The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
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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!!!
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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 Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
05-11-2025
This Professor Claimed That Out of 225 Cases Studying Reincarnation, 75 Had Birthmarks Corresponding with Past Life Memories
This Professor Claimed That Out of 225 Cases Studying Reincarnation, 75 Had Birthmarks Corresponding with Past Life Memories
In his book Reincarnation and Biology, Ian Stevenson documented 75 cases of people with birthmarks and defects on the head and neck, which he believed might be linked to past lives. Stevenson’s cases with 19 similar cases found in a systematic review by Laura Borges Kirschnick and her colleagues. Stevenson’s reports were much longer and more detailed than those found in journal publications (averaging 9 pages vs. 2.1 pages). Additionally, the cases in the journals didn’t represent the same variables Stevenson used in his research.
Reincarnation research is unusual because it relies heavily on books rather than just journal articles. Stevenson’s books are considered key resources in this field, and literature reviews should include books alongside journal papers. Finally, a trustworthiness scale is suggested to help researchers evaluate reincarnation case studies.
Ian Stevenson (October 31, 1918 – February 8, 2007) was a Canadian-born American psychiatrist, the founder and director of the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. He was a professor at the University of Virginia School of Medicine for fifty years.
Ian Stevenson
Stevenson began studying children who claim to remember previous lives— an endeavor that will surely be remembered as the primary focus of his life’s work—almost by accident.
Recently in this journal, Laura Borges Kirschnick and colleagues published a review of birthmarks and birth defects of the head and neck region in reincarnation cases, following the 2020 PRISMA guidelines for systematic reviews. (Source)
Birthmarks and birth defects have different causes, and many of these causes are not fully understood. Some people believe that certain birthmarks might come from past lives, even though this idea sounds strange.
In a study of newborns in Thailand, which is often studied for reincarnation, the most common birthmarks were Mongolian spots (66.7%) and sebaceous gland hyperplasia (60.9%). The most common vascular birthmarks were salmon patches (36%), while infantile hemangiomas (1.1%) and port wine stains (0.7%) were much rarer.
Birthmarks thought to be linked to reincarnation are mostly large spots and moles, sometimes lighter or darker than the skin around them, and areas without hair, especially on the head. Birth defects that seem connected to reincarnation are usually very rare types.
Reincarnation is a debated idea, but it seems interesting in cases where birthmarks match the location and look of fatal wounds or scars on people who have died. Some people also remember details about the lives of these deceased individuals, which adds to the belief in reincarnation. Additionally, they may show behaviors, emotions, and personality traits similar to those who have died, making the idea feel even more real.
The main researcher on this topic was Ian Stevenson from the University of Virginia. He spent the latter part of his career studying what he called “cases of the reincarnation type.”
In 1997, he published a large two-volume work called Reincarnation and Biology, focusing on physical differences in these cases. This study included reports of 225 cases from places like Asia, Africa, North America, and Europe. Most of the birthmarks and defects matched fatal injuries, but some were related to other scars, like earring holes or tattoos. A few were linked to marks made after death, which is a common practice in South Asia.
Ian Stevenson outlines his views on evidence for life after death in this video from 2004, emphasizing that his findings go beyond the accounts of children who claim to remember past lives.
Stevenson identifies six significant sources of evidence for life after death:
Apparitions: He refers to these as “hallucinations of the mentally well.” These are experiences where individuals claim to see or sense the presence of someone who has died. Stevenson considers these phenomena important in the discussion of life after death.
Near-Death Experiences (NDEs): He mentions experiences of individuals who come close to death but survive. These experiences have gained significant public interest, as many report profound and transformative insights during such moments.
Statements from the Dying: Stevenson points out that those who are nearing death often make comments or express thoughts that deserve attention. These statements may reflect insights or awareness beyond the ordinary understanding of life.
Possession Experiences: He describes instances where a person’s personality seems to disappear, replaced by the characteristics of another individual. This phenomenon raises questions about the nature of identity and consciousness.
Mediumship: Stevenson discusses people who claim to communicate with the deceased. He refers to these deceased individuals as “discarnate personalities.” He believes that some mediums can relay credible messages from those who have died, suggesting a form of continued existence after death.
Vivid Dreams: Finally, he intends to share accounts of significant dreams experienced by a colleague, which he believes provide additional evidence supporting the idea of life after death.
Ian Stevenson wrote a synopsis, Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect, that contained color photographs of some of the marks and defects along with far fewer pages than the two-volume set (Stevenson, 1997b). Cases with such lesions continued to be found, and several of us, led by Ian, later published a paper of additional birthmark/birth defect cases that included two American cases (Pasricha et al., 2005). (Source)
He was interested in how certain children acted. He wrote a paper about fears, called phobias, that many of these children had, often connected to how they said they died in a past life. In his study of 387 cases, he found that 36% of the children showed these fears. These fears often appeared when the kids were very young, sometimes even before they talked about their past lives.
For example, he mentioned a baby girl in Sri Lanka who was so scared of baths that three adults had to hold her down to give her one. By six months old, she was also afraid of buses. Later, she talked about the life of another girl who had died after stepping back to avoid a bus and falling into floodwater. Ian observed that the fears often lessened as the children stopped discussing their past lives, but this didn’t always happen.
Stevenson wrote about children’s play in a study he did. He found that in 278 cases, nearly a quarter of the children played in ways that connected to lives they described, even though these lives were different from their families and had no role models. For example, one boy played as a biscuit shopkeeper so much that he fell behind in school, while a girl in India enjoyed sweeping and even cleaned up after her younger brothers, surprising her Brahmin parents.
Ian also looked at Burmese children who said they lived as Japanese soldiers during World War II. Many of these kids showed behaviors that were unusual in Burma but typical of Japanese soldiers, like wanting to wear Japanese clothes instead of traditional Burmese attire and preferring raw fish over spicy Burmese food. Some also displayed traits like being hardworking and, like the soldiers, being cruel.
Ian believed this research was very important because it suggested there might be a third factor in how personalities develop. He pointed out that not all unusual behaviors can be explained by genetics or the environment alone; he thought some personality traits of the deceased people might have influenced the children in ways that couldn’t be easily explained.
Question: If reincarnation were widely accepted, how would it change the world?
Ian Stevenson answered:It would lessen guilt on the part of parents. They wouldn’t have as much of a burden that, whatever goes wrong with a child is all their fault, either through genes or mishandling during the child’s infancy. People themselves would have to take more responsibility for their own destinies. . . . I don’t expect any great moral transformation. On my first trip to India I met a respected Indian monk, a swami. I told him I had come out to see what evidence there was in India for reincarnation. He remained silent for a long, long time. Then he said, ”We here in India regard it as a fact that people are reborn, but, you see, it doesn’t make a difference because we have just as many rogues and villains in India as you have in the West.” (Source)
Cube UFO over Ulm, Germany on Google Earth map, its cloaked! Plz confirm! UAP paranormal news 📰
Cube UFO over Ulm, Germany on Google Earth map, its cloaked! Plz confirm! UAP paranormal news 📰
Date of discovery: Nov 4, 2025
Location of discovery: Elm, Germany
Coordinates: 48°22'52.0"N, 9°59'17.0"E
Hey guys, I just found this today and it’s kind of mind-boggling stuff. This UFO cube is like something out of Star Trek and it’s just absolutely amazing. The cube itself is bigger than a city block and it has an circular opening doorway that I believe ships can come and go as they want now it appears to be green only because it’s cloaked from the top so anything flying over we’ll see greenish fields of grass. They won’t see anything else greenish fields of grass or trees, but from the bottom viewed, they see nothing but sky and clouds so depending which side the person is looking at it Changes the cloaking color of this craft but it is 100% there and I hope you confirm it and see it for yourself on Google Earth. 🌍
Round city with a square in the middle on Mars. It’s 50 miles across, UFO UAP sighting news
Round city with a square in the middle on Mars. It’s 50 miles across, UFO UAP sighting news
I found this round city with a square in the middle on Mars. It’s 50 miles across. I was using a NASA Mars map, which does not give me coordinates, but I'm sure if you look at my video, it will lead you directly to this 50 mile disk on Mars. It's an amazing achievement in both its size and its existence on Mars. Only a highly evolved species with advanced spacefaring capabilities could land a craft that big on Mars.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
Huge UFO in crater with tunnels on planet Venus, alien tech of the ancients, UAP paranormal news
Huge UFO in crater with tunnels on planet Venus, alien tech of the ancients, UAP paranormal news
Date of discovery: Oct 27, 2025
Location of discovery: Planet Venus
Source: NASA Venus map
Now this map has no coordinates to give me and has no names of craters, so I'm just searching for alien tech...like structures, ships, faces, ect. And I found this huge oval alien ship landed in this deep area of Venus. Over the top of the ship is many small tunnels, about 5-6, which look like a single bridge going over the ship from one side of the hole to the other. Clearly made for transporting from place to place and they are using the ship as a permanent structure. Watch the video below and tell me your thoughts not he comment section of the video.
The interstellar object racing through our solar system has been caught unexpectedly picking up speed as it moves away from the sun and closer toward Earth.
NASA has confirmed a small extra 'kick' moving the mysterious visitor dubbed 3I/ATLAS off its predicted path, which can't be explained by the sun's gravity.
The sun contains almost all of the solar system’s mass, meaning its weight pulls all the planets together in a predictable motion scientists can measure, but these new movements by 3I/ATLAS appear to defy our laws of gravity.
The object, which many scientists claim is a comet, set a record as the fastest space rock entering the solar system ever detected by humans at more than 130,000mph.
After reaching its closest point to the sun on October 29, known as perihelion, its speed has now soared to approximately 152,000mph.
While NASA believes the sun's gravity is mainly responsible for the speed boost, scientists are having a harder time figuring out what has caused 3I/ATLAS to noticeably shift away from our home star.
If it were an ordinary comet, the heat of the sun would be causing the icy cold space rock to melt and shoot out jets of gas trapped inside, potentially pushing the comet in a different direction.
However, Harvard physicist Avi Loeb has revealed that astronomers are still awaiting evidence that 3I/ATLAS has released anywhere close to enough gas to prove the object is really a comet.
3I/ATLAS (pictured) has exhibited unique features, including an anti-tail, extreme color changes, and an extremely unusual course through our solar system
The interstellar visitor has unexpectedly changed course as it picked up speed during its perihelion with the sun in late October
3I/ATLAS is now just six weeks from reaching its closest point to Earth, and Loeb added that not detecting a cloud of gas coming from the object would be a clear sign that this latest speed boost was powered by an extraterrestrial rocket engine.
NASA's latest readings found the mystery push got significantly weaker in the days after 3I/ATLAS reached its perihelion with the sun, but it was still noticeable and unrelated to the star's gravitational pull.
For a natural space rock to pull off this strange maneuver, scientists examining the NASA data have estimated that 3I/ATLAS would have had to suddenly lose at least 13 percent of its total mass as it approached the sun.
That's the only way enough of the comet would have been transformed into a gas that blasted the object away like a thruster on a spacecraft.
If this happened while 3I/ATLAS was hiding in the sun's blind spot from our viewpoint on Earth, a huge cloud of dust and gas from that event would have formed around the rock.
In December, the James Webb Space Telescope will look for this giant cloud around 3I/ATLAS.
However, Loeb has noted that 3I/ATLAS showed little evidence of shedding enough of its mass as it got closer to the sun last month.
'If 3I/ATLAS is not enshrouded in a much more massive gas cloud after perihelion than it had in the months preceding perihelion, then its recent non-gravitational acceleration must have resulted from a different cause than cometary evaporation,' Loeb said on Wednesday.
The supposed comet, 3I/ATLAS, mysteriously turned blue as it approached the sun on October 29, unlike normal comets which turn red
Loeb added that there are now 10 strange anomalies that science can't completely explain when it comes to the interstellar visitor's trip through the solar system.
The latest oddities that point to the object possibly being an extraterrestrial craft of some kind took place as 3I/ATLAS neared our sun.
Unlike a typical comet, which would have changed color to red, 3I/ATLAS quickly began to shine brighter than normal space rocks and also turned blue.
That's when its course suddenly shifted beyond gravity's control, which NASA has just confirmed for the first time on Tuesday.
It's also incredibly massive, weighing approximately 33billion tons, which Loeb said doesn't make sense because there isn't enough rocky material in interstellar space to have created such a structure naturally.
While fellow scientists have concluded that the massive object formed in a distant solar system on the other side of the Milky Way galaxy, its strange chemical makeup is still raising serious questions about its origins.
Unlike comets that formed in our solar system, which are mainly composed of ice and water, scans have shown that 3I/ATLAS is an odd mixture of nickel and carbon dioxide.
Loeb has theorized that 3I/ATLAS could be a nuclear-powered 'mothership,' which would explain how it could get unusually bright if it were generating its own light.
Also, its nickel shell, which originally turned the object green, could be a sign of an alien intelligence using the valuable metal as a protective coating against the extreme heat of approaching our sun, just like humans do with manmade space probes.
Experts have unearthed the world's largest web that's home to more than 110,000 arachnids, creating a nightmare megacity deep within a cave.
The monumental structure stretches 106 square metres (1,140 square feet) along the wall of a narrow, low–ceilinged passage.
It is situated deep inside 'Sulphur Cave' on the Albanian–Greek border, around 50 metres (164 feet) from the cavern's entrance.
The sprawling network of thousands of funnel–shaped webs is home to two species – Tegenaria domestica, also known as the domestic house spider, and Prinerigone vagans, a small, moisture–loving spider measuring just 3mm in length.
Their giant web is strikingly similar to that of the lair of Shelob – an enormous, mystical spider that features in the Lord of the Rings. Her home, a winding network of tunnels, is filled with thick, sticky webbing that catches her prey.
'The natural world still holds countless surprises for us,' lead author István Urák, an associate professor of biology at Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania in Romania, told Live Science.
'If I were to attempt to put into words all the emotions that surged through me [when I saw the web], I would highlight admiration, respect and gratitude.'
The enormous spider web deep inside Sulphur Cave is home to a mixed colony of two different species
The monumental structure stretches 106 square metres (1,140 square feet) along the wall of a narrow, low–ceilinged passage
The domestic house spider weaves funnel–shaped webs which have joined together to create a megacity
The massive colony marks the first documented case of communal behaviour in two spider species.
Researchers estimate around 69,000 domestic house spiders and more than 42,000 P. vagans are sharing the same sprawling structure.
The web is so heavy that, at certain points, it may 'detach from the wall under its own weight'.
'We report the discovery and detailed analysis of an extraordinary spider assemblage in Sulphur Cave,' they wrote in the journal Subterranean Biology.
They suggest that the cave's unique sulphur–rich environment may have encouraged the two species to cluster together in record–breaking numbers.
Scientists would normally expect domestic house spiders to prey on their smaller neighbours, but the lack of light in the cave may impair their vision, the team said.
Instead, they appear to feast on non–biting midges which also call the dark cave their home.
Further analysis revealed the spiders living inside the cave are genetically different to their counterparts living outside, indicating they have adapted to their unique surroundings.
A male (left) and female (right) Prinerigone vagans, a tiny spider who also call the huge web home
Their giant web is strikingly similar to that of the lair of Shelob – an enormous, mystical spider that features in the Lord of the Rings
'Often, we think we know a species completely, that we understand everything about it, yet unexpected discoveries can still occur,' Dr Urák added.
'Some species exhibit remarkable genetic plasticity, which typically becomes apparent only under extreme conditions.
'Such conditions can elicit behaviours that are not observed under 'normal' circumstances.'
Concluding their study, the researchers wrote: 'Sulfur Cave in the Vromoner Canyon located on the border between Greece and Albania contains exceptionally abundant and diverse invertebrate communities that thrive in total darkness.'
Recent research has claimed that a fear of spiders is a survival trait written into our DNA.
Dating back hundreds of thousands of years, the instinct to avoid arachnids developed as an evolutionary response to a dangerous threat, the academics suggest.
It could mean that arachnophobia, one of the most crippling of phobias, represents a finely tuned survival instinct.
And it could date back to early human evolution in Africa, where spiders with very strong venom have existed millions of years ago.
Study leader Joshua New, of Columbia University in New York, said: 'A number of spider species with potent, vertebrate specific venoms populated Africa long before hominoids and have co-existed there for tens of millions of years.
'Humans were at perennial, unpredictable and significant risk of encountering highly venomous spiders in their ancestral environments.'
In Part 1 of this 2 part exclusive interview, former NASA engineer and Warp Drive pioneer Harold G. “Sonny” White talked about his education, his time at NASA, and how he finally left the agency to work at the Limitless Space Institute (LSI).
Now, in Part 2, Dr. White talks about his goals of interstellar travel and how the grants awarded by LSI in 2020 are helping scientists and engineers from around the globe research things like Pulsed Fusion Drives, Solar Sails, Directed Energy Propulsion, and even Traversable Wormholes.
The Debrief: One of the main programs at Limitless Space is your ‘I-squared grants,’ which provide money for mainstream scientists and engineers interested in advanced power propulsion to pursue their research. Was LSI already working on the grants when you joined, or did you bring that concept with you?
Sonny White: That was something I immediately championed as soon as I came in the door. LSI’s mission is to inspire and educate the next generation to travel beyond our solar system and support the research and development of enabling technologies. We wanted to be a “doing” organization, and as we were talking about earlier in the discussion, it really comes down to power propulsion.
