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...
28-11-2024
Mystery of the Loch Ness Monster may finally be SOLVED - as expert claims he has a simple explanation for sightings of the mythical beast
A strange natural phenomenon could unravel the mystery of Loch Ness Monster sightings, according to an expert researcher.
Alan McKenna, founder of Loch Ness Exploration (LNE), believes elusive 'standing waves' might explain sightings of the mythical monster.
He said: 'A standing wave occurs when two boat wakes of the exact same frequency and amplitude are moving in opposite directions on the loch surface.
'When the two boat wakes finally meet and interfere with one another the results have the potential to create a standing wave.'
The peaks of these standing waves, rising above the otherwise calm waters, could be mistaken for 'humps' above the surface.
Footage captured by Mr McKenna shows the phenomenon occurring where a river meets the loch on its southern shore, at Fort Augustus.
But capturing a standing wave caused by boat wakes out on the open water is a greater challenge.
Alan said: 'The waves and the boat wake need to be identical.
A strange natural phenomenon could unravel the mystery of Loch Ness Monster sightings, according to an expert researcher
Alan McKenna, founder of Loch Ness Exploration (LNE), believes elusive 'standing waves' might explain sightings of the mythical monster
'So with all that in mind, there's now a lot more to consider here such as the boat itself, its size, the direction of travel and its current speed.
'A small boat with a smaller engine will most definitely produce a wake different from a much larger boat.
'It's a complex procedure, especially in open water, but it can happen.'
Mr McKenna now hopes to record the phenomenon happening out over the deep heart of the loch.
He said: 'Ali Matheson, skipper of Deepscan, frequently reports standing waves, but more so in the small marina within Urquhart Bay also known as Temple Pier.
'That's all fine and well, but it's more difficult to capture a standing wave in open water.
'We know that standing waves exist and they have been reported but what we don't have is the footage showing a natural standing wave in motion.'
He continued: 'Since launching LNE, it's always been my hope to capture as much natural phenomena as possible.
Peaks of standing waves, rising above the otherwise calm waters, could be mistaken for 'humps' above the surface
Mr McKenna now hopes to record the phenomenon happening out over the deep heart of the loch
Nessie sightings might just be 'standing waves'
Mr McKenna says 'standing waves' might explain sightings of the mythical monster.
He said: 'A standing wave occurs when two boat wakes of the exact same frequency and amplitude are moving in opposite directions on the loch surface. When the two boat wakes finally meet and interfere with one another the results have the potential to create a standing wave.'
The peaks of standing waves, rising above the calm waters, could be mistaken for 'humps' above the surface.
'It's a process of elimination, in my mind, as most potential 'Nessie' reports can be explained.
'Without being disrespectful, I tend to follow the reports made by the locals and the reason being is that they see Loch Ness everyday.
'I dare say that they are more knowledgeable than tourists.
'If you are unfamiliar with Loch Ness and its natural behaviour then I do believe that many people will be fooled by the water and certain illusions – it's easily done!'
When it comes to the existence of the fabled beast, however, Alan is keeping an open mind.
The 37-year-old said: 'If there are any unknown animals in Loch Ness then they certainly don't play by the rules.
'It's the perfect habitat for a shy animal with 23 miles of cold dark water and around 750ft deep.
'You could be swimming next to a 200ft submarine below the surface and not even notice it right in front of you, it's that dark!'
He continued: 'When I was a youngster and throughout my childhood, I fully believed the Plesiosaur theory.
'But the more you explore the story of Loch Ness the more unlikely that theory becomes – sorry folks.
'We've had many potential candidates over the years for 'Nessie' such as giant eels, long-necked seals, Greenland shark, large sturgeon, catfish and many others.
'But truth be told, none of us have the correct answer and that's what keeps this mystery going.'
LNE is an independent voluntary research group focused on Loch Ness, its natural environment, and its ecology, as well as the mythical monster.
Mr McKenna said: 'We invite everyone to join this group who has a genuine interest in the loch. It's not just about 'Nessie' as Loch Ness is far more than that.
'We have a great mixture of individuals in the LNE group and I believe it to be diverse.'
Rumours of a strange creature living in the waters of Loch Ness have abounded over the decades, yet scant evidence has been found to back up these claims.
One of the first sightings, believed to have fuelled modern Nessie fever, came in May 2, 1933.
On this date the Inverness Courier carried a story about a local couple who claim to have seen 'an enormous animal rolling and plunging on the surface'.
Another famous claimed sighting is a photograph taken in 1934 by Colonel Robert Kenneth Wilson.
It was later exposed as a hoax by one of the participants, Chris Spurling, who, on his deathbed, revealed that the pictures were staged.
Other sightings James Gray's picture from 2001 when he and friend Peter Levings were out fishing on the Loch, while namesake Hugh Gray's blurred photo of what appears to be a large sea creature was published in the Daily Express in 1933.
Robert Kenneth Wilson, a London physician, captured arguably the most famous image of the Loch Ness Monster. The surgeon’s photograph was published in the Daily Mail on April 21, 1934 - however it was later proven to be a fake
The first reported sighting of the monster is said to have been made in AD565 by the Irish missionary St Columba when he came across a giant beast in the River Ness.
But no one has ever come up with a satisfactory explanation for the sightings - although in 2019, 'Nessie expert' Steve Feltham, who has spent 24 years watching the Loch, said he thought it was actually a giant Wels Catfish, native to waters near the Baltic and Caspian seas in Europe.
An online register lists more than 1,000 total Nessie sightings, created by Mr Campbell, the man behind the Official Loch Ness Monster Fan Club and is available at www.lochnesssightings.com.
So what could explain these mysterious sightings?
Many Nessie witnesses have mentioned large, crocodile-like scutes sitting atop the spine of the creature, leading some to believe an escaped amphibian may be to blame.
Native fish sturgeons can also weigh several hundred pounds and have ridged backs, which make them look almost reptilian.
Some believe Nessie is a long-necked plesiosaur - like an elasmosaur - that survived somehow when all the other dinosaurs were wiped out.
Others say the sightings are down to Scottish pines dying and flopping into the loch, before quickly becoming water-logged and sinking.
While submerged, botanical chemicals start trapping tiny bubbles of air.
Eventually, enough of these are gathered to propel the log upward as deep pressures begin altering its shape, giving the appearance of an animal coming up for air.
OTHER VIDEOS
The Truth Behind the Loch Ness Monster: Nessie Mystery Solved | Factoidz
History of the Loch Ness Monster - Documentary
The Mystery Of The Loch Ness Monster | A Legend Uncovered
While scanning the frozen surface of northwestern Greenland this year, NASA scientists stumbled across a "city under the ice" from the paranoid years of the Cold War.
The structure was Camp Century, an abandoned Arctic military research base run by the US between 1959 and 1967 during the Cold War. It was the hub of Project Iceworm, a plan to install a network of nuclear missile launch sites hidden amid the Arctic Ice Sheet that could survive a first strike from the Soviet Union.
Camp Century.
Picture: Nasa
Nuclear missiles never made it to the camp, fortunately, because they couldn’t get permission from the Danish government, which still holds sovereignty over Greenland. However, the complex was powered by a nuclear reactor, which left behind alarge amount of radioactive debris, as well as loads of chemical and biological waste.
The site was abandoned in 1967 and left to be covered by Greenland’s perpetual snowfall. This year, however, faint echoes of the buried camp emerged when researchers flew over the Greenland Ice Sheet with a plane that had radar equipment attached to its belly.
“We were looking for the bed of the ice and out pops Camp Century,” Alex Gardner, project leader and cryospheric scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), said in a statement.
“We didn’t know what it was at first,” Gardner added.
It’s estimated that the structures of the military facility are currently at least 30 meters (100 feet) below the snow-covered surface, shallow enough to be picked up by radar-beaming equipment.
Previous airborne surveys of Greenland have detected signals of Camp Century as they passed over the site. However, the latest imagery from April 2024 provides the best view yet.
“In the new data, individual structures in the secret city are visible in a way that they’ve never been seen before,” explained Chad Greene, another cryospheric scientist at JPL.
With warming temperatures melting the planet’s ice sheets, there’s no guarantee the camp’s ruins will remain buried for long. A 2016 study indicated that the ice sheet on top of Camp Century could rapidly deteriorate within 75 years under a "business-as-usual scenario" of fossil fuel abuse.
If that happens, the report said, it would “guarantee the eventual remobilization of physical, chemical, biological, and radiological wastes abandoned at the site.” The researchers went on to suggest that the problem had the potential to spark fiddly political disputes between the Danish government and the US.
It’s uncertain if or when disaster might strike at Camp Century, but research initiatives like the recent project by NASA JPL could help keep tabs on the situation.
“Without detailed knowledge of ice thickness, it is impossible to know how the ice sheets will respond to rapidly warming oceans and atmosphere, greatly limiting our ability to project rates of sea level rise,” noted Gardner.
The Camp Century military base in Greenland.(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Constructing the trenches at Camp Century, Greenland. (credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Mysterious blue light spotted during avalanche on Mount Xiannairi, China
Mysterious blue light spotted during avalanche on Mount Xiannairi, China
A rare and intriguing phenomenon has been observed in China. On the night of October 27th, Chinese astrophotographer Shengyu Li set up his camera to capture star trails over Mount Xiannairi in Sichuan Province. To his surprise, he recorded mysterious blue flashes accompanying an avalanche.
The exact cause of these "blue lights" remains unclear, sparking various theories. Some speculate they could stem from geomagnetic activity, interactions of cosmic rays in the upper atmosphere, or rare atmospheric phenomena like blue jets or elves. However, Li offers another explanation: the flashes might result from triboluminescence—light produced by friction during ice fragmentation.
Triboluminescence occurs when certain materials emit light as they are fractured, scratched, or rubbed. This phenomenon happens due to the breaking of chemical bonds or the sudden separation of surfaces, which generates electrical charges. These charges can ionize the surrounding air or excite the material itself, creating visible light.
The hypothesis suggests that this event could be an example of triboluminescence. However, it also raises the intriguing possibility of a connection to UFO phenomena, such as orbs or other unexplained lights that have been observed around the world over the years.
Hypothesis: The sighting depicts what appears to be a blue light descending onto a snowbank, following the avalanche as it moves downward, and then vanishing before seemingly ascending again.
Did the avalanche trigger the blue light, or did the blue light crash into the snow, causing the avalanche?
Whether this phenomenon is a rare case of triboluminescence, potentially the first instance of it being captured on camera or something linked to unexplained UFO activity, the recording of this light remains a unique and fascinating occurrence.
Despite their sometimes harrowing nature, the vast majority of people live to tell the tale of seeing a UFO or even interacting with an extraterrestrial being from another world. Some people, though, are not so lucky. These unfortunate people, who, according to the Hynek scale, have experienced an encounter of the sixth kind, have died as an apparent direct result of an incident with a UFO or an encounter with an alien entity. And while comparatively speaking, these incidents are few and far between, there are more of them on record than we might think.
There have been several cases of US Air Force pilots, for example, who are suspected of having lost their lives in aviation accidents as a direct result of pursuits of UFOs. Without a doubt, one of the most morosely intriguing is the Grouse Mountain encounter that unfolded in February 1954, not least as the evidence appears to go against the official determination that the incident was a tragic accident due to pilot error. In fact, given the weight of this evidence uncovered by UFO investigators, it is surprising, and perhaps suspicious, that the incident is not much more well-known than it is.
At around 10:30 am on February 12th, 1954, Second Lieutenant Lamar Barlow was piloting his F86 Sabre jet over Grouse Mountain in British Columbia, Canada. He had departed from McChord Air Force Base across the border in Tacoma, Washington on a standard instrument checking exercise, although, interestingly or not, the jet was fully armed. The flight was uneventful, to begin with. However, at a little after noon, the control tower at McChord began receiving “Mayday” calls from Barlow. He offered that the plane’s compass was no longer working and as a result, he was now lost. According to official records, at precisely 12:06 pm, Barlow was around 60 miles north of Vancouver. Only nine minutes later, that distance had been reduced to 15 miles. However, by now, the jet was running low on fuel. As such, preparations were made for an emergency landing at Vancouver’s Sea Island Airport. Before the landing, however, communications with Barlow suddenly ceased.
Barlow and his plane were eventually recovered on the mountainside at an altitude of 2700 feet. It was estimated that his plane had slammed into the mountain while traveling at a speed of around 750 miles per hour. Upon the discovery, his body was found still strapped into the pilot’s seat, while debris from the now crippled jet was scattered in all directions.
Accounts of the crash began appearing in both local and national newspapers, and several days later, the United States Air Force offered their official explanation for the tragic crash. Barlow, they offered, had seen “radar ghosts” and, with the loss of his navigation equipment, became increasingly confused. They believed that Barlow thought he was much closer to Tacoma than he actually was. As such, by the time Grouse Mountain came into view, he simply had no time to react and crashed into the mountainside, killing him instantly.
To some, though, this explanation didn’t make sense, especially why he was traveling so fast when he was descending. These concerns were dismissed by the military as a simple lack of experience on Barlow’s part. There were, though, other details that didn’t add up for UFO investigators. Why, for example, was the jet carrying 24 fully armed rockets on what was a standard navigation exercise? Despite counterarguments that this was to reproduce the exact weight of the plane should it be heading into combat, this could have been achieved without armed rockets. Furthermore, sending an inexperienced pilot up with such an armed plane on a standard exercise was also seen as questionable.
Ultimately, as had been suspected in other similar cases over the previous years, UFO investigators asked whether Barlow had left the runway at Tacoma Air Force Base not to embark on a training exercise but to intercept an anomalous object – essentially, a UFO. What made these suspicions grow even more was that the entire area around the crash site was roped off and protected by armed guards for several days following the incident. Once more, the official explanation was to ensure that the scene was not contaminated and to make sure every last bit of wreckage was recovered, not least the rockets themselves. The fact is, it is not known if any of the rockets were fired, or if all or any of them were recovered. Incidentally, reports of the apparent clean-up operation stated that “most” of the rockets were recovered but not all. Needless to say, many people refused to accept the official explanation for Barlow’s death.
With these doubts in mind, questions continued to grow as to whether Lamar Barlow was on a secret intercept mission that morning in February 1954. And what’s more, this intercept mission, it was theorized, was to use deadly force to bring down this anomalous object. Had this potential use of deadly force resulted in Barlow’s death?
Also to come under scrutiny was the strange radar echoes, which were never explained, as well as just what caused Barlow’s navigation equipment to fail in the first place. In light of these questions, it is interesting to note that many pilots who have encountered UFOs – both military, private, and commercial – have reported having problems with their navigation and communications equipment, almost as if they were intentionally jammed. Was that what happened here? It is also interesting to note that, at the time, the United States military often used the term “phantom radar echoes” as an explanation for any kind of aerial anomaly.
One UFO researcher – Gord Heath – arrived at his potential scenario as to what happened that morning on Grouse Mountain. He highlighted, for example, how unusual it was that a pilot would be allowed to stray so far off course, even going across the border into Canada. He offered that it was standard practice for the control tower to alert a pilot under such circumstances. If we recall, according to the official report, the first time the control tower was aware there was a problem of any kind was when Barlow began issuing Mayday calls following the apparent loss of his navigation equipment. Of course, if Barlow was on an intercept mission then the control tower would have been fully aware of his whereabouts and why. Heath writes:
“Which makes more sense? The radar operators ignored the jet flying off into Canadian airspace until the pilot suddenly realizes he has only 30 minutes of fuel and has no clue about his position OR the radar operators guided the pilot in pursuit of a UFO into Canadian air space, beyond the farthest distance to return to base thinking the pilot would be able to land safely at Vancouver?”
Many UFO researchers and enthusiasts agreed with Heath’s conclusions. There was, though, a witness who offered further information. In a twist that appears to come straight out of a Hollywood blockbuster movie, this witness was a 6-year-old girl, Robin McPherson, who was returning home from school during her lunch break at the time of the incident. She stated to newspaper reporters that she watched as the jet plane just missed a ski-lift when she first saw it. She further claimed that the plane was “awful low” and “came out of the clouds” traveling “very fast”. She then stated that:
“Then it sort of zoomed up and went in the trees on the side of the mountain. I didn’t hear any noise like a bang!”
Adding to the confusion and intrigue, in the same newspaper report, a military spokesperson, perhaps without permission to do so, questioned why Barlow had not “bailed out” which was standard procedure, adding that Barlow was “flying as blind as a bat!” In short, for all the suggestions that something more than had been disclosed had taken place, the military seemed intent on putting the blame for Barlow’s death squarely on Barlow and nobody else.
