Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 12 YEARS AND 10 MONTHS.
ON 06/04/2024 MORE THAN 1.951.050
VISITORS FROM 134 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
31-03-2024
Area 51 Unveiled: The Lazar S4 UFO Mystery in 3D CGI
Area 51 Unveiled: The Lazar S4 UFO Mystery in 3D CGI
Embark on a captivating journey behind the enigmatic bay doors of Area 51 with our latest 3D CGI animation, “Behind the Bay Doors of Area 51 – The Lazar UFO at S4.” This video takes you deep into the heart of one of the most secretive locations on Earth, where the legendary Bob Lazar claimed to have worked on reverse engineering extraterrestrial technology.
Through cutting-edge CGI, we bring to life the rumored alien spacecraft and the clandestine surroundings of the S4 site, located just south of the main Area 51 facility. Lazar’s controversial claims have fueled UFO enthusiasts and skeptics alike for decades, sparking debates and investigations into the existence of alien life and advanced technology.
Whether you’re a believer in the extraordinary or simply fascinated by the mysteries of Area 51, this animation is sure to intrigue and entertain. Join us as we peel back the layers of secrecy and explore what might lie within the depths of S4. It’s an experience that invites you to question the boundaries of human knowledge and the possibilities of what exists beyond our world.
Don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe for more exclusive content. Dive into the unknown with us—where truth and fiction blur, and the tales of tomorrow unfold.
De meest indrukwekkende dingen ooit gemaakt met een 3D-printer Iedereen en hun buurman weten dat de wereld met elke nieuwe dag exponentieel sneller verandert. Maar een van de meest fascinerende revoluties die plaatsvinden in laboratoria over de hele wereld is de opkomst van 3D-printen. Van dingen die je kunt eten tot vervangingen voor voeten en alles daartussenin.
LEES VERDER om enkele van de meest indrukwekkende dingen te zien die 3D-printers ooit hebben gemaakt.
Een hart Israëlische wetenschappers van de Universiteit van Tel Aviv hebben naar verluidt 's werelds eerste 3D-geprinte, gevasculariseerde technische hart gecreëerd.
Ongeboren baby Een Ests 3D-technologiebedrijf besloot het ultieme zwangerschapssouvenir te maken, waardoor ouders de kans krijgen hun baby aan te raken voordat deze zelfs maar geboren is.
Ongeboren baby Nadat ze zorgvuldige foto's hebben gemaakt, printen ze 3D-foetusmodellen zo gedetailleerd dat je al hun vingers kunt tellen en kunt zien wiens neus de baby heeft!
Jezelf Je maakt eerst een fotografische scan van 360 graden van een persoon en geeft deze vervolgens weer in een digitaal 3D-model (en retoucheert het model zodat het voldoet aan de vereisten voor afdrukken). De drukmachine gebruikt dit digitale model vervolgens om een solide figuur met hoge resolutie te produceren.
Een wervelkolom-as Een kunstmatige 3D-geprinte as, de eerste die ooit met succes in de wervelkolom van een botkankerpatiënt is geïmplanteerd, wordt geïmplanteerd in een model in het Peking University Third Hospital in Beijing.
Prothetische onderarm De Taiwanese ingenieur Chang Hsien-Liang verloor zijn onderarm bij een ongeval en was zeer ontevreden over zijn prothetische opties. Daarom ontwierp en bouwde hij zijn eigen prothetische onderarm met behulp van 3D-printtechnologie!
Een toekansnavel Grecia de toekan verloor het grootste deel van zijn bovensnavel bij een aanval, maar hij kan nu eten met zijn 3D-geprinte snavel in het dierenasiel Zoo Ave in Alajuela, Costa Rica.
Ijsje Bedrukte lekkernijen die je kunt eten! In de Iceason-winkel in Shanghai worden deze kleine karakters gemaakt van ijs met aardbeienmelksmaak en vervaardigd door een 3D-printer.
Een chocoladebierflesje Gaetan Richard, oprichter van het 3D-printchocoladebedrijf Miam Factory, maakt iets waarvan je niet wist dat je het nodig had: een chocoladebierflesje.
Een motor Ontwerper Marco Mattia Cristofori, van de Duitse 3D-printerfabrikant BigRep, creëerde een bijna volledig 3D-geprinte e-motorfiets, genaamd "NERA".
Een auto Tijdens een rondleiding door Techmer PM, een kunststofproductiebedrijf in Tennessee, wierp Barack Obama een blik op een 3D-geprinte Shelby Cobra.
Vliegtuigstoelen Airgo's 3D-geprinte prototype van hun Orion-vliegtuigstoelen voor lange afstanden ziet er zeker uit als een upgrade van een touringcar.
Viool Hier poseert de Franse ingenieur en professionele violist Laurent Bernadac met een 3D-geprinte viool gemaakt van transparante hars, de "3Dvarius" genoemd.
Kunststof werkende pistolen In 2014 werd Yoshimoto Imura de eerste man die in Japan werd gearresteerd wegens illegaal bezit van twee plastic pistolen die hij zelf had gemaakt met behulp van 3D-printtechnologie.
Huisvesting Onderzoekers van de Universiteit van Nantes in Frankrijk hebben het startschot gegeven voor een 3D-geprint sociaal woningbouwgebouw genaamd 'Yhnova'
Geavanceerde geometrische structuren De M1 3D-printer bij Carbon in Redwood City, Californië concurreert met de ingewikkelde creaties van de natuur zelf.
In 1988, Miriam Delicado had a contact experience with Tall Blonde extraterrestrials who told her they were involved in the creation of humanity and rescuing large numbers of humans at the end of different historical ages. She described the ends of the First, Second and Third Worlds where human civilizations were wiped out by cataclysms due to the dangers they posed to the planet in developing advanced technologies without the right ethical understanding. Delicado said the Tall Blondes intervened in huge spacecraft (aka space arks), to take large numbers of humans off the surface to the safety of outer space, the bottom of oceans, or Inner Earth, to wait out the cataclysmic surface events. The Tall Blondes, she pointed out, are very different to the “Tall Whites” encountered by Charles Hall at Nellis Air Force Base in the 1960s.
After her profound contact experience, Delicado was approached by Men in Black and other organizations who wanted to recruit her to different official government programs so they could better understand alien technologies. She said that the contact enhanced her psychic abilities, and she was invited by a secret Russian organization to join a psychic community, where she would be trained and be among “her kind”.
In her first Exopolitics Today interview, Miriam Delicado discusses her incredible contact experiences, the life-changing events that happened afterward. She also discusses the dangers that lie ahead as humanity enters the End Times where confusion and corruption abound, and critical thinking is compromised in ways that are very similar to the end of Atlantis.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
Nuclear powerplant becomes UFO hotspot with '10 sightings in a single month'
Nuclear powerplant becomes UFO hotspot with '10 sightings in a single month'
The Kudankulam Nuclear Plant in the town of Tirunelveli in India has seemingly become a UFO /UAP hotspot - with as many as ten sightings in a single month.
Kudankulam (or Koodankulam) Nuclear Plant appears to be a UFO hotspot.
(Image: Wikipedia/submitted)
Multiple sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) have been reported at a troubled nuclear power plant being built by Vladimir Putin's Russia in India.
UFOs or Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) have been spotted around Kudankulam Nuclear Plant, in the town of Tirunelveli, India, as many as 10 times within a single month.
Sabir Hussain, a UFO researcher affiliated with the Indian Society for Extraterrestrial Studies, said the UFOs have been observed by a local official.
He said: "Syed, an engineering graduate (now a sub-inspector), has seen UFOs more than 10 times in the Koodankulam area in August 2023."
The initial sighting reportedly occurred just 10 days after another individual reported witnessing a UFO in a nearby village along the coastline of Chennai.
Claiming that UFOs were spotted in the sky covering Koodankulam in Tirunelveli district last year, UFO tracker Sabir Hussain here said these unidentifhttps://www.dtnext.in/news/tamilnadu/ufo-visits-near-key-nuclear-installations-baffle-experts-776265
(Image: Supplied)
The mysterious object was described to have been flying in a peculiar "zigzag" pattern while emitting an intensely bright light across the night sky.
Syed told news outlet DT Next: "After meeting UFO tracker Sabir and discussing with him, I am more than 100 percent sure what I saw were UFOs. The way it stood still, the way it made zigzag movements and the speed in which it disappeared all were different."
A picture snapped by Syden reveals a bright white light in the night sky, forming a circle but no clear details can be seen from the image he shared. The first part of the nuclear plant in question was launched in 2013, with additional units becoming operational over the next decade.
Syed who claims he saw UFOs 'zig zagging' around the plant.
A new study by researchers from Brown University and the SETI Institute of an object nicknamed “Space Snowman” is reportedly “shaking up” what scientists thought they knew about distant objects in the far reaches of the solar system.
Officially named Kuiper Belt Object 486958 Arrokoth, the researchers say the double-lobed object at the edge of our solar system may contain stores of ice deep within its interior from over 4.6 billion years ago when the solar system formed. Perhaps even more surprising, the researchers believe other Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) may also contain these ancient ices from the dawn of the solar system.
The study’s results, published in the journal Icarus, are expected to inform future missions, including a sample return mission designed to help unlock the secrets of life on Earth.
SPACE SNOWMAN MAY NOT BE THE ONLY KBO CONTAINING ANCIENT ICE
“We’ve shown here in our work, with a rather simple mathematical model, that you can keep these primitive ices locked deep within the interiors of these objects for really long times,” said Sam Birch, a planetary scientist at Brown and one of the paper’s co-authors. “Most of our community had thought that these ices should be long lost, but we think now that may not be the case.”
If true, these ancient ice stores hidden within Space Snowman and other KBOs could offer critical information to scientists studying the formation of our planets and moons, as well as the dawn of Earth life itself.
Much of the previous skepticism came from the wide use of thermal evolutionary models applied to the solar system’s creation that, the researchers say, “failed to account for the longevity of ices that are as temperature sensitive as carbon monoxide.” This led Birch and his co-author Orkan Umurhan, a senior research scientist at the SETI Institute, to design and create their own model, which revealed that it is more likely that these highly volatile ancient ices “stick around” much longer than previously thought.
“We are basically saying that Arrokoth is so super cold that for more ice to sublimate — or go directly from solid to a gas, skipping the liquid phase within it — that the gas it sublimates into first has to have travel outwards through its porous, sponge-like interior,” Birch said.
Unfortunately, Birch explained, if you want to move the gas, you also have to sublimate the ice surrounding it. His models show that for many KBOs, including Space Snowman, there isn’t enough solar energy to accomplish this.
“So what you get is a domino effect: it gets colder within Arrokoth, less ice sublimates, less gas moves, it gets even colder, and so on,” Birch explained. Eventually, everything just effectively shuts off, and you’re left with an object full of gas that is slowly trickling out.”
If their models are correct, the researchers say a large number of KBOs besides Space Snowman could contain ancient ices, which remain effectively dormant within the object’s interior unless they experience an orbital shift that moves them closer to the sun. In fact, the researchers suspect that this is why KBOs that do experience an orbital shift that brings them closer to the sun explode so violently. The ancient ices inside these objects suddenly sublimate to gas and expand, essentially turning them into comets.
“The key thing is that we corrected a deep error in the physical model people had been assuming for decades for these very cold and old objects,” said Umurhan. “This study could be the initial mover for reevaluating the comet interior evolution and activity theory.”
RESEARCH WILL INFORM UPCOMING MISSIONS TO RETRIEVE SAMPLES FROM COMETS
Although the study is based on theoretical models, the researchers get the opportunity to apply their expertise in the near future. That’s because both Birch and Umurhan are listed as co-investigators for NASA’s upcoming Comet Astrobiology Exploration Sample Return (CAESAR) mission, which could launch as soon as August of this year.
According to NASA, “The Comet Astrobiology Exploration Sample Return (CAESAR) mission will acquire and return to Earth for laboratory analysis a minimum of 80 grams of surface material from the nucleus of comet 67P/Chur-yumov-Gerasimenko (67P). CAESAR will characterize the surface region sampled, preserve the collected sample in a pristine state, and return evolved volatiles by capturing them in a separate gas reservoir.”
As the name’s inclusion of “astrobiology” implies, one of the goals of CAESAR is to look for gins of life or its building blocks at the dawn of the solar system’s creation. Although the mission isn’t expected to actually land on a comet until 2038, the researchers say their new study shows that sample return missions like CAESAR may contain a wide range of tantalizing clues that are just waiting to be unlocked.
“There may well be massive reservoirs of these primitive materials locked away in small bodies all across the outer solar system — materials that are just waiting to erupt for us to observe them or sit in deep freeze until we can retrieve them and bring them home to Earth,” Birch said.
Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.
De Mars Express-sonde arriveerde eind 2003 bij Mars en cirkelt alweer dus alweer bijna 21 jaar om de rode planeet heen. En in die tijd heeft hij 25.000 baantjes om Mars getrokken. Een enorme mijlpaal die de sonde viert door een geweldige foto van Mars af te leveren.
Op de foto schittert een flink stuk van het Marsoppervlak, met daarop enkele van de beroemdste vulkanen die de rode planeet rijk is. Zo zien we Olympus Mons; niet alleen de grootste vulkaan van Mars, maar ook de grootste van ons zonnestelsel! De vulkaan is bijna 22 kilometer hoog en is met een oppervlakte van 300.000 vierkante kilometer zeven keer omvangrijker dan ons eigen Nederland.
Grote vulkanen Naast Olympus Mons zijn op de foto echter nog meer vulkanen te zien. Ascraeus Mons, bijvoorbeeld. Met een hoogte van 18 kilometer kan deze ook tot de grotere vulkanen van Mars worden gerekend. Ook zijn op de foto de vulkanen Arsia Mons – net iets hoger dan onze Mount Everest – en Pavonis Mons – ongeveer 14 kilometer hoog – te zien.
Klovensysteem Onder dit drietal van vulkanen vinden we Noctis Labyrinthus; een klovensysteem, met valleien die tot wel 30 kilometer breed en tot wel 6 kilometer diep zijn. Het klovensysteem is ongeveer 1190 kilometer lang; vergelijkbaar met 3,5 keer de afstand tussen Groningen en Maastricht.
Wolken Wat daaronder opvalt, zijn de blauwe tinten op een verder zandkleurig plaatje. Ze worden veroorzaakt door wolken. Helemaal onderaan zijn golfstijgwinden (Lee wave clouds) te zien. Ze ontstaan doordat lucht over een obstakel – bijvoorbeeld een berg – wordt gedwongen.
Afbeelding: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin.
Phobos Wie goed kijkt, ziet dat niet alleen Mars door Mars Express is vereeuwigd; ook maan Phobos is op de foto te zien. En wel schuin onder Arsia Mons. Phobos bevindt zich vrij dicht bij Mars in de buurt; de afstand tussen beide hemellichamen bedraagt slechts 6000 kilometer. Ter vergelijking: onze maan draait op zo’n 385.000 kilometer afstand om de aarde heen.
Veel werk verzet Met de geweldige foto viert ESA dus het 25.000e rondje van Mars Express rond Mars. Dat 25.000 rondje voltooide de ruimtesonde overigens al in oktober 2023. Maar nu pas staat de Europese ruimtevaartorganisatie daar uitgebreid bij stil. Niet alleen met deze foto, maar ook door terug te blikken op wat Mars Express ons – cirkelend rond Mars – allemaal over de rode planeet heeft geleerd. Zo bracht de sonde de atmosfeer van Mars in kaart en gaf deze meer inzicht in hoe het water op de rode planeet door de tijd heen verging. Ook bestudeerde de sonde de twee manen van Mars – Phobos en Deimos – in ongeëvenaard detail en maakte deze geweldige foto’s van Mars.
En als het aan ESA ligt, gaat de oude orbiter daar ook nog wel even mee door. In 2023 werd de missie van Mars Express – voor de zoveelste keer – verlengd. Afgesproken werd toen om Mars Express zeker tot 2026 rond Mars te laten cirkelen. De informatie die de ruimtesonde nog altijd verzamelt, wordt namelijk als zeer waardevol beschouwd. Niet alleen omdat we zo nóg meer over Mars te weten komen. Maar ook omdat de informatie van belang kan zijn voor aankomende Marsmissies. Zo hoopt de Europese ruimtevaartorganisatie ergens in de komende jaren een rover naar Mars te sturen die op zoek moet gaan naar sporen van (vergaan) Martiaans leven. En NASA wil door Marsrover Perseverance op Mars verzameld materiaal op gaan pikken en naar de aarde brengen. En hoe meer we – bijvoorbeeld via Marsorbiters, zoals Mars Express – over de rode planeet te weten komen, hoe groter de slagingskans van dergelijke ambitieuze missies.
Whoopi Goldberg — The View moderator, intergalactic Star Trek queen, and anti-cactus warrior — has done what the United States government has never dared in its nearly 250 years of existence: confirm that extraterrestrial life has made contact with humanity.
The Oscar-winning actress and apparent interstellar explorer told her cohosts Wednesday that she is fully aware that aliens are among us on earth, after View guest and Ghostbusters franchise star Kumail Nanjiani said he believes in space-dwelling beings.
"I think they're waiting for us to clean up a little bit so that they can come here and tell us we're really messing things up," Nanjiani joked, before Goldberg spoke of her findings.
"They're already here," she said, calmly. "They're already ... They've been here for quite some time."
A stunned Nanjiani turned to Goldberg for further information, as she did not elaborate on how — or why — she knows such information. "And what are they doing?" he asked, to which she responded: "They're watching us."
Whoopi Goldberg confirms aliens exist on 'The View'.
ABC; GETTY
"They're watching us?" Nanjiani asked, before Sara Haines attempted to soften the impact of Goldberg's stunning revelation with some levity. "She talks to ghosts, not aliens. Duh," Haines said, referencing Goldberg's role in the classic movie Ghost. "I got you, girl."
Entertainment Weekly has reached out to a representative for The View for more information on how Goldberg knows aliens exist.
This isn't the first time Goldberg has discussed aliens on The View. The subject came up multiple times in 2023, with the actress reacting to a congressional hearing on UFOs that yielded claims that the government possessed "non-human" body parts by telling her cohosts she already "knew" that information.
Later in September, she got up from her seat at the Hot Topics table to analyze a large photo of a reported alien body, indicating to the panelists that her findings, in the moment, concluded that "it's definitely dead."
Earlier this month, a sudden atmospheric warming event caused the Arctic's polar vortex to reverse its trajectory. The swirling ring of cold air is now spinning in the wrong direction, which has triggered a record-breaking "ozone spike" and could impact global weather patterns.
The polar vortex is a key driver of the polar jet stream (seen here).
(Image credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center)
The polar vortex circling the Arctic is swirling in the wrong direction after surprise warming in Earth's atmosphere triggered a major reversal event earlier this month. It is one of the most extreme atmospheric U-turns seen in recent memory.
In the past, disruptions to the polar vortex — a rotating mass of cold air that circles the Arctic — have triggered extremely cold weather and storms across large parts of the U.S..
The current change in the vortex's direction probably won't lead to a similar "big freeze." But the sudden switch-up has caused a record-breaking "ozone spike" above the North Pole.
Polar vortices occasionally reverse temporarily. These events can last for days, weeks or months and are caused by sudden stratospheric warming (SSW), when the temperatures in the stratosphere climb by as much as 90 degrees Fahrenheit (50 degrees Celsius) in the space of a couple of days, according to the Met Office.
The sudden warming is caused by "planetary waves" in the atmosphere — compression waves formed when air rises into a region of different density and is pushed back downward by the force of Earth's spin. This process disrupts or reverses the vortex flow. (Image credit: NOAA Climate.gov)
The current reversal event in the Arctic began on March 4. However, the winds are starting to slow down, hinting that the vortex will return to its normal trajectory soon, Spaceweather.com reported.
"It was a substantial reversal," Amy Butler, a climate scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and author of NOAA's new polar vortex blog, told Spaceweather.com. The speed of the reversed winds puts the event in the top six on record, she added.
Disruptions to the polar vortex can impact weather in the U.S., such as in 2019 when a massive cold front descended across the Midwest. These extreme weather events occur when the polar vortex deforms the jet stream — an air current that surrounds the polar vortex — exposing lower latitudes to large blobs of icy Arctic air.
This month's disruption did not change the shape of the jet stream, so weather patterns are expected to remain largely unaffected, according to Spaceweather.com.
However, the change in air temperature around the Arctic has sucked up large amounts of ozone from lower latitudes, creating a temporary ozone spike — the opposite of an ozone hole. Currently, there is more ozone surrounding the Arctic than at this time during any other year on record, according to Spaceweather.com. However, this ozone spike will disappear after the polar vortex returns to normal.
The current reversal is the second of its kind this year, following a smaller event in January that did cause a brief cold snap in some states, Butler wrote in NOAA's polar vortex blog.
Historical records show that SSW events are more likely to occur during El Niño or La Niña, the two contrasting phases of a natural cycle of planet-wide warming and cooling. During these phases, global weather systems become more unstable, which sets the stage for more frequent reversal events, Butler wrote in the NOAA blog.
We are currently in the midst of a major El Niño, which could make further reversals or disruptions more likely over the next year or so.
In today’s episode: We talk to Brett Tingley, Managing Editor at Space.com who has covered UAP as a journalist on other outlets such as Scientific American, The War Zone, Popular Science, the History Channel, Science Discovery, and The Debrief. We also cover the latest UFO/UAP News and look at a couple weird videos from the Enigma app.
Thermal Modeling of a Pulsed Plasma Rocket Shows It Should Be Possible To Create One
We’ve reported on a technology called pulsed plasma rockets (PPRs) here at UT a few times. Several research groups have worked on variations of them. They are so popular partly because of their extremely high specific impulse and thrust levels, and they seemingly solve the trade-off between those two all-important variables in space exploration propulsion systems. Essentially, they are an extremely efficient propulsion methodology that, if scaled up, would allow payloads to reach other planets in weeks rather than months or years. However, some inherent dangers still need to be worked out, and overcoming some of those dangers was the purpose of a NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) project back in 2020.
Originally granted to Howe Industries, a design shop that has received several NIAC grants (including two in 2020 itself), the purpose of this project was to model the design of a fully functional PPR in modeling software to see if the necessary materials and power systems are available for a rocket that can provide 100 kN of thrust and over 5,000 seconds of specific impulse.
In essence, a PPR takes a fuel pellet made out of some form of fissionable material (in this case, uranium), and zaps it into a plasma, then emits the plasma out the back for a forceful thrust. Rockets with this design can carry much less fuel than standard chemical rockets, but their design must be significantly larger due to the heating constraints put on the system by creating the plasma in the first place.
SciShow discusses a scaled down version of the PPR proposed in the paper. Credit – SciShow Space
Those heating constraints were one of the Phase I NIAC study’s main focal points in 2020. In particular, this study focused on analyzing the barrel the fuel pellet is released into to see if it could withstand the extreme temperatures created by handling a plasmatized uranium pellet.
To do this modeling, the team at Howe Industries used a modeling software called MCNP6 to check where particles went in the system and thereby calculate how much heat would be collected on other parts of the system where it wasn’t desired. MCNP6 uses a Monte Carlo simulation methodology, which calculates where neutrons will be created from the fission reaction that makes the plasma and where those neutrons will impact the rest of the spacecraft.
Those plasmas would have to be created about once every second, according to the calculations done by Howe Industries, and each pulse must reach an energy level of around 1 keV – much smaller than industrial-level nuclear fission reactors but a relatively high number for a spacecraft propulsion system. That energy is turned into heat, and while some of the heat is effectively used to eject the plasmatized uranium out as a thrust propellant, the rest is absorbed by other parts of the system.
Troy Howe, one of the paper’s authors, discusses his research into the PPR. Credit – Interstellar Research Group YouTube Channel
The barrel was a part of that system that is particularly important in these thermal calculations. The modeled barrel was made out of low-enriched uranium but of a different type than the projectile, allowing the energy to heat the projectile and not the barrel itself. However, a small part of the barrel would be made of highly enriched uranium, allowing for rapid plasma propagation in an otherwise relatively stable system.
That’s not to say that none of the heat generated by the fission reaction would end up in the barrel. Still, by the author’s calculations as part of their final report, an active cooling system should be enough to lower the temperature to a point where at least the barrel itself wouldn’t melt. Other parts of the system, such as the nozzle and a rotating drum that helps handle the fuel pellet, will be modeled in future work.
Additional future work would include building benchtop prototypes of these systems to test them out, though the prospect of working with highly enriched uranium as part of this process seems daunting. However, NIAC hasn’t yet funded a Phase II study of the PPR system, so for now, it is resigned to a nicely modeled project and another step forward in an idea that has plenty of history. Maybe someday, it will find its time to shine.
Search for Life on Mars Could Level-Up with MARSE Mission Concept
A breakdown of the Mars Astrobiology, Resource, and Science Explorers (MARSE) mission profile and its Simplified High Impact Energy Landing Device (SHIELD) system, which could revolutionize how we search for life on Mars by using four rovers at four different landing sites. (Credit: Longo (2024))
Search for Life on Mars Could Level-Up with MARSE Mission Concept
A recent study presented at the 55th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) discusses the Mars Astrobiology, Resource, and Science Explorers (MARSE) mission concept and its Simplified High Impact Energy Landing Device (SHIELD), which offers a broader and cheaper method regarding the search for—past or present—life on the Red Planet, specifically by using four rovers at four different landing sites across Mars’ surface instead of just one-for-one. This concept comes as NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers continue to tirelessly explore the surface of Mars at Gale Crater and Jezero Crater, respectively.
Here, Universe Today discusses the MARSE mission concept with the study’s sole author, Alex Longo, who is a MS student in the Department of Earth, Marine and Environmental Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, regarding the motivation behind MARSE, how the landing sites were chosen, significant implications, current work being conducted, and next steps for MARSE becoming an actual mission. Longo draws on his ten-plus years of experience finding landing sites on Mars, along with having several publications under his belt, including an assortment of scientific abstracts, papers, and a Kindle book. So, what was the motivation behind the MARSE mission concept?
“The overarching goal of the MARSE concept study was to reduce the cost of access to the surface of Mars,” Longo tells Universe Today. “Flagship-class rovers, such as Curiosity and Perseverance, are extremely capable vehicles. The caveat is that, since they cost over a billion dollars apiece, we can only visit one or two sites on Mars every decade. Like Earth, Mars is an astoundingly diverse planet. Using satellites in orbit, we have mapped a variety of ancient environments which may have been habitable in the distant past. However, the resolution of orbital imagery and spectra are limited, and they sometimes fail to predict what a field geologist (or, in the case of Mars, a rover controlled by geologists) will discover on the ground. Even on Earth, finding early biosignatures is difficult, and even with comparatively little weathering and erosion, I would not be surprised if the same is true on Mars. MARSE was intended to present one possible solution which would allow planetary scientists to explore more sites on Mars within a realistic budget.”
The car-sized Curiosity rover landed in Gale Crater on August 6, 2012, with its mission website displaying that Curiosity has traveled a total of 31.27 kilometers (19.43 miles) as of January 27, 2024, having far surpassed its primary mission timeline of one Martian year, or 687 Earth days. Gale Crater was chosen as the landing site due to a multitude of evidence that it once held liquid water at some point in Mars’ ancient past, as scientists estimate that Gale Crater was formed from an impact between approximately 3.5 to 3.8 billion years ago. During its time in Gale Crater, Curiosity has used its suite of scientific instruments to identify evidence of past liquid water within Gale Crater and evidence that Mars once contained the building blocks for life, including carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur.
A selfie of NASA’s Curiosity rover taken on Oct. 11, 2019, or the 2,553rd Martian day, or sol, of its long and successful mission. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems)
The car-sized Perseverance rover landed in Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021, with its mission website displaying that Perseverance has traveled a total of 25.113 kilometers (15.604 miles) as of March 28, 2024. While Perseverance and Curiosity have similar designs, the main upgrade has been the delivery of the Ingenuity helicopter to Mars, which became the first robotic explorer to achieve a powered flight on another world and accomplished dozens of flights before being permanently grounded after damaging one of its rotor blades on what would be its final landing in January 2024. Like Gale Crater for Curiosity, Jezero Crater was chosen as the landing site for Perseverance due to strong evidence that it once held a massive body of liquid water, which is made evident from the enormous fan-delta deposit that was the likely entry point for the liquid water billions of years ago. During its time in Jezero Crater, Perseverance has used its suite of scientific instruments to identify ancient volcanic rocks, sediments from an ancient lakebed, converted carbon dioxide (the primary atmospheric constituent of Mars) to oxygen, and even used its powerful microphones to record the sounds of Mars. Given the incredible science conducted by Curiosity and Perseverance, what are the most significant implications for the MARSE mission?
A selfie of NASA’s Perseverance rover taken in January 2023 displaying the rover with several sample tubes it has collected and dropped on the Martian surface to be picked up and returned to Earth by the Mars Sample Return mission, scheduled for the 2030s. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems)
“The most significant ramification of this trade study is that it should be possible to build a small rover capable of characterizing an unexplored site on Mars,” Longo tells Universe Today. “There have been several proposals for cheap Mars landers, such as SHIELD. MARSE demonstrates that it may be possible to deliver useful scientific payloads with these landers. Each MARSE rover weighs just 15 kilograms and is about the size of a microwave oven. If we can determine how to land similar rovers on Mars, that would help proliferate and democratize Mars exploration. We are already seeing a similar paradigm shift in lunar exploration thanks to the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.”
Artist rendition of one of the four MARSE mission rovers that will each be deployed to explore separate landing sites on Mars. (Credit: Longo (2024))
While Curiosity and Perseverance have successfully explored their respective landing sites in great detail, the cost of each mission was in the billions of dollars (Curiosity: ~$2.5 billion, Perseverance: ~$2.7 billion). Therefore, the cost alone only allows for one rover per mission, and their landings occurred almost seven years apart. As noted, one of the objectives of the MARSE mission concept is to land four rovers at four separate landing sites, which are Columbia Hills, Milankovi? Crater, Mawrth Vallis, and Terra Sirenium, with Coumbia Hills being the landing site for the Spirit rover during its mission from 2004 to 2010, and the others having never been explored by landers or rovers. But how were the landing sites chosen and are other landing sites being considered?
Longo tells Universe Today, “The four landing sites are not an exclusive list. We just wanted to illustrate the range of investigations which can be conducted with this approach. All four of the listed sites have been highlighted in peer-reviewed papers and prior landing site studies, so we know that they have high scientific potential.”
Image of Columbia Hills on Mars, which is one of the potential landing sites for a MARSE rover. The white circle denotes the approximate 80-kilometer (50-mile) landing ellipse that SHIELD will use to land. (Credit: Longo (2024))
Longo continues by telling Universe Today that SHIELD will be designed to “land at any flat site on Mars below the datum (0 km of elevation on Mars; the equivalent of sea level on Earth), so you could readily swap one or more of them out for locations of your choice”, with Longo noting that one of his personal favorite landing sites would be inside Valles Marineris, which is the largest and deepest canyon in the solar system. Longo discusses the years-long research by Dr. Steven Ruff at Arizona State University, who conducted analog studies comparing hot spring deposits at Columbia Hills on Mars to similar features at the El Tatio hot spring in Chile, concluding that microbial communities could thrive at these locations.
A breakdown of the Mars Astrobiology, Resource, and Science Explorers (MARSE) mission profile and its Simplified High Impact Energy Landing Device (SHIELD) system, which could revolutionize how we search for life on Mars by using four rovers at four different landing sites. (Credit: Longo (2024))
As noted, Curiosity and Perseverance landed on Mars almost nine years apart, 2012 and 2021, respectively, but their respective missions had been in the works almost an entire decade earlier. Both rovers are part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, with the Curiosity rover mission having been approved in 2003 and the Perseverance rover mission having been announced in 2012. Once approved, it takes NASA years to design and build each rover, ensuring every aspect of their systems is functioning at their fullest potential before being delivered and loaded onto the launch vehicle. This includes tests designed to analyze the rovers’ endurance, exposure to harsh environments, and longevity, and many others. Therefore, if a MARSE mission were to get the green light, it could still be almost a decade of designs, builds, and tests before their microwave-sized rovers touch the surface of Mars. So, what are the next steps in terms of MARSE being approved for an actual mission?
“Regrettably, the future of MARSE and SHIELD is uncertain,” Longo tells Universe Today. “This concept was developed with the support of the SHIELD team at JPL, led by Lou Giersch and Nathan Barba. They were doing phenomenal, cutting-edge work, and I was grateful for the opportunity to work with them. Unfortunately, JPL was forced to implement massive budget cuts and layoffs last month due to uncertainty over the future of the Mars Sample Return mission, which accounts for the majority of the center’s budget. Because JPL’s future priorities are in flux, we have placed the development of the MARSE concept on hold.”
While uncertainty looms for the MARSE mission, it’s important to note that space exploration missions often take decades to go from a simple concept to real hardware, and then several more years until it’s launched. This is noted by the Curiosity and Perseverance rover missions, as it took almost a decade from the time each was approved until they landed on Mars. Moreover, it is not uncommon for mission proposals to take several attempts before they’re approved, as NASA has very stringent criteria for approving missions, including cost, timelines, science objectives, and long-term implications for science. Despite the outlook, this has not deterred Longo from continuing his work for the MARSE mission concept.
“Developing a mission concept is a rewarding experience, and it was a privilege to work on this concept with the SHIELD team,” Longo tells Universe Today. “Even if it happens a decade from now, I hope that someone will eventually implement a low-cost, multi-rover Mars geology and astrobiology mission. Following the completion of Mars Sample Return, the next logical steps in Mars exploration are to explore more of the planet, to develop a better understanding of its history, and to learn what Mars can teach us about our own planet’s past. If we want to have a thriving space program, we need to be creative and embrace bold ideas, and I love working with the scientists and engineers who are doing just that.”
Will the MARSE mission get to explore the Red Planet in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
Mysterious Cattle Mutilations: Extraterrestrial Intrigue or Covert Government Acts?
Mysterious Cattle Mutilations: Extraterrestrial Intrigue or Covert Government Acts?
In the vast stretches of rural America, a perplexing phenomenon has been occurring for decades, leaving farmers, investigators, and the public alike baffled and concerned. Cattle mutilations, characterized by precise and inexplicable surgical-like incisions, removal of organs without any traces of blood, and absence of predator signs, have been reported across various states and even globally. This phenomenon has sparked a flurry of theories attempting to explain the culprits behind these bizarre occurrences, with two primary hypotheses emerging: extraterrestrial involvement and clandestine government operations.
A significant portion of the speculation surrounding cattle mutilations points towards the involvement of extraterrestrial beings. This theory is bolstered by numerous eyewitness accounts of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and unexplained lights seen in the vicinity of mutilation sites. Investigators like Chuck Zukowski have dedicated years to mapping these incidents against UFO sightings, discovering intriguing patterns that suggest a correlation. For instance, many of these events align along the 37-degree latitude, hinting at a potential “paranormal freeway” that intersects with areas reporting the highest UFO activities. This alignment has led some to theorize about the motivations behind these extraterrestrial visits, suggesting that the precise nature of the mutilations indicates a scientific purpose, possibly related to genetic research or the study of terrestrial life forms.
The Government Operation Hypothesis
On the other side of the debate are those who believe that these mutilations are the result of secret government or military experiments. Witnesses have reported seeing unmarked, military-style helicopters in areas where mutilations occurred, raising suspicions about a government-led program. This theory suggests that the government might be conducting covert operations to monitor the health of the livestock population, possibly in response to concerns about diseases such as mad cow disease. The secrecy surrounding these operations could be attributed to the potential panic and societal ramifications that could arise from the public’s awareness of threats within the food chain.
Seeking the Truth Amid Mystery
Despite the multitude of theories, concrete evidence pointing definitively to either extraterrestrial or government activities remains elusive. This lack of clarity only adds to the mystery and fuels further speculation. What is clear, however, is the impact of these incidents on the affected communities. For the farmers who have suffered losses, the phenomenon is not just a subject of curiosity but a direct threat to their livelihoods and well-being.
VIDEO:
Cattle Mutilations: Aliens or Secret Government Operation? | The Unexplained Files
The quest for answers continues as both independent researchers and possibly undisclosed entities delve deeper into this enigma. The implications of discovering the truth behind cattle mutilations are profound, potentially revealing new dimensions of our reality, whether they are rooted in our own world or stem from the far reaches of the cosmos.
As the investigation into this perplexing phenomenon advances, one thing remains certain: the resolution of the cattle mutilation mystery could unravel secrets that challenge our understanding of both the natural and the supernatural, urging us to reconsider what we know about the universe and our place within it.
Wat je moet doen wanneer je een alien ziet De Amerikaanse overheid ontvangt maandelijks tientallen meldingen van UFO's. Hoewel de meesten vals alarm blijken te zijn (van drones tot zwervend afval), kan ongeveer 2-4% van die meldingen niet worden verklaard. Gezien de grootte van ons zonnestelsel is het niet ondenkbaar dat er leven is buiten onze planeet dat nog niet is ontdekt. Voordat we ingaan op de meldingen van mensen die beweren te zijn ontvoerd door buitenaardse wezens, kun je je afvragen: wat moet ik doen als er een buitenaards wezen tevoorschijn komt?
UFO's In 2023 hebben buitenaardse wezens in sommige landen tot discussie geleid. Een klokkenluider van de Amerikaanse luchtmacht getuigde over UFO's tijdens een hoorzitting in het Huis van Afgevaardigden.
Een geheim van de Amerikaanse overheid? De Amerikaan David Grusch beweerde dat er een geheim programma wordt uitgevoerd door de Amerikaanse federale overheid, die 'niet-menselijke' ruimtevaartuigen en hun 'dode piloten' zou bergen.
Buitenaardse lijken In Mexico werden twee gemummificeerde lijken, waarvan werd beweerd dat ze buitenaards waren, door UFO-fanaat Jaime Maussan tentoongesteld in het Mexicaanse Congres. Critici deden ze echter af als 'nep'.
Radiogolven Als er buitenaardse wezens bestaan, zouden ze de aarde makkelijk kunnen vinden. We sturen namelijk al meer dan 100 jaar radiogolven de ruimte in.
Kosmische buren? Als we daadwerkelijk het heelal delen met aliens, zouden ze deze golven waarschijnlijk kunnen oppikken. Dit hangt echter af van de technische ontwikkelingen die ze hebben doorgemaakt en of ze middelen hebben die vergelijkbaar zijn met die van ons, zoals telescopen.
Aankomst Als er een buitenaards wezen bij jou voor de deur stond, hoe zou je dan reageren? Op dit moment bestaan er geen afspraken over wat je moet doen wanneer je een alien tegenkomt.
Aankomst Zonder internationaal protocol dat we dienen te volgen wordt het misschien tijd dat we nadenken over hoe we zouden moeten reageren als er een buitenaards wezen opduikt – voor het geval dat!
Een aangekondigde waarschuwing? Als er aliens zouden arriveren in een enorm luchtschip of UFO, zou dit waarschijnlijk opvallen. Zelfs zonder kunstlicht zou een buitenaards voertuig zonlicht reflecteren.
Oumuamua In oktober 2017 namen twee Pan-STARRS-telescopen op Hawaï de reflectie van een object waar dat Oumuamua werd genoemd, wat in het Hawaïaans 'verkenner' betekent .
Oumuamua De eigenschappen van Oumuamua zijn anders dan andere natuurlijke kometen of asteroïden in ons zonnestelsel, waardoor het mogelijk een resultaat is van buitenaardse technologie.
Een lange reis Het zou Oumuamua 10.000 jaar hebben gekost om ons zonnestelsel te doorkruisen. Als het een middel was geweest die zou zijn gestuurd om ons te bespioneren, dan zou deze te oud geweest zijn en hoogstwaarschijnlijk niet meer functioneren.
De slimste jongetjes het heelal? We kunnen niet weten of we de beste technologie van het heelal tot onze beschikking hebben of dat het dusdanig onontwikkeld is dat onze telescopen kleine, snel bewegende objecten in ons zonnestelsel niet kunnen waarnemen.
Communicatie Stel dat er op een dag aliens op aarde terechtkomen of dat we bewijs vinden van buitenaards leven: hoe zouden we dan taal of andere middelen gebruiken om met elkaar communiceren?
Communicatie Er zijn veel manieren waarop mensen met elkaar communiceren wanneer dat d.m.v. gesproken taal niet mogelijk is. Lichaamstaal zou waarschijnlijk een belangrijk middel zijn, zoals het dat in het verleden ook vaak geweest is.
Lichaamstaal Het gebruik van (hand)gebaren zou een van de manieren kunnen zijn om een gesprek te voeren. Er worden ongeveer 7.100 talen gesproken op aarde, wat zeer verwarrend kan zijn voor buitenaardse wezens!
Communicatie met dieren Die talen worden echter alleen door mensen gesproken. Misschien kan de manier waarop dieren communiceren aantonen hoe buitenaardse wezens dat zouden kunnen doen.
Evolutie Wetenschappers geloven dat de wetten van evolutie universeel zijn en dat de ontwikkeling die het leven op aarde heeft doorgemaakt ook van toepassing zou kunnen zijn op buitenaardse wezens.
Evolutie Als deze theorie klopt, zou dit kunnen betekenen dat alle wezens die in het universum leven en de talen die zij spreken gemeenschappelijke kenmerken hebben.
Wetten van de natuurkunde Communicatie is in het hele universum, voor zover wij weten, onderworpen aan de wetten van de natuurkunde. Dit betekent dat alles, van gebaren tot geluiden, de basis kan vormen een buitenaardse taal.
Taalkunde Sommige taalkundigen hebben gespeculeerd over hoe een niet-menselijke taal zou kunnen klinken. Ze zijn het erover eens dat als er wezens bestaan die goed technisch onderlegd zijn, communicatie tussen hen van groot belang zou zijn.
Taalkunde Hoewel de aard van de menselijke taal kan lijken op welke buitenaardse taal dan ook, betekent dit niet dat er op dezelfde manier gesproken zou worden.
Buitenaardse taal Mensen spreken, schrijven, maken gebaren, trommelen en fluiten om te communiceren. Het is mogelijk dat intelligente aliens communiceren op een manier waarop wij dat niet doen, bijvoorbeeld door gebruik te maken van magnetische velden of feromonen.
Vergelijkbare kennis Je kunt je wel voorstellen dat buitenaardse wezens van een aantal dingen dezelfde kennis zouden hebben als mensen, zoals de chemische bouwstenen van het heelal.
Vergelijkbare kennis Je zou dus misschien een gesprek kunnen voeren over de spiralen die je in de natuur tegenkomt, de waarde van Pi, of de chemische formule voor water als je een manier zou vinden om te kunnen communiceren met buitenaardse wezens.
Contact We kunnen echter niet weten of we een buitenaardse taal zouden kunnen ontcijferen of een gesprek met aliens zouden kunnen voeren zonder in contact te komen met zulke wezens.
Speculaties Tot die tijd kunnen we over de aard van buitenaardse wezens, hun technische ontwikkeling en de mogelijkheid om met mensen te communiceren alleen maar speculeren.
MUFON Het Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) is een Amerikaanse organisatie die onderzoek doet naar UFO's. Dit een voorbeeld van een aanspreekpunt voor mensen die denken dat ze er een hebben gezien.
Amerikaanse ministerie van Defensie Op zijn beurt heeft NASA gezegd dat het de ontvangen meldingen van UFO's naar het Amerikaanse ministerie van Defensie stuurt. Hun onderzoek moet uitwijzen of er ook leven buiten onze planeet is.
Verwerpingen Meldingen van UFO's worden doorgaans verworpen, omdat er in het verleden nooit overtuigend bewijs is geweest dat tekenen van buitenaards leven aantoonde. Er zijn geen duidelijke richtlijnen over wat je moet doen als je een alien tegenkomt; je kunt maar beter hopen dat het een goedaardig wezen is!
On February 15th, Intuitive Machines (IM) launched its first Nova-C class spacecraft from Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. On February 22nd, the spacecraft – codenamed Odysseus (or “Odie”) – became the first American-built vehicle to soft-land on the lunar surface since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. While the landing was a bit bumpy (Odysseus fell on its side), the IM-1 mission successfully demonstrated technologies and systems that will assist NASA in establishing a “sustained program of lunar exploration and development.”
After seven days of operation on the lunar surface, Intuitive Machines announced on February 29th that the mission had ended with the onset of lunar night. While the lander was not intended to remain operational during the lunar night, flight controllers at Houston set Odysseus into a configuration that would “call home” if it made it through the two weeks of darkness. As of March 23rd, the company announced that their flight controllers’ predictions were correct and that Odie would not be making any more calls home.
The company started listening for a wake-up signal from Odysseus on March 20th, when they projected that there was enough sunlight in the lander’s vicinity. At the time, it was thought that this could potentially charge Odysseus‘ power system, allowing it to activate its radio and reestablish contact with Houston. However, three days later, at 10:30 AM Central Standard Time (08:30 AM PST; 11:30 AM EST), flight controllers determined that the lander was not charging up after it completed its mission.
Image from the IM-1 Odysseus lander after it soft landed on the lunar surface. Credit: Intuitive Machines
This consisted of the Nova-C spacecraft making its inaugural soft landing on the Moon, the first time an American spacecraft has done so in over 50 years. The IM-1 mission was also the first time a spacecraft used methalox – the combination of liquid methane and liquid oxygen (LOX) – to navigate between the Earth and the Moon. While the IM-1 was not expected (or intended) to survive the lunar night, the data acquired by this mission could prove useful as the company continues to improve the lunar landing systems to deliver payloads to the Moon.
One of the company’s main objectives is to develop heat and power sources that can “keep systems from freezing during the lunar night.” This technology will greatly extend the life of lunar surface missions and facilitate the buildup of infrastructure on the Moon’s surface. A second Nova-C lander with the IM-2 mission will launch aboard a Falcon 9 no earlier than December 2024. This mission will land a drill and the Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1 (PRIME-1) mass spectrometer near the south pole of the Moon.
This NASA payload will demonstrate the feasibility of In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) and measure the volatile content of subsurface samples. ISRU and the presence of water are vital to the creation of a lunar base and the ability to send crews to the lunar surface well into the foreseeable future. A third mission (IM-3) is scheduled for early 2025, which will carry four NASA payloads to the Reiner Gamma region of the Moon, a rover, a data relay satellite, and secondary payloads to be determined. All three launches were contracted as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.
In addition, the IM-1 mission controllers and company managed to have a final farewell with the Odysseus mission before nightfall and the depletion of its battery power. On February 22nd, the lander transmitted a final image (shown below), which mission controllers in Houston received by February 29th. The image, Intuitive Machines said in a statement, “showcases the lunar vista with the crescent Earth in the backdrop, a subtle reminder of humanity’s presence in the universe. Goodnight, Odie. We hope to hear from you again.”
The last image sent by the IM-1 Odysseus mission on Feb. 22nd, 2024. Credit: Intuitive Machines
European scientists have created an extremely detailed geological map of Oxia Planum, the landing site for the ESA's Rosalind Franklin rover. Not only will it help guide the rover's driving, it will help the rover sample the most promising sites. Image Credit: Fawdon et al. 2024.
Rosalind Franklin, the ESA’s Mars rover, is scheduled to launch no sooner than 2028. Its destination is Oxia Planum, a wide clay-bearing plain to the east of Chryse Planitia. Oxia Planum contains terrains that date back to Mars’ Noachian Period, when there may have been abundant surface water, a key factor in the rover’s mission.
Rosalind Franklin’s primary mission mirrors that of NASA’s Perseverance rover: to search for fossil evidence of life. To do that, both rovers are equipped with a suite of powerful instruments. They both have sampling drills, but Franklin’s drill wins the tale of the tape. It can penetrate to a depth of two meters, compared to Perseverance’s which can only drill a few inches deep.
In order for the Franklin to be successful, it needs to land in a place where its drilling capability can be put to good use. That’s why the ESA chose Oxia Planum. Not only is it flat, which makes for a safer landing, but it contains hydrated minerals. In fact, it’s one of the largest exposed sections of clay-bearing minerals on Mars, and that’s where the fossilized evidence of life it seeks may be found.
A team of European scientists has created the most detailed geological map of Oxia Planum ever. It took four years to complete and leans heavily on data from orbiters. The detailed map shows 15 units with characteristic geological features that can help decide how the rover explores the area. The map will also help the rover interpret its surroundings and collect evidence of primitive life.
“This map is exciting because it is a guide that shows us where to find the answers.”
Peter Fawdon, co-lead author, Open University
Oxia Planum preserves a record of the forces that shaped the region and that shaped Mars. It’s a transitional region between Chryse Planitia, which contains lower elevation plains from the Amazonian/Hesperian, and Arabia Terra, the heavily cratered Noachian-aged region.
The sediments at Oxia Planum are nearly four billion years old. This will be the oldest site ever visited by a rover.