I felt we needed a focused grant initiative, where we can put out a solicitation for the community to write some proposals and where they can be as bold as they want to be. I think it feeds the community in a way that allows them to get attention at their own universities and maybe improve the chances that they’ll get resources from other entities.
TD: Is that already happening?
SW: It is. One of our grant winners, a Professor University of Pomona picked up a grant. He also just sent me a note the other day that his graduate student just got approved by the University for three years. It’s cool to see how that gets connected back to this.
TD: How many applicants were there for these first grants, and how did LSI choose the nine winners?
SW: There were a lot. And the thing that was amazing to me is that there were a lot of very good proposals. They did a good job of making it hard for us to pick. And if we had more resources, there were more we would have liked to have funded.
TD: In the 1990s, NASA had the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics project, which in many ways seems like a predecessor to this effort. Was that project an influence?
SW: I think they did some great work. They tried to champion stuff that is in the same categories that we try and champion.
TD: Is there a technological advantage to this program taking place almost 30 years later?
SW:There is. It’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, the stuff we can do that we couldn’t do five years ago because of technological capability!’ For example, we do work internally where we’re working with the DARPA science office. We do an enormous amount of simulation work with our models, and we have to have 1000 CPUs to make the run; otherwise, it would take forever. Even five years ago, we couldn’t have done that. We’re also seeing work in nanofabrication that wasn’t available even ten years ago.
TD: You mentioned that you’re doing some in-house stuff at Eagleworks that isn’t part of the grants. Would you be willing to give me a little more detail on that, or is it top secret?
SW: Certainly nothing’s classified, but we tend to be very cautious about how much we say. We’re currently funded by DARPA, through the science office, so this is meant to be categorized as basic research/applied research.
We’re doing some work exploring something we call our dynamic vacuum model. And there are some potential implications of this dynamic vacuum model when you apply it to the idea of a Casimir effect. There’s potential for some power implications, some propulsion implications, and maybe some communication sensor implications for fabricating some customized Casimir cavities using our dynamic vacuum model to predict the quantum vacuum that responds to this customized topology and structure that we build in these nanoscale customized Casimir cavities.
So, that’s the work that we’re doing currently, internally with DARPA. We’re working with things like the Casimir Force, trying to measure very, very small fields in these cavities. There’s a paper coming out on that soon.
TD: Will you share that research with us?
SW: At the time, yes.
TD: Did the money for the nine grants awarded last year come from DARPA as well?
SW: The I-squared grants are philanthropic money. They don’t come from DARPA. That’s all philanthropic dollars, primarily from our benefactor, Kam Ghaffarian. Our DARPA grant is to support our internal work.
TD: Is there anything from your original Warp Drive work among those things that you’re actually working on? Or did it kind of hit a wall with theory in 2011, and that’s kind of just been where it’s been since then?
SW: (Long pause) We’re always thinking about some potential steps we can take to get from where we are today to something far in the future. But often, with stuff like this, because it is, at best, basic science, in some cases, you’re trying to figure out the science…there’s just a lot of detailed work. And it takes a long time. So certainly, that’s something we’re always thinking about and have an interest in, and as I said, at some point in the future, there may be some papers in the literature that we can make you aware of.
TD: Was there a timeline on these original grants, meaning is there a period of time you’re expecting to see results or something published from your nine grant winners?
SW: The I-squared grants program was always implemented as being a biennial program, meaning it’s a two-year cycle with a 12 month period of performance. That means we will put out a solicitation for the next round of proposals in the summer of next year. That timeline gives us a chance to do the solicitation, do the proposal review, make the awards and then follow these grant performers as they go through their process. Then we kind of digest and learn what they figure out before starting the process again.
TD: So you will evaluate these first programs later this year, and the public will get the results sometime next year when the new solicitations go out?
SW: That’s correct.
TD: Are you already receiving applications for the next round?
SW: No, we have not put out the next solicitation. The first solicitation was the early summer of last year, so we’ll put out the next solicitation early summer of 2022. I think we put out the first solicitation in the early part of May, and I think we made the announcements in September. So it was an aggressive grant review process.
TD: That’s a pretty fast turnaround.
SW: I know. We worked hard. We worked really hard.
TD: Because Limitless Space is a nonprofit, and because you have a financial benefactor, is there any long-term goal to try and capitalize on some of the work that’s being done? Or is it really a pure science venture?
Warp Fields 101
SW: Let me restate the mission of LSI and then give you the pinnacle objective. Our mission is to inspire and educate the next generation to travel beyond our solar system and support the research and development of enabling technologies. And our pinnacle objective, our “North Star,” is to enable Interstellar flight. Everything we do traces to that critical path.
TD: You have previously mentioned the Perimeter Institute as an influence for your approach at LSI. Could you explain that?
SW: The Perimeter Institute is a nonprofit, and they are solely focused on theoretical physics. There are no commercial products, and it’s just trying to push the boundaries of knowledge. It was set up in a very beautiful facility in Canada, a 120,000 square foot facility on a lake, and they have professors who come and visit and have lectures.
At LSI, our focus is advancing power propulsion as it applies to this goal of interstellar travel. Their focus is just trying to push the boundaries of theoretical physics, just to help humanity develop a deeper understanding of nature at its core. And so, in some ways, they were a good analog for us to kind of look at, as we were trying to figure out how do we set up the gears in this system, how do we want to do things, and what do we want to be as we continue to move forward?
TD: Where do you see the Limitless Space Institute in 10 years?
SW: Hopefully, we’ll be doing some of the things that we’re already doing and we’ll just be doing them a little bit more. Ideally, we’d love to have a facility, whether it’s located on a university campus somewhere or some other location, have a facility with laboratories, classrooms, and is partnered with universities all over the planet, even more so than what we are now. We have about 17 formal partnerships already.
TD: What is the single most important thing about your work at LSI that you want to make sure gets across to The Debrief’s readers?
SW: It comes down to this. This is all about capability, and our objective is to enable human exploration to the outer reaches of the solar system and the stars.
As a capability, chemical propulsion enables us to do all kinds of things. We can send stuff to the surface of Mars, we can send stuff to the surface of the moon, and we can send people to the surface of the moon. We might be able to send people to the surface of Mars. But we can’t even send robotic probes all over the solar system. We cannot send humans to Saturn in 200 days with chemical propulsion. But as a capability, if you just think about known engineering, known physics, nuclear-electric propulsion as a capability enables us to send humans to every destination in the solar system.
And the beauty is, if you build that capability, you won’t have to convince anyone to do that; they’re just going to do it. There’s always this perennial debate about ‘humans or robots.’ Well, to me, that’s a beautiful philosophical discussion, but I prefer to think about the practical side. As a capability, advanced power propulsion is going to enable us to do all kinds of stuff. We’ll send humans, and we’ll send robots. Because as a capability, we can do that. So we will!
A special thanks to Dr. White for giving The Debrief this exclusive interview. In the coming weeks, look for exclusive interviews with a number of the I-squared grant winners, including projects on Pulsed Fusion Propulsion, Directed Energy Propulsion, and Traversable Wormholes. Plus, keep following The Debrief to learn more about Dr. White’s recent Warp Drive breakthrough.
Follow and connect with author Christopher Plain on Twitter:@plain_fiction
Scientists have revealed a grim prospect for humanity's future, as they warn Earth will eventually be consumed by the sun.
In roughly five billion years, our star will burn the last of its hydrogen fuel and begin expanding into a monstrous red giant.
When this happens, astronomers from the University College London and the University of Warwick predict that Earth will be swallowed by the sun or torn to pieces.
Lead author, Dr Edward Bryant says: 'Just like the Moon pulls on Earth's oceans to create tides, the planet pulls on the star.
'As the star evolves and expands, this interaction becomes stronger.
'These interactions slow the planet down and cause its orbit to shrink, making it spiral inwards until it either breaks apart or falls into the star.'
Scientists have given a terrifying glimpse into the future as they warn that Earth will eventually be swallowed by the sun (artist's impression)
This terrifying discovery, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, was made by looking at nearly half a million stars that had just entered this 'post–main sequence' stage of their lives.
Main–sequence stars, like our sun, are stable because the inward force of gravity is balanced by the outward push from nuclear fusion reactions in their core.
But when stars run out of hydrogen to burn, this balance is disturbed, and the star begins to collapse in on itself.
This collapse makes the core hot enough to fuse helium atoms into carbon, releasing a surge of energy that kickstarts nuclear fusion in the outer layers, which then expand and cool.
During this process, a red giant can become anywhere from 100 to 1,000 times larger.
Using a computer programme, the researchers searched for the tiny dips in brightness caused by an orbiting planet passing in front of post–main sequence
Out of 15,000 possible signals, Dr Bryant and his co–author were able to identify 130 giant planets orbiting close to their stars, 33 of which were previously undiscovered.
They found that stars that had already expanded and cooled into red giants were much less likely to host large, close–orbiting planets.
In about five billion years, scientists say that the sun will burn the last of its hydrogen fuel. When this happens, it will expand to about 200 times its current size to become a red giant and destroy Earth (artist's impression)
A star's life cycle
Around 90 per cent of stars in the sun are what scientists call 'main sequence' stars.
These are stars that fuse hydrogen into helium in their cores, and range from about a tenth of the mass of the sun to about 200 times as massive.
Main sequence stars start as clouds of gas and dust, which collapse under gravity into 'protostars'.
When a protostar is dense enough, the pressure and heat start nuclear fusion and a star is born.
Stars keep burning helium until it runs out in around 10 to 20 billion years.
At this point, stars will enter the post–main sequence phase and become red dwarfs, white dwarfs, red giants, or even explode into neutron stars, depending on their size.
Overall, 0.28 per cent of stars surveyed were home to a giant planet, with the youngest stars in the sequence having planets more frequently.
However, for planets that had already grown enough to be classed as red giants, just 0.11 per cent were home to planets.
'This is strong evidence that as stars evolve off their main sequence they can quickly cause planets to spiral into them and be destroyed,' says Dr Bryant.
'We expected to see this effect, but we were still surprised by just how efficient these stars seem to be at engulfing their close planets.'
Worryingly, the researchers believe that the same thing will eventually happen to Earth.
Co–author Dr Vincent Van Eylen, of University College London, says: 'When this happens, will the solar system planets survive? We are finding that in some cases planets do not.'
Earth is likely to be safer than the giant planets in the study, which orbit very close to their stars.
The researchers studied thousands of stars that had transitioned into red giants and found that these were less likely to host large planets, suggesting that the stars had destroyed them already (artist's impression)
However, the researchers only looked at the first one to two million years of the 'post–main sequence' phase.
That means these stars have a long way still to evolve and could be even more destructive in the years to come.
Research suggests that the sun will grow so much that it swallows the two inner planets, Mercury and Venus, but might not reach the Earth.
In either case, scientists predict that humanity is not likely to survive the sun's evolution.
Dr Bryant told Daily Mail: 'Life on the surface would not survive.
'The expansion of the Sun would drastically increase the level of radiation received at the surface of the Earth, dramatically increase the surface temperature and render the planet uninhabitable.'
Five billion years from now, it's said the Sun will have grown into a red giant star, more than a hundred times larger than its current size.
Eventually, it will eject gas and dust to create an 'envelope' accounting for as much as half its mass.
The core will become a tiny white dwarf star. This will shine for thousands of years, illuminating the envelope to create a ring-shaped planetary nebula.
Five billion years from now, it's said the Sun will have grown into a red giant star, more than a hundred times larger than its current size
While this metamorphosis will change the solar system, scientists are unsure what will happen to the third rock from the Sun.
We already know that our Sun will be bigger and brighter, so that it will probably destroy any form of life on our planet.
But whether the Earth's rocky core will survive is uncertain.
Space exploration has always been constrained by one fundamental issue: the need for fuel. Traditional rockets require vast amounts of propellant, which limits their range and the scope of their missions. But now, scientists are exploring the idea of propellantless travel, which could completely change the way we think about reaching distant planets and even other star systems. A new review posted to the arXiv preprint server sheds light on various propulsion concepts that harness natural forces, offering a glimpse into a future where fuel may no longer be necessary for deep space missions.
Unlocking the Potential of Propellantless Travel
The idea of propellantless space travel has been around for decades, but only in recent years has it gained serious attention. A new study available on ArXiv delves deeply into this concept, offering a comprehensive review of several propulsion methods that could revolutionize space exploration. These techniques rely on external energy sources like solar radiation, planetary gravity, and even the solar wind, opening doors to missions that would be impossible with traditional rocket technology. According to the study, these methods could dramatically change our approach to long-duration space travel.
One of the key methods discussed in the study is the use of solar sails. Solar sails harness the pressure exerted by sunlight to push spacecraft through space. These sails, made of ultra-light reflective material, capture the momentum of photons from the Sun. The advantage? They require no fuel, making them a viable option for missions that extend beyond the capabilities of current propulsion systems. Solar sails could theoretically carry spacecraft to distant parts of the solar system, and even to other stars, with continuous, low-thrust acceleration. As highlighted byUniverse Today, this approach could pave the way for exploring distant planets and even interstellar travel, without the need for propellant.
However, solar sails do come with challenges. The further a spacecraft gets from the Sun, the weaker the solar radiation becomes, diminishing the sail’s effectiveness. Moreover, the thin, fragile material used in solar sails needs to withstand harsh conditions in space, which poses significant engineering hurdles. Despite these challenges, the potential of solar sails as a propellantless propulsion system remains a promising avenue for the future of space exploration.
IKAROS, the Japanese satellite that demonstrated the solar sail (Credit : JAXA)
Gravity Assist: The Power of Planetary Motion
One of the oldest propellantless techniques, gravity assist, has been used successfully by missions like Voyager. By flying close to a planet and timing the approach carefully, spacecraft can gain speed by stealing a small amount of the planet’s orbital momentum. This method has been pivotal in exploring the outer solar system, as it allows spacecraft to change trajectory and gain velocity without burning fuel.
Gravity assists are highly effective, but they are dependent on planetary positions and careful mission planning. The limitation here is that the spacecraft must pass near specific planets, which makes missions highly dependent on the timing of planetary alignments. These kinds of opportunities are rare, and the trajectory of such missions can be inflexible. Despite these limitations, gravity assists have proven to be an invaluable tool for space exploration, allowing missions to traverse vast distances and visit multiple planets with minimal fuel consumption.
Magnetic and Electric Sails: Harnessing the Solar Wind
While solar sails offer steady thrust using sunlight, magnetic and electric sails take a different approach by utilizing the solar wind—charged particles constantly emitted by the Sun. Magnetic sails generate thrust by interacting with this stream of charged particles using large superconducting coils, while electric sails rely on long tethers charged with electricity to repel solar wind protons. Both methods offer several advantages, including the ability to accelerate spacecraft over long periods of time without the need for propellant.
However, these technologies are still in their infancy, with significant challenges to overcome. For instance, magnetic sails would require enormous superconducting loops, potentially up to 50 kilometers in radius, maintained at cryogenic temperatures. Such structures are far beyond our current engineering capabilities. Likewise, electric sails require large, thin wires that are both lightweight and strong, and they need significant electrical power to maintain the necessary charge.
Both magnetic and electric sails offer higher potential for acceleration compared to solar sails, and they don’t suffer from the same degradation over time. Yet, the required technologies are still in development, and creating and deploying such large structures in space presents a monumental challenge. Nonetheless, the study suggests that with continued research and innovation, these methods could one day provide a viable alternative to traditional rocket propulsion.
Source: X / @NASA (Unconfirmed image circulating online)
A photo claiming to be a NASA leak of the interstellar object 3I/Atlas has gone viral on social media. Around the same time, a beautiful sky photo from Japan also caught everyone’s attention. Both pictures have become popular online, sparking curiosity and conversation among space fans and regular viewers alike.
The alleged NASA leak
A photo purported to be of 3I/Atlas hit the internet early this week, with many users claiming it originated from NASA’s internal systems and showed a close-up of the mysterious space object in question.
3I/Atlas appears, in the picture, to be a glowing structure with a bluish-green light around it. Some online users described the shape of it as unusual and suggested it could be something artificial.
However, NASA has not confirmed that this image is real, and the agency has not made any official statement about any leak. Scientists have also warned people against believing unverified posts shared on the internet.
Experts say the image could have easily been a digitally edited photo or even real telescope data with added filters to make it look more dramatic.
What we know about 3I/Atlas
3I/Atlas is an interstellar object, which means it came from outside our solar system. It is the third known object of its kind after ‘Oumuamua (2017) and 2I/Borisov (2019).
It is being watched closely by astronomers as this reaches our solar system. According to scientists, based on its movements, 3I/Atlas would pass by once and will not return.
There is no evidence that it is artificial or is connected with any extra-terrestrial life. The most common belief concerning the composition of comets among scientists is that they are composed of rock, ice, and dust.
Japan’s viral sky photo
While the NASA leak was trending, another photo went viral for a very different reason. A Japanese photographer captured a stunning view of the night sky.
The photo showed the Milky Way and what looked like faint Aurora lights glowing above a mountain. The image was taken on a clear night, and people online called it one of the most peaceful and beautiful space photos of the year.
