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...
10-03-2025
The Three Unsolved UFO Cases in China: The Huang Yanqiu Incident, the Meng Zhaoguo Incident, and the Strange Vehicle Incident in the Sky
The Three Unsolved UFO Cases in China: The Huang Yanqiu Incident, the Meng Zhaoguo Incident, and the Strange Vehicle Incident in the Sky
1. Huang Yanqiu incident
From the end of July to the end of September 1977, Huang Yanqiu went through three miraculous trips, flying thousands of kilometers away in just one night.
On July 27, 1977 (June 12th in the lunar calendar), a strange thing happened. Huang Yanqiu, a young farmer who was about to get married in the east of the village, suddenly disappeared while sleeping that night. audio. The news reached Xinzhai Village, 3 kilometers north of Northeast Gao Village, and the villagers handed over an outdated urgent telegram to a village committee member of Beigao Village. The date is marked "July 28", which is the second day after Huang Yanqiu disappeared, and the telegram reads: "Xinzhai Huang Yanqiu is detained at the Shanghai Mengzi Road Deportation Station and is expected to claim it."
What is puzzling is that the time when the Shanghai deportation station sent the report was only 10 hours after Huang Yanqiu disappeared. Northeast Gaocun is 1,140 kilometers away from Shanghai. At that time, it took 22 hours to get there by express train, and you had to go to Handan City, 45 kilometers away, to get on the train.
He came to Shanghai again, and with the help of Lu Haishan, he finally returned to his hometown on September 11. Huang Yanqiu's departure from home again aroused people's suspicions, and the rumors became more and more strange, with the legendary color of myths and ghosts. Some said it was haunted by little ghosts and so on. His fiancée, a kind and beautiful girl, couldn't bear the mental pressure and appealed to the township judicial office to divorce him.
On September 20th (the eighth day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar), night fell. After dinner, Huang Yanqiu went to the brigade to collect work points and came back. It was already more than ten o'clock in the middle of the night. As soon as he entered the yard, he suddenly felt dizzy and lost consciousness. When he woke up, he was lying in a hotel. Sitting next to him were two young men who claimed to be from Shandong. They told Xiao Huang that this was Lanzhou, a thousand kilometers away from Feixiang, and that the "traffic policemen" he met in Nanjing and the soldiers who sent him to the army were the same. It was the two of them who pretended to be, and they arranged for the first two disappearances. This time I took him out and planned to visit 9 major cities in 9 days.
After eating the dinner prepared for him, that night, two strangers carried Xiao Huang on their backs and flew in the direction of Beijing, from Gansu-Ningxia-Shaanxi-Shanxi-Hebei-Beijing, at least 1,200 kilometers away. The distance is about an hour.
In Beijing, he also experienced the situation where he went directly to the Chang'an Theater to watch a play without buying a ticket, but the two ticket inspectors did not respond. After playing, the three flew to Tiananmen Square and landed in front of a Chinese frame. The stranger gave a brief introduction to the scenery around the square. After watching for about 10 minutes, Huang left the square with two flying people and walked into a hotel not far away. The flying people switched to Mandarin and showed the "Provincial Introduction" Letter" registered the room.
Afterwards, the three of them flew to Tianjin, which arrived within an hour as usual. The three of them entered the movie theater without a ticket again under the eyes of the ticket inspector. The pilot said that the next stop is to fly to Harbin. After visiting a department store in Harbin, I went to Changchun in the evening.
Went to Shenyang the next day.
On September 25th (the thirteenth day of the eighth lunar month), we arrived in Fuzhou.
On September 25 (the thirteenth day of the eighth lunar month), we arrived in Nanjing.
On September 27th (the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month), the Mid-Autumn Festival, we arrived in Xi'an.
On the evening of September 27 (the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month), I returned to Lanzhou again. When he fell asleep, he was sent to the jujube tree at home by flying people.
2. Meng Zhaoguo Incident
At the end of May 1994, at the Fenghuang Mountain Forest Farm in Wuchang County, Heilongjiang, according to local mountain residents, an unidentified object stayed on the southern slope of Fenghuang Mountain, and some people even saw this unidentified object flying nearby. On June 6, 1994, Meng Zhaoguo came into contact with an unknown object for the first time. On that day, when he and a relative climbed up the hillside to "find out" the unknown object, a series of strange phenomena occurred. When the unknown object was about 100 meters away, Meng Zhaoguo saw it as a huge, white, tadpole-shaped object, about 150 meters long. The "giant tadpole" let out a piercing squeal as they approached.
Meng Zhaoguo reported this strange experience to the forest farm immediately after returning from the mountain. On June 9, more than 30 people including the chairman of the trade union went to Phoenix Mountain to check. When they were about 100 meters away from the location of the unknown object that day, they took out the telescope to check, but they didn't see anything.
Meng Zhaoguo took the telescope. It is said that he took the telescope over and saw it at a glance. The white unidentified object was still there, and "an alien was standing in front of it." Meng Zhaoguo recalled that at that time he clearly saw that "person", took out something like a matchbox and put it in the palm of his hand, and shot a strong light from it to the center of his eyebrows, he felt his whole body tremble, and then Nothing is clear anymore. People around still insist that they saw nothing at the time. They carried Meng Zhaoguo to a small shed not far away, and people had to hold him down because he kept convulsing. According to him later, he saw an alien with big eyes, and he screamed in fear , but no one seemed to be able to hear him, so he stood upside down all of a sudden. When standing upside down, everyone present witnessed it. It is said that because of his height, the roof of the shed was broken. According to the forestry doctor's diagnosis, Meng Zhaoguo suffered instant deep high-temperature burns between his eyebrows. Strange things also happened during the recovery process.
Meng Zhaoguo and his two colleagues said that in June 1994, they saw a strange luminous body appearing on Phoenix Mountain near the Hongqi Forest Farm in Wuchang City, Heilongjiang where they worked. Meng Zhaoguo initially thought there was a helicopter crash there. He then traveled alone to the scene of the incident, where he said he was hit on the head by a force as he approached what he believed to be wreckage from the plane and was pushed away. Meng Zhaoguo said that a few days later he met a woman with hairy legs at his residence, "about 3 meters tall, with 6 fingers, and otherwise no different from ordinary people." He said that his wife and children were lying quietly on the bed, but he himself floated above, and then had sexual intercourse with the woman for about 40 minutes. After the sexual intercourse, the woman left, and a 5 cm long scar appeared on Meng Zhaoguo's thigh. A month later he walked through a wall into a spaceship and encountered aliens. He asked if he could see the woman again, and was told no. But aliens said that within 60 years, a descendant of a Chinese farmer will be born on another planet. They also expressed that Meng Zhaoguo had the opportunity to visit their children.
3. Sky car incident
At 3 o'clock in the morning on December 1, 1994, workers and residents near the Duxi Forest Farm, 18 kilometers away from the northern suburbs of Guiyang City, were awakened by the rumbling sound of strange vehicles in the sky, the wind was very fast, and there were strong red and green lights. Unidentified objects roared past. A few minutes later, the pine forest of more than 400 mu in the Majiatang forest area of Duxi Forest Farm was cut off in pieces, leaving only 1.5 meters in a strip-shaped area about 3 kilometers long and 150 meters to 300 meters wide. Most of the stumps up to 4 meters high and the broken trunks and tree crowns fell to the west. The thick trunks of one person's height in 4 forest areas with a length of 2 kilometers are neatly arranged on the forest farm. Some of the broken trees were safe and sound, a few were uprooted, and some small trees around had scratches. Most of these broken trees have a diameter of 20 centimeters to 30 centimeters and a height of about 20 meters. Later, according to the wife of forestry worker Li Xinghua, she saw from the window that it was a big truck-like thing called a "strange car in the sky" with two lights shooting from the front of the car. The next day, the forest farm workers inspected the forest area and found that 4 large forests were destroyed, and about 2,000 cubic meters of commercial timber were lost. From Majiatang at the southwest end to Zhuanyaopo at the northeast end, it is 3 kilometers long, with a total area of more than 400 mu. The widest part of the strip is more than 300 meters, and the narrowest part is 150 meters. The stump at the southwest end is about 2 meters high, and at the northeast end, there is a stump about 4 meters high.
In the early morning of November 30, 1994, Guiyang Beixiao Duxi Forest Farm and Dulaying Vehicle Factory suffered strange disasters. Among them, 400 mu of masson pine in Duxi Forest Farm was destroyed. This disaster showed selectivity and purpose. The disaster was divided into 4 areas, which were not continuous with each other. A large number of trees fell down, but the plastic greenhouses beside the trees were intact. The trees were all broken, but the coniferous layer under the trees was intact. The situation in the vehicle factory is even more puzzling. The steel pipes in the weighbridge room were magically cut off, mysterious claw marks were left on the concrete floor of the miscellaneous goods warehouse, the nearly 70-ton truck box was moved more than 20 meters in reverse, and the night watch workers were sucked off the ground.
On February 9, 1995, an unidentified object was detected on the central radar of Guiyang Airport. Then, during the flight from Guangzhou to Guiyang, Boeing 737 Flight 2946 of Zhongyuan Airlines was flying at an altitude of 10,000 meters. An unidentified flying object followed it. The shape changed from a diamond to a circle, and the color changed from yellow to red. It was about 1 km away from the plane, and finally disappeared 70 km northeast of Guiyang.
In these several incidents, although the Duxi Forest Farm and the Guizhou Vehicle Factory were severely damaged, no human, livestock or poultry were injured or killed. Even the factory guards who were on patrol at night at the vehicle factory were blown up several meters by the wind, moved more than 20 meters in the air and fell down. A large number of trees in the forest area were broken, but the high-voltage lines passing through the forest area were intact.
Regarding the "strange car in the sky" incident, quite a few people think that it is the trace left by the flying saucer and is a masterpiece of "alien". Ma Ruian, a senior engineer of the Guizhou Academy of Sciences, has not stopped researching on the "strange vehicle in the sky" for more than ten years. He believes that the appearance of an unidentified aircraft that night is not people's conjecture, but a fact. It is similar to a jet propulsion According to his previous experimental theory and the damage on the spot, Marian even calculated that the diameter of this flying saucer was about 200 meters, and this huge flying saucer was affected by bad weather when it flew over this area that night.
More than ten years later, the "strange car in the sky" left quite a lot of sequelae to the place where the incident occurred, such as mutations in some areas of the site, strong magnetic fields, and severe stagnation of trees. The pine trees of the same age have grown to more than 10 meters, while the pine trees in this area have only grown about 1 meter.
This man from rural China mysteriously vanished from his home at night on multiple occasions, only to reappear in cities thousands of miles away—far faster than should have been possible given the distance.
Huang Yanqiu was born in 1956 in a small village in China. He was a farmer, and not much is known about his early life. His mother passed away when he was young.
On July 27, 1977, Huang, who was 21 years old, finished working on his farm and went to sleep in his unfinished home. The next morning, he was gone. His family and neighbors searched everywhere, but he was nowhere to be found.
Ten days later, the village received a message from Shanghai, saying Huang was at a deportation center and needed to be picked up. The message was sent the morning after he disappeared, meaning he had arrived in Shanghai—almost 900 km (560 miles) away—in less than half a day, which should have been impossible.
When Huang returned home, he explained that he went to bed as usual but woke up in a big city with tall buildings, cars, and neon lights. He saw signs that said “Nanjing Shopping Center” and “Nanjing Restaurant” and realized he was in Nanjing, a city 780 km (485 miles) away.
Huang wandered around in shock until two police officers stopped him. He told them he was lost, so they gave him a train ticket to Shanghai and told him to go there. When he arrived in Shanghai, the same two officers were already waiting for him—even though they never got on the train, and the train was the fastest way to travel. This made no sense.
At a deportation camp, Huang shared his story with a soldier. He had no ID, and there was a mistake in the message sent to his village, so it took longer for his family to get him back.
People in the village were confused. Trains at that time were too slow to get him to Nanjing that fast. Other transportation, like airplanes or cars, was either too expensive or unavailable in the village. Huang also had no reason to run away, and he had never talked about Nanjing or Shanghai before. Some people thought he was lying, but others couldn’t explain how he got there.
Then, something similar happened again.
On September 8, 1977, during harvest season, Huang and other villagers worked hard all day. At 10:00 PM, the village leader allowed Huang and a few others to leave early and sleep, as long as they delivered fertilizer the next morning. They agreed and went to bed.
The next morning, on September 9, when the villagers gathered at the storage area, they noticed Huang was missing again. Thinking he overslept, they checked his house, but he wasn’t there. However, they found something strange—words carved into his bedroom wall that said:
“Shandong Gao Dengmin, Gao Yanjin Relax.”
Just like before, Huang was found in Shanghai. This time, there were witnesses from both the village and Shanghai who confirmed his disappearance and sudden reappearance. On September 11, he was sent back home, but he still couldn’t explain how he got there.
Huang said he woke up at Shanghai Railway Station in the middle of the night. It was 2:00 AM, and the area was completely dark except for the stars and moon. There was a typhoon hitting Shanghai, bringing heavy rain, strong winds, and thunder. He was even more terrified than last time because he had no idea how he got there and had no way to find help.
Suddenly, he heard a voice behind him say: “Hello there, you must be Huang Yanqiu from Feixiang County. Trying to head to the artillery division?”
Shocked, he turned around and saw two men in military uniforms. They told him they were soldiers from the same unit as Lü Qingtang—the soldier who helped him last time. They said they were sent to pick him up.
A composite sketch of the two created by the police
Huang followed them as they took ferries and buses to an artillery division in what is now Pudong, Shanghai. Even though the area was heavily guarded, the soldiers got through without any trouble, which was unusual.
They arrived at Lü Qingtang’s home, where his wife, Li Yuying, was completely shocked to see them. She told them: “When someone visits, they must show documents, sign in, and wait for us to confirm their identity. There’s no way you got in so easily!”
Years later, Lü’s son also found something strange. He said the two soldiers’ uniforms looked wrong, especially their shoes and visors. He described them as too big and not fitting properly, as if they had borrowed the uniforms.
Before anyone could ask the two mysterious men more questions, they simply walked away and were never seen again. The military was very concerned because Huang being on the base was a serious security issue. When they questioned the guards, all of them said they had never seen Huang or the two men before.
Later, another telegram was sent directly to Huang’s village leader, asking for every possible detail about him—even asking if he was a spy. The village leader responded, saying Huang was just a simple farmer. With no evidence of wrongdoing, the military decided to send Huang home but warned him that if he ever appeared at the base again, he would be arrested. Huang returned to his village on September 11, 1977. However, the military could not explain how he had traveled so quickly or entered the base.
By now, no one could deny that something strange was happening. Too many witnesses saw Huang go to sleep in his village, and the military confirmed he was in Shanghai. Those who thought he was lying began to doubt themselves. However, this made Huang infamous in the village. People gossiped about him constantly, and some even believed he was possessed by spirits.
The situation became too much for his fiancée, who sued his family for 200 yuan for “damaging her reputation” and divorced him. This left Huang emotionally devastated and financially ruined. Then, when he was at his lowest, something even stranger happened.
On September 20, 1977, after a long day of work, Huang started walking home. He was so exhausted that he collapsed in front of his house and disappeared again. This time, he was gone for eight days.
On September 28, the villagers found him under a jujube tree in the village. When they asked where he had been, he told them an even more unbelievable story.
According to Huang, after passing out in his yard, he woke up—not on a sidewalk or in a train station, but inside a luxury hotel room. Standing in front of him were the same two men from before. However, this time, they wore regular clothes and introduced themselves. They said they were brothers from Shandong Province named Gao Dengmin (26 years old) and Gao Yanjin (25 years old). Huang estimated they were about 170 cm (5’7″) tall.
The brothers admitted they were responsible for his disappearances. They said they had dressed as police officers and soldiers to help him return home. Now, they had something special planned for him. They told Huang that over the next nine days, they would take him to nine major cities.
The day after Huang returned to his village, he finally learned how he had traveled so far so quickly. The two mysterious brothers made him climb onto their backs, and they literally flew. Huang said they flew at a low height, and he didn’t feel any wind. The brothers took turns carrying him, and in just over an hour, they arrived in Beijing.
In Beijing, they went to the Chang’an Grand Theater without tickets, but no one stopped them. They watched an opera called Forced Onto Mt. Liang. Then, they visited Tiananmen Square and checked into a hotel using a special “provincial-level introduction letter.” That same day, they flew to Tianjin, snuck into a movie theater, and watched a film.