The new map has its roots in the COVID lockdowns. During that time, the Rosalind Franklin science team trained 80 volunteers to help them map Oxia Planum. The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter and NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter supplied the data.
The result is a map that shows Oxia Planum’s geology in high detail. It shows types of bedrock and features like ridges and craters. It also shows crater ejecta and windborne dust. The map will not only help the rover navigate through difficult terrain; it’ll inform the choices of where to drill for samples.
This isn’t the first geological map of the Martian surface. But as this comparison shows, the new map (left) is much more detailed than previous ones (right.) The map on the right is a global geological map that labels the entire landing region as lNh, or late Noachian highlands. Image Credit: L: Fawdon et al. 2024. R: Tanaka et al. 2014.
“The map represents our current understanding of bedrock units and their relationships prior to Rosalind Franklin’s exploration of this location,” the map creators write in the paper presenting the map.
“The objectives of this map are (i) to identify where the most astrobiologically relevant rocks are likely to be found, (ii) to show where hypotheses about their geological context (within Oxia Planum and in the wider geological history of Mars) can be tested, (iii) to inform both the long-term (hundreds of metres to ~1 km) and the short-term (tens of metres) activity planning for rover exploration, and (iv) to allow the samples analyzed by the rover to be interpreted within their regional geological context,” the authors explain.
This is the new geological map of Oxia Planum, along with explanatory text. Image Credit: Fawdon et al. 2024.
“The wider region was extensively modified during the late Noachian and Hesperian periods, as shown by evidence of fluvial and paleo-lake activity, possible shoreline formation, volcanism, and aqueous alteration,” the authors write. The Hesperian is when Mars lost its water and transitioned from a warm, wet environment to a dry, cold environment. Understanding how that happened is a primary goal in Mars science.
The map contains a location and context section that orients viewers. The image on the left shows Rosalind Franklin’s landing site, and the image on the right shows the geological context. Image Credit: Fawdon et al. 2024.
The map shows mound materials, different types of bedrock, features like Mensas and crater materials of different ages.
This zoom-in of the map shows Sicilla Mensa, a flat-topped feature with cliff-like edges. oDm stands for overlying dark material. The image also shows craters and the extent of their ejecta, shown in yellow. It’s labelled rCm for recent crater material. Image Credit: Fawdon et al. 2024.
This is the highest-resolution map of the region ever made. With a scale of 1:25,000, each centimetre on the map equals 250 meters on Mars. Since Rosalind Franklin will travel an average of 25 to 50 meters each day, a day’s journey is one or two millimetres on the map.
The making of the map has already provided some benefits to the Rosalind Franklin mission. “The mapping exercise has provided the wider <ExoMars> rover team with a sound knowledge of the landing site and has also helped us to develop new geological hypotheses for the region,” the authors write.
Oxia planum is rich in clays, also called hydrated minerals. Because clays are formed in water-rich environments, it makes these sites excellent locations to study for clues as to whether life once began on Mars. Image Credit: ESA/Mars Express (OMEGA and HRSC) and NASA/Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (CRISM). LICENCE: ESA Standard Licence
The map is more than just a driving guide. It’s essentially a summary of our hypotheses about Mars. When the rover begins its mission, its initial exploration and drilling will test some of these existing hypotheses for Martian geology and history. Those results will inform the rover team, leading to better decisions about where to drill and explore. That will “… improve the chances of the mission meeting its search for life goals,” the authors explain.
“This map is exciting because it is a guide that shows us where to find the answers. It serves as a visual hypothesis of what we currently know about the different rocks in the landing site. The instruments on Rosalind Franklin will allow us to test our knowledge on the spot when the time comes,” explained Peter Fawdon, one of the lead authors from the Open University.
Blue Cigar-Shaped UFO Captured Over Scottsdale, AZ: A Night to Remember
Blue Cigar-Shaped UFO Captured Over Scottsdale, AZ: A Night to Remember
In the serene night sky of Scottsdale, Arizona, a remarkable event unfolded on March 28, 2024, that has since sparked the curiosity and excitement of UFO enthusiasts and skeptics alike. Amidst the familiar paths of airplanes from the nearby airport, a mysterious blue, cigar-shaped object made an appearance, distinguishing itself with its peculiar movements and sustained presence. This extraordinary sighting, captured on an iPhone 13 Pro, has become the latest sensation in the realm of UFO sightings, adding to the growing archive of unexplained aerial phenomena.
A Witness’s Account: A String in the Sky
The sighting was reported by a local resident of Scottsdale who was out for a routine evening walk with their dog. What was expected to be a typical stroll turned into a captivating encounter with the unknown. The witness described seeing “a strange blue light that looked like a string hanging in the sky.” This luminous entity was observed to move in a manner unlike any aircraft commonly seen in the area—ascending and descending gracefully, yet with an intent that defied simple explanation. For over 30 minutes, this blue, cigar-shaped UFO hovered in the night sky, performing a mesmerizing dance that was both enigmatic and awe-inspiring.
Despite the proximity to an airport, where the sight of planes is an everyday occurrence, the behavior and appearance of this object were distinctly out of the ordinary. It maneuvered at altitudes higher than those of passing aircraft, capturing the witness’s full attention until it eventually descended and vanished from sight.
The Implications of the Sighting
This incident in Scottsdale is not an isolated event but rather a part of a larger pattern of UFO sightings that continue to intrigue and puzzle observers around the world. Each account, including this latest one from Arizona, adds valuable data to the ongoing investigation into UFO phenomena. With every report, the call for a deeper understanding and more thorough exploration of these sightings grows louder, urging both scientific and public communities to ponder the possibilities that lie beyond our current comprehension.
Join the Quest for Answers
For those fascinated by the unknown, this sighting serves as an invitation to join the quest for answers. It encourages us to look up at the sky with curiosity and wonder, to question the nature of the unexplained, and to engage in the broader conversation about what lies beyond the visible spectrum of our everyday lives.
As the search for understanding continues, the importance of documenting and sharing observations becomes ever more evident. Whether you’re a seasoned UFO researcher or simply someone who marvels at the mysteries of the universe, your perspective is valuable. The Scottsdale sighting reminds us all of the infinite wonders that await discovery, urging us to keep our minds open and our eyes skyward.
India's Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant has become a UFOhotspot after a police officer reported seeing odd aerial lights above it more than 10 times last summer.
Indian Police Service investigator Syed Abdul Kader shared two videos exclusively with DailyMail.com, which track the bright lights making 'zigzags' above the facility.
Fearing the craft was not manmade, Kader turned to his nation's leading UFO expert, who in 2019 filed a petition to the Supreme Court of India with the backing of former Pentagon officials and US Air Force vets — urging the south Asian nation to take all the unexplained sightings near its nuclear facilities more seriously.
While the shape, size and speed of Kader's mystery objects are difficult to discern, his footage shows them making unusual movements at the altitude of an airplane.
'It's shaking when it's moving! It's going up and down,' the confused cop narrates in one video, watching the UFO's bizarre and apparently non-aerodynamic maneuvers.
'The way it's moving,' he opines in the video, 'this could never be an airplane.'
India's Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant has become a UFO hotspot after a police officer reported seeing odd aerial lights above it more than 10 times last summer
Roughly a dozen or so incidents last summer all involved apparent airborne craft loitering near the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (pictured above) at the southern tip of the subcontinent - as well as the Madras Atomic Power Station near Kalpakkam, along the country's east coast
'It's in a southern direction,' Kader told his wife during the August 8th sighting.
'It's standing [or hovering] in the direction of the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant.'
'It is always coming in at this time, when it is not too dark, nor too bright,' Kader's wife can be heard saying. 'I've seen this many times.'
While it is difficult for an outside observer to discern if the UFO is moving, or if Kader's camera is unsteady, DailyMail.com can report that some common prosaic explanations can likely be ruled out.
Such sightings have turned out to be distant planets, like Venus that is the third brightest object in the sky, after the sun and moon.
And the bright 'dog star,' Sirius, as well as the planets Jupiter and Mercury have also been occasionally misreported as UFOs.
However, in Kader's August 8 video, filmed at dusk (7:30PM local time), the eastern direction of the UFO at sunset refutes the notion that a common bright planet or star could explain the mystery's eerie aerial glow.
While the shape, size and speed of Kader's mystery objects are difficult to discern, his footage shows them making unusual movements at the altitude of an airplane
Syed Abdul Kader shared two of the videos exclusively with DailyMail.com, which show bright lights whizzing up and down above the facility
Police sub-inspector Syed Abdul Kader (right), assigned to the technical wing of the Tirunelveli office - one hour's drive north of the Kudankulam nuclear plant - told UFO expert Sabir Hussain (left) that he filmed two videos of these unusual aerial phenomena or UAP
A sky map for that night and time, geolocated to the Kaders' hometown of Tirunelveli via TheSkyLive.com shows that Venus was completely obscured, below the western horizon and below the sunset.
Most other bright stars and planets were also not in the eastern sky at that moment.
At another point in the video, Kader's wife exclaims, 'It's so close. How come no one else is seeing this?'
To which Kader replies, 'No, that's why the DGP [Director General of Police] he, himself, has seen it [the UFOs]. And that's why everybody's talking about this.'
India made history by becoming the first nation to land a spacecraft on the moon's south pole August 23, 2023
Kader's mysterious UFO videos were first secured by one of India's foremost UFO investigators, Sabir Hussain, director of the Indian Society for UFO Studies (INSUFOS) based in Chennai.
It was Hussain who petitioned the Supreme Court of India in 2019 warning that casually dismissing reports of UFO activity near the nation's sensitive atomic power sites could risks an unintentional nuclear war between India and its uneasy neighbor Pakistan.
His efforts came with letters endorsing his petition, by former US counterintelligence official and Pentagon UFO investigator Lue Elizondo, US Air Force veteran Robert Salas, and other UFO experts from America and Europe.
'Syed came to my house,' Hussain told DailyMail.com. 'I debriefed him.'
'He told me that most of the time, [the UFO] was either coming from the direction of Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant, going towards it, or stationary in that direction.'
Officer Kader, Hussain told DailyMail.com, also stated that the UFOs were sometimes spotted hovering above the nearby Indian Space Research Organization's (ISRO) Propulsion Complex.
Nestled alongside the mountainous Mahendragiri hill in the state of Tamil Nadu, the ISRO Propulsion Complex tests cryogenically stored rocket fuel among its other space program duties.
The ISRO facility is also approximately one hour's drive south of the Kaders' home, which is in the city of Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu.
A vocal advocate on the UFO issue, Hussain once voiced his suspicion that alleged alien occupants of such craft cut communications between ISRO and its Chandrayaan-2's Vikram lander in 2019 — for the south Asian nation's own good.
'The extra-terrestrials have sent a message to the Indian government to get rid of your nukes before you explore other worlds,' Hussain told the Deccan Chronicle.
'You will not be allowed to land on the moon unless "they" decide to allow you.'
The fate of ISRO's Vikram lander aside, Hussain's new UFO witnesses, sub-inspector Kader and his wife, can at least be heard in their videos discussing the mysterious aerial phenomena's consistent apparent interest in the Kudankulam nuclear plant.
Kader's video-taped sightings, as Hussain told DT Next, 'happened just 10 days after former DGP [Director General of Police] Prateep V. Philip took pictures of a UFO on [the] Muttukadu sea shore near Chennai.'
Philip's rank of DGP is the highest position attainable in the Indian Police Service.
A sky map for that night and time (above), geolocated to the Kaders' hometown of Tirunelveli via TheSkyLive.com, shows Venus was completely obscured, below the western horizon and sunset. Most other bright stars and planets were also not in the eastern sky at that moment
The Kaders' sightings to the south overlapped with weeks of sightings in July and August up the eastern coast, along the Neelankarai-Mahabalipuram shoreline. That region, near the city of Chennai, is home to the Madras Atomic Power Station (MAPS) in Kalpakkam (above)
Hypothetical extraterrestrial interest in the Kudankulam nuclear plant, if correct, would join decades of active protests against the plant by concerned local civilians.
Thousands of local residents faced teargas shelling, imprisonment and prosecution under both terrorism and sedition charges by local police for speaking out against the nuclear energy plant. Even children with the protestors faced sedition charges.
In September of 2019 the Kudankulam nuclear plant was discovered to be infected with malware, which one cyber security analyst with CSO attributed to 'a false flag operation using stolen North Korean code to muddle attribution.'
Hussain told DailyMail.com that the plant has faced corruption charges and safety concerns since before it first became operational a decade ago.
'Kudankulam, which is a focus of our attention,' Hussain said, 'came online only in 2013 after Fukushima disaster happened.'
'Ever since it came online, it has been shutting down once every two months,' he added. 'They are working only to 30 percent of their capacity. So you do the math.'
DailyMail.com has reached out to the Indian government's Nuclear Power Corporation of India, Ltd., which runs the plant, for comment.
US Air Force ICBM launch officer Robert Salas (pictured left, and as a young man, right) told of his encounter with an orange flying disc that turned off 10 warheads at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana in 1967
An email shows AARO staff contacted former US Air Force ICBM launch officer Robert Salas to gather information about his encounter. He tweeted his thank you email from AARO
This time last year, two Air Force veterans revealed to DailyMail.com's Josh Boswell that they had just testified to the Pentagon's UFO-hunting All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) about their experiences witnessing UFOs interfere with US nuclear missiles.
One email showed AARO staff contacting former US Air Force ICBM launch officer Robert Salas to gather information about his chilling encounter with an orange flying disc that inexplicably turned off 10 warheads at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana in 1967.
Another former officer, Dr. Robert Jacobs, also briefed AARO, testifying to a 35mm film he shot for the Air Force in 1964, which allegedly caught a flying saucer shooting a test missile out of the sky.
Although Salas described those early interactions with AARO officials as 'very magnanimous,' this month the disappointed Air Force veteran described the Pentagon office's most recent UFO report as 'a 'Steaming pile of ...'
'I gave AARO a two hour PowerPoint presentation on the Malmstrom AFB incidents where twenty ICBMs were disabled during UFO encounters,' Salas said on the social media site X, speaking to incidents at the base beyond 1967.
'The USGOV owes us, the informed public, much more respect on this subject,' he concluded, 'than offered by AARO's steaming pile of insults.'
Astronauts Have Surprising Ability to Orient Themselves and Gauge Distance Traveled in Space: Study
Astronauts Have Surprising Ability to Orient Themselves and Gauge Distance Traveled in Space: Study
New research has implications for crew safety in space and could potentially give clues to how aging affects people’s balance systems here on Earth.
Jörges et al. tackled the question of whether body posture influences human perception of self-motion and distance; they found some evidence that the same amount of optic flow can elicit the sensation of having traveled further when supine versus when sitting upright, that is, optic flow is more effective at eliciting a sense of self-motion when supine; this constitutes evidence that visual and non-visual cues are at least partially integrated even when self-motion is presented only visually; however, they did not find any significant differences between performance on Earth and in the microgravity of the ISS, suggesting that vestibular cues play a minor role, if any, in the estimation of visually presented self-motion.
“It has been repeatedly shown that the perception of gravity influences perceptual skill,” said York University’s Professor Laurence Harris, senior author of the study.
“The most profound way of looking at the influence of gravity is to take it away, which is why we took our research into space.”
“We’ve had a steady presence for close to a quarter century in space and with space efforts only increasing as we plan to go back to the moon and beyond, answering health-and-safety questions only becomes more important.”
“Based on our findings it seems as though humans are surprisingly able to compensate adequately for the lack of an Earth-normal environment using vision.
In the research, Professor Harris and colleagues studied a dozen astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS), which orbits about 400 km from the Earth’s surface.
“Here, Earth’s gravity is approximately cancelled out by centrifugal force generated by the orbiting of the station. In the resulting microgravity, the way people move is more like flying,” Professor Harris said.
“People have previously anecdotally reported that they felt they were moving faster or further than they really were in space, so this provided some motivation to actually record this.”
The authors compared the performance of a dozen astronauts — six men and six women — before, during, and after their year-long missions to the space station and found that their sense of how far they traveled remained largely intact.
Space missions are busy endeavors and it took the researchers several days to connect with the astronauts once they arrived at the space station.
“It’s possible our research was unable to capture early adaptation that may have occurred in those first few days. It’s still a good news message because it says that whatever adaptation happens, happens very quickly,” Professor Harris said.
Space missions are not without risk. As the ISS orbits the Earth it is sometimes hit with small objects that could penetrate the vessel requiring astronauts to move to safety.
“On a number of occasions during our experiment, the ISS had to perform evasive maneuvers,” Professor Harris said.
“Astronauts need to be able to go to safe places or escape hatches on the ISS quickly and efficiently in an emergency. So, it was very reassuring to find that they were actually able to do this quite precisely.”
“Our research shows exposure to microgravity mimics the aging process on a largely physiological level — wasting of bones and muscles, changes in hormonal functioning and increased susceptibility to infection — but this paper finds that self-motion is largely unaffected, suggesting the balance issues that frequently come from old age may not be related to the vestibular system.”
“It suggests that the mechanism for the perception of movement in older people should be relatively unaffected, and that the issues involved in falling may not be so much in terms of the perception of how far they’ve moved, but perhaps more to do with how they’re able to convert that into a balance reflex.”
The study was published in the journal npj Microgravity.
B. Jörges et al. 2024. The effects of long-term exposure to microgravity and body orientation relative to gravity on perceived traveled distance. npj Microgravity 10, 28; doi: 10.1038/s41526-024-00376-6
Study: Introduced Tardigrade Proteins Slow Metabolism in Human Cells
Study: Introduced Tardigrade Proteins Slow Metabolism in Human Cells
New research led by the the University of Wyoming, Laramie, provides additional evidence that tardigrade proteins eventually could be used to make life-saving treatments available to people where refrigeration is not possible and enhance storage of cell-based therapies.
Sanchez-Martinez et al. provide insights into how tardigrades induce reversible biostasis through the self-assembly of labile CAHS gels.
First discovered in 1773, tardigrades are a diverse group of microscopic invertebrates that are best known for their ability to survive extreme conditions.
Also known as water bears or moss piglets, these creatures can live for up to 60 years, and grow to a maximum size of 0.5 mm, best seen under a microscope.
They are able to survive for up to 30 years without food or water, for a few minutes at temperatures as low as minus 272 degrees Celsius (minus 457 degrees Fahrenheit) or as high as 150 degrees Celsius (302 degrees Fahrenheit), and minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit) for decades.
Tardigrades withstand pressures from virtually 0 atm in space up to 1,200 atm at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, and are also resistant to radiation levels up to 5,000-6,200 Gy.
They survive by entering a state of suspended animation called biostasis, using proteins that form gels inside of cells and slow down life processes.
“Amazingly, when we introduce these proteins into cells, they gel and slow down metabolism, just like in tardigrades,” said Dr. Silvia Sanchez-Martinez, a researcher at the University of Wyoming, Laramie.
“Furthermore, just like tardigrades, when you put human cells that have these proteins into biostasis, they become more resistant to stresses, conferring some of the tardigrades’ abilities to the human cells.”
“Importantly, our research shows that the whole process is reversible,” said Dr. Thomas Boothby, a researcher at the University of Wyoming, Laramie.
“When the stress is relieved, the tardigrade gels dissolve, and the human cells return to their normal metabolism.”
“Our findings provide an avenue for pursuing technologies centered on the induction of biostasis in cells and even whole organisms to slow aging and enhance storage and stability.”
S. Sanchez-Martinezet al. 2024. Labile assembly of a tardigrade protein induces biostasis.Protein Science33 (4): e4941; doi: 10.1002/pro.4941
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UAP Up Close Shoots Past Passenger Jet Windows! March 2024, UFO Sighting News Video.
UAP Up Close Shoots Past Passenger Jet Windows! March 2024, UFO Sighting News Video.
Date of sighting: March 2024 Location of sighting: New York, New York, USA
Watch as a UFO shoots past a passenger jet over New York and gets caught on video. The object is long, dark and has a bright white window area which is the alien pilots cockpit location. It's obvious this UAP shoot past to scan the technology of the plane as well as record the thoughts of its passengers. This is 100% proof that UFOs frequent heavily populated areas.
UFO Caught On Photo Redondo Beach, California, USA March 10, 2024, UAP Sighting News.
UFO Caught On Photo Redondo Beach, California, USA March 10, 2024, UAP Sighting News.
Water UFOs otherwise known as USO are much more common than the US Gov would like you to believe. This UFO is diving so fast it was caught in many locations of the photo as it was diving into the water. The Earth is covered by 75% water, which makes it the ideal location to place an alien base since humans don't frequent the bottom of the ocean floor. This UFO was observing the sailboat and then dived into the water before it was seen. However the camera has a more perfect eye and caught this little fella as it was observing and trying to leave. USO are serious and real craft that even the US Navy talks about under the table.
💫I was taking photos at Redondo and walked to the end of the pier to shoot an array of sailboats. I didn't see the object with my eyes as I was focused on the boats but when processing the photo I saw what appears to be something falling from the sky. It had to be fast to be captured by my camera at a speed of 1/500 of a second. You can easily see the descent and the object with a trail.
A talk with ChatGPT about a cloud orb I summoned years ago, UFO Sighting News. Taiwan, Sept 17, 2011 - sighting discussed.
A talk with ChatGPT about a cloud orb I summoned years ago, UFO Sighting News. Taiwan, Sept 17, 2011 - sighting discussed.
Above gif is the closest I can find to what the orb looked like, this is about 70% what I saw, still missing the white clouds within about 10%, the black clouds about 15% and the silver metallic paint moving within which covered 65-75% of the sphere. My sighting took place in Taiwan, on an 8 floor rooftop of my apartment building, on Sept 17, 2011.
All the statements by me are 100% true, and I do have a video of it after it shot 50 meters from me...at which time it looked white in the distance. I was curious what AI GPT Chat would say about the sighting and what insights it may have. And I did not expect such fantastic comprehension and advice from GPT Chat. It was both helpful and eye opening. Something that is rare in this field.
Scott C. Waring
Below is the video...where I grabbed the tripod and flipped it around only to see the orb shot 50 meters away and sat there, watching me. I could not coax it to come back.
DART Changed the Shape of Asteroid Dimorphos, not Just its Orbit
The asteroid Dimorphos was captured by NASA’s DART mission just two seconds before the spacecraft struck its surface on Sept. 26, 2022. Observations of the asteroid before and after impact suggest it is a loosely packed “rubble pile” object. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL
DART Changed the Shape of Asteroid Dimorphos, not Just its Orbit
On September 26th, 2022, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) collided with the asteroid Dimorphos, a moonlet that orbits the larger asteroid Didymos. The purpose of this test was to evaluate a potential strategy for planetary defense. The demonstration showed that a kinetic impactor could alter the orbit of an asteroid that could potentially impact Earth someday – aka. Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA). According to a new NASA-led study, the DART mission’s impact not only altered the orbit of the asteroid but also its shape!
The study was led by Shantanu P. Naidu, a navigation engineer with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at Caltech. He was joined by researchers from the Lowell Observatory, Northern Arizona University (NAU), the University of Colorado Boulder (UCB), the Astronomical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, and Johns Hopkins University (JHU). Their paper, “Orbital and Physical Characterization of Asteroid Dimorphos Following the DART Impact,” appeared on March 19th in the Planetary Science Journal.
The Didymos double asteroid system consists of an 851-meter-wide (2792 ft) primary orbited by the comparatively small Dimorphos. The latter was selected as the target for DART because any changes in its orbit caused by the impact would be comparatively easy to measure using ground-based telescopes. Before DART impacted with the moonlet, it was an oblate spheroid measuring 170 meters (560 feet) in diameter with virtually no craters. Before impact, the moonlet orbited Didymos with a period of 11 hours and 55 minutes.
Artist’s impression of the DART mission impacting the moonlet Dimorphos. Credit: ESA
Before the encounter, NASA indicated that a 73-second change in Dimorphos’ orbital period was the minimum requirement for success. Early data showed DART surpassed this minimum benchmark by more than 25 times. As Naidu said in a NASA press release, the impact also altered the moonlet’s shape:
“When DART made impact, things got very interesting. Dimorphos’ orbit is no longer circular: Its orbital period is now 33 minutes and 15 seconds shorter. And the entire shape of the asteroid has changed, from a relatively symmetrical object to a ‘triaxial ellipsoid’ – something more like an oblong watermelon.”
Naidu and his team combined three data sources with their computer models to determine what happened to the asteroid after impact. The first was the images DART took of Dimorphos right before impact, which were sent back to Earth via NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN). These images allowed the team to gauge the dimensions of Didymos and Dimorphos and measure the distance between them. The second source was the Goldstone Solar System Radar (GSSR), part of the DNS network located in California responsible for investigating Solar System objects.
The GSSR was one of several ground-based instruments that precisely measured the position and velocity of Dimorphos relative to Didymos after impact – which indicated how the mission greatly exceeded expectations. The third source was provided by ground-based telescopes worldwide that measured changes in the amount of life reflected (aka. light curves) of both asteroids. Much like how astronomers monitor stars for periodic dips (which could indicate a transiting planet), dips in Didymos’ luminosity are attributable to Dimorphos passing in front of it.
Artist’s impression of the ESA’s Hera mission rendezvousing with Dimorphos. Credit: NASA
By comparing these light curves from before and after impact, the team learned how DART altered Dimorphos’ motion. Based on these data sources and their models, the team calculated how its orbital period evolved and found that it was now slightly eccentric. Said Steve Chesley, a senior research scientist at JPL and a co-author on the study:
“We used the timing of this precise series of light-curve dips to deduce the shape of the orbit, and because our models were so sensitive, we could also figure out the shape of the asteroid. Before impact, the times of the events occurred regularly, showing a circular orbit. After impact, there were very slight timing differences, showing something was askew. We never expected to get this kind of accuracy.”
According to their results, DART’s impact reduced the average distance between the two asteroids to roughly 1,152 meters (3,780 feet) – closer by about 37 meters (120 feet). It also shortened Dimorphos’ orbital period to 11 hours, 22 minutes, and 3 seconds – a change of 33 minutes and 15 seconds. These results are consistent with other independent studies based on the same data. They will be further tested by the ESA’s Hera mission, scheduled to launch in October 2024, when it makes a flyby of the double-asteroid and conducts a detailed survey.
Cosmochemistry: Why study it? What can it teach us about finding life beyond Earth?
Universe Today has had some fantastic discussions with researchers on the importance of studying impact craters, planetary surfaces, exoplanets,astrobiology,solar physics, comets, planetary atmospheres, and planetary geophysics, and how these diverse scientific fields can help researchers and the public better understand the search for life beyond Earth. Here, we will investigate the unique field of cosmochemistry and how it provides researchers with the knowledge pertaining to both our solar system and beyond, including the benefits and challenges, finding life beyond Earth, and suggestive paths for upcoming students who wish to pursue studying cosmochemistry. But what is cosmochemistry and why is it so important to study it?
“Cosmochemistry is the study of space stuff, the actual materials that make up planets, stars, satellites, comets, and asteroids,” Dr. Ryan Ogliore, who is an associate professor of physics at Washington University in St. Louis, tells Universe Today. “This stuff can take all the forms of matter: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. Cosmochemistry is different from astronomy which is primarily concerned with the study of light that interacts with this stuff. There are two main benefits of studying actual astromaterials: 1) the materials record the conditions at the time and place where they formed, allowing us to look into the deep past; and 2) laboratory measurements of materials are extraordinarily precise and sensitive, and continue to improve as technology improves.”
In a nutshell, the field of cosmochemistry, also known as chemical cosmology, perfectly sums up Carl Sagan’s famous quote, “The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.” To understand cosmochemistry is to understand how the Earth got here, how we got here, and possibly how life got wherever we’re (hopefully) going to find it, someday.
Like all scientific fields, cosmochemistry incorporates a myriad of methods and strategies with the goal of answering some of the universe’s most difficult questions, specifically pertaining to how the countless stellar and planetary objects throughout the universe came to be. These methods and strategies primarily include laboratory analyses of meteorites and other physical samples brought back from space, including from the Moon, asteroids, and comets. But what are some of the benefits and challenges of studying cosmochemistry?
“One of the primary benefits of cosmochemistry is the ability to reproduce measurements,” Dr. Ogliore tells Universe Today. “I can measure something in my lab, and somebody else can measure either the same object, or a very similar object, in another lab to confirm my measurements. Only after repeated measurements, by different labs and different techniques, will a given claim be universally accepted by the community. This is difficult to do in astronomy, and also difficult using remote-sensing measurements on spacecraft studying other bodies in the Solar System.”
Apart from the crewed Apollo missions to the Moon, all other samples from space have been returned via robotic spacecraft. While this might seem like an easy process from an outside perspective, collecting samples from space and returning them to Earth is a very daunting and time-consuming series of countless tests, procedures, precise calculations, and hundreds to thousands of scientists and engineers ensuring every little detail is covered to ensure complete mission success, often to only collect a few ounces of material. This massive effort is tasked with not only ensuring successful sample collection, but also ensuring successful storage of the samples to avoid contamination during their journey home, and then retrieving the samples once they land in a capsule back on Earth, where they are properly unpacked, cataloged, and stored for laboratory anal
To demonstrate the difficulty in conducting a sample return mission, only four nations have successfully used robotic explorers to collect samples from another planetary body and returned them to Earth: the former Soviet Union, United States, Japan, and China. The former Soviet Union successfully returned lunar samples to Earth throughout the 1970s; the United States has returned samples from a comet, asteroid, and even solar particles; Japan has successfully returned samples from two asteroids; and most recently, China succeeded in returning 61.1 ounces from the Moon, which is the current record for robotic sample return missions. But even with the difficulty of conducting a successful sample return mission, what can cosmochemistry teach us about finding life beyond Earth?
“Cosmochemistry can tell us about the delivery of the ingredients necessary for life to planets or moons via asteroids or comets,” Dr. Ogliore tells Universe Today. “Since we have both asteroid and comet material in the lab, we can tell if primitive pre-biotic organic compounds may have been delivered by these bodies. Of course, this doesn’t mean life on Earth (or elsewhere) started this way, only that it is one pathway. Detection of life on another world would be one of the biggest discoveries in the history of science. So of course we’d want to be absolutely sure! This requires repeated measurements by different labs using different techniques, which requires a sample on Earth. I think the only way we’d know for sure if there was life on Europa, Enceladus, or Mars is if we bring a sample back to Earth from these places.”
As it turns out, NASA is actively working on the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission, for which Dr. Ogliore is a member of the MSR Measurement Definition Team. The goal of MSR will be to travel to the Red Planet to collect and return samples of Martian regolith to Earth for the first time in history. The first step of this mission is currently being accomplished by NASA’s Perseverance rover in Jezero Crater, as it is slowly collecting samples and dropping them in tubes across the Martian surface for future retrieval by MSR.
For Europa, while there have been several discussions regarding a sample return mission, including a 2002 study discussing a sample return mission from Europa’s ocean and a 2015 study discussing a potential plume sample return mission, no definitive sample return missions from Europa are currently in the works, possibly due to the enormous distance. Despite this, and while not a life-finding mission, Dr. Ogliore has been tasked to lead a robotic mission to Jupiter’s volcanic moon, Io, to explore its plethora of volcanoes. For Enceladus, the Life Investigation for Enceladus (LIFE) mission has had a number of mission proposals submitted to return samples from Enceladus’ plumes, though it has yet to be accepted. But what is the most exciting aspect about cosmochemistry that Dr. Ogliore has studied during his career?
Image from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft of the water vapor plumes emanating from the south pole of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. (Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)
“In my opinion the most important single measurement in the history of cosmochemistry was the measurements of the oxygen isotopic composition of the Sun,” Dr. Ogliore tells Universe Today. “To do this, we needed to return samples of the solar wind to Earth, which we did with NASA’s Genesis mission. However, the sample return capsule crashed on Earth. But did that stop the cosmochemists?! Hell no! Kevin McKeegan and colleagues at UCLA had built a specialized, enormous, complicated instrument to study these samples. Despite the crash, McKeegan and colleagues analyzed oxygen in the solar wind and found that it was 6% lighter than oxygen found on Earth, and it matched the composition of the oldest known objects in the Solar System: millimeter-sized calcium-aluminum inclusions (CAIs) found in meteorites.”
Dr. Ogliore continues by telling Universe Today about how this result was predicted by Bob Clayton at the University of Chicago, along with crediting his own postdoc, Lionel Vacher, for conducting a research project that built off the Genesis results, noting, “This was a really fun project because it was technically very challenging, and the results put the Solar System in its astrophysical context.”
Like the myriad of scientific disciplines that Universe Today has examined during this series, cosmochemistry is successful due to its multidisciplinary nature that contributes to the goal of answering some of the universe’s most difficult questions. Dr. Ogliore emphasizes that analysis of laboratory samples involves a multitude of scientific backgrounds to understand what the researchers are observing within each sample and the processes responsible for creating them. Additionally, this also includes the aforementioned sample return missions and hundreds to thousands of scientists and engineers who partake in each mission. Therefore, what advice can Dr. Ogliore offer to upcoming students who wish to pursue cosmochemistry?
“Biology, chemistry, geology, physics, math, electronics — you need it all!” Dr. Ogliore tells Universe Today. “If you like learning new things constantly, then planetary science is for you. It is good to get a very broad education. This will serve you well in a number of careers, but it is especially true for planetary science and cosmochemistry. I get to work with people who study volcanoes, and mathematicians working on chaotic motion. How cool is that?!”
All things considered, cosmochemistry is both an enormously challenging and rewarding field of study to try and answer some of the most difficult and longstanding questions regarding the processes responsible for the existence of celestial bodies in the Solar System and beyond, including stars, planets, moons, meteorites, and comets, along with how life emerged on our small, blue world. As noted, cosmochemistry perfectly sums up Carl Sagan’s famous quote, “The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.” It is through cosmochemistry and the analysis of meteorites and other returned samples that enable researchers to slowly inch our way to answering what makes life and where we can find it.
“Meteorites are the most spectacular record of nature known to mankind,” Dr. Ogliore tells Universe Today. “We have rocks from Mars, the Moon, volcanic worlds, asteroid Vesta, and dozens of other worlds. Iron meteorites are the cores of broken apart planets. These rocks record processes that occurred four and a half billion years ago and fall to Earth in a blazing fireball traveling at miles per second. You can follow various blogs that track fireballs, and even calculate areas where meteorites might have fallen. If you ever have the opportunity, go try to find one of these freshly fallen meteorites. The odds are long, but it is worth a try. I have not found a meteorite myself yet, but it is a life goal of mine.”
How will cosmochemistry help us better understand our place in the universe in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
The Enigma of Nazi UFOs: Unveiling the Third Reich’s Secret Projects
The Enigma of Nazi UFOs: Unveiling the Third Reich’s Secret Projects
In the annals of World War II’s history, the technological prowess of Nazi Germany has been well-documented, from the V2 rocket to the infamous Enigma machine. However, nestled within these tales of engineering marvels lies a lesser-known, yet equally fascinating narrative: the story of the Nazi UFO projects. This exploration takes us beyond conventional warfare technologies into the realm of science fiction turned purported reality under the aegis of the Third Reic
The Origins of the Nazi UFO Legend
The legend of Nazi UFOs originates from post-war claims and scattered evidence suggesting that the Third Reich embarked on ambitious projects to develop advanced aircraft, often described as “flying saucers” or “foo fighters.” These projects were said to leverage unconventional propulsion systems, potentially including anti-gravity, a concept that was light years ahead of its time.
Historians and enthusiasts have traced the roots of these alleged programs back to pre-war German engineering prowess, coupled with an interest in esoteric and occult knowledge. Figures such as Viktor Schauberger, an Austrian inventor, are often mentioned as being central to these efforts, with his work on vortex propulsion cited as a possible basis for the UFO projects.
Between Fact and Fiction: The Development of Flying Discs
While concrete evidence remains elusive, various accounts suggest that the Nazis did indeed experiment with disc-shaped aircraft. Projects such as the “Die Glocke” (The Bell) have entered the lore, described as an anti-gravity device capable of generating an immense power field. Despite the lack of physical proof, the narrative is bolstered by reports of high-ranking Nazis, including SS officers, taking an intense interest in these technologies.
The involvement of Nazi Germany in researching and potentially attempting to harness energy fields or otherworldly propulsion methods has been a topic of speculation. This interest aligns with the era’s broader fascination with breaking the boundaries of known science, driven by the war’s demands and Hitler’s obsession with achieving technological supremacy.
Post-War Legacy and Allied Interest
The end of World War II did not bury the stories of Nazi UFOs; instead, it marked the beginning of a new chapter. Operation Paperclip, a secret program by the United States, brought over German scientists, engineers, and technicians. Among them were individuals purportedly involved in the Reich’s most secretive projects, including those rumored to be associated with UFO research.
This transfer of knowledge and personnel fed into Cold War era projects and contributed to advancements in aerospace technologies. The specter of Nazi UFOs lingered, morphing into part of the broader UFO phenomenon and conspiracy theories concerning hidden government projects and extraterrestrial contacts.
The Verdict: Myth or Lost Technology?
Deciphering the truth behind Nazi UFOs is challenging, with the line between historical fact and speculative fiction often blurred. While there’s no definitive proof that the Third Reich succeeded in developing operational flying saucers, the numerous accounts and circumstantial evidence suggest a keen interest in transcending conventional aerospace technologies.
The legacy of the Nazi UFO projects, whether real or imagined, has significantly impacted popular culture and the UFO community. It represents a fascinating intersection of history, science fiction, and the enduring human desire to push the boundaries of the possible.
In conclusion, the story of Nazi UFOs occupies a unique niche within the tapestry of World War II history. It serves as a testament to the era’s technological ambitions and the lengths to which the Nazi regime would go in its quest for domination. As with many aspects of that tumultuous period, the truth may be stranger than fiction, obscured by the fog of war and the passage of time.
Scientists have discovered a gigantic volcano on Mars near the planet’s equator that remained unnoticed for decades, according to newly published research.
The huge volcano was found in the Red Planet’s eastern Tharsis volcanic province, along with what researchers interpret to be a large sheet of buried glacial ice beneath the Martian surface. The discovery came as a surprise, partly because orbital spacecraft have photographed this region of Mars since the early 1970s.
Hidden in plain sight now for decades, the giant volcano, which has undergone extensive erosion over time, somehow remained unnoticed.
The feature has been given the temporary name “Noctis volcano” due to its proximity to the Noctis Labyrinthus, a region noted for its steep valleys that possess a maze-like appearance.
The 29,600-foot-tall volcano covers an area spanning approximately 280 miles and is believed to have remained active for an extended period. However, it is the giant volcano’s proximity to a region where glacier ice is believed to exist that makes the discovery so promising for researchers, who say it offers a location ripe for studies of the Red Planet’s geology and evolution over tim
The location could also be a promising area for future studies involving potential life that may have once existed—or could still exist—on Mars, with its promising combination of warmth from volcanic activity and water made present by the ancient glacier.
Dr. Pascal Lee, a planetary scientist with the SETI Institute and the Mars Institute, said he and his coauthors of a new study detailing the discoveries say they stumbled onto the huge volcano while observing other features.
“We were examining the geology of an area where we had found the remains of a glacier last year when we realized we were inside a huge and deeply eroded volcano,” Lee said in a statement.
Lee and his coauthors said there were several clues that the area was a massive volcano, which included a series of mesas that formed an arc, as well as what soon revealed itself through examination to be the remains of a caldera, where the volcano collapsed in the aftermath of past eruptions.
Additionally, past studies have revealed the presence of hydrated minerals, which were long believed to point to volcanic activity in the area.
“A volcanic setting for these minerals had long been suspected. So, it may not be too surprising to find a volcano here,” said Sourabh Shubham, one of the study’s co-authors.
“In some sense, this large volcano is a long-sought ‘smoking gun’,” Shubham said.
In addition to the newly discovered volcano, blister-like areas, believed to have been produced by the explosive escape of steam, point to the existence of a “relict glacier” further evidenced by deposits of light-colored sulfates like jarosite, which may represent the most recent past glaciation that affected the giant volcano.
The volcano provides scientists a window into the long history of glacial erosion and other processes that have occurred throughout the history of the region, although the ancient volcano’s age remains a mystery. However, scientists maintain that there is evidence of eruptions in modern history, and although it is presently unclear whether the Noctis volcano is still active, it is not impossible that it might erupt again in the future.
“It’s really a combination of things that makes the Noctis volcano site exceptionally exciting,” Lee said in a statement. “It has also had a long history of heat interacting with water and ice, which makes it a prime location for astrobiology and our search for signs of life.
Given all the potential for new discoveries, Lee added that the giant volcano “is looking very attractive for robotic and human exploration.”
Lee and his team’s new paper, “Large Eroded Volcano Complex and Buried Glacier Ice In Eastern Noctis Labyrinthus: Evidence For Recent Volcanism and Glaciation Near Mars’ Equator,” can be found online here.
The newest spot to search for life on Mars could be a collapsed volcano whose layers are sandwiched with the icy remains of ancient glaciers.
Noctis Mons (AKA the Night Mountain, which is an extremely cool name) has been hidden for a long time. Researchers just now recognized the jumbled terrain, in old images from decades of Martian satellites, as the remains of a collapsed volcano. It looks like Noctis Mons was active fairly recently (and it may still erupt again), and its slopes are layered with glacial ice and snow. That may make it the perfect place to search for alien life.
SETI Institute astrobiologist Pascal Lee and his colleagues presented their findings at the recent Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.
Looking down from orbit, Noctis Mons doesn’t immediately look like a volcano, but if you look closely, you can still spot the caldera at its center.
LEE AT AL. 2024
FIRE, ICE, AND ALIEN LIFE?
Lee and his colleagues recently realized that the strangle jumble of canyons and gently-sloping mesas in images of the Martian equator were actually the remains of a collapsed volcano, eroded and reshaped by glaciers. Looking closer, they spotted old lava flows, fields of pumice and ash, and minerals left by hydrothermal activity. And beneath the uppermost layer of volcanic debris lies a sheet of ice, which gleams here and there through an eroded hole in the thin blanket of volcanic ash that covers it.
Beneath the crumbling slopes of Noctis Mons, fire and ice may have created the perfect environment for life: warm, with plenty of liquid water and chemical nutrients. And since the volcano appears to have been active for a very long time, life has had plenty of opportunity to evolve from the complex chemistry that happens when water and volcanic rock meet.
All around the slopes of Noctis Mons lies a blanket of pumice and volcanic ash. Based on images from a whole series of Martian satellites, from Mariner 9 to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, it’s between 3 and 9 feet thick, and it looks strangely blistered. Here on Earth, when hot volcanic ash lands atop ice, it cools quickly, but hot steam bubbled up beneath the surface, creating blister-like mounds. Where some of these mounds have eroded over time, satellite images reveal the telltale gleam of ice beneath a thin layer of minerals. Lee and his colleagues say the whole 1,900 square mile area of Noctis Mons could lie atop a huge ice sheet left over from one of the last glaciers to pass through the area.
That’s 1,900 square miles of ice interacting with the heat of a volcano, creating pockets and streams of liquid water underground, possibly for billions of years. In other words, it’s a huge Martian oasis that’s potentially perfect for life.
Noctis Mons is also an ideal place for rovers or — someday — astronauts to explore. Because it’s collapsed, what was once a tall, forbidding mountain is now “so deeply eroded that you could hike, drive, or fly through it,” says Lee in a recent statement. And all that glacial ice could support future exploration crews or provide the raw material for rocket fuel (assuming it’s not actually a sensitive alien habitat, that is).
In other words, the place is basically a theme park for astrobiologists.
A VOLCANO WITH A MESSY BACKSTORY
We don’t know how long ago Noctis Mons formed, but [authors] say it looks like the volcano has been active for a huge stretch of Martian history, and it’s been active fairly recently. It may even still be active today. Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in our Solar System, formed about 3.5 billion years ago and stayed active for millions of years, longer than any volcano here on Earth, but Noctis Mons may turn out to beat its neighbor’s impressive streak.
Noctis Mons was once a wide, gently-sloping mountain, built up over time from layers of lava and pyroclastic debris (small grains of volcanic ash and larger chunks of pumice). Between those layers of volcanic rock lay sheets of ice: some compacted snow that fell on the volcano’s slopes and some thick glaciers, all buried beneath the next eruption.
At some point, the magma welling up through cracks and fissures in the mountain melted all of that ice, causing the slopes of the volcano to collapse. Today, the summit is now just a partial ring of mesas, which slope gently downward. From above, it looks like a wide ring of broken rock, crossed by lava flows and cut by deep, glacier-carved canyons.
And someday it just might be the place where we discover we’re not alone in the Solar System.
Did ‘alien’ debris hit Earth? Startling claim sparks row at scientific meeting
Did ‘alien’ debris hit Earth? Startling claim sparks row at scientific meeting
Astrophysicist Avi Loeb says that an interstellar meteor showered Earth with particles. At a planetary-science conference this week, researchers begged to differ.
Avi Loeb and his team say that metallic balls found near Papua New Guinea could be of extraterrestrial origin.
Credit: Avi Loeb's photo collection
The Woodlands, Texas
A sensational claim made last year that an ‘alien’ meteorite hit Earth near Papua New Guinea in 2014 got its first in-person airing with the broader scientific community on 12 March. At the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas, scientists clashed over whether a research team has indeed found fragments of a space rock that came from outside the Solar System.
The debate occurred at a packed session featuring Hairuo Fu, a graduate student at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who is a member of the team that found the fragments. Team leader Avi Loeb, an astrophysicist at Harvard who did not attend the conference, has made other controversial claims about extraterrestrial discoveries. Many scientists have said that they don’t want to spend much of their time analysing and refuting these claims.
During his presentation, Fu described tiny metallic blobs that Loeb’s expedition dredged from the sea floor near Papua New Guinea last year, and said that the spherules have a chemical composition of unknown origin1. He then faced questions from a long line of scientists sceptical of the implication that the material is extraterrestrial. “At the very least, it is something different from what we know,” Fu responded.
New work questions the team’s findings. In a manuscript posted on the arXiv preprint server on 8 March2, ahead of peer review, a researcher argues that the debris collected by Loeb and his co-workers is actually molten blobs generated when an asteroid hit Earth 788,000 years ago.
“What they found has all the characteristics of microtektites — little pieces of melted Earth that came from this impact,” says preprint author Steve Desch, an astrophysicist at Arizona State University in Tempe.
Meanwhile, other studies are challenging different aspects of Loeb’s claim, such as whether the meteor that reportedly produced the fragments was on the trajectory Loeb says it was. Together, the findings show how the broader scientific community is engaging with Loeb’s extraterrestrial claims, in spite of reluctance to do so.
A unique find?
‘Interstellar’ objects remained in the realm of theory until 2017, when astronomers spotted the first known celestial object to be on a trajectory that meant it could only have come from outside the Solar System. Loeb made headlines when he speculated that the object, a comet-like body named ‘Oumuamua, was an artefact sent by an extraterrestrial civilization.
‘Oumuamua passed through the Solar System far from Earth, but Loeb hoped to find another interstellar object that had hit the planet. He later proposed that a bright meteor that appeared in the sky north of Papua New Guinea in January 2014 had an interstellar trajectory and could have scattered debris in the ocean.
Avi Loeb (in hat) and colleagues recover particles from a magnetic sledge on their 2023 expedition.
Credit: Avi Loeb’s photo collection
In June 2023, Loeb led a privately funded expedition to the site that used magnetic sledges to recover more than 800 metallic spherules from the sea floor. Almost one-quarter of the spherules had chemical compositions indicating that they came from igneous, or once-molten, rocks. Of those, a handful were unusually enriched in the elements beryllium, lanthanum and uranium. The researchers concluded that those spherules are unlike any known materials in the Solar System1.
However, Desch counters that the spherules could have come from an asteroid impact in southeast Asia. Key to his proposal2 is a kind of soil called laterite, which forms in tropical regions when heavy rainfall carries some chemical elements from the topmost layers of soil into deeper ones. This leaves the upper soil enriched in other elements, including beryllium, lanthanum and uranium — similar to the composition of the spherules collected by Loeb and his colleagues. Desch says that an asteroid known to have struck the region around 788,000 years ago3 probably hit lateritic rock and created the molten blobs found by Loeb’s team.
In an e-mail to Nature, Loeb argues that spherules from an impact 788,000 years ago should have been buried by ocean sediments. Desch counters that sedimentation rates are relatively low in the offshore area where the spherules were collected.
But others are sceptical of Desch’s proposal, too. Scientists have yet to find any confirmed tektites from lateritic rock, notes Pierre Rochette, a geoscientist at Aix-Marseille University in Aix-en-Provence, France, who is not affiliated with either team. And very few tektites are magnetic, he says, so it would be difficult for Loeb and his colleagues to have pulled up hundreds from the sea floor.