Many users shared the picture, saying it reminded them of how amazing the sky can look without any filters or editing.
How social media responded
Both images — the NASA “leak” and the Japanese sky photo — quickly spread online. Hashtags like #3IAtlas, #NASAleak, and #JapanSkyPhoto started trending on X (formerly Twitter) and Reddit.
Some people believed the NASA photo was real and hinted at secret discoveries. Others said it was probably fake but still interesting.
Scientists later explained that no official NASA data was leaked, and that many space images shared online are often altered or misunderstood.
What it shows about space curiosity
The two pictures have nothing to do with each other, but they both went viral on social media. They illustrate that space fascinates people to this day, and anything unusual catches the public's eye.
NASA hasn't given any new update about 3I/Atlas yet, but scientists are still studying it from different observatories in the world.
A giant colonial spiderweb in a sulfuric cave on the border between Greece and Albania may be the largest ever found — and it was built by spiders we didn't know liked the company of others.
Researchers have discovered more than 111,000 spiders thriving in what appears to be the world's biggest spiderweb, deep inside a pitch-black cave on the Albanian-Greek border.
The "extraordinary" colony consists of a colossal web in a permanently dark zone of the cavern, according to a study published Oct. 17 in the journal Subterranean Biology. The web stretches 1,140 square feet (106 square meters) along the wall of a narrow, low-ceilinged passage near the entrance of the cave. It is a patchwork of thousands of individual, funnel-shaped webs, the researchers noted.
This is the first evidence of colonial behavior in two common spider species and likely represents the largest spiderweb in the world, said study lead author István Urák, an associate professor of biology at Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania in Romania.
A cave-dwelling spider colony has built what appears to be the largest spiderweb ever found.(Image credit: Urak et al. 2025, Subterranean Biology (CC BY 4.0))
"The natural world still holds countless surprises for us," Urák told Live Science in an email. "If I were to attempt to put into words all the emotions that surged through me [when I saw the web], I would highlight admiration, respect, and gratitude. You have to experience it to truly know what it feels like."
The spider megacity is located in Sulfur Cave, a cavern that was hollowed out by sulfuric acid formed from the oxidation of hydrogen sulfide in groundwater. While the researchers revealed tantalizing new information about Sulfur Cave's spider colony, they weren't the first to see the giant web. Cavers with the Czech Speleological Society discovered it in 2022 during an expedition in the Vromoner Canyon. A team of scientists then visited the cave in 2024, plucking specimens from the web that Urák analyzed before going on his own expedition to Sulfur Cave.
This analysis revealed that two spider species live in the colony: Tegenaria domestica, known as the barn funnel weaver or domestic house spider, and Prinerigone vagans. On their visit to the cave, Urák and his colleagues estimated there were about 69,000 T. domestica and more than 42,000 P. vagans specimens. DNA analyses for the new research also confirmed that these are the dominant species in the colony, Urák said.
Sulfur Cave's spider colony is one of the largest ever documented, and the species involved weren't previously known to assemble and cooperate in this way, Urák said. T. domestica and P. vagans are widespread near human dwellings, but the colony is "a unique case of two species cohabiting within the same web structure in these huge numbers," he said.
A barn funnel weaver or domestic house spider (Tegenaria domestica) in Sulfur Cave. (Image credit: Urak et al. 2025, Subterranean Biology (CC BY 4.0))
Scientists would normally expect barn funnel weavers to prey on P. vagans, but the lack of light in the cave may impair the spiders' vision, according to the study.
The spiders instead eat non-biting midges, which in turn feast on white microbial biofilms — slimy secretions that protect microorganisms against threats in their environment — from sulfur-oxidizing bacteria in the cave. A sulfur-rich stream fed by natural springs flows through Sulfur Cave, filling the cavern with hydrogen sulfide and helping microbes, midges and their predators survive, the researchers wrote in the study.
The spiders in Sulfur Cave eat non-biting midges, clouds of which hover near the entrance to the cave. (Image credit: Urak et al. 2025, Subterranean Biology (CC BY 4.0))
The spiders' sulfur-rich diet influences their microbiomes, causing them to be significantly less diverse than the microbiomes of spiders from the same two species outside the cave, gut content analyses revealed. Molecular data also showed that the spiders inside the cave were genetically different from their relatives living outside, suggesting the cave-dwellers have adapted to their dingy surroundings.
"Often, we think we know a species completely, that we understand everything about it, yet unexpected discoveries can still occur," Urák said. "Some species exhibit remarkable genetic plasticity, which typically becomes apparent only under extreme conditions. Such conditions can elicit behaviors that are not observed under 'normal' circumstances."
It's important to preserve the colony, despite challenges that might arise from the location of the cave between two countries, Urák said. In the meantime, the researchers are working on another study that will reveal further clues about Sulfur Cave's inhabitants, he added.
Images of vast ‘canals’ rippling across the red planet inspired fears of alien ‘engineers’ and changed science forever
The clearest ever picture of the planet Mars composed of over 100 Viking Orbiter mission photos from the 1970s missions.
Courtesy NASA
On 16 December 2017, TheNew York Times beganpublishing a series of investigative reports confirming what conspiracy theorists had long believed. There was a ‘secret programme’ hidden within the US Department of Defense that had investigated unidentified flying objects. From offices on the fifth floor of the Pentagon, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) had uncovered remarkable evidence of what it called unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), including videos of craft resembling Tic Tac mints that moved with seemingly impossible speed and agility.
Military officers soon claimed that secret programmes like the AATIP had reverse-engineered extraterrestrial technology and even recovered the bodies of aliens aboard downed spacecraft. By the early 2020s, hundreds of videos and images had come to light, some of which have still not been explained. Journalists learned that, at the very least, high-ranking military officers had been covertly discussing UFOs for decades – if only as a cover for secret weapons programmes.
An image from ‘Gimbal’, a video of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) taken by a pilot from the USS Theodore Roosevelt off the coast of Florida on 21 January 2015.
It sounds like the plot of a science-fiction film. But it happened. And it’s still happening. In 2025, further video evidence was presented to Congress, showing another Tic Tac-shaped craft flying over the ocean near Yemen being targeted by a Hellfire missile fired from a drone. Incredibly, the missile appears to have bounced off the craft, which continued on its path, hurtling above the water.
But what’s odd about all this isn’t just the evidence. It’s our collective response. More than half of Americans, not to mention millions or even billions of people around the world, believe that UFOs probably confirm the existence of intelligent alien life. Yet, most of us probably don’t think much about secret Pentagon programmes or impossible craft. Isn’t that strange? At this point in a Hollywood movie, riots would be tearing through cities. Governments would be teetering on the brink of collapse. It’s why the Men in Black erase the memories of anyone who even glimpses an alien. Popular culture (and common sense) make it seem obvious that the apparent discovery of aliens, let alone a conspiracy to hide their existence, should lead to mass panic.
So, why the collective shrug? And what will happen if and when humanity really does, indisputably, encounter an extraterrestrial civilisation?
For answers, we can look to one of the strangest stories in the history of science: the 19th-century ‘discovery’ of canal-building aliens on Mars. This story isn’t widely known today and, when it is told at all, it’s usually framed as a curious delusion, shared by a small group of maverick astronomers – at least one of whom had an undiagnosed eye condition. But the event had an enormous impact on scientists and the public. It involved hundreds, perhaps thousands of astronomers, and captured the attention of millions of people.
The apparent discovery of aliens on Mars a century ago reveals that the consequences of an encounter with alien life may be less traumatic but also more far-reaching than science-fiction authors have imagined.
Indeed, in a sense, ‘aliens’ have already altered our world.
It was the summer of 1877, and Earth had an intimate date with Mars. Though these planets regularly pass each other, this time they were set to come closer than they had in decades.
Because Earth is nearer to the Sun than Mars is, it takes less time to complete a full orbit. That means that our world passes the red planet every two years – an event that humans have been witnessing for millennia. First, a dim red point of light gradually brightens until it outshines everything in the night sky, save the Moon. Then the point of light seems to move backwards as Earth wheels past, before fading again. During the peak of the event, the Sun, Earth and Mars form a straight line, with Earth in the middle and the red planet opposite us. That is why this moment is known as an ‘opposition’.
However, not all oppositions are equal. The one set to occur in 1877 would happen when Mars was alsoin the part of its elliptical orbit that brings it nearer to the Sun. Such ‘perihelic’ oppositions (from peri, meaning near, and helios, meaning Sun) happen just once every 15-17 years and bring Mars nearer to Earth. And in some of these oppositions, the tug of distant Jupiter’s gravity means that Mars is drawn even closer to our planet. That’s what happened in 1877, when Mars passed just 56 million kilometres from Earth (it’s more than 350 million kilometres away as I write this sentence). By the measure of cosmic distances, in 1877 the two planets were almost touching.
New telescope designs allowed observers to see genuine features on the Martian surface
Changes in astronomy and in the instruments used by astronomers ensured that this opposition would truly be like no other in history. The invention of the telescope in the early 17th century had already revealed that Mars was a world, not just a point of light. Indeed, in an age of colonial expansion, Mars seemed like a new world that could be explored and charted by Europeans, remotely of course, as though it were just another imperial frontier.
An 1867 map of Mars by the British author Richard Proctor, who gave the impression of an Earth-like world and named its most prominent features after British astronomers. From Other Worlds Than Ours (1870) by Richard Proctor.
By the end of the 18th century, new telescope designs allowed observers to see genuine features on the Martian surface. Astronomers had previously focused on making precise calculations of celestial movements, but now the environments of other worlds seemed worthy of serious study. What was on the surface of our neighbouring planet?
Observers soon determined that there were bright regions at the poles of Mars and dark patches at lower latitudes. What’s more, the shape and colour of these regions seemed to fluctuate dramatically over time.
Polar exploration on Earth suggested that the bright regions of Mars were ice caps undergoing seasonal melting and refreezing. The dark regions were more mysterious. These areas appeared to transform so much that early 19th-century scientists believed they had to be either cloud formations, oceans spilling their banks, or vegetation undergoing seasonal changes. Mars seemed to be a living world, much like our own.
Night after night, he huddled over his gleaming refractor, high up on a rooftop above Milan, sketching Mars
This widely held view made the opposition of 1877 a major event for scientists. Telescopes were now so powerful that it seemed like a second Earth could be unveiled for the first time during the passing of Mars.
Months before the opposition, as the red planet began to brighten in the night sky, the Italian astronomer and hydraulic engineer Giovanni Schiaparelli got to work. Night after night, he huddled over the eyepiece of his gleaming refractor, high up on a rooftop above Milan, sketching Mars. As the planet wheeled closer and closer, he recorded each new detail that shimmered into view. When the opposition passed, Schiaparelli gathered his sketches and drew a complete map of Mars in the Mercator projection – the same projection commonly used in maps of Earth’s continents.
An 1877 map of the channels, or canals, on Mars, by Giovanni Schiaparelli.
It was like no other depiction. Astronomers had previously glimpsed linear features on the planet, but Schiaparelli’s Mars was covered with them. They were, he wrote, canali that linked Martian oceans. Schiaparelli seems to have preferred that canali would be translated as ‘channels’. However, it was more often rendered as ‘canals’ when his observations were reported in English.
Some astronomers doubted that the channels, or canals, actually existed. But Schiaparelli was a leader in his field, with renowned eyesight, and it couldn’t be denied that his map of Mars was more detailed than any drawn before. Indeed, it included so many previously uncharted features that Schiaparelli introduced a new naming scheme, drawing from classical mythology, to make sense of them all. With a decidedly alien surface named after gods and goddesses, Mars became a more mysterious and intriguing world than anyone had imagined.
In a different time, Schiaparelli’s ‘canals’ might have been a short-lived curiosity. Instead, they became a popular sensation – thanks to the shifting nature of mass media, during an age of imperial expansion and technological disruption.
Around the time of the 1877 opposition, major newspapers, such as TheNew York Herald, were beginning to secure exclusive access to telegraph lines that permitted instantaneous communication between far-flung cities. These newspapers did not just reportwhat had happened along the exotic frontiers of the era’s empires. They also helped to create the news. In the process, they influenced how scientific discoveries reached ordinary people and shaped what counted as a ‘discovery’ among scientists.
These dynamics were primarily responsible for the ‘Mars Boom’ of 1892, during another perihelic opposition.
A key figure behind the boom was William Pickering, an ambitious young astronomer at Harvard College Observatory in Boston. Pickering accepted that Schiaparelli’s canals were real. He also believed that Mars was a world like Earth. The canals, he thought, were nothing more than strips of vegetation. But to know for certain, Pickering would need to take a closer look.
The canals seemed to copy themselves, or ‘germinate’, as Mars approached Earth
In 1891, he was sent to Peru by the observatory’s director (his brother, Edward) with orders to set up a modest mountaintop facility that would gather precise data about the colour and brightness of southern hemisphere stars.
Pickering did nothing of the sort.
It had been almost 15 years since the opposition of 1877, and Earth was once again bearing down on Mars. The tilt of Earth’s axis meant that when Mars reached opposition, it would be far easier to see in the southern hemisphere than in the north. With that in mind, Pickering spent lavishly to establish an observatory that would give him the best views of Mars that any astronomer had ever had. And he agreed to report what he saw to TheNew York Herald using a telegraph controlled by the newspaper. It was a chance for Pickering to make his name – and for the Herald to transform a planetary opposition into a sensational news event.
Schiaparelli continued mapping Mars. By 1891, the canals on his maps had taken on a more artificial appearance. From William Peck, A Popular Handbook and Atlas of Astronomy (1891).
In 1892, as Earth approached Mars, Pickering started to send curt descriptions of his observations to the Herald. The historian of science Joshua Nall showed in News from Mars (2019) that the newspaper reworded these descriptions into a vivid narrative that played on the expectations of readers in a colonial era. The Herald presented Pickering as an explorer who had journeyed to Earth’s ends in search of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to discover a new world.
Pickering’s reworded descriptions included dramatic accounts of environments on Mars that embarrassed more experienced astronomers who had downplayed the scientific value of the coming opposition. One of those experts was Edward Holden, the director of the greatest observatory in the northern hemisphere: the Lick Observatory in California. Holden’s views now seemed not only foolish, but an indictment of his observatory.
In the face of popular ridicule, Holden announced to the Associated Press that he had also put the opposition to good use. Peering through the Lick telescope, he had confirmed a remarkable property of the planet’s canals, earlier suggested by Schiaparelli: they seemed to copy themselves, or ‘germinate’, as Mars approached Earth.
Holden privately doubted that the canals were real. But in the process of defending his reputation, he had introduced millions of people to the idea that the canals existed – and that they behaved like nothing else in nature. An explosion of popular interest in the canals followed, reflected by a wave of newspaper reports in the United States and Europe.
The Lick Observatory, built between 1876 and 1887, was named after the land baron James Lick, one of California’s richest men. As he neared the end of his life, Lick considered how to preserve his legacy. He toyed with building a colossal pyramid, but ultimately decided to finance the construction of a telescope big enough to detect aliens on the Moon. That discovery, he thought, would let his name ring through the ages.
In the 1890s, history began to repeat itself. Another wealthy man – Percival Lowell, heir to a fortune gained in the textile trade – saw his chance to achieve immortality. Lowell seems to have decided that if Schiaparelli had been the Columbus of Mars, discovering a new world, then he would follow in the footsteps of the Conquistadors by realising that world’s true potential. He would discover what the canals really were.
Lowell ordered a gigantic telescope from Alvan Clark & Sons, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of fine optics. But that wasn’t enough – he also needed an ideal location to install the device. In Peru, Pickering had worked out a method for measuring the suitability of the atmosphere for astronomy. Under Lowell’s direction, Pickering’s former assistant, Andrew Ellicott Douglass, used the method to identify a perfect site to build an observatory for the new telescope: Flagstaff, Arizona, where thin, dry air would permit unrivalled observations of Mars.
What was this strange, fluctuating latticework that seemed to cover the planet?
As Earth approached Mars in 1894, Lowell, Douglass and other members of their team began to observe the canals. With painstaking diligence, they would eventually map more than 400, of which more than 50 canals seemed to show signs of ‘germination’, or doubling. What’s more, the team charted some 200 oases – circular features at the intersection of canals – including one that seemed to connect no fewer than 17 canals. Nor were these features stable. They were faint when Earth approached Mars, but darkened as Earth left Mars behind.
What was this strange, fluctuating latticework that seemed to cover the planet? To Lowell, the age of Mars provided the first clue. Most scientists believed that the planets had formed one after another, from rings of gas and dust released by the Sun. That meant that Mars was older than Earth.
Canals and oases rotate into view in sketches published by Lowell. From Percival Lowell, The Planet Mars (1894). Flagstaff: Lowell Observatory.
A second clue came from naturalists who had discovered fossilised sea creatures on dry land, far from the ocean. Earth, it seemed, was drying as it aged. When Douglass spotted a canal crisscrossing one of the dark regions of Mars, he believed he had uncovered proof that those regions weren’t oceans, as Schiaparelli and other astronomers had assumed. Because Mars was older than Earth, it was naturally drier.
A third clue came from the changes that swept across Mars. The canals seemed to darken, first around the pole and then towards the equator, as spring arrived in each Martian hemisphere. At the same time, what appeared to be an ‘ice cap’ in the northern hemisphere seemed to melt, creating a dark region around its perimeter.