Huang has apparently travelled across China at supersonic speed without the aid of car, train or plane
(Image: Supplied)
Over the next several days, they visited many cities:
September 22 – Harbin (Heilongjiang Province) September 23 – Changchun (Jilin Province) September 25 – Fuzhou (Fujian Province), then Nanjing September 27 – Xi’an (Shaanxi Province) for the Mid-Autumn Festival September 27 (later that day) – Final stop in Lanzhou Each time, they traveled by flying, and no matter how far the city was, the trip always took one hour. Huang noticed that the brothers could speak the local dialects of every city they visited. In hotels, they always showed a special introduction letter for check-in. One brother always stayed with Huang while the other found new clothes—sometimes police or military uniforms. The only things they carried were clothing and money; they had no bags or wallets.
Other than their ability to fly, they seemed like normal people. They ate and slept like anyone else and had a normal body temperature. However, they had strict rules: Huang wasn’t allowed to take photos or keep souvenirs. When he asked why they chose him, they didn’t answer. When he asked if they could teach him how to fly, they firmly said, “No.”
Just like when Huang first disappeared, he was gone for nine days and visited nine different cities. But this time, when he fell asleep in their hotel, he woke up back in his village under a tree—as if nothing had happened.
After Huang’s strange disappearance, people in the village kept talking about him. Some believed ghosts or gods were involved. The rumors spread so much that the local police, government, and even the military started investigating him. Officials thought he might be lying to hurt the village’s reputation. They called him a “class enemy” but, after questioning him, found nothing suspicious. He acted normal, had no mental illness, and showed no signs of lying. So, they dropped the charges and let him go.
Huang’s story became famous across China and was considered one of the country’s strangest unsolved mysteries. Even the government officially listed his case as “unexplained.”
In 2004, investigators took another look at his case. UFO researchers, a hypnotist, and other experts interviewed Huang. There was solid proof of his first two disappearances, like telegrams and eyewitnesses. However, his third disappearance was more doubtful.
Huang found himself in the bustling city of Nanjing
Under hypnosis, Huang repeated the same story he told back in 1977. But during the session, he suddenly woke up, saying “one of the two brothers” made him wake up. A documentary was made about his case, and he was given a polygraph (lie detector) test, which he failed. However, the test was not considered reliable because it had been 27 years, his memory had faded, and he was under stress.
During the documentary, police drew sketches based on Huang’s descriptions of the mysterious “Gao brothers” he claimed to have met. They also brought Huang to Nanjing to retrace his steps from the first time he disappeared.
Later, doctors at a hospital reviewed his case. One doctor said that if Huang’s story were true, the “Gao brothers” would have been moving at supersonic speeds. The doctor suggested that Huang was either sleepwalking or lying.
Huang’s villagers did not believe he was lying. They pointed out that he had nothing to gain from telling his story—he lost his fiancée and became a laughingstock. Also, he had no money or way to travel such long distances on his own.
Several theories have been suggested:
Sleepwalking Theory – Some believe Huang was sleepwalking when he traveled to these cities. However, this is unlikely because he would have needed to walk for hours, buy a train ticket with no money, and switch trains—all without waking up or anyone noticing. Doctors even did an MRI scan of his brain, which came back normal.
Multiple Personality Disorder Theory– Another idea is that Huang had multiple personalities. In this theory, his “Gao brothers” were actually different versions of himself, and he imagined flying with them. However, mental health experts found no signs of this disorder in Huang. This theory also doesn’t explain how he traveled so fast.
UFO Theory – Some believe Huang was abducted by aliens. Investigators checked details of his story. For example, Huang mentioned watching a theater performance in Beijing. A journalist found that the theater he mentioned was closed at the time, but another nearby theater did have the same performance on the exact date Huang said he was there. This suggests he may have really been in Beijing.
Military Experiment Theory– Another theory is that the Chinese military kidnapped Huang for secret experiments. Some believe the “Gao brothers” were high-ranking officers involved. They might have drugged and hypnotized Huang to erase his memory. However, skeptics argue that the government had plenty of prisoners for experiments, so why choose a random farmer?
“The Huang Yanqiu Incident” remains one of China’s most famous unsolved mysteries. As of now, there have been no new developments. Huang, now 67 years old, has chosen to live a quiet life in his village, away from the public eye. The last known update about him was in 2008 when he underwent another mental health check.
Despite being grilled by police and psychologists, Huang has never given a clear explanation for hsi mysterious travels
(Image: CCTV.com)
Huang, now 67, doesn't appear to have teleported again
Researchers say they have found "unequivocal evidence" that a meteorite smashed into Earth 3.47 billion years ago, potentially affecting plate tectonics and creating conditions for life.
The world's oldest known meteorite impact crater was discovered in the Australian outback.
(Image credit: John White Photos/Getty Images)
Scientists in Australia have discovered the world's oldest known meteorite impact crater thanks to pristine structures created by the blast in the rock.
Hidden away in the country's outback, the crater is a whopping 3.47 billion years old, according to a study published Thursday (March 6) in the journal Nature Communications.
Karijini National Park, Pilbara, Western Australia
Witte-art_de/Getty Images
"Before our discovery, the oldest impact crater was 2.2 billion years old, so this is by far the oldest known crater ever found on Earth," study co-author Tim Johnson, a professor in the school of Earth and planetary sciences at Curtin University in Australia, said in a statement.
The crater is located in Western Australia's Pilbara region, which is home to some of Earth's oldest rocks. Johnson and his colleagues identified the crater thanks to cone-shaped chunks of rock known as "shatter cones," which form when the shock waves from a meteorite impact propagate downward.
Aerial perspective showing Wolfe Creek Meteorite Crater, Western Australia, Australia
Abstract Aerial Art/Getty Images
Evidence of the world’s oldest known meteorite impact crater was found hidden within the ancient rocks of the North Pole Dome in Western Australia.
(Representational image)
The extreme pressure caused by a meteorite collision fractures the rock below in a branching pattern, leaving chunks that are shaped like cones, with the tapered end pointing toward the center of the impact.
The shatter cones were buried in a rock formation called the East Pilbara Terrane, which scientists already knew dates back to more than 3 billion years ago. The cones were "exceptionally preserved," according to the new study, providing "unequivocal evidence" of an epic meteorite crash around the dawn of life on Earth.
The impact likely rippled across the planet, opening a crater that may have measured up to 62 miles (100 kilometers) across — although more work is needed to confirm the size, the researchers wrote in the study. The shatter cones revealed that the meteorite was traveling roughly 22,400 miles per hour (36,000 km/h) when it hit the ground, according to the statement.
As well as being a destructive force, the impact may have helped to spark life by creating the physical and chemical conditions required.
"Uncovering this impact and finding more from the same time period could explain a lot about how life may have got started, as impact craters created environments friendly to microbial life such as hot water pools," study lead author Chris Kirkland, also a professor at Curtin University's school of Earth and planetary sciences, said in the statement.
Shatter cones are chunks of rock resulting from meteorite impacts. The shatter cones pictured here are dolomite cones from the U.S., not Australia. (Image credit: The Book Worm/Alamy)
Evidence of ancient meteorite strikes on Earth is hard to come by, because the planet continuously recycles rocks from the crust into the mantle, erasing most crash sites. Erosion and weathering also degrade rocks sitting at the surface, meaning Earth's early impact record is largely lost, according to the study.
Nevertheless, researchers suspect that Earth was regularly pummelled by meteorites in its first billion years of existence due to scars on the moon, which does not have plate tectonics. The moon counts millions of impact craters and 40 that are more than 62 miles across, suggesting planets in the early solar system also underwent heavy bombardment, the researchers wrote.
The new discovery hints that some information about Earth's early history has survived. Not only does this offer new avenues to explore how life began on Earth, but it could also shift geologists' perspectives on the formation of Earth's crust.
"The tremendous amount of energy from this impact could have played a role in shaping early Earth's crust by pushing one part of the Earth's crust under another, or by forcing magma to rise from deep within the Earth's mantle toward the surface," Kirkland said.
The new crater alone doesn't paint a clear picture of Earth's first billion years, but there may be many more similar craters awaiting discovery, the researchers concluded in the study.
The concept of time is deeply ingrained in our daily experience—we move forward, never backward, with the past forever fixed and the future an unfolding mystery. Yet, physics presents a paradox: the fundamental laws that govern everything from atomic interactions to planetary motion remain indifferent to the flow of time. They work just as well whether time runs forward or in reverse.
So why does time seem to have a preferred direction? While conventional theories point to entropy as the key driver of time’s arrow, a radical new idea suggests that gravity itself might be responsible for shaping our perception of time’s progression.
Rethinking Time and Gravity
For over a century, physicists have relied on the second law of thermodynamics to explain time’s direction. This law states that in a closed system, entropy—a measure of disorder—always increases. From a neatly stacked deck of cards becoming shuffled to a pristine room inevitably turning messy, our everyday experiences align with this principle. However, this explanation raises a fundamental problem: for entropy to define the arrow of time, the universe must have started in an extremely ordered, low-entropy state—an assumption that clashes with our chaotic understanding of the Big Bang.
In 2014, theoretical physicist Julian Barbour and his team introduced a groundbreaking idea that seeks to resolve this paradox. Rather than relying on entropy, they proposed that gravity itself naturally generates the forward flow of time. Their approach, based on an alternative framework called Shape Dynamics, challenges Einstein’s view of spacetime and suggests that the universe’s evolution is driven by the relationships between objects rather than the fabric of space and time itself.
Barbour’s work demonstrated that if a system of particles is governed solely by gravity, a natural time asymmetry emerges. His simulations showed that these particles tend to form highly ordered structures before progressing toward a state of increasing complexity—mirroring the rise of entropy but without assuming an initial low-entropy condition.
This finding is intriguing because it implies that the arrow of time might not be a byproduct of entropy at all, but rather an intrinsic feature of gravitational interactions. Even though the equations of gravity are time-reversible, the very way matter interacts could give rise to time’s directional flow without requiring any special initial conditions.
The Challenges Ahead
Despite its promise, Barbour’s model simplifies reality. It assumes a universe composed solely of gravitationally interacting particles, ignoring the complexities of quantum mechanics, electromagnetism, and nuclear forces. Expanding Shape Dynamics to accommodate a broader range of interactions remains an open challenge.
Additionally, while Shape Dynamics produces results that align with some aspects of General Relativity, it predicts different mathematical behaviors in extreme scenarios—such as black holes. Whether these deviations discredit the theory or hint at new physics is still under investigation.
A Glimpse Into the Future
In recent years, researchers have explored whether the principles behind Shape Dynamics could apply to quantum systems or even the early universe. Some findings suggest that time’s arrow could emerge in a broader range of physical scenarios without relying on entropy. However, a fully developed Shape Dynamics-based model of the universe remains out of reach, as only a small number of scientists are currently exploring the idea.
Although the theory has yet to reach mainstream acceptance, its core premise is fascinating: the relentless forward march of time might not be an illusion or a statistical quirk of entropy, but a natural consequence of how the universe fundamentally works. If true, this perspective could reshape our understanding of time, gravity, and the very fabric of reality.
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In “Mickey 17” — a new sci-fi movie from Bong Joon Ho, the South Korean filmmaker who made his mark with “Parasite” — an expendable space traveler named Mickey (Robert Pattinson) is exposed over and over again to deadly risks. And every time he’s killed, the lab’s 3D printer just churns out another copy of Mickey.
While it’s possibly to create 3D-printed body parts for implantation, the idea of printing out a complete human body and restoring its backed-up memories is pure science fiction. Nevertheless, Christopher Mason, a Cornell University biomedical researcher who studies space-related health issues, is intrigued by the movie’s premise.
“If you could 3D print a body and perfectly reconstruct it, you could, in theory, learn a lot about a body that’s put in a more dangerous situation,” he says in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast. “I think the concept of the movie is actually quite interesting.”
Mason explores the ways in which the human body can be optimized for living in space in a book titled “The Next 500 Years: Engineering Life to Reach New Worlds.” He argues that it’s up to us humans to ensure the long-term future of life in the universe by taking the tools of evolution into our own hands.
Even if we’re able to avoid blowing ourselves up, or succumbing to the effects of climate change, we have only about a billion years before the sun reaches a level of activity that would make Earth unlivable.
“I want to think about preserving life, which necessitates us going to other planets and eventually other stars,” Mason says. “Because humans are the only species with an awareness of extinction, this gives us a unique duty toward life … what I call a deontogenic sort of principle, the genetic duty toward all life.”
Christopher Mason studies beneficial genetic changes.
(Credit: Weill Cornell Medicine)
The good news is that we can adjust to many of the rigors of spaceflight, at least temporarily. Mason and other researchers saw that when they monitored the health of NASA astronaut Scott Kelly during his nearly yearlong stint on the International Space Station in 2015-2016. They compared Kelly’s physical and genetic profile with that of his twin brother, Mark Kelly, who was monitored down on Earth.
The NASA-sponsored Twins Study found that Scott Kelly experienced changes in the ways that his genes and his immune system worked while he was in space — possibly because of radiation exposure and other space-related stresses.
“More than 90% of these changes really seemed to come back to normal within a few months being back on Earth,” Mason said. But some of the changes were longer-lasting.
“There’s this nagging question of this small percentage of genes and functions that were perturbed that we’re still studying to this day in other crews, with SpaceX and other commercial providers,” he said.
The stresses of the space environment are likely to become more concerning as explorers and settlers go beyond Earth orbit and our planet’s protective magnetic shield. Which gets us back to the things that can kill Mickey 17 and other earthly life forms.
Radiation is the top concern. The studies done to date suggest that astronauts could be exposed to cancer-causing levels of radiation during a three-year mission to Mars and back. Thick shielding could reduce the risk, but Mason suggests using genetics as well.
“For example, tardigrades are these water bears that can survive even the vacuum of space and heavy doses of radiation,” he says. “We’ve made cells in my laboratory that can actually take a tardigrade gene and use it in a human cell, and have this increase of radiation resistance — an 80% decrease in the [DNA] damage that we observe.”
If scientists could use CRISPR-style gene-editing tools to insert the tardigrade gene into Mickey’s genome, that might head off one of his deaths. In his book, Mason lists other genetic techniques that could improve the vision of space travelers, boost their immune response, or make it easier for them to “hibernate” during a long trip.
“The simplest one, I think, includes the ability to make all of your own amino acids and vitamins,” Mason says. “The gene to make vitamin C, for example, is still embedded in all of our DNA. It’s just been degraded, and it’s no longer functional. But with a few small modifications, you can make your own vitamin C.”
As scientists learn more about health-related genes in humans and other species, and improve their gene-editing techniques, Mason thinks the challenges of spaceflight will become less daunting — not only for professional astronauts, but for the rest of us as well.
“You could imagine a case where you can ethically and responsibly and safely modify someone to get them into space,” Mason says. “That’s not that far away.”
And if space travelers run into unexpected challenges on another world — for example, alien microbes on Mars — they wouldn’t have to handle it on their own.
“I talk a bit in the book about a ‘point-to-point biology’ concept, where weird things might appear on Mars, but there’s not a lot of resources there to do high-throughput screening, or high-dimensional characterization of the organisms,” Mason says.
In that case, the alien microbe’s genetic code could be sequenced on site, using a next-generation version of equipment that’s already been tested on the International Space Station. Then the DNA data could be transmitted back to lab researchers on Earth.
“They could synthesize it and then study it there with more resources, and send updates back to Mars,” Mason says. “You could imagine this idea of a virtuous cycle of observation, interrogation, study, transfer of data, repeat in a place with more resources — and then send back that knowledge and help the organisms adapt.”
That’s a world where Mickey wouldn’t have to die every day.
The Area 51 Caller Mystery: Real Panic or an Elaborate Hoax?
The Area 51 Caller Mystery: Real Panic or an Elaborate Hoax?
The famous Area 51 caller incident remains one of the most intriguing moments in paranormal radio history. It all began on September 11, 1997, when a panicked caller dialed into Art Bell’s Coast to Coast AM, a popular late-night talk show known for its discussions on UFOs, conspiracy theories, and unexplained phenomena. The caller claimed to be a former employee of Area 51, the highly classified U.S. Air Force facility long associated with alien technology and government cover-ups. However, decades later, people still debate whether the call was a genuine warning or an elaborate hoax.