Of course, there is no proof that a UFO was present in the skies over Grouse Mountain that morning, or if Lamar Barlow was sent up to intercept it. The rumors, however, persist to this day, and what’s more, it is far from the only encounter to feature the death of a military pilot. Only months earlier a similar incident unfolded, once more along the American-Canadian border, several hundred miles to the east in the Soo Locks area of Lake Superior in Michigan.
On the evening of November 23rd, 1953, personnel at Sault Ste Marie began seeing strange radar readings over the strictly restricted air space. Several moments later, an anomalous aerial object was detected. Shortly after that, Lieutenant Felix Moncla and Second Lieutenant Robert Wilson sprinted to their F-89C Scorpion fighter jet before taking off from Kinross Air Force Base to investigate and possibly intercept the unknown craft. While Moncla piloted the jet, Wilson read the radar readings. However, whether a consequence of the strange craft or not, the jet’s radar appeared faulty and so Moncla had to rely on information relayed from the control tower at Kinross Air Force Base. In an article on the incident, veteran UFO researcher Nick Redfern wrote:
“Available USAF records demonstrate that the F-89 was vectored west-northwest, then west, climbing to 30,000 feet. While on its westerly course, the crew received permission to descend to 7,000 feet, turning east-northeast and coming steeply down on the target from above!”
Moncla began his descent, traveling at approximately 500 miles per hour. Then, without warning, the anomalous object suddenly changed course. In response, Moncla did likewise, beginning a cat-and-mouse chase that continued for around 30 minutes before it appeared the jet was finally closing in. As this was happening, radar operators in the control tower at Kinross Air Force Base watched events unfold on their radar screens, seeing the jet close in on the mystery blip.
Eventually, the two objects on the radar screen, for all intents and purposes, became one. Personnel in the control tower prepared for communications regarding engagement. However, rather than that, the mystery object suddenly vanished from the radar screen – as did the F-89 jet. Attempts to communicate with the pilot began immediately but no response was forthcoming. More jets were scrambled in order to search for the missing fighter jet and the two missing pilots. However, there was no sign of them or the plane. It appeared as though they had completely vanished into thin air. Despite this, the search continued through the night and into the following day, although it ultimately proved fruitless. As we might imagine, in part because of the high strangeness of the encounter, and in part because the United States was in the middle of several waves of UFO sightings at the time, it wasn’t long before the wider public took an interest in the case, specifically UFO investigators. And, perhaps as a response to this wider interest, the military soon began to offer differing versions of events as to just what happened on the evening of November 23rd, 1953.
They had, for example, originally stated to the Associated Press that the jet and mystery object had “merged” on the radar screen. However, as interest in the incident grew, they backed down from this, claiming that no merging of any kind had taken place. At one point, a military spokesperson offered that the mystery object was a Canadian fighter jet that had strayed off course and wandered into American air space, something that the Canadian military outright rejected. Eventually, the United States military put forward that “the pilot probably suffered from vertigo and crashed into the lake!” Ultimately, though, despite all the differing statements and back-and-forth between the military and the press, just what happened to Moncla and Wilson remained unknown.
The previously mentioned Gord Heath offered his opinion on the incident, stating that it was highly unlikely that the United States Air Force – or indeed any air force – would have allowed someone who suffered from vertigo to pilot a fighter jet, adding that it was also just as unlikely that Moncla had managed to hide this condition from the military. Even more interesting, Heath also offered that he had spoken with fellow UFO researcher, John Tenney. According to what Tenney told him, through a source in the United States Air Force, Moncla’s “Cajun drawl” was heard over the communications radio several hours after the jet fighter had disappeared. If this was true, then where was this communication coming from, and just what had happened to the two pilots? Had they been “abducted” by the mystery craft and were their communications left open after this event? Was this communication coming from somewhere on Earth or was Moncla communicating from somewhere in space, or even from another dimension? And most intriguingly, just what did Moncla say? Furthermore, was this communication on a channel that was only heard by a very select number of the control tower, or had the military successfully managed to quieten all of those present that evening?
Whatever the truth, it didn’t take long for accusations of a cover-up to swirl around the encounter. Heath offered several reasons for his belief that the military was suppressing information on the incident. He highlighted, for example, how there was no memorial for the two missing (presumed dead) pilots – something that is carried out for every single member of the military who loses their lives during active service for their country. We should remember that the official stance of the military was that the two pilots had died while on active military duty. Similarly, the men’s wives did not receive the also customary American flag from the Air Force. Writing in 2003 in UFOBC Quarterly Magazine, Heath stated:
“Was it because they (the Air Force) had reason to suspect that the two crewmen might still be alive?”
Might Heath have been close to the truth? Could the pilots have still been alive despite the official declaration of their deaths? A decade and a half after the presumed deadly incident, in 1968, the case took another intriguing turn when the wreckage of a fighter jet was discovered on the banks of Lake Michigan. The discovery led to speculation in the local press that the wreckage was that of the missing F-89 fighter jet. However, neither the American nor Canadian authorities issued any kind of statement about the discovery. Was this the missing plane from November 1953? And if so, where were the bodies of the two pilots? Furthermore, how did it remain undetected for 15 years?
While there is no solid proof that the United States military, and indeed the Canadian authorities were engaged in an active cover-up regarding the disappearance of Moncla and Wilson, there are enough discrepancies and loose ends for the incident to remain a matter of intrigue almost three-quarters of a century later. And we should also note that it isn’t just UFO researchers and investigators who have continued to question the official narrative of the events of November 23rd, 1953. Many members of the two men’s families have also questioned just what happened to the two men. One such person was Moncla’s cousin, Buddy Moncla. He stated that he was very much open to the idea that Moncla and Wilson had been “snatched” by a UFO. In fact, according to his own research, the last transmission from Moncla that fateful evening was him stating that he was “going in for a closer look” before silence took over the airwaves.
Buddy believes that the two pilots did indeed witness something in the skies over Michigan that evening and went to investigate as they had been sent up to do. Perhaps adding yet another layer of mystery to the whole affair was Buddy’s suggestion that the UFO might not have been an alien vehicle but “something that Uncle Sam was experimenting with!” Of course, if this was the case then it perhaps offers an explanation as to why the military were so insistent on suppressing any information of the encounter. Should we consider that the order to scramble that evening was given in error and that the anomalous object was, in fact, a top-secret experimental aircraft of the United States military? And with this in mind, is that why Moncla’s voice was heard several hours after the disappearance – because the “Uncle Sam aircraft” had an open communications channel available to only a select few, one of whom might have been the “military source” behind the claim? While this is, of course, pure speculation, that something strange took place that November evening in 1953 surely is not.
There are more details to examine regarding the incident that hint at some kind of secret mission – one that Moncla and Wilson very much might have been aware of before they embarked on it. And once more, it is the research and investigation of Gord Heath that brings us this information. Reminiscent of the movie Destination Tokyo, where pilots were asked to leave their identification papers behind before embarking on their mission due to the fact that many of them were not expected to return alive, Moncla had quickly left his wallet purposely behind where it could be found before taking off from Kinross Air Force Base that evening. As Heath asks, was this because Moncla was fully aware of the potentially deadly nature of his mission?
There are also the testimonies of several Canadian rail workers at the Algoma Central Railway, who stated to local Canadian newspapers that they heard the sound of a crash on the night in question. Was this crash Moncla and Wilson’s F-89 jet? What makes these claims even more interesting is that local residents of the area also offered to newspapers that they witnessed several American fighter jets performing several “sweeps” of the area in the hours that followed the disappearance of the F-89. Once more, did the military know more about the incident than they publicly let on?
In the early 2000s, although we should perhaps treat it with a pinch of salt, another witness came forward, anonymously, through a UFO website. They claimed to have been a member of the military at the time of the incident and were present in the radar room at Battle Creek Air Force Base on the night in question. His account was almost identical to what eventually entered the public record, although, as he offered, he was able to “fill in the gaps” of the official record.
He stated that not one but two F-89 fighter jets had been scrambled from Kinross Air Force Base on the night in question. One of them, however, immediately experienced problems with their equipment and so had to return to base. Moncla, the witness claimed, was asked if he wanted to return to base and await another wingman, something he declined, instead offering to continue the mission alone (with Wilson as the radar operator). Official records show that only one fighter jet was in the air that night, which leaves us with several possibilities.
Perhaps the most obvious scenario is that the anonymous Battle Creek witness manufactured his version of events. However, as he was anonymous, he would have had little to gain from doing so. Without revealing his identity, he wouldn’t have been able to gain financially. So, if we discount that idea, was it possible that the anonymous witness was working for the military in order to plant disinformation about the encounter in order to lead investigators away from the truth of what happened that night? It is certainly possible, although, perhaps unlikely. This then leaves us with the notion that what the anonymous witness offered was completely true, right down to the details that the communications during the encounter were affected greatly by electrical static (something that often accompanies close contact UFO encounters). And if this is the case, why did he wait 50 years to come forward with the information? Perhaps we should turn once more to Gord Heath, who offered about the anonymous witness that while there was nothing to corroborate his account, it had the feeling of “being important”, and ultimately, truthful.
In August 2006, the case took yet another twist after UFO researcher, Francis Ridge, received an email from “Preston Miller” regarding the apparent recovery of the missing F-89 several weeks after it disappeared in late 1953. And while it is another piece of information that should be treated with caution it is certainly worth quickly examining.
According to the correspondence, the discovery was made in Lake Superior a short distance from the last known location of the fighter jet. The discovery was made by a group of divers known as the Great Lakes Dive Company. And not long after these apparent revelations, an apparent representative of the company came forward. “Adam Jimenez” began to answer questions online regarding the discovery, eventually appearing on Coast to Coast radio where he was interviewed by veteran UFO researcher, Linda Moulton Howe. Not only did he come across as very credible, but he offered side-scan sonar images of the discovery, which did indeed appear to show a sunken jet fighter, mostly in one piece.
However, the twists continued several months later when the website set up by the Great Lakes Dive Company simply disappeared. At the same time, “Adam Jiminez” also seemed to disappear, no longer responding to emails or online questions. To some, this was confirmation that the revelations were nothing but a hoax. Some researchers, though, questioned if this sudden disappearance was part of the long-standing cover-up.
Ultimately, the disappearance and presumed deaths of Felix Moncla and Robert Wilson remain a complete mystery. Felix Moncla’s sister, Leoni Shannon, offered years later that:
“We still know nothing about it. I don’t think the (US) government wants to let us know about what really happened to him!”
She is certainly not alone in her assessment of the situation.
Several years later in March 1956, another blood-curdling episode unfolded involving two more military personnel. According to the account, on the day in question, Sergeant Jonathon Lovette and Major William Cunningham were out on the White Sands missile testing grounds near Holloman Air Force Base searching for rocket debris. During the course of their search, Lovette opted to go and investigate an area at the edge of a small sand dune. He momentarily disappeared from Cunningham’s sight. A short time later, though, Cunningham heard a petrified scream coming from where Lovette was last seen.
Suspecting Lovette had discovered and been bitten by a snake, Cunningham rushed over to the sand dune. However, when he peered down, he was greeted with a sight he was not contemplating. The first thing he could see was a large, shiny, silver disc hovering over the ground around 20 feet away from him. Then he saw the tentacle-like appendage extending from an opening in the object. He traced this tentacle down to the ground and could see that it was wrapped around Lovette’s leg. He watched helplessly as his colleague continued to scream in terror. A moment later, Lovette began to be dragged toward the object, eventually disappearing inside. Then, the object rose straight into the air and disappeared in a second.
A moment later, after finally bringing himself to his senses, Cunningham ran back to the military jeep the pair had been traveling in and radioed back to base what had happened, requesting immediate backup and assistance. By the time several military units arrived in response to his distress call, Cunningham was in a state of complete shock. He was immediately taken to a military hospital where he was kept under constant observation. During this time, he was questioned on several occasions as to exactly what had happened – and each time, he offered the same version of events: that he had seen Lovette dragged aboard a flying saucer by a tentacle-like appendage, and then the saucer had disappeared into the sky. It is also interesting to note, at least according to the report, that base radar noted an anomalous object in the same region that Lovette disappeared – an object that itself simply vanished from radar suddenly.
Military search units combed the entire region over the course of three days, eventually discovering Lovette’s naked corpse around 10 miles from where he was last seen. It was estimated that his body had been out in the elements for between 12 to 24 hours, meaning there were 48 hours where his whereabouts were unknown. When his body was returned to base and an autopsy performed, it simply raised more unsettling questions.
His body had been completely, but precisely mutilated, with very similar injuries and cuts that would become commonplace in the cattle mutilations that would follow over the subsequent decades. Part of his lower jaw, for example, had been precisely cut away, and his tongue had been surgically removed. His eyes had also been cleanly removed, as had his anus, which was described as being taken out as it were a “plug or cork-stop!”
It was determined that whoever – or whatever – had inflicted these injuries, almost certainly had advanced surgical and medical knowledge, not to mention skills. Perhaps the most unsettling discovery, though, and again something that would show itself in the cattle mutilations that would begin in the late 1960s, was that every drop of blood had been drained from his body. Adding to the mystery, the autopsy found no signs of vascular collapse that would normally be present in a person who had bled to death. Incidentally, Cunningham’s superiors suspected that he himself had murdered Lovette, but with no evidence – not least where he had managed to stash the body and then place it where it was found while in the hospital under observation – he was released without charge.
One last thing of interest to mention about this case is an apparent report of the incident from Project Grudge – a report named, Report 13. Two people came forward claiming to have been asked to analyze the document for the United States military – researcher, William Cooper, and Captain William English, a former Green Beret – and it is from their recollections of the report in question that most of what we know of the case comes from.
Williams claimed to have seen and analyzed the report (an annotated version of it) in the early 1970s, while English claims to have looked at it several years later while assigned to the United States security service based at a Royal Air Force base in Chicksands, England. Both of the men recalled almost identical versions of events, even though both gave their accounts separately and without the knowledge of the other. Another interesting thing to note is that, officially at least, Report 13 no longer exists. All of the other reports in Project Grudge – Reports 1 to 12 and Report 14 – are now in the public domain. Report 13, however, remains missing. Make of that what you will.
It is also worth mentioning a similar horrifying encounter that occurred in October 1981 in the small town of Panorama in Brazil. At the time the incident unfolded, strange objects, that the locals called Chupas, were terrifying the entire region and had been for several weeks. These objects were often described as oval or circular (although some described rectangular objects), and, most concerning of all, they would fire beams of light toward the ground, as if attempting to attack residents of the area. And on the evening of October 17th, it seems that’s exactly what happened.
On the night in question, two hunters, Ribamar Ferreira and Abel Boro, were hunting in the woods when they noticed a bizarre, glowing object appear overhead, with Ferriera later describing it as looking similar to a “luminous tire of a truck!” He would elaborate that the object was so bright that it appeared to turn “the night into day!” After several moments, the object descended slightly – and its attention was very much on Boro.
Within moments, Boro was completely surrounded by some kind of “glittering light” that came from the underside of the object. Ferreira, as scared as he was confused, turned to run back to the village in order to get help. By the time he and several members of Boro’s family returned, however, Boro was dead. Despite there being no wounds or cuts to his body, it was later discovered that Boro’s blood had seemingly been completely drained. His death remains unsolved.
Without a doubt, one of the most ominously intriguing incidents to explore here also unfolded in Brazil around a decade and a half earlier, an encounter known as the Lead Masks case. The curious episode occurred in the summer of 1966 just outside of Rio de Janeiro, and was first relayed to the wider world by Jacques Vallee in his book, Confrontations. However, a comprehensive and detailed report appeared several months after the deadly incident, in the March 1967 edition of Flying Saucer Review. In more recent years with the arrival of the Internet interest in the case has only grown and it remains one of the most reinvestigated cases on record.
The story begins at a little after 5 pm on the afternoon of August 17th, 1966, in the small town of Niteroi, when a local teenager was wandering through the woods and noticed two men sitting upright in a nearby clearing. He watched the men for several moments before going on his way. The next morning, he went through the same area and noticed the two men once more, still lying in the same position. Once more, he went on his way, but two days later, so intrigued was he that he returned to the same spot. He was a little shocked to see the two men still in the clearing, and still laying on their backs. This time, he decided to take a closer look. By the time he was approaching the clearing the nauseating smell hitting his nostrils told him that the two men were not only dead, but they had likely been so for several days. Even so, he continued to the clearing.
Both of the men were dressed in suits with what appeared to be brand-new raincoats over the top. Perhaps strangest of all, though, was that both had a crudely made lead mask over their eyes. He took one last look at the grim scene before running back to the village to inform the authorities. It would take the better part of a day for the police to negotiate the rough terrain of the woodland. When they arrived they were as perplexed as they were shocked. Just what had happened to cause the deaths of the two men? As multiple investigations unfolded over the coming weeks, both by the police and private investigators, it became clear that something very strange had unfolded. Was this some kind of experiment, a bizarre ritual gone wrong, or simply outright murder?