A fourth clue consisted of environmental changes happening on Earth. Between 1877 and 1894 – from the time when Schiaparelli first mapped the canals to when Lowell arrived in Flagstaff – a series of extreme El Niño events brought catastrophic droughts and famine to much of the world. By then, irrigation systems and especially ship canals had emerged as quintessential infrastructure projects of an industrialising world. In the US alone, workers had built some 6,800 kilometres of navigable canals by 1860, a figure almost exactly equivalent to the diameter of Mars.
People believed they could actually see the canals using small telescopes
Lowell put the clues together. An alien civilisation, he speculated, had long ago emerged on Mars. When the planet dried out, that civilisation was imperilled. It responded by using its advanced technology to build a world-straddling network of canals. The canals funnelled water from its last reservoirs – the poles – to vast food-growing regions around the equator. When the ice caps melted in the spring, the water would flow south, and vegetation would sprout around the canals, appearing to darken them in a wave that swept from each pole to the equator. Around the north pole, a sea of meltwater formed first, creating the dark region that emerged every spring.
It was an elegant explanation, and it made Lowell an overnight celebrity. His books were bestsellers, his lectures sold out, and his ideas routinely made the front page of major newspapers. What’s more, people believed that they could actually see the canals using small telescopes, which had recently become a common possession for well-to-do families. Newspapers even printed instructions for canal-watching.
Not everyone believed Lowell’s explanation. Some astronomers always doubted that the canals were real – a view that gained credibility in the early 20th century, when powerful telescopes seemed to resolve apparently linear features on Mars into discontinuous spots and streaks. Then, in the 1960s, the robotic exploration of the planet finally proved beyond doubt that the canals were illusions, and that the environmental changes Lowell took for proof of flowing water had been caused by enormous dust storms that exposed or obscured dark rock and sand. In a sense, Mars is an even less Earth-like world than Lowell had imagined.
At the end of the 19th century, however, millions seem to have believed that a species much older and more advanced than humanity had found a way to survive on a dying planet that, every two years, passed precariously close to Earth.
In 1895, a front-page article in The Cook County Herald, an Illinois newspaper, announced that ‘very strange and mysterious things are going on on Mars.’ Douglass had just spotted what seemed like flashes along the Martian ‘terminator’, the dividing line between night and day on the planet. When he and other astronomers announced such sightings, their descriptions routinely made it into the newspapers – and prompted letters from anxious readers who believed that the Martians were messaging Earth.
Lowell uncharacteristically pointed out that the flashes were probably natural in origin, caused by sunlight glinting off ice, for example. Yet light seemed like a natural way to send a signal between worlds. Public figures of all stripes, from inventors to poets, now proposed ambitious schemes to message the Martians using light and colour.
The cover of the September 1919 edition of Popular Science magazine encouraged contact with Mars.
Courtesy Popular Science
Some called for the construction of enormous mirrors that could focus sunlight – or better yet, electric light – into beams bright enough for the Martians to see. Others suggested that immense geometric shapes could be carved into forests using fire, or that enormous strips of black fabric could be hooked to motors in the Saharan desert and rearranged to send a message. Everyone agreed that any message had to relay information universal to all intelligent life. If sent to clever Martian observers, flashes of light would communicate something about the structure of the solar system, or the basics of geometry. Once the Martians understood how humans used light flashes to communicate universal information, they would be able to respond in kind. Eventually, a shared, interplanetary language could be developed. This became the underlying principle that still informs how we think about communicating with aliens.
At the turn of the 20th century, breakthroughs in wireless communication, using radio waves, suggested light and colour weren’t the only ways to send and receive messages from Mars. Sitting in his laboratory in Colorado Springs one night in July 1899, the inventor Nikola Tesla suddenly heard a repeating radio signal that he believed might have come from another world. He was awestruck, thinking that he had witnessed ‘the revelation of a great truth’. For the rest of his life, he obsessed over how he could use his inventions to return the message. In all probability, he had actually heard a signal from Jupiter, caused by interactions between the planet’s magnetic field and the volcanoes of its moon, Io. Though the signal he received was not a real message from an alien transmitter, radio waves would become central to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence in the 20th century.
When another opposition with Mars was set to occur in 1924, most astronomers no longer accepted that idea of Martian canals. Still, many people continued to believe that the planet could harbour an alien civilisation. From 21-24 August, during the opposition, radio operators across Europe and the Americas observed a ‘National Radio Silence’ for five minutes at the top of every hour to listen for possible signals from Mars. At 7:12 am, operators at Point Grey Wireless Station in Vancouver even reported hearing a repeating pattern that briefly seemed like the message from Mars that everyone had been hoping for. The news made headlines, but the signal was soon traced to a terrestrial source.
Mars was silent. Nevertheless, it seemed as though the ‘Martians’ had communicated a grand truth. They had revealed, according to Lowell, that the ‘true history of man has consisted not in his squabbles with his kind’ but rather our species’ growing dominance over all other life. The canals suggested that the fate of all intelligent life was to remake its home world in order to delay extinction as the climate of that world dried out.
This was a forerunner to what we might now call the Anthropocene concept: the idea that humanity has remade Earth, and that this remaking is central to the history of our time. As Lowell put it, the discovery of megastructures on Mars helped to explain and justify why, even in the 19th century, ‘man has begun to leave his mark on this his globe in deforestation, in canalisation, in communication.’ Those Martian feats of planetary engineering hinted at humankind’s longer future: ‘[T]he time is coming when the earth will bear his imprint, and his alone. What he chooses, will survive; what he pleases, will lapse, and the landscape itself will become the carved object of his handiwork.’
An intelligent species did not need to go meekly into the night when facing a planetary threat
Yet the canals of Mars also hinted that the lifespan of intelligent species had a natural conclusion. Indeed, the apparent discovery of the Martians provided one of the first indications that humanity faced existential risks, meaning risks to its continued existence, and that these risks could come from changes to Earth’s climate. Mars was drying out, and the process would continue until the Martians could no longer siphon water from the poles. After that point, it seemed that every Martian would inevitably die.
Still, the beings on Mars had also shown that an intelligent species did not need to go meekly into the night when it faced a planetary threat. For some, that lesson sparked a very different kind of existential dread.
Martian fighting machines in the Thames Valley by Henrique Alvim Corrêa for the 1906 edition of The War of the Worlds (1898) by H G Wells.
The Martians had created ‘a shadow and a fear’, the president of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada told an audience in 1897. It seemed logical, he said, that they would look enviously at the watery Earth. Indeed, if space travel was possible, then there was no reason for the Martians to accept their fate on a drying world. They might instead take over Earth – at humanity’s expense.
The English science-fiction author H G Wells played on these fears to reimagine the lights reported on Mars as flares created by the launch of projectiles headed for Earth, heralding the invasion of our planet by ‘intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic’. His novel TheWar of the Worlds (1898)popularised the alien-invasion genre in science fiction but it was, above all, a critique of British colonialism. The story resonated with particular force in the anxious years before the First World War. For more than two decades after it was published, newspapers speculated about a Martian invasion whenever the planet reached opposition. Radio broadcasts of TheWar of the Worlds would later spark widespread panic about the possibility of a real invasion – and concerns over the compatibility of mass media with democracy. To Wells and other authors, the Martian threat exposed the folly of imperial aggression.
The Martians also seemed to reveal which social structures allowed a civilisation to reach old age. For some scholars and writers, the canals vindicated social Darwinists who used the concept of natural selection or ‘survival of the fittest’ to justify both colonialism and capitalism. Lowell believed that the stronger Martians had survived to reengineer their planet, while the weak had perished. Schiaparelli, by contrast, thought the canals were a triumph of collective socialism, a whole-of-society response to a planetary catastrophe.
In the decades after the great perihelic opposition of 1877 – through years marked by the emergence of the labour movement, the rise of communist insurgencies, the global spread of unregulated capitalism, and the eruption of imperial wars – the canal-builders on Mars seemed to have urgent lessons to impart. But what those lessons were, exactly, remained in the eye of the beholder. Some hoped that establishing contact with our Martian neighbours might change humankind. When that happened, ‘we may tell the Martians all about our great war,’ reflected an article in Popular Science in 1919; ‘perhaps we will learn from an older and wiser planet how we ought to run the Earth.’
Around the same time that alien engineers on Mars were being imagined, naturalists and explorers from imperial cities, like London or Paris, were enthralling their readers with tales of exotic lands and peoples on Earth. The Martians therefore also had a romantic, almost orientalist appeal. Novelists would later pioneer world-building science fiction by imagining adventures on a canal-covered planet with alien cultures and ecosystems.
The quest to map the canals of Mars directly expanded the frontiers of science
Few were more successful than Edgar Rice Burroughs, whose Barsoomseries, beginning with A Princess of Mars (first serialised in 1912), inspired a generation of young readers. Some of those readers would play pivotal roles in the coming age of space travel. A map of the canal-covered Mars imagined by Burroughs, for example, adorned the office door of the planetary scientist Carl Sagan, a leading figure in the Viking missions that undertook the first tests for microbial life on Mars.
Indeed, the quest to map the canals of Mars directly expanded the frontiers of science. It helped establish the importance of a thin and steady atmosphere for astronomy, leading in a roundabout way to the construction of today’s mountaintop observatories. Douglass, who had compared the climate of different sites in Arizona for Lowell’s observatory, eventually decided to study the changing climate of Earth using the growth rings in trees. He would play a central role in the development of palaeoclimatology, the science of past climate change.
By revealing that climatic changes have undermined the foundations of historical societies, and by showing the deep connection between greenhouse gases and global temperature, palaeoclimatology has confirmed the essential truth of the canal theory: climate change can accompany the maturation of a technologically advanced civilisation, and can also threaten the destruction of that civilisation.
In short, the ‘discovery’ of the Martians had profound consequences – many of which continue to shape culture and science. After all, what are Star Wars’ Tatooine and Frank Herbert’s Duneif not variants of Lowell’s Mars?
The history of the canals on Mars upends two enduring assumptions. For decades, these assumptions have appeared in everything from classified government reports to Hollywood blockbusters.
The first assumption is related to how the discovery of an extraterrestrial civilisation would be made and shared. It’s easy to assume that such a discovery would happen when scientists find definitive proof, either by observing a distant planet or receiving a signal from such a planet. Major news outlets would then report the news. But science doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and news is not a transparent reflection of reality. The Martian canal sensation – one of the first examples of scientists ‘discovering’ alien life beyond our planet – was a consequence of everything from environmental changes on Earth and Mars to the transformation of mass media in an age of global imperialism.
It’s no surprise that alien news today does not involve the careful evaluation of scientific evidence
The second assumption is that the discovery of an alien civilisation would destabilise society. The canal-builders of Mars did provoke widespread unease and even spasms of local panic, especially during radio broadcasts of TheWar of the Worlds. But, for the most part, public order received no serious challenge. The aliens on Mars were big news, but not as big as stories about political intrigue, economic trends or the descent to war – stories that had more tangible impacts on people’s lives.
So, maybe we shouldn’t be startled at our collective shrug when new reports of UAPs surface. Nor should it surprise us that alien news today does not involve the careful evaluation of scientific evidence. Instead, it is a reflection of cultural and technological changes, such as the spread of conspiracy theories on social media, for example, or the commercialisation of drones that resemble UAPs.
The Martian canals controversy has one more lesson to offer. When the canals were eventually exposed for the illusions that they were, the reputation of planetary astronomy briefly collapsed. Today, Lowell is often remembered as a misguided maverick, rather than a serious figure in the history of science. Yet few theories have stimulated as much thought, or been as enduring and productive for culture and science, as the canals of Mars.
Astrobiology, the science that explores how life begins, survives and evolves in the Universe, is today a burgeoning discipline. Two organisations – the SETI Institute and Breakthrough Listen – now lead unprecedented efforts to contact, or at least detect, an extraterrestrial civilisation. Even if their work uncovers nothing, the history of the canals on Mars reveals that there are few enterprises more worth pursuing.
The exercise will send an unarmed ICBM on a 4,200-mile journey to a test range near Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, a flight expected to take about 22 minutes.
America's ICBM is also capable of carrying three Mk 12A nuclear warheads, each packing up to 350,000 tons of TNT, and is designed to hit targets anywhere in the world within 30 minutes of launch.
While the exercise focuses on a single missile, the US maintains a far larger nuclear arsenal.
According to a 2025 report from the Nuclear Information Project, roughly 1,770 warheads are deployed, including 400 on land-based ICBMs, about 970 on submarine-launched ballistic missiles, 300 at bomber bases in the US and around 100 tactical bombs stationed at European bases.
Officials emphasized that the upcoming test is a routine exercise scheduled years in advance. However, it comes as President Donald Trump claimed that Russia and China are conducting secret underground nuclear weapon tests.
Speaking with 60 Minutes' Norah O'Donnell on Sunday, the president said, 'Russia's testing and China's testing, but they don't talk about it. They don't have reporters that are going to be writing about it, we do.'
The US Air Force is set to launch an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in a test of the weapon system's effectiveness, readiness and accuracy. Pictured is a previous launch of the ICBM
America's ICBM is also capable of carrying three Mk 12A nuclear warheads, each packing up to 350,000 tons of TNT, and is designed to hit targets anywhere in the world within 30 minutes of launch
While the Air Force has not disclosed specific details about the test, it has traditionally selected a missile at random from F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming for each exercise.
'The US Air Force operates 400 silo-based Minuteman III ICBMs and keeps another 50 silos 'warm' to load stored missiles if necessary, for a total of 450 silos,' the Nuclear Information Project reported.
'Land-based missile silos are divided among three wings: the 90th Missile Wing at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, the 91st Missile Wing at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, and the 341st Missile Wing at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana.
'Each wing has three squadrons, each with 50 Minuteman III silos, collectively controlled by five launch control centers.'
ICBMs armed with the W78/Mk12A warheads could theoretically carry two or three independently targetable warheads each, giving the land-based missile force a potential total of around 800 warheads.
The ICBM is one of two missiles currently used by the US, the other being submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) deployed from underwater submarines.
The weapon remains a vital component of the US military's nuclear forces, capable of delivering a nuclear payload to targets worldwide.
However, it is scheduled to be phased out by 2029 and replaced with the LGM-35A Sentinel ICBM.
The exercise will send an unarmed ICBM on a 4,200-mile journey to a test range near Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, a flight expected to take about 22 minutes
Officials emphasized that the upcoming test is a routine exercise scheduled years in advance. Pictured is a previous launch of the ICBM
The US Air Force said that 'the Sentinel weapon system is the most cost-effective option for maintaining a safe, secure, and effective land-based leg of the nuclear triad and would extend its capabilities through 2075.'
The LG-35A Sentinel will replace the Minuteman III ICBM with an initial capability of 2029.
Until full capability is achieved in the mid-2030s, the Air Force is committed to ensuring Minuteman III remains a viable deterrent.
The upcoming test also comes a week after Vladimir Putin claimed the Kremlin's military had tested a nuclear-powered torpedo and a new cruise missile, which followed Trump vowing to restart testing US nuclear weapons in response.
Confusion has surrounded Trump's order to resume testing, particularly if he meant conducting the country's first nuclear explosion since 1992.
The 79-year-old Republican first made his surprise announcement on social media on Thursday, minutes before entering a summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea.
No country other than North Korea is known to have conducted a nuclear detonation for decades.
Russia and China have not carried out such tests since 1990 and 1996, respectively.
Een wetenschappelijke analyse van UFO-activiteit nabij nucleaire sites en de implicaties voor ons begrip van onverklaarde fenomenen
Een wetenschappelijke analyse van UFO-activiteit nabij nucleaire sites en de implicaties voor ons begrip van onverklaarde fenomenen
Inleiding
De recente publicatie van een door pers beoordeelde studie die een statistisch verband aantoont tussen mysterieuze luchtverschijnselen en nucleaire testen uit de Koude Oorlog, markeert een belangrijke doorbraak in het onderzoek naar onverklaarde anomalieën (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, UAP). Voorheen werden dergelijke waarnemingen vaak gereduceerd tot pseudowetenschap of onderbuikgevoelens, maar de huidige studie, uitgevoerd door Dr. Beatriz Villarroel en Dr. Stephen Bruehl, brengt een nieuw wetenschappelijk bewijsmateriaal naar voren dat de betrokkenheid van deze fenomenen bij nucleaire activiteiten suggereert.
Dit proefschrift beoogt de inhoud van de studie systematisch te analyseren, de methodologie en bevindingen te bespreken, en de bredere implicaties voor de wetenschap en de samenleving te verkennen. Daartoe wordt eerst de historische context geschetst, gevolgd door een gedetailleerde bespreking van de gebruikte onderzoeksopzet, resultaten, interpretaties en de beperkingen van de studie. Vervolgens worden de mogelijke verklaringen en de toekomstige gebieden van onderzoek verkend.