The Mysterious Call
Art Bell had invited employees or former employees of Area 51to share their experiences. The unexpected happened when a man called in, sounding deeply distressed, claiming that extraterrestrial beings were not what they seemed. His voice trembled, and he repeatedly stated that aliens were actually extradimensional beings that had infiltrated the military. He also warned about impending disasters that the U.S. government allegedly knew about but kept secret from the public.
Then, something unusual occurred—the broadcast was suddenly cut off. The show’s satellite transmission was mysteriously disrupted, leading many to speculate that the government or a secret organization had intentionally shut it down to prevent the caller from revealing sensitive information.
The Follow-Up Call and Hoax Claims
A week after the original call, a man identifying himself as Brian called into Art Bell’s show, claiming that he was the Area 51 caller and that his previous call had been a hoax. However, many listeners remained skeptical of his confession. Unlike the original caller, Brian lacked the intense emotional distress that made the first call so believable. His tone was more controlled, and some felt he was simply mimicking the voice.
Remote Viewing Investigation
Years later, paranormal researchers John Vivanco and Rob Counts from Metaphysical decided to analyze the event using remote viewing, a technique believed to allow individuals to perceive distant or hidden objects psychically. Their findings suggested that the original caller was not the same person as Brian, and the call had been orchestrated by an external source. Their investigation also indicated that the satellite failure during the original broadcast might not have been a mere technical glitch.
Art Bell’s Role and the Hoax Theory
Art Bell himself was a legendary radio host known for blending entertainment with investigative journalism. Some have speculated that he might have had a hand in orchestrating the call for entertainment purposes. Remote viewing data suggested that the original call may have been staged, either as an independent hoax or with Bell’s knowledge, as he was known for creating compelling radio moments.
Even if the call was a hoax, the information it conveyed about extraterrestrial beings, government cover-ups, and impending disasters still aligns with many existing theories about UFOs and Area 51. Some argue that the call was a mix of fabricated drama and genuine conspiracy theories, which kept the mystery alive for years.
The Legacy of the Area 51 Caller
More than two decades later, the Area 51 caller mystery remains a topic of discussion among conspiracy theorists and UFO researchers. The incident serves as a prime example of how paranormal storytelling, mass media, and unexplained phenomena intertwine to create lasting legends. Whether the call was real or a hoax, it continues to captivate audiences worldwide, reminding us of the enduring fascination with the unknown.
As technology advances and new investigations emerge, perhaps one day we will uncover the full truth behind that eerie phone call on Art Bell’s legendary radio show.
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Earth’s oldest meteorite crater found in outback WA
Earth’s oldest meteorite crater found in outback WA
By Tim Johnson, Chris Kirkland, and Jonas Kaempf – Curtin University
The crater formed more than 3.5 billion years ago.
Image credit: Curtin University
Earth’s oldest meteorite impact crater was just found in WA’s Pilbara region – exactly where geologists hoped it would be.
We have discovered the oldest meteorite impact crater on Earth, in the very heart of the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The crater formed more than 3.5 billion years ago, making it the oldest known by more than a billion years. Our discovery is published in Nature Communications.
Curiously enough, the crater was exactly where we had hoped it would be, and its discovery supports a theory about the birth of Earth’s first continents.
The very first rocks
The oldest rocks on Earth formed more than 3 billion years ago, and are found in the cores of most modern continents. However, geologists still cannot agree how or why they formed.
Nonetheless, there is agreement that these early continents were critical for many chemical and biological processes on Earth.
Shatter cones formed by the impact in the Pilbara. Image credit: Tim Johnson
Many geologists think these ancient rocks formed above hot plumes that rose from above Earth’s molten metallic core, rather like wax in a lava lamp. Others maintain they formed by plate tectonic processes similar to modern Earth, where rocks collide and push each other over and under.
Although these two scenarios are very different, both are driven by the loss of heat from within the interior of our planet.
We think rather differently.
A few years ago, we published a paper suggesting that the energy required to make continents in the Pilbara came from outside Earth, in the form of one or more collisions with meteorites many kilometres in diameter.
On the hunt for shatter cones in a typical Pilbara landscape with our trusted GSWA vehicles. Image credit: Chris Kirkland
As the impacts blasted up enormous volumes of material and melted the rocks around them, the mantle below produced thick “blobs” of volcanic material that evolved into continental crust.
Our evidence then lay in the chemical composition of tiny crystals of the mineral zircon, about the size of sand grains. But to persuade other geologists, we needed more convincing evidence, preferably something people could see without needing a microscope.
So, in May 2021, we began the long drive north from Perth for two weeks of fieldwork in the Pilbara, where we would meet up with our partners from the Geological Survey of Western Australia (GSWA) to hunt for the crater. But where to start?
A serendipitous beginning
Our first target was an unusual layer of rocks known as the Antarctic Creek Member, which crops out on the flanks of a dome some 20 kilometres in diameter. The Antarctic Creek Member is only 20 metres or so in thickness, and mostly comprises sedimentary rocks that are sandwiched between several kilometres of dark, basaltic lava.
Large hut-like shatter cones in the rocks of the Antarctic Creek Member at the discovery site. The rocks on the hilltop farthest left are basalts that lay directly over the shatter cones. Image credit: Tim Johnson
However, it also contains spherules – droplets formed from molten rock thrown up during an impact. But these drops could have travelled across the globe from a giant impact anywhere on Earth, most likely from a crater that has now been destroyed.
An approximately one metre tall shatter cone ‘hut’, with the rolling hills of the Pilbara in the background. Image credit: Chris Kirkland
After consulting the GSWA maps and aerial photography, we located an area in the centre of the Pilbara along a dusty track to begin our search.
We parked the offroad vehicles and headed our separate ways across the outcrops, more in hope than expectation, agreeing to meet an hour later to discuss what we’d found and grab a bite to eat.
Remarkably, when we returned to the vehicle, we all thought we’d found the same thing: shatter cones.
Shatter cones are beautiful, delicate branching structures, not dissimilar to a badminton shuttlecock. They are the only feature of shock visible to the naked eye, and in nature can only form following a meteorite impact.
Little more than an hour into our search, we had found precisely what we were looking for. We had literally opened the doors of our 4WDs and stepped onto the floor of a huge, ancient impact crater.
Frustratingly, after taking some photographs and grabbing a few samples, we had to move on to other sites, but we determined to return as soon as possible. Most importantly, we needed to know how old the shatter cones were. Had we discovered the oldest known crater on Earth?
It turned out that we had.
There and back again
With some laboratory research under our belts, we returned to the site in May 2024 to spend ten days examining the evidence in more detail.
Shatter cones were everywhere, developed throughout most of the Antarctic Creek Member, which we traced for several hundred metres into the rolling hills of the Pilbara.
Our observations showed that above the layer with the shatter cones was a thick layer of basalt with no evidence of impact shock. This meant the impact had to be the same age as the Antarctic Member rocks, which we know are 3.5 billion years old.
We had our age, and the record for the oldest impact crater on Earth. Perhaps our ideas regarding the ultimate origin of the continents were not so mad, as many told us.
Delicate shatter cones within rocks typical of the Antarctic Creek Member. Image credit: Tim Johnson
Serendipity is a marvellous thing. As far as we knew, other than the Traditional Owners, the Nyamal people, no geologist had laid eyes on these stunning features since they formed.
Like some others before us, we had argued that meteorite impacts played a fundamental role in the geological history of our planet, as they clearly had on our cratered Moon and on other planets, moons and asteroids. Now we and others have the chance to test these ideas based on hard evidence.
Who knows how many ancient craters lay undiscovered in the ancient cores of other continents? Finding and studying them will transform our understanding of the early Earth and the role of giant impacts, not only in the formation of the landmasses on which we all live, but in the origins of life itself.
Earth's Oldest Known Meteor Crater Discovered in Australia
The Devil’s Bible: A Massive Medieval Manuscript of Mystery
There are three major questions about the Codex Gigas, known more famously as ‘The Devil’s Bible, and they are: who wrote it, why, and why is it so big?
Some say the Codex was inspired by Satan himself. Others say the mega-sized book has been misunderstood, and that its real purpose is to warn people about the Devil’s evil purpose. Both sides say its immense size is meant to capture people’s attention, so they will pay closer attention to its message.
The Devil’s Bible is famous for two features – its size and it unique full-page representation of the Devil. It became known as the Codex Gigas, ‘giant book,’ due to its immensity. It is so large that it took more than 160 animal skins to make it and it is so heavy that two people are needed to lift it. It measures 36 inches (91 cm) tall, 20 inches (50.5 cm) wide, and almost nine inches (22.86 cm) thick. It weighs 165 lbs. (74.8 kg). It is so huge that it is probably more accurate to say it was constructed, like some sort of medieval monument, rather than just written.
According to legend, the medieval manuscript was made out of a pact with the Devil, which is one reason why it is sometimes referred to as the Devil’s Bible. The uniformity of the writing suggests that it was written by one scribe and stories say he was under immense pressure when he created the book.
The legend behind the making of Codex Gigas is that it was the work of one monk, sometimes named as Herman the Recluse, who was sentenced to death by being walled up alive for breaking his monastic vows. As a last gasp for survival he made a deal that he would create a book filled with the world’s knowledge in return for his life. His proposal was accepted, but his freedom from death would only be granted if the monk managed to complete the monumental manuscript in one night.
The only way the monk could see himself completing the insurmountable task was with the help of the Devil. After selling his soul, the scribe was able to generate the frenetic and unholy energy necessary to fulfill the order and gain his freedom.
Supposedly, this pact with the Devil explains why the Prince of Darkness is depicted in such a prominent way in the codex. But the origin of this myth is unknown, and there is really no evidence to suggest the writer of the book meant to glorify Satan in any way (the author’s depiction of the Devil portray’s him as a salivating and bloodthirsty monster).
Enhanced version of the image of the Devil from the Codex Gigas.
Although the story of a pact with the Devil is rather far-fetched, analysis of the level of uniformity of the Latin text does suggest that it was written by just one scribe. That person may not have been Herman the Recluse, but it was likely a 13th century monk who lived in Bohemia, a part of modern Czech Republic.
According to the National Geographic , it would take one person working continuously, day and night, five years to recreate the contents of Codex Gigas by hand (excluding the illustrations). Therefore, realistically it would have taken at least 25 years for the scribe to create the codex from scratch. Yet, all this time, the writing retained an incredible uniformity from start to finish, not wavering at all becaue of age or bad health. This may be the inspiration for the legend that says the monk wrote it in just one day.
Originally, the Devil’s Bible was comprised on 320 vellum pages created with the skin of 160 donkeys, but at some point in its history, ten pages were removed. It is believed that those pages were the Rule of St. Benedict – a guide to living the monastic life in the 6th century.
What is the Devil’s Bible Really About?
Codex Gigas contains a complete vulgate Latin translation of the Bible as well as five other major texts. It begins with the Old Testament and continues with ‘Antiquities of the Jews’ by Flavius Josephus (1st century AD; ‘ Encyclopedia Etymologiae ’ by Isidore of Seville (6th century AD); a collection of medical works of Hippocrates, Theophilus and others; the New Testament; and ‘The Chronicle of Bohemia’ by Cosmas of Prague (1050 AD) - the first history of Bohemia.
Page of the Codex Gigas which may represent Flavius Josephus. This is the only portrait of a person in the codex.
Smaller texts are also included in the manuscript, with the most famous ones including writings on exorcism, magic formulas, and a calendar with a list of saints and Bohemian people of interest and the days on which they were honored.
As it is an illuminated manuscript, there are illustrations and decoration found throughout the Codex Gigas. Many of the drawings are impressive, but the most famous are the full page drawings of the Devil and the Heavenly City, which are juxtaposed to each other.
The Devil is depicted as a large, monstrous figure taking up the entirety of Hell. He is drawn with large claws at the tips of outstretched arms, red-tipped horns, small red eyes, a green head and two long red tongues. He’s shown crouching between two large towers and is wearing and ermine loin cloth. This material was usually used by royalty and it may be a nod to the Devil as the Prince of Darkness. Even though portraits of the Devil were a common occurrence in medieval art, his depiction in the Codex Gigas stands out for presenting him all alone on a large page.
Across from the Devil is a full-page representation of the Heavenly City. It is shown in tiers of buildings and with towers behind red walls. Towers also project from the walls and the Heavenly City is bordered with two larger towers, like the Devil’s portrait. This image probably was meant to inspire the ideas of hope and salvation and contrast with the evil nature of the Devil.
Taken together, the portrait and city probably were meant to be a reflection on what would await you if you lived a good or bad life. The text before the Heavenly City refers to penitence and the text after the Devil is about exorcisms. Notably, the Devil and the Heavenly City are the only illustrations occupying full pages in the Codex Gigas, so it is clear that the author’s intended message here, whatever it was, was seen as vitally important.
As noted above, the true origins of the Codex Gigas are unknown. In the text, there is a note stating that the manuscript was pawned by the monks of Podla¸ice in the monastery at Sedlec in 1295. From there it was located in the Břevnov near Prague. Since the monasteries associated with the early history of the Codex Gigas were located in Bohemia and the text refers to that area’s history, it is generally accepted that it was created in Bohemia too.
The next mention of the Codex Gigas is when Rudolf II took it to his castle in Prague in 1594. It stayed there until the Swedish siege of Prague at the end of the Thirty Years’ War in 1648. The Swedish army looted the city and one of the treasures they took was the medieval manuscript. That’s how it ended up in Stockholm.
In 1877 the Codex Gigas became part of the collection of the National Library of Sweden in Stockholm, where it is still kept today. Stories and legends say that the Codex Gigas was cursed and brought disaster or illness on whoever possessed it during its history. Fortunately, the National Library appears immune to the curse of the codex, as it remains a popular exhibit that draws in many visitors.
The Codex Gigas.
(Sharon Hahn Darlin/CC BY 2.0)
For those who can’t make it to Sweden to see the book, it is possible to view its digitalized pages online. So be sure to read it for yourself, soon … if you dare.
Top Image: Codex Gigas, open to pages that show the Devil and the Heavenly City.
Marine researchers have uncovered what could be the most expansive cloned organism ever documented—an enormous seaweed specimen stretching over 300 miles along Sweden’s Baltic coast. This massive clone, identified as a “super female” of Fucus vesiculosus, better known as bladderwrack, has reshaped what scientists understand about marine ecosystems and genetic survival.
A Hidden Giant Beneath the Waves
At first, DNA analysis led researchers to believe they had identified a different species of seaweed, but closer examination confirmed that this vast organism is, in fact, bladderwrack. This discovery is remarkable because bladderwrack is a foundational species in the Baltic, forming underwater forests that serve as critical habitats for snails, crustaceans, and other marine life.
Unlike its counterparts in saltier oceans, this particular Fucus vesiculosus has adapted to the Baltic’s lower salinity levels, allowing it to spread extensively. While bladderwrack typically reproduces sexually, the conditions of the Baltic Sea have favored an unusual survival strategy—cloning. This means that rather than mixing genetic material, the organism has been duplicating itself, producing an immense network of genetically identical individuals.
The clone of bladderwrack in the Baltic Sea was long assumed to be a separate species, which was called narrow seaweed.
The Role of Climate in Bladderwrack’s Future
With climate change affecting ocean temperatures and salinity, the future of this record-breaking seaweed is uncertain. “The Baltic Sea is entering a period of warmer and possibly even fresher seawater,” explained marine biologist Kerstin Johannesson, co-lead author of the study published in Molecular Ecology. “Every species must adapt to these changes, including the dominant bladderwrack.”
Although its cloning ability has allowed it to thrive, this very mechanism might also be its greatest vulnerability. Without genetic diversity, the massive clone may struggle to withstand environmental shifts, leaving it at risk of disease or habitat changes.
Despite these challenges, the bladderwrack “super female” remains a crucial part of the Baltic ecosystem. “This clone comprises millions of individuals,” said study co-author Ricardo Pereyra. “In some areas, it is completely dominant, while in others, it coexists with sexually reproduced bladderwrack.”
While other large clones have been identified in the Baltic, none compare to the scale of this one. Its longevity and dominance highlight the complexity of marine ecosystems and raise new questions about how cloned organisms might survive in a rapidly changing world.