The two men were eventually identified as 43-year-old Jose Viana and 32-year-old Manuel Pereira da Cruz, both local electricians from the small village of Atafona. From speaking to the local community, both men were well-liked and respected and didn’t appear to have any obvious enemies. Once details of the grim discovery were released to the public, information came to the police – and some of it made the whole case even stranger. Some of the initial findings, however, left the police at a loss as to what had happened.
The clearing where the bodies were found, for example, was perfectly serene and undisturbed, with no sign whatsoever of any kind of struggle, right down to the fact that both men were neatly dressed without even a hair out of place. It was, as bizarre as it appeared, as if the men had simply laid on the ground of their own accord and died. Initial autopsies only clouded the picture even more. Both men, it seemed, had died from massive, sudden heart attacks, with their deaths happening within seconds of each other. This was highly improbable – that two otherwise healthy men had suffered sudden heart attacks in the same spot within seconds of each other. Ultimately, something had to have caused the heart attacks. From what the boy who discovered the bodies had told the police, something untoward had taken place between 5 pm on August 17th and 9 am the following morning on August 18th.
It would also come to light as authorities spoke to members of the local community that several residents had witnessed a strange glowing orange object seemingly hovering directly over the clearing where the two men were discovered on the evening of August 17th, with some witnesses even reporting that several orange beams of light shot down from the object toward the ground. One of the most intriguing of these reports appeared in the Brazilian national newspaper, Jornal do Brazil. It came from Senhora Gracinda Coutinhjo da Sousa, who claimed that she saw the “unusual object” on the night in question directly over Vintem Hill where the two bodies were discovered. Sousa was described by those who knew her as a very credible witness, with the newspaper reporting that:
“…she was driving along with three of her children when they saw an orangy color with a band of fire around its edges. The object was sending out rays in all directions and was hanging over the top of the hill. She stopped the car, and with her children watched the object as it rose and fell vertically for some three or four minutes!”
Following this initial report of strange objects overhead further reports of similar objects came in from the public which, ultimately, attracted the attention of UFO investigators. And it would soon come to light that there had been another UFO incident several weeks earlier, which we will turn our attention to next.
According to an article in Flying Saucer Review, on the evening of June 13th, a “violent explosion” occurred in the two dead men’s village. According to the report, the publication had received regular reports of UFO sightings in the days leading up to this explosion. However, rather suspiciously, the Brazilian newspapers suddenly stopped reporting on the sightings due to authorities wrapping a “cloak of security” around the encounters. This was followed by rumors of some kind of bizarre electrical experiment taking place on the beach involving several local residents, as well as the discovery of some kind of electrical device stored in a nearby garden. Even stranger, several local residents reported seeing a “ball of fire” crossing the sky on the evening in question, as well as fishermen reporting seeing a “flying saucer” crashing into the sea.
Interestingly enough two of the people present during this incident in June 1966 were Viana and Cruz. As we will explore a little later, there is good reason to believe that some kind of experiments were taking place in the area – and what’s more, they appeared to be connected to some kind of local “movement” or organization. Before we turn our attention to these potentially connected goings-on, however, we will examine the timeline of events that the police managed to piece together that somehow led to the deaths of the two young men in the forest clearing.
At around 9 am on the morning of August 17th, Viana and Cruz left their village on their way to Sao Paulo where they planned to purchase a car as well as the electrical equipment they required for work. With them, they had around $4000 in today’s monetary value. Interestingly enough, despite there being no evidence they had purchased a car or electrical equipment, only a small amount of the money was found on them when their bodies were discovered. Robbery, though, was pretty much ruled out given that neither of the men had any kinds of injuries or even bruises on their bodies.
Ultimately, after boarding the bus, the two men arrived in Niteroi. At around 2 pm, they purchased the raincoats both were wearing when they were found (although we should note that the weather reports at the time suggested it was raining and that the raincoats could very well have been an incidental last-minute purchase and not of consequence to the strange events). Following buying the raincoats, according to receipts found on them, the pair went to a local bar where they each purchased a bottle of mineral water. Once more, the fact that the pair had intentionally kept the receipts suggested to investigators that they intended to claim money for returning their empty bottles on their return journey, suggesting to investigators that they were very much intending to return home and that suicide was not in their plans. It was around 3 pm when the two men set off to the woods where their bodies were discovered two days later. It was around 5 pm when the teenager witnessed the two men “sat upright” in the clearing. What happened between then and 9 am the following morning is purely guesswork.
There were, though, further discoveries. Perhaps the most intriguing of these was several pieces of paper with instructions on them. One of these notes, for example, read:
“Sunday, one pill after meal. Monday, one pill after breakfast. Tuesday, one pill after meal. Wednesday, one pill lying down!”
Another note would state:
“4:30 pm be at appointed place. 6:30 pm swallow pill. Then protect face with metal and await for signal to show itself!”
In another twist, an examination of the notes revealed that it was highly unlikely that either of the two men had written them. They appeared to be instructions for some kind of countdown. Ultimately, who wrote these notes, and why? Furthermore, what did they mean or represent?
One line of thought was that the two men were looking to purchase unorthodox materials, possibly illegal ones, which might explain why they were meeting someone in an out-of-the-way place, and why they had taken so much money with them yet appeared to not have purchased anything. Had they been double-crossed somehow? And just what were they trying to purchase, if anything? Could it even be possible that the two men were somehow involved in espionage? And, just how did the UFO sightings fit into all of this? If we recall that one witness claimed to have seen beams of light directed toward where the two men were found – could this have been what caused their sudden cardiac arrests? Or, returning to the speculative links to the intelligence agencies, could their deaths have been made to look like heart attacks and the UFO sightings have been purely coincidental? We will return to this line of thought very shortly.
First, though, we will examine another incident that was documented in the UFO magazine Flying Saucer Review and a very similar encounter in 1962. A local television technician and repair man was discovered in much the same position as the two men on Vintem Hill – laying on his back, fully dressed and with an almost identical crudely-made lead mask covering his eyes. As bizarre as this discovery was, it would surely be irresponsible to dismiss the incident as pure coincidence.
This is perhaps especially the case when we consider that, according to investigations at the time, several electricians in the local area were involved in experiments with “high frequency thought waves” that used LSD in order to “step up the mental alertness” of those involved with them, as well as to “alter the frequency of the brain”. We might recall the notes discovered on Viana and Cruz that featured instructions on when to take pills.
If such a group of electricians and fringe scientists did exist, they remain a mystery, as does how they came into existence in the first place. One man, though, Elci Gomes – who knew both Viana and Cruz – informed the police when he was brought in for questioning that the two dead men were members of a “secret society” of “scientific spiritualists” that was made up of “electronic specialists and enthusiasts”. Furthermore, this organization covered the entire region with multiple members. Although he didn’t know the goals or agenda of the group, he did state that they were “devoted to spiritism”. He continued that Viana and Cruz – possibly outside of the organization’s knowledge – were attempting to “communicate with beings from Mars”. What’s more, they had previously “performed many strange electronic experiments”. Even more amazing, Gomes offered that he, along with Viana and Cruz, had built the device discovered in the garden following the June 1966 incident, although he further offered that the object witnessed by members of the local community that evening was very genuine.
Despite this wealth of information from Gomes, the deaths of Viana and Cruz remain a complete mystery almost half a century later. Had they constructed a device that not only communicated and possibly summoned a UFO in June 1966, but also shot it down into the sea? It is perhaps interesting to recall that authorities placed a reporting ban on the encounters following the incident. Did they know more than they revealed to the public?
It is also not clear why these experiments began in the first place, and which individual was the driving force for the apparent organizing of such like-minded people. Perhaps Viana and Cruz were themselves – maybe unbeknown to them – part of some kind of bizarre experiment. Were they perhaps lured to the woodland with the promise of purchasing advanced electronic equipment or materials, possibly by the secret society they were a part of, or possibly by intelligence agents?
One last thing to consider with this last possibility in mind is the alleged “heart attack gun” that came to light following the New York Times investigation into some of the secret programs of the CIA, specifically the MK Ultra experiments. This weapon was designed to fire a needle of ice that would, in theory, pierce the heart leaving only the small pinprick of a mark, so small it could go undetected unless the person performing the autopsy knew exactly what they were looking for. Once in the body, the ice would melt unleashing a toxin that would cause a sudden heart attack. Might this have happened here? And if so, was it connected to the experiments to communicate with UFOs? Perhaps the pair had been too successful in their goals. Perhaps these discreet government agents wished to pick up where the pair had left off. For now, all possibilities remain on the table.
As we can see, then, there are many more deadly encounters with UFOs and potential aliens than many of us would think. And the cases we have examined here are but a fraction of these deadly cases on record. Indeed, it is highly likely that we will return to these fatal UFO incidents in another article in the near future. While some of these encounters appear to have been tragic accidents while in pursuit of UFOs in the skies, others – such as the Lovette incident and the Lead Masks case – appear to have been much more targeted and purposeful. Indeed, if such cases are accurate, then we perhaps should question whether the secrecy surrounding UFOs is as much for our protection as that of the government. One thing is certain, the more we delve into the UFO and alien mysteries, the cloudier and murkier the waters become.
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Odysseus continues its voyage to the lunar surface.
Odysseus landing on the Moon
Odysseus lunar lander’s first images of the Moon
Update for 7 pm ET: Touchdown! Intuitive Machines reports that its IM-1 lander Odysseus has landed on the moon and is transmitting a faint, but definite, signal. "Houston, Odysseus has found his new home," mission director Tim Crain said. See our full landing story, video and photos.
The Odysseus lander from Intuitive Machines obtained this picture of the Bel’kovich K crater on Feb. 21, 2024. (Image credit: Intuitive Machines/X)
Hours ahead of its moon landing, Odysseus snapped a picture of a lunar crater.
The Intuitive Machines lander beamed home an image of the Bel’kovich K crater, a roughly 31-mile (50-kilometer) divot in the moon's northern equatorial highlands. Mountains in the center were "made when the crater was formed," officials wrote Wednesday (Feb. 21) on X, formerly Twitter.
Odysseus successfully entered lunar orbit on Wednesday following a crucial engine burn, and is slated to touch down near the moon's south pole on Thursday afternoon (Feb. 22) no earlier than 6:24 p.m. EST (2324 GMT). You can tune in to the landing live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA, or directly via the space agency. Coverage will begin at 5:00 p.m. EST (2300 GMT).
1st image of Odysseus on the moon released after historic landing
If Odysseus makes it, the lander will be the first private machine to successfully soft land on the moon and the first American vehicle overall to do so since the crewed Apollo 17 mission achieved the feat in 1972. You can watch the attempt here at Space.com.
Intuitive Machines' Odysseus lander beams home a selfie in lunar orbit on Feb. 21, 2024. (Image credit: Intuitive Machines)
The mission launched on Feb. 15 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, bringing along 12 payloads for lunar investigations. Six of those experiments are from NASA and associated with the agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, or CLPS.
NASA aims to use CLPS missions for science investigations ahead of the agency's Artemis program, which itself plans to put astronauts back on the moon in the 2020s and eventually establish a permanent base at the lunar south pole. The region is rich in water ice, which is useful for fueling and machinery.
One CLPS mission has already tried to reach the moon, but it didn't make it. Astrobotic's Peregrine lunar lander launched in January atop the first United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur rocket. Peregrine, however, developed a fuel leak and instead was steered into Earth's atmosphere on Jan. 18.
Other private missions before Odysseus' IM-1 endeavor did indeed achieve lunar orbit before. Examples include Israel's Beresheet and Tokyo's Hakuto-R landers. Both missions, however, saw their spacecraft crash: Beresheet in April 2019 and Hakuto-R in April 2023.
This story was updated at 2:34 p.m. Feb. 22 with the updated landing time.
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Freek Vonk ontdekt nieuw soort reuzenslang in de Amazone: verschillen zijn genetisch gezien enorm
Freek Vonk ontdekt nieuw soort reuzenslang in de Amazone: verschillen zijn genetisch gezien enorm
Jeannette Kras
Een hoogtepunt in zijn carrière noemt Freek Vonk het. Samen met veertien andere biologen heeft hij in het Amazoneregenwoud een nieuwe reuzenslang ontdekt, de noordelijke groene anaconda genaamd.
Het maakt eens te meer duidelijk dat we nog lang niet alles weten over de natuur. En dat we er zuinig op moeten zijn. Volgens de wetenschappers uit acht landen wordt het ecosysteem van de pas ontdekte anaconda namelijk ernstig bedreigd.
De groene anaconda is een indrukwekkend dier. Hij kan meer dan 7 meter lang worden en weegt wel 250 kilo. Een groot vrouwtje kan een omtrek hebben van een meter. Als volwassene pas je er dus makkelijk in. Veel dieren (en ook mensen) zijn dan ook doodsbang voor de slang, die vooral in de regenwouden van Zuid-Amerika voorkomt. De anaconda jaagt op herten, kaaimannen en soms zelfs jaguars.
Enorme genetische verschillen Dat er nu een nieuwe soort is ontdekt van zo’n enorm dier is groot nieuws. Hoogleraar aan de VU en onderzoeker bij Naturalis, Freek Vonk, was de enige Nederlander, die bij de ontdekking betrokken was. Vonk vertelt in het persbericht hoe bijzonder dat is: “Het komt wel vaker voor in de natuur dat twee soorten er voor mensen op ’t oog hetzelfde uitzien, maar toch tot verschillende soorten behoren. Maar dat dit bij de grootste slang ter wereld ook het geval was, dat had ik nooit verwacht!’’
Zelfs experts kunnen het verschil niet zien tussen de beide anaconda’s. “Toch zijn de verschillen genetisch gezien enorm”, vertelt medeonderzoeker Bryan Fry van de University of Queensland. “Het genetische verschil is 5,5 procent. Ter vergelijking: mensen verschillen maar 2 procent van chimpansees.”
Moeilijk te vinden Tot die spectaculaire ontdekking komen de biologen, nadat ze bloed en weefsel hebben verzameld van anaconda’s in Ecuador, Venezuela en Brazilië. Ook bestudeerden ze de dieren van dichtbij om de schubben te tellen en andere fysieke kenmerken te vinden die duiden op evolutionaire verschillen. Na de genetische data te hebben bestudeerd, vonden ze een duidelijke scheiding tussen de anaconda’s in het noorden en het zuiden van het continent. Daarop besloten ze de slangen die ze in het noorden vonden een nieuwe naam te geven: de noordelijke groene anaconda, oftewel officieel Eunectes akayima. Deze komt vooral in Venezuela, Suriname en Guyana voor. Akayima betekent in de inheemse talen in de regio ‘grote slang’. De zuidelijke groene anaconda blijft E. murinus heten.
Het is niet makkelijk om anaconda’s van dichtbij te bestuderen. Ze zijn niet alleen gigantisch en levensgevaarlijk, maar ze verstoppen zich ook het grootste deel van de tijd in moerassen en modderige poelen.
Leefgebied onder druk De vondst is bijzonder nuttig voor het behoud van de soort, legt Vonk uit. Nu kunnen de onderzoekers per anaconda bekijken wat nodig is om te overleven. Erg belangrijk in een tijd waarin het slecht gaat met de regenwouden van Zuid-Amerika. Door klimaatverandering en ontbossing staat het leefgebied van de anaconda zwaar onder druk. “Dit is een belangrijke ontdekking, omdat de nieuw beschreven noordelijke groene anaconda een veel kleiner leefgebied heeft dan de zuidelijke variant en dus veel kwetsbaarder is”, aldus Fry.
En niet alleen het leefgebied van de anaconda wordt bedreigd, benadrukt Vonk. “De ontdekking van deze nieuwe soort anaconda is natuurlijk heel erg opwindend, maar tegelijkertijd is het van essentieel belang om te onderstrepen hoe belangrijk het is dat niet alleen bedreigde dieren maar ook het bedreigde Amazonewoud verder wordt onderzocht, en natuurlijk ook zoveel mogelijk wordt beschermd.”
Sleutel en slot De studie roept ondertussen veel vragen op. Hoe zijn de noordelijke en zuidelijke groene anaconda bijvoorbeeld op verschillende evolutionaire sporen beland? De twee soorten leefden immers in Frans Guyana nog samen. Ze zijn zelfs aan twee kanten van dezelfde rivier gespot, zegt Fry. En toch is er in hun genen geen bewijs gevonden dat ze met elkaar paarden. Daarom wil de onderzoeker kijken of de genitaliën van de slangen verschillen, omdat veel slangensoorten als een sleutel en een slot in elkaar passen. Als twee soorten niet langer in elkaar passen, is het logischer dat ze evolutionair uit elkaar gaan lopen. “Voor elke vraag die we beantwoorden, komen er zeven interessantere bij”, besluit Fry.