1. Historische context: UFO-waarnemingen en nucleaire sites
Gedurende de jaren 1940 en 1950 werden talloze rapporten gedaan van onverklaarde luchtverschijnselen, vooral rondom militaire en nucleaire gebieden. Militairen, wetenschappers en burgers rapporteerden vaak het zien van glanzende, metalige objecten die volgens getuigen intrigeerden door hun gedrag en uiterlijk. Voorbeelden zijn onder meer de incidenten bij Malmstrom Air Force Base in 1967 en de uitgebreide waarnemingen tijdens de Koude Oorlog, waarin men vermoedde dat deze objecten mogelijk inlichtingen verzamelden of technologische observaties uitvoerden. Je kan deze vroegere waarnemingen het beste vergelijken met de actuele golf aan onbekende drones boven West-Europese militaite basissen, waaronder Kleine Brogel in België met Amerikaanse nuckeaire raketten..
In de vroegere periode voerden de supermachten de eerste nucleaire tests uit, met meer dan 124 bovengrondse explosies wereldwijd tussen 1949 en 1957. Het is opvallend dat veel waarnemingen gelijktijdig gebeurden met het testen van nucleaire wapens, wat vragen oproept over een mogelijk verband tussen deze fenomenen en de menselijke atoomactiviteiten. Tot op heden blijven dergelijke verbindingen in grote lijnen anekdotisch en onderbelicht, ondanks bewijs uit getuigenissen en historische documenten.
2. De studie en haar methodologie
2.1 Toelichting op de data
De studie van Villarroel en Bruehl maakt gebruik van twee hoofdbronnen: (1) fotografische gegevens uit de Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS) uit de jaren 1949-1957 en (2) de database UFOCAT, een gesystematiseerde verzameling van UAP-waarnemingen die deels gebaseerd is op Amerikaanse militaire en civiele rapportages.
In totaal werden meer dan 100.000 'transients' geanalyseerd — heldere, sterren- of puntvormige lichtverschijnselen die kortstondig op de foto's verschenen en snel weer verdwenen. Deze transients werden automatisch geïdentificeerd via algoritmes voor beeldherkenning, met een subset die handmatig werd geverifieerd om de betrouwbaarheid te vergroten.
De Palomar-observatorium in Californië, waar de luchtenonderzoekfoto's werden gemaakt tussen 1949 en 1957.
(Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net)./CC BY-SA 4.0)
2.2 Analyse technieken
De onderzoekers gebruikten geavanceerde statistische analyses, zoals correlatiemodellen en temporele patroonherkenning, om het verband te onderzoeken tussen het voorkomen van transients en nucleaire testen. Vooral werd gekeken naar de periodes rondom de tests: de dag vóór, de dag van en de dag na de explosies. De statistische significantie werd beoordeeld met behulp van p-waarden, waarmee de kans werd bepaald dat deze verbanden bij toeval zouden voorkomen.
Daarnaast werd gekeken naar het aantal UAP-rapporten op de dagen met nucleaire testen, wat resulteerde in een analyse van de correlatie tussen getuigenissen en de waargenomen transients.
De VS experimenteerde met kernenergie sinds de eerste atoombomaanvallen van het beroemde Manhattanproject tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog (afgebeeld)
3. Resultaten: statistische verbanden en observatiepatronen
3.1 Toename van transients rond nucleaire tests
De belangrijkste bevinding is dat op dagen dat nucleaire testen plaatsvonden, het aantal waargenomen transients met 8,5% toenam vergeleken met dagen zonder tests. Meer nog, het meest significante verband werd gevonden voor de dag na een test: op die dag werden 68% meer transients geregistreerd dan op andere dagen. Deze timing is cruciaal omdat het niet aansluit bij de verwachting dat eventuele effecten onmiddellijk ná de explosie optreden (zoals stof en rook), maar eerder met een vertraging.
3.2 De aard en kenmerken van de transients
De waargenomen verschijnselen vertoonden een opvallende consistentie: ze verschenen als discrete puntgerelateerde bronnen, vaak metallic glanzend, spiegelend en mogelijk roterend. Dit wijst op een mogelijk artificieel, technologische oorsprong, en het feit dat ze niet als bewegende stippen of strepen over de foto’s maakten, suggereert dat ze relatief stilhielden tijdens de opnames.
Foto's uit de jaren 1940 en 1950 onthulden duizenden heldere vlekken, transiënten genoemd, die verschenen in de baan om de aarde tijdens de vroege kernproeven van de wereld.
3.3 Correlatie met getuigenrapporten
Naast de directe astronomische data, werd een significante correlatie gevonden met getuigenrapportages van UAP’s. Voor elke extra UAP-rapportage op een dag steeg het aantal transients met 8,5%. gezamenlijke waarnemingen rondom nucleaire tests en getuigenlijke informatie versterken de hypothese dat deze fenomenen mogelijk een relatie hebben met menselijk uitgevoerde nucleaire activiteiten.
In een visuele demonstratie van surveillancebias worden punten volledig willekeurig geplaatst (witte stippen, boven). Punten worden het meest waarschijnlijk gedetecteerd (rode stippen, midden) als ze zich in de buurt van een gebied met verhoogde controle bevinden (geel). De gedetecteerde resultaten (rode stippen, onder) lijken geclusterd rond hotspots. Volgens een inlichtingenanalyse uit 2021 kan het onevenredig grote aantal UFO-meldingen rond militaire locaties te wijten zijn aan "verzamelingsbias als gevolg van gerichte aandacht".
4. Interpretatie van de bevindingen
4.1 Alternatieve verklaringen en afwegingen
Hoewel de statistische resultaten indrukwekkend zijn, moeten ze worden geëvalueerd binnen een breder wetenschappelijk kader. Mogelijke provocaties zijn onder meer:
Atmosferische artefacten: stofdeeltjes, vlammen of chemische dampen die reflecteren op de fotografische plates en mogelijk lijken op transients.
Contaminatie en defecten: fotografie-emulsie of defecten kunnen ten onrechte worden geïnterpreteerd als heldere puntverschijnselen.
Nucleairgerelateerde fysische fenomenen: ionisaties, elektromagnetische interferentie of radiatie die de film beïnvloeden.
De onderzoekers hebben systematisch deze opties uitgesloten door de aard van de waarnemingen en aanvullende analyses, onder meer door controle van mogelijke contaminaties en het gebruik van geautomatiseerde identificatiemethoden.
4.2 Implicaties voor de aard van de fenomenen
De consistentie en timing van de waarnemingen wijzen op een niet-natuurlijke oorsprong. Het verschijnen van metallic, spiegelende objecten in periode met nucleaire testen past bij het bestaan van artificiële technologieën, mogelijk van niet-menselijke herkomst, die mogelijk de aard van het bewijs op een fundamenteel niveau verandert.
De afwezigheid van dergelijke transients na 1956 suggereert dat het fenomeen zich wellicht aanpaste of reageerde op menselijke activiteiten, zoals het intensiveren of de overgang naar ondergrondse testen. Dit kan duiden op een bewuste observatie- of meetstrategie van een buitenmenselijke intelligente aanwezigheid.
Een nucleair gerichte oppervlakteschot wordt afgevuurd op het Eniwetok-atol in de Marshalleilanden in 1956.
(VS-regering/CC BY NC 2.0)
5. Wetenschappelijke en maatschappelijke betekenis
5.1 Doorbraak in het UAP-onderzoek
De publicatie in het prestigieuze tijdschrift Scientific Reports betekent dat de studie niet langer wordt afgedaan als pseudowetenschap. Een belangrijke waarde ligt in de methodische toetsing en openbare reproduciteit van de bevindingen, wat de weg wijst voor verdere wetenschappelijke exploratie.
5.2 Verstoringen, theoriën en scepticisme
Niettemin blijft er scepsis bestaan over de interpretatie van de data. Kritieken kunnen zich richten op:
Geautomatiseerde herkenning en fout-positieven.
Onvolledige of niet-representatieve gegevens (enkele observatietekens, single locatie).
Externe factoren die niet werden meegenomen, zoals weerpatronen of technische anomalieën in de fotografie.
5.3 Implicaties voor het begrip van buitenaardse activiteiten
De studie opent de deur naar nieuwe hypotheses over buitenaardse observatie en mogelijk technologische aanwezigheid in de buurt van nucleaire sites. Dit kan leiden tot nieuwe wetenschappelijke zoekrichtingen, waaronder:
Digitalisatie en analyse van historische atmosferische en astronomische archieven.
Multidisciplinair onderzoek naar technologische en fysische kenmerken van anomalieën.
Beleid en veiligheidsmaatregelen omtrent onverklaarde waarnemingen bij nucleaire faciliteiten.
Transienten werden waarschijnlijker waargenomen de dag nadat een nucleaire test was uitgevoerd, waardoor de mogelijkheid dat de plekken het gevolg van de explosie waren, werd uitgesloten.
6. Beperkingen en toekomstig onderzoek
Hoewel de studie significante doorbraken markeert, blijven er beperkingen:
De herkomst van de transients blijft onduidelijk, en bewijs voor bewust artificialiteit is inferentieel.
Data zijn historisch en beperkt tot Britse en Amerikaanse observatoria; observaties wereldwijd kunnen andere patronen onthullen.
Geautomatiseerde detectiemethoden, hoewel krachtig, kunnen nog steeds fouten bevatten; een combinatie van AI en menselijke beoordeling wordt aanbevolen.
Vooruitkijkend moet toekomstig onderzoek onder meer bestaan uit:
Analyses van digitale en nucleaire archieven van vergelijkbare fenomenen.
Opzetten van gerichte waarnemingsprogramma’s, inclusief moderne radarsystemen, telescopen en sensoren.
Interdisciplinaire samenwerking tussen fysici, astronomen, ufologen en veiligheidsinstanties.
7. Conclusie
De bevindingen van Villarroel en Bruehl vormen een fundamentele stap in het empirisch onderbouwen van de hypothese dat bepaalde mysterieuze luchtverschijnselen gerelateerd kunnen zijn aan nucleaire activiteiten uit de Koude Oorlog. De statistische correlaties en de karakteristieken van de waarnemingen wijst op de aanwezigheid van artificiële objecten die mogelijk in of nabij nucleaire sites opereren.
Hoewel verdere verantwoorde en gedetailleerde studies vereist blijven, opent deze doorbraak de weg naar een serieuzere wetenschappelijke benadering van het fenomeen. Het benadrukt tevens het belang van transparantie en samenwerking tussen verschillende disciplines en instellingen, om zo de diepe vragen over buitenaardse intelligentie, technologische observaties, en de veiligheid van nucleaire installaties wetenschappelijk te onderzoeken.
In samenvatting toont deze studie aan dat het onverklaarde niet langer louter een kwestie van folklore of pseudowetenschap is, maar dat het fenomeen mogelijk een integrale rol speelt in onze toekomstig mogelijk begrip van universele intelligente aanwezigheid en de risico’s voor onze beschaving.
Onderzoekers richtten zich op de kernproeven uitgevoerd door de VS, het VK en de Sovjet-Unie tijdens de vroege dagen van de Koude Oorlog (Stockfoto)
Bronnen
Villarroel, B., & Bruehl, S. (2023). "UFO activity near nuclear sites gains peer-reviewed validation." Scientific Reports.
UFOCAT Database, Center for UFO Studies.
Historische gegevens van de Palomar Sky Survey.
Documenten van de Amerikaanse en Britse nucleaire testen (1949-1957).
Getuigenissen en incidentrapporten uit de jaren 1950-1960.
Eindwoord
Het wetenschappelijk onderzoek zoals gepresenteerd in deze studie vormt de basis voor een nieuwe fase in het bestuderen van onbegrepen luchtverschijnselen. Door de combinatie van astronomisch bewijs, statistische analyse en getuigenverslagen, wordt de hypothese versterkt dat er bij onze nucleaire geschiedenis misschien meer betrokken is dan wij tot nu toe konden bevatten. De weg ligt open voor een diepere exploratie, die mogelijk het begrip van onze plek in het universum fundamenteel kan veranderen.
The Need for Blood: Shapeshifters, Aliens, and “Real-Life” Vampires!
The chances are that when most of us think of bloodlust or a desire for blood, particularly human blood, we might think about deranged serial killers with uncontrollable urges. However, in the world of the paranormal, whether it is strange, otherworldly entities, UFOs and aliens, or indeed people who assert their belief that they are, for all intents and purposes, vampires, we find this urge for blood more than many of might like to imagine. Moreover, much of this apparent bloodlust has connections to ultra-secret societies that seemingly operate hidden in plain sight, with members of these cults seemingly coming from the super-rich and the elites of the world.
Perhaps the best place to start with all of this is with vampires and vampirism. Indeed, while the modern world is perhaps most familiar with such concepts through the Bram Stoker novel Dracula, the fact is that cases of people having an insatiable appetite for human blood go back centuries, with Stoker himself even basing his main character on a real-life historic person, Vlad Tepes, perhaps better known as Vlad the Impaler. Born in 1428 near the Danube River in what is modern-day Romania, Vlad was the ruler of Wallachia in the Carpathian Mountains, Transylvania, on three separate occasions between 1448 and 1477, and was known for his appetite for blood. Vlad’s father was the Prince of Wallachia and moved within the elite circles of the time, being a member of a secret society known as the Order of the Dragon. It was from this connection to the Order of the Dragon that he became known as Vlad Dracul – or Vlad the Dragon. It is easy to see where the moniker Dracula came from.
Here, it is very much worth our time exploring the Order of the Dragon a little more, particularly how they operated, at least outwardly, in the same manner as the Knights Templar; officially providing a Holy Army for the church, primarily against the forces of the Sultan of Turkey. It is also worth noting that when the Knights Templar were dissolved by King Phillip IV of France over a century earlier in 1307, those Templar Knights who managed to escape fled to various destinations across Europe before blending in with their respective local populations. Could it be that at least some Knights Templar made it to modern-day Romania and continued their practices within such societies as the Order of the Dragon?
With this in mind, it is also worth highlighting the suggestion from some researchers that the Knights Templar came about from the eventual regrouping of members of the mystery schools of ancient Egypt, meaning that such teachings stretch back thousands of years. Indeed, from an esoteric point of view, the Order of the Dragon means the Order of the Dragon means the Order of Knowledge or Wisdom, and, going back to Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula, it is further interesting to note that many esoteric messages are said to be contained within its pages.
If we return to Vlad the Impaler, following years of unrest and political assassinations, including that of his father, Vlad had assumed full control of his territory by 1456, and his reputation for torture was, by this point, well known. And it was his solidification of this power that furthered his brutal reputation. Although Vlad was the ruler of Wallachia, the real power still lay with the region’s noblemen, or boyars, some of whom were behind the assassination of Vlad’s father. Almost immediately after taking the throne, Vlad summoned these boyars – 500 men in total – to his castle in Târgoviște. He had them gather in the main hall, and almost immediately, his guards appeared. What followed was the systematic execution of all of them, who were led out to the courtyard one by one, and then impaled on a large wooden stake. The bodies were left there for all to see, with some of these unfortunate noblemen taking days to die. Vlad had issued a brutal warning to anyone who dared to challenge his rule.
It is thought that Vlad murdered thousands of people in this manner. However, it is the accounts of his actions during these executions that are most disturbing, and from where the legends of his very real bloodthirst stem. It is said that as people were being impaled, Vlad would pull up a table in the middle of the killing grounds and partake in a huge feast, taking chunks of bread and dipping them in the blood of his victims. It is, though, the often-ritualistic nature of these bloody feasts that is perhaps most disturbing. According to reports, Vlad would have his victims impaled in a large circle, with him sitting in the middle of them, feasting on fine foods and consuming his victims’ blood. Indeed, all of these details suggest some kind of ritualistic human sacrifice, including the drinking of human blood. Could it be that these rituals also stretch back thousands of years?
It is also worth noting the location – close to the Black Sea and the Carpathian Mountains – that was a prime route for those fleeing Asia for Europe, many of whom would go on to become the nobility and even monarchs of Europe.
Whatever the truth, it was around this time that Vlad became known as Draculea or Draculya, which eventually morphed into Dracula, which translates as Dragon’s Son or Devil’s Son. Clearly, we can see, then, that Stoker based his Dracula character on Vlad the Impaler, but if we return to the idea that Stoker also inserted many esoteric meanings and messages into his work of fiction, we can find some intriguing details. Such researchers point to the fact that Dracula is called Count Dracula in the novel, are, according to some, suggests that Stoker was revealing to the wider world that such activities were taking place within the circles of the elite throughout Europe. Moreover, Dracula’s ability to shapeshift and take control of a person’s thoughts is also highlighted, as is his need for human blood to maintain such powers (the ritual sacrifices we mentioned earlier). Perhaps of most interest, though, is Stoker’s close relationship with J.W. Brodis-Inis, who was an influential figure in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, whose rituals were said to date back to those same mystery schools of ancient Egypt we explored previously. It is further interesting to note that many members of this order were also Freemasons, who themselves have tentative connections to the Knights Templar, who fled from France in the early 1300s. Was Stoker trying to inform the wider world of these secret societies, and the bloodthirsty rituals and practices that took place within them?
While Bram Stoker might have informed the wider world of vampirism and its origins in 1400s Europe, some researchers insist that this practice stretches back much further, perhaps to the beginnings of human civilization. One such researcher is the controversial figure, David Icke, who draws comparisons between legends of vampires and reptilian entities, who, he claims, require human blood to maintain their human form. These reptilians, according to Icke, are often referred to as the Anunnaki, who have ruled over humanity since the dawn of time and have continued to do so from ancient Egypt and Babylon, to the ruling houses of Europe, right into the political leaders of the modern world.
