hinted at a multifaceted answer, suggesting that some technologies might originate from private entities, while others could stem from extraterrestrial sources.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) also questioned Elizondo about the Defense Department’s handling of UAP data, underscoring concerns about a possible cover-up. Moskowitz drew a parallel to “Fight Club,” referencing its code of silence and secrecy, saying, "You can’t talk about Fight Club if there’s no Fight Club.” quotes NRP.
Elizondo affirmed that a substantial portion of UAP information remains classified and argued for controlled declassification to allow more robust scientific inquiry and public awareness.
Shifting Public and Institutional Attitudes Towards UAPs
The recent hearing reflects a growing shift within U.S. agencies and public institutions towards serious consideration of UAPs. In 2022, the Pentagon established the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) to centralize UAP reporting from the military and FAA. The creation of AARO follows historical efforts to study UAPs, including Project Blue Book, a 1947–1969 Air Force project that collected over 12,000 reports, many of which were later explained by conventional means, though 701 incidents remained unexplained.
With agencies such as NASA now directly addressing UAPs, the stigma surrounding the study of unexplained phenomena is slowly diminishing. Gold argued that government agencies require dedicated tools to properly study UAPs, moving beyond the limited use of cellphone videos and fighter jet gun cameras. He and other witnesses emphasized that more funding and open scientific research would help establish whether UAPs have terrestrial or extraterrestrial origins.
A Call for Greater Accountability
The hearing concluded with an appeal for accountability from the witnesses, who reiterated that the secrecy surrounding UAPs could be detrimental to national security, public trust, and scientific progress. Elizondo warned that if UAPs represent foreign adversarial technology, it would mark an intelligence oversight “eclipsing that of 9/11 by an order of magnitude.”
Public pressure and bipartisan support for transparency legislation on UAPs continue to grow. As Congress seeks answers, the recent testimonies have raised new questions about the nature of UAPs, whether they stem from human or extraterrestrial origins, and the true scope of the U.S. government’s investigations into these mysterious phenomena.
Top image: Mr Shellenberger holds up the whistleblower report at the UAP Congressional Hearing. Source: YouTube Screenshot
Who are the Nephilim and what do they represent? Are they biblical giants? What does the term literally translate to, and why does the brief mention of them in the Book of Genesis show resemblance to other mythologies? The Nephilim have been a topic of great controversy. Many scholars, both independent and accredited, have dedicated much of their lives to answer these questions. It wasn’t until the discovery and translation of the Book of 1Enoch that we were finally given a better understanding of these Nephilim, but is it a proper understanding?
This detailed analysis will incorporate the theology during the proposed time of writing for the verses, grammatical study in Hebrew and Aramaic word forms, and even external influences that would have played a role in the region.
In the past century, many independent scholars have taken the opportunity to exploit the Nephilim to their advantage. Zecharia Sitchin was one of those individuals, who proposed that the Nephilim were nothing more than a god-like race with the knowledge and technology to navigate the heavens, who came to earth and created mankind as slave labor mining rare materials. Sitchin had jumped on the chance to translate the Nephilim as: (1) those who came down from above, (2) those who were cast down, and (3) people of the fiery rockets. These made-up epithets are clearly ridiculous and groundless. The Hebrew verb for ‘to go’ or ‘to come down, descend’ is yarad which shows no relation to the term in question. He then goes on to identify the Nephilim with the Sumerian deities, claiming that the Sumerians knew of their existence and that they came from a planet called Nibiru. According to Sitchin, Nibiru completed its rotation around our sun every 3600 or so earth years. The sources cited came from his mistranslated Mesopotamian inscriptions and cylinder seal impressions. Many others have tried to follow in Zecharia Sitchin’s footsteps, such as Alan Alford, but have quickly repealed their theories, claiming it was too outlandish of an idea. It was in his second book, The Phoenix Solution, that Alan Alford retracted his ancient astronaut theories. Apparently, this made such a powerful impact that Zecharia Sitchin threatened Alan Alford with a 50 million dollar lawsuit on the grounds that Alford’s comments discredited Sitchin’s theories and destroyed his reputation.
Figure 1 - Stela depicting image of Baal Haddad in a smiting position.
Then there was Andrew Collins, using the sons of God and the Nephilim to hint at a forgotten race. This race allegedly knew and shared all the forbidden arts and sciences with humanity, thus leading them to their corruption and the Flood of Noah. Much of what Collins proposes, it seems, may be based on earlier works, such as that belonging to Sitchin. For example, Collins uses translations similar to Sitchin’s for the noun Nephilim.
In his book, From the Ashes of Angels, Collin’s clearly displays his lack of knowledge in biblical Hebrew; confusing the Nephilim with the sons of God, when it was the sons of God who supposedly had fallen (unto the daughters of men) and not the Nephilim. It would seem that most of these authors attempt to link the root word for the plural Nephilim with the Hebrew singular word of naphal. naphal means ‘to fall’ or ‘to fall in battle, by the sword’, ‘to be killed’, ‘to be fallen’ and also ‘to fall unto/ upon.’ All of these definitions display characteristics not held by the Nephilim or, as I will point out later in this article, the sons of God.