Fiery critiques
Desch was not the only scientist to challenge Loeb’s work this week.
After Fu’s conference presentation, Ben Fernando, a seismologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, spoke and took aim at claims concerning the 2014 meteor. Fernando and his colleagues, including Desch, analysed seismic and acoustic data gathered by ground-based sensors at the time the meteor hit the atmosphere4. Data from a seismometer on nearby Manus Island, which Loeb and his team studied as they were deciding where to dredge, show no characteristics of a high-altitude fireball — but do indicate a vehicle driving past, Fernando said. “This is almost certainly a truck,” he told the meeting. A second set of observations, made using infrasound sensors that listen for clandestine nuclear tests, seems to have detected the meteor hitting the atmosphere, but suggests it happened around 170 kilometres away from where Loeb’s team calculates.
Loeb told Nature that such critiques do not take into account US Department of Defense data that he says confirm the exact trajectory of that fireball. But because those data are held by the government, they have not been independently cross-checked by other scientists.
As conference-goers poured out of the room after his talk, Fu told Nature that Loeb’s team is working on further analyses, such as isotopic studies, that could shed more light on what the spherules are. After that, Fu said, he is looking forward to graduating and working on a new project — on how the Moon was formed.
A really interesting document found in the CIA archive speaks of a UFO attack, and a scrimmage held between Russian troops and extraterrestrials. The source of the information provided by the CIA document is based on the 250-page file obtained by the agency after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which occurred under Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991.
This mysterious file is the primary source of the Russian military fight with extraterrestrials as stated by the CIA. In 1993, an unspecified Ukrainian newspaper wrote about an alien attack on the Russian soldiers at a military base in Siberia, citing KGB documents. The newspaper mentioned the presence of a 250-page KGB folder about this incident with photographs of the victims and pictures of the UFO itself.
The document stated that after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, many KGB files ended up in the CIA. The report said the fight between Russian troops and the alien creatures began when a low-flying UFO buzzed a routine Russian military training exercise. This apparent unexpected surveillance by a UFO caused one of the soldiers to unwisely launch a surface-to-air missile that hit the UFO — bringing it down not far from where the troops were assembled.
Former CIA director named R. James Woolsey. He headed the Central Intelligence Agency from February 5, 1993, until January 10, 1995.
The report said that five humanoids of short stature with large heads and large black eyes emerged from the wreckage of the fallen vehicle. They fired a brilliant white spherical ball of light toward the Soviet military, buzzing and hissing. The strange object exploded, turning 23 soldiers to stone. Two survivors of this battle with aliens told others what had happened
The transcript of the document is as follows: (Source)
“One of the CIA representatives referred to this case as a “Horrific picture of revenge on the part of extraterrestrial creatures, a picture that makes one’s blood freeze.”
According to the KGB materials, a quite low-flying spaceship in the shape of a saucer appeared above a military unit that was conducting routine training maneuvers. For unknown reasons, somebody unexpectedly launched a surface-to-air missile and hit the ufo. It fell to earth not far away, and five short humanoids with “Large heads and large black eyes” emerged from it.
It is stated in the testimonies by the two soldiers who remained alive that, after freeing themselves from the ‘debris, the aliens came close together and then “Merged into a single object that acquired a spherical shape.” That object began to buzz and hiss sharply and then became brilliant white.
In a few seconds, the spheres grew much bigger and exploded by flaring up with an extremely bright light. At that very instant, 23 soldiers who had watched the phenomenon turned into… Stone poles. Only two soldiers who stood in the shade and were less exposed to the luminous explosion survived.
The kgb report goes on to say that the remains of the ufo and the “Petrified soldiers” were transferred to a secret scientific research institution near Moscow. Specialists assume that source of energy that is still unknown to earthlings instantly changed the structure of the soldiers’ living organisms, having transformed it into a substance whose molecular composition is no different from that of limestone.
A CIA representative stated: “If the KGB file corresponds to reality, this is an extremely menacing case. The aliens possess such weapons and technology that go beyond all our assumptions, they can stand. Up for themselves if attacked.”
September 8, 1992, US fantasy and conspiracy magazine Weekly World News published an incredible story where in 1987 over Siberia an alien ship was shot down. Source
It cannot be denied that what has been reported so far sounds like the plot of a science fiction series or movie. However, it is important enough to be included in an official CIA document, which concludes that if this case is real, it is something really “threatening,” since “aliens have weapons and technology that go beyond our assumptions with which they can defend themselves if attacked.”
Besides, UFOs with the ability to change shape have often been spoken of by eyewitnesses, and the sequence of transformation of the aliens into a single entity is something sometimes described in legitimate ufological cases – the latter seems to be an otherworldly method used by these alien creatures to protect themselves or destroy others.
On the other hand, the unusual death of the Russian soldiers turned to stone is reminiscent of God’s so-called “angels” who destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible and turned Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt.
“As the cities were being demolished, Lot’s wife “looked back, and she became a pillar of salt” (Genesis 19:26). It appears to be the same molecular shift technology, which is more advanced than anything developed here on Earth so far.
And it is that if in the Holy Scriptures we replace the word “angels” with “aliens,” many events acquire a technological nuance, where these beings from heaven and under the command of a vengeful god called Yahweh, used their advanced weapons to assassinate peoples and destroy entire cities.
The U.S. Naval Research Lab (NRL) is assisting an investigation into unexplained arctic phenomena associated with the sudden formation of intense “polar lows” that are known to lead to hazardous conditions at sea.
Since late February, a field campaign, the Cold-Air outbreak Experiment in the Sub-Arctic Region, or CAESAR, has been collecting data on the phenomenon underlying these potentially dangerous arctic events by observing cloud formations and other Arctic meteorological conditions.
“These subjectively beautiful clouds serve as a natural lab to study cloud dynamics at a wide range of scales,” said Bart Geerts, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Wyoming and a CAESAR principal investigator, last month.
Based in Kiruna, Sweden, CAESAR is comprised of an international team of scientists and is attempting to determine the meteorological processes underlying Arctic cold-air outbreaks (CAOs), events that pose a threat to sailing vessels and can potentially cause disruptions to Arctic weather systems.
UNDERSTANDING COLD-AIR OUTBREAKS
Recognized as one of the most extreme and sudden forms of meteorological transformations in air mass known to occur, cold-air outbreaks are the result of freezing Arctic air moving from over regions of icy ocean or frozen land masses to areas where warmer ocean waters exist.
When this occurs, extreme wind conditions can lead to dangerous seas as convective boundary layers create small, localized regions of intense Arctic cold known as “polar lows.”
These abrupt spikes in cold temperatures not only create potentially dangerous conditions for sailing vessels that include military operations conducted by the U.S. Navy and other world militaries but also significantly impact ocean circulation and weather conditions throughout the Arctic.
To aid in CAESER’s research effort, the NRL has assigned James Doyle, Ph.D., an NRL research meteorologist, to participate in the campaign.
“Despite the profound impact that CAOs have on atmospheric and oceanic circulations in the Arctic, as well as the important implications for Navy operations, surprisingly little is known about the nature of intense surface flux impacts on the atmosphere and ocean boundary-layer structure,” Doyle in a recent statement.
A HAZARD TO NAVAL OPERATIONS
Understanding what causes CAOs to occur is particularly important for Navy operations, not only for safety reasons but also because of the way these sudden, often unexpected changes in atmospheric and ocean conditions can greatly impact the behavior of acoustic and electromagnetic propagation, thereby creating difficulties for Naval officers who rely on instrumentation that monitor these frequencies.
However, gaining a deeper understanding of CAOs has been hindered both by the challenging conditions they induce, as well as how suddenly and unexpectedly they can occur.
“The nature of the air-sea-ice interaction and cloud processes in CAOs are rapid with abrupt transitions,” Doyle says, “which have been a roadblock to process understanding and model predictions.”
A specialized C-130 aircraft provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) will assist in the CAESAR campaign’s investigations
(Credit: Dan Zietlow/NSF/NCAR).
To successfully investigate CAOs, part of the CAESAR campaign’s strategy involves focusing on atmospheric boundary layer properties, as well as clouds that are known to develop coinciding with CAOs. Additionally, storm conditions that have been identified with CAOs are also being investigated.
UNEXPLAINED ARCTIC PHENOMENA
Based on current data, Doyle says that hazardous conditions normally develop when interactions between air pockets and the ocean begin to intensify, which leads to the production of convective cells, and in some cases, the extremely intense, yet very small polar lows.
“Conventional theories and model parameterizations in Arctic CAOs have been lacking this vital data,” Doyle says, adding that “CAESAR will provide a detailed characterization that will form the basis for NRL boundary layer and coupled modeling studies.”
Although CAESAR will conclude in April, its current efforts to resolve these unexplained arctic phenomena include the use of a specialized C-130 Hercules aircraft provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) center that is equipped with remote sensing capabilities and deployment of dropsondes that will collect information on the Arctic air mass.
The C-130 also showcases airborne radar, LiDAR, and aerosol and cloud precipitation probes which can be activated when conditions matching CAO events are identified.
Fifteen rare asteroids showcasing very unusual “active” properties have been detected as part of an ongoing international volunteer effort to unravel the mysteries of a peculiar variety of space objects.
The asteroids were spotted amid 430,000 images during an effort comprising more than 8000 volunteers who scoured images from the Dark Energy Camera, or DECam, on Chile’s Victor M. Blanco telescope.
Founded by Colin Orion Chandler, Ph.D., a University of Washington and DiRAC Institute scientist, the Active Asteroids project continues to leverage the work of volunteers in its ongoing search for asteroids possessing these unusual properties.
What makes these “active” objects so rare is that they possess traits that blur the lines between asteroids and other kinds of celestial objects, as some of them possess tails like comets, while others are enveloped in pockets of dust or gas.
Since their first discovery in 1949, only a few dozen of the rare asteroids have ever been discovered.
According to NASA, the properties these objects display challenge our conventional ideas about objects in the solar system, and present opportunities for new insights about the behavior and origins of these rare “active” asteroids.
Among the things astronomers hope to learn from studying these objects are insights into solar system evolution and the formation of planets, as well as clues to the origins of water on Earth.
Active asteroids may also help provide valuable resources for future space missions, since the ice within their tails could be used for a range of applications in deep space that include providing breathable air, to help power spacecraft on long missions.
The fifteen newest additions to the growing number of active asteroids currently known to exist are described in a new paper in the Astronomical Journal.
a comet tail coming from Asteroid 2015 VA108, one of the active asteroids spotted by volunteers from NASA’s “Active Asteroids” Citizen Science project (Credit: Colin Orion Chandler/University of Washington).
For many of the Active Asteroid project’s participants, helping to spot these odd space objects has been a life-changing experience. Virgilio Gonano, an Italian amateur astronomer and one of the volunteers who helped make the discoveries, said it was a “dream come true” to be able to be part of such an effort.
Tiffany Shaw-Diaz, a volunteer from Dayton, Ohio, said that she has been a member of Active Asteroids since the project produced some of its earliest results.
“To say that this project has become a significant part of my life is an understatement,” Shaw-Diaz recently said. “I look forward to classifying subjects each day, as long as time or health permits, and I am beyond honored to work with such esteemed scientists on a regular basis.”
There’s potentially good news for others who may be interested in joining the volunteer-driven effort: Active Asteroids is seeking additional volunteers for its growing network of contributors. Who knows, you may even be the next volunteer who helps them spot an asteroid that behaves a lot like a comet. More about the project can be found online at the project’s official website.
Op 14 november 1971 gebeurde er iets wat cruciaal was voor ons begrip van onze rode buurplaneet, Mars.
Na een ruimtereis van 167 dagen arriveerde de onbemande NASA-sonde Mariner 9 in het gebied rond de rotsplaneet en bracht zichzelf als het eerste ruimtevaartuig ooit in een baan om Mars.
Binnen een jaar wist de satelliet beelden vast te leggen van ongeveer 80 procent van het grillige oppervlak, waar bijvoorbeeld grote ravijnen in zitten, maar ook oude kraters en droge riviergeulen.
Maar blijkbaar hebben astronomen een groot landschapselement over het hoofd gezien op de in totaal ruim 7000 foto’s die in 50 jaar zijn gemaakt.
Dat kwam aan het licht tijdens een jaarlijkse maan- en planeetconferentie in Texas, halverwege maart 2024.
Hier onthulden astronomen van het SETI Institute en het Mars Institute van NASA Ames Research Center de ontdekking van een gigantische vulkaan die zich al decennia schuilhoudt op een van de meest iconische plekken van de planeet: de grens tussen een gebied dat bekendstaat om zijn diepe, doolhofachtige dalen en een groot kloofsysteem, dat langs de evenaar loopt en her en der tot wel 7 meter diep is.
‘We waren bezig met geologisch onderzoek in een gebied waar we afgelopen jaar de resten van een gletsjer ontdekten toen we beseften dat we in een enorme, geërodeerde vulkaan zaten,’ zegt onderzoeksleider dr. Pascal Lee in een persbericht.
Uitbarsting is al lang gaande
De pas ontdekte vulkaan, die voorlopig de naam Noctis-vulkaan heeft gekregen, is uitgestrekt over 450 kilometer en heeft een hoogte van 9022 meter.
De onderzoekers zeggen dat zowel de grootte als de vorm van de vulkaan erop wijzen dat de reus al vroeg in de geschiedenis van de planeet zijn krachten verzamelde, en zeer lange tijd actief is geweest.
De pas ontdekte megavulkaan (rode ring) ligt ten zuiden van de evenaar van de planeet, in het oostelijke deel van het doolhofachtige gebied Noctis Labyrinthus en in het westelijke deel Valles Marineris, een gebied met kloven met een diepte van 2 tot 7 kilometer. Ter vergelijking: het diepste punt van Grand Canyon is 1800 meter.
Maar de reusachtige vulkaan is niet de enige nieuwe ontdekking in het iconische gebied.
In het zuidoostelijke deel van de vulkaan ligt een nieuwere, smalle afzetting, waar volgens de onderzoekers gletsjerijs verstopt kan zitten.
De onderzoekers noemen de ontdekkingen opmerkelijk, want ze wijzen in de richting van een nieuw gebied, dat interessant kan zijn als we meer willen weten over de ontwikkeling van de planeet door de tijd heen en mogelijke tekens van leven.
De reden dat we tientallen jaren de 450 kilometer brede reus over het hoofd hebben gezien, moeten we zoeken in het grillige en gehavende landschap. Daardoor ging de als het ware op in de omgeving.
Op de rotsplaneet zijn meerdere grote, slapende vulkanen uit een ver verleden te vinden.
Een daarvan heet Olympus Mons en is met zijn 25 kilometer hoogte en 600 kilometer breedte de grootste vulkaan in het zonnestelsel.
A long-awaited Pentagon report says there is "no verifiable evidence" of the U.S. government encountering or concealing evidence of alien life.
The Pentagon, Washington DC, USA.
(Image credit: Glowimages via Getty Images)
The U.S. government is not hiding aliens or their spaceships — although it did once propose a program to reverse-engineer any hypothetical alien technology it found, a Department of Defense (DOD) report reveals.
The Pentagon report, a highly anticipated review of classified documents from 1945 to 2023 that was submitted to Congress Friday (March 8), found no evidence that the U.S. government has encountered aliens or covered up their existence.
Instead, the report blames UFO sightings in the 1960s on top-secret flights of prototype American spy planes and spacecraft. And while the U.S. government did consider a program to reverse-engineer any captured alien ships in the 2010s, no craft were ever found and the proposal was rejected for "lacking merit," according to the report.
There is "no verifiable evidence for claims that the U.S. government and private companies have access to or have been reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology," Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said in a statement after the report's release. The report also found "no evidence that any U.S. government investigation, academic-sponsored research, or official review panel has confirmed that any sighting of a UAP [unidentified aerial phenomenon] represented extraterrestrial technology."
"All investigative efforts, at all levels of classification, concluded that most sightings were ordinary objects and phenomena and the result of misidentification," Ryder added.
The 63-page review was made by the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which was established in 2022 to investigate and manage reports of UFO sightings from the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force. The review included classified and unclassified archical evidence, full access to all secretive government programs related to UFOs, and 30 interviews with intelligence personnel.
The U.S. government's renewed interest in UFOs came after a 2017 leak of three now-infamous video clips that appeared to show mysterious, wingless aircraft flying at hypersonic speeds past dumbfounded U.S. Navy pilots. In 2020, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence called for an inquiry into UFOs, and in June 2021, the Pentagon released a report on more than 140 UFO sightings by Navy pilots. That report concluded there was no evidence of alien activity in any of the instances.
Despite those findings, the government's interest in UFOs drove news outlets and social media sites into frenzies of speculation. The conspiracy theories reached their apex when, in July 2023, David Grusch, a former U.S. intelligence official and whistleblower, claimed that the government had been secretly investigating crashed UFOs. In his congressional hearing, Grusch told the House Committee on Oversight and Reform that not only had spaceships been recovered but that "nonhuman" beings had been found inside.
Despite bluntly contradicting many of Grusch's claims, the report does mention a brief period when the Pentagon considered a program to reverse-engineer alien technology. Called Kona Blue, it was proposed to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) by individuals who suspected the U.S. government was hiding crashed UFOs.
"This proposal gained some initial traction at DHS to the point where a 35 Prospective Special Access Program (PSAP) was officially requested to stand up this program, but it was eventually rejected by DHS leadership for lacking merit," the report said. "It is critical to note that no extraterrestrial craft or bodies were ever collected — this material was only assumed to exist by Kona Blue advocates and its anticipated contract performers."
The AARO said that later this year it will publish a second volume of the report covering sightings made between November 2023 and April 2024. The office also announced that the DOD is working on a portable sensor kit called the "Gremlin system" to investigate UFO sightings as they occur.
An international team of astronomers has revealed a three-dimensional map of the known universe that charts the largest-ever volume of the extended cosmos. The tools used to create the map were initially designed to measure stars in our galaxy. However, their sensitivity revealed the locations of quasars powered by supermassive black holes at the centers of other galaxies, leading to the map’s eventual creation.
“This quasar catalog is different from all previous catalogs in that it gives us a three-dimensional map of the largest-ever volume of the universe,” says map co-creator David Hogg, a senior research scientist at the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics in New York City and a professor of physics and data science at New York University. “It isn’t the catalog with the most quasars, and it isn’t the catalog with the best-quality measurements of quasars, but it is the catalog with the largest total volume of the universe mapped.”
MAP OF THE KNOWN UNIVERSE COMBINES DATA FROM MULTIPLE OBSERVATORIES
Fans of the movie Star Trek: Generations may recall the map of the known universe used by Captain Picard and Commander Data to track an anomaly across vast regions of space known as the Nexus. Of course, such a detailed map covering the entire cosmos has thus far existed only in the world of science fiction. Now, a team of Flatiron Institute researchers say they have created the first-ever real-world map of the known universe, bringing yet another concept from science fiction to science fact.
To create their map of the known universe, the researchers compiled data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia Space telescope, which included over 6.6 million quasar candidates. That data was then compared against observations collected by NASA’s Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, allowing the map’s creators to remove “noise” from the final product, including from other stars and galaxies, which resulted in a final 1.3 million quasars ending up in the final version of the map. The team also mapped dust and other “nuisances” that may block out certain quasars from observation.
An infographic explaining the creation of a new map of around 1.3 million quasars from across the visible universe. CREDIT: ESA/Gaia/DPAC; Lucy Reading-Ikkanda/Simons Foundation; K. Storey-Fisher et al. 2024.
As previously noted, Gaia’s primary mission involved mapping stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. However, the researchers behind this latest effort found that Gaia “inadvertently spots objects outside the Milky Way.” This includes supermassive quasars dating back to 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang.
“We were able to make measurements of how matter clusters together in the early universe that are as precise as some of those from major international survey projects—which is quite remarkable given that we got our data as a ‘bonus’ from the Milky Way–focused Gaia project,” explained the paper’s lead author, Kate Storey-Fisher.
While black holes themselves typically emit no light, quasars driven by supermassive black holes are often hundreds of times brighter than entire galaxies. That’s because the extreme gravitational pull of black holes at the center of galaxies collects and “spins up” nearby gas, resulting in an enormously bright disk that can be spotted across the space between galaxies. The result is a massive collection of bright objects that can be spotted by humanity’s most advanced telescopes, leading to the creation of the cosmic map.
NEW MAP ALREADY PAYING SCIENTIFIC DIVIDENDS
In their published study, which appears in The Astrophysical Journal, the researchers behind the largest-ever map of the known universe say their tool is already paying dividends. For instance, the data gathered by Gaia was recently compared against the light from the Big Bang, known as the cosmic microwave background. According to the researchers, this comparison will allow scientists to measure how matter clumps together throughout the cosmos.
The map is also likely to aid scientists who are trying to unravel the mystery of dark matter, as enormous rings of dark matter surround these individual quasars. In fact, the researchers say they expect their new largest-ever map of the known universe to aid astronomers and astrophysicists across a wide range of research efforts.
“It has been very exciting to see this catalog spurring so much new science,” Storey-Fisher says. “Researchers around the world are using the quasar map to measure everything from the initial density fluctuations that seeded the cosmic web to the distribution of cosmic voids to the motion of our solar system through the universe.”
“This quasar catalog is a great example of how productive astronomical projects are,” adds Hogg. “Gaia was designed to measure stars in our own galaxy, but it also found millions of quasars at the same time, which give us a map of the entire universe.”
Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.
A new paper suggests that the “zoo hypothesis” may explain why we haven’t heard from aliens yet
Extraterrestrial societies may have advanced means to conceal themselves
One of the researchers thinks we’ll get proof of extraterrestrials within 15 years
Where are all the aliens? This question hasn’t just puzzled UFO enthusiasts but has been the subject of longstanding scientific inquiry. Famously, during one lunch-time conversation in 1950, Enrico Fermi, the Nobel-Prize-winning physicist who was known as the “architect of the nuclear age,” asked his colleagues a similar question – “where is everybody?”
Fermi asked this question of fellow physicists Edward Teller, Herbert York, and Emil Konopinski, referring to the fact you’d think in a 13.8 billion-year-old universe that’s teeming with ingredients for life, we would have encountered alien intelligence by now.
This vital question from Fermi became known as the “Fermi paradox,” and now a new paper tackles the possibility that it may be resolved by figuring out whether extraterrestrial civilizations are absent from our galaxy or perhaps they do exist but are hiding from us — in an argument known as the “zoo hypothesis.”
Why the ‘great silence’?
The new paper, published in Nature Astronomy, comes from a team of Ian A. Crawford, Professor of Planetary Science and Astrobiology at UCL/Birbeck College, and Dirk Schulze-Makuch, Professor of Planetary Habitability and Astrobiology at the Technical University of Berlin, and several other institutions.
The scientists aimed to address in their work that even after decades of observation and a variety of SETI surveys that looked for radio transmissions and techno signatures of advanced civilizations, more needs to be detected. What explains the conundrum of such a “great silence”?
The researchers believe a possible explanation could be that the so-called Hart-Tipler Conjecture is true, which basically maintains that the absence of evidence for alien life forms can only be explained by the absence of ExtraTerrestrial Civilizations (ETCs) altogether. It may also be that intelligent life is rare since the odds against it emerging are so great – due to the so-called Great Filter.
Alternatively, if neither of these possibilities is the reason for the Great Silence, then the zoo hypothesis may be correct. The ETCs are just doing a good job of preventing us from detecting them.
In an exchange with Universe Today, Crawford elaborated: “Either we would never expect to observe them because space is so big, etc., [or] we don’t observe them because they have taken steps to ensure that we don’t ( this is the Zoo Hypothesis).”
What is the zoo hypothesis?
This idea, first put forth in 1973 by John A. Ball, a radio astronomer with ties to Harvard University and MIT, suggests that advanced alien species may know we exist but stay clear of us on purpose. They don’t want to interfere with our evolution and societal development. As Ball said, “…the only way that we can understand the apparent non-interaction between ‘them’ and us is to hypothesize that they are deliberately avoiding interaction and that they have set aside the area in which we live as a zoo.”
Perhaps the extraterrestrials are of higher intelligence and there may exist some sort of Star-Trek-like Prime Directive to not disrupt or contaminate the path of lower-level beings (like humans). This assumes the aliens are rather high-minded and do not want to harm us, as many of our movies on the subject imagine.
In the interview with Universe Today, Professor Crawford shared that if advanced technological life forms exist, they are likely hiding. On the other hand, he thinks it’s more probable they don’t exist at all.
His colleague Schulze-Makuch believed the zoo hypothesis was behind the lack of aliens. He bases this on the recent UFO report, which clarified the great amount of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) that make it hard to ignore the possibility of extra-terrestrial intelligence (ETI) being behind some of them. He also sees it unlikely that humans are all on their own considering the vastness of the cosmos.
”While I do think that humanity is something very special, being a technologically advanced life form, I can’t fathom that we are truly unique or so rare in that capability that—for practical reasons—nothing is out there,” wrote the scientist.
Finding ETIs
The scientists think that there are paths we should take to truly find out the answer to one of life’s biggest mysteries – are we alone in the universe? These include SETI surveys and looking for techno-signatures of structures like Dyson Spheres that advanced civilizations might have created. “We can only assert an absence of evidence if we have searched for evidence sufficiently hard,” they write in their paper.
As exoplanet studies advance, aided by our advanced tech like the James Webb Space Telescope, it may also be soon possible to look for “biosignatures” of life on planets outside the Solar System. This scientific power will allow tracking traces of life, biological events, and even intelligence.
Schulze-Makuch believes that if the aliens were hiding from us as per the zoo hypothesis, no matter how well they were doing it, we would still be able to find them one day as our technologies get more and more powerful.
In line with that thinking, the professor predicts, based on the current rate of our technological advancement that we’ll get proof of extraterrestrials within 15 years. He even has a bet going with his partner Ian on this eventuality. “But the timeline is, of course, difficult to predict and depends to a large degree also on how fast the progress will be, and how attentive the ‘Zoo keepers’ are or what their aim is,” he pointed out.
Could the aliens have a Prime Directive?
If the aliens are indeed ghosting us, is that due to some intergalactic agreement not to contaminate the growth of lower-level species like ours? An earlier study actually took a look at that very question.
In his 2016 paper “The Galactic Club, or Galactic Cliques? Exploring the limits of interstellar hegemony and the Zoo Hypothesis,” Duncan Forgan of the University of St. Andrews in the UK, presented a mathematical simulation of the galaxy that tracked how advanced alien civilizations might go about creating a galactic treaty. Its goal would be to safeguard primitive societies, like ours might appear to them.
Forgan tried to account for how communication between civilizations would be handled, looking at what kind of overlap would be necessary for messages to be passed along. He also considered what parts of the galaxy would be more habitable and the different types of leadership these alien societies might have.
The researcher’s model showed that the degree of contact between the civilizations would depend on their amount. Fewer societies in existence would mean less potential contact.
The model also suggests that if civilizations lived for less than a million years, there would likely be several galactic groupings, with no full consensus emerging, and you would need to make a treaty that involved everyone. But if all civilizations lived well past a million years, the models propose that a single “galactic club” could exist.
As Forgan wrote, “If civilization cliques do come into contact, it is likely they will hold significantly different perspectives on the universe, and the rights and responsibilities of sentient beings and the institutions they construct.”
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We've Got 'Multiple US Military Whistleblowers' Saying There's Video of a UFO Shooting Down a Nuke With a Laser Beam
We've Got 'Multiple US Military Whistleblowers' Saying There's Video of a UFO Shooting Down a Nuke With a Laser Beam
Jerry Thornton
David Wall Getty Images..
I'm disappointed by the way the federal government's "transparency" on the UFO phenomenon over promised and under delivered. You're probably disappointed. We're all disappointed. And it feels increasingly likely that what little they have actually revealed is part of some coordinated key-jingling operation to distract us from what they've really been hiding all along.
Yet there are elements of UFO/UAP reporting that can't be dismissed. Namely how many of these crafts appear around our most sensitive nuclear defense facilities. Enough that it's hard to believe it's all random and not part of a pattern. There's no shortage of UFO researchers who believe the infamous crash at Roswell can be traced directly to the atomic bomb research by J. Robert Oppenheimer's team at Los Alamos. That splitting the atom attracts them like a magnet.
And there have even been multiple reports down through the years of them appearing over our nuclear missile facilities and demonstrating the power to disarm them.
But never a story quite like this one:
Source -The US military is in possession of a video of a UFO apparently disabling a nuclear warhead during a routine test, according to multiple former officials.
They claim the video in question captured a saucer-shaped craft circling the unarmed, dummy warhead shortly after it detached from the Atlas missile booster, then shooting four beams of light at the warhead, disabling it.
Retired US Air Force officers Lieutenant Bob Jacobs and Major Florenze Mansmann claim to have viewed the recording of the 1964 encounter before the tape went missing.
The former officials were part of a team responsible for capturing video of missile test launches in California with telescopic photography and videography equipment.
Two days later, after they screened the video, they claim that two plain-clothed CIA agents confiscated the footage and swore them to secrecy. …
The alleged incident occurred nearly six decades ago, on September 15, 1964, but it has more recently come into public knowledge due to author Robert Hastings investigating it.
Luis Elizondo acknowledged the existence of the video and claimed he has seen it [and] he was the former director of the Pentagon's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) program to study UFOs. …
The craft inadvertently caught on film was domed and disc-shaped, according to Jacobs and Mansmann.
It was a 'classic disc, the center seemed to be a raised bubble…the entire lower saucer shape was glowing and seemed to be rotating slowly,' according to a letter Mansmann wrote about the incident in 1983.
'At the point of beam release…the object turned like an object required to be in a position to fire from a platform …'
Beyond the video, there is some limited evidence supporting the story.
A declassified but unreleased set of radar data of the September 15, 1964 event apparently confirmed that an unidentified aerial object was observed near the dummy warhead during the missile test, a source told Hastings.
Great. Just great. Classic 1950s flying saucers with rotating discs shooting our nuclear test missiles out of the sky with fricking space lasers like the Death Star:
Giphy Images.
Our missile defense researchers have it captured on video, but the Men in Black had to grab it and hide it in a secret wall safe hidden behind a portrait of whoever really killed JFK for the past 60 years. This I guess is what we're paying them for and why the Pentagon can't ever pass a budget. Because all the money is going to running around hiding videos that would change the course of history like they're sex tape.
I can understand why the deep state operatives choose to keep some stuff hidden from the public. They can justify it by telling themselves that if we knew the truth it would create distrust in the government and society would collapse or whatever. But aliens shooting down and disarming nukes would have the exact opposite effect.
If anything, it would make everyone feel safer. We'd sleep better at night knowing that aliens or whoever are here keeping us safe from each other. The human race figured out how to destroy itself. And we're basically a toddler who found dad's gun and are playing with it. It's comforting to think there's some adult supervision in the cosmos making sure the gun isn't loaded so we can keep running around pointing it at each other in blissful ignorance.
That alternative beats the hell of out living life knowing we're all one madman starting nuclear armageddon monkey business away from the Age of the Cockroaches on our home world. So release the video, for crying out loud. Not only do we deserve to see it finally, it'll give us something to watch now that football is over
NASA Reveals its Planetary Science Goals for Artemis III
If all goes well, NASA’s Artemis III mission will bring humans back to the Moon as early as 2026, the first time since the Apollo 17 crew departed in 1972. It won’t be a vacation, though, as astronauts have an enormous amount of science to do, especially in lunar geology. A team from NASA recently presented their planetary science goals and objectives for Artemis III surface activities, which will guide the fieldwork the astronauts will carry out on the lunar surface.
The landing site hasn’t been chosen yet, but it will be within 6 degrees of latitude from the South Pole. These instruments will collect valuable scientific data about the lunar environment, the lunar interior, and how to sustain a long-duration human presence on the Moon, which will help prepare NASA to send astronauts to Mars.
“Artemis marks a bold new era of exploration, where human presence amplifies scientific discovery. With these innovative instruments stationed on the Moon’s surface, we’re embarking on a transformative journey that will kick-start the ability to conduct human-machine teaming – an entirely new way of doing science,” said NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy. “These three deployed instruments were chosen to begin scientific investigations that will address key Moon to Mars science objectives.”
Two of the three main Artemis science goals and the instruments deal with understanding the Moon itself. The Lunar Environment Monitoring Station (LEMS) is a compact, autonomous seismometer suite will help study planetary processes, while the Lunar Dielectric Analyzer (LDA) will aid in understanding the character and origin of lunar polar volatiles. The third main science objective will investigate how to mitigate the risks of human exploration, and to that end the Lunar Effects on Agricultural Flora (LEAF) instrument will investigate the lunar surface environment’s effects on space crops to see if the lunar regolith can be used to grow food.
Artist’s concept of an Artemis astronaut deploying an instrument on the lunar surface. Credits: NASA
Falling under the planetary science goals with the two instruments, scientists have laid out four main objectives, which are designed to be “site agnostic,” so that they can be performed at any landing site, or be able to be modified to fit with any future chosen landing site.
A. Understand the Early Evolution of the Moon as a Model for Rocky Planet Evolution
The main objective here is to evaluate the leading theory of the Moon’s early days, which is the Lunar Magma Ocean (LMO) theory. It is theorized that a layer of molten rock was present on the surface of the Moon from the time of the Moon’s formation (about 4.5 or 4.4 billion years ago) to tens or hundreds of millions of years after that time, which led to the formation of the crust, mantle, and core. While the LMO model is supported by many observations, it is not supported by all.
The scientists said gathering samples from the Moon’s polar region and comparing the ages and chemical and isotopic compositions of the new samples to those collected by the Apollo astronauts will help to evaluate the current LMO model and perhaps “find alternate or more complex LMO models.” Scientists would also like to determine the composition of the lower crust, and mantle materials if possible.
Artist’s impression of the impact that caused the formation of the Moon. Credit: NASA/GSFC
Another theory that scientists hope to put under scrutiny during the Artemis program is the giant impact hypothesis. This is the most widely accepted theory for the origin of the Earth–Moon system, which proposes the Moon formed during a collision between the Earth and another small planet, about the size of Mars. The debris from this impact collected in an orbit around Earth to form the Moon. However, similarities between the Earth and Moon don’t quite fit that model, the majority of the Moon’s material should originate from the impactor. “The Artemis III samples will allow new assessments of the formation process and age of the Moon,” the scientists wrote.
B. Determine the Lunar Record of Inner Solar System Impact History.
Impacts played a big role in the early history of our Solar System, and scientists say they would like to determine the age of South Pole Aitken (SPA) Basin, the oldest known lunar impact basin. “This will provide key new information for determining when the record of bombardment starts and how complete that early record is,” the scientists wrote. They also hope to determine the sources of early impactors, which will provide a fundamental benchmark for understanding the ages of surfaces across the Solar System.
Scientists would also like to gather data to test the Lunar Cataclysm Hypothesis, a theory that says an intense period of bombardment occurred on the Moon about 3.9 billion years ago, where about 80% of the Moon was “resurfaced,” with the formation of approximately 1,700 craters 100 kilometers in size or larger. This hypothesis is controversial, but determining if this period of bombardment did occur would help scientists determine if a similar cataclysmic bombardment may have affected life on Earth or been involved in life’s origins.
For the two above goals, the Lunar Environment Monitoring Station (LEMS) will carry out continuous, long-term monitoring of the seismic environment, namely ground motion from moonquakes, in the lunar south polar region. This instrument is expected to operate for at least three months and up to two years and may become a key station in a future global lunar geophysical network. NASA said the instrument will characterize the regional structure of the Moon’s crust and mantle, providing valuable information to analyze the current lunar formation and evolution models.
C & D: Determine the Variability of Regolith in the Circumpolar Environment as a Keystone for Understanding Surface Modification of Airless Bodies, and Reveal the Age, Origin, and Evolution of Solar System Volatiles
The Moon’s poles – and especially the permanently shadowed regions – have been compared to an attic in an old house, because it likely contains a record of history. On the Moon, the “attic-like” regions near the poles would still hold the exogenous material delivered to the inner Solar System. Since the terrestrial record of the early Earth is largely lost, finding it on the Moon would be extremely valuable.
A map showing the permanently shadowed regions (blue) that cover about 3 percent of the moon’s south pole. Credit: NASA Goddard/LRO mission
“Little is known about cold-trapped volatile composition, abundance, age, and the general ability of the Moon to retain volatiles over time,” the scientists wrote. “….Assessing volatiles in cold traps of varying thermal environments and age will provide key new observations to understand their nature.”
And there’s also growing evidence for the presence of lunar polar volatiles like water, hydrogen, and methane, which would be extremely important for future long-term habitation on the Moon. Scientists also want to study how volatiles might be transported across the lunar surface, as such transport has yet to be measured on the Moon, and how it might occur – whether it driven by diurnal temperature changes, solar wind or and micrometeoroid delivery across the Moon.
The Lunar Dielectric Analyzer (LDA) will help in these studies as it will measure the regolith’s ability to propagate an electric field, which is a key parameter in the search for lunar volatiles, especially ice. It will gather essential information about the structure of the Moon’s subsurface, monitor dielectric changes caused by the changing angle of the Sun as the Moon rotates, and look for possible frost formation or ice deposits.
With the Artemis program, NASA will land the first woman, first person of color, and its first international partner astronaut on the Moon, and with the goal of establishing long-term exploration for scientific discovery and preparation for human missions to Mars for the benefit of all.
In an effort to enhance the educational outreach of their Starlink constellation, SpaceX has an interactive global map of their Starlink internet satellites, which provides live coverage of every satellite in orbit around the Earth. This interactive map comes as SpaceX continues to launch Starlink satellites into orbit on a near-weekly basis with the goal of providing customers around the world with high-speed internet while specifically targeting rural regions of the globe. In 2022, Starlink officially reached all seven continents after Starlink servicebecame available in Antarctica. Additionally, SpaceX announced in 2023 a partnership with T-Mobiel for Starlink to provide mobile coverage, as well.
2021 video showing an early attempt at Starlink tracking
Within this interactive map, users can opt to see live satellite coverage or rewind and fast forward their respective orbital speeds. Scrolling your mouse will highlight each satellite, and clicking on them will produce their individual satellite information and orbital trajectory, enabling the user to see if a particular satellite will pass over their location. Additionally, users can rotate the Earth and zoom in to anywhere on the planet. All in all, this interactive map gives users near-total control over identifying Starlink satellites currently orbiting the Earth.
To complement the interactive map, users can find data on the number of satellites both launched and currently in orbit, noting a few hundred of the several thousand satellites have been deorbited to burn up on re-entry. As of this writing, 5,977 satellites have been launched with 5,601 satellites currently in operation, and the remaining 376 having been deorbited for a variety of reasons, including failing to reach their target orbit or containing design flaws, as Elon Musk recently announced he plans to deorbit 100 Starlink satellites slowly degrading their orbits over the next five years.
Scrolling down the left menu provides users with information pertaining to the running gigabytes and terabytes having been sent to Earth, along with the most recent and next Starlink launch by SpaceX. Additionally, this menu provides the average time between Starlink launches, along with the number of satellites in orbit by SpaceX’s competition and how many Starlinks jobs are presently available at SpaceX.
As noted, the goal of Starlink is to provide worldwide high-speed internet, with the interactive map noting “The Starlink constellation could serve up to 188,180 MB/sec to Earth.” Despite the more than 5,500 Starlink satellites currently in orbit, SpaceX hopes to launch up to 12,000 satellites during this phase and possibly 42,000, someday.
Despite its impressive numbers and credentials, Starlink has been met with its share of backlash and controversy, including its negative impacts on astronomy, as reports have indicated the streaks from Starlink satellites caused by prolonged camera exposures result in obscuring optical images of the night sky from ground-based telescopes. Most recently, a 2023 study discussed both deliberate and accidental radio signals emanating from Starlink satellites that could interfere with radio astronomy. Additionally, there is growing concern over the increasing number of Starlink satellites could result in unavoidable collisions, leading to increasing space debris in Earth orbit.
With thousands of Starlink satellites still scheduled to be launched into orbit, this Starlink interactive map is going to get busier, and hopefully along with the worldwide high-speed internet access it provides across the globe.
How will Starlink contribute to internet availability in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
In an eye-opening exploration into the unexplained aerial phenomena within the United Kingdom, investigative journalist Ross Coulthart, associated with 7NEWS Australia, delves into a series of perplexing sightings and encounters that have sparked intrigue and debate for decades. Coulthart’s investigation, a blend of historical research and firsthand accounts, sheds new light on incidents that have both fascinated and puzzled experts and the public alike.
The Catalysts of Inquiry
Central to Coulthart’s inquiry are the infamous Rendlesham Forest and Cosford incidents, events that have stood the test of time as quintessential examples of UFO phenomena. The Rendlesham Forest incident, often described as Britain’s Roswell, and the lesser-known but equally mystifying Cosford incident, serve as pivotal case studies in Coulthart’s reportage. These incidents, characterized by sightings of unidentified flying objects and unexplained lights, have been the subject of extensive investigation by military and civilian authorities.
The Voices of Experience
Coulthart’s investigation is enriched by conversations with pivotal figures in the UFO research community and witnesses to these enigmatic events. Notably, Nick Pope, a former Ministry of Defence official who was tasked with investigating UFO sightings, offers insights into the government’s response to UFO phenomena. Pope’s transition from skeptic to believer underscores the compelling nature of the evidence encountered during his tenure.
Further depth is added through interviews with witnesses such as Darren Perks, Colonel Charles Halt, and former RAAF Commander Alan Turner, each bringing a unique perspective to the fore. Their testimonies provide a gripping narrative of encounters with objects displaying capabilities far beyond human technology.
Skepticism and Science
Balancing the narrative, Coulthart engages with skeptics like Professor Chris French, who advocate for caution in interpreting these phenomena. French suggests that psychological factors, such as perception and memory distortion, can influence eyewitness accounts, reminding us of the complexity of human cognition and the need for scientific rigor in UFO studies.
The Enduring Mystery
Despite decades of investigations, reports, and debates, the truth behind the UK’s UFO sightings remains shrouded in mystery. Coulthart’s report highlights a critical takeaway: while significant evidence suggests the presence of unidentified aerial phenomena, definitive explanations remain elusive. The investigation into the UK’s UFO phenomenon not only uncovers a history of unexplained encounters but also underscores the ongoing challenge in distinguishing between myth and reality.
VIDEO:
Ross Coulthart investigates UK’s UFO Phenomenon (7NEWS Spotlight)
Ross Coulthart’s investigation into the UK’s UFO phenomenon offers a compelling journey through the heart of one of modern society’s most enduring mysteries. By weaving together eyewitness accounts, expert analyses, and historical data, Coulthart provides a nuanced perspective on the UFO enigma. His work invites us to ponder the possibilities of what might lie beyond our current understanding, urging both believers and skeptics alike to keep an open mind in the face of the unknown.
Forget the Skies, the U.S. Military Is Looking for UFOs Below the Waves
Forget the Skies, the U.S. Military Is Looking for UFOs Below the Waves
No matter how much is learned about UAP in the atmosphere, a complete understanding of anomalous phenomena will remain hidden absent dedicated research in our largely unknown oceans.
Throughout the early stages of the Cold War, there was a significant focus on unidentified flying objects (UFOs)—more recently known as an unidentified anomalous phenomenon (UAP). Most UFOs/UAPs have been identified as known objects or atmospheric phenomena, yet, a small number remained unexplained
That fact has led to wild conspiracy theories, but UAPs are still seen as a very serious source of concern as these objects could pose a clear and present danger to the security of the United States. That fact was highlighted in a Department of Defense (DoD) report released last month, which found that while there is no evidence of “extraterrestrial technology,” official records and public reporting are filled with evidence of unknown craft that exhibit what appears to be extraordinary technology.
However, there has been a focus not just on what has been seen in the skies, but also on what may be lurking below the waves. Rear admiral and oceanographer Tim Gallaudet recently authored a white paper for the Sol Foundation think tank and called for greater attention on unidentified submersible objects (USOs). He suggested that while past research and attention have been on aerial occurrences, instances of UAP at sea, whether under the surface or traveling “transmedium”—between the atmosphere and the ocean—are also occurring.
“We have less research on transmedium UAP and USOs than is ideal, yet what data there is points to a few conclusions. First, these underwater anomalies jeopardize US maritime security, which is already weakened by our relative ignorance about the global ocean. Second, their presence in the oceans at the same time presents an unprecedented opportunity for maritime science. Third, to meet the security and scientific challenges, transmedium UAP and USOs should be elevated to national ocean research priorities,” wrote Gallaudet.
He further suggested that the security implications of UAP and USO and the scientific ramifications are nothing short of world-changing.
Mysteries of the Deep
For eons, sailors have claimed to have spotted the seemingly unexplainable at sea, and that included mythical creatures like the Kraken and mermaids, as well as phantom ships such as the infamous “Flying Dutchman.” The mysterious creatures were attributed to misidentified marine life, while the Flying Dutchman was actually fabricated by the British as propaganda in retaliation against the Dutch East India Company.
Yet, there remain countless mysteries of the deep—which isn’t all that surprising as 95 percent of the ocean remains unexplored. There is no doubt that some undersea life has yet to be seen.
As the U.S. Naval Institute noted in 2022, “to date, there has been no documented damage to a plane caused by a UFO,” yet, the report identified multiple incidents where vessels have had all too close encounters with aquatic life that in another time might have been described as “sea monsters.”
That included the 1978 incident involving the Knox-class destroyer escort USS Stein (DE-1065) and an unknown species of giant squid. The “NOFOUL” rubber coating of the vessel’s AN/SQS-26 sonar dome was damaged by multiple cuts. While that might not seem all that unusual, the cuts contained remnants of sharp, curved claws found on the rims suction cups of some squid tentacles—and these were far larger than any squid that had ever been encountered!
What Is Under the Sea?
The number of unexplained incidents at sea is as great as those seen in the sky.
“The underwater and transmedium UAP reported in these sources are as diverse as their aerial counterparts, including luminous orbs, silver and gray discs, and triangular and cigar-shaped objects with various lighting configurations. Large lighted craft are often seen under the sea surface without ever emerging,” explained Gallaudet.
He added that subsequent research has shown that many such phenomena often have a down-to-earth explanation—bioluminescent organisms excited by near-surface turbulence—and that this serves to “remind us that prosaic explanations for phenomena should always be considered to avoid jumping to conclusions about alien craft.”
Yet, Gallaudet added that there is still much we can’t easily explain, and worse, perhaps not enough is being said or done about it.
“The fact that unidentified objects with unexplainable characteristics are entering US water space and the DOD is not raising a giant red flag is another sign that the government is not sharing all it knows about all-domain anomalous phenomena,” wrote Gallaudet.
He further warned that the focus shouldn’t be just what is seen in the heavens above, which is finally getting the attention it may deserve.
“Not so in Neptune’s realm,” Gallaudet concluded in his paper. “No matter how much is learned about UAP in the atmosphere, a complete understanding of anomalous phenomena will remain hidden absent dedicated research in our largely unknown oceans. Without gazing into the abyss, one will never know if the abyss does indeed return the gaze.”
Author Experience and Expertise: Peter Suciu
Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also aContributing Writer for Forbes andClearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter:@PeterSuciu. You can email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org.
For centuries, the grassy plains of the Namib Desert have been dotted with mysterious barren rings known as “fairy circles.” Local folklore warned that these strange patterns were the footprints of the gods, or a sign of a subterranean dragon poisoning the earth above.
However, modern science has a different explanation for these enigmatic bare patches; one that has sparked heated debate among researchers.
A new study published in the journal Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics presents compelling evidence against the long-standing “termite hypothesis” that has dominated discussions around fairy circle origins. This hypothesis, championed by biologist Norbert Jürgens, proposed that the circles form when subterranean termites consume the roots of newly sprouted grasses, creating distinctive circular patches in the dry grasslands on the edge of the Namib Desert.
Aerial image reveals the so-called “fairy circles” prevalent throughout the NamibRand Nature Reserve in April 2022. (Image: Stephan Getzin)
However, an international team led by researchers Stephan Getzin and Hezi Yizhaq offers a systematic rebuttal, drawing from extensive fieldwork and analysis across multiple regions of the Namib Desert over several years, which led to intriguing findings.
Jürgens and his team had previously cited various studies as proof that termites of the species Psammotermes allocerus were the culprits behind fairy circle formation. But Getzin’s team wasn’t convinced by the evidence.
“Our review shows that there is no single study to date that has demonstrated with systematic field evidence that the green germinating grasses within the fairy circles would be killed by root herbivory of sand termites,” states the new paper.
Getzin and Yizhaq excavated and measured around 500 grass individuals across southern, central and northern Namib sites from 2020-2022. Crucially, the roots of dead grasses inside fairy circles were undamaged and often longer than those of living grasses outside the circles.