While it might be easy to dismiss such considerations as nothing but nonsense, there are very definite connections between the rulers of antiquity and those who have control in the modern world. Moreover, at least according to some researchers, these reptilian entities arrived on Earth from the Draco star system. Of course, once more, we have a connection between the world of Draco and Dracula. One more thing to mention here, especially given Icke’s assertions that many of the royal families of Europe, including the British royal family, is that Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth’s mother, is a descendant of Vlad the Impaler. While we should perhaps treat this with a pinch of salt, you can make of that assertion what you will.
Whatever the truth about vampires and reptilians and their apparent need for human blood, it is worth keeping in mind that many ancient cultures practiced such blood rituals. We might ask just where they obtained such a belief system; perhaps from the “gods”, who some people believe were the Anunnaki, or reptilians from the Draco star system.
While legends of shapeshifters consuming human blood to maintain human form are dismissed by many, and perhaps rightly so, now would be a good time to explore unsettling claims of our modern world – reports of the “super rich” using blood, or blood plasma, of the young to “maintain eternal youth”. We should be clear that whole these procedures simply halt or slow aging, and are very much in experimental stages, there has been great interest in such studies from those who can afford to pay for them. Ultimately, we might imagine that should such procedures become more widely available, those with the money to pay for them almost certainly will do. And of course, while we should be cautious with such claims, there have been several conspiracies over the years of “private” youth-maintaining procedures taking place behind closed doors.
We might imagine, then, that if such procedures around using human blood to maintain youth are breaking into the modern public arena, we might find examples of this secret knowledge in the past. And, while once more, we should treat such claims with extreme caution and a large helping of salt, there are several intriguing characters that we should examine here.
Perhaps a good person to start with here would be the Count of St. Germain, who, according to some reports, lived from the mid-eighteenth century to the opening decades of the 1900s. Moreover, as if providing tentative proof of this prolonged existence, the Count appeared to have been present at several historical events. As we might imagine, there have been several suggestions put forward to explain this prolonged existence, ranging from him being a time traveler to that he had discovered the secret of eternal youth. Of most interest to us here, though, is the suggestion that the Count of St. Germain was, for all intents and purposes, a vampire. What makes these suggestions even more interesting is that, according to some researchers, the Count was a descendant of a prince from Transylvania – the same Transylvania that was home to Vlad the Impaler, and one of the locations in the previously mentioned Bram Stoker novel, Dracula.
Whatever the truth, the first mention of the Count of St. Germain in the official record is in the early 1740s in London, where he was a socialite of sorts among the city’s elite of the times, one of whom was the (then) British Prime Minister, Robert Walpole’s son, Harold Walpole. In a letter that Walpole had written, he described the Count as being “a little odd”, and possibly even “mad”. Ultimately, he was suggesting that the Count was eccentric, and he elaborated that he was an extremely talented violin player who could compose remarkably intricate pieces of music. It was likely these high society connections, coupled with his eccentric behavior, that led to his arrest on charges of being a spy. Although he was quickly released and the charges dismissed, the incident seemingly unsettled the Count so much that he left London almost immediately afterward and headed for mainland Europe, eventually settling in Paris.
Once more, he circled in the upper classes of Paris society, even striking up a friendship with King Louis XV. It was during his time as a guest of Louis XV that the Count began working on several experiments in a laboratory in Louis XV’s residence, including developing a substance that could dye any material, any color that was desired, something which brought considerable wealth and opportunity to the region. Perhaps of more interest, and keeping in mind the brief charge of being a spy while he was in London, there were several rumors that the Count embarked on several “secret missions” on behalf of Louis XV, missions which remain a complete mystery to this day.
Despite these alleged secret missions and experiments, the Count of St. Germain was often seen in various drinking establishments of the city, and, because he was fluent in several languages, he was often seen conversing with anyone who took an interest in him. Of most interest, on several occasions, if the Count took a liking to a person, he was said to place a considerable “handful of diamonds” in their hand. While some saw this as an act of generosity, others claimed that he could change bog-standard rocks into valuable stones and materials – essentially, he was a master of alchemy. Perhaps because of this suspicion that he was a masterful alchemist, rumors began to spread that the Count was much older than he suggested, and not just by a few years, but by several centuries, with some suggesting that he had been alive and present at the Council of Nicaea in the year 325.
It was around the same time that these rumors were circulating that the Count left Paris. His exact movements remain unclear, but it seems that he traveled from France to Russia, with further rumors suggesting that he became a close friend and advisor to Catherine the Great, assisting in her seizing control of the country. What is known for certain is that he eventually surfaced in Germany, where he, once more, inserted himself into the upper echelons of German society, even striking up a friendship with Prince Charles of Hesse-Cassel. In a remarkably similar scenario to that in Paris under Louis XV, Prince Charles provided the Count with a laboratory where he could conduct experiments and develop his ideas in private.
Officially, the Count passed away in 1784. However, sightings and encounters with him continued all over Europe right into the nineteenth century, with some sightings occurring as far away as New Orleans, Louisiana, in the New World of the United States (something we will return to shortly). It is also worth mentioning that in 1972, a gentleman spoke on a French television program claiming to be none other than the Count of St. Germain. As we might imagine, these claims were not taken seriously, but they could prove to be those of an individual who, through such bizarre claims, had managed to stay hidden in plain sight for hundreds of years.
At this point, it is worth our time returning to New Orleans in the early 1900s, and another intriguing character by the name of Jacque St. Germain. Much like the Count of St. Germain, Jacque St. Germain seemingly appeared out of nowhere and quickly began frequenting the social circles of the city’s elite. Moreover, Jacques St. Germain was known for his eccentric personality, often throwing lavish parties at his home. It was at these parties that he would speak of historical events, as if he had witnessed them firsthand, offering extreme detail and intricacies as he told these fascinating tales.
Interestingly, Jacques St. Germain claimed that he was a descendant of the Count of St. Germain, but some people, in part because of the tales he told and in part because of his physical resemblance to the Count, believed that Jacques St. Germain and the Count of St. Germain were the same person. In fact, not only did he appear similar to the Count, Jacques was practically identical to him, including, of course, his eccentric personality. Not long after this, rumors about Jacques St. Germain began to spread around New Orleans.
Perhaps one of the most interesting of these was that many people had noticed that Jacques rarely, if ever, ate any food or consumed any drinks at his lavish parties. Despite this, he never appeared unwell and never appeared to age. To some, this was proof that not only was Jacques St. Germain the Count of St. Germain, but that he was a vampire. Then, an incident unfolded that seemingly confirmed this, at least to the residents of New Orleans.
One evening, following one of his famous parties, the police were called to attend his property following reports that a woman had fallen from a balcony at the property. The identity of the woman remains unknown, but according to reports at the time, she was a local prostitute. Of most concern, though, when police spoke to witnesses at the party, they learned that the woman had not simply fallen from the balcony, but she had jumped of her own accord. What’s more, she had done so in a state of absolute terror.
Eventually, the woman regained consciousness, and she told police eventually caused shockwaves to spread throughout New Orleans. She claimed that Jacques St. Germain had not only attacked her, but that he had bitten her neck in an attempt to drink her blood. It was this act, she said, that had caused her to fling herself from the balcony to escape St. Germain. The woman was eventually taken to hospital where it was determined that she must have imagined the entire ordeal due to excessive alcohol consumption. Despite these troubling events, the police declined to arrest Jacques St. Germain. They told him instead to attend the police station the following day so that he could give a statement as to what had happened. The following day, when Jacques failed to show up at the police station, the police attended his property once more. Perhaps not surprisingly, when they arrived, they discovered that St. Germain had seemingly vacated the property during the night. As well as his disappearance, police were perplexed that he had left all of his belongings. However, after they conducted a full search of the property, police made further unsettling discoveries, the most disturbing being several bottles of red wine in one of the abandoned rooms. All of the bottles were open but still full. When the contents were analyzed, though, they were found to contain a mixture of red wine and human blood.
The gentleman who appeared on the French television show aside, Jacques St. Germain, or indeed the Count of St. Germain, was never heard from or seen again. There are, though, many questions that remain, not least if Jacques St. Germain and the Count of St. Germain were the same person. What happened to St. Germain following the incident at his New Orleans home? Did he manage to find a new residence where he blended in without notice? And if that was the case, how did he manage to fund his existence, given that he had left all of his wealth in Louisiana? Moreover, was the account given by the woman who jumped from his balcony true? We might ask, if it wasn’t, then why did Jacques vacate the city under the cover of darkness? Given that the police didn’t even question him following the incident, we might imagine that his high social standing would have protected him against any possible charges. With these questions in mind, we might consider that St. Germain did indeed have a dark secret to protect. Perhaps the biggest question of all, though, is was Jacques St. Germain was what we would collectively understand to be a vampire?
As interesting as the details of St. Germain are, there are other historical figures who have been surrounded in such controversy.
Arguably one of the most interesting of these, as well as one of the most harrowing, is the questionable activities of Countess Elizabeth Bathory of Hungary, who was not only known for her cruel behavior to those who worked for her, but also had an appetite for human blood. In fact, this blood lust, according to many rumors that circulated at the time, resulted in her murdering over 650 young women. Even more harrowing, it is said that she would then bathe in the blood of her victims as she believed not only would it maintain her youth, but also bestow other powers upon her.
Whatever the truth of such rumors, following the death of a young noblewoman – that Bathory had seemingly made appear like a suicide – the authorities eventually questioned the Countess, and when they did, the true nature of her behavior was revealed. She was eventually charged with 80 murders; however, he died before she could be put on trial while under house arrest.
While it might be tempting to think that individuals or secret societies were taking part in blood rituals only in the past, there are many accounts of such activity in the modern age. One of the most thought-provoking of these comes to us from the research of Nick Redfern about a cult that originated in Puerto Rico. It was while Redfern was in Puerto Rico in May 2007 that he learned of this disturbing group and their equally disturbing activities.
Redfern claimed that he was in a bar one evening when a local restaurant worker named Sal spoke with him about an ultra-secret group made of various members of the world’s elite. This group, Sal claimed, practiced rituals involving blood sacrifices of various animals, including chicken, goats, and peacocks. This group seemingly began operating at some point in the mid-1990s, and counted politicians, famous actors and musicians, and even members of various royal families among its members.
These rituals, Sal offered, usually took place in various locations, ranging from rich, spacious mansions to the middle of the rain forest, and would involve the sacrificing of animals, whose blood was then drained into a vessel as an offering to ancient gods. Redfern also reports that these rituals also involved alcohol and drug-fueled orgies, similar to those depicted in the Stanley Kubrick movie Eyes Wide Shut.
What is further interesting about these claims, at least according to Redfern, is that the same animals used in these sacrifices are the same preferred kills of many of the alleged cryptid creatures of the region, specifically, the Chupacabra. Of further interest, reports of the Chupacabra began to become widespread around the same time as the alleged origins of this mysterious cult. Sal informed Redfern that while the group didn’t invent encounters with the Chupacabra, they wasted little time in using such reports to cover their own dark activities.
We should note, as Redfern advises, that the claims should be treated with caution, not least as Sal passed the information on to Redfern after he had heard it from a third person. Moreover, although Redfern questioned Sal for more information, he was unable, or perhaps unwilling, to provide the researcher with any further information.
It is interesting to note, however, as Redfern highlights, the connections between Sal’s account and the religious practice of Santeria, which is practiced not only in Puerto Rico but around the entire Caribbean region. To quote Redfern, he writes:
“While those that adhere to the teachings of Santeria believe in the existence of one, overall god, they also believe there are numerous other sub-gods too, which are collectively known as Orishas.”
Those who practice this religion are known as Santeros, and many of their rituals are geared towards the appeasement of these ancient deities, as well as for reasons such as health or personal desire, with ritual blood sacrifices of animals being a major factor. Redfern writes about this, stating:
“A Santero would rub the skin of a paying client with the body of the animal that was to be imminently sacrificed. Doing so, the followers of Santeria believed, transferred whatever ailed the person – or whatever they desire – into the body of the animal. The sacrificing of the animal was an act designed to ensure the wish reaches the Orishas, who granted them whatever it was that the person in question required. Sometimes, the corpse of the animal was destroyed; on other occasions it was eaten. As for the blood, it was served in a large vessel that is then offered to the gods.”
While this is pure speculation, we might ask if a discreet group of the super-rich – essentially, the elite – also use these sacrifices, perhaps under the cover of such ancient practices as Santeria, and perhaps using not only animals but human blood sacrifices, to maintain and even increase their personal wealth and influence.
It is also worth our time here looking at another alleged secret society of the world’s elites, also documented by Redfern, based on information given to him by a man named Rob Lea in the summer of 2000. Lea claimed that he had proof of this dark cult, based in England, which had been operating discreetly since the late 1980s.
According to what Lea told Redfern, one morning in the summer of 1989, Lea’s father discovered the butchered remains of five of his sheep on the farm he owned. It appeared that these unfortunate animals had been attacked during the night. However, rather than some beastly onslaught, it appeared as though they had been killed in a methodical, calculated way, almost by something or someone who had knowledge and intelligence in such actions. The throat had been perfectly and precisely slit on each of the sheep, with their carcasses purposely arranged in a circle. Moreover, in the middle of this circle were the purposely arranged internal organs of the sheep.
Rob’s father suspected the sheep had been killed as part of a Satanic ritual and immediately reported his concerns to the police. However, when the police arrived at the property, the account took another strange and ominous twist. Not only could the officers find no clues as to who might be behind the disturbing activities, but they also appeared to discreetly warn and discourage Rob’s father from taking the matter further, specifically warning him about speaking to the media about it. Although there were no more such discoveries on the farm, as Rob grew older, he began to carry out his own research into the incident, as well as ritual sacrifices, in general. Eventually, he uncovered an ultra-secret group known as the Cult of the Moon Beast.
According to what Rob told Redfern, this group was comprised of several individuals who came from various locations in the United Kingdom. All of them were hugely influential in their specific field or walk of life. This group used “ancient rites” to carry out various rituals and ceremonies, which involved animal sacrifices that would summon up otherworldly entities, who would then use their power to assist the group in their dark desires, which, according to Lea, even involved the deaths of rivals of the group. Even more remarkable, Lea claimed that after following the group for several years, he managed to secretly view no less than three of these rituals, claiming that these ominous entities came from a “realm or dimension that co-existed with ours”, and were a “non-physical intelligence” that would “take on the appearance of what was in the mind’s eye”. Further still, these entities didn’t use physical methods to kill their targets, instead using “mind power, fright, and suggestion”. Ultimately, they scared their victims to death. Darker still, according to Lea, this group also “hired out” these otherworldly entities to other members of the world’s elites for their own ends, which perhaps tells us just how influential this group actually was, or is.
Of course, many people will dismiss such claims as nothing but bizarre nonsense. However, it is worth noting that many other researchers have made similar claims. And while we should still treat such claims with caution, it is interesting to note the number of political figures and industry leaders who suddenly take their own lives or die of a sudden heart attack despite being seemingly perfectly healthy. Moreover, Redfern made other discoveries about strange goings on connected to dark cults, with specific connections to peacocks, as per the sacrifices in Puerto Rico that we mentioned earlier.
While Redfern was in Puerto Rico in 2004 investigating several Chupacabra reports, he spoke with a wealthy landowner who believed that his peacocks, despite there being a wealth of other animals on his land, had been seemingly singled out and targeted by the beast.
Redfern made similar discoveries regarding the apparent targeting of peacocks while investigating a similar cult in the United Kingdom in 2006. Redfern had traveled to Chartley Castle to investigate a crop circle that had appeared in a nearby field. Of most interest to us here, though, was the presence of peacock feathers in the center of this circle. Further peacock feathers were also discovered along the road that ran next to the field. When Redfern spoke with a Wiccan named Jane Adams, he was told that the presence of peacock feathers in this manner suggested that a dark ritual had been performed, suggesting that a mysterious and powerful cult was behind such rituals. She didn’t reveal any precise details of the group or the names of those involved. She did, though, state that they were a “group of occultists that had tentacles stretching all across the United Kingdom”. She also stated, whether of consequence or not, that the purpose of these rituals was to “conjure up” such supernatural creatures as “alien big cats” or “phantom black dogs”, reports of which, incidentally, are rife in the area.
One more account to mention regarding Redfern’s research is an incident that unfolded on the morning of June 28th, 2007, in Staten Island, New York. On the morning in question, employees and customers at a local Burger King restaurant were surprised by the sudden appearance of a peacock outside the restaurant doors. To begin with, the scene was one of interest and joy, with many customers breaking off bits of food to feed the friendly bird. However, the scene quickly turned nasty when a young man arrived and attacked the bird, eventually killing it. It was later discovered that the man in question suffered from schizophrenia and had neglected to take his medication. However, whether of consequence or not, and of particular interest to us here, the man claimed that the peacock was a “vampire” who assumed the form of a peacock to surprise attack its unsuspecting victims. Of course, once more, we should treat such claims with caution, but they are certainly worth keeping on the mental back burner considering all that we have explored here.