Wetenschappers hebben ontdekt dat de Kuipergordel mogelijk bijna twee keer zo groot is als eerder werd gedacht. Niet alleen dat: het zou zelfs zo kunnen zijn dat er sprake is van een tweede gordel.
De ruimtesonde New Horizons heeft weer een nieuwe ontdekking gedaan: het zou zomaar kunnen zijn dat de Kuipergordel miljarden kilometers verder reikt dan de huidige modellen voorspellen. De ruimtesonde is inmiddels aangekomen op een afstand van 60 AU, wat betekent dat deze zestig keer verder verwijderd is van de zon dan onze eigen planeet: AU staat voor Astronomical Unit en is gelijk aan de afstand tussen de zon en de aarde, wat ongeveer 150 miljoen kilometer is. Op de huidige afstand van 9 miljard kilometer vanaf de zon vangt New Horizons een hoop meer stof is dan de bedoeling is, wat mogelijk betekent dat de Kuipergordel een stuk verder reikt dan eerder werd gedacht. Wetenschapper Alex Doner heeft meegewerkt aan het onderzoek. Hij laat weten: “New Horizons is momenteel bezig met de eerste directe metingen van interplanetair stof – ver voorbij Neptunus en Pluto. Op deze afstand kan elke kleine observatie leiden tot een grote ontdekking. Het idee dat we wellicht een verlenging hebben ontdekt van de Kuipergordel is een stap vooruit in het ontrafelen van de mysteries van het zonnestelsel.” Het onderzoek is gepubliceerd in het blad Astrophysical Journal Letters.
De Kuipergordel Als je vanaf de zon door ons zonnestelsel reist, kom je eerst de planeet Mercurius tegen. Vervolgens Venus, de aarde, Mars, Jupiter, Saturnus, Uranus en Neptunus. Tussen Mars en Jupiter bevindt zich dan ook nog de planetoïdengordel: een gebied met een grote hoeveelheid planetoïden. En voorbij Neptunus bevindt zich dan de Kuipergordel, bestaande uit miljarden komeetachtige – uit steen en ijs bestaande – objecten. Sommige van die objecten zijn groot – zoals Eris en Pluto – andere zijn juist aanzienlijk kleiner.
Ruimtestof De wetenschappers hebben de ontdekking kunnen doen omdat New Horizons zich momenteel dus door de Kuipergordel beweegt en hierbij stof tegenkomt. Dit stof wordt vervolgens gedetecteerd, waardoor er uiteindelijk een dichtheid bepaald kan worden. Die dichtheid is momenteel een stuk hoger dan deze zou moeten zijn. De verwachting is namelijk dat de buitenste ring van de Kuipergordel een lagere stofdichtheid heeft dan de regionen binnenin. Aangezien New Horizons vooralsnog geen lagere dichtheden heeft gemeten is het dan ook waarschijnlijk dat deze de buitenkant van de Kuipergordel nog niet heeft bereikt. Mede-wetenschapper Alan Stern licht toe: “Deze nieuwe bevindingen betekenen dat New Horizons waarschijnlijk het eerste ruimtevaartuig is dat een nieuwe verzameling hemellichamen heeft ontdekt. Ik ben dan ook erg nieuwsgierig om te zien tot hoever de hoge stofdichtheid zal reiken.”
IJsdeeltjes De metingen van New Horizons komen op het perfecte moment. Zo hebben wetenschappers van het New Horizons-team met behulp van observatoria zoals de Subaru Telescope in Hawaii eerder een aantal objecten gevonden die ver buiten het gebied liggen dat traditioneel gezien als de Kuipergordel wordt aangemerkt. En New Horizons lijkt nu dus ook ter plekke te bevestigen dat de buitengrens van de Kuipergordel op grotere afstand ligt dan gedacht. Zo werd eerst gedacht dat deze grens zich rond een afstand van 50 AU bevond, terwijl nu wordt gedacht aan een afstand van 80 AU. Concreet betekent dit een verlenging van 4,5 miljard kilometer. Het team van Doner is naarstig op zoek naar een mogelijke verklaring. Zo stelt Doner: “Het zou goed kunnen zijn dat New Horizons nu kleine ijsdeeltjes detecteert die niet dichter bij de zon kunnen komen. Een ander verklaring zou kunnen zijn dat kleine stofdeeltjes van de Kuipergordel door stralingsdruk een stuk verder worden geduwd dan voorheen werd gedacht. Dit laatste idee is niet heel waarschijnlijk, maar het zou kunnen.”
Het is ongetwijfeld niet de laatste keer dat New Horizons vanuit de buitenste regionen van ons zonnestelsel van zich laat horen; vooralsnog heeft de ruimtesonde nog meer dan genoeg brandstof. De verwachting is namelijk dat de ruimtesonde tot aan 2050 kan blijven werken, waarbij deze een afstand zal overbruggen van meer dan 100 AU. Het is trouwens ook niet de eerste keer dat New Horizons een opzienbarende ontdekking doet. Zo heeft de ruimtesonde in het verleden foto’s gemaakt van Pluto en is deze zeer dicht in de buurt gekomen van Arrakoth. Wil je meer weten over New Horizons? Kijk dan eens hier.
Recently-Discovered Active Asteroid is in Fact Main-Belt Comet, Astronomers Say
Recently-Discovered Active Asteroid is in Fact Main-Belt Comet, Astronomers Say
456P/PANSTARRS, an active, main-belt asteroid first spotted in 2021, is recurrently active, and activity is likely driven by the sublimation of volatile ice, according to new observations from the Magellan-Baade telescope and the Lowell Discovery Telescope.
Images of 456P/PANSTARRS taken with the Magellan-Baade telescope in Chile on October 3, 2024, and the Lowell Discovery Telescope in Arizona on October 26, 2024, where the head, or nucleus, of the comet is at the center of each image, and the tail extends to the right.
Image credit: Scott S. Sheppard / Carnegie Institution for Science / Audrey Thirouin, Lowell Observatory / Henry H. Hsieh, Planetary Science Institute.
“Main-belt comets are icy objects found in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter — rather than the cold outer Solar System where icy bodies are typically expected,” said Planetary Science Institute senior scientist Henry Hsieh and colleagues.
“They sport comet-like features, like tails extending away from the Sun or fuzzy clouds as the Sun’s heat vaporizes their ice.”
These objects were first discovered in 2006 at the University of Hawaii by Dr. Hsieh and his then-doctoral advisor, Professor David Jewitt.
“Main-belt comets belong to a larger group of solar system objects known as active asteroids, which look like comets, but have asteroid-like orbits in the warm inner Solar System,” the astronomers said.
“This larger group includes objects whose clouds and tails are made of ejected dust produced after an impact or as they quickly rotate, rather than just those that eject dust due to vaporized ice.”
“Both main-belt comets and active asteroids in general are still relatively rare, but scientists are discovering them at a growing clip.”
456P/PANSTARRS was discovered as P/2021 L4 (PANSTARRS) from observations on June 9 and 14, 2021, by Pan-STARRS1, and Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope observations on June 14, 2021.
Dr. Hsieh and co-authors observed the object twice using the Magellan Baade Telescope and Lowell Discovery Telescope in October 2024 to establish its status as a main-belt comet.
“This object is not just an asteroid that experienced a one-off event that caused it to show activity one time, but is an inherently active, icy body similar to other comets from the outer Solar System,” Dr. Hsieh said.
If 456P/PANSTARRS’s activity were due to something other than ice vaporization, then its tail would be expected to appear only once randomly, and not repeatedly appear when it was close to the Sun.
An icy object, on the other hand, heats up every time it approaches the Sun, and the vaporized ice drags dust out along with it.
When the object moves farther from the Sun and cools, the activity stops.
Observations of repeated dust ejection activity during close approaches to the Sun are currently considered the best and most reliable way to identify main-belt comets.
“There are still very few confirmed main-belt comets known,” Dr. Hsieh said.
“We want to build up the population so we can get a clearer idea of what their broader properties are — such as their sizes, activity duration and distribution within the asteroid belt, for example — so that they can be better used to trace ice in the Solar System in general.”
The findings were published in the Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society.
Henry H. Hsieh et al. 2024. Confirmation of Recurrent Activity of Main-Belt Comet 456P/PANSTARRS (P/2021 L4). Res. Notes AAS 8, 283; doi: 10.3847/2515-5172/ad90a6
This article is a version of a press-release provided by the Planetary Science Institute.
Asteroid Samples Returned to Earth Were Immediately Colonized by Bacteria
We’ve known for a while that complex chemistry occurs in space. Organic molecules have been detected in cold molecular clouds, and we have even found sugars and amino acids, the so-called “building blocks of life,” within several asteroids. The raw ingredients of terrestrial life are common in the Universe, and meteorites and comets may have even seeded Earth with those ingredients. This idea isn’t controversial. But there is a more radical idea that Earth was seeded not just with the building blocks of life but life itself. It’s known as panspermia, and a recent study has brought the idea back to popular science headlines. But the study is more subtle and interesting than some headlines suggest.
Panspermia became popular in the 1800s and 1900s when it became clear that life arose surprisingly early on Earth. On a geologic scale, cellular life appears almost as soon as Earth cooled enough to support it. Given the complexity of DNA and living cells, how could such a thing have evolved so quickly? In the panspermia model, life evolved either in space or on some distant world, and was carried to Earth within asteroids or comets. We know that some living things can survive the harsh vacuum of space, so perhaps we have some alien, extraterrestrial origin.
But there are reasons to be skeptical. For one, the transition from organic to biological chemistry may be remarkably adaptive. While life appears to have appeared suddenly on Earth, that may be precisely what you’d expect. Without an example of extraterrestrial life, we simply don’t know. And while life can survive in space for a limited time, it’s not likely to survive for the millions of years it would take for an asteroid to traverse the solar system, much less the billions of years it would take to travel between star systems. Still, one step toward proving panspermia would be to gather material from an asteroid and find out it has life, and that’s exactly what this latest study found.
The Hayabusa2 mission, launched in 2014, landed on a small asteroid named Ryugu in 2018 and returned a sample of material to Earth in 2020. The sample was kept sterile the whole time, hermetically sealed for the journey back, and only opened in a pure nitrogen clean room using sterilized equipment. The sample was as clean and uncontaminated as we could get. When the team prepared a sample and looked at it under an electron microscope, they found rods and filaments of organic matter consistent with microbial life. In other words, the team found life on an asteroid.
Except they likely didn’t.
The size distribution is consistent with terrestrial life. Credit: Genge, et al
One thing to keep in mind is that microbial life is incredibly robust. It exists everywhere and spreads rapidly. You can find the stuff in the cores of nuclear power plants, in hot thermal vents, and in the cleanest clean room. And even if you sterilize something, microbial life will find a way. When the team found life on their sample, the first thing they did was to look for evidence of contamination, and there was plenty of evidence to be found. To begin with, the size distribution of the organic rods and filaments found in the sample is consistent with those commonly deposited by terrestrial life. Their data also found evidence of a growth and decline period of about five days, which is also consistent with Earth life. If the Ryugu samples had truly evolved beyond Earth, they would be genetically separated from us by millions or billions of years. Their size and growth rate wouldn’t match those of our common microbes. So the best explanation is that the sample became contaminated despite our best efforts.
While the study doesn’t support the panspermia model, it does tell us two important things. The first is that our sterilization procedures are likely inadequate. We may have already spread life to the Moon and Mars inadvertently. The second is that asteroids have organic materials that could sustain terrestrial life. That’s good news if we want to establish ourselves elsewhere in the solar system. Earth life may not have begun in space, but it could very well end up there.
Water and Carbon Revealed in NASA's Ancient Asteroid Samples
OKEANOS – A Mission That Would Have Retrurned Samples From the Trojan Asteroids
Getting a mission to the point of officially being accepted for launch is an ordeal. However, even when they aren’t selected for implementation, their ideas, and in some cases, their technologies, can live on in other missions. That was the case for the Oversize Kite-craft for Exploration and AstroNautics in the Outer Solar system (OKEANOS) project, originally planned as a Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) mission. Despite not receiving funding to complete its entire mission, the project team released a paper that details the original plan for the mission, and some of those plans were incorporated into other missions that are still under development.
OKEANOS sought to build on JAXA’s success in returning samples from asteroids to Earth. Its most well-known mission in that regard was Hayabusa-2, which returned samples from the asteroid Ryugu in 2020 and has been the subject of dozens of scientific papers since. Ryugu is a near-earth asteroid, which means its origins in the solar system are dramatically different from those of other asteroids farther out from the Sun, which is where OKEANOS came in.
The original plan for OKEANOS was to launch a sample return mission to one of the Jupiter Trojan asteroids that sit in the Lagrange points in front of and behind Juptier and its orbital path. Scientists believe these asteroids originated outside of Neptune’s orbit in the Kuiper belt but were brought closer to the Sun due to gravitational fluctuations caused by the migration of the gas giant planets. Since they would hold clues to the early solar system, astronomers are interested in their composition, and some space exploration enthusiasts are interested in the materials they hold for in-situ resource utilization purposes. But so far, no missions have visited them yet.
A solar panel, like the one shown in the video, would have been a key component of the OKEANOS missions. Credit – The Japan Times YouTube Channel
That is about to change, though, with Lucy, a NASA mission that launched in 2021 to visit them. However, Lucy will simply do remote observations and lacks the equipment to sample them directly, let alone return a sample back to Earth. The project team had hoped OKEANOS would do just that.
Several novel technologies would be used to enable OKEANOS’ scientific objectives. One of the most interesting was a combination solar sail and ion drive known as a solar power sail. A solar power sail combines the solar pushing power of a solar sail with flexible photovoltaic solar collectors that can collect a significant amount of energy while deployed in a sail-like configuration. JAXA has also successfully tested a similar system with its IKAROS mission, demonstrating the technology in 2010.
Since solar sails have tiny thrust out near Jupiter, OKEANOS relies entirely on an ion engine and simply deploys its “sails” to deploy the solar panels that collect energy to power the ion drive. But once it reached its destination, it would utilize its second interesting technology—a lander.
Fraser talks about Lucy, the first mission to explore the Trojan asteroids.
The two main asteroid sample return missions – OSIRIS-REx and Hayabusa-2 – directly touched down on the surface of their respective asteroids. However, there have been deployed landers that have at least attempted to land on an asteroid before – Philae, the lander that accompanied ESA’s Rosetta mission, is probably the most famous. But never before has a mission attempted to land a lander, collect a sample, and return it to a “mothership” that would then transport that sample back to Earth. Doing so out at the Trojan asteroids would add a new difficulty level of having significant communications lag time, making it difficult to troubleshoot any problems with the mission.
Given JAXA’s track record, it seemed likely that they could pull off that technical challenge. However, the mission was never fully funded due to a “cost issue,” according to the paper. JAXA selected a project known as LiteBIRD to study the cosmic microwave background as its large-class mission for this decade instead. Despite that, the technical details of some of the instrumentation have been described in other papers, and the project team feels confident that future asteroid sample return missions will adopt at least some of them. We’ll be sure to see more of those in the future as interest grows in understanding the roots of our solar system and how we might utilize the readily available resources on asteroids.
A prototype of a robot designed to explore subsurface oceans of icy moons is reflected in the water’s surface during a pool test at Caltech in September. Conducted by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the testing showed the feasibility of a mission concept for a swarm of mini swimming robots. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Europa, one of the four Galilean satellites of Jupiter is one of the most intriguing locations in the Solar System to search for life. However, its subsurface oceans are buried beneath thick layers of ice making exploration difficult. To explore its oceans, scientists have suggested using small swimming robots capable of penetrating the icy shell. Recently, NASA engineers tested prototypes designed to operate as a swarm, enabling them to explore the mysterious sub-ice oceans on Europa and other icy worlds in the Solar System.
Along with the other three Galilean satellites orbing Jupiter, Europa was discovered just over 400 years ago by Galileo. It is the smallest of the four measuring just 3,120 km across. It orbits Jupiter at a distance of 671,000 km in an almost circular orbit. In comparison to our own Moon, Europa is a little smaller but that is where the similarities end. Europa is made of a silicate rock and has a thick water ice crust below which is thought to be a liquid water ocean and it is this which has captured the interest of scientists.
The Galilean moons of Jupiter: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
The deep oceans of Europa may well harbour forms of aquatic life. Consider the deepest parts of the oceans of Earth where whole eco-systems thrive off thermal vents. At these depths, no light from the Sun penetrates so the organisms and creatures living at these depths take all their energy from the heat escaping from inside the planet. It is this which tantalisingly suggests that maybe such life could have evolved in the oceans of Europa too.