We first read of the Nephilim in Genesis 6:4. This is one of two verses to mention the Nephilim three times throughout the entire Pentateuch. Genesis 6:4 reads:
The Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them; the same were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown.
The biggest clues to the identification of the Nephilim will come from Numbers 13:33:
And there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, who come of the Nephilim; and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.
Taking an interpretation of the Nephilim as the ‘people of the fiery rockets’ again holds no credibility when examining the term itself and the surrounding grammar of Genesis 6:4 and Numbers 13:33. The word was left untranslated by the Revisers, the name of one of the Canaanite tribes. The Revisors have, in fact, translated the Hebrew gibborim, in Genesis 6:4, as ‘mighty men,’ which will be a key point in the coming conclusions. When the Old Testament was first translated to the Greek language, the word for Nephilim read gigantes, the Greek word for giants. This is confirmed in Numbers 13:33 with the description of the Israelites when compared to the race of giants.
It is extremely important for the reader to understand that in Hebrew grammar, the singular naphal cannot form the plural Nephilim. If we were to follow grammatical rules within the language, we would end up with the plural nophelim. Clearly this is not the same as Nephilim, and we can now see that it is impossible for naphal to be the root word used. A detailed analysis of the characteristics held by the Nephilim will further prove this in the section below. One other area of concern is that nophelim is not in the plural passive (perfect) form, but instead a plural active (imperfect), indicating that these beings are ‘falling’ and have not ‘fallen’. Now what have the Nephilim fallen from? The answer is nothing. If a link were to be established for someone(s) falling from God’s grace it would have to go to the sons of God as is apparent in the post-Exilic and not in the pre-Exilic literature. The biggest clue to the identification of the word’s root can be found in Numbers 13:33. The word Nephilim is used twice in this verse, but oddly enough, is spelled differently. Many have wondered what this could mean. In the first occurrence we find:
Top image: The Fall of the Rebel Angels by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Public Domain)
A sample of the Moon’s far side retrieved by Chang’e-6 contains 2.83-billion-year-old basalt
A sample of the Moon’s far side retrieved by Chang’e-6 contains 2.83-billion-year-old basalt
Abstract
Remote sensing observations have shown that the far side of the Moon (lunar farside) has different geology and rock composition to the near side, including the abundances of potassium, rare earth elements, and phosphorus (collectively known as KREEP). The Chang’e-6 (CE-6) spacecraft collected samples from the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin on the farside and brought them to Earth. We use lead-lead and rubidium-strontium isotope systems to date low-titanium basalt in a CE-6 sample, finding a consistent age of 2830 ± 5 million years. We interpret this as the date of volcanism in SPA and incorporate it into lunar crater chronology. Strontium, neodymium and lead isotopes indicate the volcanic magma was from a lunar mantle source depleted in incompatible elements and containing almost no KREEP component.
The Moon has a global dichotomy, with its near and far sides having different geomorphology, topography, chemical composition, crustal thickness, and evidence of volcanism (1–3). Volcanic eruptions flooded parts of the surface with lava, producing rocks known as mare basalts, which are more common on the nearside (4), where they cover ~30% of the surface compared to 2% of the farside (5). Analysis of samples retrieved by the Apollo and Luna missions has indicated most mare volcanism on both sides ceased before ~3.0 billion years ago (Ga) (6). Samples returned by the Chang’e-5 (CE-5) mission demonstrate that mare volcanism continued to at least 2.0 Ga in the Procellarum KREEP Terrane (PKT) region of the near side (7, 8) and other forms of volcanism potentially to ~120 million years ago (Ma) (9, 10). It is unclear when mare volcanism ceased on the farside, due to lack of samples. The SPA basin, located on the lunar farside, is the largest and oldest known lunar impact basin. Its formation is thought to have had a global effect on the Moon (11, 12). Samples from the SPA basin could potentially provide information on the Moon’s global dichotomy (13).
The CE-6 mission collected a total of 1935.3 g of lunar soil from the lunar farside and brought it to Earth for laboratory analysis. The CE-6 landing site (at lunar coordinates 41.625°S, 153.978°W) (Fig. 1) was in the southern part of the Apollo impact basin, located northeast of the SPA basin (14). The Apollo basin has a diameter of 492 km, making it the largest impact structure within the SPA basin, and formed earlier than 3.9 Ga (15–17). Remote sensing observations show that at least two episodes of mare basalt eruptions occurred in the region (Fig. 1A) (14, 18–20). The earlier episode occurred during the Imbrian geologic period (3.3 to 3.4 Ga) and erupted low-titanium (Ti) basalts, likely covering the entire southern Apollo basin, which has low topography (19). It was followed by younger (2.4 to 3.1 Ga) eruptions of intermediate-Ti mare basalt from the west of the previous eruption (19). The CE-6 samples were collected from the intermediate-Ti mare unit, close to its eastern boundary, ~5 km from the low-Ti basalt flows (Fig. 1A). We therefore expect the CE-6 samples to be dominated by the younger mare eruption.