Of course, it was Redfern’s investigations into the Chupacabra sightings that, in part, put him on the trail of such secret societies carrying out such dark rituals, and he discovered more revelations after speaking to another woman in Puerto Rico in the late 2000s named Julia. She claimed that the increase in reports and the legends of the Chupacabra was down to a “secret society”, which her ex-husband had been involved with. In fact, it was his involvement in this group that had led Julia to divorce him. She claimed he had become involved with the group at some point in 1999, around a year before she had met him. She claimed that he had informed her that the power, wealth, and influence he and other members of the group enjoyed were down to “supernatural pacts between the group and the paranormal denizens of realms beyond ours”. Moreover, this pact involved rituals with human blood, with one specific ritual he attended at the lavish mansion of a “powerful Puerto Rican drug baron”, who himself firmly believed his wealth and apparent protection from prosecution were down to these dark rituals.
Julia continued that she had carried out her own research into the group’s activities, claiming she had managed to speak with three separate individuals who had been handsomely paid by the mysterious group for supplies of their blood. According to Julia, each of the people in question had been taken to an unknown location somewhere in the El Yunque rainforest, where a doctor, who himself had been well-paid by the group, extracted the required amount of blood from them before they were returned home.
It was from one of these individuals’ blood that was used in the ceremony at the drug baron’s mansion that her ex-husband informed her about. She claimed that this ritual involved dozens of people from all walks of life, all of whom were extremely influential. Each was “dressed in cloaks,” and all were extremely focused on the task at hand: to manifest a Chupacabra.
Julia claimed that a short time after the start of the ceremony, the light in the mansion began to flicker, and the room filled with a strong aroma of sulfur. Moreover, the air in the room began to “shimmer” before a Chupacabra creature began to form right in front of them right out of thin air. Then, things turned even stranger.
Julia continued that this strange creature was “semi-transparent” – it was “more spectral than it was physical”. However, several moments later, it stepped into a bowl full of human blood that had been placed in front of it. As soon as it did so, it began to become less transparent and quickly fully physical. According to what Julia’s ex-husband told her, it was the human blood that gave it a physical existence in our realm as opposed to the “ethereal” one from its own realm. Then, with many of those in the room still coming to terms with what they were seeing, a blinding “bright blue flash” appeared, and the Chupacabra vanished.
While it isn’t clear what the purpose of this manifestation of the Chupacabra was and how it served those behind the ritual, it is interesting to note the notion that human blood was required to make the creature physical, and perhaps explains the Chupacabra’s need for blood on its travels across the American continents.
Of course, the Chupacabra has long been associated with UFOs and alien entities, and there are several accounts of such that have direct connections to the need for blood (we have already touched on, for example, on alleged reptilian extraterrestrial entities requiring human blood to maintain their human form). Arguably, one of the most fascinating of these accounts can be found in The Mothman Prophecies by John Keel.
According to the report, on the evening of March 5th, 1967, 21-year-old Beau Shertzer, along with a young nurse and colleague, was transporting blood supplies and samples to the Red Cross Headquarters in Huntingdon, West Virginia. It was while they were on Route 2 between Huntingdon and Point Pleasant that their journey took a bizarre and disturbing turn. Out of nowhere, they noticed a “large white glow” that appeared in a flash over the trees that lined the roadside. When they realized this strange glow was heading in their direction, Beau pressed down hard on the gas in an effort to outrun it. However, only seconds later, this ominous, glowing object was directly over their vehicle.
With the vehicle still in motion, Beau wound down the window and attempted to look outside to see what was happening. Out of the light from the object, he could see a “mechanical-looking arm or extension” stretching towards the moving blood bank. Then, he heard the nurse he was riding with let out a horrified scream. He turned in her direction and saw another mechanical arm stretching down past the passenger side window. It appeared to Beau that this object was attempting to “grab” their vehicle, perhaps to carry it off.
Just as Beau was about to submit to their apparent fate, the headlights of an oncoming vehicle came into view. As soon as they did so, the mechanical arms retracted and the glowing object rose into the air and disappeared. Beau continued to his destination, although both he and the young nurse were on the verge of absolute terror for the remainder of the journey. The pair reported the incident to the local police, but there was little they could do, or were willing to do, to investigate it. Similarly, despite the bizarre nature of the events, there was hardly any media coverage of the incident, aside from a brief mention on a local radio station. Keel wrote of the incident:
“In cases like this, we have to ask: Did the UFO really intend to carry off the Bloodmobile? Or was it all a sham to “prove” the UFOs interest in blood. Later I tried to check to find out if any Bloodmobiles had actually vanished anywhere. The Red Cross thought I was a bit nuts. But I often find myself seriously wondering if we only hear about the people who get away!”
Indeed, we might ask just how many other UFO, alien, or supernatural entity encounters and their apparent blood lust go unreported, either because of the unwillingness of the witness to speak about such bizarre matters, or, as Keel states, because the people involved didn’t “get away”.
Beau, incidentally, passed away on October 22nd, 2015, at the age of 71. As well as having a long and respected career in the medical field, he also served in the Vietnam War, earning a Bronze Star for heroism. In short, he was a very credible witness who was unlikely to have concocted such a story.
Beau’s encounter with apparent bloodthirsty UFOs is far from the only one on record, however, with one of the most horrific incidents unfolding several years earlier in March 1956. On the day in question, United States Air Force Sergeant Jonathan Lovette and Major William Cunningham were searching for rocket debris on the White Sands missile testing grounds near Holloman Air Force Base following a recent rocket test. Lovette had gone to inspect over the edge of a dune. Moments later, Cunningham hears his colleague let out a terrified scream. He immediately ran to the top of the dune to check on Lovette. However, what he saw was something he simply wasn’t prepared for.
There, hovering a short distance from the ground, was a silver disc-shaped object approximately 20 feet ahead of him. Coming out of this disc was a huge tentacle-like appendage that was wrapped around Lovette’s leg, who was still screaming and calling out in terror. It was clear that Lovette was being dragged inside the object, and moments later, he disappeared inside the object before the craft shot straight up into the sky and disappeared.
Cunningham immediately ran back to the military jeep and radioed back to the main base about what had happened and requested assistance. Shortly after, Cunningham was transferred to the military hospital, where he was placed under observation. He was questioned several times, and each time he told the same account. Interestingly or not, at least according to some reports, an unidentified object had appeared on the base’s radar at the same time Cunningham claimed the incident happened.
A search of the entire area was carried out, with Lovette’s naked corpse finally being discovered three days later, around 10 miles from where he had vanished. When the autopsy was carried out, though, rather than providing the military with answers, it simply raised more questions. His body, for example, had been completely mutilated, although not in a manner that suggested a beastly attack. His tongue, for example, had been precisely sliced off, while his lower jaw had equally as precisely been cut away. Both of his eyes had also been skillfully removed, but the most disturbing discovery was the fact that every drop of blood had seemingly been drained from his body. Moreover, there were no signs of vascular collapse, which would have happened if Lovette had bled to death.
Despite being initially suspected of Lovette’s murder, in part because of these strange finds, Cunningham was released from the hospital without charge.
One last thing to mention regarding this case is that it was pieced together from accounts given by researcher William Cooper and a former Green Beret captain, William English, both of whom learned of the encounter from an apparent report from Project Grudge – Report 13. Cooper claimed that he was asked to investigate an annotated version of this report in the early 1970s. English, meanwhile, claimed he came across the report while he was assigned to a United States security service based at a Royal Air Force base in Chicksands, England. Both men, each without knowing the other, gave the same details. Moreover, officially at least, Report 13 doesn’t exist, with all of the other reports from Project Grudge (Reports 1 to 12, and Report 14) having since been declassified. Report 13, however, is simply not mentioned. We might ask just why this is.
Perhaps a good place to end our exploration of the need for blood and strange, potentially otherworldly entities is with just some of the cases of “real-life” vampires from the modern world. Before we continue, we should stress that most medical and psychological expertise will tell us that many of these people almost certainly suffered from mental imbalance or illness that resulted in their desire for human blood, without wanting to trivialize such cases, we might ask whether these urges stemmed from their own respective psyche or whether they were influenced by outside, otherworldly forces or entities.
Joshua Rudiger, for example, embarked on a vampiric killing spree throughout the 1990s in California. When he was eventually arrested in 1998, he stated that he was a “2000-year-old vampire” who required human blood for “vitality”. These statements led to him being given the moniker The Vampire Slasher by various media outlets. Ultimately, he was sentenced to over 20 years in jail for his crimes. Of course, whether Rudiger was an actual vampire or whether he used such assertions to distance himself from his horrific crimes remains open to debate to some (although, once more, we should stress, it is almost certainly the latter).
The following year, in Oklahoma, Sean Seller was executed for the 1986 murders of his parents and a store clerk. During his trial, he claimed that he had been possessed by an evil demon with a desire for human blood, even offering its name – Ezurate. He regularly drank human blood, often slashing himself or his friends to do so.
Arguably, one of the most harrowing cases of modern-day real-life vampires unfolded between December 1977 and January 1978 I Sacramento, California, when Richard Chase murdered six people to drink their blood, which led to him being dubbed The Vampire of Sacramento. Chase, it would come to light, had had an intense interest in vampires since he was a young child, specifically, drinking blood. From around the age of 10, he regularly killed animals to satisfy this urge, with details later emerging that Chase believed consuming blood would cure him of “paranoid thoughts” that had plagued him for as long as he could remember. He even went as far as to inject himself with blood, which, on one occasion, led to him being treated for blood poisoning after injecting rabbit’s blood. Following this, he was held in a secure facility for several months, during which time, staff regularly referred to him as Dracula. It was not long after his release from this facility that he began his blood-fueled killing spree when, on the evening of December 29th, 1977, he shot and killed 51-year-old Ambrose Griffin.
From there, Chase regularly prowled the streets of Sacramento looking for victims, later claiming that he would simply try doors of properties on the off-chance that they would be unlocked, stating to police after his arrest, similar to vampire law, that if he found doors to be locked, he took this as a sign that he was “not welcome” and he would walk away. Of course, in vampire folklore, a vampire has to be invited into a property before entering. So when Chase found properties that were unlocked, he took this as a sign that he was allowed to enter.
This was very much the case on the evening of January 23rd, 1978, when he discovered the door of Teresa Wallin’s home unlocked. He went inside and shot her before stabbing her multiple times with a butcher’s knife. Not only did Chase engage in necrophilia, but he also removed several of Wallin’s internal organs, as well as used a yoghurt pot to drink her blood.
Only four days later, on the evening of January 27th, he found the door of 38-year-old Evelyn Miroth unlocked. He entered the property, where, along with Evelyn, was her six-year-old son, Jason Miroth, her 22-month-old nephew, David Ferreria, as well as her friend, Dan Meredith. Chase shot all of them before mutilating Evelyn’s corpse, once more engaging in sexual activity with her corpse before removing her internal organs. Even more alarming, it appeared that Chase had been disturbed during this multiple murder episode by a neighbor, who quickly informed the police. Chase fled the scene, but he took David Ferreira’s corpse with him, which wasn’t discovered for several months; decapitated behind a church.
When police arrived at the Miroth home, they discovered several of Chase’s fingerprints in the bloodstains around the property, and he was arrested later that evening. Not long after, he was charged with six murders. Upon his arrest, investigators discovered a calendar in his home with the word “Today” written on several dates – all of which matched the dates of the murders he was charged with. This, of course, showed premeditation on his part, on which nights he planned to kill. Moreover, there were over 40 dates with the world “Today” written on them, meaning he had planned several months into the future. He was sentenced to death in the gas chamber, but took his own life after stockpiling his antianxiety pills before finally self-administering a fatal dose in his cell in December 1980.
One more case of modern-day real-life vampire murders unfolded over Thanksgiving weekend in 1996, in Murray, Kentucky, when 16-year-old Roderick Ferrell murdered his girlfriend’s father, Richard Wendorf, as well as his partner, Naoma. He bludgeoned the pair to death with a crowbar, the killings being the culmination of Ferrell’s long-held belief that he was a 500-year-old vampire named Vesago.
Following his arrest, it came to light that Ferrell was the leader of a Vampire Clan, through which he had first met his victim’s daughter, Heather Wendorf, when she joined the cult after running away from home. The group regularly met at an abandoned building they dubbed The Vampire Hotel, the words of which were scrawled on one of the walls inside. The group performed regular blood rituals in the building, including consuming each other’s blood. Although five people from the group were arrested in connection with the murders, investigations suggested that their number was around 30 members at the time of the killings.
Once more, whether Ferrell genuinely believed he was a 500-year-old vampire or not, or whether he used it as a way to distance himself from the crimes, remains open to debate. One thing that is worth mentioning, however, and something noted by investigators, was that Ferrell’s mother had a particularly strained relationship with her son, and she also had an intense interest in vampirism. Whether this contributed to Ferrell’s state of mind and murderous tendencies, however, remains open to question. He was, incidentally, initially sentenced to death for the murders, but his sentence was reduced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
As we can see, then, the notion of vampires, blood sacrifice, and the appeasement or summoning up of otherworldly entities is more widespread than we might wish to admit. Moreover, these activities have taken place for thousands of years. Indeed, when we consider the claim of modern-day cults partaking in such blood rituals, we might contemplate whether these ancient practices have continued right into the modern age through various secret societies, mainly made up of the world elites. As preposterous as it might sound to many, could these ancient blood rituals really be the reason why the families in power and with great influence remain in such positions across generations? Of course, if there is any truth to any of this, if only in part, then it gives us a lot to think about and to come to terms with.
Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS has been spotted for the first time since it disappeared behind the sun.
Using the Lowell Observatory's powerful Discovery Telescope, astronomer Dr Qicheng Zhang managed to snap the mysterious object as it sped back into Earth's line of sight.
The optical observations show that 3I/ATLAS is now even brighter than when it went in.
Scientists have been carefully watching 3I/ATLAS since it was first detected by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) telescope on July 1.
In early October, the comet vanished from Earth's view as it approached its closest point to the sun, known as perihelion.
As it approached a distance of 130 million miles (210 million kilometres), the sun started to evaporate the outer layers of ice into a cloud of glowing gas.
According to Dr Zhang, the comet is now bright enough for even amateur telescopes to pick up.
'Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is now rising early enough in morning twilight to be seen even with small telescopes under imperfect conditions,' he explained in his blog.
Scientists have spotted the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS for the first time since it disappeared behind the sun in early October
3I/ATLAS is the third time that scientists have managed to detect an object travelling from another solar system. It is moving on an unusually flat and straight path at speeds over 130,000 miles per hour (210,000 km/h)
3I/ATLAS is travelling through our solar system on an unusually flat and straight path at speeds over 130,000 miles per hour (210,000 km/h).
Professor Mark Burchell, an astronomer from the University of Kent, told Daily Mail: 'A swing round the sun is perfectly normal behaviour for a comet.
'The term swing is a slight exaggeration; it is attracted by the sun's great mass, and its orbit gets deflected a bit, but it is not a tight sling shot effect, more a slow change of course.'
Dr Zhang found that the interstellar object underwent a rapid brightening ahead of reaching perihelion and also took on a distinctively blue hue.
Their study found that the comet was brightening at twice the normal rate, which suggests some big changes were taking place on the surface.
Dr Matthew Genge, an expert on comets and meteors from Imperial College London, told Daily Mail: 'Comets usually produce more gas as they approach the sun and become brighter. Their surface heats up, and more and more ice is turned to gas. It's like turning the kettle on.'
The fact that this comet turned blue also hints that gases, rather than just dust, are responsible for a large part of the brightening.
As it approached the sun, the heat caused outer layers of ice and dust to evaporate. This has produced the glowing cloud which surrounds 3I/ATLAS
As the comet moves away from the sun and into Earth's view, astronomers will be able to watch these ongoing transformations to learn more about our interstellar visitor.
Dr Genge says: 'As it moves away from the sun, its gas tail will point directly away from the Sun, ahead of the comet, since it is swept by the solar wind. In contrast, its tail of dust will trail behind the comet.'
By studying the gases it leaves behind, scientists hope to learn more about the solar system 3I/ATLAS came from and how it differs from comets from our own neighbourhood.
For instance, scientists have already found that the comet's surface has been transformed by billions of years of exposure to harsh gamma radiation while travelling through space.
This has given 3I/ATLAS a thick, irradiated crust that has been responsible for the unusual amounts of CO2 released by the comet.
Professor Marina Galand, a planetary scientist from Imperial College London, told Daily Mail: 'After perihelion, a deeper layer below the surface will have been revealed.
'It will be interesting to see how the composition of the gas changes as the comet gets further away from the Sun, compared with when it approached it.'
However, despite rampant speculation, one thing scientists are absolutely sure about is that 3I/ATLAS is definitely a comet.
As it leaves the sun, scientists will be able to study how the comet has changed over time. If it got hot enough, pristine layers of ice from another solar system might be revealed. This would offer valuable clues about how stars form
Dr Mark Norris, an astronomer at the University of Lancashire, told Daily Mail: 'In terms of why we think it is a comet, it is because it looks and acts exactly like a comet.
'It is just happening faster because this comet is moving so much faster than solar system comets, which remain gravitationally bound to the Sun.'
There are still a lot of questions to answer about this object, but that is mainly because it is only the third interstellar object humanity has ever discovered.
Dr Genge adds: 'Aliens would be literally barmy to hollow out a comet for a spacecraft.'