For now, the world’s largest clone continues to shape the Baltic’s underwater landscape, providing shelter and stability for marine life. Whether it can endure future environmental shifts remains to be seen.
And Then There Were Three: NASA Shuts Down More Voyager 2 Science Instruments
And Then There Were Three: NASA Shuts Down More Voyager 2 Science Instruments
By Evan Gough
This artist’s illustration depicts one of NASA’s Voyager probes. NASA is continuing to shut down Voyager 2 science instruments to conserve energy. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
In an effort to conserve Voyager 2's dwindling energy and extend the spacecraft's mission, NASA has shut down another of its instruments. They did it with the Plasma Spectrometer in October 2024, and it won't be the last. In March, Voyager 2'sLow-Energy Charged Particle instrument will be powered down.
What does this mean for the durable spacecraft?
"If we don’t turn off an instrument on each Voyager now, they would probably have only a few more months of power before we would need to declare end of mission." - Suzanne Dodd, Voyager Project Manager, JPL
Things have changed a lot since the pair of Voyager spacecraft were launched in 1977. Our planet is hotter, the human population has ballooned, and Battlestar Galactica came and went—twice.
Voyager 1 and 2 have surprised us all with their longevity. When they were launched, their planned mission length was a mere five years. Now, almost 50 years after their launch date, they've both reached interstellar space, a remarkable achievement.
This image shows Voyager 2 blasting off on a Titan-Centaur rocket from Cape Canaveral on August 20th, 1977.
Image Credit: NASA
Though both spacecraft have proven to be durable, nothing lasts forever, not even plutonium. When they were launched, they both carried about 13.5 kg of plutonium-238 in their Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs). RTGs generate electricity by running the heat from the decaying plutonium through a thermocouple. However, as the plutonium decays, its power output is reduced. That necessitates lowering the spacecraft's power demands.
That's where NASA is at with both Voyagers. They've had to sequentially shut down systems that are no longer providing much scientific benefit. Fortunately, some of the spacecraft's instruments were aimed at planetary science and are less critical in interstellar space.
"The Voyagers have been deep space rock stars since launch, and we want to keep it that way as long as possible," said Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager at JPL. "But electrical power is running low. If we don’t turn off an instrument on each Voyager now, they would probably have only a few more months of power before we would need to declare end of mission."
Each Voyager spacecraft carries the same payload of 10 science instruments. NASA has shut down different instruments on each one at different times to achieve the best science outcomes.
In October 2024, NASA turned off Voyager 2's Plasma Spectrometer. On March 24th, NASA will shut down Voyager 2's Low-Energy Charged Particle Instrument (LECP), leaving it with only three active instruments: the Triaxial Fluxgate Magnetometer (MAG), the Cosmic Ray Subsystem (CRS), and the Plasma Wave Subsystem (PWS).
Those three instruments still allow Voyager 2 to gather valuable scientific data.
Voyager 2 captured this image of Jupiter and Io when it was 24 million km away.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL
Voyager 2's MAG instrument measured the magnetic fields of Uranus and Neptune and how the solar wind interacted with their magnetospheres. It also played a vital role in determining exactly when Voyager 2 crossed the heliopause into interstellar space. Now that the spacecraft is in interstellar space, MAG is measuring the strength of interstellar magnetic fields and how they interact with the Sun's magnetic fields.
The CRS instrument helped scientists measure energetic particles inside the magnetospheres of the outer planets. It also provided irreplaceable data on the composition, energy, and distribution of cosmic rays. By measuring cosmic ray nuclei, it helped scientists understand how these rays are accelerated and propagated. By measuring cosmic ray flux in interstellar space, the CRS revealed some of the details about the ISM.
The PWS measured the density of electrons near the Solar System's planets. Early in the Voyager missions, the instrument detected lightning storms on Jupiter and other giant planets, a significant development in understanding these planets. In interstellar space, it's measuring the density of the interstellar plasma. Its measurements are critical to understanding the interstellar medium (ISM).
Throughout its mission, the LECP instrument has told scientists about the energy of charged particles and the dynamics of the Sun's solar wind. It has also shown how some particles can leak out of the heliosphere into interstellar space. As Voyager 2 continues its journey into interstellar space, the LECP will tell us more about the heliopause and how particles behave differently in the heliosphere and interstellar space.
"Every minute of every day, the Voyagers explore a region where no spacecraft has gone before." - Linda Spilker, Voyager project scientist at JPL
The LECP instrument will be shut down later this month, reducing Voyager 2 to only three instruments. Nothing illustrates Voyager's longevity and robustness more than the LECP. It's only being shut down because of energy constraints, not because of degraded performance.
Voyager 2 uses a stepped motor to rotate the instrument 360 degrees and provides a 15.7-watt pulse every 192 seconds. During development and testing, the motor was tested to 500,000 steps. That was enough to see it through until the spacecraft encountered Saturn in August 1980. However, the motor will have completed more than 8.5 million steps by the time it's deactivated later this month.
Like other facets of the Voyager program, the LECP has lasted so long that its principal investigator, Stamatios Krimigis, is now 86 years old and has retired into an honorary position. He's now Emeritus Head of the Space Exploration Sector of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). Maybe both the man and the instrument will fully retire at the same time.
Voyager 1 and 2 are our first interstellar probes, though they were never intended to be. Everything they're showing us about interstellar space is bonus knowledge. Many of the people behind the program are gone now, but both spacecraft live on. There's a poignancy to that that goes beyond science, charged particles, and the details of the interstellar medium. They're humanity's first unintentional envoys into interstellar space and are starting to outlast their creators.
"The Voyager spacecraft have far surpassed their original mission to study the outer planets."- Patrick Koehn, Voyager Program Scientist
This graphic from 2019 shows the locations of both Voyage probes in relationship with the heliosphere.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Johns Hopkins APL
However, the Voyagers are scientific missions, and they're still stubbornly fulfilling those missions.
"The Voyager spacecraft have far surpassed their original mission to study the outer planets," said Patrick Koehn, Voyager program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Every bit of additional data we have gathered since then is not only valuable bonus science for heliophysics but also a testament to the exemplary engineering that has gone into the Voyagers — starting nearly 50 years ago and continuing to this day."
NASA is determined to milk the Voyager spacecraft for as much data as possible. Once Voyager 2's LECP is turned off later this month, both Voyagers should be able to operate for another year before another instrument will need to go dark. For Voyager 1, this means it will lose its LECP. Voyager 2's CRS will be shut off in 2026.
NASA engineers say that their power conservation program should let both spacecraft operate into the 2030s, albeit with a single instrument each. However, they have been operating in deep space for almost 50 years, and it's not a benign environment. It's only rational to expect some other problems to crop up.
It's easy to gloss over the success of the Voyager program now that space missions launch every month, powerful rovers explore Mars, and high-resolution cameras deliver a steady stream of yummy images to our hungry browsers. It's also easy to forget that they've both travelled more than 20 billion km. In fact, when Voyager 2 sends us a signal, it takes 19.5 hours to reach us. For Voyager 1, the signal travel time is even greater: 23.5 hours. Those signal travel times will only grow as the spacecraft continue their journeys. And every kilometre of their journeys is a new frontier for humanity.
"Every minute of every day, the Voyagers explore a region where no spacecraft has gone before," said Linda Spilker, Voyager project scientist at JPL. "That also means every day could be our last. But that day could also bring another interstellar revelation. So, we’re pulling out all the stops, doing what we can to make sure Voyagers 1 and 2 continue their trailblazing for the maximum time possible."
The Athena Lunar Lander Also Fell Over on its Side
The Athena Lunar Lander Also Fell Over on its Side
By Matthew Williams
The Athena lunar lander (IM-2) has been declared dead after it failed to stick the landing on the surface of the Moon. The second commercial lander launched by Texas-based aerospace company Intuitive Machines attempted to reach the lunar surface on March 6th. However, it ended up in a crater near the lunar south pole, where it then fell on its side. The company confirmed that the mission was dead this morning in a statement.
Per that statement, Intuitive Machines declared that while the lander was no longer operational, the mission was not a total write-off:
"[T]he IM-2 mission lunar lander, Athena, landed 250 meters from its intended landing site in the Mons Mouton region of the lunar south pole, inside of a crater. This was the southernmost lunar landing and surface operations ever achieved. Images downlinked from Athena on the lunar surface confirmed that Athena was on her side. After landing, mission controllers were able to accelerate several program and payload milestones, including NASA’s PRIME-1 suite, before the lander’s batteries depleted."
"With the direction of the sun, the orientation of the solar panels, and extreme cold temperatures in the crater, Intuitive Machines does not expect Athena to recharge. The mission has concluded and teams are continuing to assess the data collected throughout the mission."
Intuitive Machines' Athena lander captured this view of the moon during its touchdown on March 6, 2025. (Image credit: NASA TV)
The lander launched on February 27th, 2025, atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A (LC39A) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. The payload includes the Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment 1 (PRIME-1), which consists of the TRIDENT Drill and MSolo mass spectrometer, designed to probe up to one meter (3.3 feet) beneath the lunar surface to search for volatiles like water and carbon dioxide (CO2) - which are critical to the Artemis Program and NASA's proposed crewed missions to the Moon.
According to NASA, mission controllers did manage to activate Trident and rotate the drill to prove it worked while a companion science instrument collected some data. Intuitive Machines also stated that several other mission objectives were accelerated. Athena's other payloads include Intuitive Machines' Micro Nova Hopper (aka. Grace), which is designed to explore craters up to 2 km (1.24 mi) from the lander.
It also carried the Nokia Lunar Surface Communications System (LSCS), a 4G/LTE system to test high-speed, long-range communications. These and other payloads were sent as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, which has contracted with multiple U.S. companies to deliver science and technology experiments to the lunar surface. While Grace and two rovers provided by private companies did not make it off the lander and explore the South Pole-Aitken Basin as planned, Intuitive Machines confirmed that they were able to activate these and other science experiments before the lander lost power.
The IM-2 mission joins its predecessor, the Odysseus mission (IM-1), which attempted to land on the lunar surface last year but also fell on its side shortly after touching down. In both cases, the problem was attributed to a last-minute failure with the lander's prime laser navigation system. However, IM-1 was the first NASA mission to land on the Moon since the Apollo 17 mission over 50 years ago. This time, the lander also survived longer before its batteries lost power. The IM-2 lander also has the distinction of getting closer to the Moon's south pole than any previous mission, landing just 160 km (100 mi) away.
On March 2nd, Firefly Aerospace successfully reached the northern hemisphere on the Moon's near side with its Blue Ghost lander. As part of the CLPS initiative, this mission carried 10 NASA experiments and is expected to remain operational for another week until lunar night descends and it can no longer draw power from its solar panels.
The two legs of Intuitive Machines' private Athena moon lander jut up to the sky, with a half-lit blue Earth above, after the probe fell over during a landing attempt near the lunar south pole on March 6. 2025.
(Image credit: Intuitive Machine)
Meanwhile, Intuitive Machines is contracted to deliver two NASA payloads to the Moon with their IM-3 and IM-4 landers. These missions are reportedly scheduled to launch no sooner than late October 2025 and 2027, respectively.
NASA's Athena Lunar Lander Launch with SpaceX Falcon 9!
What are these mysterious entities flying through our skies
What are these mysterious entities flying through our skies
EBANI stands for "Unidentified Anomalous Biological Entity," referring to a mysterious class of airborne phenomena that may be biological rather than mechanical in nature. These entities are often described as elongated, flexible, and tubular, moving through the sky in a serpentine or twisting manner.
They exhibit advanced flight capabilities, including high-speed travel, precise control, and even self-illumination. Some have been observed rendering themselves invisible, raising questions about their energy sources and possible technological origins.
Recent observations have revealed formations of translucent spheres in red, white, and blue, challenging conventional classifications of both biology and aerodynamics.
Some of these entities have a massive structure composed of thousands of clustered spheres. These entities appear to function as an aircraft carrier, releasing these smaller spheres into Earth's atmosphere for an unknown purpose.
While some researchers propose that EBANIs are natural organisms evolving in Earth's upper atmosphere under unfamiliar physical laws, others speculate they may be advanced artificial (eventually biological) constructs, potentially extraterrestrial probes or surveillance devices, given the presence of large structures expelling numerous smaller spheres.
Are they living UFOs, advanced biological organisms that function autonomously within the spheres, without the need for pilots?
Director of Groundbreaking UFO Doc Says What He Learned Left Him 'Rattled': 'Things Could Get Really Bad, Really Fast'
Director of Groundbreaking UFO Doc Says What He Learned Left Him 'Rattled': 'Things Could Get Really Bad, Really Fast'
"I've tried to make a serious, credible, eye-opening movie that brings out as much of the truth as possible," says 'The Age of Disclosure' director Dan Fara
An image from the so-called “Gimbal” video recorded by a U.S. Navy F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter pilot off the coast of Jacksonville, Fla., during a 2015 encounter with a UAP. .Photo: Farah Films/YouTube
Disclosure details what is being called an 80-year cover-up of the existence of non-human intelligence and secret efforts to reverse engineer technology of non-human origin
34 high-ranking members of the U.S. government, military and intelligence community share never-before released information on UFOs and their potential impact on humanity
Director Dan Farah tells PEOPLE he worked in secret on Disclosure for two and a half years because 'there's a lot of people who would try and stop this movie from getting made if they had the opportunity'
By his own calculation, Dan Farah watched Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial close to "a thousand times" before he turned 15. So it’s hardly surprising that the 45-year-old Hollywood producer yearned to one day create a film that picked up where Spielberg’s two fictional movies about alien visitations and government coverups left off.
“I wanted to make a movie,” says Farah, “that I always wished existed, a documentary that did an unprecedented job at seriously and credibly exploring what is actually known about UAPs [Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, aka UFOs] and non-human intelligence by people who have direct knowledge of it as a result of working with the U.S. government.”
Anyone who has gotten a chance to watch a screening of Farah's groundbreaking documentaryThe Age Of Disclosure (and, as of publication time, only a handful have) and pondered some of the film’s jaw-dropping revelations will tell you that the 45-year-old first-time director pretty much nailed it.
Over the course of his 1-hour-and-49-minute-long documentary, Farah speaks with 34 senior members of the U.S. government, military and intelligence community who all paint a disturbing portrait of what they claim is an 80-year-long cover-up regarding the existence of non-human intelligent life that has been visiting our planet for decades.
Those interviewed detail what they claim has been a decades-long top-secret campaign to reverse engineer the technology from spacecraft of non-human origin that has been retrieved from crash sites by scientists from our government and those of other nations.
This has resulted, they say, in what has essentially become a top-secret arms race with China and Russia — where each nation is vying to be the first to find a way to harness this other-worldly advanced technology. The downside, warn many of the officials who appear in Disclosure, is that keeping this information secret and compartmentalized within the government and the military industrial complex could result in an intelligence failure exponentially worse than what happened with 9/11.
“We interviewed dozens of very high-level, credible officials who said these unknown threats [posed by UAPs] could basically destroy our way of life forever,” Farah tells PEOPLE. “Things could get really bad, really fast. Learning that left me rattled.”
If true, the impact of these revelations — some of which were discussed in a series of bi-partisancongressional hearingsover the past few years — has the potential to alter the future of humanity. That's why, explains Farrah, that he was able to get so many heavy hitters to speak on camera about this once-taboo topic.
“I ask people to think about why would any of these extremely high-level people like our Secretary of State [Marco Rubio] have to gain by participating in this film and shedding light on this?” he says. “They're doing it because they feel an obligation to bring out the truth as much as they legally can.”
Marco Rubio.
Farah Films/YouTube
Rubio — who confesses that this issue “keeps me up at night” in the doc — has a number of memorable scenes in the film where he discusses just how gravely important this topic is and the risks involved by our leaders’ continued reluctance to take it seriously.
“I think,” says Farah, “one of the best lines in the film is when Secretary Rubio says, ‘At the heart of every blunder in intelligence is a lack of imagination — the idea that an adversary can't do something or won't do something because it hadn't been done before. And that leads to strategic surprise and sometimes strategic surprise changes the course of human history.' ”
Those interviewed in the film include retired Air Force Lieutenant General (and former Director of National Intelligence) James Clapper, Admiral (and former Navy Chief Oceanographer) Tim Gallaudet and former Department of Defense official (and one-time member of the Government’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program) Lue Elizondo.