Fig. 1. Geological settings of the CE-6 landing site.
(A) Location of the CE-6 landing site (red dot) in the south of Apollo basin. The background image is an orthographic albedo map from Chang’e-2 (36). (B) Zoom out to the entire farside hemisphere. The yellow dot indicates the CE-6 landing site and the white dashed circle outlines the SPA basin. (C) TiO2 abundance map (color bar in percentage by weight, wt%) of the same region as panel A, derived from Kaguya Multiband Image data (37). In panels A and C, the younger basalts are labeled intermediate-Ti and the older are labeled low-Ti. The white lines indicate the boundary of mare units.
We analyzed basalt clasts (rock fragments formed on the Moon’s surface by space weathering) (Fig. 2, A and B, and fig. S1) from a CE-6 sample using radiometric dating, to determine the age of the farside mare basalts. We also conducted a geochemical analysis to characterize the magma source of the eruptions.
Fig. 2. Two types of basaltic clasts in CE-6 lunar soil. Back-scattered electron (BSE) images of two clasts, with mineral phases labeled. The brightness and contrast vary between images. (A) Low-Ti basalt clast with moderate content of ilmenite. (B) Very low-Ti basalt clast with much less ilmenite. (C-D) Zoomed regions of two other low-Ti basalt clasts. Fine apatite, baddeleyite and potassium-rich phases are labeled. Each panel is labeled with the resin mount number (S3551 in panel A) and the particle number (001 in panel A). Mineral abbreviations: Pl, plagioclase; Cpx, clinopyroxene; Ilm, ilmenite; Ap, apatite; Tro, troilite; Bdy, baddeleyite; Kfs, K-feldspar; Si, silica.Open in viewer
Sample description
Thirty-five basalt clasts with sizes from 0.2 to 5 mm were identified from a 2 g aliquot of CE-6 lunar soil (scooped sample CE6C0100YJFM003) and analyzed with a scanning electron microscope (SEM) (21). We identified grains of pyroxene in these basaltic clasts using electron probe microanalysis (EPMA (21)), which follow two compositional trends (fig. S2A). The pyroxene compositions are expressed as the molar ratios Ti# ≡ 100 × Ti/(Ti + Cr) and Fe# ≡ 100 × Fe/(Fe + Mg). Thirty-three of the thirty-five basaltic clasts follow a monotonic trend beginning from a low-Ti composition (which we interpret as the parent magma) and extending to higher Ti# and Fe#. The other two clasts have much lower Ti content, so we infer they formed from a very low-Ti (VLT) parental magma. Pyroxene in all 35 clasts has similar Fe/Mn ratios to previous measurements of nearside mare basalts (fig. S2B). The mineral assemblages in both groups are similar; we identified minerals including plagioclase, pyroxene, ilmenite and troilite. The low-Ti basalt contains more ilmenite (~50%) than the VLT basalt (< 1%) (Fig. 2, A and B). This provides petrographic support for our interpretation that there are two types of mare basalts in the sample. The predominance of low-Ti basalts in our clasts most likely represents the local basalts (19) which formed during the Eratosthenian period [3.2 to 0.8 Ga; (22, 23)].
Fractures are common in these basaltic clasts, while shock veins and melt pockets are absent. Some datable minerals are present, mostly in the mesostasis (the last minerals to crystallize in lunar basalts) area of the low-Ti group, including apatite (size, 10 to 50 μm), baddeleyite (3 to 20 μm) and tranquillityite (4 to 15 μm) (Fig. 2, C and D; fig. S1; data S2). No phosphates or zirconium (Zr)-bearing minerals are found in the two VLT basaltic clasts. We therefore performed isotopic dating on the low-Ti basaltic clasts only.
Radioisotope dating
The thirty-three low-Ti basaltic clasts were used for Pb isotope measurements (data S3). Zr-bearing minerals (number of analyses n = 44), apatite (n = 78), potassium (K)-rich phases (K-feldspar, K-glass, n = 54) and troilite (n = 11) were analyzed in a secondary ion mass spectrometer using a primary beam of O- ions with ~3 μm, ~5 μm, ~15 μm and ~15 μm spot sizes, respectively (fig. S3). From the 187 individual measurements, 60 were discarded due to having elevated 204Pb/206Pb ratios, which indicates terrestrial contamination (21). The remaining 127 measurements were used to construct a Pb-Pb isochron (line of constant age) (Fig. 3A). Fitting a linear model to the data indicates a mean age of 2830 ± 5 Ma [mean squared weighted deviation (MSWD) = 0.53, 95% confidence level].
Fig. 3. Radioisotope dating of the CE-6 low-Ti basaltic clasts.
Plotting symbols indicate measurements from different mineral phases (see legends). Error bars are 2σ. (A) Pb-Pb istopes in 33 low-Ti basaltic clasts. Measurements discarded due to terrestrial Pb contamination are omitted here but are shown in fig. S3A. (B) Rb-Sr isotopes for 17 low-Ti basaltic clasts.