“If termite herbivory were the cause, the roots of the dying grasses should be shorter… and show signs of biomass consumption,” the authors write in the paper. Oddly, the roots were as long, and some significantly longer, which tells the researchers that something else killed those plants, not termites.
So what is behind the fairy circles?
The researchers point to an alternative “self-organization” hypothesis where the grasses essentially create their own downfall through competition for scarce water resources. The plants, in simple terms, organize.
Using continuous soil moisture monitoring, the team found that the uppermost 10cm topsoil layer inside fairy circles dries out rapidly after rainfall, while deeper soil layers retain more moisture. The young grass seedlings, with roots only 10cm long, cannot reach this deeper water reservoir and quickly desiccate, while the thriving grass on the exterior of the fairy circle enjoys a feeding frenzy.
“With their well-developed root system, these clumps of grass soak up the water particularly well. After the rain, they have a huge competitive advantage over the freshly germinated grasses in the fairy circle. The new grass only loses a small amount of water via transpiration from its small leaves, resulting in insufficient ‘suction power’ to pull new water from deeper soil layers,” Dr. Stephan Getzin said in a statement.
To bolster their case, the researchers employed a multi-pronged approach combining extensive field data, soil analyses, and statistical testing across multiple sites and rainfall events from 2020-2024.
Soil moisture measurements at depths of 12cm and 20cm revealed the fairy circle topsoil was significantly drier than the surrounding matrix vegetation during the critical post-rainfall period when grasses germinate. Root excavations showed dying seedlings had undamaged but longer roots than healthy matrix grasses, indicating failed efforts to reach moisture rather than termite damage. In simple terms, those new baby grasses tried hard to reach the water in the soil, but they just couldn’t compete.
Small grass plant dead in the fairy circle 19 days after the rain. (Image: Stephan Getzin)
The larger and stronger grasses that live outside the fairy circles soak up the water faster, utilizing the fairy circle as a sort of “death zone.” According to the study, this is purposeful.
“This self-organization can be described as ‘swarm intelligence’. It is a systematic adaptation to a lack of resources in arid regions,” say Getzin and his colleague Dr Hezi Yizhaq.
The grasses along the edge of the fairy circles, with their larger size and competitive advantage, actively create and maintain these unvegetated gaps through their strong water uptake, sacrificing their newly germinated brethren to a dry death.
While termites likely consume dead grass matter after seedlings perish, the researchers argue the initial desiccation, not herbivory, sparks fairy circle formation in this arid ecosystem.
As the debate continues, this latest study highlights how rigorously testing hypotheses against multi-year field data can separate fanciful folklore from ecological reality. The fairy circles’ real origins, though less whimsical than the footprints of the gods, reveal a harsh survival strategy written in radial patterns across a desert.
For more, please visit Stephan Getzin’s research website on this phenomenon.
MJ Banias is a journalist who covers security and technology. You can find his work here. He co-hosts The Debrief Weekly Report. and you can email MJ at mj@thedebrief.org or follow him on Twitter @mjbanias.
A series of experiments studying the sensitivity of life-hunting instruments to be employed in NASA’s forthcoming Europa Clipper Mission have revealed promising new capabilities that significantly raise its chances of being the first to detect lifeforms beyond Earth.
With a launch window that opens in October of this year and a planned insertion into Jupiter’s orbit sometime around April 2030, the Europa Clipper is equipped with a suite of science instruments. Based on recent experiments, one particular instrument, SUrface Dust Analyzer, was determined to be so sensitive that it could likely detect signs of alien life in individual grains of ice ejected by Jupiter’s icy moon.
“For the first time, we have shown that even a tiny fraction of cellular material could be identified by a mass spectrometer onboard a spacecraft,” said lead author Fabian Klenner, a University of Washington (UW) postdoctoral researcher in Earth and space sciences. “Our results give us more confidence that using upcoming instruments, we will be able to detect lifeforms similar to those on Earth, which we increasingly believe could be present on ocean-bearing moons.”
OCEANS BENEATH SURFACE OF ICY MOONS ARE IDEAL TARGETS FOR ALIEN LIFEFORMS
While the search for life outside Earth has many targets, including the soil of Mars or the clouds of Venus, astrobiologists are increasingly optimistic about finding signs of past and present alien lifeforms within the subsurface oceans of the solar system’s icy moons. Along with Europa, these targets include Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Those hopes received even more fuel when researchers recently found evidence of phosphate on the surface of Enceladus.
The researchers explain, “This planetary body now appears to contain energy, water, phosphate, other salts, and carbon-based organic material, making it increasingly likely to support lifeforms similar to those found on Earth.”
This image shows red streaks across the surface of Europa, the smallest of Jupiter’s four large moons. The upcoming Europa Clipper mission will send instruments to investigate this moon. Credit: NASA/JPL/Galileo
In the decade since NASA’s Cassini mission detected plumes of water and ice being ejected by Enceladus, mission planners and amateur enthusiasts alike have theorized about how such a life-hunting mission might actually take place. While some of the more exotic proposals include mini submarines or a snakelike probe that can crawl down into those subsurface oceans, the most popular involves flying a sample mission through those ejected plumes and scanning them for clues to alien lifeforms.
Now, an international team of researchers says instruments that might be included on upcoming missions should not only be able to detect signs of alien lifeforms, but they believe the conditions are ideal for such a finding as soon as the Europa Clipper.
LAB STUDY SHOWS INSTRUMENTS COULD SPOT SIGNS OF LIFE IN A SINGLE GRAIN OF ICE
To see if instruments slated to join future missions would be able to detect signs of life in the plumes ejected from Enceladus and Europa, the UW research team selected a type of bacteria called Sphingopyxis alaskensis for study. That’s because this particular bacterium lives in cold environments on Earth and can survive on very little nutrients, making it a likelier analog of extraterrestrial bacteria that may thrive beneath the surface of these icy moons. The researchers also say this bacterium is just the right size for future probes to spot within a single grain of ice.
“They are extremely small, so they are, in theory, capable of fitting into ice grains that are emitted from an ocean world like Enceladus or Europa,” Klenner said.
The drawing on the left depicts Enceladus and its ice-covered ocean, with cracks near the south pole that are believed to penetrate through the icy crust. The middle panel shows where authors believe life could thrive: at the top of the water, in a proposed thin layer (shown yellow) like on Earth’s oceans. The right panel shows that as gas bubbles rise and pop, bacterial cells could get lofted into space with droplets that then become the ice grains that were detected by Cassini. CREDIT: European Space Agency
After coming up with a lab experiment that would best simulate the conditions a future mission might experience these ejected ice grains, the team used a mass spectrometer to see if they could spot the life signs of their chosen bacterium in a single grain of ice. Significantly, they note that their instrument was less sensitive than the one planned for the Europa Clipper.
As hoped, their study was a success. An analysis of water injected into a vacuum showed that the right instruments could indeed detect alien lifeforms as they were ejected from Enceladus or Europa. In fact, the scientists behind the successful experiments say searching for life in this method “is more successful than averaging across a larger sample containing billions of individual grains.”
INSTRUMENT ON NASA’S EUROPA CLIPPER MISSION MAY BE FIRST TO DISCOVER ALIEN LIFEFORMS
In their published study, the UW researchers supplemented their experiments by looking at the conditions on Earth that cause bacteria to collect on the ocean’s surface and cause a layer of “ocean scum.” They soon realized that a similar set of conditions likely exists on the surface of these extraterrestrial oceans. As a result, any subsurface water ejected into space would likely capture pieces of alien lifeforms and encapsulate them within grains of space ice, where NASA’s instruments could detect them.
“We here describe a plausible scenario for how bacterial cells can, in theory, be incorporated into icy material that is formed from liquid water on Enceladus or Europa and then gets emitted into space,” Klenner said.
The left panel shows the kilometers-thick icy crust believed to encapsulate Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Filling the crack is salty water with a proposed thin layer (shown orange) at its surface. The right panel shows that as gas bubbles rise and pop, they combine with organic material and get lofted into the spray. CREDIT: Postberg et al. (2018)/Nature.
Although they are not directly involved with the planning of NASA’s missions, the team notes that NASA’s Europa Clipper, thanks to its unique instrumentation, could be perfectly equipped to find alien lifeforms living beyond Earth.
“With suitable instrumentation, such as the SUrface Dust Analyzer on NASA’s Europa Clipper space probe, it might be easier than we thought to find life, or traces of it, on icy moons:” said senior author Frank Postberg, a professor of planetary sciences at the Freie Universität Berlin, “if life is present there, of course, and cares to be enclosed in ice grains originating from an environment such as a subsurface water reservoir.”
Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.
Mars’ Gale Crater was Filled with Water for Much Longer Than Anyone Thought
Layers at the base of Mt. Sharp. These visible layers in Gale Crater show the chapters of the geological history of Mars in this image from NASA's Curiosity rover. New evidence from this area shows that water persisted on Mars for longer than thought. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.
Mars’ Gale Crater was Filled with Water for Much Longer Than Anyone Thought
Even with all we’ve learned about Mars in recent years, it doesn’t stack up against all we still don’t know and all we hope to find out. We know that Mars was once warm and wet, a conclusion that was less certain a couple of decades ago. Now, scientists are working on uncovering the details of Mars’s ancient water.
New research shows that the Gale Crater, the landing spot for NASA’s MSL Curiosity, held water for a longer time than scientists thought.
Life needs water, and it needs stability. So, if Gale Crater held water for a long time, it strengthens the idea that Mars could’ve supported life. We know that Gale Crater is an ancient paleolake, and this research suggests that the region could’ve been exposed to water for a longer duration than thought. But was it liquid water
The research centers on desert sandstone that Curiosity found.Multiple rovers and orbiters have given us ample evidence of that. Orbital images show clear examples of ancient deltas. We also have many images of sedimentary rock, with its tell-tale layere
We know that water played a role in shaping the Martian surface. d structure, laid down in the presence of water. But beyond the initial creation of Martian sandstone, the details of the rock can tell scientists about what happened long after it formed
The Eberswalde delta near Holden Crater on Mars is considered the ‘smoking gun’ for evidence of liquid water on Mars. By NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems
This research focuses on Gale Crater and the landforms within it. Mount Sharp (aka Aeolis Mons) is the dominant feature in the crater and rises 5.5 km or about 18,000 feet. It’s made up of sedimentary layers that have been eroded over time. But it has substructures that show its detailed history.
One structure overlays Mount Sharp and post-dates Mount Sharp’s erosion. It’s characterized by the accumulation of aeolian strata under arid conditions. That means windborne deposits instead of waterborne deposits. So scientists can tell that there was a wet period during which fluviolacustrine sediments built Mt. Sharp. They can also tell that a dry period followed, during which wind-borne sediment created the overlying structure. That’s what you’d expect to find if the story ended here: Mars was wet, then it wasn’t.
“Surprisingly, we found that these wind-deposited layers were contorted into strange shapes, which suggests the sand had been deformed shortly after being laid down. These structures point to the presence of water just below the surface.”
Amelie Roberts, study co-author, Imperial College London’s Department of Earth Science and Engineering.
But scientists found something odd in the overlying windborne sandstone: deformed layers that could only have been formed in the presence of water. “The sandstone revealed that water was probably abundant more recently, and for longer, than previously thought – but by which process did the water leave these clues?” Banham said in a press release.
That’s more difficult to determine.
“This water might have been pressurized liquid, forced into and deforming the sediment; frozen, with the repeat freezing and thawing process causing the deformation; or briny, and subject to large temperature swings,” Banham said.
“What’s clear is that behind each of these potential ways to deform this sandstone, water is the common link.”
There’s a generally accepted understanding of Martian water among scientists. By the middle of Mars’ Hesperian Period, the planet lost its water. The Hesperian’s boundaries in time are uncertain, but it’s generally thought of as the transition from the heavy bombardment period to the dry Mars we know today. The Hesperian could’ve ended between 3.2 and 2.0 billion years ago. The Noachian preceded it, and the Amazonian followed it.
This research presents a new wrinkle. It suggests that Mars had abundant subsurface water toward the end of the Hesperian. The evidence is in MSL Curiosity’s images of different sedimentary rocks on Gale Crater’s Mt. Sharp.
“When sediments are moved by flowing water in rivers, or by the wind blowing, they leave characteristic structures which can act like fingerprints of the ancient processes that formed them,” said Banham.
MSL Curiosity slowly worked its way up Mt. Sharp, studying the rocks at different elevations as it ascended. As expected, it found younger rocks the higher it went. Eventually, it reached the Stimson formation. The Stimson formation is the remnant of an ancient windborne desert dune field.
An analysis of Curiosity’s images shows that Stimson formed after Mt. Sharp when Mars was thought to be dry. But Stimson isn’t entirely uniform. One of its features is named the Feòrachas structure, and it contains features that were clearly influenced by the presence of water.
“Usually, the wind deposits sediment in a very regular, predictable way,” said study co-author Amelie Roberts, a PhD candidate from Imperial College London’s Department of Earth Science and Engineering. “Surprisingly, we found that these wind-deposited layers were contorted into strange shapes, which suggests the sand had been deformed shortly after being laid down. These structures point to the presence of water just below the surface.”
This image from the study shows part of the Feorachas structure with undeformed features. Water played no role in shaping them. B shows wind-ripple laminations. The image also shows cross laminations, which are the result of additional sediments deposited by wind. Image Credit: Banham et al. 2024, NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
In the Brackenberry outcrop feature, the sedimentary rocks show evidence of deformation by water. There are laminations in various states of deformity, becoming more pronounced in the feature geologists call the cusp core. In the cusp core, wind-ripple laminations bend toward the vertical and become incoherent.
This image from the research shows some features that are deformed by the presence of water. Vertical, incoherent sedimentary lines in the cusp core, oversteepened laminations, and vertically deformed laminations are all evidence of the presence of water. Image Credit: Banham et al. 2024, NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
The authors explain that there are three mechanisms that can explain the deformed features, and they all involve water. They’re also not mutually exclusive.
High-pressure water could’ve overcome the strength of the rock and deformed it. Large ice deposits on top of the structure could’ve caused deformation, as could freeze/thaw cycles of water inside the rock. The third explanation involves sediment rock weakly bound together by evaporites. Thermal expansion and contraction of the evaporites can deform the rock.
This image from the research shows more examples of fluidization structures. A shows a feature named Up Helly Aa, and B is a zoomed-in image showing up warping and vertical laminations. C shows the Lamington feature, and D is a zoomed-in image showing more deformed laminations. Image Credit: Banham et al. 2024, NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
“The layers of sediment in the crater reveal a shift from a wet environment to a drier one over time – reflecting Mars’ transition from humid and habitable environment to inhospitable desert world,” said co-author Roberts. “But these water-formed structures in the desert sandstone show that water persisted on Mars much later than previously thought.”
Mars is no exoplanet, but it’s inadvertently teaching us a lot about our quest to understand exoplanets and habitability.
“Determining whether Mars and other planets were once able to support life has been a major driving force for planetary research for more than half a century,” said Dr. Banham. “Our findings reveal new avenues for exploration – shedding light on Mars’ potential to support life and highlighting where we should continue hunting for new clues.”
“Our finding extends the timeline of water persisting in the region surrounding Gale crater, and so the whole region could have been habitable for longer than previously thought,” said Amelie.
Maybe one day in the far distant future, one of our rovers on a distant exoplanet will flip over a rock and watch something scuttle away. It’s easy to imagine.
But Mars is an instructive example. If it remained habitable for longer than we thought, it was likely only marginally inhabitable. We can’t say for sure, but complex life seems to be out of the question. This should prepare humanity for what we can expect to find in our quest for habitable exoplanets.
There are a bewildering number of variables that go into making Earth the living oasis that it is. We’re much more likely to stumble on other planets like Mars, which were once habitable and maybe even harboured simple life. If Earth’s long-lived habitability is the outlier, and Mars’ marginal, interrupted habitability is more likely, we can expect to find many planets like it that were once alive but are now long dead.
Senior law enforcement in India investigated and video-taped eerie UFO sightings over nuclear plants across the Asian nation last year, a local news report revealed.
One witness, a police sub-inspector and engineer by training, said he was '100-percent sure' the object he taped, with its high-speed 'zigzag movements,' could not be explained by human tech.
But, reports of these 2023 incidents in India were allegedly less hostile.
One witness, a police sub-inspector and engineer by training, Syed Abdul Kader said he was '100-percent sure' the object he taped, with its high-speed 'zigzag movements,' could not be explained by human tech. Above, a still from one of Kader's encounters with the UFO
Police sub-inspector Syed Abdul Kader (right), assigned to the technical wing of the Tirunelveli office an hour's drive north of the Kudankulam nuclear plant, told UFO expert Sabir Hussain (left) that he filmed two videos of the unusual airborne phenomena.
The roughly dozen or so incidents all involved apparent craft loitering oddly near the Kudankulam nuclear plant at the southern tip of the subcontinent and the Madras atomic power station near Kalpakkam along the country's east coast.
Police sub-inspector Syed Abdul Kader, assigned to the technical wing of the service's Tirunelveli office an hour's drive north of the Kudankulam nuclear plant, told UFO expert Sabir Hussain he filmed two videos of unusual airborne phenomena.
'The way it stood still, the way it made zigzag movements and the speed in which it disappeared,' Kader told reporters for the English-language Indian daily DT Next, 'all were different.'
Confirming his conversations with Hussain, Kader told DT Next that he had personally spotted UFOs near the southern coast town of Kudankulam since 2020.
'After meeting UFO tracker Sabir and discussing with him,' he told the paper, 'I am more than 100-percent sure what I saw were UFOs.'
The roughly dozen or so incidents all involved apparent craft loitering oddly near the Kudankulam nuclear plant (pictured above) at the southern tip of the subcontinent and the Madras atomic power station (not pictured) near Kalpakkam along the country's east coast
This February, American UFO researchers dropped the bombshell that an ex-Pentagon UFO investigator had privately briefed Congress on a stunning 1964 incident where a UFO blasted an Atlas missile carrying a dummy nuclear warhead out of the sky (graphic re-creation above)
Chuck Schumer criticizes Republicans for striking down UFO bill
Kader's 2023 sightings to the south, overlapped with weeks of sightings in July and August up the eastern coast along the Neelankarai-Mahabalipuram shoreline.
That region, near the bustling city of Chennai, is home to the Madras Atomic Power Station (MAPS) in Kalpakkam.
Kader's video-taped sightings, Hussain told DT Next, 'happened just 10 days after former DGP [Director General of Police] Prateep V. Philip took pictures of a UFO on [the] Muttukadu sea shore near Chennai.'
US Customs and Border Patrol, the agency responsible for keeping terrorists and weapons out of the country, uploaded 10 videos that appear to show craft moving in strange ways in our skies. The videos document a fighter jet pursued by an apparently baffling flying orb, as well as something that appears to be a propeller-powered hang-glider, and another apparent orb hovering near a parked 16-wheeler truck
Philip's rank of DGP is the highest position attainable in the Indian Police Service.
Despite an official Pentagon UFO report to Congress this year, which attempted to dispel whistleblower allegations of a secret and illegal UFO crash retrieval program, senior members of the US Senate continue to pursue subpoena power to investigate the issue.
The Pentagon's report, produced by the Department of Defense's UFO-hunting All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), was preceded by a largely hobbled effort by lawmakers to pass a sweeping UFO 'disclosure' amendment — designed to grant authority to an independent panel that would then be tasked with scouring deeply buried clandestine information for the truth about UFOs.
As Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who sponsored the bill, told The New York Times: 'It is really an outrage the House [of Representatives] didn't work with us on adopting our proposal for a review board.
'It means that declassification of UAP records will be largely up to the same entities that have blocked and obfuscated their disclosure for decades.'
'We got ripped off. We got completely hosed. They stripped out every part,' said Congressman Tim Burchett, one of the House lawmakers most vocal on the issue of UFO disclosure.
While the watered-down version of the bill has meant that the Pentagon and US intelligence agencies can determine on their own what information about these mysterious sightings can be kept secret for now, Congress plans to seriously revisit the issue again later the year.
'It's just a matter of priorities right now,' Senator Mike Rounds, who co-sponsored the bill with Sen. Schumer, told Capitol Hill reporter Matt Laslo this March. 'We have an interest in pursuing somethings like that.'
Guys, check this out. This report just came in not long ago to NUFORC and it's just amazing. A dark jellyfish shaped UFO is seen moving across the sky over South Africa...one of the rarest locations ever to get a report from...and this one is of great quality video, a steady eyewitness hand. The speed this UFO is moving looks to be about 25 miles per hour, much too fast to be wind and it is slightly rotating in a 360 degree turn once every 30 seconds. Awesome catch, fantastic and indisputable evidence that UFOs are flying low and want to be seen by humans.
Scott C. Waring
Eyewitness states:
Object flying across the sky with very unusual shape and color. Emitted no sound or light. Object moved across the sky at a reasonable fast pace. No light or sound came from it. Looked as if it had a blue to purple hue to it and was completely silent.
UFO cloaked as cloud over Pico Island, Portugal March 2024, UAP Sighting News.
UFO cloaked as cloud over Pico Island, Portugal March 2024, UAP Sighting News.
This disk shaped cloud is actually camouflage for a real UFO that sits within it. You see, often UFOs want to fly lower to gather data, but can't without revealing themselves, thus they use methods that make us shrug it off saying...oh its only a cloud, when in reality...its an alien vessel scanning us. Aliens like to believe they are smarter than us, well, I am here to say that they are flesh and bones and they do make mistakes and get caught every so often. But when an alien ship forms a cloud within their forcefield, the cloud cannot move off, but instead stays with the field tightly packed around the UFO.
Retired Japanese fighter pilot recounts a compelling encounter with a UFO
Retired Japanese fighter pilot recounts a compelling encounter with a UFO
In addition to American fighter jet pilots, others have recently shared accounts of encountering UFOs during their missions.
Mamoru Sato, a retired veteran Japanese fighter pilot and former Air Defense Force Base Commander with 34 years of dedicated service, recounts a compelling encounter involving an unidentified flying object (UFO) within the Japanese airspace.
During a routine training session at Matsushima Air Base, a pilot undergoing training in a craft witnessed an unusual occurrence. He described a cigar-shaped object hovering above him in the sky. Interestingly, the pilot seated in the front confirmed the presence of the UFO, while the instructor positioned in the back seat failed to observe it. However, the situation took a puzzling turn when the aircraft's fuselage experienced an unexpected malfunction. It wasn't a typical mechanical issue indicated by warning lights or similar alerts.
The pilot found control of the craft compromised, rendering steering virtually impossible. Strangely, as abruptly as the UFO had appeared, it vanished, coinciding with the cessation of the aircraft's malfunction and the restoration of flight control.
Upon attempting to land, the UFO reappeared, triggering a recurrence of the loss of control experienced previously. This time, even the instructor caught sight of the UFO, confirming the pilot's earlier sighting.....
Men in Black The Men in Black conspiracy theory suggests that mysterious individuals or groups monitor and suppress information related to UFOs and extraterrestrial encounters. They are believed to intimidate witnesses and researchers, ensuring the secrecy surrounding these phenomena.
According to this theory, these mysterious individuals dressed in black suits allegedly visit UFO witnesses, warning them to remain silent about what they saw, or they would erase their memories of the UFO encounter. The concept of Men in Black has also been popularized through movies and books.
Alien Manipulation of Human Genetics Conspiracy theories argue that extraterrestrial beings genetically engineered humans or altered human evolution for their own purposes. In fact, believers of this theory think that advanced beings from other worlds have even intervened in our evolutionary process.
However, it is important to note that the concept of alien manipulation of human genetics lacks substantial scientific evidence.
Government Knowledge and Secrecy Many conspiracy theorists argue that governments worldwide possess knowledge about extraterrestrial life and UFOs but keep it hidden from the public. They suggest that governments conduct secret investigations, such as the rumored Area 51 in the United States.
In the US, in December 2020, Congress passed the Intelligence Authorization Act, which required intelligence agencies to provide an unclassified report on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) within 180 days. That report, released in June 2021, acknowledged UAP sightings by military personnel, but did not provide definitive explanations for the observed phenomena.
Reverse Engineering Alien Technology It is speculated that governments have acquired crashed UFOs and alien technology, allowing them to reverse engineer these technologies for military and technological advancements. This theory suggests that some advanced human technologies have extraterrestrial origins.
Reverse engineering is related to the process of dismantling and analyzing a technology to understand its components. The idea of reverse engineering alien technology suggests that humans have acquired extraterrestrial objects or devices and successfully deciphered their advanced technology.
Suppression of Advanced Energy Technologies It is speculated that governments or corporations suppress advanced energy technologies obtained from extraterrestrial sources. Their goal, according to believers of this theory, is to maintain their control over traditional energy industries.
These entities allegedly block the development and dissemination of revolutionary energy technologies. These innovations could potentially replace traditional fossil fuel-based energy systems in the future.
Collaboration with Extraterrestrial Beings This theory suggests that governments have established secret agreements or alliances with extraterrestrial beings. In these alliances, authorities would exchange technology and knowledge with aliens in undisclosed treaties.
However, there is no credible scientific evidence or documentation to support claims of collaboration with extraterrestrial beings.
Hybridization Programs Some conspiracy theories propose that extraterrestrial beings are engaged in hybridization programs. These kinds of programs consist of creating a hybrid species that combines human and alien DNA.
With that being said, it is virtually impossible to achieve that kind of hybridization. The study of genetics and reproductive biology indicates that successfulinterbreeding between species with major genetic differences is unlikely due to fundamental incompatibilities.
Secret Space Programs Some conspiracy theorists believe that governments operate secret space programs that explore extraterrestrial civilizations and engage in interstellar travel. These programs allegedly involve advanced spacecraft and interactions with alien species.
Space exploration and activities are typically carried out through publicly known programs. NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) in the United States, Roscosmos in Russia, ESA (European Space Agency) in Europe are examples of international space agencies.
Alien Infiltration of Governments This theory posits that extraterrestrial beings have infiltrated human governments at high levels. According to this theory, aliens have the power of manipulating global events and controlling world leaders for their own agenda.
Governments and institutions try to maintain security, protect national interests, and address potential threats. While governments do have top-secret operations, the claim of alien infiltration in those remains unsupported by meaningful evidence.
Staged Alien Invasions Some theorists propose that governments plan to stage fake alien invasions. The argument behind this theory is that authorities stage these invasions to create a global crisis and unite humanity under a single world government.
The notion of using a simulated alien invasion for political or social purposes has been mentioned in science fiction literature and films. However, there is no substantial evidence to support staged alien invasions in real life.
Alien Abductions and Experiments Some conspiracy theories propose that extraterrestrial beings visit Earth to abduct humans and conduct experiments on them. These theories often involve claims of missing time, strange markings, and repressed memories.
A popular theory about alien abductions is related to The Betty and Barney Hill case in 1961. Betty and Barney Hill were an American couple who claimed to have been abducted by extraterrestrial beings in rural New Hampshire.
Secret Underground Bases This theory suggests that governments have constructed hidden underground bases. In those bases, authorities conduct research, house recovered UFOs, and interact with extraterrestrial beings.
It’s worth mentioning that there are known underground facilities such as military bunkers or research laboratories. However, there is no major evidence regarding secret underground bases where research about UFOs is conducted.
UFO Disinformation Campaigns It is suggested that governments actively spread disinformation about UFOs and extraterrestrial life. The goal behind this, according to believers of this theory, is to confuse the public and discredit genuine sightings and encounters.
However, it is important to highlight the difference between deliberate disinformation campaigns and the complexities of investigating UFOs. Whether it is because of national security concerns, lack of definitive scientific conclusions, possibilities of hoaxes or public panic prevention, the government could inadvertedly cause disinformation or misinformation when trying to explain UFO investigations.
The Roswell Incident Cover-Up One of the most well-known conspiracy theories revolves around the alleged crash of an extraterrestrial spacecraft near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. Some believe that the US government covered up the existence of the crash and the recovery of extraterrestrial beings.
The official explanation provided by the U.S. military at the time stated that the debris recovered from the incident was actually from a top-secret research project known as the Mogul balloon. This secret project was designed to monitor Soviet nuclear tests during those early years of the Cold War.
Global Alien Cover-Up This theory argues that governments worldwide collaborate to suppress information. It also argues that there’s a global alliance to delete evidence of extraterrestrial life to maintain social stability and prevent widespread panic.
Governments have increasingly shown transparency and released previously classified information related to UFO sightings and investigations. There hasn’t been any concrete evidence about a global deliberate cover-up of extraterrestrial investigations.
Suppression of UFO Sightings It is claimed that governments actively suppress and discredit UFO sightings to prevent public panic and maintain control over the narrative surrounding extraterrestrial life. Authorities argue that they do it over national security concerns or the protection of sensitive military technology.
With that being said, this does not necessarily imply a deliberate suppression of information about UFO sightings. Governments, in general, decide to protect themselves and prevent any unwanted information, even in relation to UFO sightings, from coming to light because it is a “state secret”.
Moon and Mars Conspiracies Some conspiracy theories involve claims of secret alien bases on the moon or Mars. The argument is that governments are aware of these bases but keep them hidden from the public.
Theories surrounding these alien bases in other planets often rely on interpretations of anomalies or unusual features observed in images captured by spacecraft. However, these interpretations often lack scientific evidence of those bases, and can be easily confused with natural geological processes, lighting effects or image artifacts.
This theory argues that extraterrestrial beings visited Earth in ancient times and influenced human civilization. It says that aliens played a role in the construction of ancient monuments and shaping human history.
The claims of ancient astronaut theorists are based on interpretations of ancient texts, artwork, and archaeological sites, which they believe have evidence of extraterrestrial influence. However, the detractors of this theory refer to these claims as “pseudoscience.”
Crop Circles as Alien Messages The crop circles phenomenon is often attributed to extraterrestrial beings leaving encoded messages or symbols in fields. These crop circles would indicate their presence and intentions.
One example of alien-made crop circles is the Chilbolton crop circle that appeared in 2001 in Hampshire, England. However, it was later revealed that the circle was human-made and it was a publicity stunt.
Alien Influence on Religious Beliefs Some conspiracy theories propose that religious texts and beliefs were influenced by extraterrestrial beings, shaping human spirituality and religious practices. It starts from the linking of ancient religious texts and beliefs to encounters with advanced beings from other worlds.
The argument is primarily based on interpretations of ancient texts, artwork, and cultural myths. However, there isn’t any legitimate evidence of alien influence on religious beliefs of any kind.
Mysterious Lights Over the Ocean: A Remarkable UFO Sighting on November 28, 2023
Mysterious Lights Over the Ocean: A Remarkable UFO Sighting on November 28, 2023
In the realm of unexplained phenomena, few topics capture the imagination as vividly as UFO sightings. These enigmatic occurrences prompt a whirlwind of speculation, intrigue, and a perennial quest for understanding. A recent event, reported on January 16, 2024, to the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC), stands as a poignant testament to the enduring allure of the unknown. This sighting, occurring on November 28, 2023, features an eyewitness account that is as compelling as it is mystifying.
A Spectacular Observation
The incident unfolded in an unexpected locale: the vast, open ocean. The witness, a passenger aboard a cruise ship, ventured back to their room to enjoy the serene ambiance of the sea from their balcony. What was meant to be a moment of tranquility quickly turned into an encounter with the inexplicable. The observer noticed a bright object performing erratic maneuvers in the sky, a sight so unusual and distant from any landmass that it defied immediate explanation. According to the witness, “the closest land was hundreds of miles away,” underscoring the isolation and the oddity of the sighting.
No Drones on Board
In pursuit of answers, the passenger approached the cruise ship’s crew, only to be met with information that deepened the mystery. The crew member confirmed that drones were not only prohibited on board but also not utilized by the ship itself. This detail is crucial, effectively eliminating a common rational explanation for such sightings. The suggestion that “maybe Mexico is doing something” adds a layer of geopolitical intrigue, albeit without concrete evidence to substantiate this theory.
A Video That Speaks Volumes
Accompanying the eyewitness report is a video, a visual testament to the encounter that lends credence to the observer’s account. While the video will undoubtedly be subjected to scrutiny by skeptics and enthusiasts alike, it serves as a pivotal piece of evidence in the ongoing dialogue about UFOs and their place in our collective consciousness.
The Enigma Continues
This sighting is a reminder of the vastness of our world and the mysteries that linger in its unexplored corners. UFO sightings, such as the one reported on November 28, 2023, challenge our understanding of the possible and propel us to look beyond the horizon, in search of answers that may forever remain just out of reach.
For enthusiasts and skeptics alike, this sighting adds another intriguing chapter to the annals of UFO encounters. As we gaze up at the night sky, we are reminded that sometimes, the most extraordinary mysteries are not found in the far reaches of space but right here, in the vast expanse of our own planet’s skies.
For those captivated by the unexplained and the extraordinary, this recent UFO sighting over the open ocean serves as a compelling invitation to explore the unknown. The video accompanying the eyewitness account provides a glimpse into an encounter that defies easy explanation, reminding us that the mysteries of the universe are not only vast but also closer than we might think.
It has been previously thought that Earth is composed of four different layers: inner core, core, mantle, and crust. But a recent scientific discovery might change the way we see Planet Earth. Scientists claimed to they have found one more layer inside the inner core that takes the form of a solid, metallic sphere situated at the core’s center. It is not molten but solid.
A recent study published in the journal Nature Communications reveals that scientists have detected a 400-mile-thick solid metallic layer located at the Earth’s innermost core. This layer responds differently than previously known layers to earthquake shockwaves
The research was conducted by a team of two seismologists from the Australian National University (ANU), who speculates that this “innermost inner core” found inside Earth might have originated from a significant global occurrence in the past. Two Harvard seismologists, Miaki Ishii and Adam Dziewonski, first proposed the idea of the innermost inner core in 2002 based on peculiarities in the speed of seismic waves passing through the inner core.
The inner core of the Earth appears to hold an innermost secret. Image via The New York Times
The research states scientists have discovered up to fivefold reverberating waves from earthquakes along the Earth’s diameter, using a growing number of global seismic stations. This has enabled them to probe the Earth’s center and infer a transversely isotropic inner-core model that contains an anisotropically distinctive innermost inner core and its transition to a weakly anisotropic outer shell.
These findings improve current knowledge of the Earth’s formation and evolution and suggest that the anisotropy could be a fossilized record of a significant global event from the past. This research has shed light on our planet’s evolution over billions of years, including the development of the Earth’s magnetic field, which transformed it from an uninhabitable terrain into a habitable abode.
Dr. Thanh-Son Phạm, from the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences, stated that around two decades ago, a hypothesis was proposed about the presence of an internal metallic ball in the innermost core. According to Dr. Phạm, they are now presenting another line of evidence to support this hypothesis.
The ANU scientists describe this process as similar to a ping pong ball bouncing back and forth. “By developing a technique to boost the signals recorded by densely populated seismograph networks, we observed, for the first time, seismic waves that bounce back – and forth up to five times along the Earth’s diameter. Previous studies have documented only a single antipodal bounce,” Dr. Phạm said. (Source)
“This inner core is like a time capsule of Earth’s evolutionary history – it’s a fossilized record that serves as a gateway into the events of our planet’s past. Events that happened on Earth hundreds of millions to billions of years ago,” said in a statement one of the researchers, Hrvoje Tkalčić.
Scientists studied one of the earthquakes that originated in Alaska. Its seismic waves were observed to bounce off a location in the south Atlantic Ocean before returning to Alaska.
The researchers investigated the anisotropy of the iron-nickel alloy that forms the Earth’s inner core. Anisotropy refers to the way seismic waves speed up or slow down depending on their direction of travel through the Earth’s inner core, potentially caused by varying arrangements of iron atoms at high temperatures and pressures or preferred alignment of growing crystals.
The scientists discovered that the bouncing seismic waves probed the Earth’s center from different angles multiple times. By examining the travel times of seismic waves for various earthquakes, the researchers inferred that the crystallized structure within the innermost region of the inner core is likely different from the outer layer. This discrepancy could explain why seismic waves change speed depending on their entry angle as they penetrate the innermost part of the inner core.
According to the researchers, the formation of this metallic ball could have been triggered by a major global event, such as a large tectonic shift that occurred millions of years ago. Its significance lies in its potential role in supporting the thriving of life on Earth. As a crucial piece of the puzzle, it provides a captivating insight into our planet’s distant past.
Another Similar Discovery
Since the 1970s, the discovery of two giant structures inside the Earth has baffled scientists. They are located on opposite sides of our planet, and their size may be compared to continents. Each of these structures is almost 100 times bigger than Mount Everest and is located at the core of the Earth, at a depth of 2900 km. (Click here to read article)
Seismic studies show that the discovered formations have a different composition than the rest of the Earth’s mantle. These waves generated by earthquakes travel through the Earth’s interior, changing speed, bending, or scattering as they pass through different materials. Scientists use seismometers to detect these waves and create a picture of the rock below the surface.
A recent study used a machine-learning algorithm to analyze around 7,000 seismic wave records, revealing new information about three-dimensional structures near the core-mantle boundary in the sub-Pacific region of Earth.
The blobs, seen from the (a) North and (b) South Poles. The two-toned structures show the shapes of the blob based on the agreement of five different models (brown) and three different models (tan). Credit: Cottaar and Lekic, 2016, https://doi.org/10.1093/gji/ggw324
Geophysicists have known about these structures anomalies (generally they call them blobs) since the 1970s but are not much closer to understanding them today.
“They’re among the largest things inside the Earth,” University of Maryland geologist Ved Lekic told Eos reporter Jenessa Duncombe, “and yet we literally don’t know what they are, where they came from, how long they’ve been around, or what they do.”
The blobs begin thousands of miles below Earth’s surface, where the planet’s rocky lower mantle meets the molten outer core. One blob lurks deep below the Pacific Ocean, the other beneath Africa and parts of the Atlantic. Both are massive, stabbing up about halfway through the mantle and measuring as long as continents. According to Duncombe, each blob stretches about 100 times higher than Mount Everest; if they sat on the planet’s surface, the International Space Station would have to navigate around them.
These discoveries suggest that Earth is hiding many secrets within which are yet to reveal. Could there be a hidden civilization inside these structures?
Comparing ancient texts and megalithic architecture reveals an anthropological connection between civilizations that were considered technologically inferior and geographically removed from one another. The Silurian Hypothesis by Schmidt & Frank and Ultraterrestrial Models by H. E. Puthoff have evolved out of a process of elimination that has taken decades to come to light due to the layered nature of the phenomena and the incommensurability problem.
UFO Fleet Cloaked As Clouds Moving Over Mount Shasta, March 2024, UFO Sighting News.
UFO Fleet Cloaked As Clouds Moving Over Mount Shasta, March 2024, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting:March 2024
Location of sighting: Mount Shasta, California, USA
Hmmm...this reminds me of something. Mount Shasta is a hotspot for UFO sightings. I remember a couple who saw a spacecraft hovering over the St. Germain Foundation property in 1991 while lounging in their hot tub on their back porch. Also, its said an alien base site below Mount Shasta, and St. Germain is one of its leaders...and is often seen wandering the mountain trails from time to time. I know there is an alien base below Shasta, however the real question is...how do we the public contact them?
Man claims to have been abducted by aliens who forced him to perform 'sexual experiments' UFO Sighting News.
Man claims to have been abducted by aliens who forced him to perform 'sexual experiments' UFO Sighting News.
As funny a it may seem...such things do occur and there are hundreds of reports of such treatment by aliens, both in Project Blue Book reports and Majestic 12 reports and more. It doesn't seem about sex at all, but instead more about inbreeding, mixing species to make two strong species one single more powerful species (talking powerful through genetics and DNA). Biology says that when two species mix, often the new DNA introduced to the offspring brings fresh and more unique traits and abilities. Whats wrong with wanting a better life for ones offspring?
Scott C. Waring
26-03-2024 om 00:36
geschreven door peter
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
What did Buzz Aldrin mean when he said, “you didn’t, no you didn’t, you watched animation.” About the nasa moon landing? UFO sighting news.
What did Buzz Aldrin mean when he said, “you didn’t, no you didn’t, you watched animation.” About the nasa moon landing? UFO sighting news.
News talked about an eyewitness who was using his telescope and recorded an unknown object shooting across the moon. I decided to look further into the recording and used the screenshot and added contrast and sharpening to see its true detail. The UFO is actually at the front right end of the glowing line. The UFO is also a disk with sharp not perfectly round but with about 8-10 different rectangle walls along the edge of the disk. The disk is also flying vertical to the moon. A disk flying vertical would be impossible, however many contact reports in Project Blue Book talk about the disks having their own gravity within, making such turns and angles of flight not felt by the pilots within. This UFO seen in the recording is 100% real, data doesn't lie.
The trojan asteroids of Mars. Credit: Armagh Observatory
POSTED BY EVAN GOUGH
An Asteroid Found Sharing the Orbit of Mars
Astronomers discovered another asteroid sharing Mars’ orbit. These types of asteroids are called trojans, and they orbit in two clumps, one ahead of and one behind the planet. But the origins of the Mars trojans are unclear.
Can this new discovery help explain where they came from?
There are now 14 known Mars Trojans and the name of the newest one is 2023 FW14. They’re in two groups, one 60 degrees ahead and one 60 degrees behind Mars. These are the Lagrange 4 and Lagrange 5 points.
Most of the Mars trojans are at the L5 point, and this newly discovered one is the second one found at the L4 point.
Scientists aren’t certain where the Mars trojans came from. Other trojans like the Jupiter trojans may have been captured by Jupiter in the Solar System’s early years. Or Jupiter may have captured them later when it migrated.
But Mars is a much less massive planet, and astronomers aren’t certain if Mars can capture trojans the same way Jupiter does. The Mars trojans could be as old as the Jupiter trojans, but some evidence suggests otherwise. The dozen or more trojans at the Mars L5 point seem to be a family from the same collision. The family is called Eureka, and their spectra indicate an olivine-rich composition.
Olivine is relatively rare in the main asteroid belt. That’s led some researchers to suggest that the L5 Mars trojans are debris from an ancient impact between Mars, where olivine is common, and a planetesimal.
The two L4 Mars trojans are different. They don’t have the same spectra as the L5 trojans, but the pair do show some similarities in their spectra, so a common origin for these two is a possibility.
In this paper, the researchers set out to determine 2023 FW14’s origins. They used the Gran Telescopio Canarias for their work. It’s a 10.4-meter telescope in Spain’s Canary Islands with an attached instrument called the OSIRIS camera spectrograph.
2023 FW14’s spectrum places it in the same class as an Xc-type asteroid. The X-type name contains several different types of asteroids with similar spectra but probably with different compositions. Xc-types are a sub-class of the X-types that are intermediate between C-type asteroids, the most common type of asteroid in the Solar System, and the uncommon K-type asteroids.
This graph from the research shows the spectrum of 2023 FW14 and several spectra of the other known L4 Mars Trojan (121514) 1999 UJ7. Orange shows 2023 FW14, with the red line representing the best asteroid taxonomical match, the Xc-type. Teal, blue, and green show different published spectra of 1999 UJ7. The gray area fills the entire domain between the mean B-type and D-type classes of asteroids.Image Credit: Marcos et al. 2024.
The researchers also used N-body simulations to try to understand the new asteroid’s resonance with Mars. Trojans follow what are known as tadpole orbits. Tadpole orbits are influenced by Earth’s gravity, which causes objects to librate or accelerate or decelerate alternately.
Tadpole orbits are complex. Asteroids on these orbits exchange large amounts of energy and angular momentum with a planet moving in a circular orbit. Tadpole loops are made of multiple overlapping epicyclic loops.
This video illustrates the tadpole orbit followed by an asteroid in Jupiter’s L4, not Mars’ L4, but the concept is the same.
2023 FW14 has a higher orbital eccentricity and lower inclination than Mars’ other L4 trojan. This means that it occupies an unstable region and orbits at the whim of several different resonances. That instability means that in a few million years, it’ll likely be ejected.
The researchers calculated its size as approximately 318 metres (+493/-199.) That makes it one of the smallest known trojans so far.
As for its origins, the authors say that there are two possibilities.
Its long-term behaviour, including its past, suggests that it was captured from the Near Earth Asteroid (NEA) population of Mars-crossing asteroids. But it could be a fragment of another trojan, as well, one that is so far undiscovered, or one that is no longer a trojan.
Spectral data suggests something else. Both of the L4 asteroids appear to be more primitive than Mars’ L5 trojans. 2023 FW14’s spectrum also supports the idea that it’s a captured Mars-crossing NEA. However, that data isn’t as clear, according to the authors, and can’t be used to rule out the other hypothesis, which is that the asteroid formed in situ. “Although incomplete, the data support the interpretation of 2023 FW14 as an interloper captured from the Mars-crossing NEA population, but they cannot be used to reject the competing hypothesis that 2023 FW14 was produced in situ,” they write.
Whatever its origins are, the researchers calculate that 2023 FW14 has about 10 million years before it’s ejected from its trojan orbit. It’s a temporary trojan, and this discovery could prove that Mars trojans can be temporarily captured, something that so far has been unproven.
The Sound of an Interstellar Meteor Might Have Just Been a Rumbling Truck
A 2023 expedition to the Pacific Ocean, searching for debris from a suspected extraterrestrial object, may have been looking in the wrong place. A new look at the infrasound data used to locate the point of impact suggests that they may have been confused by the rumblings of a truck driving past.
On 14 January 2018, a space rock hit the Earth’s atmosphere off the coast of Papua New Guinea. It was detected by what are mysteriously described as “US Government Sensors”, and given the catalogue entry “CNEOS 2014-01-08”. Based on the brightness of the fireball and its apparent speed, the physical rock likely survived without burning up completely. The observation was logged in a database kept by the Center for Near Earth Object Studies. Bolides like this can be a spectacular sight, when spotted by human eyes, but they are not rare; several are detected each week.
Extrasolar objects
A few years later, Oumuamua was discovered. Oumuamua was traveling at a high speed, along a path that showed it was not orbiting the Sun. Instead, it had come from interstellar space and was merely passing through. This was very exciting because it was the first time anybody had observed an interstellar rocky object, and so it attracted a lot of attention.
Some observations showed that Oumuamua’s path wasn’t steady, but kept making tiny changes. Most scientists agreed that this was almost certainly because of pockets of ice melting and jetting away in the Sun’s heat. This is a common phenomenon, that we often see happening with comets. More detailed observations and simulations showed that it had a long and skinny shape, more like a splinter than a boulder, which is very unusual among the asteroids and comets that we’re used to. But Oumuamua only really hit the mainstream press when a well-known and prestigious astrophysicist decided, in a surprising leap of logic, that all these details proved that it could be an alien spacecraft!
The Oumuamua discovery led many scientists to start searching for other interstellar objects. CNEOS 2014-01-08, with its high reported speed, looked like a promising candidate. The physicist who had made such a big deal about Oumuamua being artificial took a closer look at the bolide reports and concluded that it must have been traveling fast enough to be another extrasolar object. This claim was controversial, not only because the government sensors appear to be classified and so cannot be verified, but because meteor speeds are notoriously difficult to measure. Observers have mistakenly reported extrasolar meteors as far back as 1951!
But if CNEOS 2014-01-08 truly was from outside the Solar System, and we could find pieces of it, that would be an incredible discovery: The first actual geological samples from a planetary system outside our own!
The expedition
This is why an expedition was launched in 2023 to try and find it. The research team used seismic and infrasound data from seismic research stations in the area to try and find the exact place where the meteoroid would have splashed into the sea. They identified two likely signals from Geoscience Australia’s Passive Seismic Network. The signals were recorded by Manus Island, Papua New Guinea (AU.MANU) and Coen, Queensland, Australia (AU.COEN), at around the same time that people saw the fireball. They triangulated a precise location based on those recordings, and sailed out to search the ocean floor.
The expedition was widely reported as a success, after they found “metallic spherules”. These spherules had an unusual composition, which the expedition leader said was proof of a possible extraterrestrial origin. Like the speed calculations, though, this interpretation was widely challenged. Specialists in other fields have weighed in to argue that there was nothing unusual about the debris, and that various natural and human processes could have created them (My personal favorite: 19th century pollution!). With so much doubt as to where the spherules came from in the first place, it’s probably not wise to say that they are of “extraterrestrial technological” origin.
The area near the seismic station in Manus Island, based on satellite images. Image credit: Roberto Molar Candanosa and Benjamin Fernando/Johns Hopkins University, with imagery from CNES/Airbus via Google.
The truck
The most recent challenge to the results of this expedition come from a team led by Dr Benjamin Fernando of Johns Hopkins University. Their report focuses on the seismic and infrasound data used to locate the impact site.
They noticed a number of problems with the expedition’s analysis, starting with the fact that none of the detections happened within 30 seconds of the fireball. But beyond that, these stations are located in the Pacific Ring of Fire, which is very tectonically active. They detect a great many earthquakes and other natural seismic events every day, and some of these happened at the same time as the the meteorite impact. Separating the two signals is hard to do without distorting both of them. This adds a lot of error to any calculations based on those data.