Their first-hand accounts — such as those from Jay Stratton, the former director of the government's Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force — are both spellbinding and disturbing. “I have seen with my own eyes non-human craft and non-human beings,” Stratton says in the film.
Farah — who produced Spielberg’s 2018 sci-fi action feature Ready Player One — worked on the film in secret for two and a half years. “The truth is,” he says, “there’s a lot of people who would try to stop this movie from getting made if they had the opportunity.”
Dan Farah.
Karwai Tang/WireImage
Lining up officials to speak on the record proved to be a long and difficult process. “A number of people, specifically intelligence officials, were actually concerned that their lives would be in danger if they participated and ultimately decided not to,” he says.
Disclosure — which is currently in search of a distributor — will premiere at South by Southwest Film Festival on March 9. Farah says he’s been buoyed by the “unprecedented” number of views — 18 million as of publication time — that the trailer has racked up on various platforms.
“The response has been really validating and rewarding,” adds Farah. “I think it speaks volumes to the universal appeal of this topic. I always knew that I couldn’t be the only person who wished that a movie like this existed.”
The Age of Disclosure premieres at SXSW on Sunday.
SpaceX's Starship Flight Test Falls Short for the Second Time in a Row
SpaceX's Starship Flight Test Falls Short for the Second Time in a Row
By Alan Boyle
An onboard camera shows the Starship second stage tumbling. (SpaceX via YouTube)
For the second time in a row, SpaceX lost the second stage of its Starship launch system during a flight test, while recovering the first-stage Super Heavy booster.
Today’s eighth Starship flight test came a month and a half after a similarly less-than-perfect mission that sparked an investigation.
“The primary reason we do these flight tests is to learn,” SpaceX launch commentator Dan Huot said. “We have some more to learn about this vehicle.”
The 403-foot-tall rocket lifted off from SpaceX’s Starbase in South Texas at 5:30 p.m. CT, and the flight appeared to proceed normally through stage separation. The booster flew itself back to the launch tower and was captured by two massive chopstick-style mechanical arms.
Meanwhile, the Starship second stage, known as Ship 34, continued spaceward. But telemetry indicated that its six engines started going out about eight minutes into the flight, toward the end of their scheduled burn. An onboard camera showed the stage tumbling for about a minute, and then the signal was lost.
“I think it’s pretty obvious we’re not going to continue the rest of the mission today,” Huot said. Videos shared on social media showed Ship 34 tumbling over Florida, and a bright hail of debris streaking over the Bahamas.
“During Starship’s ascent burn, the vehicle experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly and contact was lost. Our team immediately began coordination with safety officials to implement pre-planned contingency responses,” SpaceX said in a posting to X / Twitter. “We will review the data from today’s flight test to better understand root cause. As always, success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will offer additional lessons to improve Starship’s reliability.”
In a statement, the FAA acknowledged that it briefly slowed aircraft outside the area where debris was falling, or stopped aircraft at their departure location. "Normal operations have resumed," the FAA said.
The FAA also said it would require SpaceX to perform a mishap investigation into the loss of the second stage. The agency would have to approve SpaceX's final report on the mishap, including any corrective actions. Starship's return to flight will be based on the FAA determining that the resumption of operations will not affect public safety.
That process follows the pattern set in the aftermath of the previous Starship flight test on Jan. 16. During that earlier mission, the Super Heavy flew itself back to Starbase for a successful catch, but the second stage broke apart after its engines erupted in flames. Debris from the breakup fell in the Caribbean.
A SpaceX investigation overseen by the FAA determined that the vibrations generated during the ascent put higher-than-expected stress on the second stage’s hardware. SpaceX said that probably caused propellant leaks that exceeded the second stage’s venting capability, leading to sustained fires.
To address the issue, SpaceX beefed up Starship’s purging system and made other changes to hardware and operating procedures. On Feb. 28, the FAA gave the go-ahead for today’s launch while saying that the mishap investigation would remain open.
Today’s flight plan was similar to the plan for January’s flight. One of the objectives was to execute the first-ever deployment of payloads — four mockups of satellites for SpaceX’s Starlink broadband internet constellation. SpaceX also aimed to test changes to the rocket’s control flaps and thermal protection system, and relight one of the ship’s engines in space.
If the mission had proceeded as planned, Ship 34 would have made a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean about an hour after liftoff.
Starship is considered the world’s most powerful rocket, with liftoff thrust of 16.7 million pounds. If and when Starship enters commercial operations, the launch system could deploy scores of next-generation Starlink satellites during a single mission, heralding a significant upgrade in communications capacity. Looking even further ahead, SpaceX aims to send people to the moon and Mars on Starships.
But before all that can happen, SpaceX will have to demonstrate that the Super Heavy booster and the Starship second stage are fully reusable and capable of delivering the goods safely to orbit.
Bizarre and Outlandish Claims and Conspiracies of the Moon
There is little doubt that the Moon is one of the most fascinating objects in the night sky. It is also at the center of some of the most outrageous and bizarre claims and conspiracies on record, not least just why NASA has not returned since the last moon landing in December 1972. Some of these conspiracies suggest there are the remains of alien bases and technology on the Moon, while others go even further and suggest there is an extraterrestrial presence on our cosmic satellite. Some researchers have even suggested that the Moon is not a natural satellite at all, but some kind of mechanical construct designed and built at an unknown location and placed in orbit by an unknown intelligence.
The fact is, though, even without these conspiracies, the Moon is a celestial body full of anomalies. While some people might be familiar with them, before we explore some of these outrageous conspiracies and claims of our celestial satellite, it is worth quickly going over some of the truly anomalous facts about the Moon.
It is, for example, exactly 400 times smaller than the sun, and its distance from the Earth, relative to the overall distance to the sun, is also exactly 1/400th. It is worth noting that these figures are not approximate - they are exact. It is because of these astounding dimensions that total eclipses are experienced here on Earth. Moreover, if these dimensions were out in any way whatsoever, this wouldn’t be possible. Incidentally, we should also take note that the chances of these specific dimensions occurring naturally are zillions to one. What’s more, these figures and dimensions are not seen in any other known moon. Even its perfectly circular orbit is unique (most moons’ orbits are elliptical) and its rotation around the planet is such that one side permanently remains hidden from us.
Looking a little closer, the many craters on the lunar surface create further problems in our understanding of the Moon. These craters, of which there are many, are for the most part, very similar in depth, and relatively shallow at that. In terms of our understanding of modern science, these craters should be much more varied, with at least some showing greater depth at the impact point, which should be the outcome for a naturally formed rocky terrestrial body. Many researchers suggest that it is the absolute high velocity of the meteor strikes that creates these crater anomalies. However, the actual reason for this, at least according to some researchers, both inside and outside the mainstream, is because the Moon is not naturally occurring at all, but a hollow object with a metallic “casing” beneath an artificial rocky surface.
Perhaps one of the most interesting considerations is how the Moon came to orbit the Earth in the first place. Accepted thinking suggests a small planet or large moon collided with Earth millions of years ago, causing the Moon to form out of the debris of such a collision, which then settled into its current orbit. However, not only because of the remarkable zillion-to-one dimensions and distances of the Moon we highlighted earlier but also because of several other anomalies, many people question just how true it is that the Moon was simply a “happy accident” and a product of coincidence. In fact, some people have even questioned if the Moon was purposely “placed” into orbit, perhaps even by an unknown intelligence. Author William Roy Shelton stated:
“It is important to remember that something had to put the moon in or near its current circular pattern around the Earth. It is very unlikely that any object just stumbles on the right combination of factors needed to help an object stay in orbit. ‘Something’ had to put the moon on its altitude, on its course and speed. The question is, what was that ‘something?”
Issac Asimov, a Russian professor of biochemistry, made similar comments when he wrote:
“… we cannot help but come to the conclusion that the Moon, by rights, ought not to be there. The fact that it is, is one of those strokes of luck almost too good to accept…Small planets, such as Earth, with weak gravitational fields, might well lack satellites…In general, then, when a planet does have satellites, those satellites are much smaller than the planet itself. Therefore, there would be every reason to suspect (the Moon) would be a tiny world, perhaps 30 miles…but it is a giant satellite, 2,160 miles in diameter. How is it, then, that tiny Earth has one?”
There are plenty of other people who have expressed similar sentiments. NASA scientist, Robin Brett stated that “it seems easier to explain the non-existence of the Moon than its existence,” while Irwin Shapiro from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics offered that “the best explanation for the Moon is an observational error!”
Perhaps some of the most intriguing and thought-provoking claims are those that suggest the Moon is a hollow object. Of course, if the Moon were hollow, it would suggest it was artificial, as Carl Sagan noted, “A natural satellite cannot be a hollow object!”
Perhaps one of the first people to legitimately question whether the Moon could be a hollow object was NASA scientist, Dr. Gordon MacDonald, who wrote in 1962, “If the astronomical data are reduced, it is found that the data require that the interior of the Moon be less dense than the outer parts. Indeed, it would seem that the Moon is more like a hollow than a homogeneous sphere!”
In November 1969, when Apollo 12 left the Moon, rocket boosters were purposely jettisoned into the surface where seismic measuring equipment had been set up to record and measure the impact. To say scientists were shocked by the returning data would be an understatement. It was noted that the Moon “reverberated like a bell” for almost an hour following the impact—something that would only be seen in a hollow object.
Indeed, as we can see, the Moon has undoubtedly been an object of fascination since the beginnings of the human race…or has it? Without a doubt, one of the most thought-provoking claims about the Moon is that at some point in human history, it didn’t exist. There was, essentially, a time before the Moon. As we might imagine, almost all mainstream historians and astronomers reject such an idea that there was once a time in (relatively speaking) recent history – certainly recent enough to be human history – when the Moon was not in orbit around our planet, not least as, at least as far as our current understanding of the world is, life on Earth would be almost impossible without it. However, while we most certainly should treat such considerations with caution, there are some intriguing and thought-provoking arguments to be made.
We might consider, for example, that this “time before the Moon” was when a now-lost civilization called the planet home. Perhaps backing this up somewhat are the many legends and myths of such a time and just such a civilization from around the world. Many researchers suggest that such legends hold at least partial truths within them, with one such researcher – Michael Tellinger – stating that these legends of a time before the Moon could very well be one of humanity’s earliest collective memories.
One of the earliest accounts of a time before the Moon comes from the Greek philosopher Aristotle. In his history of the Arcadian region in Greece, he refers the Pelasgians, a civilization, he claimed, who had resided in the area “since very old times,” during a time “when the Moon did not exist!” Moreover, Aristotle wasn’t the only ancient Greek philosopher to have spoken of such a time. Apollonios, for example, wrote of a time when the Moon didn’t orbit the Earth and even when all the celestial objects were yet to be present in the sky. During this time, the only civilization on Earth was the Pelasgians, who resided in the mountains of Arcadia.
Is it really possible that the Pelasgians did exist? And if so, did they reside on Earth before the Moon orbited the planet? Once more, current knowledge suggests that life on Earth would be almost impossible. Could the Pelasgians, however, have managed to survive in Arcadia, perhaps one of the few habitable locations on Earth? Might they have even lived under the ground, perhaps giving birth to the many legends of an ancient civilization living inside the “Inner Earth”? Or might we even consider that this civilization was not entirely human and was of extraterrestrial origin, perhaps even with connections to “the Gods” themselves? Perhaps above all else, though, if the Pelasgians did exist, just how long ago were they present on Earth? Could it be tens of thousands of years ago, or perhaps hundreds of thousands, or even millions of years?
We can find another writer from antiquity who speaks of a time before the Moon in Plutarch, who wrote of a “time before the birth of Zeus” when the “Arcadians possessed their land,” adding that “these folk are older than the Moon!” Hippolytus also made similar statements, offering that the Arcadians “brought forth Pelasgus,” the ancestor of the Pelasgians, who are “of greater antiquity than the Moon!” While perhaps not endorsing the claim, in his work Astrology, Lukianos also states that “the Arcadians foolishly claim they are older than the Moon!”
There are also such claims to be found in Biblical writings. In the Book of Job, for example, it states that “the Lord makes peace in the heights” during a time “before there was a Moon and it did not shine!” In Psalms, there is also a passage that states “since the time of the Sun and before the time of the Moon”, an era that was said to be “a generation of generations ago” – seemingly a length of time that is perhaps so great that it is immeasurable.
Similar claims are found in many other ancient writings and creation stories around the world, including other Biblical stories, such as The Flood. Just one example is the oral traditions of the Colombian civilizations in the Bogota highlands of South America, which speak of the “earliest times when the Moon was not yet in the Heavens!”
If we turn our attention to the Zulu legends from Africa, we find even more remarkable accounts of a time before the Moon. Their legends state that the Moon was brought to the Earth thousands of years ago by two extraterrestrial brothers named Wowane and Mpanku. We might note that this story of two extraterrestrial brothers coming to Earth thousands of years ago is remarkably similar to the accounts of the Anunnaki from ancient Sumer, which speaks of two brothers, Enlil and Enki, who “descended from the Heavens” and ruled over the Earth. Could this once again suggest that Pelasgians – if they are the same ancient civilization described around the world – were of extraterrestrial origin? Another interesting detail is that the Pelasgians’ language was described as “barbaric!” Could this description have been so because it was simply incomprehensible to humanity because it was, quite literally, an alien language?
With the detail of an alien race bringing the Moon to Earth in deep antiquity in mind, we should turn to the ancient writings and symbols in the courtyard of Kalasasaya in Bolivia, a site said to be around 15,000 years old. The ancient writings there suggest that the Moon was “brought to Earth” many thousands of years ago. What’s more, it replaced a smaller moon that had been orbiting Earth previously. If there is any truth in such legends, might this explain how civilizations could have existed before the Moon we see today (Lunar) because another moon was present in the skies before that which provided the stabilization needed for life to flourish? It is also possible that the arrival of this new moon could have caused temporary cataclysmic events on Earth, which could also have given rise to such legends as The Flood, and even the lost civilization of Atlantis.
What is further interesting about the idea of a second (or previous) moon orbiting Earth before the arrival of our current moon is that several researchers have put forward genuine suggestions that Earth could have had a moon – perhaps even several – before our current moon “arrived” and began its orbit. Some have gone even further, offering that our current moon could have collided with one of these previous moons before settling into its orbit. Do these theories, if they were to be true, offer corroboration to the legends in the courtyard of Kalasasaya? We might also consider just how many records of the Americas, particularly those of South America, were lost to the actions of the Spanish conquistadors, who destroyed almost all of the records of the respective civilizations of the continent. Many of these records could very well have told us much more about our collective history than many of us could perhaps imagine, including of a time before the Moon. We should also note that in antiquity, writing was not as widespread, or as cheap as it is today. Indeed, it was costly to record information, and time-consuming. As such, writing – at least official records and documentation – was reserved for events that were of great importance and not fanciful stories. We might consider, then, that such ancient writings that speak of a time before the Moon should be contemplated a little more seriously.
We have already explored what an anomaly the Moon is. Could it be so because its history and origins are much more explosive, fascinating, and far-reaching than current mainstream thinking suggests it is? And could there have been a time in human history when the Moon didn’t exist, at least not in our skies?
The suggestion that the Moon was brought to Earth by an extraterrestrial race was not only made in ancient times. Alex Collier, for example, offered that his research suggested that the Moon was, in fact, a transport ship that brought “reptilians, human-reptilian hybrids, and the first humans to set foot on Earth!” He made the claims, along with several others, in the book Letters from Andromeda, a book he put together, he claimed, through telepathic communication with extraterrestrial entities from a constellation called Zenetae. Of the Moon as it is today, he wrote:
“The Moon is hollow. It contains huge underground facilities built by E.T.’s and later humans from Earth. There are seven openings into the Moon’s crust and the underground bases. Conservative scientists have wondered why so many craters seem so shallow, despite their size. The Andromedans say it’s because much of the surface was built on top of a metallic shell of a circular space crest; or “A War Carrier”, as the Andromedans describe it!”
Collier also claimed that bases from this ancient war – which raged 113,000 years ago - remained in ruins on the Moon, adding that both extraterrestrials and humans are living on the Moon “right now” in underground bases that housed over 30,000 people and contained several “great lakes!” Even more remarkable were his claims that there were plans to send many more people to the Moon in the future. Moreover, he claimed that advanced weapons, vehicles, and anti-gravity technologies were tested on the Moon and that over 50 “Earth-built spacecraft” were housed there.