In seventeen of the low-Ti basaltic clasts, we identified clean grains of plagioclase - those that are free of mineral inclusions, mesostasis pockets, or mesostasis domains - making them suitable for analysis of RbSr isotopes (fig. S4). A total of thirty-two clean plagioclase grains and twenty-seven plagioclase grains with various amount of late-stage mesostasis (data S4) were measured using multiple-collector inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (21). The Rb-Sr measurements of grains with mesostasis domains and clean plagioclase follow a single isochron, with the clean plagioclase close to the initial ratio (Fig. 3B). The Rb-Sr isochron has a fitted model age of 2839 ± 95 Ma (MSWD = 2.3, 95% confidence level) and initial 87Sr/86Sr ratio of 0.69927 ± 0.00004 (2σ). This Rb-Sr age is consistent with (but less precise than) that derived from the Pb-Pb measurements.
The consistent ages and pyroxene composition (fig. S2B) indicate that the measured low-Ti basaltic clasts probably have a common origin. We adopt the higher precision Pb-Pb age of 2830 ± 5 Ma and interpret it as the crystallization age of the low-Ti basalt unit. This is older than the 2.0 Ga basalt sampled by CE-5 (7, 8), but demonstrates that volcanism occurred more recently than 3.0 Ga on both the near- and far-sides of the Moon.
Origin of the parent magma
We consider the intermediate-Ti and low-Ti basalt units identified by remote sensing as likely corresponding to the low-Ti and VLT basalts in our sample, respectively, on the basis of their pyroxene compositional trends (fig. S2). Those trends indicate that extensive evolution of the parent magmas increased the TiO2 contents of the erupted lava to the low-Ti and intermediate-Ti categories (19). The Ti abundances we measured in the pyroxene grains are lower (data S1 and fig. S2A) than we expected from the remote sensing data (Fig. 1C). We regard this discrepancy as likely due to the very different sampling scales. The remote sensing TiO2 measurement is an average value of a large area (20 m pixel−1 in Fig. 1B), whereas the scooped soil sample collected by CE-6 was from an area of less than 1 m2. Although we conclude that the low-Ti basaltic clasts are representative of the mare basalts local to the sampling site (21), we are unable to determine the provenance of the VLT clasts. They could be derived from the older mare unit to the east of the CE-6 landing site (Fig. 1A), or be fragments of underlying mare units that were excavated to the surface by impacts, or were transported to the sample site from more distant locations (19).
It has been suggested that lunar magmatism was sustained by radiogenic heating from KREEP components in the mantle sources of the magmas (24). However, studies of CE-5 basalt (25) and some ~3.0 Ga lunar meteorites (26) have found that these younger basalts do not contain a KREEP component. Because the CE-6 low-Ti basalt records similarly young basaltic volcanic activity on the farside, we investigate whether the mantle source contained a KREEP component by examining the initial Sr-Nd isotopic compositions and initial 238U/204Pb ratio (μ value).
We select the five analyses of troilites in the CE-6 basaltic clasts that have the highest measured 207Pb/206Pb ratios (data S2), 1.090 ± 0.007 (2σ), which we assume represents the initial 207Pb/206Pb composition. The initial 204Pb/206Pb ratio is more difficult to determine due to the low current abundance of 204Pb. We therefore constrain the initial 204Pb/206Pb ratio using the estimated initial 207Pb/206Pb and the best-fitting Pb-Pb isochron (Fig. 3A), which yields an initial 204Pb/206Pb of 0.00563 ± 0.00013 (2σ). We then use a two-stage lunar Pb isotopic evolution model (27) to estimate the μ value of the CE-6 low-Ti basalt mantle source. The model assumes the Moon formed at 4500 Ma and evolved as a single body, with initial Pb isotopes equal to the isotopic standard Canyon Diablo Troilite (28) and had a μ value of 460. Beginning at 4376 Ma in the model, the Moon differentiated to produce different mantle sources (27). Our application of this model indicates a μ value of 355 ± 8 for the CE-6 low-Ti basalt mantle source (Fig. 4A). This is much lower than the μ values of KREEP-rich basalts [> 2000 (27)] and the PKT basalt from CE-5 [~680 (7, 8)].
Fig. 4. Initial Sr-Nd-Pb isotopes of lunar basalts.
(A) Initial 206Pb/204Pb as a function of crystallization age for lunar basalts from Apollo and Chang’e samples and lunar meteorites (see legend). The dashed lines show calculated evolution trajectories from a two-stage Pb isotope evolution model (27) of different lunar mantle sources at varying μ values. Our CE-6 measurement (red star) is compared to CE-5, Apollo and meteorite data (8, 27, 38). (B) Initial εNd as a function of initial 87Sr/86Sr for lunar basalts and meteorites. The dashed lines indicate evolutionary models calculated as described in the text. Data sources: CE-5 basalt (25); Apollo basalts (39, 40); Lunar meteorites (26, 38, 41–44).