Along with seismic data, these stations also have infrasound detectors, meant to detect and monitor nuclear weapons tests. But infrasound has a limited range, and is strongly affected by geography.
Fernando’s team concluded that only one station recorded an infrasound signal that could have come from CNEOS 2014-01-08, and that none of the seismic detections had anything to do with the bolide. Based on this, they believe that the expedition was looking in the wrong place, and that the debris they discovered had nothing at all to do with the 2014 bolide.
But their most damning claim is this: The strongest signal had an unusual pattern, lasting a long time and coming from a direction which changed halfway. They noticed that there is a road passing near the station, with a curve in it that matches the change in direction of the signal. They point out that the signals recorded by trucks driving that road are a far closer match than any natural event.
In other words, they believe that the expedition based its search location for an extraterrestrial meteoroid on the noise of somebody in a truck going for a drive.
In their defense
It’s tempting to laugh at the researchers on the expedition, especially since their leader was a respected astrophysicist who has recently developed a reputation for having crackpot ideas about aliens. But I think there is value in investigating these questions.
It’s easy to get tired of cranks and fools wasting our time with conspiracy theories and crazy stories about abductions. And we should always be skeptical of any claims about aliens, given what we know about the physics of interstellar travel and the absurd scale of the Universe.
But most astronomers agree that life has to exist elsewhere in the Universe, and many think that it could well be intelligent and technologically capable, like us. Nobody’s saying that they can’t possibly exist, only that it’s extremely unlikely that they are over here!
So we should be skeptical of these reports. It’s good to not waste too much time studying them, when there are other mysteries that are far more likely to be true. But that doesn’t mean we should ignore the possibility altogether. It would be disastrous if, by some chance, it turned out to be real, and the scientific community had simply refused to acknowledge it! When new evidence comes in, we must revisit our assumptions and go back and check our previous conclusions. And it’s important that somebody do this even when we’re certain that they’ll get a negative result.
Parker Solar Probe Was Blasted by Coronal Mass Ejections 28 Times in 4 Years
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe (PSP) was launched on August 12, 2018, with the goal of becoming the first spacecraft to touch the Sun while teaching us more about our host star than any spacecraft or solar instrument in human history. Now, a recent study submitted to The Astrophysical Journal discusses the incredible data that PSP collected on coronal mass ejections (CMEs) over a four-year period. This study holds the potential to help scientists and the public better understand the CMEs and how they contribute to space weather.
Here, Universe Today speaks with Dr. Tarik Mohammad Salman, who is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at NASA and George Mason University and lead author of the study regarding the motivation behind the study, its most significant results, implications for future research, PSP contributions, and the importance of studying CMEs. So, what was the motivation behind this study?
“The PSP science data is a treasure trove as it samples the solar wind at uncharted radial distances from the Sun,” Dr. Salman tells Universe Today. “There have been numerous case studies of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) using PSP observations that provided new insights into the evolution of CMEs as the structures propagate farther from the Sun. We are in the sixth year of the PSP mission which provided us with a reasonable number of CME events to perform a statistical investigation. That was the motivation for this project to compile a catalog of CME events that PSP measured from 2018-2022 and also to investigate different perspectives of CME evolution in a statistical manner.”
For the study, PSP collected direct measurements of 32 interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs) between October 2018 and August 2022 and distances from the Sun ranging between 0.23 and 0.83 astronomical units (AU), with 1 AU being the distance between the Earth and the Sun, or approximately 150 million kilometers (93 million miles). Of the 32 measurements, four were discarded due to gaps in the data, leaving 28 CMEs successfully measured by PSP. The study’s objectives were to identify various aspects of CMEs, specifically pertaining to how they change as they travel farther from the Sun, also known as radial distance. So, what were the most significant results from this study?
Dr. Salman tells Universe Today, “A few results that I would like to highlight are that we observed the internal CME magnetic structure to become more complex with radial distance. We found the CME magnetic field strength to decrease at a lower rate than previous studies. We also saw that the expansion of the CME is important in the formation of the compression region ahead of it and the internal magnetic field has an influence on the short-scale fluctuations we find within the compression region.”
While the study of CMEs falls under the scientific field of solar physics, which studies how our entire Sun functions, scientists also classify CMEs as part of space weather, which studies the activity on the Sun’s surface and how it affects the surrounding environment. Space weather can wreak havoc on electronics, specifically communication satellites and power stations on Earth, with one of the most notable space weather events occurring in September 1859 known as the Carrington Event, which was caused by a massive solar storm that wreaked havoc on worldwide electrical grids and created spectacular auroras across the globe, as well, with the latter traditionally only being visible in the northern and southern latitudes. Therefore, what implications can this study have on future research regarding our Sun, and specifically space weather?
“The compiled catalog of CME events itself will be a valuable resource for performing future extensive case studies,” Dr. Salman tells Universe Today. “Understanding the evolution of CMEs is of paramount importance for space weather operations. This statistical investigation of different aspects of CME evolution is a step towards that as it validates previous approximations but also raises new questions that need to be explored further with a more robust data set in the future.”
After having its first solar encounter in October 2018, PSP has continued to smash records regarding its distance from our Sun. This includes achieving its closest distance of 7.26 million kilometers (4.51 million miles) on September 27, 2023, which is slated to be surpassed after its last flyby of Venus in November 2024. Science objectives for PSP include determining the solar corona processes responsible for producing the solar wind, gaining insight into the solar plasma and magnetic field properties, and learning more about additional energy particles emitted by the Sun.
The reason why PSP can travel so close to our Sun is due to its state-of-the-art solar shield comprised of a 11.43-centimeter-thick (4.5-inch-thich) carbon-composite shield capable of withstanding scorching temperatures up to 1,377 degrees Celsius (2,500 degrees Fahrenheit). While PSP has already broken records regarding its distance to the Sun, PSP is slated to come within 6.16 million kilometers (3.83 million miles) during its mission, which is planned to last a total of seven years. But how has PSP contributed to our understanding of our Sun and space weather?
“PSP is so important for us to advance our current understanding of CME evolution and space weather,” Dr. Salman tells Universe Today. “The questions of interest for space weather are will a CME impact Earth and whether it will have a southward field component to interact with the northward magnetic field of Earth. Our modeling frameworks depend on an initial characterization of the CME closer to the Sun (within 20 solar radii) based on which the models project the CME parameters when it impacts Earth.”
Dr. Salman continues, “The initial characterization is made based on CME remote-sensing imaging. What PSP is doing is providing direct measurements of CMEs in the initial phases of propagation. Adding to this are the widespread radial observations of PSP to make our statistical approximations more robust. This is how PSP is contributing to develop a more accurate picture of the CME propagation and evolution from closer to the Sun to Earth.”
Animation showing NASA’s Parker Solar Probe studying the Sun. (Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/CIL/Brian Monroe)
CMEs have been observed for thousands of years in the form of auroras when the solar wind interacts with the Earth’s magnetic field near the planet’s surface. They are produced from the Sun’s corona in the form of massive discharges when solar plasma interacts with the Sun’s massive magnetic field and their velocities can range from 250 kilometers per second (155 miles per second) to almost 3,000 kilometers per second (1,864 miles per second).
CMEs are monitored by the Space Weather Prediction Center with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration using a combination of ground- and space-based solar observatories. As noted, space weather is constantly monitored to determine how much damage can be caused to Earth surface power grids and satellite communications. But aside from monitoring space weather, why is it so important to study CMEs?
“CMEs are crucial for the existence of our Sun,” Dr. Salman tells Universe Today. “CMEs appear as a valve that releases the built-up magnetic field from the Sun without which the Sun will rip itself apart. But the investigation of CME science also has important societal relevance. CMEs drive the strongest solar storms that can wreak havoc through impacting power grids and telecommunication networks. CMEs can also damage orbiting satellites and technological infrastructure. CMEs are now counted among the major natural hazards as well. A more in-depth understanding of CMEs (from initiation to propagation to evolution along the Sun-Earth line) is thus required to improve the current status quo of space weather operations.”
What new discoveries will researchers make about coronal mass ejections in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
On July 1st, 2023, the European Space Agency (ESA) launched the Euclid Observatory, a mission that will spend the next six years investigating the composition and evolution of the Universe. In particular, Euclid will observe how the Universe has expanded over the past 10 billion years to test theories about Dark Energy. While fine-tuning and calibrating the telescope’s instruments in preparation for the mission’s first survey, the mission team noticed that a few layers of water ice formed on its mirrors after it entered the freezing cold of space.
While common, this is a problem for a highly sensitive mission like Euclid, which requires remarkable precision to investigate cosmic expansion. After months of research, the Euclid team tested a newly designed procedure to de-ice the mission’s optics. On March 20th, the ESA announced that the team’s de-icing approach worked (so far) and that Euclid’s vision has been restored. If the method proves successful, it will have validated the mission team’s plan to keep Euclid‘s optical system working for the rest of its mission.
The problem first became evident as science operations experts noticed a small but progressive decrease in light measured by the telescope’s VISible instrument (VIS). This instrument is responsible for measuring visible light from distant galaxies to determine how the light’s trajectory is affected by gravity fields. Mischa Schirmer, a calibration scientist for the Euclid consortium and one of the main designers of the new de-icing plan, explained in an ESA press release:
“We compared the starlight coming in through the VIS instrument with the recorded brightness of the same stars at earlier times, seen by both Euclid and ESA’s Gaia mission. Some stars in the Universe vary in their luminosity, but the majority are stable for many millions of years. So, when our instruments detected a faint, gradual decline in photons coming in, we knew it wasn’t them – it was us.”
Artist’s impression of the Euclid observatory. Credit: ESA
It was always expected that there would be some water contamination with Euclid, which is why there was an “outgassing campaign” shortly after launch. This consisted of the telescope being warmed up by onboard heaters and also partially exposed to the Sun, sublimating most of the water brought from Earth. However, a considerable amount remained after being absorbed in the telescope’s multi-layer insulation, which slowly began building up on the VIS intrument’s mirror surfaces. After months of research, lab studies, and calibrations, the team determined the source and began working on a solution.
The obvious solution was to heat Euclid again by running all its internal heaters for days. However, this ran the risk of deforming the mechanical structure of the spacecraft, which could alter Euclid’s optical alignment. Said Andreas Rudolph, Euclid Flight Director at ESA’s mission control:
“Most other space missions don’t have such demanding requirements on ‘thermo-optical stability’ as Euclid. To fulfilEuclid’s scientific goals of making a 3D map of the Universe by observing billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years, across more than a third of the sky, means we have to keep the mission incredibly stable – and that includes its temperature. Switching on the heaters in the payload module therefore needs to be done with extreme care.”
The team began by individually heating two of Euclid’s mirrors independently, a low-risk approach since they are located in areas where water vapor was not likely to contaminate other instruments. After analyzing the initial results, the team found that Euclid’s vision was restored to its previous accuracy. However, this was a temporary solution, and a long-term strategy for regular de-icing is still being sought. In the meantime, the ESA promises to continue to monitor the telescope for changes and share any new findings publicly.
However, the response to this problem highlights the international cooperation that made this mission possible. Said Ralf Kohley, Euclid Instrument Operations Scientist who coordinated the response:
“A complex mission requires a united response from teams across Europe, and I’m incredibly thankful for the effort and skill that so many have poured into this. It took work from teams at ESA’s ESTEC technical heart in the Netherlands, the ESAC science operations centre in Madrid and the Flight Control Team at ESOC mission control in Darmstadt – but we couldn’t have done it without the Euclid consortium and the critical inputs we got from spacecraft prime contractor Thales Alenia Space and its industrial partner Airbus Space.”
In addition, this issue could lead to vital research on how to maintain missions where highly sensitive optics are concerned. Despite how common this issue is for spacecraft, there is very little research on how ice forms on optical mirrors and impacts observations. Therefore, the solution devised by the mission team and agency could lead to new procedures for future missions. These could come in handy when Euclid is joined by NASA’sNancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (RST) in March 2027 – another mission that will explore the “dark Universe.”
Aan de rand van de woestijn in Namibië bevindt zich dor grasland met daarin kale plekken, die een vrijwel perfecte cirkel vormen. De vraag is: hoe kan het gras eromheen wel groeien en in de cirkel niet? Het is een mysterie dat wetenschappers al decennia bezighoudt, maar een stel Duitse en Israëlische onderzoekers lijkt nu het antwoord te hebben.
Ze zijn zelf het veld ingetrokken om te kijken hoe net opkomend gras vrijwel direct weer afsterft in de cirkel, terwijl het eromheen wel welig tiert. Dat blijkt door een gebrek aan water te komen, ontdekten ze. De bovenste 10 tot 12 centimeter grond functioneert als een soort death zone waarin gras niet lang kan overleven. Het gaat tien tot twintig dagen, nadat er regen is gevallen alsnog dood. Daarmee kan een andere theorie de prullenbak in: het gras gaat niet ten onder aan termieten, zoals lang werd gedacht.
Honderden metingen De wetenschappers zijn niet over één nacht ijs gegaan om dit tientallen jaren oude mysterie op te lossen. Ze hebben vijfhonderd grasplanten in vier regio’s van de Namib-woestijn opgemeten, en dan zowel de wortels als de sprieten. Ook hebben ze er statistische analyses op losgelaten en foto’s gemaakt. De honderden metingen van de vochtigheid van de grond tijdens en na de regenseizoenen van 2023 en 2024 boden uiteindelijk definitief uitsluitsel.
Daaruit bleek namelijk dat de toplaag erg gevoelig is voor uitdroging. Tijdens en na het regenseizoen is deze grond drie tot vier keer minder vochtig dan de aarde op een diepte van 20 centimeter. Daarbovenop is de toplaag in de periode na de regen nog droger binnen de cirkels dan erbuiten.
Langere wortels Onder deze omstandigheden kan het net ontkiemende gras niet overleven in de cirkel, concluderen de onderzoekers. Het droogt uit, omdat het de diepere, vochtigere grondlaag niet kan bereiken met de wortels die gemiddeld nog maar 10 centimeter lang zijn. Het grote, oudere gras daarentegen dat aan de rand van de cirkel groeit, heeft langere wortels en weet het water op 20 tot 30 centimeter diepte dus wel te halen. Het wordt na een stevige regenbui al snel weer lekker groen.
“Met hun goed ontwikkelde wortels zuigen deze graspollen veel van het water op. Na de regen hebben ze een enorm voordeel boven de net ontkiemende grassen in de cirkel. Het nieuwe gras verliest maar een klein deel van het water via transpiratie door zijn kleine sprietjes, waardoor er onvoldoende zuigkracht is om nieuw water uit diepere bodemlagen te halen”, legt hoofdonderzoeker Stephan Getzin uit van de Göttingen University.
Schematische weergave van de groei van het gras en de waterverdeling in de eerste weken na hevige regenval in de cirkel. Afbeelding: Bauhaus University Weimar, Faculty of Art & Design/Animation Art & Design
Bovenste grondlaag De metingen tonen verder aan dat het water vooral makkelijk uit de grond te zuigen is in de eerste twintig dagen na de regen en dan met name in de bovenste grondlaag. Het gevolg is dat het oudere, stevigere gras voornamelijk water haalt uit de bovenste 10 tot 20 centimeter grond. Daardoor blijft er nog minder over voor de nieuwe plantjes. “Dit is de doodsoorzaak van het nieuwe gras in de cirkel. Continue metingen van de grondvochtigheid gedurende meerdere jaren ondersteunen die conclusie, omdat daaruit blijkt dat het grondwater in de cirkel alleen merkbaar snel afneemt tijdens de groei van het omringende gras na de regen”, aldus de onderzoeker.
Dit betekent dus dat de cirkels eigenlijk een waterbron vormen voor het omringende gras dat een groot deel van het jaar kampt met een watertekort. Het gras zelf vormt de ronde vorm van de cirkels, omdat het zo voor zichzelf maximaal toegang heeft tot grondwater. “Deze zelforganisatie kun je zien als zwermintelligentie. Het is een systematische aanpassing aan een gebrek aan water in droge regio’s”, verklaart Getzin.
Geen termieten De theorie dat termieten de wortels van het verse gras opeten, waardoor het afsterft, klopt dan ook niet volgens de onderzoekers. “In een uitgebreide discussie over de zandtermietentheorie tonen we aan dat tot nu toe geen enkele veldstudie met systematische meetgegevens van de wortellengte heeft weten te bewijzen dat de termieten zich voeden met de wortels van het nieuwe gras in de cirkels”, klinkt het overtuigd.
Het bewijs stapelt zich dus op dat het echt een watertekort is dat tot de mysterieuze cirkels in de Namib-woestijn heeft geleid. De nieuwe verse grassprietjes delven het onderspit tegen de grote, oudere grassen, die veel langere wortels hebben.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) continues to set its sights on the Moon, recently selecting defense giant Northrop Grumman to advance concepts on building a lunar railroad network.
Constructing a lunar railroad system may seem like something from a science fiction movie. Yet, the project reflects the Department of Defense’s (DoD) mysterious focus on lunar operations and potential ambition to establish a strategic military presence on the Moon.
“The envisioned lunar railroad network could transport humans, supplies, and resources for commercial ventures across the lunar surface – contributing to a space economy for the United States and international partners,” Northrop Grumman said in a statement.
According to Northrop Grumman, the company will begin by exploring concepts for constructing and operating a lunar railroad network, including identifying the foreseeable costs, necessary resources, and technological risks associated with such an ambitious endeavor.
The company will also provide DARPA with lunar railroad network prototypes, as well as demonstrations and analyses of how a fully operating system would perform.
DARPA’s plans to develop a lunar railroad network is a strategic initiative reminiscent of the pivotal role railroads played in expanding and developing the United States.
Just as the First Transcontinental Railroad revolutionized the settlement and economy of the American West, this lunar project aims to tackle the unique logistical and operational challenges of establishing a sustainable human and commercial presence on the Moon.
Chris Adams, vice president and general manager at Northrop Grumman’s Strategic Space Systems, emphasized the significance of this initiative. “This investment in key developmental research propels our technology to the forefront of next-generation solutions, establishing a sustainable space ecosystem,” Adams stated.
America’s development of a nationwide railroad network in the 1800s is primarily recognized as a symbol of modernity and national progress. However, the expansion of the First Transcontinental Railroad also came at a significant cost to the landscape and Indigenous communities of the American Midwest.
Many historians argue that the construction of the Pacific Railroad from 1863 to 1869 played a significant role in the near-extinction of the American bison. This was largely due to the railroad’s influx of settlers who hunted the bison extensively.
Furthermore, the arrival of these new settlers, coupled with diminishing natural resources, led to increased tensions and conflicts between the U.S. government and the Indigenous tribes of the region, as the expanded homesteading facilitated by the railroad encroached on their lands.
As a consequence of these developments, Indigenous peoples in the United States ended up losing nearly 99% of the land they had occupied for tens of thousands of years.
The Moon lacks human inhabitants or an ecosystem that a lunar railroad system could potentially disrupt. Nonetheless, this does not eliminate the possibility of unintended consequences as humanity plans to colonize the lunar surface.
As it relates to potential “unintended consequences,” perhaps one of the most pressing questions is why DARPA, the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DoD) primary brain trust, has taken such a keen interest in the Moon in recent years.
In addition to its 10-year Lunar Architecture (LunA-10) Capability Study, several other DARPA programs are developing various technologies to establish and facilitate a permanent human presence on the Moon.
One such initiative, the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations program, or “DRACO,” looks to identify “leap-ahead” propulsion technologies to allow larger payload transfers between the Earth and the Moon.
Traditionally, NASA, the independent federal agency dedicated to the scientific exploration of aeronautics and outer space, has led America’s space exploration ventures. Yet, DARPA’s recent initiatives to develop lunar infrastructure, such as constructing a moon-based railroad, mark a significant change in how the U.S. is approaching space exploration.
In contrast to NASA’s emphasis on scientific research, DARPA’s official documents explicitly state its goal to foster a “thriving lunar economy” and establish a “civil lunar framework for peaceful U.S. and international use.”
During the announcement of industry partners for DARPA’s 10-Year Lunar Architecture (LunA-10) Capability Study, known as “LunA-10,” Dr. Michael “Orbit” Nayak, a program manager in DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office, underscored the agency’s intention to turn the Moon into an economic extension of the U.S.
“LunA-10 has the potential to upend how the civil space community thinks about spurring widespread commercial activity on and around the Moon within the next 10 years,” Dr. Nayak said. “LunA-10 performers include companies both big and small, domestic and international, each of which brought a clear vision and technically rigorous plan for advancing quickly towards our goal: a self-sustaining, monetizable, commercially owned-and-operated lunar infrastructure.”
Policy experts note that DARPA’s lunar initiatives, such as constructing a lunar railroad network, comply with the United Nations Outer Space Treaty of 1967. This treaty prohibits the militarization of space and requires the Moon and other celestial bodies to be used only for peaceful purposes.
However, there remains a risk of “unintended consequences” similar to those experienced during the construction of the First Transcontinental Railroad. In this case, the conflict would not involve Indigenous populations but could arise from commercialization and competition for lunar resources with another global power: China.
China likewise has plans for a permanent lunar settlement, including a nearly 14-square-mile lunar base with underground facilities, a command and communication center, a power station, laboratories, and a fleet of autonomous robots to support scientific research and commercialization of the Moon.
Even before either country has started constructing permanent settlements on the Moon, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has accused China of intending to claim resource-rich areas of the Moon as its own sovereign territory, an allegation that Beijing has denied, labeling it a “lie.”
Nevertheless, as recently reported by The Debrief, Beijing plans to extend its advanced mass surveillance network, known as “Skynet,” to the Moon. Expanding its extensive spy network to include the lunar surface suggests China is already preparing for potential disputes with lunar neighbors, particularly the U.S.
The recent lunar railroad initiative by DARPA is not just about creating a novel means of transport but also envisioning a future where the Moon plays a pivotal role in supporting human life and commercial activities.
DARPA’s burgeoning interest in lunar infrastructure development subtly aligns with the DoD’s broader vision to leverage the Moon’s strategic position beyond mere scientific exploration to achieve economic and defense objectives.
It remains to be seen whether perceiving the Moon as a critical asset for U.S. national security and economic development will ultimately lead to earthly conflicts in the future.
“For my entire 50-year career, no one I knew was particularly interested in it [the moon], but now there is extreme attention,” Szymanski said. “In the 1970’s NASA asked the Air Force if they wanted a base on the moon, and they said ‘no,'”
“Yet now, I personally know of companies planning on providing cell phone service on the Moon, and the Air Force Research Lab is developing several programs, such as space surveillance for the far side of the Moon. None of this makes sense unless there is some other not publicly known factor that has changed everyone’s attitudes.”
Tim McMillan is a retired law enforcement executive, investigative reporter and co-founder of The Debrief. His writing typically focuses on defense, national security, the Intelligence Community and topics related to psychology. You can follow Tim on Twitter:@LtTimMcMillan. Tim can be reached by email: tim@thedebrief.org or through encrypted email:LtTimMcMillan@protonmail.com
Is the remote viewing real? The subject is very controversial for scientists to study but James H. Lee, an award-winning financial advisor suggested that it has the potential to make a meaningful contribution to the professional futurist′s toolbox. This particular technique is well-discussed in the declassified CIA files where psychic abilities were used to spy on Soviet Russia and track down its military activities under Project Stargate.
RV was real, CIA admitted it
The first test of the project was conducted in the 1970s at the US Army base in Maryland. Basically, this highly classified project was about the mind-reading of the enemies, so the CIA started recruiting people who claimed to “have powers of extrasensory perception (ESP) to help uncover military and domestic intelligence secrets.” (Source)
In the CIA declassified file, it was detailed how Uri Geller could replicate things drawn by a researcher in another sealed room. As the US government was getting benefits from this program, they continued funding it.
In one experiment for the CIA, Geller replicate images drawn by a researcher, sitting in another sealed room.
Uri Geller replicated images drawn by a researcher
One of the remote viewers named Angela Dellafiora Ford revealed her physics powers on the CBS News program “48 Hours.” In 1989, she was asked by the army to psychically track down the location of one man. She located the man in Lowell, Wyoming, and then he was arrested 100 miles west of a Wyoming town called Lovell.
In 2021, John Greenewald, Jr.’s Blackvault published approximately 2,700 pages of the declassified documents provided by the CIA, involving UAP/UFO information. One document that staggered ET hunters was about Mars.
The document titled “Mars Exploration May 22, 1984,” basically centers around a subject that made use of astral projection which helped him observe ancient alien life on Mars. In this document, there is a transcript, where a subject named Joseph McMoneagle, a retired US Army veteran was given an envelope prior to the interview and asked not to open it until the interview ended. According to the CIA’s own documents, the unnamed psychic described “The planet Mars. Time of interest approximately 1 million years B.C.” (Source)
He claimed to identify that he saw pyramid-like structures on the Red Planet. The subject also added that he witnessed alien life forms on the Martian surface.
[Subject]: I’m seeing, ah… It’s like a perception of a shadow of people, very tall… thin, it’s only a shadow. It’s as if they were there and they’re not, not there anymore. [Monitor]: Go back to a period of time where they are there. Sub: Um… (mumble) It’s like I get a lot of static on a line and everything, it’s breaking up all the time, very fragmentary pieces. Mon: Just report the data, don’t try to put things together, just report the raw data. Sub: I just keep seeing very large people. They appear thin and tall, but they’re very large. Ah… wearing some kind of strange clothes.
According to the date specified in the “Mars Exploration” memo, it was approved to be published only in 2000 although it was recorded in 1984, and McMoneagle was the only remote viewer to be working at that time. He wrote in his book “Mind Trek” about a similar incident mentioned in that memo.
Jacob Brogan, an assistant editor at the Washington Post tracked down and called McMoneagle. According to Brogan, McMoneagle told him that the request to visit Mars was not made by the CIA but by some unknown army person to him. (Source)
“Neither of us knew what we were working on. Our assumption at the time was that I was working on targets on Earth. I was not familiar with any pyramids on Earth that had such large rooms,” McMoneagle told him.
McMoneagle was confused why he had been asked by the army to explore Mars. He had no clue. He remembered one more incident when he was asked to examine the UFO. “The problem that I have with targeting UFOs and Mars and things like that is that there’s no real way to validate the information,” he said.
In an interview with Richard Thieme, a founder of ThiemeWorks, McMoneagle shared his experience on Project Stargate, UFOs, and ETs. He shared his encounter with the UFO in 1966, in which he got a radiation burn.
Richard Thieme asked him: “Is it all one thing, though? These are complex psychological processes – and you were burned physically in 1966. Is it all one thing? Do scriptural texts of folk documents about people encountering entities – can we connect that experience with an experience of the lights going on at night and you seeing a physical craft?”
McMoneagle replied: “I did a remote viewing in early 1980s, 82 or 83, where a UFO target was mixed in with other targets, so I had no idea it was a UFO target.” Over the years, as McMoneagle said, he was involved in about 450 missions. One of his favorites was in 1980 when CIA personnel captured a suspected KGB agent in South Africa. They wanted to know how the agent was communicating with the Soviet military. They put an envelope on McMoneagle’s desk, and without knowing anything of the man, McMoneagle told the CIA that the man liked to use a small pocket calculator. The calculator turned out to be a disguised short-wave radio. He retired from the Army in 1984 but continued to work as a Stargate consultant.
According to the date specified in the “Mars Exploration” memo, it was approved to be published only in 2000 although it was recorded in 1984, and McMoneagle was the only remote viewer to be working that time. He wrote in his book “Mind Trek” about the similar incident mentioned in that memo.
Jacob Brogan, an assistant editor at the Washington Post tracked down and called McMoneagle. According to Brogan, McMoneagle told him that the request to visit Mars was not made by the CIA but by some unknown army person to him.
“Neither of us knew what we were working on. Our assumption at the time was that I was working on targets on Earth. I was not familiar with any pyramids on Earth that had such large rooms,” McMoneagle told him.
McMoneagle was confused why he had been asked by the army to explore Mars. He had no clue. He remembered one more incident when he was asked to examine the UFO. “The problem that I have with targeting UFOs and Mars and things like that is that there’s no real way to validate the information,” he said.
In an interview with Richard Thieme, a founder of ThiemeWorks, McMoneagle shared his experiences on the Project Stargate, UFOs, and ETs. He shared his encounter with the UFO in 1966, in which he got a radiation burn.
Richard Thieme asked him: “Is it all one thing, though? These are complex psychological processes – and you were burned physically in 1966. Is it all one thing? Do scriptural texts of folk documents about people encountering entities – can we connect that experience with an experience of the lights going on at night and you seeing a physical craft?”
McMoneagle replied: “I did a remote viewing in early 1980s, 82 or 83, where a UFO target was mixed in with other targets, so I had no idea it was a UFO target.”
CIA Interdimensional Experiemnt
Robert Monroe (1915 –1995), another RV that had a striking history of remote viewing was probably the first RV hired by the CIA. One day in 1978, the CIA representatives contacted him. They wanted to implement his mind-expanding practice in attempt of sending soldiers into deep remote viewing sessions. Given Monroe’s extensive background and various patented applications, he was the perfect choice for this trailblazing operation. Hoping to obtain further credibility in the study of paranormal phenomena, he agreed to join them. (Source)
Since those involved were opening portals to other dimensions, researchers aptly named the assignment Gateway Process. According to declassified files, the program is “a training system designed to bring enhanced strength, focus and coherence to the amplitude and frequency of brainwave output between the left and right hemispheres so as to alter consciousness, moving it outside the physical sphere so as to ultimately escape even the restrictions of time and space. (Source)
The participant then gains access to the various levels of intuitive knowledge the universe offers.” Discoveries listed in Commander Wayne M. McDonnell’s final analysis paper included detailed information about the nature of reality. Investigators ascertained we live in a holographic universe and waking life is a projected electromagnetic matrix.
To enter the unearthly realms, headphone-donning voyagers sat in isolated darkness while listening to various tones at specific hertz. The participants had no contact or communication with one another. After their journey was finished, the volunteers would report what they experienced with staff members.
According to Robert, subjects would often encounter interdimensional entities. Most frequently, they witnessedreptilian humanoids. The viewers referred to the uncanny creatures as “the alligators” due to their crocodilian features. Curiously, Monroe was already quite familiar with the unsettling breed. During countless expeditions, he observed identical saurian creatures. For over thirty-five years, the etheric investigator gathered insight about these startling beings.
In the history of space programs, seven Apollo command module pilots spent time in isolation in lunar orbit while the rest of the crew explored the moon. These astronauts were completely cut off from Earth and the nearest humans had ever been when they were on the far side of the Moon. One of these astronauts was Apollo 15 command module pilot Al Worden who flew to the Moon in July 1971. He is remembered as the “most isolated human being” ever – at times his companions being 3,600 km (2,235 miles) away on the lunar surface. He passed away at the age of 88 on March 18, 2020.
Astronaut Al Worden claimed that we are not alone in the universe. He said there is no doubt there are other living species out there. During his visit to FM’s Ray D’Arcy Show in 2014, he recalled being alone in space for three days during his 1971 mission gave him time to think about the bigger questions in life. (Source)
He said, “You see the universe out there and all the stars and you think and you do a little research on the stars. You realize how many there are out there. “There are 400 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy alone and there are another 200 billion galaxies. You begin to think ‘All that out there, there’s got to be somebody’.” Asked why he thought we haven’t had any contact from potential extraterrestrials, he quipped: “Why would they want to? They know enough about us not to want to. We’re making a balls of what we’re doing down here.”
Later he reconsidered his thoughts on alien life during his interview with the British TV show “Good Morning Britain.” He without any hesitation said that humans are the ancient aliens who had arrived on Earth in the distant past. When Worden is asked about the possibility that there are extraterrestrials out there, Worden says, “You know, I’ve been asked that question hundreds of times, ‘do you believe in aliens?’ and I say ‘yeah.’
In 2017, on a British TV show, he gave a shocking response when a host asked why to spend a lot of money on space missions when there are lots of problems on Earth. He was asked if he believed aliens were real. The answer probably surprised everyone watching the interview. The former Apollo 15 member said that not only were aliens real, but they had come to Earth in the distant past and created our civilization, and if we wanted to look for evidence, all we had to do was to look at ancient Sumerian literature.
“We are the aliens, but we just think they are somebody else. But we are the ones who came from somewhere else, because somebody else had to survive, and they got into little spacecraft then they came here and landed, and they started civilization here. And if you don’t believe me, go get books on Ancient Sumerians and see what they had to say. They’ll tell you right up front,” Worden added. He died on March 18, 2020.
ccording to his words, he was the firm believer in the ancient Sumerian scriptures. They reveal that humans and gods used to live together, while humans were servants to gods and each Sumerian city was guarded by its own god. The earliest record of a Sumerian creation myth can be found in a tablet excavated in Nippur, an ancient Sumerian city in Mesopotamia, in 1893. (Click here for the full article)
According to the cuneiform tablets, Earth was ruled by human-like gods at the beginning. When they arrived on Earth, they made it habitable by toiling the soil and mining the minerals. Besides, the text mentioned the revolt between the gods and their laborers.
“When the gods like men Bore the work and suffered the toll The toil of the gods was great, The work was heavy, the distress was.”
It is said before humans, the Anunnaki (a group of deities of the ancient Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians, and Babylonians) used the Igigi (sometimes also spelled “Igigu”), the young generation of Ancient Astronaut Gods as their servants to mine gold on Earth, but later, they were replaced by humans when they rebelled against the Annunaki. For the ancient Mesopotamians, heaven is divided into three domes. The lowest dome of heaven was the home of the stars, and the middle dome was the home of the Igigi, the younger gods. The highest and outermost dome of heaven was personified as An, the god of the sky.
According to him, humans should have become the strongest race in the universe, but the mortal body failed to thrive in the Earth’s environment, it can easily be harmed by sunlight, natural disasters, and diseases. He said: “Mankind is supposedly the most highly developed species on the planet, yet is surprisingly unsuited and ill-equipped for Earth’s environment: harmed by sunlight, a strong dislike for naturally occurring foods, ridiculously high rates of chronic disease, and more.”
Dr. Ellis concluded that mankind did not come from that particular strain of life, but evolved elsewhere and was transported to Earth (as fully evolved Homo sapiens) between 60,000 and 200,000 years ago.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
Webb Reveals Secrets of Neptune’s Evolution
JWST's view of Neptune in infrared. The telescope also studied the surfaces of two icy asteroids in the Kuiper Belt that lie beyond Neptune. Courtesy: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
A twinset of icy asteroids called Mors-Somnus is giving planetary scientists some clues about the origin and evolution of objects in the Kuiper Belt. JWST studied them during its first cycle of observations and revealed details about their surfaces, which gives hints at their origins. That information may also end up explaining how Neptune got to be the way it is today.
The Mors-Somnus binary is part of a collection of objects beyond Neptune. They’re called, aptly enough, “Trans-Neptunian Objects” or TNOs, for short. About 3,000 are numbered and known, and many more aren’t yet surveyed. They all lie beyond the orbit of Neptune and are divided into various classes. There are the classical Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) and scattered disc objects. Within those two classes, there are resonant TNOs—which move in resonance with Neptune and extreme TNOs, which orbit far beyond Neptune (around 30 AU). Then there are objects in orbits similar to Pluto’s, called “plutinos”. Mors-Somnus is also a Plutino.
The orbit of Mors-Somnus with respect to Neptune in the outer Solar System. Courtesy JPL.
Neptune and Beyond
Why is there such a varied bunch of objects “out there”? Where did they originate and how have they changed over time? One way to answer those questions is to study the surface properties of Kuiper Belt Objects and, in particular, icy rocks like Mors-Somnus. One way to do that is to take spectra of their surfaces. The data reveals information about the surface compositions of these objects. That, in turn, tells scientists something about the environments in which they formed and those they’ve experienced over time.
Neptune itself likely formed closer to the Sun but then migrated to the outer Solar System (along with Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus). At the same time, a huge dense disk of rocky and icy planetesimals and asteroids populated space out to about 35 AU. As the giant planets migrated to more distant orbits, they preferentially scattered those smaller bodies. These icy asteroids and cometary bodies settled into the Kuiper Belt, scattered disk, and the Oort Cloud. How that activity progressed and where those icy bodies came from in the first place are questions planetary scientists are working to answer.
More About Mors-Somnus and Neptune
This is where Mors-Somnus comes in handy. The pair is a good example of a “cold classical” TNO. It was studied by JWST as part of a program called Discovering the Surface Compositions of Trans-Neptunian Objects (DiSCO-TNOs) led by Ana Carolina de Souza Feliciano and Noemí Pinilla-Alonso at the University of Central Florida. The project identifies the unique spectral properties of these small celestial bodies beyond Neptune, something that hasn’t been done before now.
An artist’s conception of Mors-Somnus, a binary duo — a pair of icy asteroids bound by gravity, is shown. These lie just beyond the orbit of Neptune. JWST was used to analyze their surface compositions for the first time. Image credit: Angela Ramirez, UCF
The Mors-Somnus is a member of the same dynamical group as other nearby TNOs and they share spectroscopic characteristics with other cold-classical group objects. This means they probably all formed at about the same time. They probably originated beyond 30 astronomical units from the Sun. Trans-Neptunian binaries such as Mors-Somnus provide a unique way to look at the formation and evolution of planetesimals in that region of space.
Studying the composition of small celestial bodies such as Mors-Somnus gives us precious information about where we came from, Pinilla-Alonso said. “We are studying how the actual chemistry and physics of the TNOs reflect the distribution of molecules based on carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen in the cloud that gave birth to the planets, their moons, and the small bodies,” she says. “These molecules were also the origin of life and water on Earth.”
The Importance of Objects Beyond Neptune
The chemical and physical properties of TNOs offer a treasure trove of information about what conditions were like in the early Solar System. They likely contain pristine materials that existed in the protoplanetary disk from which our Solar System formed, including primitive ices. Those ices don’t change due to solar heating (since the Sun is so far away), but they can be darkened by ultraviolet radiation over time, as planetary scientists have seen at Pluto and other icy worlds. And, those bodies can get transported from their birth regions to other parts of the solar system. If their surfaces don’t change much, then scientists can used spectral studies to trace where groups of objects originated.
The TNO region also contains what scientists call a “dynamical structure”. That is, its distribution of objects by various characteristics, including their orbits and motions over time. Objects and events can change the dynamical structure. For example, the dynamical structure of the trans-Neptunian region bears the traces of planetary migration that occurred in the first billion years of the Solar System’s existence. The TNOs, and in particular, binaries like Mors-Somnus were affected by such migrations.
Migration and Neptune
It’s very likely that this binary pair originally formed well beyond the orbit of Neptune. The researchers found similar spectroscopic characteristics between Mors and Somnus and the cold-classical group. It’s compositional evidence that this binary pair formed well beyond 30 astronomical units (nearly 2.7 billion miles away). Then, they moved to their present positions under the gravitational influence of other planetary migrations.
A model of possible migration paths in the outer solar system due to giant planet migrations. Model: R. Gomes, image by Morbidelli and Levison.
Thanks to gravitational perturbations from Neptune, Mors-Somnus and its neighbors moved closer to the planet. They now orbit in resonance with the planet. All these objects are potential tracers for Neptune’s migration path before it settled into its final orbit, the researchers say.
Binaries separated by distance, as Mors-Somnus is, rarely survive outside of areas bound by gravity, where they are sheltered by other KBOs. To survive migration, they require a slow transportation process toward their destination. The migration of Neptune to its final orbit offered such a leisurely opportunity.
Using JWST to study the surface characteristics of smaller distant worlds is a great accomplishment, according to co-author Pinilla-Alonso. The telescope has studied larger worlds out there, but this is the first time it’s focused on such tiny members of the outer Solar System. “For the first time, we can not only resolve images of systems with multiple components like the Hubble Space Telescope did, but we can also study their composition with a level of detail that only Webb can provide. We can now investigate the formation process of these binaries like never before.”
Planetary scientist Dante Lauretta spent the last two decades pitching, preparing, and pondering a mission unlike one he or NASA had ever tried: OSIRIS-REx, the space agency’s first attempt at retrieving a sample from an asteroid.
Lauretta is now settling into his new role as an asteroid sample scientist. But way before that he began chronicling his epic career in a book. The Asteroid Hunter (Grand Central Publishing) is set to hit shelves today. The book takes readers through Lauretta’s out-of-this-world ventures, including the monumental effort it took to get a spacecraft off the ground, to an asteroid, back to Earth, and on to a new asteroid.
This month, Lauretta spoke to Inverse about the keystone to the entire mission — the space-rock scooper called the Touch and Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) that grabbed the sample — as well as what might be hiding inside the carbon-rich, ultra-dark asteroid samples, and what near-Earth asteroids keep him up at night.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
The Asteroid Hunter (Grand Central Publishing) by Dante Lauretta is out now.
GRAND CENTRAL PUBLISHING
Inverse: The TAGSAM, which is the robotic “arm” that scooped the asteroid sample as the spacecraft flew by Bennu, went through over 25 rounds of testing to ensure it could do this incredibly important, yet tricky task. It did these tests in NASA’s test plane, nicknamed the “Vomit Comet” for its signature parabolic, u-shaped flights known to induce severe nausea. When you saw the TAGSAM again once it landed on Earth last year, did you have flashbacks to this testing from 11 years ago?
Lauretta: Definitely. When the TAGSAM touched the test bed in the reduced gravity aircraft [the Vomit Comet], it was so gentle! Everything kind of just flipped up in slow motion. It was like a snow globe, but you could tell the physics were different.
It was so captivating. I found myself staring at it and thinking, ‘Wow.’ It really is a different regime when you’re trying to work in microgravity. We don’t have common sense for that. That really stuck with me. What will happen when we get down to the really low gravity [of Bennu], which is impossible to simulate on that aircraft?
This series of 82 images shows TAGSAM touching Bennu’s surface on October 20, 2020.
Have all the Bennu asteroid samples been cataloged yet or is it an ever-evolving process?
It’s kind of a fractal process. When we take them out of TAGSAM and put them in what we call our pizza trays — if you’ve seen some pictures of them, they look like pizza slices — and that whole tray has a sample number. Then we go in and say, ‘Oh, that stone looks interesting!’ That stone gets pulled out and gets its own sample number. That process will go on for years because there are thousands and thousands of stones, especially as you get to smaller particles.
There’s a lot of discussion and decision-making. It’s a balance between doing the most exciting science, meeting the minimum science requirements, and also preserving the legacy of the collection for the future. We don’t want to consume all of a unique thing. But we do want to look at it, so we figure out how to characterize it while maintaining its integrity.
A view of eight sample trays containing the final material from asteroid Bennu.
In the book, you describe the difficulties in talking to media outlets about an asteroid called Duende that would safely fly by the Earth. But then, that same morning, a meteoroid exploded with the power of a nuclear bomb over Chelyabinsk, Russia. Do you have fears that, say, OSIRIS-REx, now called OSIRIS-APEX, finds something gnarly about its new asteroid target, Apophis?
The risk of an asteroid impact is real. It’s small. But the consequences are huge. The event in Chelyabinsk really showed us. That was a true asteroid impact over a populated area. It was a really small object, as these things go, but it still caused damage. Hundreds of people were injured, and the property was destroyed. It woke everybody up.
That reminded me of the comet that struck Jupiter in 1994. Same kind of awareness. We live our lives with our heads down with all our daily struggles. But every once in a while, you look up, and you go, you know, there could be something coming, and maybe we should think about it. These kinds of high-profile events catalyze a lot more activity in these areas, absolutely.
The meteor that broke apart over Chelyabinsk, Russia on February 15, 2023 was caught on camera by Aleksandr Ivanov.
How did Chelyabinsk affect the progression of the OSIRIS-REx mission? At the time, the mission hadn't yet been confirmed.
My science is all about origins investigations: How did Earth form, where did life come from, and does it exist elsewhere in the universe? But that’s somewhat esoteric, I would say, especially for Congress and politicians. But something coming from outer space that could cause damage? Everybody understands that. Our mission directly addresses it. So we absolutely leaned into it.
A few years ago, NASA confirmed that the asteroid this spacecraft is chasing now, called Apophis, won’t hit Earth in 2029, nor in 2068, and will fly past us safely in both instances. But Bennu could strike our planet in the year 2182. If that happens, it could create a fireball many times brighter than the Sun and carve out a four-mile-wide crater where dislodged rocks the size of sixteen-story buildings would rain down. Does knowing all this ever give you nightmares?
No. I mean, what it does is make me very humble in the sense that the universe is much bigger than anything I can imagine. Even though I spend my time trying to imagine how big it is, it’s impossible.
The forces that are out there are unbelievably powerful. Once you kind of appreciate that, you can’t help but feel tiny. An asteroid impact is one facet of that. The universe is such an amazing place to explore. There are beautiful things, but there are dangerous things. Our place is very precious. At the end of the day, I come away grateful that I’m here, that I’m alive.
Asteroid Bennu, which was the target of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, measures about 1,614 feet in diameter.
In the last 20 years, have advancements been made to better track asteroids? What would you like to see happen next in this field?
In the last 20 years, there have been advances, and there have been setbacks. Advances have been made in the sense that some very capable asteroid survey telescopes have come online. One of which is the Pan-STARRS facility in Hawaii. That was a huge asset that came online and has discovered many hazardous asteroids — and non-hazardous asteroids, for that matter — every night. At the University of Arizona, where I’m based, we operate the Catalina Sky Survey, which has continued to improve its capabilities. It is still a very productive program for looking for asteroids in the Solar System.
This aerial view shows the damage at the Arecibo Observatory after one of the main cables holding the receiver broke in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, on December 1, 2020.
RICARDO ARDUENGO/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
I think the biggest setback is the loss of the Arecibo planetary radar system in Puerto Rico. That took severe damage from the hurricane that passed through there. That was such a powerful tool for characterizing the nature of these asteroids: getting their orbit, their size, their shape, their rotation state, and even some information about their surface properties. Arecibo data was absolutely central to mission planning for OSIRIS-REx at Bennu.
We don’t have that anymore. There’s no plan to rebuild Arecibo. I think it’s critical infrastructure. We should be talking about a replacement radio telescope. That, to me, is a major setback and a loss in our capability to get up close and personal with these objects.
(Image Via Buena Vista Pictures Distribution/Touchstone Pictures
The allure of the unknown has always drawn us toward the stars, igniting our imaginations and prompting questions about what lies beyond. Among these cosmic curiosities, UFOs occupy a special place, blurring the line between reality and fiction. However, not every light in the sky is a sign of extraterrestrial visitors; many are the creations of earthly tricksters!
Today, we're looking at some UFO rumors and hoaxes that took the internet by storm. These posts and videos may have gone viral, but that doesn't mean they should be trusted. The truth may be out there!
From misunderstandings to outright deception, these are the UFO "sightings" that got the world talking:
1. Is This an Authentic Video of 3 UFOs Spotted Over New Mexico or Nevada?
In August 2023, a video claiming to show UFOs being chased by F-22 Raptors over Nevada took social media by storm. However, the creator disclosed that it was all virtual reality and that it was filmed using the "Digital Combat Simulator" video game.
Despite looking incredibly realistic and even fooling some UFO enthusiasts, the video doesn't feature real unidentified flying objects.
2. Did Rep. Tim Burchett Accuse US Government of Covering Up UFOs 'Since 1947'?
In a podcast appearance in June 2023, U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett discussed the U.S. House Oversight Committee's efforts to declassify unexplained anomalous phenomena and hold hearings on recovered non-human-made aircraft. Burchett mentioned the possibility of the government hiding evidence of alien technology since 1947, citing UFO sightings and the infamous Aurora, Texas, incident from 1897.
Though the alleged airship crash from Mars was later revealed as a hoax, Burchett did make this claim. These discussions shed light on the ongoing interest in unexplained aerial phenomena and their potential implications.
In mid-June 2023, a Twitter user posted a video supposedly capturing a UFO in Kazakhstan. However, it turned out to be an optical illusion created by the lights from the Russian Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft on its way to the International Space Station. The video, although genuine, didn't depict a UFO.
It was filmed in Balkhash, south of the Kazakh Uplands, shortly after the spacecraft's launch on Sept. 21, 2022. The footage surfaced online four days after the launch and continued circulating for a month, offering a glimpse into the fascinating world of misinterpreted space phenomena.
4. Does NASA Video Show Aliens Flying 2 Rectangular UFOs?
In February 2023, a Twitter post misleadingly claimed that NASA had recorded a video of aliens piloting two rectangular UFOs eight years prior. This assertion quickly sparked curiosity and skepticism. However, the truth is far less extraterrestrial.
The video in question was actually a digital animation created by NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio, showcasing the twin spacecraft satellites from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment mission, not alien technology. This creative misunderstanding highlights the importance of verifying sensational claims, especially when they involve the vast unknown of space.