If you're a fan of skygazing, make sure you block off Wednesday evening in your diary.
The biggest supermoon of the year is set to light up the skies, appearing eight per cent larger and 16 per cent brighter than usual.
The phenomenon occurs because the moon's orbit is not perfectly circular around Earth, meaning at times it is slightly closer or slightly further away.
At its closest, it is called a lunar perigee – and when it occurs close to a full moon, it can be a spectacular sight.
'As long as there aren't too many clouds, the full moon will be an unmistakable white orb in the sky,' Royal Museums Greenwich (RMG) said.
'This is a good opportunity to use a small telescope or a pair of binoculars to see the moon's detailed surface, or even try taking a few interesting moon photos.
'However, you can see the moon perfectly well with just your eyes.'
Looking for the lunar satellite just after sunset or just before sunrise will be an impressive sight, as it will appear enormous compared to the surrounding landscape.
A supermoon rising above London in October last year. These occur when the moon's orbit is closer to Earth
Last year's beaver supermoon rising above the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building in New York City
Pictured: A passenger plane flying in front of a supermoon rising above the San Francisco Bay in California in 2024
On Wednesday, the moon will be just under 221,818 miles (357,000km) from Earth, compared to an average distance of 238,855 miles (384,400km).
This will make it the nearest full moon of the year and therefore the largest supermoon – coinciding with Bonfire Night.
The first full moon of November is informally called a Beaver moon, as part of a tradition dating back centuries.
It is thought the term may have been used in a range of cultures from certain Native American tribes to early European settlers, and depicts the time of year that beavers become particularly active as they build dams and stock up on food.
Along with looking spectacular, supermoons also have an effect on the Earth's tides.
'The tides are caused by the gravitational forces of the sun and the moon on the Earth's oceans,' the RMG said.
'When the Moon is closer to the Earth during a supermoon, the gravitational pull is slightly stronger, and so the tides are bigger.
'However this effect is almost negligible, with only a couple of inches difference between a normal full moon and supermoon tide.'
On Wednesday, the moon will be just under 357,000km (221,818 miles) from Earth, compared to an average distance of 384,400km (238,855 miles). Pictured: A beaver supermoon setting over Jerusalem last year
This photo taken on November 16, 2024 shows the full moon over the sky in the Longsha Park of Qiqihar, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province
Beaver full moon gets its name from Native American and colonial traditions, as beavers are most active this time of year, fortifying their lodges and building dams in anticipation of the cold months ahead
While this isn't the final supermoon of the year – there will be one again on December 4 – it's thought the moon won't appear this large and bright again until November 24, 2026.
It should be easy enough to take a decent photo of the moon using your phone, but it's best to place it on a steady surface to prevent blurring.
Those with a single lens reflex (SLR) camera can take good images if they use a 250mm telephoto lens.
To get the best detail, you need a telephoto lens of at least 500 to 600mm and ideally a long focal length telescope.
Experts recommend using shutter speeds of 1/30th of a second, with a low ISO setting to reduce noise.
Full moon, supermoon, Strawberry moon: What's the difference?
A FULL MOON is the phase of the moon in which its whole disc is illuminated.
During the 29.5–day lunar cycle, we observe a new moon (with 0 per cent illumination), a waxing moon (when the amount of illumination on the moon is increasing), a full moon (100 per cent illumination) and then a waning moon (when its visible surface area is getting smaller).
Because our modern calendar isn't quite in line with the Moon's phases, sometimes we get more than one full Moon in a month. This is commonly known as a blue moon.
Meanwhile, a SUPERMOON is when the full moon nearly coincides with perigee – the point in the orbit of the moon at which it is nearest to the Earth.
This means a supermoon can appear as much as 14 per cent larger and 30 per cent brighter than when it's furthest away from Earth.
There are about three or four supermoons per year, most astronomy websites claim, and they happen at different times each year.
In a nutshell, a supermoon is a full moon. But it's bigger and brighter than a normal full moon.
Lastly, STRAWBERRY MOONsimply refers to the time of the year the full moon is appearing.
In June, it's known as Strawberry Moon because because it historically appeared when the strawberry harvest first took place.
Other months of the year correspond to different nicknames – so January is Wolf Moon, February is Snow Moon, March is Worm Moon, April is Pink Moon, May is Flower Moon and so on.
Full moon names were historically used to track the seasons and therefore are closely related to nature.
The full list of full moon nicknames:
January: Wolf Moon because wolves were heard more often at this time.
February: Snow Moon to coincide with heavy snow.
March:Worm Moon as the Sun increasingly warmed the soil and earthworms became active.
April:Pink Moon as it heralded the appearance of Phlox subulata or moss pink – one of spring's first flowers.
May:Flower Moon because of the abundance of blossoms.
June: Strawberry Moon because it appeared when the strawberry harvest first took place.
July: Buck Moon as it arrived when a male deer's antlers were in full growth mode.
August:Sturgeon Moon after the large fish that was easily caught at this time.
September:Corn Moon because this was the time to harvest corn.
October:Hunter's Moon after the time to hunt in preparation for winter.
November:Beaver Moon because it was the time to set up beaver traps.
December:Cold Moon because nights at this time of year were the longest.
Archaeologists believe they have found the site where Jesus cast demons into a herd of pigs near the Sea of Galilee.
Dr Scott Stripling, director of excavations for the Associates for Biblical Research (ABR), told Digging for the Truth that a mix of textual clues, geography and submerged ruins led him to the town of Kursi in Israel.
According to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus arrived by boat across the Sea of Galilee from west to east, where he encountered a man possessed by a 'Legion' of demons.
The spirits begged to be sent into a herd of pigs, which then charged down a steep slope into the sea and drowned, matching the geographical clues near the newly uncovered site.
'All three gospels say there was a cliff nearby,' Stripling said. 'All three say there were tombs nearby.
'And they tell us that Jesus was coming in on a boat from the west side to the east side.'
The breakthrough came from a Roman-era harbor, partially submerged beneath the lake.
Guided by a massive ancient fish tank, used centuries ago to keep freshly caught fish alive, Stripling and his team located the harbor where Jesus may have landed before performing the exorcism.
Dr Scott Stripling, director of excavations for the Associates for Biblical Research (ABR), told Digging for the Truth that a mix of textual clues, geography, and submerged ruins led him to the town of Kursi
Stripling used information from a 1985 excavation that documented dozens of ancient harbors along the Sea of Galilee, including Kursi, which featured massive stone jetties and a large adjacent fish tank.
The harbor vanished again as water levels rose, forgotten by most.
Stripling used information from a 1985 excavation that documented dozens of ancient harbors along the Sea of Galilee, including Kursi, which featured massive stone jetties and a large adjacent fish tank.
Armed with the old excavation reports and photographs, Stripling returned in 2023 with a film crew.
Navigating by GPS and landmarks, including the mouth of Wadi Semak and the unmistakable fish tank, they donned scuba gear and dove into crystal-clear water.
The underwater exploration revealed massive stone jetties and carefully arranged blocks forming a classic harbor.
'We felt the stones before we saw them,' Stripling said. 'Massive, dressed blocks forming twin piers, classic harbor construction.'
Confirming the harbor’s location was key to understanding where the biblical event could have taken place.
According to the Bible, Jesus cast a demons from a man into a heard of 2,000 pigs that threw themselves into the Sea of Galilee and drowned
The journey described in scripture, Jesus leaving Capernaum and crossing to the east side of the lake, corresponds geographically to Kursi.
Nearby tombs dot a hillside where the pigs grazed, and a steep cliff less than 164 feet from the water would have allowed the herd to rush into the Sea of Galilee, recreating the dramatic scene recorded in the Gospels.
'From the harbor, every biblical detail aligns within a 656-foot radius,' Stripling said.
Crowning the hill above Kursi, a Byzantine chapel known as the 'Chapel of the Miracle' preserves a mosaic floor that some scholars interpret as depicting pigs.
Pilgrims have venerated the site for over 1,500 years. 'This isn't just tradition,' Stripling noted.
'The Byzantines built where memory and geography intersected. They likely followed Origen's research.'
Kursi sits in the Decapolis, a league of ten Greco-Roman cities. The pigs were likely raised under contract for Roman troops; the 10th Legion, stationed nearby, used the boar as its emblem.
'When the demons say 'Legion,' it's no coincidence,' Stripling said. 'This was a Gentile man, possibly a failed recruit or laborer, tormented by forces mirroring Roman oppression. The pigs weren't just livestock, they were military supply.'
'After the miracle, the healed man begs to follow Jesus but is sent home to proclaim what God had done.
'A year later, when Jesus returns (Mark 6), a multitude greets him, suggesting the man's testimony sparked a revival.'
'His obedience changed a region,' Stripling reflected, standing in the ancient harbor. 'We're not just finding stones. We're standing where despair met deliverance.'
While no inscription proclaims 'Jesus was here,' the convergence of harbor, cliff, tombs, and early Christian commemoration forms what Stripling calls a 'criterial screen' that no other site passes.
While no inscription proclaims 'Jesus was here,' the convergence of harbor, cliff, tombs, and early Christian commemoration forms what Stripling calls a 'criterial screen' that no other site passes.
For now, the harbor remains underwater, visible only when lake levels drop or to divers with permits. But its rediscovery anchors a floating miracle to solid ground and submerged stone.
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Kursi: Demon-Possessed Man Healed, Pigs Drown, Sea of Galilee, Jesus Crushes Satan's Kingdom, Israel
The interstellar object that continues to baffle scientists has just confirmed one of Albert Einstein's theories, more than a century after it was proposed.
Scans of 3I/ATLAS as it reached its closest point to the sun have found that our home star's gravity bent the light coming from the mysterious object, just as Einstein predicted in 1915 in his theory of general relativity.
This effect, known as gravitational lensing, was caused by a slight shift in the object's apparent position in the sky, which scientists had predicted last month would be approximately 0.27 arcseconds —a remarkably small displacement that can only be observed with powerful telescopes.
However, 3I/ATLAS showed even more of a shift than scientists could have imagined, straying four arcseconds from its expected path past the sun.
One arcsecond is equal to 1/3600 of a degree, or like viewing a dime from 2.5 miles away.
While the mystery object, which many scientists have dismissed as a comet, may have proven Einstein's theory about gravity bending light, its new unexplained location in the sky adds to the possibility that 3I/ATLAS is no ordinary space rock.
Harvard physicist Avi Loeb revealed that the supposed comet would have needed to release a huge amount of its mass in the form of a powerful gas jet to push 3I/ATLAS to its current location in our solar system.
If it's really a comet, this would have left behind a massive cloud of gas and dust, but if it didn't, then the claims of 3I/ATLAS being an artificial spacecraft will be one step closer to being proven true.
Scientists have proven Albert Einstein's theory of gravitational lensing after spotting movement by 3I/ATLAS (Pictured) near the sun
The interstellar object has given scientists no less than nine different clue that it may not be a natural comet
Loeb explained that for scientists to be right about 3I/ATLAS being a comet, the sun would have needed to melt away roughly 15 percent of the object's mass.
That's about five billion tons worth of gas pouring out of 3I/ATLAS as it reached perihelion, its closest point to the sun, on October 29.
The cloud of dust this outpouring would have created would be visible by telescopes as the object nears its closest point to Earth on December 19.
However, if there is no giant dust cloud for astronomers to see, Loeb called it the tenth clue that 3I/ATLAS was constructed by extraterrestrials and sent to this solar system for an unknown purpose.
The latest hint that there was something unusual about the interstellar visitor came as the object reached its perihelion with the sun and suddenly pulled away and changed color.
'Observations of 3I/ATLAS close to perihelion by the solar observatories STEREO, SOHO and GOES-19, revealed unprecedented brightening and a color bluer than the sun,' Loeb wrote in a paper released Sunday.
This discovery was incredibly strange because comets turn red as their cold surfaces absorb blue light and bounce back mostly red light, just like a cold piece of metal glows red when you start heating it.
Meanwhile, this 'non-gravitational acceleration' 3I/ATLAS experienced could not be explained by gravity, so something else appeared to be speeding it up and nudging it off its expected path, which could be a sign the object has its own engine.
3I/ATLAS (Pictured) made its closest approach to the sun on October 29, as seen by NASA spacecraft
The supposed comet has become the first interstellar object added to the list of threats tracked by the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN)
Loeb also broke down the odds of the other strange clues surrounding the interstellar visitor, including its almost perfectly flat course, which takes it within close range of three different planets in our solar system.
The professor explained that the chance of a natural object traveling along the same plane in space as the Earth and its neighboring planets was only 0.2 percent.
Meanwhile, there was only a 1-in-20,000 chance of a natural comet making close fly-bys over Mars, Venus, and Jupiter, pointing to the possibility that this path has been guided by an unknown intelligence.
Scans of 3I/ATLAS have also revealed far more nickel and much less iron than astronomers have found in all other comets before this one.
The object's nickel coating is similar to how humans use the metal as a protective layer against the extreme heat of rocket engines on Earth spacecraft.
3I/ATLAS was also seen projecting an unusual 'anti-tail' which pointed at the sun instead of trailing behind the object like a normal comet.
As scientists wait to see if the alleged comet really lost a giant portion of its mass last week, Loeb noted that 3I/ATLAS was unexplainably larger and moving faster than previous interstellar objects detected by humans.
At 33 billion tons, it's a million times larger than the mysterious Oumuamua, which passed through the solar system in 2017, and about a thousand times bigger than the comet Borisov, which passed Earth two years later.
The odds of a natural space rock from a distant solar system being that large and moving at its current speed of 151,800mph were estimated at 1-in-1,000.
Loeb also noted that 3I/ATLAS only appears to contain four percent water, unlike normal comets, which mostly consist of water ice.
It's also reflecting light in a strange way that made it get much brighter as it neared the sun, and did so approximately 7.5 times faster than normal comets.
Finally, the suspected comet has also come from the same direction as the famous 'Wow! Signal' of 1977, a still unexplained radio signal which scientists have theorized could be an alien transmission.
Mysterious drones were spotted near Belgium's Kleine Brogel air base, where US nuclear weaponsare stored, prompting fears of a potential espionage operation.
Belgium's Defense Minister Theo Francken confirmed that drones entered the base's airspace in two waves on Saturday and Sunday night.
The first involved smaller drones, reportedly testing the base's radio frequencies, followed by larger drones intended 'to destabilize the area and people,' Francken said.
'It resembles a spy operation. By whom, I don't know,' he told public broadcaster RTBF.
The defense minister added that the drones appeared to target sensitive locations, including F-16s and munitions, and that the incidents were under investigation.
'It's not a drone that just happened to cross the military base. It was there for a long time, so it was definitely for spying,' Francken said.
The US stores an estimated 10 to 20 B61 nuclear bombs at the Kleine Brogel Air Base, which plays a key role in NATO's nuclear deterrence strategy in Europe and hosts F-16 fighter jets, according to the base's website.
The site notes that these jets are scheduled to be replaced in the coming years by the F-35A, the US Air Force's newest fifth-generation fighter.
The US stores an estimated 10 to 20 B61 nuclear bombs at the Kleine Brogel Air Base
Belgium's Defense Minister Theo Francken confirmed that drones entered the base's airspace in two waves on Saturday and Sunday night. The first involved smaller drones
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'This was not a simple flyover, but a clear attack targeting Kleine Brogel,' Francken said. 'It is not clear who is responsible for the drone sightings.'
The US maintains an estimated 200 tactical nuclear weapons, with roughly half positioned in Europe. Around 100 of these are thought to be deployed across five NATO member countries, including Belgium, Germany and Turkey.
Unlike strategic nuclear arms, tactical weapons are intended for use in battlefield scenarios or within a limited geographic region.
Kleine-Brogel air base took part in NATO’s most recent annual nuclear exercise, Steadfast Noon, held last month.
In recent months, the continent has seen tense encounters between fighter jets, unexplained sightings of large drones, and deliberate acts of disruption that have affected major airports.
In September, drones were reported over several military installations in Denmark, and flights at Spain’s Gran Canaria airport were rerouted following similar drone activity.
The US maintains an estimated 200 tactical nuclear weapons, with roughly half positioned in Europe. Around 100 of these are thought to be deployed across five NATO member countries, including Belgium, Germany, and Turkey
NATO forces shot down a mystery drone near a base used by US troops in Estonia, less than 30 miles from the Russian border last month
Flights were canceled during German Unity Day, and as Munich prepared for the final weekend of Oktoberfest, which draws over six million visitors annually.
'He is waging an information war against us. He is waging a military war against Ukraine, and this war is directed against all of us,' Merz told broadcaster NTV.
One was blasted out of the sky with an anti-drone rifle, while the second escaped.
Liis Vaksmann, a spokesperson for the Estonian Defence Forces, said: 'Allies detected drones flying in the immediate vicinity of the 2nd Infantry Brigade's military base at 16:30 on 17 October, one of which was brought down with an anti-drone rifle.'
Military and police teams searched for the wreckage but were unable to locate it.
Estonia, viewed as one of NATO's most vulnerable members, hosts both US and British troops as part of the alliance's deterrence force.
Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said NATO must be ready to intercept and shoot down any aircraft violating allied airspace.
'The message must be unequivocal - future violations will meet a response, including, if necessary, the interception and downing of intruding aircraft,' he said.
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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 75 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.