A black smoker hydrothermal vent discovered in the Atlantic Ocean in 1979. It’s fueled from deep beneath the surface by magma that superheats the water. The plume carries minerals and other materials out to the sea. Courtesy USGS.
The exploration of Europa is already underway with NASA’s Europa Clipper expected to arrive in 2030. It will explore Europa with a powerful set of scientific instruments over a total of 49 flybys. Each pass will see the instruments search for signs that the ocean under the thick icy crust could sustain life. This will just be a flyby mission with Europa being probed from high above its surface. NASA are already shaping up their next mission to include even more complex robots that could survey the depths of the sub-surface oceans of Europa.
Artist’s concept of a Europa Clipper mission. Credit: NASA/JPL
This is where NASA’s new mission called SWIM ‘Sensing With Independent Micro-swimmers’ comes in. The concept at least, is simple…a swarm of self-propelled robots that can swim around in the underground oceans having been deployed by the ice piercing cryobot. Once underway, the swimming robots, which are about the size of a mobile phone, would hunt for chemical and temperature signals that might indicate life.
The swimming robots are not just on the drawing board. Engineers have already used 3D printers to create prototypes that have already been tested in a 23 metre pool. The devices which are propelled along by two propellers, with flaps for steering were able to stay on course. These prototypes however were a little larger than those destined to make it into space measuring about three times larger.
The results of the test were very promising but much more work is needed before they are ready for launch. Meanwhile the robots are likely to be trialled here on Earth to support oceanographic research before being sent on their way to Europa.
India's Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant has become a UFO hotspot after a police officer reported seeing odd aerial lights above it more than 10 times last summer.
Indian Police Service investigator Syed Abdul Kader shared two videos exclusively with DailyMail.com, which track the bright lights making 'zigzags' above the facility.
Fearing the craft was not manmade, Kader turned to his nation's leading UFO expert, who in 2019 filed a petition to the Supreme Court of India with the backing of former Pentagon officials and US Air Force vets — urging the south Asian nation to take all the unexplained sightings near its nuclear facilities more seriously.
While the shape, size and speed of Kader's mystery objects are difficult to discern, his footage shows them making unusual movements at the altitude of an airplane.
'It's shaking when it's moving! It's going up and down,' the confused cop narrates in one video, watching the UFO's bizarre and apparently non-aerodynamic maneuvers.
'The way it's moving,' he opines in the video, 'this could never be an airplane.'
India's Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant has become a UFO hotspot after a police officer reported seeing odd aerial lights above it more than 10 times last summer
Roughly a dozen or so incidents last summer all involved apparent airborne craft loitering near the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (pictured above) at the southern tip of the subcontinent - as well as the Madras Atomic Power Station near Kalpakkam, along the country's east coast
'It's in a southern direction,' Kader told his wife during the August 8th sighting.
'It's standing [or hovering] in the direction of the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant.'
'It is always coming in at this time, when it is not too dark, nor too bright,' Kader's wife can be heard saying. 'I've seen this many times.'
While it is difficult for an outside observer to discern if the UFO is moving, or if Kader's camera is unsteady, DailyMail.com can report that some common prosaic explanations can likely be ruled out.
Such sightings have turned out to be distant planets, like Venus that is the third brightest object in the sky, after the sun and moon.
And the bright 'dog star,' Sirius, as well as the planets Jupiter and Mercury have also been occasionally misreported as UFOs.
However, in Kader's August 8 video, filmed at dusk (7:30PM local time), the eastern direction of the UFO at sunset refutes the notion that a common bright planet or star could explain the mystery's eerie aerial glow.
While the shape, size and speed of Kader's mystery objects are difficult to discern, his footage shows them making unusual movements at the altitude of an airplane
Syed Abdul Kader shared two of the videos exclusively with DailyMail.com, which show bright lights whizzing up and down above the facility
Police sub-inspector Syed Abdul Kader (right), assigned to the technical wing of the Tirunelveli office - one hour's drive north of the Kudankulam nuclear plant - told UFO expert Sabir Hussain (left) that he filmed two videos of these unusual aerial phenomena or UAP
A sky map for that night and time, geolocated to the Kaders' hometown of Tirunelveli via TheSkyLive.com shows that Venus was completely obscured, below the western horizon and below the sunset.
Most other bright stars and planets were also not in the eastern sky at that moment.
At another point in the video, Kader's wife exclaims, 'It's so close. How come no one else is seeing this?'
To which Kader replies, 'No, that's why the DGP [Director General of Police] he, himself, has seen it [the UFOs]. And that's why everybody's talking about this.'
India made history by becoming the first nation to land a spacecraft on the moon's south pole August 23, 2023
Kader's mysterious UFO videos were first secured by one of India's foremost UFO investigators, Sabir Hussain, director of the Indian Society for UFO Studies (INSUFOS) based in Chennai.
It was Hussain who petitioned the Supreme Court of India in 2019 warning that casually dismissing reports of UFO activity near the nation's sensitive atomic power sites could risks an unintentional nuclear war between India and its uneasy neighbor Pakistan.
His efforts came with letters endorsing his petition, by former US counterintelligence official and Pentagon UFO investigator Lue Elizondo, US Air Force veteran Robert Salas, and other UFO experts from America and Europe.
'Syed came to my house,' Hussain told DailyMail.com. 'I debriefed him.'
'He told me that most of the time, [the UFO] was either coming from the direction of Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant, going towards it, or stationary in that direction.'
Officer Kader, Hussain told DailyMail.com, also stated that the UFOs were sometimes spotted hovering above the nearby Indian Space Research Organization's (ISRO) Propulsion Complex.
Nestled alongside the mountainous Mahendragiri hill in the state of Tamil Nadu, the ISRO Propulsion Complex tests cryogenically stored rocket fuel among its other space program duties.
The ISRO facility is also approximately one hour's drive south of the Kaders' home, which is in the city of Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu.
A vocal advocate on the UFO issue, Hussain once voiced his suspicion that alleged alien occupants of such craft cut communications between ISRO and its Chandrayaan-2's Vikram lander in 2019 — for the south Asian nation's own good.
'The extra-terrestrials have sent a message to the Indian government to get rid of your nukes before you explore other worlds,' Hussain told the Deccan Chronicle.
'You will not be allowed to land on the moon unless "they" decide to allow you.'
The fate of ISRO's Vikram lander aside, Hussain's new UFO witnesses, sub-inspector Kader and his wife, can at least be heard in their videos discussing the mysterious aerial phenomena's consistent apparent interest in the Kudankulam nuclear plant.
Kader's video-taped sightings, as Hussain told DT Next, 'happened just 10 days after former DGP [Director General of Police] Prateep V. Philip took pictures of a UFO on [the] Muttukadu sea shore near Chennai.'
Philip's rank of DGP is the highest position attainable in the Indian Police Service.
A sky map for that night and time (above), geolocated to the Kaders' hometown of Tirunelveli via TheSkyLive.com, shows Venus was completely obscured, below the western horizon and sunset. Most other bright stars and planets were also not in the eastern sky at that moment
The Kaders' sightings to the south overlapped with weeks of sightings in July and August up the eastern coast, along the Neelankarai-Mahabalipuram shoreline. That region, near the city of Chennai, is home to the Madras Atomic Power Station (MAPS) in Kalpakkam (above)
Hypothetical extraterrestrial interest in the Kudankulam nuclear plant, if correct, would join decades of active protests against the plant by concerned local civilians.
Thousands of local residents faced teargas shelling, imprisonment and prosecution under both terrorism and sedition charges by local police for speaking out against the nuclear energy plant. Even children with the protestors faced sedition charges.
In September of 2019 the Kudankulam nuclear plant was discovered to be infected with malware, which one cyber security analyst with CSO attributed to 'a false flag operation using stolen North Korean code to muddle attribution.'
Hussain told DailyMail.com that the plant has faced corruption charges and safety concerns since before it first became operational a decade ago.
'Kudankulam, which is a focus of our attention,' Hussain said, 'came online only in 2013 after Fukushima disaster happened.'
'Ever since it came online, it has been shutting down once every two months,' he added. 'They are working only to 30 percent of their capacity. So you do the math.'
DailyMail.com has reached out to the Indian government's Nuclear Power Corporation of India, Ltd., which runs the plant, for comment.
US Air Force ICBM launch officer Robert Salas (pictured left, and as a young man, right) told of his encounter with an orange flying disc that turned off 10 warheads at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana in 1967
An email shows AARO staff contacted former US Air Force ICBM launch officer Robert Salas to gather information about his encounter. He tweeted his thank you email from AARO
This time last year, two Air Force veterans revealed to DailyMail.com's Josh Boswell that they had just testified to the Pentagon's UFO-hunting All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) about their experiences witnessing UFOs interfere with US nuclear missiles.
One email showed AARO staff contacting former US Air Force ICBM launch officer Robert Salas to gather information about his chilling encounter with an orange flying disc that inexplicably turned off 10 warheads at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana in 1967.
Another former officer, Dr. Robert Jacobs, also briefed AARO, testifying to a 35mm film he shot for the Air Force in 1964, which allegedly caught a flying saucer shooting a test missile out of the sky.
Although Salas described those early interactions with AARO officials as 'very magnanimous,' this month the disappointed Air Force veteran described the Pentagon office's most recent UFO report as 'a 'Steaming pile of ...'
'I gave AARO a two hour PowerPoint presentation on the Malmstrom AFB incidents where twenty ICBMs were disabled during UFO encounters,' Salas said on the social media site X, speaking to incidents at the base beyond 1967.
'The USGOV owes us, the informed public, much more respect on this subject,' he concluded, 'than offered by AARO's steaming pile of insults.'
UFO Sightings at Nuclear Bases (Full Episode) | UFOs: Investigating the Unknown
'I'm sorry. Did I say something wrong?' Captain Robert Salas joked after delivering the blunt opinion to Congresswoman Nancy Mace during an episode of the podcast Total Disclosure.
At the height of the Cold War, a then 26-year-old USAF Lieutenant Salas was underground while overseeing Malmstrom Air Force Base's nuclear equipped intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in Montana.
He claimed an eerie red glowing UFO above the base's front gate temporarily disabled 10 ICBMs on the night of March 24, 1967.
'They knew exactly how our systems worked. Exactly,' Capt Salas told South Carolina Representative Mace, speaking about the UFO's mysterious pilots.
Capt Salas was grilled by Rep Mace about what he thought the UFO's pilots were trying to convey.
''WTF!? You have nuclear weapons,'' he said, paraphrasing these appalled, pacifist aliens. 'That's what I think [they meant] .Of course, it's just my opinion.'
Retired US Air Force Captain Robert Salas personally witnessed a UFO deactivate 10 nuclear missiles in 1967 at a US Air Force base in Montana. He spoke to South Carolina Congresswoman Nancy Mace, after this month's shocking UFO hearing on November 13
Above, a missile combat crew member at Captain Salas' old post - Malmstrom Air Force Base - prepares to close a three-foot thick door inside a nuclear launch control center 70-feet underground
Both Rep Mace and Capt Salas spoke on the podcast Total Disclosure for an episode released online November 24, 2024.
In his analysis of the Malmstrom AFB incidents, the retired official was adamant the nonviolent, nondestructive nature of the UFOs interactions might be a clue as to the potentially extraterrestrial occupants' peaceful intent.
'No equipment was fried. Nothing was damaged,' Capt Salas told Rep Mace.
'It was simply intermittent electrical pulse that was delivered to a particular part of the guidance system, called the logic coupler,' he explained.
'And this was proven by Boeing. Boeing did a test of this so-called logic coupler.'
'Without that piece of equipment working properly, the guidance system would not properly work,' he continued. 'So, the missile shut itself down.'
'The missiles were all brought back up on alert within 24 hours,' he noted.
Both Representative Mace (above) and USAF Captain Salas spoke on tape for an episode of the podcast Total Disclosure - for an episode published online November 24, 2024
'No equipment was fried. Nothing was damaged,' Capt Salas told Rep Mace. 'It was simply intermittent electrical pulse that was delivered to a particular part of the guidance system.' Above an ICBM nuclear missile at Malmstrom AFB which is home to the 341st Missile Wing
Air Force veterans have repeatedly testified about their experiences of UFOs interfering with US nuclear missiles - some occurred at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana (pictured)
At the time of the 1967 UFO incursions, Capt Salas said he was also told the incident had been classified and that he was forbidden from speaking about it.
'I signed a non-disclosure agreement,' he said. 'Didn't start talking about it 'til 1996.'
The veteran later learned that his crew commander had dealt with a unnerving and virtually identical UFO episode on the nuclear base just eight days prior to his own.
Capt Salas, who has long advocated for government transparency on UFOs, told Rep Mace that he has published a recent book digging into '13 similar cases that happened all over the world, including Russia.'
'In none of those incidents was any significant damage done,' as he emphasized to the congresswoman this month.
'To me, that says they're sending us a message about nuclear weapons.'
In March 2023, Salas and another Air Force veteran told DailyMail.com that they had taken their testimony to the Pentagon's UFO-hunting All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) expressing concern over UFOs ability to interfere with US nukes.
One now public email confirms that AARO staff contacting former Salas to gather information about his chilling encounter with the orange-red glowing 'disc' that inexplicably turned off 10 warheads at Malmstrom AFB.
US Air Force ICBM launch officer Robert Salas (pictured left, and as a young man, right) told of his encounter with an orange flying disc that turned off 10 warheads at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana in 1967
Although Salas described those early interactions with AARO officials as 'very magnanimous,' he has since told the media that he's disappointed in the office.
'I gave AARO a two hour PowerPoint presentation on the Malmstrom AFB incidents where twenty ICBMs were disabled during UFO encounters,' Salas said on the social media site X, speaking to incidents at the base beyond 1967.
'The USGOV owes us, the informed public, much more respect on this subject than offered by AARO's steaming pile of insults,' he concluded.
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station(ISS) were sent into a panic after a cargo ship arrived with a 'toxic smell' and 'possible contamination hazard in the form of droplets.'
The Progress 90 docked with the Russian Poisk module at 9:31am ET on Saturday and Roscosmos cosmonauts identified a smell immediately after opening the hatch.
The Russian crew quickly strapped into protective equipment and activated an extra air-scrubbing system aboard their segment of the ISS for about 30 minutes.
NASA astronaut Don Pettit also reported some 'spray paint-like' smell in the Node 3 module of the US Segment, but it was not immediately clear if it had originated from Progress.
'Space station air scrubbers and contaminant sensors monitored the station's atmosphere following the observation, and on Sunday, flight controllers determined air quality inside the space station was at normal levels,' NASA shared in a statement.
The agency continued to explain that there are no concerns for the crew as of Sunday afternoon, but the hatch between the Russian modular and cargo craft is still closed.
The Progress 90 arrived at the Russian Poisk module at 9:31am, delivering three tons of food, fuel and supplies for members of the Expedition 72 crew on board the ISS.
The Progress 90 docked with the Russian Poisk module at 9:31am ET and Roscosmos cosmonauts identified a smell immediately after opening the hatch. NASA said the crew has yet to reopen the hatch
NASA reported that the US side of the orbiting laboratory also activated its own air-scrubbing system, while the hatch to Russia’s Poisk module remained closed.
While Russian outlets reported a toxic smell, NASA told a different story.
'After opening the Progress spacecraft’s hatch, the Roscosmos cosmonauts noticed an unexpected odor and observed small droplets, prompting the crew to close the Poisk hatch to the rest of the Russian segment,' the agency shared on X.
Progress 90 is scheduled to stay docked for about six months before returning to Earth.
The 'toxic smell' comes just months after a report revealed space agency and its Russian counterpart, Roscomos, are tracking 50 'areas of concern' related to a growing leak aboard the station.
Although officials have been aware of the issue since 2019, the exact source of the leak is still unknown.
All potential cracks have been covered with 'a combination of sealant and patches' but NASA warned that the leak reached its fastest rate yet in April this year.
Both the US and Russian side of the ISS activated its air-scrubbing systems after the toxic smell was identified
Concerns over the station's safety are now so high that NASA has negotiated with Roscomos to only open the hatch when necessary and to keep it sealed in the evenings.
And that's not the only cause for concern, as the space agency has warned that the ISS is at risk of being pelted with micro-meteors and space debris.
In 2019, it was noted that the module had begun to leak a small amount of air through an unidentified crack.
However, despite efforts to seal the module, the amount of air escaping the station has only increased over the last five years.
In February this year, NASA was forced to hold a press conference on the issue as the amount of air escaping temporarily increased from 0.2 lbs per day (0.09 kg) to 2.4 lbs (1.08 kg) per day.