The 32 clean plagioclase measurements yield an average initial 87Sr/86Sr ratio of 0.69922 ± 0.00013 (2σ), which is consistent with the initial ratio determined from the fitted Rb-Sr isochron (0.69927 ± 0.00004, 2σ), and lower than those of CE-5 basalts and most Apollo mare basalts (fig. S5A). We measured Sm-Nd isotopic compositions of domains containing late-stage mesostasis with high proportions of apatite in the CE-6 low-Ti basalt (fig. S4 and data S5). We find the 147Sm/144Nd ratios vary from 0.2049 to 0.2384, and 143Nd/144Nd from 0.51370 ± 0.00007 (2σ) to 0.51424 ± 0.00013 (2σ). The averaged initial εNd (defined in equation S1) is 17.2 ± 2.4 (2σ, n = 8), which is higher than other lunar samples (fig. S5B).
We calculate the expected evolution of the depleted mantle and urKREEP (primordial KREEP from the lunar magma ocean) using an initial 87Sr/86Sr of 0.69903 and a chondrite-like initial 143Nd/144Nd. For the depleted mantle, 87Rb/86Sr and 147Sm/144Nd were set to 0.005 and 0.286, respectively. For urKREEP, they were set to 0.206 and 0.158, respectively, fitted to the plotted lunar samples in Fig. 4B, which shows the initial Sr-Nd isotopes of the CE-6 low-Ti basalt are compatible with our calculated Sr-Nd isotopic evolution trajectory for depleted lunar mantle with 87Rb/86Sr = 0.005 and 147Sm/144Nd = 0.286. The initial Sr-Nd -Pb isotopes of the CE-6 low-Ti basalt indicate a mantle source depleted in incompatible elements (elements that tend to remain in melts during partial melting or crystallization), containing no measurable KREEP component. The farside CE-6 low-Ti basalts, and nearside CE-5 basalts, indicate that heat-producing KREEP components were probably not responsible for the generation of their parent magmas.
It has been suggested that the asymmetry of lunar nearside and farside volcanic activity is due to differences in the thickness of the Moon’s crust (4, 29). The farside has a thicker crust [mean ~50 km compared to ~30 km on the nearside (30)], which could explain the lower level of volcanism. However, the SPA basin on the farside has a thinner crust (20-30 km (30)) than the mean, but still does not contain abundant mare basalts. The giant impact basins on the nearside, such as Imbrium, Serenitatis and Tranquillitatis, are all flooded by mare basalts, whereas the SPA basin, the largest lunar impact basin, contains few volcanic deposits (18).
The Sr-Nd-Pb isotopic signature of the CE-6 low-Ti basalt indicates it was sourced from a non-KREEP mantle source, whereas KREEP is widespread on the nearside. The very depleted mantle source could be related to the impact that formed the SPA basin, which had an excavation depth of 100 km (31). The SPA impact might have redistributed any sub-crustal KREEP material to the nearside of the Moon (11, 12), and induced partial melting of the mantle beneath the SPA basin, leaving a depleted mantle below SPA with low U/Pb and Rb/Sr ratios, and a high Sm/Nd ratio (fig. S6). Over time, Sr, Nd and Pb isotopic ratios evolved due to radioactive decay until they matched the isotopic compositions we measured for the CE-6 low-Ti basalts. Depleted mantle material would have a higher melting point temperature than mantle material that did contain a KREEP component (32). KREEP contains elements that generate heat through radioactivity (including K, Th and U), so the absence of KREEP in the CE-6 mantle source would correspond to a low heat flow in the SPA basin. We suggest a combination of these factors could explain the rarity of mare volcanism in the SPA basin.
Implications for lunar crater chronology
Isotopic dating provides absolute ages for locations on the Moon from which samples have been retrieved. The ages of other locations are indirectly estimated from the number and size of impact craters, calibrated to the locations with measured absolute ages. Models of this lunar crater chronology have shown that the impact rate on the Moon has varied over time (33). The lunar impact flux was high at early times, then rapidly declined to a nearly constant rate, but timing of that transition is poorly constrained. The canonical chronology model predicts that the transition occurred at ~3.0 Ga (33). However, the only absolute age available between ~3.0 to 0.8 Ga was the CE-5 basalts (7, 8). Our isotopic dating of the CE-6 mare basalt provides an additional calibration point at ~2.8 Ga.
Adding the CE-6 data point to a crater chronology model requires a determination of N(1), the spatial density of impact craters with diameter D ≥1 km, at the landing site. Prior to the launch of CE-6, predictions for the age of the landing site ranged from 2.42 to 3.33 Ga (5, 14, 19, 34) due to differences in the determinations of N(1). We adopt N(1) = (2.01 ± 0.90) × 10−3 km−2 from a study (35) of craters with diameters ~200 m to 2 km in multiple areas of the mare beneath the CE-6 landing site. We discuss this choice of N(1) in Supplementary Text.