5. Does This Video Show Helicopters Escorting a UFO?
In early February 2022, UFO enthusiasts were abuzz with a video purporting to show an alien spacecraft being chased by helicopters over Durham, Connecticut. The footage, described in sensational headlines, was too grainy to confirm details such as the date, location and type of helicopters involved.
Despite the fuzzy quality, the video likely depicted three helicopters, with the middle one shining a spotlight below, rather than a UFO encounter. This interpretation leans more towards a terrestrial explanation.
6. Did Pentagon Confirm Leaked Pics of UFOs Were Taken by Military Personnel?
In July 2019, a night-vision video captured by the USS Russell crew showed pyramid-shaped objects flying in the night sky, confirmed as authentic by the U.S. Department of Defense. While the public might jump to extraterrestrial conclusions, these are officially termed "unidentified aerial phenomena." The origin and nature of these objects remain a mystery even to U.S. military officials.
Documentary filmmaker Jeremy Corbell and investigative reporter George Knapp released the footage, hoping it sparks a rational and transparent investigation into UFO phenomena, suggesting technology possibly beyond current human capability. Further images captured by military aviators in 2019 have also surfaced, adding to the intrigue around these unidentified objects.
7. Did a 'Declassified' Picture Show an Alien UFO Crash?
An online ad promising "40+ Wild Photos That the Government Has Declassified" featuring a dramatic image of a UFO crash scene led curious folks to a lengthy slideshow on the Daily Forest website. The intrigue? A flying saucer surrounded by officials, straight out of a sci-fi scene. However, the twist in the tale was that the advertised UFO crash photo didn't make an appearance in the article.
Instead, it was revealed to be a still from "The X-Files: The Event Series," dating back to 2016.
8. Was a UFO Spotted Over New Jersey?
In mid-September 2020, a TikTok video capturing what seemed to be a UFO over New Jersey quickly went viral, amassing millions of views. The footage showed onlookers near Route 21, mesmerized by the sight. However, the mystery was soon solved: the "alien spaceship" was actually a Goodyear Blimp, confirmed by a company representative.
The blimp was in the area to film the NFL game between the New York Giants and the Pittsburgh Steelers at MetLife Stadium.
9. Was an Alien Spotted Boarding a UFO in Romania?
In January 2018, a video allegedly capturing an alien boarding a spaceship in Romania and soaring over the forest became a social media sensation, amassing more 15 million views. Despite skepticism, some viewers were convinced it documented a real extraterrestrial visit.
However, the video's authenticity was questionable, with conflicting reports about its location — ranging from Târgoviște to Bacău, Romania, and even Alaska, highlighting a typical internet hoax pattern.
Originally posted on the "Alien Unleash" YouTube channel without a specific location, the video, surrounded by keywords like "UFO" and "Real Aliens," was part of a collection featuring fantastical elements such as dragons and alien abductions, casting further doubt on its legitimacy.
10. Did a UFO Disappear Into a 'Portal' Above Colorado?
On April 17, 2017, a video claiming to show a UFO over southern Colorado went viral after being posted on the "I'm From Denver" Facebook page. Despite its widespread sharing, there were no local news reports to corroborate the sighting, which would be expected for such an extraordinary event.
The video's true origins trace back to Sonora, Mexico, not Colorado. Skepticism grew as no concrete evidence supported the sighting, and the possibility of it being a drone light show or a digital creation was considered. Gabe Hash, a YouTube personality, debunked the video as a likely computer-generated hoax.
He quit heading the Pentagon’s UFO office. Now a report of his has shaken up ufology
He quit heading the Pentagon’s UFO office. Now a report of his has shaken up ufology
Sean Kirkpatrick has faced threats for his work – and a new report concluding no evidence UAPs represented extraterrestrial tech has sent ufology into a tailspin
Sean Kirkpatrick, director of All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office at the defense department, speaks at Nasa’s headquarters in Washington DC on 31 May 2023.
Photograph: Joel Kowsky/Nasa
Sean Kirkpatrick doesn’t seem too thrilled to be chatting with me about UFOs. Since taking over the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) in 2022 – government-speak for UFO hunting – Kirkpatrick has received violent threats, social-media smear campaigns, and even had to call the FBI after a UFO fanatic showed up at his home.
“I’ve had people threaten my wife and daughter, and try to break into our online accounts – far more than I ever had as the deputy director of intelligence [of US Strategic Command],” Kirkpatrick says. “I didn’t have China and Russia trying to get on me as much as these people are.”
So, after 18 months in the job, Kirkpatrick called it quits last December. Then, last week, AARO published the first part of a report he had worked on that concluded there was no evidence “that any USG [US government] investigation, academic-sponsored research, or official review panel has confirmed that any sighting of a UAP [unidentified aerial phenomenon] represented extraterrestrial technology”.
AARO’s conclusions sent the world of ufology – the study of UFOs, the practitioners of which are known as ufologists – into a tailspin.
After all, it was only in July last year that the former intelligence officer David Grusch told a packed congressional hearing that for decades the US government had been hoarding crashed alien spaceships and attempting to reverse-engineer them. True believers thought we were getting closer than ever to full disclosure; it was only a matter of time until the government would wheel out the flying saucers on to the White House lawn.
David Grusch, center, testifies during a house hearing on unidentified aerial phenomena in Washington DC on 26 July 2023.
Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Kirkpatrick was watching that hearing. Over the course of three hours, and via testimony from two former US navy pilots, David Fravor and Ryan Graves, Congress heard about unknown aircraft making impossible manoeuvres, or the government’s possession of “non-human biologics” recovered from crashed spaceships. At one point, Representative Tim Burchett asked Grusch if he had any personal knowledge of people being harmed or injured in efforts to cover up or conceal extraterritorial technology. Grusch replied: “Yes.” Burchett then asked Grusch if he had heard of anyone being murdered. The former intelligence official answered: “I directed people with that knowledge to the appropriate authorities.” Grusch also claimed that the Men in Black were on his case and were harassing other witnesses.
Crucially, Grusch said he hadn’t seen the spaceships and “biologics” with his own eyes; someone in the intelligence community told him the story.
Naturally, Kirkpatrick tried to talk to him. But although Grusch had dropped most of these bombshells months before on the cable channel NewsNation, when asked to discuss it with the one man in the US government who really needed to hear the yarn, he was a no-show. “We tried to reach out to him four or five times to get him to come in,” Kirkpatrick says. “And as of the time that I left, he had refused to come for a variety of reasons.”You see this story crop up every couple of decades, and it’s pretty much the same story
Kirkpatrick – who has sharp features, a thin goatee and speaks in a measured monotone that makes even this topic seem slightly boring – says the evidence against Grusch’s claims is conclusive. “There’s no evidence to support any of the allegations or any extraterrestrial reverse engineering or ‘human biologics’ or whatever you want to call it,” he says. “You see this story crop up every couple of decades, and it’s pretty much the same story.”
And it comes, he says, from the ufologists who gave him such grief – a core of people that can only be described as America’s new UFO lobby.
A new age
The 21st century’s UFO craze began on 16 December 2017 after the New York Times reported that the Pentagon had created something called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). This was supposedly a secret department investigating unidentified aerial phenomena or UAPs (the Department of Defense’s preferred acronym for UFOs).
The Times piece also included three videos, the most compelling of which showed an object eerily similar to a flying saucer, moving with no apparent means of propulsion.
The story went viral and UFOs went mainstream. Serious people were now taking little green men and their spaceships very seriously. Barack Obama told The Late Late Show with James Corden that things were happening in our skies that the US government simply could not explain.
A flying saucer photographed near Santa Ana, California, in August 1965.
However, not everything in the Times’ story was accurate. Yes, the Pentagon did have a UFO programme, but it was called the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP), not AATIP, and it had bizarre beginnings.
Seated next to Grusch in that congressional hearing was George Knapp, a journalist who in 2006 co-wrote a book called Hunt for the Skinwalker (a shape-shifting witch in Navajo culture). Knapp’s book tells stories of vanishing cattle, “invisible objects emitting magnetic fields” and flying orbs zooming around the eponymous Skinwalker Ranch – a large property in Utah.
The book has proved to be instrumental in modern ufology. It found its way to James Lacatski, an intelligence officer in the Department of Defense, who was blown away by it and contacted the aviation billionaire Robert Bigelow, the owner of Skinwalker Ranch at the time. Bigelow allowed Lacatski to visit the ranch and investigate; one evening, Lacatski claimed to see an apparition in the kitchen, described in Knapp’s and Lacatski’s 2021 follow-up book Skinwalkers at the Pentagon as “an unearthly technological device” which took the form of “a complex semi-opaque, yellowish, tubular structure”.
Lacatski and Bigelow took their findings to the late Harry Reid, the Nevada senator, who also had a keen interest in UFOs. Bigelow was a longtime donor to Reid’s campaigns, and persuaded him that it was time to look into UFOs and related phenomena.
There was one problem: a defence programme focused on UFOs would not loosen any purse strings at the Pentagon, so Lacatski buried the true purpose of his research under an unremarkable acronym: AAWSAP, which promptly kicked off a search for poltergeists, ET and “the freakish hybrid of small dinosaur [sic] and large beaver”.
The Pentagon gave $22m to AAWSAP in 2008 – and AAWSAP gave the funds to none other than Bigelow and his company, Bigelow Aerospace, who used the money to chase UFOs and the paranormal at Skinwalker Ranch.
A few years later, the Pentagon got wind of what was really happening, and AAWSAP was fully closed down by 2012. There’s no evidence that AAWSAP found spaceships or aliens.
The Amalgamated Flying Saucer Club of America, which headquarters in Los Angeles, released this photo taken by a member reportedly showing a flying saucer estimated at 70ft in diameter.
Photograph: Bettmann/Bettmann Archive
But the myth had taken root.
In Kirkpatrick’s report, he says all the stories – the alien bodies and crashed spaceships that Grusch peddled in Congress – “largely originate from the same group of individuals who have ties to AAWSAP/AATIP program” and “worked with each other consistently in various UAP-related efforts”.
Their beliefs, he says now, are as circular as their associations with one another. “Some of that same core group of individuals had reached out to one of these industry partners and convinced them to take a look at a piece of material that they claimed was part of a crashed UFO. And then they turned around to point to that company and say, ‘Hey, ‘they’re reverse engineering crashed UFOs?’ Well, they were the ones that gave it to them.” Nevertheless, he and his team at AARO looked into it. “It turns out that’s not really a UFO. It’s most likely a piece of a missile case from an air force test,” he says.
What about the leaked UFO videos, like the one in the New York Times? Kirkpatrick says there’s not enough data to provide a definitive analysis of each one but insists that, like all the stories that came across his desk, they have mundane explanations that don’t involve space aliens. The rotating object shaped like a flying saucer is probably glare from a distant heat source. “The source could be any number of things. Even a weather balloon will give off that kind of glare if it’s got enough shiny metal on it, and the sun’s just right,” he says.
But evidence is not the point. Some will never be swayed. “There’s the absolute true belief, which would suggest it is more akin to a religion than an actual factual thing,” he says. “And those are the people that you’re never going to convince, no matter what you put in front of them. I can lay out the pictures of the classified programmes that they mistook, and they still wouldn’t believe it. They would say, ‘No, that was derived from alien technology.’”
And what if the government does eventually get its hands on aliens and their flying saucers? “It’s not their job [to keep it secret],” he says. “It would immediately get turned over to Nasa, and Nasa would immediately disclose it to everybody. That’s their job.”
This article and its headline were amended on 22 March 2023. A previous version misquoted Sean Kirkpatrick as saying a UFO fanatic tried to break into his home. Instead a ufologist only showed up at his home.
There are many stories about people missing in strange and sometimes inexplicable circumstances. Most of them are rather fascinating and close to sci-fiction. But a story of the disappearance of Australian pilot Frederick Valentich is documented in detail and at the same time baffles the reasoning of everyone who comes across it.
Since his childhood, Valentich had a great passion for aviation and flying. In 1977, at the age of 18, after he sat in the cockpit of a helicopter, he decided to become a pilot. He lived in Melbourne with his parents and a younger brother named Richard who was only 12 when Frederick vanished. It is said that he had about 150 total hours of flying time and was also certified to fly at night under special conditions. Nevertheless, he failed flying tests twice, and during the performance of the test exercises, at least four times created dangerous situations on the ground and in the air.
Frederick Valentich disappeared in 1978 while flying a Cessna over the Bass Strait
On October 21, 1978, Valentich (20) planned a date with his fiancee Rhonda Rushton to fly in his light-engine Cessna 182L aircraft from Moorabbin to King Island. Somehow, the plan failed as Rhonda could not leave work earlier and also unable to call him. Due to the tight schedule of the flight, Valentich had to leave her behind, began his flight at 18:19 and flew at an air level of 1500 m.
The plane flew to the island, not over the shortest distance, but making a broken line to minimize the duration of the flight over the Bass Strait, a sea strait separating Tasmania from the Australian mainland. At the 41st minute of the flight, the plane reached Cape Otway and turned towards the strait.
At 19:06, Valentich informed the ground control service of Melbourne that he had seen an unidentified aircraft flying higher and faster. The controllers did not know anything about the planes flying in that area, and the radars showed that Valentich was flying all alone.
Nevertheless, Frederick insisted that there was a large aircraft next to him, which appeared and disappeared from his view. Over the next 5 minutes, he continued to talk about the spaceship flying around him, however, he did not give any detailed description of it. The only significant information related to the appearance of the UFO given by him was that it had four landing lights.
Frederick Valentich and his younger brother Richard at an open house at Edinburgh Air Force Base, South Australia (1970)[/capti on]
During his communication with the controller, Valentich said that he began to fly in a circle. The next minute, he said that the object was approaching him from the southeast and that it was not an airplane. Over the next several seconds, a signal disturbance was heard on the radio, after which they lost communication.
It has been over 43 years since Valentich’s plane disappeared. The search operation carried out in the Bass Strait and on King Island had no result, although it continued until October 25. The investigation carried out by the Australian Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development, lasted for 3.5 years. On April 27, 1982, it ended with a laconic verdict and the reason for the disappearance of the aircraft has not been determined.
Richard Valentich was 12 when his brother vanished but said there was no family fixation on UFOs. “The concept of a UFO taking my brother is very far out there,” he said.
“Did he encounter something that made him crash? That may be more plausible. There’s a lot of theories out there but no one has proven anything.” The people in authority tried to destroy all records of his flight. It was done ostensibly to announce that on October 21, 1978, there was no such flight at all. Moreover, the original audio recording of Valentich’s conversations with the control room has disappeared. In 2008, BBC officials formally requested the original audio recording from the Australian Ministry for Infrastructure but never received it.
At the end of 1978, dozens of reports were received about strange objects and incomprehensible optical phenomena in the sky over the western part of the Bass Strait. In 1998, it became known about the existence of three witnesses, who on October 21, 1978, watched from the shore a flight over the Bass Strait of a light-engine aircraft, which was pursued by green lights.
Roy Manifold’s photograph
Interestingly, there was a witness on the ground who claimed to have seen a green light just above Valentich’s plane. The last piece of audio recording with a duration of 17 seconds, in which strange grinding sounds are heard, was examined by researcher Richard Haines. According to him, this audio fragment contained 36 sound signals (bursts) of different frequency spectrums without a clear rhythmic pattern.
UFO researchers have made great efforts to find possible witnesses of the incident with Valentich. According to them, they managed to find more than 20 people who were near the coast in the area of Cape Otway before, during, and after the sunset on October 21, 1978, and who had seen an unidentified object or incomprehensible optical phenomena in the sky.
The Frederick Valentich case is documented in both Ross Coulthart’s “In Plain Sight” and Leslie Kean’s “UFOs.” Here you can listen to the actual audio of Valentich’s last transmission.
Richard Valentich is still convinced that his brother was abducted by aliens. In all his interviews, he invariably declared that what had happened to his brother could not be staged and had no rational explanations. Frederick Valentich is still officially listed as a missing person, and his family members still hope that one day, his disappearance mystery will be solved.
It's been an interesting few years for UFO enthusiasts
(Image: Andy Johnstone for The Daily Mirror)
In Moston a shiny silver object was seen 'randomly disappearing and reappearing in a cloudless sky'. Several bright white lights were spotted in Stalybridge ascending towards a bright star.
And in Stretford a 'white light streak' was caught on a doorbell camera zig-zagging across the atmosphere. They're just some of the dozens of UFO sightings reported across Greater Manchester over the last four years, a new report has revealed.
It's been an interesting time for UFO enthusiasts. Last year American fighter jets shot down an unexplained flying object - which was later identified as a Chinese balloon, suspected to be on a spying mission - as well as three other objects in or near American airspace.
Then whistle-blower Major David Grusch, a former Air Force intelligence officer, set the internet on fire when he claimed the US was concealing a long-standing programme that retrieves and reverse-engineers unidentified flying objects.
The intrigue has continued into 2024, with Ukrainian troops recording a huge disc-shaped object over the battlefield of Donetsk, while closer to home a hiker came upon a mysterious monolith on a hilltop in Powys, which he initially assumed was 'some sort of UFO', but has since left some speculating it may have been planted by aliens.
Craig Muir, a builder from a Welsh town, who said he was "taken aback" when he spotted what he assumed was "some sort of a UFO" at the summit of a hill(Image: PA)
But despite increasing speculation about alien visitors online and in the media, the skies above the UK have been relatively quiet in the last year. In its annual report, the research group UFO Identified documented 395 sightings in the UK in 2023 - a 20% drop from 497 sightings in 2022 and lower than in 2021 (413) and 2020 (484).
Information was taken from social media, newspaper reports, and over 50 Freedom of Information requests, as well as from reports made directly to UFO spotter groups around the UK. According to the report, people in the North West had the best chance of seeing a UFO last year, with 41 sightings across the region, followed by the South East (40) and then the South West (39).
Use our interactive map to see the UFO sightings where you live..
Ash Ellis of UFO Identified said: "Overall, it’s disappointing to see such a big decrease in reports this year, especially after the bumper year of 2022. This time last year we were hoping that a reduction in the stigma surrounding the topic would lead to more reports being filed, but this clearly hasn’t been the case.
This strange light in the sky above Tyldesley was reported in 2021(Image: Paul Ellison)
"Hopefully, as we and other groups around the country continue giving people space and a platform to talk about their experiences that will help more people come forward and be confident to stand up and tell their story. Despite the reduced number of reports, we continue to see the same trends across different datasets.
"Whether that's the area in which sightings are being made, to the time of day, and the described shape of UFOs, and so on, these have all been consistent over the past four years. This, to me, tells us that there are areas which are more prone to seeing UFOs and we will be using this data to forecast areas of interest over the coming years."
Astronomers Find Two Ancient Substructures in Inner Milky Way
Astronomers Find Two Ancient Substructures in Inner Milky Way
Dubbed Shakti and Shiva, the newly-identified structures are between 12 and billion years old — so ancient they likely formed before even the oldest parts of the present-day Milky Way’s spiral arms and disk.
This image shows the location and distribution of Shakti (yellow) and Shiva (blue) stars throughout the Milky Way.
Image credit: ESA / Gaia / DPAC / K. Malhan.
“What’s truly amazing is that we can detect these ancient structures at all,” said Dr. Khyati Malhan, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy.
“The Milky Way has changed so significantly since these stars were born that we wouldn’t expect to recognize them so clearly as a group — but the unprecedented data we’re getting from ESA’s Gaia satellite made it possible.”
Using Gaia observations, Dr. Malhan and Max Planck Institute for Astronomy’s Dr. Hans-Walter Rix were able to determine the orbits of individual stars in the Milky Way, along with their content and composition.
“When we visualised the orbits of all these stars, two new structures stood out from the rest among stars of a certain chemical composition. We named them Shakti and Shiva,” Khyati said.
Each stream contains the mass of about 10 million Suns, with stars of 12 to 13 billion years in age all moving in very similar orbits with similar compositions.
The way they’re distributed suggests that they may have formed as distinct fragments that merged with the Milky Way early in its life.
Both Shakti and Shiva streams lie towards the Milky Way’s heart.
Gaia explored this part of the Milky Way in 2022 using a kind of galactic archaeology. This showed the region to be filled with the oldest stars in the entire Galaxy, all born before the disk of the Milky Way had even properly formed.
“The stars there are so ancient that they lack many of the heavier metal elements created later in the Universe’s lifetime,” Dr. Rix said.
“The stars in our Galaxy’s heart are metal-poor, so we dubbed this region the Milky Way’s ‘poor old heart’.”
“Until now, we had only recognized these very early fragments that came together to form the Milky Way’s ancient heart.”
“With Shakti and Shiva, we now see the first pieces that seem comparably old but located further out.”
“These signify the first steps of our Galaxy’s growth towards its present size.”
While very similar, the two streams are not identical. Shakti stars orbit a little further from the Milky Way’s center and in more circular orbits than Shiva stars.
Fittingly, the streams are named after a divine couple from Hindu philosophy who unite to create the Universe.
Some 12 billion years ago, the Milky Way looked very different to the orderly spiral we see today.
We think that our Galaxy formed as multiple long, irregular filaments of gas and dust coalesced, all forming stars and wrapping together to spark the birth of our Galaxy as we know it.
It seems that Shaki and Shiva are two of these components — and future Gaia data releases may reveal more.
The authors also built a dynamical map of other known components that have played a role in our Galaxy’s formation and were discovered using Gaia data.
These include Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus, LMS1/Wukong, Arjuna/Sequoia/I’itoi, and Pontus.
These star groups all form part of the Milky Way’s complex family tree, something that Gaia has worked to build over the past decade.
“Revealing more about our Galaxy’s infancy is one of Gaia’s goals, and it’s certainly achieving it,” said Gaia project scientist Dr. Timo Prusti, an astronomer at ESA.
“We need to pinpoint the subtle yet crucial differences between stars in the Milky Way to understand how our Galaxy formed and evolved.”
“This requires incredibly precise data — and now, thanks to Gaia, we have that data.”
“As we discover surprise parts of our Galaxy like the Shiva and Shakti streams, we’re filling the gaps and painting a fuller picture of not only our current home, but our earliest cosmic history.”
The study was published in the Astrophysical Journal.
Khyati Malhan & Hans-Walter Rix. 2024. Shiva and Shakti: Presumed Proto-Galactic Fragments in the Inner Milky Way. ApJ 964, 104; doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/ad1885
Roswell was a coverup, and the official photos of the crash debris are not what Army officers found in the desert. A report from the U.S. Air Force and testimony from two officers present, reveal this to be the case. However, the coverup details do not prove what crashed in the desert in 1947 was an alien spacecraft. According to U.S. Air Force investigators, the coverup demonstrates what crashed in Roswell was a top-secret project from the cold war.
In early July 1947, a rancher claimed to have found debris on a ranch approximately 30 miles outside of Roswell, New Mexico. He reported it to the Chavez County Sheriff in the nearby town of Corona. The sheriff called the Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF), who sent intelligence officer Major Jesse Marcel and counterintelligence corps officer (CIC) Captain Sheridan Cavitt to investigate.
On July 7, Marcel and Cavitt went to the debris site and examined the materials. What they reported seeing was strange enough for the base commander to order the creation of a press release claiming the RAAF had captured a “flying saucer.”
On July 8, the front page of the Roswell Daily Record read “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch in Roswell Region.” The article claimed the RAAF reported they had “come into possession of a flying saucer.”
Roswell Daily Record, July 8, 1947. Click to enlarge.
(Credit: Roswell Daily Record)
The story was short-lived. The next day, the front-page headline of the Roswell Daily Record read: “Gen. Ramey Empties Roswell Saucer” with the subheadings: “Ramey Says Excitement Is Not Justified,” and “General Ramey Says Disk Is Weather Balloon.”
Roswell Daily Record, July 9, 1947. Click to enlarge.
(Credit: Roswell Daily Record)
On July 8, Marcel was ordered to bring some of the debris to the Fort Worth Army Air Base in Texas and meet with General Roger Ramey. On July 9, Ramey held a press conference where he said there was no “flying saucer” found, and that the RAAF had mistaken a standard weather balloon for something more mysterious.
Press photos were taken with Marcel, Ramey, Colonel Thomas DuBose (Ramey’s Chief of Staff), and the alleged crash debris.
General Roger Ramey (left) with Colonel Thomas Dubois looking at the weather balloon Ramey claimed was mistaken for a flying saucer in Roswell in 1947.
Jesse Marcel holding the weather balloon debris in Ramey’s office.
The public quickly forgot the entire affair. It wasn’t until the 1980s that the Roswell UFO crash story began to acquire attention. In the late 1970s, researcher Stanton Friedman heard about the case and was able to find Marcel. Marcel told Friedman that the weather balloon story was to coverup what was really found. He said the material was not a weather balloon.
“You couldn’t bend it. You couldn’t dent it. Even a sledgehammer would bounce off of it,” Marcel stated in an interview in the 1980s on the show In Search Of.
“I knew I had never seen anything like that before, and as of now, I do not know what it was,” Marcel continued, “It was not anything from this earth.”
Marcel said he had taken some of the material home to show his family. His son had kept some of it, but after the cover story was released, Marcel says he had to return all the material he had to the Army. Jesse Marcel Jr. confirmed the strange properties of the material.
Friedman was able to track down other witnesses, civilians and military, who backed Marcel’s story. Friedman began working the case with researcher and author Bill Moore. Moore then published their work in a book titled The Roswell Incident coauthored with Charles Berlitz.
In the 1980s and 1990s, several more books were published, and the Roswell incident grew in popularity. In 1989, an alleged witness came forward to claim alien bodies were also recovered.
The mythology of the Roswell UFO crash had received so much attention that in 1993, congressman Steven Schiff, called for an investigation into the incident. The investigation results were released in 1995 by the U.S. Air Force (USAF) as The Roswell Report: Fact versus Fiction in the New Mexico Desert.
“Concerning the initial announcement, ‘RAAF Captures Flying Disc,’ research failed to locate any documented evidence as to why that statement was made,” wrote USAF investigators.
However, they also discovered it was not a weather balloon, as Ramey stated.
“It appears that there was some type of umbrella cover story to protect our work with MOGUL,” Professor Charles Moore told USAF investigators.
According to the report, while researching the Roswell incident, investigators ran across balloon testing conducted at the same time as the Roswell incident out of Alamogordo Air Field (now Holloman Air Force Base), over 100 miles west of Roswell. New York University (NYU) ran the project, and further investigation revealed the NYU testing was part of a Top Secret program called Project MOGUL.
The investigators were able to track down Moore, who was the NYU project engineer. When shown witness descriptions of the debris, Moore told investigators that he believed they had found one of their Project MOGUL test balloons. In particular, Moore’s team had not recovered a balloon they had launched on July 4, 1947.
Google map showing Roswell in upper right, and Alamogordo and Holloman Air Force Base in lower left.
“When we heard the [Flying Saucer] news back in New York, we joked that they probably found one of our balloons,” recalled Moore.
As for why Ramey had called it a weather balloon, the report states: “the Air Force did not find documented evidence that Gen. Ramey was directed to espouse a weather balloon in his press conference, he may have done so because he was either aware of Project MOGUL and was trying to deflect interest from it, or he really perceived the material to be a weather balloon based on the identification from his weather officer, Irving Newton.”
Components of a Mogul balloon train per Professor Moore.
As to why debris from a Top Secret project would be left out in a field to be discovered by a rancher, the report explains that the materials were not classified, only the use was. The project’s purpose was to float listening devices with balloons to detect nuclear tests by the Russians.
In 1991, DuBose, the third man in the photographs with the debris, sent UFO researchers an affidavit claiming he knew the material in the photos was not what was found in the desert.
“The material shown in the photographs taken in Gen. Ramey’s office was a weather balloon,” wrote DuBose. “The weather balloon explanation for the material was a cover story to divert the attention of the press.”
DuBose claims the real debris was sent to a General McMullen in Washington D.C., who said he intended to forward the material to Air Material Command at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio.
DuBose claimed, “The entire operation was conducted under the strictest secrecy.”
However, DuBose did not say he knew what the debris material consisted of or knew anything about the recovery of an alien spacecraft.
Although it appears Ramey was covering up the true nature of what the RAAF found in the desert, the description of the materials used for the Project MOGUL balloons was not high tech or out of the ordinary. The balloons were standard weather balloons. Other elements included balsa wood, foil, tape, and string.
Cavitt, the CIC officer who accompanied Marcel to the debris site, claimed what he saw looked like regular weather balloon debris.
The report described the tape on the balloons as “fabricated by toy or novelty companies using purplish-pink tape with flower and heart symbols on it.”
Symbols on I-beam as described by the Marcel. This poster is on display at the Roswell UFO Museum.
Symbols and shapes used on Mogul balloons from USAF Roswell report.
Marcel and his son described having a piece of the debris that looked like a small I-beam with strange symbols. However, they recall that although the beam was as light as balsa wood, it was made of metal. They did remember markings on the I-beam but said they were not hearts and flowers.
The USAF investigation led them to conclude: “The Air Force research did not locate or develop any information that the ‘Roswell Incident’ was a UFO event. All available materials, although they do not address Roswell per se, indicate that the most likely source of the wreckage recovered from the Brazel Ranch was from one of the Project MOGUL balloon trains. Although that project was Top Secret at the time, there was also no specific indication found to indicate an official preplanned cover story was in place to explain an event such as that which ultimately happened.”
They claimed that Marcel and the RAAF base commander overacted when they claimed they had caught a “flying disc.”
As for alien bodies, they said that was not possible because the wreckage was from Project MOGUL balloons, which did not have passengers, and that even UFO researchers could not agree on the details related to the alleged alien bodies.
If the USAF seemed to solve the case in 1995, why is Roswell still a thing? Well, many do not believe Marcel would mistake a weather balloon for a crashed alien spacecraft. Further, they argue that the base commander would not have written a press release based on finding foil, balsa wood, and other materials that were not mysterious.
Proponents to the Roswell UFO crash also point to the numerous witnesses who claim to have been threatened by the military to keep their mouths shut, or who had allegedly helped clean up the debris field. Even Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who was from Roswell, has said he heard from credible locals that the Roswell UFO crash was real, and he did not believe the USAF conclusion.
Another problem is that although there are numerous alleged witnesses, the USAF investigators only talked to Cavitt. There are references to Marcel’s comments in publications, but USAF investigators did not contact him or other alleged witnesses.
Field where the “real” Roswell debris is said to have been found.
(Credit: OpenMinds.tv)
The Roswell incident continues to create heated debate among UFO researchers. Over 70 years later, the mythos of the Roswell UFO crash lives on, despite whatever happened in the lonely desert in 1947.
Northrup Grumman is Studying How to Build a Railway on the Moon
Roughly two years and six months from now, as part of NASA’sArtemis III mission, astronauts will set foot on the lunar surface for the first time in over fifty years. Beyond this mission, NASA will deploy the elements of the Lunar Gateway, the Artemis Base Camp, and other infrastructure that will allow for a “sustained program of lunar exploration and development.” They will be joined by the European Space Agency (ESA), the China National Space Agency (CNSA), and Roscosmos, the latter two collaborating to build theInternational Lunar Research Station (ILRS).
Anticipating this process of lunar development (and looking to facilitate it), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) launched the 10-year Lunar Architecture (LunA-10) Capability Study in August last year. In recent news, the agency announced that it selected Northrop Grumman to develop a moon-based railroad network. This envisioned network could transport humans, supplies, and resources for space agencies and commercial ventures, facilitating exploration, scientific research, and the creation of a lunar economy.
According to DARPA, the seven-month LunA-10 study aims to establish “an analytical framework that defines new opportunities for rapid scientific and commercial activity on and around the Moon.” It also aims to foster the development of foundational technology to optimize lunar infrastructure, allowing space agencies to move away from individual efforts within isolated, self-sufficient systems and towards shareable, scalable, resource-driven systems that can operate together. In keeping with NASA’s long-term objectives, this work will complement the administration’s “Moon to Mars” objectives.
Artist rendition of construction of the Moon. Credit: NASA.
In layman’s terms, the plan is to develop the technologies that will allow space agencies and companies to access each others’ resources, facilities, and information to promote further growth opportunities. Several key sectors are identified in the solicitation that must be developed into services to sustain a long-term presence on the Moon based on an independent market analysis of the future lunar economy. They include construction, mining, transit, energy, agriculture, and research (e.g., medicine, robotics, and life sustainment) that will have applications for space exploration and life on Earth.
Other aspects include lunar and planetary science, communications, digital infrastructure, and Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) technology. Dr. Michael “Orbit” Nayak, a program manager in DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office, extolled DARPA’s long history of working with NASA during last year’s announcement:
“For 65 years, DARPA has pioneered and de-risked technologies vital to civil space advancement — from the rocket technology in the Saturn V that took humans to the Moon for the first time, to the recent DARPA-NASA partnership to enable faster space travel to the Moon and beyond with a nuclear thermal rocket engine.
“LunA-10 continues this rich legacy by identifying and accelerating key technologies that may be used by government and the commercial space industry, and ultimately to catalyze economic vibrancy on the Moon. Just like DARPA’s foundational node of ARPANET grew into the sprawling web of the internet, LunA-10 is looking for those connective nodes to support a thriving commercial economy on the Moon.”
As part of this 10-year plan, Northrop Grumman will be tasked with creating the infrastructure that will physically connect lunar facilities and allow for the movement of people and resources back and forth. Their responsibilities, as spelled out in their contract of opportunity, include defining the interfaces and resources required to build a lunar rail network; identifying cost, technological, and logistical risks; creating prototypes, demonstrations, and analyses of a concept design and architecture, and exploring robotics concepts for constructing and operating the system.
These robotics concepts must be able to operate on the lunar surface and carry out specific tasks, such as grading and foundation preparation, track placement and alignment, joining and finishing, inspection, maintenance, and repairs. Said Chris Adams, the vice president and general manager of strategic space systems at Northrop Grumman:
“This investment in key developmental research keeps our technology at the forefront of next-generation solutions. With our proven experience in the integration of complex systems and commercialized autonomous services, we will continue to create lasting change for a sustainable space ecosystem.”
Northrop Grumman and other selectees will receive an Other Transaction award of up to $1 million. They will present their work at the Spring meeting of the Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium (LSIC) in April 2024 and provide a final report in June 2024.
In July 1955, a lumberjack, who preferred to remain anonymous, was working in the woods in the Gulf of Bothnia at Västra Norrland, Sweden, with his two brothers. Let’s take a deeper look into the Alien Encounter In Sweden.
The 1955 Alien Encounter In Sweden
At some point, all three heard a very loud and incomprehensible noise, which they described as a sound similar to that of a very large animal running wildly in the bushes.
Listening to this mysterious noise, the rustle and crackle of branches and bushes, they saw above them a cigar-shaped object that flew so low that it touched the tops of the trees. Fragments of branches and leaves rained down on the men like an avalanche.
At first they thought it was a small plane crashing, so when the object passed over them, they ran in the direction it fell. And the fact that he was definitely falling was obvious, the object was quickly losing height.
“I don’t know what we were expecting, maybe a deafening roar when the plane hit the ground, but it didn’t happen. disappeared.
The light was so bright that we could see through the trees. For a second, I could even see the seeds of the trees, and they were more than one meter in diameter, like on an x-ray. After a few seconds, a vacuum wave came, sucking everything towards the center of light. All three of us flew forward, branches and leaves flying past us.
It all probably only lasted a fraction of a second, but I still remember crashing into a tree, time stopped, and my whole life instantly replayed in my head. Even the usual sounds of the forest have ceased.”
When the three lumberjacks finally got to the Esta house where they thought the plane had crashed. They ended up in a clearing where for some reason neither aircraft nor other equipment was visible. There were damaged trees, a bunch of broken branches, but no remains of the plane.
But they found a living humanoid creature on the branches. It was a very short man, apparently about 110-120 cm in height, around whose body a strange white light “vibrated”, “like a halo”.
The creature seemed dead at first, and one of the brothers reached out to touch the lifeless body, he immediately pulled back his hand, as he received a strong electric shock. And then the little man opened his eyes and said in perfect Swedish: “Don’t touch me, it will only bring you problems.”
“After that, I immediately calmed down and carefully examined him. He was not a dwarf in the broad sense of the word. He was very proportionately built, with broad shoulders and normal features. His skin was yellowish, like an Asian. His eyes were deep-set and black , without proteins.
His face was covered in bruises with a couple of large gashes on his chin and forehead. No blood flowed, but the skin around the wounds felt wet. The top of his head was lightly covered with a fluff of almost white hair. The earlobes were integral with the neck and resembled shark fins. The lips were wrinkled, narrow and colorless.
When he smiled reassuringly, as he often did, he would reveal a row of small teeth in both the upper and lower jaws. I especially noted that his fangs were flat and as wide as our two front teeth.
His hands were small with five slender fingers without nails, and when he moved his hand, it seemed that the ring finger was fused with the little finger, because they moved in sync.
His clothes were like reddish metal and seemed to fit snugly to his body. The head and hands were free, but on the feet the clothes passed into a pair of closed boots in size 35-37. The soles of the boots were ribbed and vibrated, and for a moment I thought of the tracks on the tank. The stranger looked at me and nodded slightly. There was no doubt that he knew what I was thinking.
With these boots, he could roll back and forth on the surface without even moving his feet. Around his waist he wore a wide silvery metal belt with an unusually large buckle that glowed slightly with a light blue tint, which later turned dark blue when he was dead.
In the middle of the buckle was a yellow colored sign – UV – it looked like the letter V, which was included in the letter U.
A strange creature told the lumberjack that he was thrown out of his spaceship, he was badly injured and now dying. Then he took out of his pocket a rectangular object the size of a matchbox and with 12 small indentations. He then took out another object that looked like a pencil and poked some of the depressions in the first object before throwing the object into the bushes.
The alien then told the lumberjack not to touch him, and that the item was a homing beacon so that his companions would know where they should come to retrieve his body when he died.
Then a curious thing happened. The two brothers seemed disoriented and left the clearing, leaving the main eyewitness alone with the dying creature in the forest:
“The stranger lay for some time as if asleep. His hands were tightly clenched, and it was obvious that he was in great pain. Then my brothers suddenly became confused, looked at each other, and then, without saying a word, returned to the forest. Later Years later, looking back on this incident, I am convinced that the stranger somehow asked my brothers to leave without saying a word.
I sat talking and listening to him for two hours before he died. Shortly before his death, a stranger gave me a folded package from an invisible pocket and said: “When I die, the light will disappear from my body, and with the help of two other men you will put me in this bag and take me to the river where I will disappear. Then you must carefully bathe in water so as not to get sick.
Now he was breathing heavily and I saw that the end was near. The halo around his body became weaker and gradually disappeared. His light blue buckle gradually darkened. He looked at me and smiled. He said something in a language I had never heard before or since.
Suddenly he switched to Swedish, and I heard the last couple of sentences: “You came without any desire and you leave against your own desire. Our life is like evaporation.”
He said a few more words, but his voice was so weak that I couldn’t hear them. I am convinced that he prayed to some deity before he died. I was very touched.”
The brothers then returned, looking a little stunned and confused, as if they weren’t quite sure what had just happened to them or why they left. The men put the dead alien in a bag and carried him to the river, noticing that the bag smelled of sulfur and burned his hands. When they lowered the sack into the water, the body and the sack dissolved.
“When the bag hit the water, it started bubbling around it, and we realized that some kind of chemical process had begun. After 5 minutes, nothing was left of the bag and the body, and I thought that perhaps the stranger was hoping to fall into the river for a quick death, instead of lying there for a couple of hours, suffering. He would probably prefer to die alone, thinking about his home, which is many light-years away.”
A few days after this incident, the lumberjack again went to the area to find a rectangular object thrown by an alien, but found only one object that looked like a pencil. He kept it as a memory and as proof that he did not dream it all.
After that, he kept this story to himself for many years. It wasn’t until he spoke to a UFO researcher named John Fontaine , who wrote about it all in an article called “Humanoid Dies in Sweden”, that the story became public.
Fontaine personally spoke to the lumberjack and seemed to be the only person the man ever spoke to about it, but the problem was that the eyewitness, even to him, never fully revealed the details of his long conversation with the alien when they were alone:
“What they talked about during these two hours, I could not get the witness to tell. I begged and persuaded him, but he did not tell me anything, only a few of the following fragments.
He said that the alien came from a place close to the constellation we call the Eagle. Several races from outer space have visited Earth and some are so advanced that we would only see them when they materialized or dematerialized to visit a parallel universe orbiting Earth.
Some aliens kept people on earth under surveillance and did so for millennia, while others took earth samples for the purpose of later settlements, and still others had contact with humanity for centuries. That’s it,” Fontaine wrote.
What do you think about this Alien Encounter In Sweden? Tell us in the comments section below.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
A Mysterious Encounter in the Nordic Forests: The 1955 Northern Sweden Incident
A Mysterious Encounter in the Nordic Forests: The 1955 Northern Sweden Incident
In the tranquil expanse of Northern Sweden, amidst the dense forests and the serene Gulf of Bothnia, an extraordinary event unfolded in July 1955 that would remain etched in the annals of UFO encounters. This story, unearthed decades later, provides a compelling glimpse into the unknown, challenging our understanding of the cosmos and its inhabitants.
The Encounter Begins
The day started like any other for a forestry worker and his colleagues, who were tasked with timber delivery in the early hours of a warm July morning. Their objective was straightforward: complete the harvest before the sweltering heat became unbearable. However, their routine was abruptly interrupted by an unexpected sight—a cigar-shaped object maneuvering erratically through the sky, cutting a path through the treetops.
The Crash
The forestry workers watched in astonishment as the object descended towards the river, anticipating an explosive impact that never came. Instead, a brilliant light engulfed the area, illuminating the surroundings with an intensity that made daylight pale in comparison. This light, powerful enough to render the forest’s interior visible as if x-rayed, was followed by a forceful vacuum wave that drew everything towards the crash site.
Discovery of the Alien
Venturing towards the impact site, the workers expected devastation but found tranquility instead. The forest stood undisturbed, save for a few downed logs. The real discovery came at the forest’s edge, where they encountered a lifeless figure—an alien being, small in stature and clad in a uniform unlike any earthly material. Attempting to check for signs of life, one worker experienced a shock upon touch, prompting the being to awaken and communicate in perfect Swedish, warning against further contact.
A Dialogue with an Extraterrestrial
The being shared its origin, claiming to hail from near the constellation of the Eagle, and spoke of various intelligences from outer space visiting Earth. It revealed that while some extraterrestrial visitors come in peace to study or establish contacts, others might have different agendas. The conversation delved into the complexities of interstellar travel and the possibility of life beyond our understanding, painting a picture of a universe teeming with life and civilizations far advanced from our own.
The Final Moments
Before its death, the alien imparted instructions for its disposal in the river, ensuring its body would leave no trace through a mysterious chemical process. In its last breaths, the being shared words of wisdom and a perspective on life that transcended the boundaries of worlds, leaving a profound impact on the witnesses.
Legacy of the Encounter
The incident left behind more questions than answers, including a piece of metal—allegedly from the alien’s possession—as the only physical evidence of the encounter. The story, shared years later, stands as a testament to the possibility of life beyond Earth and the potential for encounters that challenge our understanding of the universe.
This incident in NorthernSwedenin 1955 remains a captivating chapter in the history of UFO encounters, inviting us to ponder the vastness of the cosmos and the mysteries that lie waiting to be uncovered. Whether viewed with skepticism or belief, the story encourages us to keep an open mind about the unknown and the myriad possibilities that the universe holds.
The Joe Rogan Experience: A Deep Dive into UFO Sightings
The Joe Rogan Experience: A Deep Dive into UFO Sightings
In the realm of the unexplained and the extraordinary, UFO sightings stand as a pinnacle of curiosity and debate. The notion of unidentified flying objects traversing our skies has captivated humanity for generations, spawning theories, research, and endless speculation. The discussions surrounding these enigmatic occurrences have taken many forms, from eyewitness accounts by credible observers to detailed examinations by government and private entities. As we delve into this intriguing subject, our aim is to explore the multifaceted nature of UFO sightings, shedding light on the technological, scientific, and speculative aspects that continue to fuel our fascination with the unknown.
At the heart of many discussions on UFOs are accounts from highly trained individuals, such as fighter pilots, whose credibility and expertise lend significant weight to their observations. These pilots, operating sophisticated military aircraft equipped with advanced tracking systems, have reported encounters with objects exhibiting capabilities far beyond our current technological understanding. One notable example involves a pilot sighting an object that dramatically changed altitude, from over 60,000 feet to just 50 feet above sea level in less than a second, defying known principles of aerodynamics and physics.
Such reports challenge our understanding of technology and propulsion, suggesting the existence of mechanisms and materials unknown to our current scientific paradigm. The debate often revolves around whether these sightings can be attributed to highly advanced drones, experimental aircraft, or even phenomena of extraterrestrial origin. Skeptics and proponents alike ponder the possibility of other nations possessing breakthrough technologies that could account for these observations.
The question of UFOs also intersects with government transparency and secrecy. There have been suggestions that top-secret programs exist, utilizing drones and technologies not yet disclosed to the public. This notion is supported by insiders and former defense department personnel, who claim the existence of spectacular yet classified photos and videos. The rationale for withholding such information often parallels the historical precedent of military projects like the stealth bomber, which remained under wraps until their strategic reveal became advantageous or necessary.
Furthermore, the discussion extends beyond terrestrial explanations to the cosmic scale, where the vastness of space and the statistical likelihood of extraterrestrial life come into play. The Drake Equation and Fermi Paradox provide frameworks for considering the existence of intelligent life beyond Earth, though evidence for visitation remains speculative and anecdotal. Yet, the continuous discovery of exoplanets within habitable zones adds a tantalizing possibility to the mix, suggesting that if we can imagine the technology for interstellar travel, others might already possess it.
In addressing the unknown, the scientific method remains our best tool. While a significant portion of UFO sightings can be explained through natural or man-made phenomena, a small yet persistent fraction defies easy categorization. These anomalies, while not conclusive proof of extraterrestrial visitation, invite further investigation and an open-minded approach to understanding the limits of our knowledge and technology.
As we stand on the brink of new discoveries, both in space exploration and technological advancement, the mystery of UFO sightings continues to provoke thought, debate, and exploration. Whether these phenomena are the result of human ingenuity, natural processes, or indeed, the evidence of other civilizations, the quest for answers remains a compelling testament to human curiosity and the unending quest to understand the universe and our place within it.
Starshot … Not? Get a Reality Check on the Search for Alien Civilizations
Fortunately, the real-world search for signs of extraterrestrial civilizations doesn’t have to deal with an alien armada like the one that’s on its way to Earth in “3 Body Problem,”the Netflix streaming series based on Chinese sci-fi author Cixin Liu’s award-winning novels. But the trajectory of the search can have almost as many twists and turns as a curvature-drive tripfrom the fictional San-Ti star system.
Today, the Breakthrough Initiatives is focusing on projects closer to home. In addition to the millions of dollars it’s spending to support the search for radio or optical signals from distant planetary systems, it’s working with partners on a miniaturized space telescope to identify planets around Alpha Centauri, a radio telescope that could someday be built on the far side of the moon, and a low-cost mission to look for traces of life within the clouds of Venus.
Breakthrough Starshot, however, is on hold. “This looks to be quite feasible. However, it seems to be something that is still pretty, pretty expensive, and probably wouldn’t be feasible until later in the century,” says Pete Worden, executive director of the Breakthrough Initiatives. “So, we’ve put that on hold for a period of time to try to look at, are there near-term applications of this technology, which there may be.”
Worden provides a status report on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence — and sorts out science fact from science fiction — on the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast.
“3 Body Problem” takes its name from a longstanding challenge in orbital mechanics: It’s devilishly difficult to predict the gravitational interactions of three massive bodies in a system, except in some special cases. In the Netflix series, and in the books on which the series is based, a Chinese radio astronomer makes contact with an alien civilization that suffers repeated crises because its home world is in an unstable triple-star system.
Pete Worden is the executive director of the Breakthrough Initiatives.
(Credit: Breakthrough Initiatives)
When the aliens learn of our existence, they set out on a 400-year mass migration to Earth — an onslaught that puts our own planet on edge. One of the key concepts in the book is the Dark Forest Theory. That’s the idea that civilizations shouldn’t broadcast their existence to the rest of the galaxy, for fear that other denizens of the “Dark Forest” will eventually come after them.
Worden admits that the Dark Forest Theory has had an effect on the Breakthrough Initiatives’ agenda.
“We initially had a program called Breakthrough Message. … Not that we were going to send anything, but we were going to think about it,” he recalls. “We got a lot of resistance to even thinking about sending messages. Interestingly enough, one of the key skeptics of this was Professor Stephen Hawking. He thought it was a bad idea for exactly the Dark Forest reason. Conversely, the chairman of our advisory committee — Lord Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal of the U.K. — has the opposite view. He doesn’t think that’s a big issue.”