A report published in September by NASA's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) confirmed that the leak hit record rates in April - losing 3.7 lbs (1.68 kg) of air every day.
This has prompted the space agency to escalate the threat rating to the highest level and consider evacuation plans.
In May and June, NASA officials traveled to Russia to discuss 'heightened concerns' over the seemingly growing leak.
Speaking to the Washington Post, NASA associate administrator Jim Free says: 'We have conveyed the seriousness of the leaks multiple times, including when I was in Russia earlier this year.
'We've come to a compromise that they close it in the evening.'
The OIG report states: 'The Service Module Transfer Tunnel leak is not an immediate risk to the structural integrity of the Station, and there are no current concerns of long-term impacts to the overall structure.'
Likewise, ISS program manager Joel Montalbano told a press conference in February that the leak was 'not an impact right now on the crew safety or vehicle operations, but something for everybody to be aware of.'
Astronaut Chris Hadfield Debunks Space Myths | WIRED
NASA has spotted mysterious 'spiderwebs' on a never-before-explored region near the equator of Mars.
The agency's Curiosity rover has been dispatched to probe these bizarre structures — which cover a six to 12 mile stretch of Martian desert — as the machine searches for signs that this long desolate world once supported alien life.
Geologists suspect that the spiderwebs are a gigantic version of a type of crystalized minerals, known as a 'boxwork,' which appear inside some caves on Earth.
They can be found on the ceiling of Wind Cave in South Dakota, which were created by calcium carbonate mineral water seeping into cracks between softer rocks that hardened into crystals.
But the sprawling, over 3,800-acre-wide boxwork on Mars differs in that it was likely formed by Martian seawater and may have trapped fossils of ancient life in its web.
'These ridges will include minerals that crystallized underground, where it would have been warmer,' according to Rice University geologist Dr Kirsten Siebach.
'Early Earth microbes could have survived in a similar environment,' Dr Siebach explained, nothing that the 'salty liquid water' that created these Martian webs an ideal location to find lingering fossil evidence of ancient alien microbes.
The discovery comes as Australian researchers have found that a Martian meteorite, which crashed into Northwest Africa, provides more evidence of hot water on Mars.
A chemical analysis of that meteorite suggests conditions were ripe for aquatic life to develop on Earth's nearest neighbor over four billion years ago.
According to satellite mapping work by 'Martian geologist' Dr Kirsten Siebach, at least 113.6 billion gallons of salty, warm mineral-laden water would have been required to create the vast field of crystal webbing (above), which is about as big or bigger than Los Angles Airport (LAX)
NASA's planetary geologists suspect the webs are a gigantic version of a type of crystalized minerals, known as a 'boxwork,' that appear inside caves on Earth. Above, Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota has some of America's most spiderweb-like 'boxwork' on its ceiling
Ever since it first parachuted down to the Martian surface on August 6, 2012, Curiosity has been exploring the Red Planet for signs of life — as well as hunting for clues about Mars' climate, geology and where all its ancient water went.
But NASA researchers have been intrigued by the massive geological spiderweb for even longer, ever since their Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter satellite first captured aerial images of this haunting landscape back on December 10, 2006.
The likelihood that evidence of aquatic microbial life of Mars might be caught in this giant web as fossils 'makes this an exciting place to explore,' Dr Siebach noted.
This web of potential dead alien microbes and bugs rests in the shadow of a three-mile tall mountain, officially known as 'Aeolis Mon,' but nicknamed 'Mount Sharp.'
Past explorations by the Curiosity rover have revealed many sedimentary layers along the cliff faces of Mount Sharp, suggesting in rich detail that it had been formed by water erosion via ancient lake deposits.
NASA scientists suspect that this erosion helped form the giant crystal spiderweb, as mineral-rich pulses of water seeped and cascaded down Mount Sharp into fractures in the surface rock and then crystallized.
According to satellite mapping work that Dr Siebach published in 2014, at least 113.6 billion gallons of salty, warm mineral-laden water would have been required to create the vast field of crystal webbing, which is bigger than Los Angles Airport (LAX).
Above, NASA's Curiosity rover takes a 'robotic selfie' on the Red Planet via its arm-mounted Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI). Each of the rover's selfies is really a composite image created from dozens of high-resolution photos taken at various angles by the MAHLI camera
Above, another view of the 'boxwork' webs on the ceiling of Wind River cave in South Dakota
'Mineralization,' the kind of crystal formation that likely occurred here, 'is known on Earth to help facilitate preservation of once-habitable environments,' they noted.
And in Australia this month, scientists working with Martian meteor NWA 7034, discovered after it crashed into Northwest Africa, have found still further evidence that ancient warm oceans on Mars could have easily supported alien life.
'We used nano-scale geochemistry to detect elemental evidence of hot water on Mars 4.45 billion years ago,' planetary scientist Dr Aaron Cavosie said in a statement.
'Geochemical markers of water' were discovered on meteor NWA 7034, Dr Cavosie explained, based both on the shape of its rocky grain patterns and its chemical composition: 'tell-tale signs of water-rich fluids from when the grain formed.'
It's believed that NWA 7034 was ejected from an asteroid impact on Mars that created a crater in the northeast of the 'Terra Cimmeria-Sirenum' province in the southern hemisphere of Mars.
Curiosity rover captured this panorama on November 2, 2024 as it was leaving Mars' so-called 'Gediz Vallis' channel on its way toward the mysterious gigantic spiderweb formation
Above, another panorama made by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover before it left Gediz Vallis
A special technique used to date the age of incredibly old zircon minerals via trace amounts of radioactive material, called 'Uranium–lead dating,' found that this meteor was made up of some of the oldest Martian volcanic rock ever obtained.
'The team identified element patterns in this unique zircon, including iron, aluminum, yttrium and sodium,' Dr Cavosie said, 'Through nano-scale imaging and spectroscopy.'
'These elements were added as the zircon formed 4.45 billion years ago,' he continued, 'suggesting water was present during early Martian magmatic activity.'
This mixture of hot and mineral-rich water, not unlike the hydrothermal vents that support life deep in Earth's oceans, point towards the possibility that life was developing on Mars billions of years ago, amid all this volcanic activity.
'Hydrothermal systems were essential for the development of life on Earth,' Dr Cavosie explained, 'and our findings suggest Mars also had water, a key ingredient for habitable environments, during the earliest history of crust formation.'
The Australian planetary scientist and his team at Curtin University in Australia published their results in the journal Science Advances this past Friday.
In its decade-plus on the Red Planet, NASA's Curiosity rover has trekked roughly 20 miles of the Martian surface for clues about the life that may have once thrived there.
Curiosity will begin studying the spiderweb ridges up close in 2025, according to NASA administrator Bill Nelson, where it will stay for a 'monthlong journey through Mars' boxwork.'
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) searches for evidence that water persisted on the surface of Mars for a long period of time.
It was launched August 12, 2005, and achieved an initial orbit around the red planet on March 10, 2006.
In November 2006, after five months of, it entered its final science orbit and began its primary science phase.
Since its arrival, MRO and its High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) telescope have been mapping the martian surface, which has been taking shape for more than three billion years.
MRO’s instruments analyse minerals, look for subsurface water, trace how dust and water are distributed in the atmosphere, and monitor daily weather in support of its science objectives.
MRO's missions have shown that water flowed across the Martian surface, but it is still unknown whether water persisted long enough to provide a habitat for life.
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The idea of a killer asteroid smashing into Earth might sound like the plot of the latest science fiction blockbuster.
But it could become a reality, according to NASA, which puts the chance of a deadly asteroid striking Earth in any given year at roughly one in 300,000.
Before you panic about our impending doom, there's good news.
A scientist from the University of Murcia has come up with an equation to spot killer asteroids heading for our planet.
Professor Oscar del Barco Novillo's equation is based on the gravitational bending of light, and will allow scientists to pinpoint the precise positions of minor objects in the solar system.
This includes objects in the Kuiper Belt – a region of icy objects including Pluto and other dwarf planets beyond the orbit of Neptune – and a vast, frozen, spherical shell called the Oort Cloud, which is the most distant region in our solar system.
In turn, that could allow planetary defence networks to spot and prepare for any asteroids which could collide with Earth.
This advanced warning could be the difference between having time to deflect the asteroid onto a safe path and a cataclysmic impact.
The idea of a killer asteroid smashing into Earth might sound like the plot of the latest science fiction blockbuster. But it could become a reality, according to NASA, which puts the chance of a deadly asteroid striking Earth in any given year at roughly one in 300,000 (stock image)
Before you anic about our impending doom, there's good news. A scientist from the University of Murcia has come up with an equation to spot killer asteroids heading for our planet
Normally, light takes a straight path from an object to our eyes, meaning where we see the image is where the object really is.
However, this isn't the case for distant objects like asteroids because of a phenomenon called 'gravitational deflection'.
When a beam of light passes through a strong gravitational field like the one around our sun it leaves its straight path and follows a curved trajectory.
You can think of this like a ball following a curving path as it rolls over some uneven ground.
The idea that gravity might bend passing beams of light was first proposed by Sir Isaac Newton in 1730.
The issue for astronomers is that gravitational deflection means that the image we see of a distant object doesn't line up with where the object really is.
Professor Novillo told MailOnline: 'When the sunlight is reflected on the minor objects in the solar system, such as asteroids, the light beams we receive on Earth are deflected due to the Sun and major planets such as Jupiter.
Normally, light takes a straight path from an object to our eyes, meaning where we see the image is where the object really is. However, this isn't the case for distant objects like asteroids because of a phenomenon called 'gravitational deflection'
The 6 asteroids that could hit Earth
1. Bennu
Diameter: 1,574 ft
Odds of collision: 1/2,700 on September 24, 2182
2. 1950 DA
Diameter: 6,561 ft
Odds of collison: 1/34,500 on March 16, 2880
3. 2023 TL4
Diameter: 1,083 ft
Odds of collision: 1/181,000 on October 10, 2119
4. 2007 FT3
Diameter: 2,165 ft
Odds of collision: 1/11.5 million on October 5, 2024
5. 2023 DW
Diameter: 166 ft
Odds of collision: 1/1,584 on February 14, 2046
6. 1979 XB
Diameter: 2,165 ft
Odds of collision: 1/1.8 million on December 14, 2113
'In this sense, the actual positions of these minor bodies are shifted, so this effect should be taken into account in the equations of motion of these minor bodies.'
For most applications that might not be an issue, but when it comes to calculating the orbit of a potentially hazardous asteroid even a small miscalculation could be fatal.
Professor Novillo's solution, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, is to treat gravity as if it were a physical medium like water to work out how much light bends as it passes through.
Using this formula, Professor Novillo calculated the angle of deflection for light beams coming from Mercury at different points in its orbit.
Comparing the results to those based on Newtonian and Einsteinian equations, he found there was up to a 15.8 per cent difference when Mercury was at its greatest distance from the Sun.
Professor Novillo says that the most important consequence of this discovery is to enable 'a better calculation of the orbits of minor objects in the solar system, which could be potentially hazardous to the Earth.'
While it won't help detect asteroids in the first place, it will help determine a more precise location for these objects and, consequently, a better estimation of their orbits.
Just like in the movie Armageddon (pictured), humanity may be able to deflect an incoming asteroid so long as there is time to organise a response
For example, the ESA's DART mission used a fridge-sized satellite to slam into the space rock Dimorphos to see if an asteroid could be knocked from its path.
While the results are due to be confirmed by the Hera mission late next year, early observations show that the impact did deflect Dimorphos' orbit.
In theory, humanity could use a similar kamikaze satellite to deflect the orbit of a hazardous asteroid on its way to Earth.
However, doing this would require years of prior warning to give space agencies time to plan the mission and for the asteroid to drift out of Earth's path.
That is why it is so critical for space agencies to have an accurate way of assessing the locations and orbits of asteroids drifting through the solar system.
Beyond planetary defence, this equation could also be used to deepen our understanding of the universe.
The hope is that scientists will now be able to calculate the exact location of the nearest star to Earth, Proxima Centauri.
Proxima Centauri is 4.25 light-years away and is thought to have three exoplanets orbiting around it.
This discovery could also be used to determine the exact location of Proxima Centauri B (artist's impression). If this exoplanet is in its star's habitable zone, it could be the closest Earth-like planet to our sun
If its location could be precisely determined, that would also help scientists accurately study the orbits of its planets to learn whether they do indeed sit within their star's habitable zone.
Additionally, Professor Novillo's discovery could even help scientists map the most distant reaches of space.
Professor Novillo says: 'Distant galaxies, which are distorted and magnified by large amounts of intervening mass, such as galaxy clusters, might be precisely located with this new exact equation.'
Armed with this equation, scientists could produce even more accurate maps which might help understand how dark matter and dark energy have shaped the Universe into what we see today.
Currently, NASA would not be able to deflect an asteroid if it were heading for Earth but it could mitigate the impact and take measures that would protect lives and property.
This would include evacuating the impact area and moving key infrastructure.
Finding out about the orbit trajectory, size, shape, mass, composition and rotational dynamics would help experts determine the severity of a potential impact.
However, the key to mitigating damage is to find any potential threat as early as possible.
NASA and the European Space Agency completed a test which slammed a refrigerator-sized spacecraft into the asteroid Dimorphos.
The test is to see whether small satellites are capable of preventing asteroids from colliding with Earth.
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) used what is known as a kinetic impactor technique—striking the asteroid to shift its orbit.
The impact could change the speed of a threatening asteroid by a small fraction of its total velocity, but by doing so well before the predicted impact, this small nudge will add up over time to a big shift of the asteroid's path away from Earth.
This was the first-ever mission to demonstrate an asteroid deflection technique for planetary defence.
The results of the trial are expected to be confirmed by the Hera mission in December 2026.
The UFO enigma is garnering increasing attention, particularly after David Grusch’s historic testimony during the 2023 UAP hearing. The United States government is deeply concerned about UAPs, especially since many individuals, including Rep. Tim Burchett, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, and Senator Chuck Schumer, believe that the American public has been kept in the dark about this issue for decades.
What is preventing the US government from telling the truth? The answer is far more complicated than most people believe. A month ago, on Redacted, Tucker Carlson discussed the UFO issue with hosts Clayton and Natali Morris. He said, “The second thing that bothers me is the UFO story… If you talk to people who have firsthand knowledge, there are aspects of that narrative that I find deeply perplexing and disturbing… There’s a spiritual component that eludes my understanding.”
When we jump into phenomena like UFOs, NHI, or E.T., it suggests that humanity is on the brink of self-destruction, and time is running out. This chilling and unsettling aspect of the UFO issue is deeply concerning. Former CIA John Ramirez claimed that the government is aware of an impending event in 2027 that will reveal something quite significant, so people are being prepared. He has been stating that there is a presence on Earth (which he refers demonic) who are just projecting their belief systems to make us disbelieve in what we believe.
Clayton Morris, a former Fox News host, along with Tucker, hinted at possessing knowledge about a similar UFO-related story. They mentioned that this particular story is something they have not discussed with their families. “It’s so unsettling. I haven’t even shared it with my wife,” Tucker remarked. “And this isn’t merely something I stumbled upon online; it’s profoundly disturbing information.”
A while back, on the “Full Send” podcast, former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson recounted a study conducted by a Stanford professor 11 years ago. Interestingly, the US Defense Department tasked Dr. Garry Nolan (which he publicly confirmed) with investigating numerous cases where pilots’ brains were seriously damaged after encountering UFOs. However, Dr. Nolan never publicly said whether these injuries led to fatalities. Tucker said that hundreds of servicemen had been killed.
According to Tucker, “[In] several cases, these unidentified objects have landed on military bases. Servicemen who approached them either suffered traumatic brain injuries or were killed. I wonder, why isn’t this making headlines in the New York Times. I don’t know.”
Later, Susan Gough, a Defense Department spokesperson, told Military Times that the story was false and the Pentagon declined to comment further. (Source)
Tucker did not stop there and raised a sensitive issue about the potential harm or killing of individuals connected to the U.S. government’s UFO programs during his interview with David Grusch. He specifically asked Grusch if he had a reason to believe that the government had hurt or killed anyone, particularly American citizens, in connection to these programs. (Click here to read the full article)
Grusch responded by acknowledging concerns that were raised by individuals who approached him, expressing worries about potential harm. He emphasized that he took those concerns seriously and reported them to the Inspector General of the intelligence community, directing the individuals to law enforcement.
Tucker pushed further, specifically mentioning the allegation of murder, to which Grusch confirmed that the concerns included both murder and physical harm. However, he refrained from providing specific details due to the ongoing investigation and potential risks to his safety.