Using the measured date and N(1) value for the CE-6 landing site, we re-calibrate the lunar crater chronology model using least square fitting (Fig. 5A). We find
Fig. 5. Incorporating the Chang’E-6 landing site into a lunar crater chronology model. (A) N(1), the density of craters larger than 1 km, as a function of age. Blue circles are calibration points from Apollo (A11, A12, A14, A15, A16 and A17) and Luna (L24) samples, using crater densities (15, 45), and radiometric ages (22), and from CE-5 using the radiometric age (8) and crater density (46). The red star shows the constraint from CE-6, using the radiometric age (this work) and adopted crater density (47). Error bars indicate 1σ uncertainties. The black curve is the canonical crater chronology (33) and the red curve is our recalibrated model (Eq. 1). The inset shows the same models on a linear scale. (B) The impact flux, determined by integrating the chronology models in panel A. The recalibrated model has a slightly faster decline of impact flux between 4.0 and 3.0 Ga, and a slightly lower constant flux thereafter. The inset in (B) shows the residual between the two models.Open in viewer
N= 1.94 × 10−14(e7.196t – 1) + 7.652 × 10−4t (1)
(1)
where t is time in Ga. This chronology model implies a constant impact flux after 2.83 Ga, slightly earlier than the canonical model (Fig. 5B).
Acknowledgments
We thank Yi-Ge Zhang and Feifei Zhang for advice and comments on a draft manuscript. We thank the China National Space Administration (CNSA) for providing the CE6 samples. We appreciate Katherine Joy, Anthony Lagain and an anonymous reviewer for their thoughtful reviews which helped to improve the manuscript. Editor Keith Smith is also thanked for the comments and efficient editorial handling. The lunar working group at GIGCAS is thanked for inspiring discussions.
Funding:
Y.G.X. was financially supported by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant ZDBS-SSW-JSC007-11). L.Z. was supported by the lunar research program of GIGCAS (grant 2022SZJJZD-03).
Author contributions:
Y.G.X. and L.Z. designed the project. Y.Q.Z. and J.Y. Chen prepared the sample mounts. Z.X.C. and Q.Y. collected SIMS data; L.Z., Z.M.C., H.Y.X., C.Y.W., J.Y.C., P.L.H., Y.H.C., Q.Z., F.F.H., L.L.C., B.W., J.T.W., Y.N.Y., L. S., Y.P.Y., X.J.L. and J.X.Z. collected SEM data; L.Z., C.Y.W. and J.Y.C. collected LA-MC-ICP-MS data. C.Z.X., L.Z., Z.M.C., J.Y.C., Y.Q.Q., Z.Y.X., J.T.W. and F.L.L. produced data tables, produced figures and performed calculations. L.Z., Y.G.X., Z.X.C., Q.Y., J.Y.C., Z.Y.X., Y.Q.Q., L.X., J.W.H., and C.R.N. drafted the manuscript. All authors revised the manuscript.
Competing interests:
We declare no competing interests.
Data and materials availability:
The lunar soil investigated in this study (CE6C0100YJFM003) was provided by the CNSA under a materials transfer agreement (47). The prepared sample mounts are currently held at Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Science, on a 1-year loan, after which they will be returned to CNSA. Readers may request Chang’e-6 samples from CNSA through a standard procedure (47). The crater chronology data and our fitting code are available at Zenodo (48). Our measured compositions of pyroxene and Pb-Pb dating minerals are provided in data S1 and S2, and our measured Pb-Sr-Nd isotopes are in data S3 to S5.
Astronomers at the Complutense University of Madrid first spotted this intriguing event using a powerful telescope in Sutherland, South Africa. The tiny asteroid, measuring just 37 feet wide, has been temporarily ensnared by Earth’s gravitational pull, transforming it into a mini-moon.
Richard Binzel, an astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), explains, “These happen with some frequency, but we rarely see them because they’re very small and very hard to detect. Only recently has our survey capability reached the point of spotting them routinely.”
While Earth’s primary moon boasts a diameter of 2,159 miles, 2024 PT5 is comparatively minuscule. To put it in perspective :
Earth’s moon : 2,159 miles wide
Asteroid 2024 PT5 : 37 feet wide$
Size difference : Earth’s moon is over 300,000 times wider
Despite its small size, this temporary satellite provides valuable insights into our cosmic neighborhood and the dynamics of near-Earth objects.
The journey of Earth’s new mini-moon
Asteroid 2024 PT5 belongs to theArjuna asteroid belt, a group of space rocks that follow orbits similar to Earth’s, approximately 93 million miles from the sun. Some Arjuna asteroids can approach our planet at a close range of around 2.8 million miles, traveling at relatively low velocities of less than 2,200 miles per hour.
Wow! See Artemis 1 spacecraft's Earth-moon transit view in amazing time-lapse
According to data from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Horizons system, 2024 PT5’s stay in Earth’s orbit will be brief. The capture began at 3 :54 p.m. EDT on September 29, 2024, and is expected to end at 11 :43 a.m. EDT on November 25, 2024.