Worden’s personal view is that we’ve been sending out signs of our presence — ranging from radio transmissions to telltale pollutants in the atmosphere — for so long that “it’s probably too late to hide in the forest and be quiet.”
The Breakthrough Initiatives is counting on civilizations in other planetary systems to speak up, one way or the other. Starting in 2015, Breakthrough Listen has provided support for programs looking for radio signals or optical flashes that might have been transmitted by aliens. One signal in particular, known as BLC1, got hearts beating faster in 2019 — but astronomers eventually traced its origin to earthly radio interference rather than Proxima Centauri.
Another initiative, known as Breakthrough Watch, is working with Australian astronomers on a space telescope that would monitor the motions of the three stars in the Alpha Centauri system, looking for ever-so-slight gravitational wobbles that could point to the presence of Earthlike planets a little more than 4 light-years from Earth. The telescope is called TOLIMAN, which is the Arabic name for Alpha Centauri as well as an acronym for “Telescope for Orbit Locus Interferometric Monitoring of our Astronomical Neighborhood.”
Worden says launch is currently scheduled for the first half of 2025. “We’re still negotiating on the launch vehicles, but it’s most likely to be a piggyback mission, possibly on a SpaceX mission.” he says.
Meanwhile, Worden is working with CSIRO, the Australian government’s science agency, on a different sort of telescope.
“We think we can put a radio telescope for on the order of $100 million on the far side of the moon that looks for transients across the broad spectrum, mostly at higher frequencies,” he says. “That’s a good place, because right now it’s blocked from interference from the Earth. Just virtually everything you see is going to be something interesting.”
The Breakthrough team is also interested in extraterrestrial life in our own solar system: Years ago, Yuri Milner looked into the prospects for sending a probe to Enceladus, an icy moon of Saturn that may harbor hidden seas and perhaps even marine organisms. Today, Worden and his colleagues are collaborating with other interested parties — including Schmidt Sciences, researchers at MIT and engineers at Rocket Lab — to send a probe through Venus’ atmosphere to search for organic materials. Liftoff is set for as early as next January.
Getting to other stars
Even though Starshot is on hold, Worden is still thinking about interstellar travel, and he’s not the only one. Last weekend, SpaceX founder Elon Musk referred to the prospects of sending his company’s Starship super-rocket on trips beyond the moon and Mars.
“This Starship is designed to traverse our entire solar system and beyond to the cloud of objects surrounding us,” Musk said in a posting to X / Twitter, his social media platform. “A future Starship, much larger and more advanced, will travel to other star systems.”
Musk may not be thinking about using light sails, but NASA is. One of the proposals that won funding in the latest round of NASA Advance Innovative Concepts grants envisions developing swarms of sail-equipped, laser-propelled micro-probes that would take advantage of the same principle laid out by Breakthrough Starshot to get to the Alpha Centauri system.
An artist’s conception shows an early design for Breakthrough Starshot’s light sail. (Breakthrough Initiatives Illustration)
Worden thinks the best long-term approach to interstellar travel would be a combination of light sails to get the probes where they’re going, plus fusion power to slow them down once they get there. “I think that ultimately, something along that line is probably feasible in a century or so, maybe sooner,” he says.
A century may sound like a long time, but when you’re talking about sending probes to other stars, you have to adjust your time scales. After all, even the super-advanced aliens in “3 Body Problem” need 400 years to get to Earth. You can add interstellar travel to the other multi-generational challenges that are facing humanity, such as climate change. In fact, The New Yorker’s review of “3 Body Problem” notes that the approach of the aliens serves as “an unexpectedly potent metaphor for the looming perils of climate change.”
So, how long could it be before we connect with extraterrestrial civilizations? That’s the kind of question that can get alien-hunters in trouble. Two decades ago, the SETI Institute’s Seth Shostak speculated that we were likely to pick up signals from intelligent alien life by the year 2025 — a scenario that now seems extremely unlikely.
Worden prefers to think in terms of percentages.
“Within a decade, we’ll almost assuredly find life elsewhere,” he says. “We’ll probably find a life-bearing planet nearby. We’ll find life either on Mars, or Venus, or maybe the outer solar system moons. But an alien techno-civilization? I’d say, for any given decade, it’s probably a few percent. But if you don’t look, you don’t find it.”
It doesn’t bother him that he may not be around to answer one of life’s ultimate questions. “One of the cool things about science is that the journey is the fun part, and you never know what you’re going to find,” Worden says. “So, as a scientist, to me, you’re pursuing something that is unlikely, but really fundamental to our future. It’s the most fun thing I can imagine working on.”
If the aliens ever do arrive, let’s hope they find that oh-so-human trait endearing.
Europa Might Not Be Able to Support Life in its Oceans
Can Europa’s massive, interior ocean contain the building blocks of life, and even support life as we know it? This question is at the forefront of astrobiology discussions as scientists continue to debate the possibility for habitability on Jupiter’s icy moon. However, a recent study presented at the 55th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) might put a damper in hopes for finding life as a team of researchers investigate how Europa’s seafloor could be lacking in geologic activity, decreasing the likelihood of necessary minerals and nutrients from being recycled that could serve as a catalyst for life.
Here, Universe Today speaks with Henry Dawson, who is a PhD student in the Department of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis and lead author of the study, about his motivation behind the study, significant results, follow-up studies, and whether Dawson believes there’s life on Europa. So, what was the motivation behind this study?
Dawson tells Universe Today, “A large portion of the community has been looking at the habitability potential of the seafloor, and looking at processes that might occur at seafloor hydrothermal vents, or at water–rock interaction chemistry. However, it was never established that there would actually be any fresh rock exposed at the seafloor, or if the tectonic processes that drive hydrothermal vents would be present. The silicate interior of Europa is a similar size to that of Earth’s Moon, which is largely geologically dead on the surface.”
Artist’s cutaway illustration of Europa and its potential geologic activity.(Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Michael Carroll)
For the study, Dawson and his colleagues examined the likelihood for geologic activity occurring on Europa’s seafloor through analyzing data on Europa’s geophysical characteristics and comparing them with known geologic parameters and processes, including the strength of potential fault lines and fractures within Europa’s rocky interior, how the strength of this rock changes with depth, and how the rock could react to ongoing stresses, commonly known as convection. Using this, they conducted a series of calculations to ascertain whether the seafloor crust could drive geologic activity. Therefore, what were the most significant results from this study?
“It looks a lot more difficult to expose fresh rock (which is required to drive the reactions that life would exploit) to the ocean,” Dawson tells Universe Today. “Tidal forces do not seem able to cause motion along faults, like it can on the surface, and so the seafloor is most likely still. All the rock that water is able to interact with through porosity was likely altered hundreds of millions to billions of years ago, and so the ocean and rock are in chemical equilibrium. This means that there is no present day, continuous input of nutrients into the ocean from the rocky core, and so any possible life would likely have to exploit nutrient input from the icy shell above the ocean.”
While this study focused on geologic stresses related to fractures and fault lines, Europa’s interior ocean is produced from another type of geologic stress known as tidal heating, which is induced from the constant stretching and compressing as Europa orbits the much more massive Jupiter. This same tidal process occurs between the Earth and its Moon, and we see this in action in the rising and falling of the Earth’s waters around the globe. For Europa, over the course of thousands to millions of years, the stretching and compressing leads to friction in Europa’s inner rocky core, which leads to becoming heated and melting the inner ice into the interior ocean that exists today. It is in this ocean that astrobiologists hypothesize that life could exist, possibly even life as we know it.
However, given these study’s unfortunate findings, Dawson and his colleagues give dire implications for the potential habitability on Europa, noting their calculations estimate that geologic activity on Europa’s seafloor is limited enough to indicate habitable conditions within Europa’s interior ocean could be limited, as well. However, the study was quick to note that other geologic processes could be examined to explain the present state of Europa’s seafloor geologic activity, including processes known as serpentinization and thermal expansion anisotropy.
“As rock is exposed to water and chemically alters, the new minerals that form may have a different molar volume than the unaltered minerals in the original rock,” Dawson tells Universe Today. “Serpentinization specifically is the process where peridotite, a typical mantle rock, is altered to serpentinite. This reaction has a net volume increase, which introduces new stresses. These stresses might lead to the fracturing of the rock, fresh rock faces exposed, and more alteration, leading to a self-propagating cycle. On the other hand, the new minerals might cement up pre-existing fractures, preventing further exposure, and creating a negative feedback loop. Thermal expansion anisotropy describes the process where different minerals have varying degrees of expansion upon heating. Thus, when a rock is heated or cooled, the mineral grains inside will push against each other, introducing porosity and interior stresses.”
Regarding the tidal forces responsible for producing Europa’s interior ocean, this icy moon and the Earth’s Moon are not the only planetary bodies in the solar system that could experience these unique forces. Others include Jupiter’s third Galilean Moon, Ganymede, Saturn’s icy moon, Enceladus, and Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, all of which are currently hypothesized to possess interior oceans from tidal heating. Like Europa, Ganymede exhibits a predominantly crater-free surface, which is indicative of frequent resurfacing, and Enceladus was observed on numerous occasions by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft to have geysers on its south pole region that frequently shoots out water into space.
Additionally, Cassini flew through these geysers to obtain data on the ejecta’s composition, discovering organic molecules. For Titan, Cassini data revealed that an interior ocean exists beneath its surface, which is currently hypothesized to contain a combination of ammonia and salts. But regarding this most recent research, what follow-up studies are currently being conducted or planned?
Dawson tells Universe Today, “I’m currently using the same model to estimate whether tidal forces are able to cause fracturing on other icy moons in the outer solar system, such as Ganymede, Enceladus, Titan, and the mid-size Uranian moons. Based on my preliminary results that I presented at LPSC, it appears that tidal forces are insufficient on those moons as well. In addition, our collaborator Austin Green is looking at whether seafloor volcanism might occur, based on the forces that volcanic dikes can exert on the rock that they are propagating through. For Europa, the lithosphere is too deep and too strong for magma to reach the seafloor, and so any melt that forms in the mantle stalls out at depth.”
Despite being discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610, the fascination for finding life within Europa’s ocean has only come within the last few decades, thanks largely to the NASA Voyager missions, with Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 flying through the Jupiter system in 1979 and imaged the Galilean Moons up close and in detail for the first time, hinting that Europa was currently geologically active. This is because Europa has almost no visible craters throughout its entire surface, indicating specific processes are responsible for reshaping the small moon and covering up evidence of past impacts. Europa, being the second Galilean Moon, shares these traits with the first and third Galilean Moons, Io and Ganymede, respectively, while the fourth Galilean Moon, Callisto has a surface that is almost entirely covered by craters.
The Galilean moons of Jupiter: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Thanks to further data obtained from proceeding missions, including NASA’s Galileo spacecraft, Hubble Space Telescope, and Juno, scientists are almost entirely convinced that an interior ocean lies beneath Europa’s icy crust, with some estimates putting the volume of liquid water at double of Earth’s oceans. Therefore, as we see on Earth, liquid water means life, which is why Europa’s interior ocean is a target for astrobiology research. But does Henry Dawson think there’s life on Europa?
Dawson tells Universe Today, “I think there’s still a lot more that I would like to understand before I make a yes or no statement on that. While I believe that Europa is one of the most likely candidates to host life, alongside Enceladus, the chance of life remains small, and this research reduces the probability even more.”
This study comes as NASA prepares to launch the Europa Clipper spacecraft this October with a planned arrival date of April 2030 and is designed to explore the habitability potential of Europa and its interior ocean. During its 3.5-year mission, Clipper will perform up to 44 close flybys of Europa ranging between 25 and 2,700 kilometers (16 to 1,678 miles) as the spacecraft will perform elongated orbits to keep from staying within Jupiter’s powerful magnetic field for too long. To assess Europa’s habitability potential, Clipper will carry a powerful suite of scientific instruments designed to analyze Europa’s chemistry, surface geology, and interior ocean characteristics.
Artist’s rendition of NASA’s Europa Clipper (published in January 2021). (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Additionally, the European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) mission was launched in April 2023 with a planned orbital insertion at Jupiter in July 2031, followed by a departure from Jupiter and an orbital insertion around Ganymede in December 2034. Like Clipper, JUICE is designed to investigate the habitability potential of the icy moon, but will also examine Ganymede and Callisto, as well.
“Get excited for the Europa Clipper and JUICE missions! Dawson exclaims to Universe Today. “While it will still be 6 years before they reach Jupiter, once they arrive, we will be able to learn much more about what is going on at Europa. While they will not be able to directly measure the interior, observations of the ice shell, gravity field, and tidal forcing on Europa will help to constrain future models. As well, always be careful about the assumptions you make for other planetary bodies. While Europa may be covered with ice, it is truly a rocky world that happens to have a deep ocean, and the processes occurring at depth may not reflect what we see at Earth’s seafloor.”
Is Europa’s seafloor geologically active, and what new insights will Europa Clipper and JUICE make about this astonishing and intriguing icy moon in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
What Can Europa’s Surface Tell Us About the Thickness of Its Ice?
Jupiter's second Galilean moon, Europa. Its smooth surface has fewer craters than other moons, but they help us understand its icy shell. (Credit: NASA/JPL/Galileo spacecraft)
What Can Europa’s Surface Tell Us About the Thickness of Its Ice?
You can tell a lot about a planetary body just by looking at its surface, especially if it has craters. Take Europa, for example. It has a fairly young surface—somewhere between 50 and 100 million years old. That’s practically “new” when you compare it to the age of the Solar System. And, Europa’s icy crust is pretty darned smooth, with only a few craters to change the topography.
Planetary scientists already know that Europa’s icy surface is a thin shell over a large interior ocean of salty water. How thin? To find out, a team of researchers led by Brandon Johnson and Shigeru Wakita at Purdue University studied images of large craters on Europa. They used what they saw, coupled with a variety of physical characteristics, to create computer models of that shell. “Previous estimates showed a very thin ice layer over a thick ocean,” said Wakita. “But our research showed that there needs to be a thick layer—so thick that convection in the ice, which has previously been debated, is likely.”
The thickness of that shell may well influence whether or not life exists at Europa. Its existence is a topic of intense interest since Europa could provide a reasonably habitable ecosystem for life. It has water, warmth, and organic materials for life to eat. That makes the search for life at Europa quite important. So, what do craters have to do with all this?
More About Craters
Impact cratering performs a lot of gardening in the Solar System, according to Johnson. He is the first author on a recently published paper discussing these features on Europa. “Craters are found on almost every solid body we’ve ever seen. They are a major driver of change in planetary bodies,” he said.
Four featured craters among many on the Moon: the triplet of Theophilus, Cyrillus and Catharina and Maurolycus. Many more craters can be seen across the lunar surface. Credit: Virtual Moon Atlas / Christian LeGrande, Patrick Chevalley
Just looking at images of different worlds in the Solar System, we can see some pretty heavily cratered surfaces. The Moon is a good example, as is Mars. And, we see it at many of the smaller bodies, such as the moons of the gas and ice giants. The more craters we see, the older the surface. In some places, multiple overlapping craters indicate a very old surface. In other places, such as at Europa, the craters are fewer and farther between. Something has “paved over” the craters such that any we CAN see were made after the repaving event. In addition, the craters reveal information about the surface as well as the “subsurface” of Europa.
“When an impact crater forms, it is essentially probing the subsurface structure of a planetary body,” said Johnson. “By understanding the sizes and shapes of craters on Europa and reproducing their formation with numerical simulations, we’re able to infer information about how thick its ice shell is.”
What Europa’s Craters Tell Us
This tiny moon is an enigma wrapped in shimmering ice. Its frozen surface hides a rocky inner core covered with a salt-water ocean. Like Earth, it experiences surface plate tectonics, driven by the core region’s heating. Inside, that heating drives currents of warmer water up from the core. That water gets forced to the surface, where it freezes and creates a new layer overlying any other features. This resurfacing happens every 50 to 100 million years.
Incoming impactors carve out new craters in that “freshened-up” surface, which gives scientists some pretty easy-to-study craters. They aren’t terribly deep, however, which tells scientists a lot about the structure of the icy shell. Johnson, Wakita, and their team studied images from the Galileo spacecraft to analyze Europa’s craters. In particular, they focused on two multi-ringed basins imaged on this moon. They show two or more concentric rings around the point of the impact that created them. Such basins are fairly rare and usually indicate some kind of large, energetic impact. On Europa, their appearance and formation give clues to the thickness of the icy shell and their thermal structure, which is a way to understand how the shell conducts heat.
Multi-ringed Crater Basins Tell a Tale
In their study, the Purdue team simulated a multi-ring basin with varying thicknesses of ice. Those thicknesses influence the degree of tidal heating in the shell itself. They also help scientists understand how heat exchange occurs between the bottom of the shell and the underlying ocean. The team found that icy shells thinner than about 15 kilometers don’t show the kinds of multi-ringed basins that exist on Europa. However, a thicker one does. In particular, the best-fit simulation used a 20+ kilometer-thick shell. It consists of two layers: a 6-8 kilometer-thick conductive “lid” that covers up a layer of warm, convecting ice.
One of Galileo’s images of the Tyre multi-ringed basin on Europa. There are at least 5-7 rings around the impact crater center. Courtesy: NASA/JPL/ASU.
In addition to studying the craters, the team also looked at the types of impactors needed to create those multi-ringed basins on Europa. From the structures seen in the Galileo images, they concluded that the impactors would need to be around 1.5 kilometers in radius to create the multi-ringed basins. Smaller ones wouldn’t create the structures they saw, and bigger impactors would result in very different-looking craters and rings.
What About Other Worlds?
Europa isn’t the only world at Jupiter with an icy crust. Both Ganymede and Callisto also show cratering, with multi-ring basins. This tells us that these worlds also have to have thick enough icy crusts where such basins can form. Planetary scientists have suggested their crusts are at least 80 to 105 kilometers thick. In their paper, the Purdue teams suggest that since Europa’s crust is likely to be at least 20 kilometers thick (if not more) it’s also likely that Ganymede and Callisto have much thicker crusts than current predictions suggest.
Callisto has many more craters than Europa and a thicker icy crust. Image credit: NASA/JPL
Finally, although the paper doesn’t specifically address this, the fact that the scientists can deduce impactor size from the characteristics of the resulting craters does provide insight into the sizes of impactors available in Jovian “airspace”. To sustain these kinds of multi-ringed basins, you need a good population of sizable impactors to do the job. Also, for Europa to be so recently “refreshed” really does give a clue to the impact environment in the Jupiter system. While Ganymede and Callisto both have very old surfaces, the existence of “fresh” ice at various cratering sites tells us that they’re still being bombarded in recent times, although they’re not actively resurfacing themselves. These are all additional data points to consider when understanding the habitability of environments, particularly at Europa (and possibly at places such as Enceladus at Saturn).
“Understanding the thickness of the ice is vital to theorizing about possible life on Europa,” Johnson said. “How thick the ice shell is controls what kind of processes are happening within it, and that is really important for understanding the exchange of material between the surface and the ocean. That is what will help us understand how all kinds of processes happen on Europa—and help us understand the possibility of life.”
The icy realms at Earth’s poles harbor enigmas that challenge our understanding of history, geography, and the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Below the vast, frozen landscapes lie secrets, buried and preserved, whispering tales of the past and possibilities of the future. Here are five startling mysteries concealed beneath the polar ice, offering a glimpse into the unknown.
1. Operation Highjump: A Military Expedition with Unexpected Discoveries
In the late 1940s, Admiral Richard Byrd led Operation Highjump, the most extensive Antarctic expedition of its time. Officially, it aimed at exploring potential military bases and conducting geological surveys. Yet, rumors and alleged diary entries from Byrd suggest the discovery of something far more bewildering—an entrance to the Earth’s core and encounters with advanced beings concerned about humanity’s nuclear capabilities. These claims fuel speculations about hidden worlds beneath our feet and the nature of our planet.
2. Ancient Structures Under the Ice
Whistleblower accounts and satellite imagery have hinted at the presence of ancient, man-made structures embedded in the Antarctic ice. Descriptions of vast, octagonal buildings with hieroglyphs unlike any known human script suggest a civilization with advanced knowledge and technology, possibly of extraterrestrial origin. These structures, reportedly capable of maintaining temperate conditions internally despite the freezing external environment, challenge our historical timeline and understanding of Earth’s past inhabitant
3. The Lost Continent of Atlantis and Pre-Diluvian Civilizations
The myth of Atlantis, a technologically advanced civilization that perished in a great deluge, finds echoes in Antarctic mysteries. Some theorists propose that remnants of this lost continent, or perhaps another prehistoric civilization, lie frozen under the polar ice. This theory is bolstered by ancient texts and geological evidence, suggesting a catastrophic event that could have flash-frozen a once-thriving society, preserving its legacy beneath the ice.
4.UFOs and Extraterrestrial Bases
The Antarctic ice has been the focus of UFO sightings and speculation about alien bases hidden from human eyes. Accounts of unidentified flying objects emerging from beneath the ice and advanced craft leaving traces on the continent’s surface feed into theories of an ongoing extraterrestrial presence on Earth. These narratives are supported by the modern UFO era’s onset coinciding with significant human activities in the region, suggesting a keen interest from otherworldly observers in our planet’s nuclear advancements.
5. Satellite Anomalies and the Search for Alien Artifacts
The advent of satellite technology has allowed independent researchers to uncover anomalies in Antarctica’s geography that hint at possible alien artifacts or crash sites. One such finding is a trail, consistent with a high-speed object’s path, stretching from the North to the South Pole. Additionally, satellite images have revealed entrances and objects that defy natural explanation, suggesting either ancient human ingenuity or evidence of extraterrestrial visitation.
VIDEO
Ancient Aliens: 5 SHOCKING Mysteries Beneath Polar Ice
The polar ice caps, remote and inhospitable, guard secrets that blur the lines between history and myth, science and speculation. Whether tales of Admiral Byrd’s otherworldly encounters, whispers of ancient civilizations, or evidence of extraterrestrial activity, these mysteries compel us to look beyond our current understanding and imagine the unimaginable. As technology advances and our exploration capabilities expand, we may soon unveil the truths hidden beneath the ice, potentially rewriting the story of our planet and its place in the cosmos.
We might witness a star explode soon — and it’s not Betelgeuse.
A mismatched pair of stars 3,000 light years away may be gearing up for an explosion in the next few months. T Coronae Borealis (T CrB to its friends) is normally too dim to see with the unaided eye, but roughly every 80 years, it flares brightly enough to appear as a “new” star, or nova, in Earth’s northern sky. Its last event was in 1946, and astronomers say it’s likely to go off again this year.
This illustration shows the red giant in T CrB with a disk of discarded gas around it. The white dwarf (the bright spot in the disk at the beginning of the animation) eventually gobbles up so much material that its surface explodes in a runaway thermonuclear reaction.
TWINKLE, TWINKLE, LITTLE — BOOM
T CrB is actually a pair of stars, trapped in each other’s orbit — and in an extremely messy relationship that sometimes literally explodes.
One is an aging red giant, which has burned up all its hydrogen fuel and is now fusing helium atoms together at its core. Helium fusion produces a tremendous amount of heat and radiation pressure, so the aging star’s outer layers have swelled outward to many times its original size (this is the same fate that will eventually befall our Sun in about 5 billion years). The other half of the dynamic duo is a white dwarf: the burned-out remains of a star’s core (this is what our Sun will look like sometime after its red giant phase).
About every 80 years, the red giant shrugs off its outermost layers of gas, and the white dwarf’s gravity grabs them. White dwarfs are nowhere near as dense as neutron stars, but they're still pretty dense, being the remnants of stellar cores — and it doesn't take much to ignite one again, at least temporarily. When even more mass gets piled on the surface, it adds just enough heat and pressure for the white dwarf to start fusing hydrogen and helium in its inner layers.
That sudden burst of fusion triggers a chain reaction that eventually engulfs the outer layers of the star in what's called a runaway thermonuclear reaction. The envelope of gas around the white dwarf, heated by the runaway nuclear fusion, explodes outward at roughly 3,700 miles per second. In other words, KABOOM.
And 3,000 light years away, people on Earth will be able to see what looks like a new star in the night sky.
WHAT ABOUT BETELGEUSE?
It won’t take T CrB’s white dwarf very long to burn up all its hydrogen fuel and settle back down: It’ll only be visible in the sky for a few days, and the runaway thermonuclear reaction itself will last just a fraction of that time. When Betelgeuse eventually explodes, however, the glow of its death throes will hang in the sky for several months. What’s the difference?
The kind of explosion that lights up T CrB once every 40 years is called a nova, and it happens when a white dwarf gets briefly reignited in a runaway nuclear reaction. Imagine throwing lighter fluid and a match onto a pile of burned-up charcoal. It will catch fire and burn for a moment, but it won’t last.
When Betelgeuse dies, however, it will go out in a blaze of glory called a supernova. A supernova happens when an extremely massive star runs out of fuel for its nuclear reactions; the outer layers collapse, and the pressure of the collapse triggers an enormous explosion. Think of it as blowing up the grill: It’s going to be bigger and brighter than what happened when you lit up the charcoal, and you’re only going to be able to do it once.
Novae like T CrB, though, are the explosive cosmic gifts that just keep on exploding.
EXCLUSIVE - Oil rigger spots UFOs 'hovering for 10 minutes' above the deck before 'zooming off in an instant' on the Mexican coast where locals believe is a submerged alien base
EXCLUSIVE - Oil rigger spots UFOs 'hovering for 10 minutes' above the deck before 'zooming off in an instant' on the Mexican coast where locals believe is a submerged alien base
The images claimed to capture to UFOs hovering over an oil rig near Mexico
Locals believe a submerged alien base sits a few miles off the coast of Tampico
A pair of UFOs were spotted soaring over an oil rig off the coast of Mexico where locals have claimed is home to a secret underwater alien base.
A crew member of the vessel near Tampico snapped two images - one showing a saucer-shaped craft with glowing lights circling the base and the other with a triangular design and three lights on the bottom.
The witness said the UAPs 'hovered for what seemed like 10 minutes and then 'just zoomed off in an instant,' a source told DailyMail.om.
A pair of UFOs were spotted soaring over an oil rig off the coast of Mexico where locals have claimed is home to a secret underwater alien base. A crew member of the vessel near Tampico snapped two images
One image shows a saucer-shaped craft with glowing lights circling the base
The images were captured on October 2023, but have just now been released online.
DailyMail.com spoke with oil rigger 'Pat' who obtained the pictures and information of the sighting from a fellow colleague on another rig who was stationed in Tampico months before he arrived.
'My contact said the UAPs showed up as they were putting the oil rigs legs to the seabed,' said Pat.
The rig, known as a 'jack-up,' is a barge fitted with three long support legs that can be raised or lowered.
One of the images shows the saucer-shaped craft hanging in the night sky and towering above the oil rig.
A close look at the object shows at least 10 round lights circling the bottom - the only portion that is truly visible in the photo.
While the oil rigger said the other UFO was triangular, the only clue about its designed is how the three lights at its base are positioned.
While the oil rigger said the other UFO was triangular, the only clue about its designed is how the three lights at its base are positioned
No other parts of the craft can be seen as well.
An X user, covertress , told DailyMail.com that a member of the intelligence community told her that the triangular craft was the 'Aurora' craft rumored to have been developed by the US government in the mid-1980s.
A disc-shaped, completely silent UFO was caught on camera by Ukrainian troops in the war-torn country, in footage shared exclusively with DailyMail.com.
The SR 91 Aurora, an ultra top-secret aircraft that has been in development since 1989, was believed to be the successor to the Mach 3.35 Lockheed Martin SR-71 Blackbird craft that was retired in 1998.
By comparison, extreme reports claim that Aurora could reach Mach 11.8.
However, there is no evidence the military plane was ever built or flown - suggesting the image captured above the oil rig could not be the top-secret warplane.
When Pat arrived in Tampico, he discovered the locals' belief about an underwater alien base called Amupac, claiming the otherworldly beings are their protectors.
'My rig only came here recently,' he said. 'It was after I discovered the local belief being so strong as regards aliens protecting them that I discussed with a guy who works as a liaison between our two rigs.
'Then he told me about the encounters. He then sent me the images.'
The submerged base is said to sit a few miles off Miramar Beach and nearby communities believe their extraterrestrial visitors have sat below the surface, protecting them from natural disasters.
And a hurricane has not hit the region over the course of that time.
The legend began in 1967 when local news outlet the local El Sol de Tampico newspaper ran a story with the headline Platillos Voladores Sobre Tampico, or 'Flying Saucers Over Tampico.'
The article stated that 'thousands of inhabitants' saw objects in the sky, quoting the local airport's control tower officer who reportedly counted 'nine unidentified objects.'
China launches relay satellite to allow communication with far side of the moon and further nation’s lunar ambitions
China launches relay satellite to allow communication with far side of the moon and further nation’s lunar ambitions
Story by Ling Xin
Queqiao-2 solar wings and relay communication antennas were deployed, making launch successful, says China National Space Administration
Smaller satellites Tiandu-1 and 2 were also launched and will orbit the moon to test and verify navigation and communications technologies
China has launched a new communications relay satellite to support its moon ambitions in the decade to come.
Queqiao-2, or Magpie Bridge-2, lifted off atop a Long March 8 rocket from Wenchang Satellite Launch Centre on southern China's Hainan island at 8.31am on Wednesday, according to the China National Space Administration.
After flying for 24 minutes, the rocket sent the relay satellite directly into the planned Earth-moon transfer orbit with a perigee height of 200km (124 miles) and an apogee height of 420,000km.
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The solar wings and relay communication antennas of the relay satellite were deployed normally in succession, "marking a complete success of the launch mission," the administration said.
The satellite would support future moon missions by China "and other countries", it said.
Queqiao-2 is planned to reach an elliptical orbit around the moon and unfold its 4.2 metre-wide (13.8 feet) parabolic antenna to make communications possible between Earth and the lunar far side, which never faces Earth.
It can relay signals up to eight hours straight for the first sample return from the far side of the moon later this year, two more complicated missions to establish a prototype base at the lunar south pole by 2028 and, potentially, more spacecraft from China and its international partners.
Related video:
How China explores the far side of the moon (Dailymotion)
Sharing the ride on the 50 metre-tall (164 foot) Long March rocket were a pair of experimental technology satellites - Tiandu-1 and 2 - which are headed to a separate orbit where they will fly in formation and test lunar navigation and communications technologies.
The moon is tidally locked to Earth. As a result, we always see the same side of the moon from Earth. In 2018, China launched the Queqiao relay satellite to support its Chang'e 4 mission, which made the first soft landing on the moon's far - or "invisible" - side.
The combination of the relay satellite Queqiao-2 and the Long March 8 Y3 carrier rocket is vertically transferred to the launching area at the Wenchang Space Launch Centre on March 17, 2024.
The 325kg (716lbs) Queqiao, which has a designed lifespan of five years, is still operating near Earth-Moon Lagrangian-2 point - a gravitationally balanced spot about 70,000km beyond the moon.
Queqiao-2 is much heavier with a mass of 1,200kg. Its orbit is also different: it is highly elliptical with the closest point at 300km and the farthest 8,600km above the moon's surface.
It will take Queqiao-2 around 12 hours to make one circle around the moon and during this time communications between Earth and the lunar far side could be provided for about eight hours.
This orbit is also known as a frozen orbit because it is very stable and requires the spacecraft to carry very little, if any, propellant for orbit maintenance over a very long time.
Queqiao-2's antenna surface was made of extremely thin molybdenum wires coated with gold, said the research team from Donghua University in Shanghai that developed the antenna.
"The wires used to weave the antenna were thinner than human hair. And gold is a very good reflector," team leader Chen Nanliang told state broadcaster CCTV back in February.
"Our 'golden umbrella' is lightweight and flexible enough to be first tucked in the rocket cabin, and then unfold in orbit. It's also strong enough to withstand the harsh conditions during launch and in flights," Chen said.
Besides signal relay, Queqiao-2 is also equipped with three scientific payloads, including an ultraviolet camera and a long-distance radio astronomy experiment. Its designed lifespan is at least eight years.
Compared with Queqiao-2, Tiandu-1 and Tiandu-2 satellites are much smaller. The 61kg Tiandu-1 carries a Ka dual-band communication payload, a laser retroreflector and a space router among other devices. The 15kg Tiandu-2 carries a communication payload and navigation devices.
Together, the two will orbit the moon to test and verify navigation and communications technologies, and inform the design of China's Queqiao lunar navigation and communication constellation, Xinhua reported last month.
The Queqiao constellation would greatly aid moon landing and lunar surface operations, said state news agency Xinhua. China plans to land astronauts on the moon no later than 2030, and build a moon base with international partners in about a decade.
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This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (www.scmp.com), the leading news media reporting on China and Asia.
Copyright (c) 2024. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
Communication between spacecraft relies upon line of site technology, if anything is in the way, communication isn’t possible. Exploration of the far side of the Moon is a great example where future explorers would be unable to communicate directly with Earth. The only way around this is to use relay satellites and the Chinese Space Agency is on the case. The first Queqiao-1 was able to co-ordinate communications with Chang’e-4 landers and now they are sending Queqiao-2 to support the Change’e-6 mission.
If you have ever gazed upon the Moon you might have noticed that it always has the same hemisphere facing the Earth. This phenomenon is known as captured or synchronous rotation. It may look like the Moon isn’t rotating but in reality the time it takes to spin once on its axis is the same as the time it takes to complete one orbit around the Earth, keeping one hemisphere constantly facing us. Explorers on the near side of the Moon have no trouble communicating with transmissions taking just over one second to reach home. Explore the far side of the Moon and you have a problem.
The Chang’e 5 test vehicle captured this beautiful view of Earth over the far side of the Moon on October 28, 2014. Credit: Chinese national space agency (CNSA) and Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)
To overcome the problem China have launched a 1.2 ton communication satellite known as Queqiao-2. It’s name originates from the mythological bridge made from magpies. In the Chinese tale, the magpies formed a bridge across the Milky Way to allow the lovers Vega and Altair to be together for one night once a year. Two miniature satellites were also launched Tiandu-1 and Tiandu-2 from the island of Hainan.
On arrival it will orbit the Moon and provide a relay for the Chang’e-6 lander which is slated to launch in May. It will join satellites from United States, India and Japan to support the exploration of the far side of the Moon. Chang’e-6 will collected samples from an ancient basin. Not only will it serve the communications for Change-6, it will transfer communications for Chang’e-7 and ‘8. Both craft are to be launched in the years ahead 2026 and 2028 respectively.
The orbit of Queqiao-2 will take it almost over the south pole in an elliptical orbit. It will reach an altitude of 8,600 km so that communication can be achieved for a little over eight hours. At its closest, it will sweep over the lunar surface at an altitude of 300 km.
The ultimate goal of the Chinese Space Agency is to create a network of satellites, not too dissimilar (but not quite on the same scale) to the growing Space X constellation which is building a global internet presence. The purpose of Tiandu-1 and Tiandu-2 is to test the concept of such a constellation.
China’s longer term aspirations include a research station at the lunar south pole and for this to be viable, communication relays are essential to establish communication, navigation and remote sensing.
The Mars Science Helicopter Could be an Airborne Geologist on Mars
After over 70 successful flights, a broken rotor ended the remarkable and groundbreaking Ingenuity helicopter mission on Mars. Now, NASA is considering how a larger, more capable helicopter could be an airborne geologist on the Red Planet. For the past several years scientists and engineers have been working on the concept, proposing a six-rotor hexacopter that would be about the size of the Perseverance rover.
Called the Mars Science Helicopter (MSH), it would not only serve as an aerial scout for a future rover, but more importantly, it could also carry up to 5 kg (11 lbs) of science instruments aloft in the thin Martian atmosphere and land in terrain that a rover can’t reach.
A new paper presented at the March 2024 Lunar and Planetary Science Conference outlines the geology work that such a helicopter could accomplish.
The paper, “Unraveling the Origin and Petrology of the Martian Crust with a Helicopter,” notes there are several outstanding questions about the makeup and history of Mars’ surface, especially with recent discoveries of unexpected dichotomies in the composition of basaltic rocks. In observations from the Mars rovers and orbital spacecraft, some regions appear to have been influenced by water while some have not.
“Up to last decade, we thought that magmatic rocks were only basaltic on Mars,” said Valerie Payré from the University of Iowa, the paper’s lead author. “But with recent rover and orbital measurements, we observed that there is a wide diversity of magmatic rocks similar to what we see on Earth.”
Payré explained via email that there are rocks on Mars with elevated silica concentrations called felsic rocks – feldspar and silicate — that are rich in elements and were not expected to be found on the Martian surface.
“We measured these with the Curiosity rover and have some hints of where there might be others using orbital measurements,” Payré said. “However, close-up images (millimetric scale) and composition analyses are lacking from the orbital dataset to know if these felsic rocks are widespread on Mars or just at a few locations. This is yet highly important to understand what the crust of Mars is made of and if it is similar to Earth’s crust, which has implications regarding the formation of the planet and even past climate.”
First X-ray view of Martian soil – feldspar, pyroxenes, olivine revealed (Curiosity rover at “Rocknest”, October 17, 2012). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ames
Payré and her team feel that a helicopter would be perfect to explore places where a rover could never traverse, such as terrains that are too high in altitude, since landing there would require too much fuel.
The instruments they propose include a miniaturized visible and near-infrared (VNIR) spectrometer for small scale mineralogical mapping and a small Laser Induced Breakdown Spectrometer (LIBS) with a micro-imager, an instrument similar to the ChemCam laser instrument on both the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers. In their paper, the team writes that a helicopter with these instruments could travel kilometers to detect promising felsic terrains, and measure their composition at a micron scale.
“We could fly over these possible felsic terrains and look at their minerals using a visible/near infrared spectrometer, land on locations of interest, take close-up images, and measure the compositions of these rocks with the LIBS,” Payré said. “We could finally know what Mars’ crust is, and better constrain how it formed.”
A graphic show the parts of the Ingenuity helicopter. Credit: NASA
There could also be an onboard a magnetometer, which measures magnetic field anomalies, to better understand how Mars’ magnetic field operated, which is still uncertain. Mars does not presently have a global magnetic field, but had one early in its lifetime.
“Such payload would finally enable us to better understand the past climate on Mars by measuring the composition and minerals of sedimentary rocks of various age,” Payré told Universe Today.
A conceptual design paper published in 2020 proposed a Mars hexacopter with a mass of about 31 kg (70 lbs) and a total diameter of just over four meters (13 feet). Each set of rotors would have blades about 0.64 meters (2 ft) long. The helicopter would be powered by a rechargeable solar cell. This would not only power the rotors, but the desired scientific instruments.
A model of NASA’s Mars Science Helicopter concept. Credit: NASA.
This helicopter could move as fast as 30 meters a second (60 mph) but also could hover over a spot for as long as five minutes. Engineers from Ames Research Center, the Jet Propulsion Lab and the University of Maryland wrote that MSH could fly with a range of up to 10 km (6.2 miles) per flight. With this speed and range, MSH could potentially cover as much ground in a few days as rovers like Perseverance and Curiosity have traversed in years.
“The fact that a helicopter can fly would facilitate the mission to visit to places that would be inaccessible for a rover, and we could access locations that we never imagined before,” Payré said.
Payré and team proposed several landing sites including Gale Crater Gale crater where evolved felsic rocks were found by the Curiosity Rover; the massive canyon of Valles Marineris, where orbital observations have revealed a deep crust with feldspar-bearing rocks; and Hellas basin, 2,300 km impact crater known to have layers of feldspar.
Annotated view of Valles Marineris from the High-Resolution Stereoscopic Camera (HRSC) on the Mars Express spacecraft. Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Michael)
Project Serpo: Unraveling the Enigma of an Alleged Extraterrestrial Exchange Program
Project Serpo: Unraveling the Enigma of an Alleged Extraterrestrial Exchange Program
In the annals of UFO lore, the story of Project Serpo stands out as a captivating narrative that combines elements of interstellar travel, government conspiracy, and the timeless quest for understanding what might exist beyond our earthly confines. Project Serpo allegedly details a top-secret exchange program between the United States government and an extraterrestrial civilization from a planet in the Zeta Reticuli star system. This tale, wrapped in layers of mystery and speculation, offers a glimpse into the complex relationship between humanity’s quest for knowledge and the shadows where truth and fiction blur.
Origins of the Story
The origins of Project Serpo trace back to anonymous postings on a public internet forum in the early 2000s. These posts were attributed to a supposed retired government official who revealed detailed accounts of an interstellar exchange program initiated in the aftermath of the famous Roswell UFO incident in 1947. According to the narrative, the program saw a select group of American astronauts traveling to Serpo, an alien planet, on a mission that aimed to foster intergalactic understanding and cooperation.
The Mission’s Journey
The journey to Serpo was described as taking several months, utilizing alien technology that allowed for faster-than-light travel. The narrative elaborates on the astronauts’ life on Serpo, where they spent years learning about the planet’s ecosystem, societal structures, and the technology of its inhabitants, known as the Ebens. This period of extraterrestrial cohabitation was said to offer profound insights into the possibilities of life beyond Earth and the potential for interstellar diplomacy.
Skepticism and Controversy
Despite the enthralling details, the story of Project Serpo has been met with skepticism and controversy. Critics argue the lack of verifiable evidence and the story’s reliance on anonymous sources cast doubt on its authenticity. Furthermore, connections to known disinformation campaigns have led some to dismiss the narrative as a sophisticated hoax or a piece of modern folklore rather than a factual account of extraterrestrial contact.
The Role of Disinformation
The tale of Project Serpo also touches upon the theme of disinformation within the UFO community. The narrative has been linked to Richard Doty, a former Air Force Office of Special Investigations officer known for his involvement in spreading UFO-related disinformation. This connection raises questions about the motives behind the dissemination of the Serpo story and the impact of such narratives on public perception and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Cultural Impact
Despite questions about its veracity, the story of Project Serpo has had a notable impact on UFO culture and the science fiction genre. It has inspired discussions, debates, and artistic works exploring the themes of interstellar travel, alien life, and government secrecy. The narrative serves as a reflection of humanity’s enduring fascination with the unknown and the lengths to which imagination and belief can lead us in the quest for understanding our place in the universe.
Project Serpo remains a compelling chapter in the larger story of humanity’s engagement with the UFO phenomenon. It exemplifies the intersection of myth, science, and the desire to believe in the extraordinary. Whether fact or fiction, the story of Project Serpo encourages us to look beyond our terrestrial boundaries and ponder the possibilities of what might lie beyond the stars.
A group of UFO researchers with backgrounds in science have come together to analyze an alleged UFO video they have confirmed comes from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The object in the video was captured by a thermal imaging camera on a DHS aircraft, and according to the researchers, it exhibits characteristics that cannot be explained by any known aircraft or natural phenomenon.
The video is overlaid with the sort of telemetry one would expect from a military or law enforcement thermal image video. It shows an object apparently moving very quickly over land and then into the ocean. It seems to be tumbling or changing shape. It moves over buildings, through trees, and eventually over the ocean. Then things get weird. The object appears to go in and out of the ocean without slowing down, and at the end of the video is either joined by another object or breaks in two.
All of the primary witnesses have requested anonymity. However, several communications from alleged DHS employees indicate that the video caused quite a stir on the base.
A still from the video in which the unknown objects appears to be flying through trees.
Research on the video began when an acquaintance to the pilot of the aircraft that captured the video contacted Daina Chaviano, a famous Cuban-born fantasy and science fiction author. She is also a volunteer with the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) in Florida, where in her spare time she investigates UFO reports. She took the UFO case to her colleague, Morgan Beall, who runs the Florida MUFON chapter.
Chaviano and Beall were so impressed by what they saw they assembled a small group of skeptical researchers with backgrounds in various fields of science and technology. The pilot’s acquaintance requested strict control of the information provided and that knowledge of the investigation be limited to a very few people, so until now, the researchers have not shared any information regarding their investigation.
Today, the group released a 161-page report detailing their findings.
The object was filmed over Rafael Hernandez Airport in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico.
(Credit: Google Maps)
They are vague when it comes to the identity of Chaviano’s informant. They say this person and others who provided information wanted to remain anonymous “to ensure no issues arise with the source’s employers.”
However, the group says: “The source of this video evidence was vetted and identified.”
They say they are absolutely certain that the information comes from sources on board the DHS aircraft and the video is genuine. Their investigation also confirmed what they were told.
Their sources told them that the UFO incident began at about 9:20 pm on the evening of April 25, 2013 at the Rafael Hernandez Airport in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. It involved the crew of a DHC-8 Turboprop aircraft from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), a division of DHS.
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection Bombardier DHC-8Q200.
(Credit: U.S. Customs and Border Protection)
The DHC-8 took off on a routine flight and soon after takeoff they noticed “a pinkish to reddish light over the ocean that was in their vicinity and approaching toward the south.”
The crew was concerned the tower had not told them about the incoming traffic, so they called it in. The tower told them they also had a visual on the object, but they were unsure of its identity.
Once the object got close to land, its lights turned off, but at this time the DHC-8 was able to begin tracking and filming the object with their onboard thermal imaging system. The DHC-8 did not approach the object, but circled the area and filmed it.
The DHC-8 did not pick up the object on radar. However, their radar was looking downward to track ships on the ocean, not objects in the sky.
According to the source, a flight was delayed by the presence of the object. The research group was able to confirm from airport records that a FedEx flight scheduled to leave at 9:10 pm was delayed until 9:26 pm.
Image of the flight log from the UFO reporting showing the a delayed flight at the time of the UFO event.
(Credit: SCU)
The researchers also confirmed the flight time and path of the DHC-8 via radar data they obtained from a Freedom of Information Act Request to the U.S. Air Force 84th Radar Evaluation Squadron (RADES) group. The radar data confirmed that the DHC-8 took off at approximately 9:16 pm and circled the airport twice before leaving the area about 10 minutes later.
Flight path of the DHC-8 according to the radar data obtained via a Freedom of Information Act Request.
(Credit: SCU)
The researchers note that there was an unknown object or objects tracked on radar a few minutes prior to the DHC-8’s take off, but it is not known for certain that this was the same object that was later caught on video. The unidentified radar strikes were just off the shore to the north and northwest of the airport and lasted about 16 minutes from 8:58 pm to 9:14 pm.
When reading the times, the radar data is presented in a different time zone than the local times. The researchers explained this on their website: “Aviation times reflect Zulu time which corresponds to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). The video displays the Zulu time April 26th at 1:22 AM at the top left of the initial frames. Converting this Zulu time to Puerto Rico’s local time gives April 25th at 9:22 PM. Puerto Rico uses Atlantic Standard Time and does not use daylight savings time.”
Radar data showing the flight path of the DHC-8 and the unknown radar hits between 8:58 pm and 9:14 pm.
(Credit: SCU)
The research group also thoroughly analyzed the video to determine the nature of the object in the film. They consulted thermal imaging experts to determine the capabilities of the system used for the filming, and broke the film down frame by frame to determine the object’s approximate size, speed, temperature and flight path.
The video (seen at the top of the story) is just under 4 minutes long, but the unknown object was tracked for about 2 1/2 of those minutes. Although it was difficult for the group to calculate the exact location of the object on the first half of its flight, they are confident of its position in the second half.
They have determined that the object came in from the ocean, from the north or northwest of the airport’s airstrip, and then flew over the airstrip, then turned back to the north and headed back out into the ocean.
Estimated flight path of the unknown object. The thinner lines estimate possible paths of the object in the first part of its flight. The thicker line shows the path the researchers believe is most likely. The researchers are more confident of the location of the object during the second half of its flight. This data corresponds with what the SCU researchers found.
(Credit: SCU)
During this time the DHC-8 was circling the airport. As can be seen in the map created by the researchers, the aircraft was moving along the shore, turning to the south, and eventually lost site of the object over the ocean as they continued south.
The flight path of the DHC-8 during the filming of the unknown object posted on Reddit by an anonymous user. This path was calculated using the data in the video. It is marked “heli,” because the Reddit user believed the aircraft to be a helicopter and was unaware it was a DHC-8.
The report states: “The object was between three to five feet in length and its speed varied between approximately 40 mph to 120 mph. Its median speed was roughly 80 mph.”
The report goes on to note that an interesting characteristic at the end of the flight was when it apparently submerged into the ocean, traveled for over half a mile, and then flew back out.
According to the report: “Its speed through the water reached a high of 95 mph and average 82.8 mph.”
The unknown object returning to the ocean.
One suggestion has been that the object was merely a balloon. However, the researchers reject this idea for several reasons. They say the wind speeds at the time were 8 to 13 mph at ground level and 12 to 18 mph at 400 to 3200 feet. This means the object was moving too fast to be carried by wind currents. It also changed directions from heading south back to the north, and it went underwater with minimal loss of speed.