Whether he meant to or not, Collier also appears to corroborate some of the many conspiracies regarding secret societies of the world elite and their private missions to and on the Moon when he wrote:
“When the Apollo astronauts landed on the moon, the World Order had been there for some time. This knowledge and technology was withheld from the lower levels of NASA and our military. NASA has been used as a blind to keep people from truly knowing what was going on there. The astronauts were silenced under threats and remain so today!”
While most dismiss Collier’s claims, they are thought-provoking, perhaps, particularly his claims of secret societies and their equally secret missions to the Moon. It has been claimed by some that these secret societies have retained knowledge that goes back to the crusades of the Knights Templar in the twelfth century and preserved before that since Biblical times. Researcher and author Mike Bara made very similar claims in his book Ancient Aliens and JFK: The Race to the Moon and the Kennedy Assassination. Before we move on to those, it is worth briefly examining the Apollo 11 moon landing mission and the alleged Masonic rituals and practices that surrounded it.
The fact is that the Freemasons had, at the very least, an active interest in the Apollo missions was no secret. In the November 1969 edition of The New Age Magazine, Buzz Aldrin – one of the men who would eventually walk on the Moon – was featured speaking of his Masonic connections, with one particular quote stating, “When man reaches new worlds, Masonry will be there!” Moreover, it wasn’t just Aldrin of the NASA astronauts who had such alleged Masonic and secret society connections. Leroy Gordon Cooper Jr, Virgil Grissom, and Donn Eisele were all said to be Freemasons, while John Glenn was also rumored to be a member of another secret society.
If we move on to the moon landings themselves, the landing site – the Sea of Tranquility – was selected due to the flat surface which made landing easier. However, in the decades that have passed since, some researchers have suggested there could have been other reasons for this specific selection. One of the people not only responsible for selecting the landing destination, as well as planning multiple other aspects of the moon landings, was Farouk El-Baz, right down to developing the strict timings of the launch window and actual landing itself. Not only was El-Baz a Freemason, but his father was an expert in ancient Egyptian rituals, which makes for interesting reading when some of the conspiracies surrounding the moon landings are explored.
The landing site, for example, including the exact time and date, was meticulously worked out so that at exactly 33 minutes after landing, Orion’s Belt would be perfectly aligned with the Moon’s horizon. Of course, the fact that it was worked out that this occurred 33 minutes after landing is yet another sign of Masonic involvement when we remember how important the number 33 is in Freemasonry (representative of the 33rd degree Freemasons of the Scottish Rite), and it is not the only time the number 33 surfaces. The launchpad where the Apollo 11 mission began, Launchpad 33, is a good example (of further interest when the first shuttle returned to Earth, it landed on Runway 33).
As well as the alleged rituals, it is also claimed by some that Aldrin left various Masonic “gifts” on the Lunar surface, all of which contained very specific Masonic symbols and were an apparent offering to Osiris. Furthermore, after landing back on Earth he is said to have “gifted” a Masonic scarf that had been “blessed” as part of a ritual on the Lunar surface to the Scottish Rite Masonic Lodge in Washington DC.
Another detail about the moon landings is the moon rocks that were brought to Earth by the Apollo astronauts – many of which have suspiciously “gone missing!” Some researchers have suggested that the missing moon rocks were not moon rocks at all, but ancient alien technology – technology that, at least according to some researchers, was the real reason the moon landings went ahead in the first place.
Claims of ancient alien technology on the Moon lead us very nicely into one of the most interesting people of the Masonic conspiracies surrounding the moon landings – James Edwin Webb. Webb served as NASA’s administrator from 1961 to 1968, leaving right before the Apollo 11 moon landing. Like many others involved in the Apollo program – and NASA, in general – Webb was a known Freemason and began placing fellow Masons into positions of power almost as soon as he took the position with NASA. Moreover, according to the previously mentioned Mike Bara, he is arguably at the center of not only the moon landing conspiracy but the assassination of President John Kennedy. Ultimately, it is claimed that the reason, at least partially, behind Kennedy’s assassination was his desire to pursue a joint American-Soviet mission to land on the Moon – and the reason why the alleged shadow government of the United States chose such a drastic course of action was because of their knowledge of ancient alien technology in alien bases on the lunar surface left by none other than the Anunnaki, the gods of ancient Sumer.
Whatever the reason, Webb wasn’t alone in immensely disliking even the idea of a joint mission to the Moon with the Soviet Union. Another person was Congressman Albert Thomas, a close friend of Webb’s, and someone with ties to fellow Texan and Vice President Lyndon Johnson. He had publicly stated his opposition to any joint space missions with the Soviet Union, and because of his position, he would have had complete access to the budget and direction of NASA, as well as, unofficially, of course, influencing its direction.
In his book Ancient Aliens and JFK, Mike Bara includes a photograph that, while not offering conclusive proof, is highly suggestive of some kind of plot involving Thomas and Johnson (as well as many others). The picture was taken in the seconds following Lyndon Johnson being sworn as President of the United States, and only hours after John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. You can see Johnson turning to look over his right shoulder towards none other than Albert Thomas, who, rather than having a solemn, shocked look on his face like almost everyone else in the room, appears to be smirking and winking at Johnson. Although we can’t see (now) President Johnson’s face, his left cheek is raised slightly, as if he is smiling back at Thomas – almost as if they knew something and realized the plan had come together just as they desired. It is also worth pointing out that Johnson, like almost everyone else we have mentioned here, was a Freemason (a member of the 33-degree Scottish Rite Freemasons). It is important to point out that these actions or those of individuals who happened to be Freemasons and not actions condoned or supported by Freemasonry in general.
While such claims are undoubtedly up for debate, if there was any truth in the suggestion that members of a secret society (not necessarily the Freemasons – these individuals could have been Masons and also members of another, unknown organization) orchestrated a mission to the moon to retrieve ancient alien technology – technology that they became aware through their secret society connections and that knowledge of had been guarded and handed down for hundreds, perhaps even thousands of years, then it forces to reassess so many aspects of our world, history, and reality.
Here it is worth our time to briefly explore the remote viewing experiments of Ingo Swann, who was one of the CIA’s most skilled remote viewers during the 1970s and eighties as part of the Project Stargate program that aimed to, essentially, keep a close eye through remote viewing on their Cold War adversaries the Soviet Union. One particular episode, however, in February 1975, is of particular interest to us here.
Swann was approached by a mysterious individual who introduced himself as Mr. Axelrod, informing him that he was required to work on a top-secret remote viewing mission. A month passed before Swann heard from Axelrod again. This time, Swann was told to meet him at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C., which Swann agreed to. Once there, a car promptly pulled up and Mr. Axelrod got out, and confirmed who he was to Swann before asking him to get into the car. At this point, they were driven to an unknown location somewhere just outside of the city where a helicopter was seemingly waiting for them. Before boarding the helicopter, however, Swann was blindfolded and told that where he was going was an ultra-secret location.
After the helicopter touched down on the ground, still blindfolded, Swann was led to what seemed to be an elevator. A moment later, he felt the lift descending, a journey that seemed to take a considerable amount of time, leading Swann to conclude that he was being taken to a secret underground military facility. Then, the elevator came to a sudden stop and the doors opened. Swann was led to a room a short distance away and the blindfold was finally removed. There, standing in front of him, was Mr. Axelrod.
Here, Mr. Axelrod introduced himself properly, offering that his name was indeed a pseudonym and that his real identity was protected given the nature of his work. He then began to question Swann about remote viewing, asking him all kinds of questions, including how he achieved his results. Eventually, he told Swann bluntly that he was prepared to offer him a lot of money for his services. Although he didn’t feel it was an offer he could refuse, Swann accepted the invite. Then, Axelrod began to question Swann and what he knew about the Moon. Following this brief conversation, Swann was then given a piece of paper with coordinates written on it and asked to “remote view” what was there.
Swann focused on the coordinates and soon found himself “leaving the Earth” and heading to the Moon, specifically, the dark or far side. Moments later, much to his shock, he could see tall buildings and huge glass dome-like structures. He went towards one of these structures and went inside. As soon as he did so, he could see there were living entities inside. He began describing what he was seeing to Axelrod who listened intently. When Swann offered that whoever the living entities were they were “aware of his presence” Axelrod suddenly became animated, insisting to Swann that he should “come away from there right now!”
Swann suddenly felt uncomfortable by the entire experience and quickly found himself rushing back to his physical body. After taking a moment to come to his senses, he asked Axelrod what exactly he had just seen, and asked if there was a colony of some kind on the far side of the Moon. Axelrod, though, simply remained quiet, now having returned to his ultra-calm demeanor. Swann asked again, this time adding that he thought the living entities could have been extraterrestrial. To this, Axelrod simply replied, “Isn’t that something, huh?” He then left the room and Swann was returned to the city.
Whether or not there are extraterrestrial bases on the Moon or not remains open to debate. There are, though, many intriguing anomalies on the lunar surface – anomalies that many people believe are artificial structures. These structures are thought-provoking to say the least. Some people, for example, have claimed they have spotted pyramid-like structures on the surface of the moon, structures that appear to be too precise to be the result of geological processes.
Near the Aristarchus Crater is another apparent artificial structure known as the Tower of Babel. As its name suggests, this alleged building is a towering, column-like formation that appears to be of significant height (some estimates suggest it is as tall as seven miles high), although skeptics argue that this tower-like appearance could be, essentially, a trick of the light, making what is, they say, a natural rock formation appear much larger than it actually is. A similar alleged artificial structure can be found in the Ina Caldera region. Known as the Ina Bridge, this bridge-like structure appears to be an artificial structure – essentially, a bridge connecting two parts of the lunar surface.
Another apparent anomaly on the surface of the Moon is known as The Shard, which appears similar to the previously mentioned Tower of Babel in that it seems to tower above the Moon’s surface. To some people, this is clear evidence of some kind of alien outpost or possibly even proof of a civilization that once called the Moon home. Although skeptics have claimed – as usual – that The Shard is nothing more than an optical illusion, the fact that it appears to cast a shadow would suggest that whatever it is, it is something real and physically there. It is also worth mentioning the castle-like structure, unsurprisingly dubbed The Castle, that was captured in one of the images of the Apollo missions. What has perplexed many who have viewed the picture is that this seemingly artificial structure seems to be somehow floating above the Moon’s surface.
At this point, it would be beneficial to explore one of the strangest of all conspiracies surrounding the Moon – those of the “secret” Apollo missions that ran, at least according to some, under the name Project Horizon. The origins of the project go back to the 1950s and looked to build a permanent base on the lunar surface. It was brought to a close not long after, but some people have suggested that the project continued to operate behind closed doors – specifically following the official closure of the Apollo missions. Although Apollo 17 was the last official Apollo mission, some researchers have suggested that the Apollo 18, 19, and 20 missions went ahead in secret without the public being aware of them. While it is easy to dismiss such claims as outlandish nonsense, it is interesting to note that the three missions (18,19, and 20) had already been budgeted and paid for when they were scrapped, something which simply made no financial sense.
Although information on the alleged secret missions is limited, it is claimed that the Apollo 18 and 19 missions did indeed find evidence of alien bases on the lunar surface (some sources claim that Apollo 19 was lost in a collision during its respective mission). During the alleged Apollo 20 mission, however, they discovered not only the remains of alien bases and technology but of a female alien humanoid. One of the alleged pilots on these discreet Apollo missions – William Rutledge – released a video on YouTube in 2007 that appeared to show parts of the Apollo 20 mission, including footage of the “alien girl” they discovered.
Several years after the release of the footage, in 2011, Italian UFO researcher, Luca Scantamburio investigated the case and spoke directly with Rutledge, who told him that he wasn’t employed for the missions by NASA but by the United States Air Force. He elaborated that he had previously “worked on the study of foreign technology – Russian only,” as well as working on the N1 Project, the AJAX plane project, and the MIG Foxbat 25. He further stated that he “had some skills for using computer navigation and was a volunteer for the MOL-Gemini Project!” Even stranger, especially when we consider the claims that President Kennedy was assassinated – at least in part – because of his desire to embark on a joint moon landing mission, Rutledge stated that the Apollo 20 mission was a joint American-Soviet mission and launched in 1976 (a year, incidentally, after the famous “Handshake in Space” that saw American astronauts meet Soviet cosmonauts during the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in the summer of 1975).
Rutledge detailed how the Apollo 20 mission headed to the Delporte-Izsak region on the far side of the Moon. Almost as soon as they touched down and ventured outside, they made remarkable discovery after remarkable discovery. They found, for example, the crashed and crippled remains of an “ancient spacecraft” that they estimated was around two and a half miles long. Not far from the remains of this crashed craft they came upon the remains of what appeared to be an old and abandoned city – a location they referred to as Moon City but was labelled Station One by those in charge of the mission on Earth.
When they ventured into the city and explored some of the buildings, they discovered that it was littered with what they described as “space garbage” and various gold parts of scrap (we might note – if there is any truth to the idea that the Anunnaki constructed the bases on the moon, the discovery of gold makes a certain amount of sense given their desire to mine gold on Earth, as well as its value for space travelers). One building, however, appeared to be relatively undamaged and largely intact – a building they named The Cathedral. The most enthralling discoveries, though, occurred when they returned to the ruined spacecraft and prepared to investigate inside.
Upon entering the craft, they discovered several strange triangular rocks, as well as what appeared to be vegetation growing inside the vehicle (this notion of vegetation inside a UFO, as bizarre as it sounds, has surfaced in several other reports of close UFO encounters, with one particular incident from the United Kingdom in the mid-1970s suggesting this vegetation was somehow connected to the propulsion of the craft). They also found the bodies of several “small beings, (each) about four inches long” that seemed to “spend their lives in tubes!” These strange beings were discovered throughout the vehicle.
Without a doubt, the most remarkable discovery, however, was of two humanoid bodies. One of these was “destroyed” although it was unclear what had happened or caused such damage (the crew preserved the head of this first body). The other, however, was undamaged and well-preserved. The crew eventually dubbed this second humanoid Mona Lisa. Rutledge elaborated that Mona Lisa was in some “state of suspended animation (and was) neither dead nor alive!” Ultimately, the crew decided to transfer this female humanoid to their craft. Rutledge informed Scantamburlo that he didn’t remember who had named the girl Mona Lisa, whether it was himself or Leonov (a cosmonaut), but he could recall that she was around five and a half feet tall with long hair and five fingers and a thumb, which led them to guess that “their mathematics are based on 12” as opposed to ten, like humans.
He continued that she was clearly a pilot and that there was a “piloting device fixed to (her) fingers and eyes!” They removed this device, which included having to cut through two cables that were connected to the nose. After doing this, “concretions of blood or biological liquid erupted and froze from the mouth, nose, eyes, and some (other) parts of the body!” It also appeared that the humanoid’s skin was “protected by a thin transparent film!” Although none of the crew had medical training, they decided to fix their bio equipment to the body of Mona Lisa, and the “telemetry received by (the) mission control meds was positive!” In other words, she was alive. He finally stated that she was returned to Earth with the Apollo 20 vehicle where she remains today (at the time of speaking).
Interestingly or not, Rutledge half-acknowledged how bizarre and outlandish his claims sounded, but he insisted he was genuine, stating, “I’m the whistleblower. What can NASA or the United States Air Force do now? Blocking or suing me would be an acknowledgment. They can (only) speak of a hoax or fiction!” It is certainly something to think about.
It is perhaps fitting to end by exploring future visits to the Moon, or more to the point, locations that are said to be “off-limits” to any future moon landing missions. While there are several locations that have been officially designated as restricted, several whistleblowers have come forward over the years stating that NASA has ulterior motives for designating these locations as forbidden and that they have several other “unofficial” locations that they seek to avoid any missions exploring.
We know, for example, that Tranquility Base – the landing site for the Apollo 11 mission – is under the protection of these laws as initiated by the United States government, and is akin to a cosmic cultural heritage site that might one day be visited by future astronauts, and perhaps, as technology develops, will be a destination for space tourists. However, some people have questioned NASA’s true motives for putting the destination off-limits, offering that the real reason is to protect against the discovery of the remains of ancient alien bases and technology. This speculation becomes even more intriguing when we factor in the alleged recordings of Armstrong and Aldrin discussing seeing alien vehicles on the lunar surface (although debate remains as to exactly what was being discussed and indeed if the recording is authentic).