Grusch disclosed that he felt his life was in jeopardy, and he reported the threats and surveillance to a counterintelligence element and law enforcement. He revealed that the threats not only affected him but also impacted his wife. He stated that he did not know the identity of those involved, ruling out the possibility of it being a foreign entity
Do fatalities occur in the UFO subject?
Many UFO researchers investigating these incidents have uncovered truly disturbing information from witnesses and victims about their UFO encounters.
Stefan Michalak’s case is the most discussed UFO encounter that happened in 1967 near the famous Falcon Lake in the Canadian province of Manitoba. Not only are we talking about seeing an extraterrestrial flying craft but also about contact made between the victim and the craft that resulted in serious burns.
A picture below shows severe burns on his chest after encountering a UFO near Falcon Lake, Canada. At first, he thought that the object was an American experimental test vehicle, so he sarcastically said: “Okay, Yankee boys, having trouble? Come on out and we’ll see what we can do about it.” Having received no answer, he tried greeting in different languages but still got no response. Therefore, without any second thought, he put his head into the half-open hatch and saw something like a dashboard and a huge number of glowing lights.
Stefan Michalak with burns on his chest after encountering UFO near Falcon Lake, Canada
Stefan’s clothes that were burnt during his contact with the UFO
As Michalak was examining quartz rocks, fortunately, he was wearing safety goggles so that the bright light could not blind him. But then, the hatch suddenly closed again, and he quickly recoiled not to be pinched. At the same time, he touched the outer surface of the mysterious spaceship which burned his glove, so he received a burn on his hand. After that, the craft changed its position and a gridlike exhaust vent was facing toward him. A hot gaseous substance was thrown out of it in his direction. His clothes immediately caught fire, and only with great difficulty, he managed to extinguish the fire. The UFO flew into the air and disappeared, leaving Michalak alone with severe pain and nausea.
“I’m not so close-minded that I can’t entertain the possibility that it’s otherworldly. I can’t discount that. But without specific evidence to show me that it is, I don’t know. What I can tell you is that I’m an aviation fanatic, a huge aviation buff, and I am very familiar with how aviation technology has advanced in the past 50 years. And there was nothing even close to that in the works anywhere at that time,” Michalak said.
During a subsequent medical examination, doctors found burns on his chest in the form of a mesh pattern, which fully corresponded to his story. In the following months, he had to contend with health problems such as loss of appetite, weight loss, swelling, and fainting. Michalak died in 1999 at the age of 83.
A sketch by Stefan Michalak
Stefan Michalak and his alleged encounter with the alien craft at Lake Falcon have been the subject of big research, and Canadian UFO researcher Chris Rutkowski, who co-authored the book “When They Appeared” with him, spent many years studying and collecting countless documents, statements, photographs and personal belongings of Michalak.
Rutkowski told the reporters that Michalak had been treated at the Misericordia Hospital, where he was examined by doctors for the first time. Then he was transferred to the Mayo Clinic. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Royal Canadian Air Force, who were investigating, admitted that they had no explanation for what had happened.
During the investigation, Michalak’s welding gloves and shirt were examined but nothing could be found in the analysis. A circle of 4.5 meters was left at the landing site and the area was declared radioactive. More than 50 years after the incident, Rutkowski transferred all documents and items related to this case to the archives of the University of Manitoba.
What is also interesting to note about the UFO phenomenon is that we see critical instrumentation failure of our aircraft when in the vicinity of some of these objects.
The former CIA director R. James Woolsey, who ran the agency from 1993 to 1995, has recently spoken about the most classified cases in the history of the United States. In an interview with the Black Vault, Woosley said that a lot of examination is going on the UFOs over the years. He also shared one incident that happened to one of his friends, when his aircraft paused at 40,000 feet and stopped operating as a normal machine.
Former CIA director named R. James Woolsey. He headed the Central Intelligence Agency from February 5, 1993, until January 10, 1995.
“But there was one case in which a friend of mine was able to have his aircraft stop at 40,000 feet or so and not continue operating as a normal aircraft,” Woolsey said. He was invited by the host of Black Vault on his YouTube channel, where he discussed the instances from his newly released book “Operation Dragon: Inside the Kremlin’s Secret War on America.” He talked about the Russian involvement in the continuation of the Cold War, then he was asked about the assassination of JFK, and also discussed the UFOs.
“I’m not as skeptical as I was a few years ago, to put it mildly. But something is going on that is surprising to a series of intelligent aircraft, experienced pilots,” he said. “And we will just have to see what it is.” (Source)
Next, we have the case of the Tordesillas boys, which is not well-known outside Spain. It is a perfect example of the consequences of the UFO’s interaction with the human body. Martin Rodríguez witnessed how a beam of light, arising from a UFO, pierced his chest and supposed numerous neurological operations.
It happened on the evening of October 1, 1977, on the outskirts of the city of Tordesillas, Spain. Martin Rodríguez and some friends were playing hide-and-seek in a vacant lot near the road and next to abandoned farm buildings.
At some point, Martin and Fernando Caravelos (both 7 years old) decided to hide somewhere so that no one could find them. The two boys ran to an abandoned corral that stood far away from the place where the children were playing. The boys knew that vagrants took shelter in that corral, so they decided to first check if there were any strangers inside.
Martin took the rock and threw it through the broken window, only to hear a loud metallic clang as if the rock hit what looked like a huge steel cauldron. The sound sparked their curiosity, as they had climbed inside the corral several times before and knew that there was nothing that could emit that sound. So, the two went in to investigate.
Inside the old corral, they were amazed at the sight of a strange metal object standing in the corner. It was shaped like a drop of water and stood on three supports. It was about 3 meters high and 2 meters wide with three circular windows as if they were intended for portholes.
A few moments later, the boys got closer to the object and it began to vibrate and rise. The first instinct of safety worked for Fernando, he jumped back and grabbed Martin’s arm to pull him away from the object. But it was too late, Martin stood frozen as if paralyzed, and a strange glow of light came out of the object and ended up hitting Martin’s chest.
The studies carried out concluded that the soil samples collected that day were subjected to a temperature of approximately 600°C. These studies were conducted by a local journalist and UFO researcher Iker Jimenez, 20 years after the event. Meanwhile, Jimenez published a book called “Enigmas Sin Resolver,” where he presented these facts. Martin also appeared on an episode of a TV show hosted by Jimenez, Cuarto Milenio.
In the following years, Martin Rodriguez, who had always been in good health, began to suffer from stomach pains, vomiting, dizziness, and loss of vision. He was admitted to the Redondo Onésimo Hospital in the city of Valladolid, and from that moment on, he underwent 14 surgeries.
Over the years, Martin suffered numerous relapses that led to routine comas, and many of his family and friends thought he could die at any time. But Martin’s life continued more or less normal, despite his illness and suffering from the operations performed. Martin’s case is considered one of the most important ufological cases in Spain, both for the witnesses who saw the object flying and for the consequences that such interaction had on Martin.
The Varginha case revolves around a reported crashed UFO in Varginha, Brazil that happened in 1996, where many locals claimed to have seen two alien creatures, captured by the Brazilian military. According to Investigative journalist Lelsie Kean, one creature was dead while the other one was still alive. (Click here to read the full article)
Filmmaker James Fox (Left, )Marco Chereze (in photo shown by his sister) died after one of the creatures scratched him
According to the report, the encounter involved two military police officers, who came across a creature running in front of their vehicle. One of the officers, Marco Chereze, supposedly captured the creature with his bare hands but later suffered from an infection that turned out to be fatal.
Kean revealed that she spoke with the doctors who had treated the police officer before his tragic demise. She said: “The circumstances of his death are shocking. He had this little cut on his shoulder from having grabbed this entity when it was alive, and it cut him. Then he got a horrific infection, and no antibiotics would work.” The veteran Brazilian doctor she spoke to, known for his expertise in autopsies, had never encountered anything like that, indicating the severity and uniqueness of the situation.
These are some of the known incidents where life-threatening injuries occurred, as well as fatalities in rare cases, during the UAP phenomena. So, when Tucker Carlson says the UFO truth is dark, could these cases be the reason behind it, or is there something more sinister?
Tucker Carlson Claims Troops Are Dying From UFO Encounters 👽 #status #foryou
Researcher Says Aliens May Be Using Star Systems as Spaceships
Astronomers have observed stars that are accelerating through space at a shockingly rapid pace. Normally this is assumed to relate to gravitational forces in some way, or to the natural emissions of the stars that might be causing them to move at unusually fast rates.
But one researcher has a different idea about why some stars or star systems seem to be moving more rapidly than normally, presumably dragging their planets along with them as they go. According to Clement Vidal, a philosopher from Vrije University Brussels in Belgium who has an interest in astronomy, these traveling solar systems may have been converted into fast-moving “spaceships” by advanced alien civilizations looking to explore other areas of the Milky Way galaxy.
The Solar System as UFO
Assuming for a moment they developed the technology to actually accomplish such a thing, an alien civilization might have various motivations for propelling their entire solar system through space.
“Two universal evolutionary motivations will make interstellar travel a necessity to any long-lived civilization: survival and reproduction,” Vidal wrote in a non-peer-reviewed paper about his concept published through Cornell University.
Such a civilization might want to escape the vicinity of a nearby supernova that threatens their star system’s existence. Or they might be running out of resources on their home planet, and decide to move to another part of their galaxy where resources might be plentiful. Or they could simply be explorers driven by curiosity or a sense of adventure. They might even be forced to take such action as a response to attacks from other alien civilizations.
Rather than constructing ships that would carry just a few of them through space as astronauts, these aliens could take everyone along for the ride, with their solar system traveling through space on the ultimate voyage of discovery. While the journey to another solar system in a different part of the galaxy would be a long one, since the entire civilization was taking the trip together the passing of the time wouldn’t really be noticed.
Binary star system R Aquarii, located 700 light-years from Earth.
This is an astonishing proposal, but it is based on an idea that has been around for a long time. The idea of creating a “stellar engine” (a star that could be used to power space travel) was first conceived of by science fiction writer Olaf Stapledon in 1937, and the concept has always been considered sound—impractical perhaps, but not totally out of the realm of possibility.
In his theoretical study, Vidal proposes that binary star systems would make the best candidates to be converted into spaceships. The particular types of binary systems he identifies are known as spidar pulsars and redback pulsars, and each consists of a star that is smaller than our sun revolving around a dense neutron star with a powerful gravitational field.
In such systems the neutron stars create an enormous amount of energy. They do this through the combination of their rapid rotation (rapidly spinning stars are known as pulsars) and the gravitational forces they generate, the latter of which causes high-powered ejections of materials from their partner stars.
It is these forces, Vidal says, that could be controlled or redirected by an advanced alien civilization to actually propel an entire star system through space at a high rate of speed. The idea would be to take control of the pattern of ejections by the neutron’s companion star, and to point them in a specific direction. This would essentially turn that star into a massive rocket, propelling the solar system and all of its inhabitants toward the region of space they would like to explore. Making changes of direction in the material ejection patterns would allow the alien engineers to steer their moving solar systems, giving them total control over their final destination.
An alien civilization would have to be enormously advanced to have developed the technology necessary to manipulate stellar forces. But if they were, converting their entire solar system into a spaceship could be feasible and logical, Vidal argues, and in such a circumstance there would be no shortage of reasons why such a civilization might want to put this idea into practice.
Let the Investigation Begin!
It would be easy to dismiss an idea like this as 100-percent speculation, rooted in science fiction more than science reality. But it is an idea that can be investigated, which is really all that Clement Vidal is recommending that astronomers do.
In fact scientists have already looked closely at the anomalous movements of hypervelocity stars, strange objects that were apparently ejected from the center of the Milky Way after passing too close to a black hole. Astronomers have identified and analyzed 16 hypervelocity stars so far, but as Vidal readily admits none of them show movement patterns that would suggest they are under intelligent control.
Vidal is convinced, however, that binary star systems with the neutron star-small companion star arrangement would make the best stellar engines, because of their unique gravitational dynamics. In fact, he has already identified two candidates that match the characteristics of the solar systems he wants investigated. These are a “black widow” pulsar designated PSR J0610-2100, and a "redback" pulsar known as PSR J2043+1711. Both of these binary star systems are accelerating, and as of now there is no good explanation for that.
Illustration of star flying through space pulling planet along with it.
And just last year, Vidal notes, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory spotted five more binary pulsar systems like these in the Omega Centauri globular cluster, a grouping of 10 million stars that are about 17,000 light-years from earth. Vidal’s idea is that the movement patterns of all of these binary star systems should be closely analyzed, to see if they show any signs of speeding up or slowing down, changing direction, moving faster than predicted, and so on.
“I see the highlighted spider stellar engine candidates and predictions as promising starting points and clues that require further attention, observation, modeling, and follow-up,” he wrote.
Should such evidence be observed, it would of course not prove these solar systems were being driven across the galaxy by aliens. But if any of them are, perhaps one day thousands of years in the future they will decide to park in orbit for awhile around our sun and stop in for a visit. Should this ever happen, the result would be the largest and most spectacular mass UFO sighting in world history, followed up by actual alien contact.
New study finds potential alien mega-structures known as 'dyson spheres'
Top image:
Illustration of binary pair of giant starts, accompanied by multiple planets.
Source: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva M. ZamaniCC BY-SA 4.0.
Forgotten Giants: Were There Really Giants in Ancient Times?
One of the most enduring myths of humankind is that pertaining to giants. In almost every major civilization and culture in the world, there are tales of ancient giants, enormous and powerful, credited with the construction of many great sites. But for the most part, the myths about giants remain only that - myths. For generations, scholars and historians tried to bring these myths to reality, to find some evidence that giants really existed. Their efforts are shrouded in enigma. There are stories of giant skeletons being excavated, and many oral legends that point to their existence. But they all somehow, “mysteriously” disappear, or are placed “under the rug”. So what is the truth? Did the giants really live in ancient history?
Across millennia, the notion of these colossal beings of immense power and stature had fascinated societies. Many people from all corners of the globe had folklore and myths centered on these beings, and even religious texts mentioned them to a great extent. So much so that scholarly inquiry was needed: were these legends simple allegories, or were they based on actual facts from some ancient time in history? To answer this question, scholars had to navigate through heaps of ancient texts, through myths and cultural lore, and plenty of archeological finds that all point out towards the existence of giants.
Perhaps the best place to start the quest was by examining ancient texts and religious accounts. Many of them specifically mention giants as being an actual part of our shared history. One of the best known such mentions come from the Hebrew Bible, which mentions beings known as the Nephilim. A passage from the Bible’s “Book of Genesis”, mentions them as follows:
“There were giants (Nephilim) in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.”
-Genesis, 6:4
This verse, combined with other references such as those in the Book of Enoch - an apocryphal Jewish text - suggests that beings of considerable size and power once walked the earth. This book takes things even further, describing them as the offspring of certain angels who descended to earth and mated with human women. The resulting offspring were beings of giant stature and great strength, whose mere existence led to corruption and violence across the world. This state ultimately prompted the biblical divine flood - a way to cleanse the earth and start anew.
This would sound like a mere legend, if it didn’t closely align with a myth from an altogether different civilization. This civilization was Mesopotamia, which left to posterity the “Epic of Gilgamesh”, one of the world’s oldest surviving literary works. Gilgamesh himself is described as a giant of extraordinary power, possibly hinting at a long-lost connection to a race of oversized beings. Similarly, the Mahabharata and other Hindu scriptures mention beings of gigantic proportions, known as , who played significant roles in cosmic battles. These giants were said to have superhuman strength and were often depicted as guardians of powerful secrets or treasures.
Statue of Ravana from the 18th century AD, British Museum
However, it is very important to note that the theme of giants is not confined to a single culture; it is a global motif. For example, in the famed Greek mythology, there existed Titans. These were primordial giants who ruled the Earth before the arrival of the “normal” gods of the Olympus. Due to their sheer size and great strength, they were difficult enemies to overthrow. Nevertheless, the gods eventually defeated them, ending their existence in a climactic battle known as Titanomachy. A very similar story exists in Old Norse mythology, which speaks of the Jötnar, a race of giants who dwelled in Jotunheim. Much like the Titans, they too were embroiled in a bitter conflict with the human Gods of the Asgard. But not all of them were evil, the myths say, and many formed alliances and even married with the Gods.
Scene from Richard Wagner's opera Das Rheingold , illustrated by Arthur Rackham (1910). The giants Fasolt and Fafner abduct Freia after Wotan fails to pay them for building Valhalla.
Amongst the Celtic peoples there are stories of the Fomorians, an ancient race of giants which were the infamous enemies of Ireland’s very first settlers. In the extensive Irish myths, these giants were eventually defeated by the Tuatha de Danann, a more advanced race of beings - the Gods of the pre-Christian Irish. The existence of megalithic structures such as Newgrange and Stonehenge has fueled speculation about whether such giant beings could have had a hand in their construction.