Carlos de la Fuente Marcos, a professor and mini-moon expert from the Complutense University, likens the asteroid’s behavior to that of a window shopper. He states, “Asteroid 2024 PT5 will not describe a full orbit around Earth. You may say that if a true satellite is like a customer buying goods inside a store, objects like 2024 PT5 are window shoppers.”
This celestial visitor’s journey serves as a reminder of the dynamic nature of our solar system. While it won’t remain in Earth’s orbit for billions of years like our primary moon, its fleeting presence offers a unique opportunity for scientific study.
The significance of mini-moons in astronomical research
Mini-moons like 2024 PT5 provide scientists with valuable opportunities to study near-Earth objects up close. These temporary captures act as natural cosmic laboratories, offering insights into the composition of asteroids and the intricate workings of our solar system.
Binzel emphasizes the importance of these events, stating, “These temporary captures are natural cosmic laboratories. They help us understand the small bodies that come close to Earth and could be important for future space missions.”
While mini-moons are too small and dim for most amateur astronomers to observe, they fall within the detection range of professional-grade telescopes. To spot 2024 PT5, one would need :
The study of mini-moons contributes to our understanding of near-Earth asteroids and their potential impact on our planet. By analyzing these temporary satellites, scientists can refine their models of asteroid behavior and improve our ability to predict and mitigate potential collisions.
Future implications and ongoing research
As technology advances, researchers hope to study these fleeting visitors more closely. Future missions may even attempt to gather samples or test new spacecraft designs using mini-moons as targets.
The discovery of 2024 PT5 and other mini-moons highlights the ever-changing nature of our cosmic environment. It serves as a reminder that our solar system is a dynamic place, full of surprises and opportunities for scientific exploration.
While Earth’s second moon may be temporary, its presence opens up new avenues for research and discovery. As we continue to scan the skies, who knows what other celestial wonders we might uncover ? The universe never ceases to amaze, and each new finding brings us one step closer to unraveling its mysteries.
Earth’s second moon confirmed : Scientists discover new natural satellite orbiting our planet
The New Mars Landing Approach: How We’ll Land Large Payloads on the Red Planet
Back in 2007, I talked with Rob Manning, engineer extraordinaire at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and he told me something shocking. Even though he had successfully led the entry, descent, and landing (EDL) teams for three Mars rover missions, he said the prospect of landing a human mission on the Red Planet might be impossible.
But now, after nearly 20 years of work and research — as well as more successful Mars rover landings — Manning says the outlook has vastly improved.
“We’ve made huge progress since 2007,” Manning told me when we chatted a few weeks ago in 2024. “It’s interesting how its evolved, but the fundamental challenges we had in 2007 haven’t gone away, they’ve just morphed.”
Image of the Martian atmosphere and surface obtained by the Viking 1 orbiter in June 1976. (Credit: NASA/Viking 1)
The problems arise from the combination of Mars’ ultra-thin atmosphere—which is over 100 times thinner than Earth’s — and the ultra-large size of spacecraft needed for human missions, likely between 20 – 100 metric tons.
“Many people immediately conclude that landing humans on Mars should be easy,” Manning said back in 2007, “since we’ve landed successfully on the Moon and we routinely land human-carrying vehicles from space to Earth. And since Mars falls between the Earth and the Moon in size and in the amount of atmosphere, then the middle ground of Mars should be easy.”
But Mars’ atmosphere provides challenges not found on Earth or the Moon. A large, heavy spacecraft streaking through Mars’ thin, volatile atmosphere only has just a few minutes to slow from incoming interplanetary speeds (for example, the Perseverance rover was traveling 12,100 mph [19,500 kph] when it reached Mars) to under Mach 1, and then quickly transition to a lander to slow to be able to touch down gently.
Universe Today publisher Fraser Cain’s video about the challenges of landing Mars, with more details in this article.
In 2007, the prevailing notion among EDL engineers was that there’s too little atmosphere to land like we do on Earth, but there is actually too much atmosphere on Mars to land heavy vehicles like we do on the Moon by using propulsive technology alone.
“We call it the Supersonic Transition Problem,” said Manning, again in 2007. “Unique to Mars, there is a velocity-altitude gap below Mach 5. The gap is between the delivery capability of large entry systems at Mars and the capability of super-and sub-sonic decelerator technologies to get below the speed of sound.”
The largest payload to land on Mars so far is the Perseverance rover, which has a mass of about 1 metric ton. Successfully landing Perseverance and its predecessor Curiosity required a complicated, Rube Goldberg-like series of maneuvers and devices such as the Sky Crane. Larger, human-rated vehicles will be coming in even faster and heavier, making them incredibly difficult to slow down.
Rob Manning, Chief Engineer for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the Sky Crane for landing rovers on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Keck Institute
“So, how do you slow down to subsonic speeds,” Manning said now in 2024 as the chief engineer at JPL, “to get to speeds where traditionally we know how to fire our engines to enable touchdown? We thought bigger parachutes or supersonic decelerators like LOFTID (Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator) tested by NASA) would allow us to maybe slow down better, but there were still issues with both those devices.”