What about these other locations, though? One such alleged forbidden lunar destination is the Mendeleev Ridge, which could very well hold an abundance of information about past volcanic activity on the Moon. However, it has also been suggested that the location would be ideal for building hidden lunar bases – ones built by humans under highly secret space programs. A similar location is the Compton-Belkovich Volcanic Complex on the Moon’s far side. This volcanic structure likely holds similar information, with some scientists arguing that it could have been active (relatively) recently. Like the Mendeleev Ridge, though, it would be another ideal location for discreetly built structures. Moreover, the location could also be home to highly valuable materials and minerals that could be discreetly transported back to Earth.
We can find another highly interesting and, to some, suspicious location near the center of the Moon’s near side in the Sinus Medii region. While we should treat the claims with caution, some have claimed that highly advanced and secret observation equipment has been left here monitoring events on Earth, as well as equally advanced lunar facilities. Furthermore, unlike some of the other locations we have looked at, there appears to be no good reason why NASA or any other organization would want access to the location restricted.
If we move to the Moon’s South Pole, we find the Leibnitz Plateau, another alleged off-limits location. This region sits on remarkably flat and elevated terrain, which once more has caused speculation of advanced lunar bases and even landing zones for advanced space vehicles being present there. There are also several craters that, at least according to some, have been designated as no-go areas. One such location is the Tycho Crater, while another is the Tsiolkovsky Crater. Once more, there could be very reasonable reasons as to why NASA would wish to keep such areas preserved, not least the possibility of studying ice deposits there. However, like many of the volcanic regions, such craters would present the option for discreet lunar bases.
Only time will tell if these, and other, locations of the Moon will be studied up close and transparently. For all of the missions to the lunar surface, the majority of the Moon remains unexplored and uncharted, at least officially. And perhaps because of that, such conspiracies and wild claims as we have examined here are allowed to flourish in that void of information. That is not to say that there might not be at least some truth to some of those claims – as we have established, the Moon is a genuine anomaly that, for all the official theories, remains largely unexplained.
Could the Moon have been placed in orbit by an unknown intelligence, and is that intelligence still present on the Moon today? Could our cosmic satellite be an artificial construct, something more akin to a space station that once brought extraterrestrials to Earth many thousands of years ago? And, if so, did it replace our natural Moon that had sustained life on Earth perhaps for many thousands of years before that? The fact is, there remain many unanswered questions about the Moon, its origin, and whether it might have served as a colony for an ancient space-faring civilization. While many of the claims about the Moon we have examined here should be treated with caution and are, admittedly, unlikely, they remain a possibility and a part of the mystery of the already fascinating object in our night sky.
Stanley Kubrick's Staged Moon Landing - Space Conspiracy Theories
Alien and UFO encounter reports come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from the slightly odd to the downright utterly bizarre. It is a category of experiences that invites the strange, yet some of these are weirder than others, and some of the strangest of all are when these alien entities turn out to be anything but friendly
A bizarre series of frightening events played out in Abbiate Guazzone, Varese, Italy on April 24, 1950. It was around 10 pm that evening when a local mechanic by the name of Bruno Facchini, 40, stepped out after a violent thunderstorm to go relieve himself at an outdoor outhouse on his property. After he finished his business he stopped to have a cigarette and that was when he noticed a series of several strange odd flashing lights which at the time he at first thought were being generated by the receding storm. Seeing as the lights seemed to be emanating from a nearby field, he decided to investigate, as he was starting to get the impression that they were coming from a nearby row of power lines, and so he was thinking there might be a danger with a fallen power line. This is where things would take a sharp turn into the weird, and he would tell the Italian UFO researcher Antonio Giudicci of what happened next;
“It was still a little farther. I decided to go there. Then I saw there a huge dark shape, like a ball, with a flattened top. In the middle of the shape there was a small ladder, lightened by a green light. Almost immediately, I understood that the light came from some sort of lamp handled by a standing man who seemed to be engaged in welding. He wore something like a diving suit and a mask. Next to a power line pole I saw a huge, round shape. From the illuminated disc, a ladder came down. A door opened. I could see inside the UFO, because a light diffused inside, there was another ladder leading to a higher level of the craft; on the walls, there were bottles connected together in rows and between them I could notice that there were gauges and tubes. Driven by curiosity, at went closer, and I saw two other people, with the same clothing, moving slowly around the craft - I guessed that their diving suit was heavy and slowed down their movements. The craft, lighted by the welding tool, cast metallic reflections back.”
There were apparently enough sparks flying everywhere that the interior of the craft was eerily lit by the flickering light, and he could see numerous dials and cylinders within. As he was taking this all in and trying to process it he became aware of a strange buzzing noise “like a giant beehive,” and a sensation of warm air all around him. He noticed that all of the mysterious figures were similarly dressed in grayish one-piece tight-fitting clothes and were wearing helmets but their faces were concealed behind masks from the front of which emerged one flexible pipe which reminded him of a breathing tube. Even at this point, his mind was struggling for rational answers, with him surmising that it was a downed aircraft with mechanics trying to undergo repairs, but this would soon turn out not to be the case, as they moved in an oddly disjointed fashion and spoke amongst each other with an otherworldly guttural language. He continues;
“I offered to help, but the only answer I received were some guttural sounds that were not understandable. I wondered what their intentions were. I had the feeling they were inviting me aboard. Suddenly I heard an uproar, like the amplified buzz of a bee, or a huge power generator. I saw another ladder in the interior of the craft, and all around, tubes, cylinders, and gauges. I understood that this was not a plane, and I was seized by panic, I started to run away.
I was not so close anymore when I turned my head back. I saw one of the men raise some sort of apparatus he carried at his side and beam a ray of light in my direction. I started to run again, but immediately, I felt as if I was cut in two parts by some cutting tool or by a jet of compressed air and I fell flat.
After a while I saw four beings around the disc. Two were beside the ladder. A third one seemed to attempt to weld together a group of tubes. Exactly this operation produced the strange flashing that had attracted my attention. Thinking that this was some test of a secret prototype, I approached them asking if they had need for help. The beings started to make strange gestures and emitted guttural sounds, something like "gurr... gurr..." At that moment the craft was started and it was only then that I understood that they were not human beings. Seized by panic, I started to run away. While I ran, I had a glimpse at them and I saw that one of those individuals was directing something at me.”
He then felt that he was knocked back off his feet by an invisible force, and he felt a burning sensation on his abdomen. The figure kept its device trained on him and he dared not get up until the occupants filed back into the craft and it began to rise into the air before shooting off into the night. He says of the surreal experience;
“I was hit at the back by a light beam, and it had such a force that I felt pushed. I lost my equilibrium and I hit the ground, knocking my head against a stone. Hurt, scared, I stayed on the ground without moving. In the meantime those beings were finishing their welding job. Then they all entered in the disc, it closed and went away. They seemed not to be interested in my anymore. I am convinced they only wanted to scare me and had no intention to do anything wrong to me. They were busy in removing the scaffold and withdrawing the ladder. Then the door closed. All the lights went out. And the buzzing sound continued. Suddenly the sound became louder. The craft took off, gained speed and disappeared.”
It was only after the night had fallen quiet again and the buzzing had stopped to bring the normal nighttime sounds crashing back into reality that he dared get up and go home. The following day, he went back to the site of the encounter out of sheer curiosity and noticed that there were some traces and four circular depressions of one meter diameter each, arranged in a square pattern of 6 meters side length, he grass around it charred and with lots of pieces of melted metal scattered about the ground. It was odd enough that he contacted authorities to come investigate, after which they collected some samples of the metal fragments for study. Analysis of the shards could only determine that they were some sort of heat-resistant, anti-friction metal.
In the meantime, the witness visited a doctor due to the persisting pain at the site of the mysterious beam strike, and it was found that Facchini had a blackened mark where the beam had hit him, and this mark had grown until it covered his entire back, causing him pains for a whole month. No rational cause could be found for it. He would go on to suffer health and psychological issues for the rest of his life.
In the following decade, we have a case from September of 1964, when 28-year-old Donald Shrum and his friends were out bow and arrow hunting at Cisco Grove, Placer County, California. They had gone out hunting in the area many times before, so there was at first no reason to suspect that this would be any different from any of their other trips, yet there would be a series of events that would play out that would end in one of the most bizarre alien encounters on record.
At some point during the day, Shrum apparently got so caught up in trying to track down deer that he became separated from the rest of the group. As night began to fall and the trees grew dark, he decided that it would be better to just hunker down for the night and catch up with the others at camp in the morning, so he took up a position in a tree. As he sat up there listening to the sounds of the night and trying to find elusive sleep, his attention was suddenly drawn to a strange white light in the sky that seemed to be moving in a sort of zig-zagging pattern and looked to descend below the tree line. As Shrum watched, it seemed as if the object was bobbing along to approach his position, and although he could not hear any noise, he assumed it was a helicopter.
Curiosity got the better of him, and so he dismounted from his safe perch up in the tree to try and get a closer look. He suspected that it might be a search party out looking for him after he failed to return to camp, so he launched a flare to let them know where he was, after which the light rapidly came right towards him, coming to within 50 feet and showing itself to be no normal helicopter. In fact, Shrum would describe it as a glowing, cigar-shaped object that was immense, around 14 stories tall. From this object a smaller one detached and supposedly came to rest not far away, which was enough to send Shrum scurrying back up into his tree for safety. He allegedly cowered there in the shadows in hiding for some time until he heard the sound of what sounded like people walking through the brush below, yet when he peeked down, he could see that these were not normal people at all.
Shrum would claim that he saw three entities, two of them humanoids standing about 5 feet tall and wearing silver coveralls and goggles of some sort, while the third was a hulking robotic creature with glowing orange eyes. These entities approached the tree and much to Shrum’s horror the robot began shaking it violently with incredible strength, in an apparent effort to get Shrum out of it. The terrified man hung on for dear life as these otherworldly beings continued their siege of his tree, and at some point during this ordeal, he claimed that the robotic entity emitted some kind of white vapor from its mouth, which had a strange odor and caused him to black out. He woke up some time later feeling nauseous and lethargic, but still up in his tree. Unfortunately, his aggressors were still there as well, and Shrum threw some lit matches and other items at them in a pathetic attempt to scare them off, before finally remembering his bow and using that to fire on them, hitting the robot three times to send sparks flying, but doing very little actual damage.
In the end, Shrum’s bow and arrow assault did not dissuade the outlandish beings, and indeed a second robot much like the first soon joined them. Once again, the robots released that toxic gas to render him unconscious, and once again he awoke feeling sick, only this time the aliens had gotten bolder and were actually climbing up the tree. Shrum managed to pelt them with various objects he had on him and they climbed back down to circle and shake the tree. This would go on all night, until the coming of dawn, when they apparently sent nearly a dozen of those robotic things at him and caused him to black out once more with a voluminous cloud of that smoke. However, this time when he woke he was oddly hanging from a branch by his belt and they were all gone as if they had never been there at all.
In the light of day, Shrum was able to make his way back to camp, where he learned one of his friends had also seen the UFO the previous night. Shrum would come forward with his bizarre tale and even talk to Air Force personnel about it, who were very eager to write it off as either fantasy or someone playing a prank on him. We are left to wonder what it really was he saw, what those creatures were, and perhaps most importantly, why they weren’t able to get him out of that tree despite having vapor-spewing robot goons. One interesting point was made by The Iron Skeptic, who says:
“Another thing is the way that the aliens are reported to have acted. Think about this for a moment: They could conquer the non-trivial challenge of interstellar travel, but they can’t get a guy out of a tree? That’s ridiculous. That’s like Andre the Giant not being able to open a jar of pickles. One way or another, those pickles are coming out of there. Either these aliens were the absolute stupidest, most bumbling, least competent abductors ever to grace the good green earth, or they had a reason for leaving the terrified man up that tree.
Their actions do, to some extent, appear similar to the actions of the Hopkinsville Goblins or the tiny, wrinkled little men that scared the hell out of some drunkards in Ririe, Idaho in the sixties: the aliens don’t seem to really want anything other than to scare the hell out of some people. The UFO enthusiasts claim that sometimes, aliens just like to screw around with people they abduct, apparently to gauge their reactions. For instance, sometimes they’ll show abductees apocalyptic images of the world being destroyed, just to see how the human will react. Could this just be some evil, alien psychology experiment?”
It is an intriguing point to consider and makes one wonder. How indeed did these forces not manage to get this one guy down from a tree, and was there some mysterious motive for it all? The case is certainly one of the stranger ones out there and has remained amazingly under the radar for the most part. Whatever one may think of such far-out reports, a case of a guy hiding in a tree while robot aliens attack him certainly is not something you see every day, and it is a truly outlandish case that will most likely remain confined to the outer fringe.
The setting for another outlandish tale is the Everglades, a vast expanse of swamps and tropical wetlands covering a massive 7,800 square miles of the southern portion of the U.S. state of Florida. It was to this wild realm of gloomy tangled, mosquito-infested wilderness that on March 12, 1965, a rancher and former constable by the name of James Flynn came to do a bit of hunting. He loaded up his truck with a swamp buggy and his four trusty hunting dogs, before making his way through winding dirt roads as far as they would take him until he was right up against the swampy wilds. He then unloaded the swamp buggy, let his dogs loose, and penetrated deeper into the muck-covered back country in search of deer. The terrain was very daunting and unpredictable, but by all accounts, Flynn knew these swamps like the back of his hand and was a seasoned outdoorsman, so this was all pretty routine for him. However, the trip was about to take a turn into the weird.
Florida Everglades
Flynn camped out there for several days, which were fairly uneventful until the early hours of March 14, when at around 1 AM his dogs picked up the scent of something out in the dark and went darting off into the murky night barking, snarling, and yipping excitedly. Flynn watched them run off but was startled when several minutes later he heard a booming sound reverberate through the trees and mangroves, sounding very much like a gunshot. This was followed by one of the hunting dogs bolting back to the camp whining and with its tail between his legs, and the concerned Flynn decided to get into his buggy and investigate. His first thought was that his dogs had come across another hunter out there and that they had possibly been shot, so he sped off towards where the sound had come from. The vegetation was dark and thick, making it very slow going, but he finally saw something up ahead through the brush, which would turn out to be far more bizarre than anything he could have imagined.
Something ahead was shining very brightly, but at first, he could not make out what it was through the canopy of the trees. The light moved off some distance, then returned to its original spot and descended into a clearing among some cypress trees. At this point, Flynn still did not register this as an alien craft, and when he got off of his buggy to approach on foot he was under the impression that it was possibly a helicopter or even an experimental craft from the nearby Cape Kennedy base that was in trouble. His plan was to go offer help, but as he approached he got a good look at it through his binoculars and could see that it was no normal aircraft. There, hovering just a few feet off of the ground, was a massive, brightly lit object that looked like an inverted cone, measuring around 100 feet in diameter at its base and around 30 feet high. It looked to be made of some sort of smooth, shiny metallic material, and around its body were four tiers of windows that seemed to be lit from within with an eerie yellow glow.
Despite his awed shock, Flynn continued approaching through the brush, mesmerized by the bizarre sight of this strange machine in the middle of the swamp. He was aware of a whirring noise like a “diesel generator” but it was not nearly as noisy as such a huge flying craft would be expected to be. Nevertheless, the dog that he had in its cage back at the buggy was going nuts, barking and snarling like mad. Flynn got within around 200 feet of the otherworldly craft, upon which there was a sudden whine like a jet engine, followed by a gust of wind that practically knocked him off his feet. Several moments later, he saw the craft emit a bright beam like a “welder’s torch,” which hit him in the center of his forehead “like a sledgehammer.” After this, there was nothing but blackness.