And far from the lands of the Norse or the Celts, amongst the Native American Indians, there also existed tales of giants. The PaiuteNative American tribe has an extensive oral history that speaks of the Si-Te-Cah. These were a race of red-haired giants that inhabited an area that is today the state of Nevada. Settling in the area, the very first natives warred with these giants, who were cannibals. The giants eventually met their bitter end in this war. Their numbers constantly dwindled, and they finally disappeared when the Paiute trapped the last of them in a cave and set it ablaze, suffocating them. This tale gained further intrigue with the discovery of Lovelock Cave in the early 20th century, where gigantic skeletal remains were purportedly found, leading some to believe that the legend was actually based in truth. However, the remains mysteriously “disappeared” under the care of the Smithsonian Museum.
The Giant Hidden History
Archaeological findings often become a point of heated debate when giants are discussed. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, there were numerous reports of giant skeletal remains unearthed in various parts of the world. For instance, in the United States, newspapers such as the New York Times published articles claiming that giant skeletons were found during digs in places like Wisconsin, Ohio, and the Appalachian region. Some reports mentioned skeletons ranging from 7 to 12 feet tall (2.1 to 3.6 m tall), complete with robust bone structures that appeared to support a human form of that magnitude. In fact, there were hundreds of such finds in America, many documented with photographs. However, virtually all of them were discredited, and many allegedly destroyed by the Smithsonian Museum, where many ended up. Why? No one really knows.
The Smithsonian, in fact, has been at the center of what were termed “conspiracy theories” that claim it actively suppressed findings related to giants to align with prevailing views of human history. However, the institution has repeatedly denied these claims, maintaining that no verified remains of giant humanoids have ever been recovered. And thus, ultimately, skepticism prevailed in academic circles. Modern archeologists usually attribute these claims to simple mistakes: misidentified animal bones and ancient fossils, hoaxes, and simple exaggerations.
One of the more important archeological finds often brought into discussion about giants was found in the ancient city of Baalbek, situated in modern-day Lebanon. Discovered were some of the largest stone blocks that were ever used in construction, with the heaviest (known as the “Stone of the Pregnant Woman”) weighing well over 1,000 tons. Modern historians attribute these megaliths to the craftsmanship and advanced abilities of the Roman Empire, but there are those that argue that they are the evidence of an ancient race of giants. In fact, they state that only giants could carve, move, and arrange such stones - ultimately creating many megalithic structures across Europe.
Stone of the Pregnant Woman pictured with Ralph Ellis standing on it, at Baalbek, Lebanon
There are those scholars who argue that the ancient stories of giant beings were simply metaphors and exaggerations, and not actual descriptions of them. They state that ancient peoples, not familiar with very old megalithic structures, or having lost certain technologies, simply ascribed them to mythical giants. And in ancient myths, these same giants were used to symbolize chaos, primal forces, or the boundary between order and disorder. As such, their defeat at the hands of human gods or heroes usually represents the triumph of civilization over nature or barbarism, and the very old ways of existence.
Anthropologists also have a say in this, claiming that ancient stories of giants could be connected to large fossils. When ancient peoples would uncover, for example, bones of mammoths or prehistoric creatures, they would liken them to bones of humans - only much larger. Not realizing otherwise, they would envision a race of giant men. This hypothesis is supported by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, who mentioned in his “Histories” that the Egyptians pointed to large bones as proof of a race of giants.
Additionally, psychological interpretations consider the stories of giants as expressions of human fears and desires. The idea of a larger-than-life being embodies power, intimidation, and the unknown. These attributes may have been incorporated into oral traditions as cautionary tales or as explanations for natural phenomena that were difficult for ancient people to comprehend. A good example is the mythology of the Aztecs. They mention Quinametzin, the Giants that dwelt in the world before them. According to the Aztecs, it was giants who created their foremost city, Teotihuacan (transl. “The Place Where Men Become Gods”). But since the giants did not venerate the gods, they were all ultimately defeated.
Secrets, myths, and inexplicable things - these are all that surround the notion of giants in ancient history. Whether or not giants really roamed the Earth is a question that remains unanswered to this very day. Ancient texts, cultural stories, and speculative archaeology suggest a rich tradition that spans continents and centuries. Yet, conclusive physical evidence is lacking, leaving room for both skepticism and belief. And on top of it all, there are those that seemingly put all their efforts to repeatedly shove this story under the rug, and to portray all those who believe in it as conspiracy theorists.
But nevertheless, the tales of the giants - be they metaphorical or literal - remain the foremost symbols of the mysteries that surround most ancient human history. And they also highlight the power of the stories that are passed down through generations. Whether these tales are born from an overactive imagination, allegorical storytelling, or faint recollections of a forgotten chapter in human history, they continue to captivate and provoke thought either way. In the end, however, they are urging us to always explore the dark unknown. Because in that darkness could hide the answers for which humanity is not yet ready.
Top image:
A huge great statue of the greek god titan atlas holding planet earth in his hands. dark sky in the background.
At first light, a boy and his father sling rifles over their shoulders and trudge barefoot through squelching grass.
They’re hunting — for proof of UFO landings on their sugar cane farm.
A young Shane Pennisi trails in lockstep behind his dad, Albert, eyes fixed on the swarm of mosquitoes surrounding him as they approach the lagoon.
“The whole of his back would be just black and they’re all full of red blood,” Shane says.
They survey the scene for any disturbance to the bullrush reed bristling from the murky water and triple-check that no crocodile has spilt into residency during the recent floods.
With last night’s sleep still clinging to the corners of their eyes, they hoist the rifles above their heads and slide into the warm marsh.
Paternal bonding comes in all shapes and sizes.
Wading through stagnant, larval-rearing water in search of “saucer nests” is just part of the daily routine for this father-son duo.
Something happened here that knocked the family off its axis and tormented a mild-mannered man for the rest of his life.
An impression left in this very lagoon would grow into a roaring wave of global crop circle fever.
And there are still secrets to tell almost six decades on.
An unlikely protagonist
George Pedley was a wiry young banana farmer in Far North Queensland when he encountered what he later described as a flying saucer.
The gentle bachelor in his 20s worked the plot of land beside the Pennisi cane farm at Euramo, just south of Tully, and built a rough but sturdy shack for his tractor and tools.
It was the era of the space race.
Aliens, UFOs and interplanetary exploration were part of the pop cultural furniture.
Less so, perhaps, around Tully.
The town then, as today, prided itself on being the wettest place in Australia — a simple agricultural and logging community carved into the skirt of a rainforest-blanketed mountain.
It seemed an unlikely spot, with an unlikely protagonist, for a mystery that would foreshadow a rash of UFO and crop circle reports all over the world.
Even so, in the grips of a sweltering wet season in January 1966, Tully went into a tailspin.
The sighting
Shane Pennisi was seven years old at the time and living on the same cane farm in the single-storey house he still calls home today.
He remembers his whole family pulling into the driveway after a beach trip on the afternoon of January 19, 1966 to find their neighbour sitting on their front steps.
George Pedley had an uncharacteristic look of agitation etched across his face.
“He started stuttering a bit. Something had happened.”
Shane’s dad Albert spoke with George for a few minutes before they all hopped in the ute — adults up front, kids clinging on in the tray — and drove to a horseshoe-shaped lagoon at the edge of a cane paddock.
That’s when they saw it.
A perfect circle of flattened bullrush reeds in the middle of the water, about nine metres in diameter and floating like a pontoon.
There were no markings around it — no trail from machinery that might have fabricated the unusual imprint.
Back at the house, George opened up about his experience.
He had been driving his tractor that morning when he heard a tremendous “hissing” noise and hopped out in search of a punctured tyre.
“He heard the hissing getting louder and louder. Then he turned around and looked up,” Shane says.
“He saw a UFO. Just above the treetops — tilted like it hesitated, and then it was gone.
“Then he looked back in the lagoon and saw the water swirling.”
Shane clearly recalls his neighbour picking up two teacup plates from the table, tipping one upside down and placing them lip to lip.
This was what he had seen.
A flying saucer, illuminated with bright lights and hissing away in a puff of blue vapour.
The term “gone troppo” is Australian slang for being driven mad by excessive heat and possibly a few too many swigs of the flagon.
George was not a drinker.
Still, the banana farmer couldn’t shake the suspicion he had contracted an acute case of the tropical malady.
“George being George just thought, ‘I’m just seeing things,’” Shane says.
George went back to the shade of his shed and boiled a billy to get his faculties in order.
Questions were piling up.
After a while he returned to the lagoon and discovered this floating mat of reeds, almost woven in a clockwise swirl into a perfect geometric circle of botanical fabric.
Or so the story goes.
The bush telegraph
Police were eventually called and word of this weird encounter spread like a contagion as the small-town rumour mill went into overdrive.
It was dubbed a “saucer nest” — a sort of prototype crop circle two decades before the latter term would become popular — and everyone wanted a look.
George Pedley's UFO sighting report to police in January 1966.(Supplied: National Archive of Australia)
Cars roared onto the farm in their hundreds, with yahoos knocking over cane, drinking beer and climbing the reedy pontoon, which could hold a man’s weight with no trouble at all.
It was a lot for a seven-year-old boy to take in.
Shane remembers the dust from the traffic being so thick that his mum couldn’t hang the washing.
“It was one car after the other,” he says.
“They parked anywhere they could, they walked over plant cane … broke down trees … they just walked through the lagoon.”
The family was eventually forced to retreat to their nearby beach shack until things died down.
It would take a while.
News reports all over the country featured photos of the splayed, flattened reeds, and reporters spent the night getting mauled by mosquitoes in hope of experiencing a visitation.
They never got one, but they did get plenty of fodder for a readership desperate for anything to do with aliens, flying saucers and cosmic expeditions.
How do you explain the unexplainable?
Wild theories started popping up about what could have caused the strange phenomenon.
Obviously it wasn’t aliens … was it?
Everything from helicopters and reed-eating grubs to whirlwinds and waterspouts were proposed as logical culprits.
There was even a theory that the purported saucer nest had been created by ducks swimming in a circle.
George’s honesty and mental stability were questioned in news articles and cartoons, and to his dying day he felt slighted about being publicly ridiculed.
Locals who knew him and the landscape were more inclined to believe his story.
Valerie Keenan was a child when saucer nest mania swept through Tully.
Her dad, a cattle station owner from one of the area’s original pioneering families, was already something of a UFO enthusiast.
“He would sit out on the lawn in this chair and observe the night sky and talk about what he would do if someone, a UFO landed,” she remembers.
He was one of a few locals to receive an invitation from George to visit the saucer nest shortly after its discovery — and he brought Valerie in tow.
For all the interest in George and his encounter, there remained a secret to which only a handful of people were privy.
It went almost entirely unnoticed by all those hundreds of trespassing sightseers and headline-chasing journalists.
Given the media circus was in full swing, Albert and George weren’t keen on bringing too many others into the fold.
But Valerie knew.
There were more so-called saucer nests in horseshoe lagoon.
Even stranger, these shapes would keep appearing on the farm for decades to come.
Other farms, other farmers
The crop circle is now such a pervasive cultural touchstone that it’s easy to forget the term wasn’t coined until the 1980s.
Sporadic mentions of comparable formations pop up as far back as 1678, when a woodcut pamphlet published in England told of a “mowing devil” at work in Hertfordshire.
The story went that a farmer had refused to pay a labourer’s exorbitant price to harvest 3 acres of oats and swore “that the Devil should mow it, rather than he”.
That night he saw the field go up in flames, but by morning any sign of fire was gone and the crop was cut to perfection in a manner “no mortal man was able to do the like”.
Crop-lopping Lucifers aside, it wasn’t until the Tully saucer nest sensation that these stories really found their stride.
Keith Basterfield is a UFO researcher who in 1973 investigated an eerily similar case in an oat field at Bordertown in South Australia.
Keith says seven of these shapes were scattered across the farm — and he would investigate similar reports over the years.
For some, saucer nests had become the subject of genuine scientific inquiry.
Unfortunately for believers, their credibility was dealt a catastrophic blow in 1991 when British artists Doug Bower and Dave Chorley admitted they had faked hundreds of the celestial glyphs across the UK since the 1970s.
In a bizarre turn of events, those British artists pointed to what happened at Horseshoe Lagoon in Tully as their inspiration.
But authorities were not simply dismissing reports outright.
Brett Biddington is a former Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) intelligence officer who spent years investigating UFO reports for the military.
He was once tasked with driving to Bendigo after local media went into a frenzy over strange lights appearing in the sky in the 1980s.
He got a first-hand glimpse of how the hunt for a headline can whip up hysteria and misinformation.
“It tends to be both sensationalised and somewhat trivialised in the general media,” he says.
Brett says military interest in UFOs was very real, but not because of any perceived threat from little green men.
“There was intense interest by both sides in the Cold War — the United States on the one hand, the Soviets on the other, to try to understand what the level of their technologies were with regard to space,” he says.
RAAF investigations into UFOs wrapped up in the 1990s and never really kicked off again Down Under.
A small percentage of cases remain unexplained, like what happened in Tully.
Some measure of vindication
George Pedley’s memorial plaque at the Tully cemetery features a small embossed figure of a horse cocking its front leg and the epitaph: “Husband, father, grandfather and brother.”
A man’s life summed up in five words.
He was a quiet farmer who, according to those who knew him, never sought nor enjoyed the limelight that was thrust upon him.
George died aged 85 in 2022, around the time a fundamental shift was happening in the public perception of UFOs — or UAPs (unidentified anomalous phenomena), as they’re often now called.
Three years ago, the United States government published a report into 144 UAP sightings between 2004 and 2021.
It was inconclusive in terms of identifying the nature of these phenomena — but it did not rule out the possibility of advanced tech from foreign nations or extraterrestrial sources.
In 2022, the US Congress held its first hearing on UFOs in more than 50 years.
A new government branch called the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) was also created to investigate UAPs across, as the name suggests, all domains — air, sea, land and space.
Suddenly there is an acknowledgement that not all encounters can be written off as hoaxes or the creations of overactive imaginations.
If this shift does provide some measure of vindication to witnesses, it has arrived too late for old George.
Dozens more nests over decades
If there was one person who never doubted George’s reliability as a witness, it was his neighbour, Albert Pennisi.
He would visit the lagoon every day for decades, jotting down notes of any disturbances and sending them back to UFO researchers in Brisbane.
Valerie Keenan and her dad were among a select few locals who were shown the other saucer nests that had also appeared that fateful January in 1966.
“There was another lagoon on the other side, and we saw another three pads, different sizes, different shapes,” she remembers.
“It was just sort of like something had come down from above — and where we saw the other three, there was no way in the world you would have got a vehicle of any kind in there.”
And it didn’t stop there.
Those early mornings spent waist-deep in the lagoon with parasites lapping at their veins and rifles held above their heads were not the most comfortable father-son expeditions.
But for Shane, they were beautiful moments spent with the man he idolised.
And they didn’t always come back empty-handed.
The pair never saw a spacecraft themselves, but Shane swears saucer nests kept appearing until about a decade ago.
“I couldn’t tell you the number … 25, 30, more,” he says.
“Towards the end, I didn’t even keep marking it down.
“You know, it’s very scary for your kids. I saw but I didn’t mark it down.”
The last saucer nest
The recent shift in public perception towards UFOs is one factor, but there’s something much more existential than that.
That seven-year-old boy is now an old man himself, and this lagoon is where he feels closest with his dad.
But it’s time to sell the farm.
Shane recently survived serious heart surgery and his kids won’t be taking over the reins.
He’s terrified that whoever buys the farm will bring in the dozers and fill the lagoon to fit in a few more rows of cane.
“What’s the biggest thing that’s going to hurt me? It’s this. Walking away from it,” Shane says.
“I’ve got to walk away from it all.
“It’s my life. I’ve got to leave and forget and don’t look back.”
Shane’s voice trembles as he sits in the same dining room where Albert and George drank tea after that very first sighting in 1966.
He feels like a weight has been lifted.
“I’m the last that’s going to be involved in it, so now’s the time for the public to know.”
Beste bezoeker, Heb je zelf al ooit een vreemde waarneming gedaan, laat dit dan even weten via email aan Frederick Delaere opwww.ufomeldpunt.be. Deze onderzoekers behandelen jouw melding in volledige anonimiteit en met alle respect voor jouw privacy. Ze zijn kritisch, objectief maar open minded aangelegd en zullen jou steeds een verklaring geven voor jouw waarneming! DUS AARZEL NIET, ALS JE EEN ANTWOORD OP JOUW VRAGEN WENST, CONTACTEER FREDERICK. BIJ VOORBAAT DANK...
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