“But there was one trick we didn’t know anything about it,” Manning continued. “How about using your propulsion system and firing the engines backwards —retro propulsion — while you are flying at supersonic speeds to shed velocity? Back in 2007, we didn’t know the answer to that. We didn’t even think it was possible.”
Why not? What could go wrong?
“When you fire engines backwards as you are moving through an atmosphere, there’s a shock front that forms and it would be moving around,” Manning explained, “so it could come along and whack the vehicle and cause it to go unstable or cause damage. You’re also flying right into the plume of the rocket engine exhaust, so there could be extra friction and heating possibilities on the vehicle.”
All of this is very hard to model and there was virtually no experience doing it, as in 2007, no one had ever used propulsive technology alone to slow and then land a spacecraft back on Earth. This is mostly because our planet’s beautiful, luxuriously thick atmosphere slows a spacecraft down easily, especially with a parachute or creative flying as the space shuttle did.
“People did study it a bit, and we came to the conclusion it would be great to try it and find out whether we could fire engines backwards and see what happens,” Manning mused, adding that there wasn’t any extra funding laying around to launch a rocket just to watch it come down again to see what happened.
A SpaceX Falcon-9 rocket poised to launch Dragon from Cape Canaveral. Credit: NASA
But then, SpaceX started doing tests in attempt to land their Falcon 9’s first stage booster back on Earth to re-use them.
“SpaceX said they were going to try it,” Manning said, “And to do that they needed to slow the booster down in the supersonic phase while in Earth’s upper atmosphere. So, there’s a portion of the flight where they fire their engines backwards at supersonic speeds through a rarified atmosphere which is very much what’s like at Mars.”
As you can imagine, this was incredibly intriguing to EDL engineers thinking about future Mars missions.
After a few years of trial, error, and failures, on September 29, 2013, SpaceX performed the first supersonic retropropulsion (SRP) maneuver to decelerate the reentry of the first stage of their Falcon 9 rocket. While it ultimately hit the ocean and was destroyed, the SRP actually worked to slow down the booster.
NASA asked if their EDL engineers could watch and study SpaceX’s data, and SpaceX readily agreed. Beginning in 2014, NASA and SpaceX formed a three-year public-private partnership centered on SRP data analysis called the NASA Propulsive Descent Technology (PDT) project. The F9 boosters were outfitted with special instruments to collect data specifically on portions of the entry burn which fell within the range of Mach numbers and dynamic pressures expected at Mars. Additionally, there were visual and infrared imagery campaigns, flight reconstruction, and fluid dynamics analysis – all of which helped both NASA and SpaceX.
To everyone’s surprise and delight, it worked. On December 21, 2015, an F9 first stage returned and successfully landed on Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral, the first-ever orbital class rocket landing. This was a game changing demonstration of SRP, which advanced the knowledge and tested the technology of using SRP on Mars.
View of SpaceX Falcon 9 first stage approaching Landing Zone 1 on Dec. 21, 2015. Credit: SpaceX
“Based on the analyses completed, the remaining SRP challenge is characterized as one of prudent flight systems engineering dependent on maturation of specific Mars flight systems, not technology advancement,” wrote an EDL team, detailing the results of the PDT project in a paper. In short, SpaceX’s success meant it wouldn’t require any fancy new technology or breaking the laws of physics to land large payloads on Mars.
“It turns out, we learned some new physics,” Manning said. They found that the shock front ‘bubble’ created around the vehicle by firing the engines somehow insulates the spacecraft from any buffeting, as well as from some of the heating.
EDL engineers now believe that SRP is the only Mars entry, descent and landing technology that is intrinsically scalable across a wide range and size of missions to shed enough velocity during atmospheric flight to enable safe landings. Alongside aerobraking, this is one of the leading means of landing heavy equipment, habitats and even humans on Mars.
But still, numerous issues remain unsolved when it comes to landing a human mission on Mars. Manning mentioned there are multiple unknowns, including how a big ship such as SpaceX’s Starship would be steered and flown through Mars’ atmosphere; can fins be used hypersonically or will the plasma thermal environment melt them? The amount of debris kicked up by large engines on human-sized ship could be fatal, especially for the engines you’d like to reuse for returning to orbit or to Earth, so how do you protect the engines and the ship? Mars can be quite windy, so what happens if you encounter wind shears or a dust storm during landing? What kind of landing legs will work for a large ship on Mars’ rocky surface? Then there are logistics problems such as how will all the infrastructure get established? How will ships be refueled to return home?
“This is all going to take a lot of time, more time than people realize,” Manning said. “One of the downsides of going to Mars is that it is hard to do trial and error unless you are very patient. The next time you can try again is 26 months later because of the timing of the launch windows between our two planets. Holy buckets, what a pain that is going to be! But I think we’re going to learn a lot whenever we can try it for the first time.”
And at least the supersonic retropropulsion question has been answered.
“We’re basically doing what Buck Rogers told us to do back in the 1930s: fire your engines backwards while you’re going really fast.”
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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.
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Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
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