The next thing Flynn remembers was waking up in the rays of the morning light, but his vision was blurry and his surroundings indistinct. He got up and stumbled about, finally recognizing his location as where he had been when he lost consciousness, and he could see through his cracked vision that where the UFO had been there was now a black patch of scorched brush. He then managed to make his way back to his camp, where his other dogs had been waiting for him and then went to the home of a Seminole friend of his, who got him to a hospital in Fort Myers. The doctors found the man had eyes that were bloodshot and red as if they had burst blood vessels, and there was an ugly bruise in the center of his forehead. An examination showed that there was also numbness and partial hearing loss, as well as some muscular reflex impairment, but there was no serious injury, and he was then discharged and expected to fully recover. During his stay at the hospital, he excitedly told of what had happened to him, and although his ophthalmologist was skeptical, he would nevertheless vouch for the man’s reputation as an honest, down-to-earth person not prone to wild imaginings. Dr. Paul R. Brown would say of his impressions of Flynn’s story:
“I first examined Mr. Flynn on March 17, 1965. He stated that while he was out hunting in the woods in this area two days before I saw him he noticed an unnatural light in the woods off in the distance. He stated that he went closer to the light to observe it and suddenly he was struck by “something from a space ship”. He said that he was knocked out and blinded. He said he recovered some sight in the left eye but he could not see out of his right eye. Mrs. Flynn accompanied him into my office, and Mr. Flynn seemed to be in quite an agitated state of mind at that particular time. He kept repeating over and over “I know you wont believe me, but this is what happened” and then he would begin to relate the same story.
As best as I can tell, Mr. Flynn appears to be a rather stable individual. He is not considered to be a person who likes to make up wild tales. Although his story could be a cover-up story for some other type of incident, I feel that this is quite unlikely since a more plausible story could have been thought up to cover up for him should he have felt the need for such cover-up. Since the incident Mr. Flynn quoted to me that he actually was sorry he even related the incident because it had caused him quite a bit of trouble and apparently not many people believed him anymore. At the time of the incident I was somewhat skeptical myself, but quite frankly at this stage of the game I am not quite as certain as I was before. I keep asking myself why should he have to make up a story like this. However, we must face the fact that this could have happened by tree branch or some other object striking him over the forehead. The only thing we can be sure of is that he did suffer some physical blow to the right eye.”
The incident would be investigated by NICAP and the Air Force, who examined the site of the alleged encounter to find a burned circle of earth measuring 74 feet across, as well as some scorched trees. Despite this intriguing physical evidence, the Air Force was quick to dismiss the case, and it was suggested that Flynn had merely hit his head on an overhanging limb and then fabricated the whole thing. However, investigators from NICAP and local law enforcement weren’t so sure about this. Interviewing the people closest to Flynn showed that he was an honest, well-like citizen who had never been known to play pranks or tell tall tales. It was surmised that whatever had happened to him out in that swamp, he at least seemed to believe his story. A rather ominous footnote to the whole thing is that when Gordon Lore, the NICAP Assistant Director, contacted the Homestead Air Force Base looking for more information, he was told that they had absolutely no record of the case in any of their files, and that “Nothing concerning this specific case was found in the files of the base commander, intelligence division, civil engineering, nor this office,” even though they most certainly had investigated it. Curious.
We are left to wonder just what happened out in that swamp on that day. What happened to Flynn? What were these entities and what did they want? Is it even real at all or just a hoax? Was there a cover-up involved? We will likely never know the answers, and it remains another weird one for the files. In another case from the files of researcher Albert S. Rosales, on November 24, 1978, a man by the name of Angelo D’Ambros was out gathering firewood in the woods near Vicenza Italy, when he became aware of a pair of bizarre entities hovering beside him. The report reads:
“The 61-year-old man noticed two 'extremely thin' entities hovering next to him - one of which was roughly 4ft-tall and the other was slightly shorter. He described the spindly creatures as having large, sunken white eyes and pear-shaped heads with 'enormous ears that rose straight up and ended in a point'. There were a pair of small tusks protruding from the sides of their mouths, and their skin was said to be yellowish. They wore 'dark, very closely fitting overalls', and had disproportionately large hands and feet with 'extremely long' fingers and toes.
The smaller gremlin circled Angelo while chattering in an unintelligible voice, and then its taller companion attempted to grab the man's machete. Terrified, he tried to keep his knife out of the goblinoid's grasp, but felt two electric shocks pass up his arm. Evidently choosing fight over flight, Angelo attacked the goblins with one of the branches that he had previously been collecting. The two creatures quickly made a beeline away from the enraged Italian, but he gave chase like any good action hero.
He followed as the floating fiends fled through the forest, and arrived in a clearing where he saw a metallic, disk-shaped craft. He was just in time to see a spindly arm close a trapdoor in the dome before the 12ft-wide UFO shot up into the sky with a burst of red flame and sped silently from the scene.”
Moving along, in 1989, a strange series of events unfolded in the wilds near Voronezh, Russia, beginning with numerous sightings by frightened locals who described a massive, red sphere floating over a park. When witnesses went to see what was going on, the object apparently dropped down to hover right over the ground, after which a hatch opened to disgorge several very bizarre entities. These creatures were purportedly 9 feet tall, dressed in silver outfits, and most notably with neckless, domed heads holding three glowing eyes and a bright red device that spun around “like a radar.” These aliens reportedly swiveled their heads about to look around, and along with the aliens was a “box-like robot” that walked around with jerky movements and upon which the aliens occasionally adjusted instruments on its chest. These creatures were bizarrely described as walking around the park collecting soil samples and occasionally projecting multi-colored beams from disc-like structures in their chests, and strangest of all they reportedly zapped a teenager who got too close with a tube-like weapon of some sort, which “dematerialized” the poor boy. Luckily the boy reappeared when the beings boarded their craft and left. What was going on here?
The UFO phenomenon has taken many shapes and forms over the years and features some very dramatic accounts of all types. However, perhaps the ones that are the most unnerving are those that suggest that these entities are perhaps at times hostile, and do not come with our best interests in mind. Is this all just hysteria, wild imagination, and hoaxes or is there any reality at all behind such reports? If so, what do these mysterious agents want and why have they targeted us? Whether any of this has any basis in reality or not, it is interesting to speculate on, and a dark peek into what we might expect if UFOs were to ever lurch forth from mere sightings of anomalous lights in the sky to the sinister possibility of aggressive actions or even warfare, to step out from the fringe and from science fiction to launch into the real world.
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KIJK. Brokstukken Starship-raket vliegen door de lucht boven Bahama’s na tweede mislukte lancering op rij
SpaceX heeft donderdag voor de tweede keer op rij de controle verloren over een onbemande Starship-raket. Het ruimtevaartbedrijf van Elon Musk verloor minuten na de lancering contact met de tweede trap van de raket, het ruimtevaartuig, zo maakte een woordvoerder bekend tijdens een live-uitzending. De vorige test in januari liep ook op een mislukking uit.
De raket werd gelanceerd vanuit Boca Chica in de Amerikaanse staat Texas. Op een livestream van de vlucht van het SpaceX-ruimtevaartuig was te zien hoe een brokstuk oncontroleerbaar naar beneden tuimelde. Video's op sociale media lieten zien hoe brokstukken na de lancering door de donkere hemel schoten boven het zuiden van Florida en boven de Bahama's.
Debris from SpaceX Starship flight 8 explosion streaks across Bahamas night sky
EEN MAAND GELEDEN
SpaceX Starship breaks apart, debris streams across the sky
De mislukte testvlucht veroorzaakte rondvliegend puin boven delen van het Caribisch gebied. Hierdoor moesten veel vluchten worden omgeleid bij de Turks- en Caicoseilanden. De luchthavens van Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando en Palm Beach in Florida mochten tot 20.00 uur lokale tijd (02.00 uur Nederlandse tijd) geen vluchten laten vertrekken van de Amerikaanse luchtvaartautoriteit FAA. Volgens de FAA liepen vluchten gemiddeld 45 minuten vertraging op door het incident.
Eigenlijk zou de lancering maandag al plaatsvinden, maar toen werd de lancering veertig seconden voor de start uitgesteld. SpaceX sprak van een probleem met de raket, maar trad niet in details.
Maanlander Athena van Amerikaans bedrijf op zijkant geland
Een commerciële maanlander van een Amerikaans bedrijf is op zijn zijkant terechtgekomen in een krater op de maan. Daardoor kan de accu aan boord niet meer worden opgeladen. De missie is voorbij, laat het bedrijf Intuitive Machines vrijdag weten.
De lander Athena kwam donderdag aan op de zuidpool van de maan. Na de landing kregen de instrumenten aan boord opdracht snel metingen te verrichten, voordat de batterij leeg was. “Met de positie van de zon, de richting van de zonnepanelen en de extreme kou in de krater verwacht Intuitive Machines niet dat Athena weer kan opladen”, laat het bedrijf weten.
Het was de zuidelijkste maanlanding ooit. Het uiterste zuiden van de maan is interessant voor bemande missies, omdat daar veel zonlicht is om energie mee op te wekken, maar ook plekken met eeuwige schaduw met ijs voor water. Wel is het er bijzonder moeilijk om contact te houden met de vluchtleiding op aarde.
Intuitive Machines schreef vorig jaar al geschiedenis door als eerste bedrijf een succesvolle maanlanding uit te voeren, toen met het toestel Odysseus. Ook die stond een beetje schuin door het afbreken van een voet.
Commerciële bedrijven richten steeds vaker hun pijlen op de maanlandingen. Begin deze maand landde Blue Ghost 1 van het bedrijf Firefly Aerospace succesvol op het hemellichaam. De Verenigde Staten willen in de nabije toekomst astronauten naar de sturen. Na verschillende keren te zijn uitgesteld, mikt NASA nu op een terugkeer tegen midden 2027.
When most people hear the phase “angel hair”, they immediately think of the classic pasta dish, but for the avid UFO enthusiast, it takes on an entirely different meaning.
The strange material known as “angel hair”–a light, cobweb-like substance that reportedly sometimes falls from the sky during UFO sightings–has been considered to be somewhat of a fringe element of Fortean phenomena, but this doesn’t mean that occurrences of angel hair have been rare; in fact, since 1947, there have been well over 200 documented cases of this gossamer-like substance being found in direct connection with UFO sightings.
Source: www.hjkc.de
The strange substance nicknamed angel hair is a feathery light material of unknown composition. Ufo being of light angel in campinas brazil▬ovni ser de luz angel en campinas brasil 28052015. Angel hair is a rather strange phenomenon that is directly related to ufos, this is an introductory video to understand and deal with this issue. Angel's hair these days after a ufo sighting is a scarce commodity. Angel hair or siliceous cotton is a sticky, fibrous substance reported in connection with ufo sightings.
So what exactly is angel hair? It has been generally described as being fibrous and silk-like, with a remarkable consistency that on one hand can be strong and resilient, but then in an instant can dissipate into the air like fog or smoke.
Some ufologists believe that angel hair is left behind as some sort of “exhaust” from alien spacecraft, similar to carbon emissions that are produced by an automobile. Scores of eyewitness reports describe unidentified flying objects including cigar-shaped aircraft, disks and silver spheres emitting this bizarre substance, particularly after moments of rapid acceleration or complex aerial maneuvers.
The substance will slowly drop to the ground, often landing on fences, wires or trees in the area, many times covering large areas at a time. In fact, there have been several reports of angel hair covering power lines for miles on end, or blanketing several square miles of land at a time.7
Source: www.paranormal-explore.com
One report from October of 1957 describes how an area of New Mexico was draped in strands of angel hair that reached up to 50 feet in length apiece, and covered a total area of roughly 110 miles. This bizarre phenomenon is often classified as being a close encounter of the second kind, since the substance typically makes some type of physical contact with the environment.
According to a vast number of reports, one of the most interesting properties of angel hair is its ability to demonstrate sublimation, which is the ability of the substance to change directly from a solid to a gas, essentially bypassing the liquid stage altogether.
It has been described in various instances as both fine and coarse, having a consistency similar to cotton, but it often dissipates as it is being physically handled. The most commonly reported color for angel hair is white, but it has also been observed in other instances as being silver, gray, black, and even translucent.
There seems to be no one particular cause for the phenomenon, but there is an inextricable link between UFO sightings and angel hair, with roughly 57% of all angel hair cases being tied to UFO reports in some way. In addition, eyewitness accounts representing virtually every corner of the globe generally agree on both the look and the consistency of this odd substance.
There have been several cases where angel hair was not only recovered from alleged UFO sighting areas, but it has also been examined in scientific laboratories. The substance has been examined by professionals from a wide range of disciplines, with the general consensus being about the same: Nobody is quite sure what this stuff is made of.
Prominent biologists, chemists, fiber technicians, toxicologists, engineers, and so forth have all sought to gain insight into the composition of this strange substance, but to little avail. Common elements such as boron, magnesium, silicon, potassium, and calcium have been discovered in samples of angel hair, with the most notable element being boron due to its noted usage in nuclear technology.
Boron is commonly utilized as a buffer that shields and controls nuclear reactions, a fact that has prompted many researchers to speculate that angel hair may be the by-product of some type of nuclear-powered propulsion system.
Some skeptics have claimed that angel hair is nothing more than the webbing produced by ballooning spiders, which are known for producing large blankets of silk webs that are often pulled aloft by the wind.
Interestingly enough, all of the samples of angel hair that have been studied in laboratories have lacked a primary ingredient that is necessary for spiders to manufacture their webbing: Protein.
The “ballooning spider theory” also does not account for the fact that angel hair often sublimates on contact, which is almost the complete opposite of what happens when physical contact with a spider’s web occurs.
While the phenomenon of angel hair definitely leaves quite a bit of room for speculation, its correlation to UFO sightings cannot be easily dismissed. In light of all that is still not known about this unique substance, it would be beneficial for more members of the UFO and scientific community to devote more time and resources towards conducting serious research of this mysterious phenomenon.
Arist's concept of the Planetary pULSetAkeR (PULSAR). Credit - NASA / Marco Quadrelli
The Gaia hypothesis theorizes that all of Earth's systems are tied together, making one large, living organism. While there's still some disagreement about whether or not that hypothesis is true, it is undeniable that many of Earth's systems are intertwined and that changes in one can affect another. As our technology advances, we are becoming more and more capable of detecting changes in those systems and how those changes affect other systems as well. A new proposal from a robotics expert at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) takes that exploration one step further by trying to develop a system that takes the "pulse" of a planet.
Planetary pULSe-tAkeR (PULSAR) was one of the most recent rounds of Institute of Advanced Concepts (NIAC) grants, handed out in January. The grant was awarded to Marco Quadrelli, group supervisor of the robotics modeling and simulation group at JPL. So, the obvious question is, why is a roboticist trying to develop a "pulse" sensor for a planet?
It has to do with positioning - or, more precisely, the exact positioning of a spacecraft compared to a ground station. As the exact location of spacecraft can be more precisely locked down, connections to ground stations become more concrete. So, as signals move through the medium connecting those two points, any disruption of the signals themselves would be due to the disturbances in the medium rather than perturbations of the location of either the spacecraft or the ground station.
NASA Goddard video on the ionosphere, one of the spheres of influence Dr. Quadrelli hopes to monitor. Credit - NASA Goddard YouTube Channel
In plain English, that means that Dr. Quadrelli and his team will try to understand what is happening in the different layers of the Earth by monitoring several detector "baselines," as they are called in the press release announcing the project. One famous example of an equivalent system is the interferometer that first detected gravitational waves.
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational Observatory (LIGO) consists of two 4 km long "arms" with a laser on one end and a detector on the other. That's a gross oversimplification, but the detector can pick up that change when a gravitational wave disturbs the space around the laser. PULSAR would use a similar concept, but instead of lasers in vacuum tunnels to detect gravitational waves, it would use those same lasers between a geostationary satellite and a ground station to detect perturbations in a planet's atmosphere.
Plenty of studies show that different layers of the atmosphere are coupled physically to one another and even to a planetary interior. For example, the ionosphere responds to space weather, as well as seismic events in the interior of a planet. PULSAR could shine a laser directly through different parts of the ionosphere from different geostationary orbiting satellites, and by analyzing the disruptions at each part of the ionosphere, it could provide an idea of what's going on in both the atmosphere and under the surface of the planet. In essence, it would take the planet's "pulse."
Another YouTube video discussion about ICON, a mission that also studied the Ionosphere until it ended in July 2024. Credit - NASA APPEL YouTube Channel
One of the most critical aspects of this system would be the precise control of the position of the geostationary satellites. They would be upwards of 20,000km away from their receiving station (compared to 4km for LIGO), so their signals could experience plenty of interference on their journey. Teasing out what that interference represents regarding physical processes could be a challenge.
But that is precisely what NIAC is for. The press release for the project doesn't provide many details about what the Phase I grant will focus on in terms of simulations, modeling, or hardware implementation, but addressing the challenges facing such a project is certainly within the realm of physical possibility. Maybe someday in the future, we'll have a system of robotic pulse takers measuring the health of our planet, whether it's a fully living organism or not.
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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.
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