Another possibility is that the object was actually a bird. The object appears dark on the screen, and for this type of thermal imaging that would mean it was warmer than the ambient air. This is how a bird would appear. However, the researchers note that the object was moving much too fast to be a bird. They note that peregrine falcons, which do occasionally visit Puerto Rico, have an average horizontal speed of 40 to 56 mph, and a maximum of 65 to 69 mph.
The researchers also examined the possibility that the object was a drone. Their research did discover that the Navy is working on a drone that can fly through the air and dive into the ocean and become a submarine. It is called a “Flimmer.”
They found that current Flimmer drones have not been tested underwater and have an airspeed of 68 mph. They also noted that the fastest known underwater battery powered torpedo travels at 50 mph.
The researchers do acknowledge that it could be possible that the Navy is secretly testing a Flimmer drone that is much more advanced. However, they question why the military would so recklessly test it over a civilian area and airport runways.
In conclusion they state: “There is no explanation for an object capable of traveling under water at over 90 mph with minimal impact as it enters the water, through the air at 120 mph at low altitude through a residential area without navigational lights, and finally to be capable of splitting into two separate objects. No bird, no balloon, no aircraft, and no known drones have that capability.”
A still image from the video just after the object apparently split into two separate objects.
They do not profess to know what the object was, and they welcome “reasonable” suggestions.
However, as to be expected, there are those who have suggested that “they know” the object is extraterrestrial in nature, and at least one of those suggestions has come from an anonymous source who has intimate knowledge of this event.
An anonymous letter was sent to one of the researchers that is very similar to one that was sent to John Greenewald, owner of the website TheBlackVault.com. The only thing Greenewald knew about the video was related to a low resolution copy that was leaked to a Puerto Rican UFO researcher. Many assumed the video was taken from a helicopter.
The letter references the exact type of thermal system and aircraft that was used to capture the video. The message was accompanied by a high resolution version of the thermal video, which was then posted on YouTube by Greenewald. The anonymous letter states: “Alien technology is no doubt under the ocean near Puerto Rico!”
Is alien technology being demonstrated in this video? This careful report, which the researchers say took over 1000 man hours to complete, indicates that whatever took place, it is certainly unusual. The entire report is 161 pages long, and thoroughly explains their work, and how they came to the conclusions they did.
The report on the Puerto Rico incident can be found at ExploreSCU.org. Click the image to go to the site.
Even if the report had come to a mundane conclusion, the effort put into the investigation is remarkable. However, the fact that they could not determine what the object was, and have determined that it displayed characteristics that cannot be explained, makes the report remarkable.
Robert Powell, a retired engineer who worked in the semiconductor industry, who helped author the research paper, says although they have finally released their report, “work on this video will continue.”
Powell, Beall, Chaviano, and the rest of the researchers working on the report posted a high resolution version of the video, their report, and an animation of the radar data they obtained on a website called the Scientific Coalition for Ufology.
Powell says they have reached out to other scientific organizations that have shown an interest in the UFO phenomenon, including 3AF Sigma2, a group that is part of the French National Aeronautical and Astronautical Association. The French scientists have agreed to review their work and provide input.
Powell says, “We hope that this report will generate ideas and thoughts from other scientists that may provide more insight into the characteristics of the object seen in the video.”
To download the report, view the video, and find out more about the investigation, visit: ExploreSCU.org.
Don Schmitt has been one of the primary investigators of the alleged crash of a UFO in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. He and his colleagues have tracked down hundreds of witnesses who claim to have information about what happened. When putting together the Roswell UFO crash issue of Open Minds Magazine in 2011, we asked Don to write us an article on the best evidence that an actual pilot of the alleged spacecraft survived. The following is the article he provided us for the magazine.
Ever since the Roswell crash of a flying saucer with “little men” inside, one specific rumor has persisted: that one of those “little men” actually managed to survive the ordeal. For most of the years since the 1947 Roswell crash and the subsequent weather balloon explanation, stories about mysterious bodies associated with the crash remained, but the very notion that Earth was indeed the host to a living extraterrestrial visitor was beyond the pale of belief. But, the question remained: Did an extraterrestrial survive that ill-fated night?
Eye-Witnesses’ Accounts of the Surviving Alien
Dan Dwyer
In 1947, Frankie Dwyer Rowe, a twelve-year-old girl, witnessed her father being threatened and warned by the military authorities for what he saw at the Roswell crash site. Her father, now deceased, was a crew chief for the Roswell Fire Department at the time of the incident. When the call came into the fire station that there had been an airship crash north of town, Dan Dwyer and Lee Reeves were dispatched with the station’s “tanker” (a pickup truck with a large cylindrical water tank in the back) to the crash site. The Chavez County sheriff and a couple of his deputies were also following up the rear in fast pursuit. Arriving just before the military would secure the scene, Dwyer and Reeves witnessed something totally unexpected. It wasn’t an airplane at all, but an egg-shaped vessel of some sort that they did not recognize.
And the bodies! Dwyer could see three diminutive humanoid beings lying in the lee of the craft. With his focus riveted on the craft and the bodies on the ground, Dwyer noticed a movement out of the corner of his eye. There, walking in front of him, seemingly from out of nowhere, was something right out of a science fiction novel. According to the fireman, it was about the size of a ten-year-old child, with grayish skin, no hair, and a large head and eyes. Within moments the roar of approaching vehicles could be heard as the military finally took charge of the entire affair. The two firemen were escorted away from the immediate area and warned of the consequences if they should ever speak of the incident. To further demonstrate the seriousness of what was witnessed, Dwyer and his family were paid a visit by military police that very evening at their home. Dwyer and his wife were physically threatened and were told that authorities would kill their children should they utter a word about what was witnessed earlier that day.
Roswell fireman Dan Dwyer (left) and his crew in the mid-1950s.
Credit: Don Schmitt
George Wilcox
The Roswell incident left an impact on all those involved, especially then-Roswell sheriff, George Wilcox. Just before Wilcox’s widow Inez passed away, she related a story to her granddaughter Barbara, who since passed on the story: “The event shocked [George]. He never wanted to be sheriff again after that. My grandmother said, ‘Don’t tell anybody. When the incident happened, the military police came to the jailhouse and told George and I that if we ever told anything about the incident, not only would we be killed, but our entire family would be killed!”’ Barbara adds, “They called my grandfather, and someone came and told him about the crash. He went out there to the site; there was a big burned area, and he saw debris. There were four space beings. Their heads were large. They wore suits like silk. One of the ‘little men’ was alive.” Inez Wilcox reiterated to Barbara that her and George took the threats very seriously and kept the information from the family.
Sergeant Homer G. Rowlette
Sergeant Homer Rowlette in 1947. Gave a death bed confession of being part of the clean-up crew.
Credit: U.S. Army/Don Schmitt
Sergeant Homer G. Rowlette, Jr., was a member of the 603rd Air Engineering Squadron at the RAAF in 1947. He was a career military man and retired as an NCO after twenty-six years of dedicated service to his country. Before passing away in March 1988, he finally conveyed to his son, Larry the following startling information about his involvement with the “crash of the flying saucer.” Rowlette was part of a cleanup detail sent to the crash site north of Roswell. Larry was told that his father had seen everything. He handled the “memory material,” which according to Homer, was “thin foil that kept its shape.” If that wasn’t enough, he described the actual ship, which was “somewhat circular.” He also caught his son completely by surprise when he announced, “I saw three little people. They had large heads and at least one was alive!”
Master Sergeant Harry Telesco
Corroboration of Rowlette’s story has come from another member of the same squadron also stationed at Roswell at that time. Master Sergeant Harry Telesco had already passed away, when I located and contacted his family in 2007. According to his daughter, her late father had spoken many years ago of being at the crash site north of town and seeing the strange wreckage and little bodies there. He also testified that he had seen one that was still alive.
Richard Loveridge
In 1947, Richard Loveridge worked as a mechanical engineer for the Boeing Aircraft Company and was part of their crash-investigation team. When information came in about the crash of an aircraft outside of Roswell, Loveridge drove to the area believing it was one of their planes. It would not be until the last year of his life in 1993 that he would finally confess to his family about the true nature of the alleged “plane” crash. The Boeing crash investigator admitted that he “saw everything.” He saw the wreckage, which was not from a conventional aircraft, as well as three small, deceased “entities” and one that was still alive. Loveridge described them as “child-size” and “grayish” in color. He refused to elaborate any further to his family: “Don’t ask me any more about this. They can hurt you.”
Ervin Boyd
Ervin Boyd worked as a B-29 mechanic at the Roswell Army Airfield (RAAF) in 1947; he worked specifically in Hangar P3, which would later be known as Building 84. On the particular day in question, Boyd was taking a cigarette break on what he called a “hot summer day,” and the doors of the hangar were open on both ends of the building. As soon as he stepped outside the hangar doors, he observed a number of men and vehicles swarming towards the building. Startled by the situation, he quickly noticed that some of the men were carrying what he first thought was the body of a child. “Why didn’t they take it to the hospital?” he asked himself. As they passed by him, he was shocked to see that it was something else.
“It was child-size, four feet, maybe a little more, and a head that was larger than one on a normal body. The eyes were walnut-shaped and also larger than normal. From my angle, it didn’t look like it had much of a nose. The arms were a bit longer too, and the skin was ashy, gray and kind of scaly. I believe it was still alive.”
Suddenly, a number of officers grabbed Boyd and rushed him away from the area and started to get physically rough with him. One of them sternly stated, “Mr. Boyd, you didn’t see anything.” But, the civilian persisted. Finally, he was warned that if he ever said one more word, not only would he lose his job, but the lives of his wife and children would be at stake. It would not be until he suffered a stroke twenty-four years later that he would finally break his silence with his family.
Army Roswell clean up crews from the Roswell movie.
Credit: Paul Davies
Joseph Montoya
That same afternoon, Monday, July 7, 1947, New Mexico’s newly elected thirty-two-year-old lieutenant governor, Joseph Montoya, was in Roswell. It is not entirely clear how the politician came to be on the base at the RAAF on the exact day as some of the bodies, including the possible survivor from the crash. One possible scenario is that he was there on Independence Day weekend for the dedication of a new plane, and after the ceremony he was escorted over to the B-29 hangar just as the first military vehicles were bearing down with their “out-of-this-world” cargo.
Montoya would confide to close associates that he had seen “four little men.” He described how small they were, along with the stunning fact that “one was alive!” Montoya painted the beings as, “short, only coming up to my chest. [They were] skinny with big eyes shaped like tear-drops. [The] mouth was real small, like a knife-cut across a piece of wood, and they had large heads.”
Next, he described the scene inside the hangar. Each of the little men, including the one that was alive, was stretched out on a table brought over from the mess hall and set up for that purpose. “I knew that one was alive because I could hear it moaning.” Montoya said that it was moving, with its knee bent and rocking back and forth
After a frantic exit from the hangar, Montoya was picked up and driven from the base by associates. Montoya would always warn that “It’s too dangerous to talk about.” Even years later, he would continue to caution that “the government will get you.”
“Eli” Benjamin
Private first class Eli Benjamin in 1947. He escorted the bodies from hanger P-3 to the RAAF base hospital.
Credit: U.S. Army/Don Schmitt
Another man who himself admitsto having seen bodies was Elias “Eli” Benjamin (a pseudonym).His wife told me much about the incident, but it would be several years before Eli would tell me himself. As a retired career U.S. Air Force man, Benjamin feared for his pension—and still does—if he ever talked about Roswell. Benjamin and his wife had come to the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell in 2002 to see the exhibits. Against her husband’s wishes, Mrs. Benjamin stopped into the museum director’s office to tell someone about her husband. After hearing Mrs. Benjamin’s story, especially the part about bodies and the hospital, Julie Shuster, the museum director, felt that a private interview with Mr. Benjamin was warranted. It was soon apparent, however, that there was a major problem: Mr. Benjamin was nowhere to be found. He had left the building, when he observed his wife and the director looking around for him—he was a reluctant witness, to put it mildly.
Since that day, I have managed to track down the former member of the 390th Air Service Squadron and meet with him half a dozen times to try to gain his confidence. In the process, I learned that Benjamin’s main fear, similar to so many others who were and are reluctant Roswell witnesses, was his belief that he, as a retired air force veteran, might lose his pension if he said anything about those long-ago events. I assured Benjamin that I knew of no instances whatsoever of someone losing his pension for talking about Roswell. Besides, the secretary of the air force issued a proclamation in 1994 that absolved anyone with knowledge about the Roswell incident who believed that they were still subject to security or secrecy oaths regarding the matter. The other thing I noticed was that Benjamin was still deeply moved, if not troubled, by what he witnessed back in 1947, and he broke down in tears on several occasions when talking to me about it. His wife also revealed that her husband still has trouble sleeping comfortably and continued to wake up suddenly in the middle of the night, shaking. In 2005, the eighty-year-old Eli Benjamin agreed to tell his story.
In July 1947, Eli Benjamin was a private first class with the 390th Air Service Squadron at the Roswell Army Air Field. Possessing a top secret clearance, Private First Class Benjamin was authorized to provide security support for the most highly classified operations of the 509th Bomb Group—the first atomic-bomb wing in the world. In addition to his primary job of guarding the B-29 Bombers, one of his secondary duties was that of a recovery specialist, which involved the grim activities associated with the aftermath of plane crashes.
On the morning of Monday, July 7, 1947, Benjamin walked back to his barracks after a night of guard duty on the flight line followed by breakfast at mess hall. “Something’s going on” he thought to himself, as he stood at attention and saluted the playing of the national anthem and morning flag-raising ritual at the base headquarters on the south end of the esplanade. He knew that the base commander, Colonel William Blanchard, normally held his weekly staff meetings on Tuesday mornings, but on this day, Benjamin thought there were too many staff cars and other vehicles parked in the headquarters parking lot for a regular staff meeting. When Benjamin finally arrived back at his barracks, “Word was given to my squadron to be on the alert for special duty,” he said. Such was life in the 509th and the Strategic Air Command and sleep after his long shift would have to remain a secondary consideration. The word finally found Benjamin: “Benjamin! Get your gun and report to hangar P-3 for guard duty.”
Upon arriving at the B-29 hangar to report to the officer in charge, Benjamin walked into a commotion at the main entrance of the building. A number of military police were trying to restrain the very officer from whom Benjamin was supposed to get his duty instructions. The lieutenant colonel was clearly experiencing an emotional reaction to the situation at hand, which seemed to be the transfer of a number of gurneys over to the base hospital. Another officer quickly pointed to Benjamin and ordered him to complete the assignment.
While in the process, something under one of the sheets covering each litter appeared to be moving. Then, as each of the stretchers was loaded into the back of a waiting ambulance truck, a sheet fell away revealing the grayish face and swollen, hairless head that clearly was not human.
Surviving Roswell alien from the Roswell movie.
Credit: Paul Davies
The military police orders were to deliver the cargo to the base hospital emergency room (Building 317) and remain there until relieved. Once at the medical facility, a half-dozen hospital personnel and men in suits took control of one specific gurney. All eyes were on the covered arrival as they removed the sheet from a being with an over-sized head, which had large, slanted eyes, two holes in place of a nose, and a slit for a mouth. For a number of moments all surrounding the patient just stood staring with mouths agape. It was alive. As the last of the gurneys was wheeled in, Benjamin and the other military police were immediately dismissed, sent back to their squadrons, and sworn to secrecy. They were told the incident never happened.
Sixty-three years after the event, the fog of time prevents Eli Benjamin from recalling the names or faces of the other men assigned to “escort duty” that day. They may well have been from other squadrons on the base or even from other bases brought in from outside (known as augmentation troops) to prevent the comparing of notes later on.
For her part, Mrs. Benjamin confirms her husband’s account of his involvement in the Roswell events of July 1947. She further states that he confided the story to her with the promise that she would never tell anyone else. Eli’s memories of that night—seeing the swollen face and slanted eyes of the “species”—remain with, and haunt, him to this day.
Roy Musser
Roy Musser happened to be at the base that afternoon. He was a civilian contractor painting part of the hospital. Working in the rear, where the loading dock area was located, he claimed to have seen the arrival of the small bodies and the “creature.” Apparently uninjured, he observed it walking and said it looked like a “very slender child.”
The military warned Musser that he was never to mention what he had seen to anyone or he and his family would be in jeopardy. Musser kept quiet for a number of years before relating the experience to fireman Dan Dwyer.
Miriam “Andrea” Bush
All military hospital administrators had their own secretary. In the case of Lieutenant Colonel Harold M. Warne, his was a twenty-seven-year-old civilian woman named Miriam “Andrea” Bush. Miriam was a graduate of New Mexico State College at Las Cruces, where she had majored in business administration. She also had a top security job at the base hospital. But none of her prior experiences prepared her for what she was about to see.
As she was performing routine duties at the hospital, Dr. Warne took her by the arm and quietly mentioned that she should accompany him to the examination room. Upon entering, she was immediately surprised to observe a number of bodies on gurneys in the middle of the room. At first she thought they were children based on their size. Their skin was grayish to brown in tone, and white linens covered most of each body. But the heads were too large to be children and had large staring eyes. All at once, one of them moved. Miriam would never forget what she had seen that day in Roswell.
Miriam Bush and her sister-in-law Pat Bush in the 1980s. Miriam claims to have seen the alien bodies at the RAAF base hospital.
Credit: Don Schmitt
What Became of the Surviving Alien?
To date there remains no eyewitness testimony as to what ultimately became of the survivor and how it was transported from Roswell. There is reliable information, however, that the being did spend some time at Wright Patterson Air Force Base and was still there up to nine months later in 1948.
Wright Field, 1947, where the survivor from Roswell was reportedly taken for study.
Credit: U.S. Army/Don Schmitt
While on his deathbed in 1997, Lieutenant Colonel Marion Magruder, a highly decorated World War II flying ace, swore to his five sons that, while with the War College, he was assigned to Wright Patterson Air Force Base in April 1948 and allowed to briefly see the “live alien” at that time. He and the others in his company were instructed that the being was recovered from the crash in Roswell just the year before. His description was similar to all the other eye-witnesses. He emphasized that there was no question that it “came from another planet.”
As one of the personnel at the RAAF once remarked, “They sure weren’t from Texas.” And in the same vein, they weren’t from Japan, Germany, or anywhere else on Earth. That is one issue all of the witnesses remain unanimous on.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
Clouds of Venus Could Be Hospitable for Some Forms of Life, New Research Suggests
Clouds of Venus Could Be Hospitable for Some Forms of Life, New Research Suggests
Planetary scientists have long speculated about the potential habitability of Venus, not at its hot surface, but in the cloud layers located at 48-60 km altitudes, where temperatures match those found on Earth’s surface. However, the prevailing belief has been that the Venusian clouds cannot support life due to the cloud chemical composition of concentrated sulfuric acid — a highly aggressive solvent. In a new study, chemists studied 20 biogenic amino acids at the range of Venus’ cloud sulfuric acid concentrations and temperatures. The researchers found 19 of the biogenic amino acids they tested are either unreactive or chemically modified in the side chain only, after 4 weeks. Their major finding is that the amino acid backbone remains intact in concentrated sulfuric acid.
This composite image, taken by JAXA’s Akatsuki spacecraft, shows Venus. Image credit: JAXA / ISAS / DARTS / Damia Bouic.
“What is absolutely surprising is that concentrated sulfuric acid is not a solvent that is universally hostile to organic chemistry,” said Dr. Janusz Petkowski, a researcher at MIT.
“We are finding that building blocks of life on Earth are stable in sulfuric acid, and this is very intriguing for the idea of the possibility of life on Venus,” added MIT Professor Sara Seager.
“It doesn’t mean that life there will be the same as here. In fact, we know it can’t be. But this work advances the notion that Venus’ clouds could support complex chemicals needed for life.”
The search for life in Venus’ clouds has gained momentum in recent years, spurred in part by a controversial detection of phosphine — a molecule that is considered to be one signature of life — in the planet’s atmosphere.
While that detection remains under debate, the news has reinvigorated an old question: Could Earth’s sister planet actually host life?
In search of an answer, scientists are planning several missions to Venus, including the first largely privately funded mission to the planet, backed by California-based launch company Rocket Lab.
That mission, on which Professor Seager is the science principal investigator, aims to send a spacecraft through the planet’s clouds to analyze their chemistry for signs of organic molecules.
Ahead of the mission’s January 2025 launch, Professor Seager and her colleagues have been testing various molecules in concentrated sulfuric acid to see what fragments of life on Earth might also be stable in Venus’ clouds, which are estimated to be orders of magnitude more acidic than the most acidic places on Earth.
“People have this perception that concentrated sulfuric acid is an extremely aggressive solvent that will chop everything to pieces. But we are finding this is not necessarily true,” Dr. Petkowski said.
In fact, the authors have previously shown that complex organic molecules such as some fatty acids and nucleic acids remain surprisingly stable in sulfuric acid.
They are careful to emphasize, as they do in their current paper, that complex organic chemistry is of course not life, but there is no life without it.
In other words, if certain molecules can persist in sulfuric acid, then perhaps the highly acidic clouds of Venus are habitable, if not necessarily inhabited.
In the new study, the researchers turned their focus on 20 biogenic amino acids — those amino acids that are essential to all life on Earth.
They dissolved each type of amino acid in vials of sulfuric acid mixed with water, at concentrations of 81 and 98%, which represent the range that exists in Venus’ clouds.
They then used the nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer to analyze the structure of amino acids in sulfuric acid.
After analyzing each vial several times over four weeks, they found that the basic molecular structure, or ‘backbone’ in 19 of the 20 amino acids remained stable and unchanged, even in highly acidic conditions.
“Just showing that this backbone is stable in sulfuric acid doesn’t mean there is life on Venus,” said Dr. Maxwell Seager, a researcher at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
“But if we had shown that this backbone was compromised, then there would be no chance of life as we know it.”
The study was published this week in the journal Astrobiology.
Maxwell D. Seager et al. Stability of 20 Biogenic Amino Acids in Concentrated Sulfuric Acid: Implications for the Habitability of Venus’ Clouds. Astrobiology, published online March 18, 2024; doi: 10.1089/ast.2023.0082
Hi-speed camera caught UFO flying over Spirit Mountain near Las Vegas
Hi-speed camera caught UFO flying over Spirit Mountain near Las Vegas
Paranormal researcher and author Joshua P. Warren has employed cutting-edge technology to unveil a series of mysterious aerial phenomena over Spring Valley in Las Vegas and Spirit Mountain, situated south of the city. Using a high-speed camera capable of capturing 1000 frames per second, Warren has captured startling footage of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) in broad daylight.
High-speed photography offers a unique glimpse into the behavior of fast-moving entities, such as bullets, by slowing down their motion to a visible pace imperceptible to the naked eye.
On April 20, 2023, at approximately 1:30 pm, Warren recorded his initial encounter. The footage reveals a swift, spherical object streaking across the sky, followed by the sudden ejection of a secondary object and an abrupt 90-degree turn, all within a fraction of a second. Concurrently, a third, cylindrical entity traverses the airspace, adding to the enigma.
Returning to the field on March 12, 2024, Warren stationed his high-speed camera at Spirit Mountain, located about 80 miles south of Las Vegas. Multiple instances were captured depicting a luminous, pulsating entity darting through the atmosphere above the mountain.
Highlighting the significance of the captured footage, Warren dismisses conventional explanations such as insects, dust, optical illusions, or conventional aircraft, attributing the observed maneuvers to genuine UAPs.
Citizen Scientists working on NASA's Active Asteroids Project have discovered 15 active asteroids and one Centaur. But it required 8,000 people poring over 430,000 images to find them. Image Credit: Henry Hsieh
Nature often defies our simple explanations. Take comets and asteroids, for example. Comets are icy and have tails; asteroids are rocky and don’t have tails. But it might not be quite so simple, according to new research.
That nice, clean definition took a hit in 1996 when a pair of astronomers discovered that what was thought to be a main-belt comet was actually an asteroid. The object is named 7968 Elst–Pizarro after the two scientists. It displayed a comet-like dust tail at perihelion.
These images from the La Silla Observatory show the active asteroid 7968 Elst–Pizarro. Its tail is clearly visible. Image Credit: By ESO – https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso9637a/, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26500568
7968 Elst-Pizarro was classified as a main-belt comet (MBC) because it orbits within the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It’s still called an MBC sometimes. However, its icy component that sublimates into a vapour trail likely comes from a small surface crater with volatiles in it rather than from a homogenous ice component. That’s why it’s called an active asteroid.
Active asteroids are unusual and rare objects. To understand them and their place in the Solar System’s history, scientists want to find more of them. That led to the creation of NASA’s Active Asteroids Project.
Now, the Active Asteroids Project has announced the discovery of 15 new active asteroids. These findings are in a new paper published in The Astronomical Journal. It’s titled “The Active Asteroids Citizen Science Program: Overview and First Results,” and the lead author is Colin Chandler from the Dept. of Astronomy & the DiRAC Institute at the University of Washington in Seattle. Among the co-authors are nine volunteer citizen scientists.
“For an amateur astronomer like me, it’s a dream come true,” said volunteer Virgilio Gonano from Udine, Italy. “Congratulations to all the staff and the friends that also check the images!”
“Active objects are rare in large part because they are difficult to identify, so we ask volunteers to assist us in searching for active bodies in our collection of millions of images of known minor planets,” the authors of the paper write. Active asteroids aren’t the only objects they’re trying to find. There are several other types.
Centaurs are small Solar System bodies that orbit between Neptune and Jupiter. Centaurs have crossed the orbits of one or more giant planets, making their orbits unstable. They have traits in common with both comets and asteroids, and about 30 of them have dust-like comas. These are the active ones.
The Active Asteroid Project is also trying to identify active quasi-Hilda asteroids (QHAs). QHAs are beyond the asteroid belt but within Jupiter’s orbit. Astronomers have discovered about 3000 of them, and about 15 of them have tails of gas and dust.
Active asteroids have asteroid-like orbits but have tails or comae like comets do.Image Credit: Mark Garlick/SPL
The Project also hopes to identify Jupiter family comets (JFCs.) JFCs are comets with very short orbital periods of less than 20 years. They’re contained within Jupiter’s orbit but may be captured Kuiper Belt Objects. They likely originated from collisions between objects in the Kuiper Belt and then were captured by Jupiter.
All of these objects have something to tell us about how the Solar System formed. Beyond that, they can help unravel the mystery of Earth’s water. There’s another, more forward-thinking reason for wanting to find these active objects. Their water can be split into hydrogen for rocket fuel and oxygen for respiration in future missions, though that’s so far in the future it’s esoteric.
This image shows one of the active asteroids found by citizen scientists involved with the Active Asteroid project. It’s named 2015 VA108, and the green arrow highlights the asteroid and its tail. Image Credit: Colin Orion Chandler (University of Washington)
The commitment of the citizens taking part is admirable. Since the effort launched on August 31st, 2021, about 8300 volunteers have taken part. Collectively, they’ve examined about 430,000 images.
“I have been a member of the Active Asteroids team since its first batch of data,” said volunteer Tiffany Shaw-Diaz from Dayton, Ohio. “And to say that this project has become a significant part of my life is an understatement. I look forward to classifying subjects each day, as long as time or health permits, and I am beyond honoured to work with such esteemed scientists on a regular basis.”
The images in the project all come from the Dark Energy Camera (DECam.) DECam is a high-performance camera with a wide field of view that’s mounted on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory.
The images are filtered by query across multiple databases and image archives before they’re placed in front of the eyes of the citizen scientists. This includes the Minor Planet Center (MPC), the JPL Small-Body Database, the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre, and the National Optical and Infrared Laboratory (NOIRLab) AstroArchive. They also consider the observing telescope’s field-of-view, the objects’ coordinates and semi-major access, and multiple other factors.
The Project then uses scripts to download the desired data from astronomical archives. Then, they generate uniform DECam thumbnail images of each object. This results in millions of images of potential active asteroids or similar objects. There’s no possible way there are enough professional astronomers to handle this much work. So, the images are grouped up into “subject sets” and sent to the citizen scientists who put the effort in and make the project feasible.
Before the volunteers work with any real images, they’re trained on a set of images of objects that display some activity, like a tail or a coma. Then, the participants give them a score from zero (unidentifiable/missing;) to 9 (definitely active, overwhelming activity indicators.) “All training images in Active Asteroids are derived from those images to which we applied a score of ?5; our minimum threshold, for which we consider the activity to be highly likely,” the authors explain.
In each image, a green reticle identifies the object of interest. The citizen scientists are asked a fairly straightforward question: do they see activity (i.e., a tail or coma) coming from the central object?
This is one of the DECam thumbnail images in the project. It shows the active asteroid (62412) 2000 SY178. In the project’s analysis system, this object received a score of 0.35, below the threshold of 0.473 needed to classify it as an active object. Image Credit: Chandler et al. 2024/Active Asteroid Project.
Over time, most citizen scientists became more productive. But not always.
This figure from the study shows the number of images classified through time by 10 randomly selected participants, numbered from 0 to 9. Most got better over time, though number 7 seemed to buck that trend. Image Credit: Chandler et al. 2024/Active Asteroid Project.
Each subject set requires a certain amount of preparation by the professional astronomers. That has to be balanced by the work and time it takes a citizen scientist to go through it. After some experimenting, the project settled on sets of about 22,000 images, which took a citizen participant about four to eight weeks to go through.
The project takes place on the Zooniverse platform, home to many other citizen science projects. One of the benefits of that platform is that the citizen participants and the professional astronomers can talk with one another on the “Talk” discussion boards on Zooniverse. “Surprisingly, we have made discoveries that first come to light on the Talk pages, well before the subject set was fully retired,” the authors of the paper write.
This is just the first data release from the project. Finding 15 active asteroids and one Centaur is just the beginning. In fact, the project has produced more than 20 discoveries, resulting in multiple publications. And they’re not done.
They intend to continue working and improving their methods. The Project is also looking ahead to the Vera Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), which will produce an enormous number of images for evaluation.
If you’re interested in participating, visit the project website.
“The Active Asteroids project is ongoing and can be accessed through the project website,” the authors write. “Participation is easy and intuitive and can take as little as a few minutes to contribute.”
One Impact on Mars Produced More than Two Billion Secondary Craters
There are plenty of craters on Mars, especially when compared to Earth. That is primarily thanks to the lack of weathering forces and strong plate tectonics that disrupt the formations of such impacts on our home planet. However, not all impact craters on Mars are directly caused by asteroid impacts. Many of them are caused by the ejecta from an asteroid impact falling back to the planet. One recent study showed how impactful this can be – it concludes that a single large impact crater on Mars created over two billion other smaller craters up to almost 2000 km away.
The study, released at the 55th annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas, focuses on a crater called Corinto. It’s located in Elysium Planitia, only about 17 degrees north of the Red Planet’s equator. It’s a relatively young crater by Martian standards, with the scientists’ best estimate of its age being around 2.34 million years ago. It’s pretty massive for being that young, though, as the average time between impacts of its size is around 3 million years. As such, the scientists think it might be the most recent crater of its size on Mars.
That’s not why it’s interesting, though. It has an extensive “ray system”. That means that a significant amount of ejecta was cast out from the impact site and landed elsewhere on the planet, creating “rays” from the central impact point that can be seen on a map of the planet’s surface even today.
A video from JHU APL shows the details of how we understand how impact craters are made. Credit – JHU APl YouTube Channel
Corinto crater is about 14 km in diameter and 1 km deep. Its interior bowl is pock-marked with other, smaller craters that happened its impact. Indications suggest it was full of water ice when it was hit, as there appeared to be some degassing of the superheated ice after the impact. Calculations point to a relatively steep impact angle of about 30-45 degrees from straight on – and the impactor appeared to be coming from the north.
As a result, much of the ejecta impact field lies to the south, especially the southwest, of the crater. While some secondary ejecta craters are sitting to the north of the main one, it appears clear that the impactor’s angle was significant enough to push most ejecta to the south.
Tracking the path of this ejecta a few million years later isn’t easy. Scientists used data collected by HiRISE and the Context Camera (CTX) on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and analyzed characteristics of smaller craters surrounding the main Corinto crater. In particular, they looked for craters that looked like they would be caused by ejecta rather than by an interplanetary impactor.
Graphical Depiction of the Facies of Maritan craters around Corinto. Credit – Golombek et al.
They grouped the different types of ejecta craters they found into five different “facies,” primarily focused on how far away they were from the main crater. Each facies has its distinct characteristics. For example, Facies 0, the one closest to the main crater, are semi-circular, don’t appear to have any ejecta, or have very distinct rims. On the other hand, Facies 3 craters are long and narrow rather than semi-circular (hinting that something rolled through to create them) and have shown up as very bright in the MRO images.
Two main findings from the paper will probably turn the most heads. The scientists found that there are close to 2 billion secondary impact craters larger than 10 meters caused by the ejecta from Corinto. And those secondary craters appear up to 1850 km away. That would make it, by far, the most impactful (pun intended) of the recent Martian craters in terms of the sheer number and distance of its ejecta.
The paper didn’t go into what that might mean for our larger understanding of these processes on the red planet, nor what future work might be completed – the version reviewed for this article was only two pages. But, as with most things in science, a new record for something – in this case, distance and amount of secondary impact craters, attracts additional research, so we’ll have to see what if any, future discoveries can be made regarding this interesting Martian crater.
Earth’s Long-Term Habitability Relies on Chemical Cycles. How Can We Better Understand Them?
Biogeochemical cycles move matter around Earth between the atmosphere, the oceans, the lithosphere, and living things. Image Credit: By Alexander Davronov - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=106124364
Earth’s Long-Term Habitability Relies on Chemical Cycles. How Can We Better Understand Them?
We, and all other complex life, require stability to evolve. Planetary conditions needed to be benign and long-lived for creatures like us and our multicellular brethren to appear and to persist. On Earth, chemical cycling provides much of the needed stability.
Chemical cycling between the land, atmosphere, lifeforms, and oceans is enormously complex and difficult to study. Typically, researchers try to isolate one cycle and study it. However, new research is examining Earth’s chemical cycling more holistically to try to understand how the planet has stayed in the ‘sweet spot’ for so long.
Earth has supported complex life for hundreds of millions of years, possibly for more than a billion years. This is extremely rare, as far as we can tell. The vast majority of the exoplanets we’ve discovered are not in their stars’ habitable zones. They have very little chance of hosting any life, let alone complex life.
It’s possible that some planets experience a period of stability for much shorter periods of time than Earth. This may describe Mars. It was warm and wet and could’ve hosted simple life, but the planet lost most of its atmosphere and became uninhabitable. Now it’s cold, dry, and dead.
Earth robustly cycles the chemical elements through different systems and has done so for billions of years. Now, about 4.5 billion years after its formation, life is abundant on our precious planet. Biogeochemical cycles like the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle, and the methane cycle have allowed the planet to sustain its habitability.
“Overall, this work provides a systematic conceptual framework for understanding balance and imbalance in global biogeochemical cycles.”
From “Balance and imbalance in biogeochemical cycles reflect the operation of closed, exchange, and open sets.”
Earth’s carbon cycle plays a dominant role in the climate. As carbon accumulates in the atmosphere, the planet warms. As carbon is sequestered into the mantle, the planet cools. Even though it’s been stable for a long time, research shows that small imbalances can upset the system.
What Kemeny and his co-researchers wanted to do was get back to the basics. They wanted to identify a framework for all the reactions, both large and small, that comprise Earth’s chemical cycles. What’s different in their work is that they didn’t specify how they all worked together, if they worked together, or how much they affected one another.
“Our approach provides a new way to identify the fundamental building blocks of stability in the chemical components of Earth’s climate—the underlying ways in which the climate can be stabilized over geological time due to the movement of elements across the ocean, atmosphere, and rock reservoirs,” said Kemeny.
Earth’s long-lasting habitability created the conditions for complex life like us to appear. That habitability is dependent on the complex interplay of chemistry between the ocean, atmosphere and land. This image, captured from the International Space Station 400km above Earth’s surface, shows our planet’s thin atmosphere. Image Credit: NASA
The researchers describe their effort as ‘agnostic’ and explain that it creates “… a systematic and simplified conceptual framework for understanding the function and evolution of global biogeochemical cycles.” They call it agnostic because it doesn’t specify the relationship between environmental conditions and the strength of biogeochemical processes. “By remaining agnostic to the relationships between environmental conditions and the intensity of biogeochemical processes, we sought to recognize and systematize patterns that underly the stability of major element cycles,” Kemeny explains on his website.
“This is an elegant, simplified way to think about an enormous problem, which organizes a lot of previous research on elemental cycles into packages of chemical reactions that can be balanced and understood,” said University of Chicago Assistant Professor Clara Blättler, senior author of the paper.
The complexity of Earth’s cycles makes them difficult to study. They work on long geological timescales, which puts us at a disadvantage. The planet’s carbon cycle illustrates this.
The movement of carbon plays an important role in regulating the planet’s climate. When carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere, the atmosphere traps more heat, which warms up the oceans. However, carbon also creates a weak acid called carbonic acid that breaks rocks down faster. The carbon eventually finds its way to the ocean floor and becomes sequestered in rock. Carbon can also spend some time as part of living things before being sequestered into rock or fossil fuels. This sequestration of carbon eventually cools the planet but takes millions of years. Carbon is eventually returned to the atmosphere by volcanoes and by the burning of fossil fuels.
The Carbon cycle plays a dominant role in moderating Earth’s climate, but other chemical cycles influence it. Image Credit: U.S. DOE, Biological and Environmental Research Information System.
Trying to understand the carbon cycle is made more difficult by its interaction with other cycles. The Earth’s cycles also aren’t static. They change over time, adding to the complexity. There are also missing pieces from the large puzzle of Earth’s cycles. Researchers are forced to make assumptions to fill in the blanks.
Kemeny devotes much of his time to understanding Earth’s cycles, and he and his colleagues hope that their approach can yield better results. “Models of global element cycles seek to understand how biogeochemical processes and environmental conditions interact to sustain planetary habitability,” Kemeny writes on his website. “However, outcomes from such models often reflect specific interpretations of geochemical archives.”
The researchers think their approach may help overcome the obstacles to understanding Earth’s cycles. They employed a mathematical analysis to develop a framework identifying all of the major and minor cycles that contribute to Earth’s long-term habitability by balancing the carbon cycle.
The result was a new, more holistic way to look at Earth. The climate can be represented by a large set of interconnected chemical equations. These equations must balance over certain time periods to keep the carbon cycle stable and the Earth habitable.
The Sulphur Cycle is just one of Earth’s important cycles. It moves sulphur between rocks, water, and living things. Kemeny and his colleagues are trying to understand all of Earth’s cycles holistically rather than in isolation. Image Credit: By Bantle – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20411832
Kemeny highlights one episode in Earth’s climate history to illustrate the point. The Cenozoic era began about 65.5 million years ago and is the era we live in now. The Cenozoic is a long-term cooling trend in Earth’s history, and the period that preceded it was a greenhouse climate. Kemeny and his colleagues say that their holistic approach can open a window into how the climate changed.
“For example, say that you are considering a hypothesis for why the climate changed in the past – such as the major cooling of the last 65 million years,” Kemeny said. “You can take this framework and use it to say: well, if X process increased or decreased, then it should have also caused Y to happen, or would have needed to be balanced by Z, and that you have to account for those outcomes—so with that prediction we can look for evidence for the joint operation of the whole geochemical system.”
Astrobiology and planetary habitability are key topics in space science. With the help of the JWST and other upcoming observatories and telescopes, scientists are getting a look at the atmospheres of distant exoplanets. But it’s a difficult process, made more difficult by our less-than-complete understanding of our own planet’s habitability. Understanding our own planet can help us better understand exoplanets.
But there’s a certain type of joy in understanding Earth for its own sake, and this new holistic approach should grow our understanding.
“We hope it’s a beautiful way to help understand all the chemistries that are involved in making Earth a safe place for life to evolve,” Blättler said.
“Overall, this work provides a systematic conceptual framework for understanding balance and imbalance in global biogeochemical cycles,” the authors conclude.
This New Map of 1.3 Million Quasars Is A Powerful Tool
This figure from the research shows the sky distribution of the new Quaia quasar catalogue in Galactic coordinates and is displayed using a Mollweide projection. The grey region across the center is the Milky Way, a blind spot in the Quaia catalogue. Image Credit: K. Storey-Fisher et al. 2024
This New Map of 1.3 Million Quasars Is A Powerful Tool
Quasars are the brightest objects in the Universe. The most powerful ones are thousands of times more luminous than entire galaxies. They’re the visible part of a supermassive black hole (SMBH) at the center of a galaxy. The intense light comes from gas drawn toward the black hole, emitting light across several wavelengths as it heats up.
But quasars are more than just bright ancient objects. They have something important to show us about the dark matter.
Large galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centers. Even those only casually familiar with space know that black holes can suck everything in, even light. But as black holes draw nearby gas towards themselves, the gas doesn’t all go into the hole, past the event horizon and into oblivion. Instead, much of the gas forms a rotating accretion disk around the black hole.
SMBHs aren’t always actively drawing material to them, an act known as ‘feeding.’ But when an SMBH is actively feeding, it’s called an active galactic nucleus (AGN.) When the material in the disk rotates, it heats up. As it heats, it emits different wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation. It can also emit jets.
When astronomers first began to detect this light, they only knew they were seeing objects that emitted radio waves. The name quasar means quasi-stellar radio source. But as time went on astronomers learned more, and the term active galactic nucleus was adopted. The term quasar is still used, but they’re now a sub-class of AGN that are the most luminous AGN.
Quasars inhabit galaxies that are surrounded by enormous haloes of dark matter. Astronomers think there’s a link between the dark matter haloes (DMH) and the quasars. The DMH may direct more matter toward the center of the galaxy, feeding the SMBH and igniting a quasar, and even aiding the formation of more massive galaxies.
Artist rendering of the dark matter halo surrounding our galaxy. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada
A team of researchers has created a new catalogue of quasars that will be a powerful tool for probing quasars, DMHs, and SMBHs. Their results are in a new paper in The Astrophysical Journal titled “Quaia, the Gaia-unWISE Quasar Catalog: An All-sky Spectroscopic Quasar Sample.” The lead author is Kate Storey-Fisher, a postdoctoral researcher at the Donostia International Physics Center in Spain.
“This quasar catalogue is different from all previous catalogues in that it gives us a three-dimensional map of the largest-ever volume of the universe,” said map co-creator David Hogg, a senior research scientist at the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics in New York City and a professor of physics and data science at New York University. “It isn’t the catalogue with the most quasars, and it isn’t the catalogue with the best-quality measurements of quasars, but it is the catalogue with the largest total volume of the universe mapped.”
This infographic helps explain Quaia, the new catalogue of 1.3 million quasars.
Image Credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC; Lucy Reading-Ikkanda/Simons Foundation; K. Storey-Fisher et al. 2024
The fact that the new catalogue captures the largest total volume of the Universe mapped and all the quasars in that space is key to understanding its purpose. It’s not meant as a survey that captures the largest number of quasars. The catalogue is meant to be a tool astrophysicists can use to understand the relationships between quasars, dark matter, black holes, and galaxies.
They call their catalogue Quaia because the data comes from the ESA’s Gaia spacecraft. Gaia’s mission is to map about one billion objects in the Milky Way, mostly stars. And it’s going about its mission with extreme accuracy. But among the multitudes of stars Gaia has mapped is a large number of quasars well beyond the Milky Way. That generated the name “Quaia.”
“We were able to make measurements of how matter clusters together in the early universe that are as precise as some of those from major international survey projects — which is quite remarkable given that we got our data as a ‘bonus’ from the Milky Way–focused Gaia project,” Storey-Fisher says.
Dark matter tends to clump in haloes around galaxies, and studying the distribution of quasars can help explain the distribution of dark matter. In the large scale of the Universe, dark matter is organized as a web, and the catalogue of quasars helps map that web.
The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), a strong piece of evidence for the Big Bang, is also part of this. As the light from the CMB travels toward us through space, the dark matter web’s massive gravitational power bends the light. Scientists can compare the CMB light we receive with the map of quasars and compare the two. The comparisons will them about the relationship between dark matter and quasars and how matter clumps together in the Universe.
Since quasars trace the cosmic web, their distribution gives information about the web that other sources can’t. For example, it can trace the distribution of matter at higher redshifts than galaxies can. And since it’s space-based, it avoids some of the data contamination that other quasar surveys suffer from, such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS.)
This is not the first quasar map/catalogue to be created. There are several others, including one from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.
This figure shows five different quasar maps created by scientists using different data and methodologies. The creators of Quaia say that its redshifts are more accurate than the others, along with other properties.Image Credit: K. Storey-Fisher et al. 2024
As the animation below shows, Quaia is more complete than the SDSS’s DR16Q, the SDSS’s quasar catalogue that accompanied its data release 16.
Though the Gaia mission itself doesn’t generate many of its own headlines, it’s at the foundation of modern space science. Its data is behind lots of published research.
“This quasar catalogue is a great example of how productive astronomical projects are,” says Hogg. “Gaia was designed to measure stars in our own galaxy, but it also found millions of quasars at the same time, which give us a map of the entire universe.”
Now, the new Quaia catalogue is playing a similar role. The data it contains is already being used by other researchers.
“It has been very exciting to see this catalogue spurring so much new science,” Storey-Fisher says. “Researchers around the world are using the quasar map to measure everything from the initial density fluctuations that seeded the cosmic web to the distribution of cosmic voids to the motion of our solar system through the universe.”
Unlocking the Unknown: How Ret. Admiral Gallaudet and Insiders Aim to Reveal UAP Secrets
Unlocking the Unknown: How Ret. Admiral Gallaudet and Insiders Aim to Reveal UAP Secrets
In the intriguing world of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), credible voices play a pivotal role in shaping public understanding and policy direction. Among these voices, Retired US Navy Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet stands out, not only for his distinguished service but for his candid remarks on the ongoing efforts to disclose information on UAPs. Gallaudet’s insights offer a rare glimpse into the complex, often shadowy process of how military and government sectors manage such enigmatic occurrences.
Gallaudet’s conviction stems from personal connections with individuals deeply embedded in “legacy programs” – government initiatives tasked with the retrieval and analysis of UAPs. These programs, which have long operated under wraps, are responsible for investigating crash sites and analyzing data related to UAPs. Gallaudet’s assertion underscores a significant point: the existence of a dedicated, albeit discreet, effort within the government to understand and potentially harness the technologies behind these phenomena.
The retired Rear Admiral’s comments were highlighted in an interview with Kristian Harloff on “The Big Thing” show, where he shed light on the collective endeavor of former intelligence officers, Department of Defense personnel, and government insiders. This coalition, according to Gallaudet, is not a loose assembly of interested parties but a coordinated group working “behind the scenes” to facilitate a controlled disclosure of UAP information.
This strategy of “controlled disclosure” aligns with legislative movements, notably the Schumer-Rounds Amendment (UAP Disclosure Act), which seeks to formalize the process of releasing information about UAPs to the public. The amendment aims to balance the public’s right to know with national security considerations, ensuring that disclosures do not compromise sensitive operations or technologies.
Gallaudet’s revelations are significant for several reasons. First, they confirm the existence of government programs focused on UAPs, lending credence to long-standing rumors and speculations. Second, his comments reveal an active push within the establishment for transparency, indicating a shift towards acknowledging the public’s interest and concerns regarding UAPs. Finally, Gallaudet’s insights hint at the complexity of managing UAP-related information, reflecting the challenges faced by those at the helm of these efforts.
FULL INTERVIEW:
Ret. Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet talks UFO’s, USO’s, Sol Foundation, China threat etc..
As discussions about UAPs move from the fringes to the mainstream, the contributions of individuals like Ret. Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet are invaluable. They not only provide a bridge between the public and the obscure world of government UAP programs but also underscore the importance of handling such profound matters with care, responsibility, and an eye towards the future.
The narrative surrounding UAPs is far from complete, and as efforts for disclosure progress, the insights of insiders like Gallaudet will continue to guide public understanding and policy development. The journey towards transparency is complex, fraught with challenges, but undeniably necessary for advancing our collective knowledge and preparedness for whatever truths lie behind the UAP phenomenon.
The most common and yet interesting question that many people ask is: Are we alone in this universe? The answer has taken a great turn from “Maybe yes” to “Maybe no” in the past few years. There is a long list of credible personalities who never denied the presence of non-human intelligent life among us. Moreover, a few of them are certain that aliens are on Earth. American billionaire Robert Bigelow said something shocking about aliens in November 2017.
According to Robert Bigelow, famous in the aerospace industry for the manufacture of inflatable modules such as those tested out at the International Space Station, there are extraterrestrial beings living among humans. He said that he is “absolutely convinced” aliens live among humans on Earth. During the interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes, reporter Lara Logan asked Bigelow if he believes in aliens. He replied: “I’m absolutely convinced. That’s all there is to it.” He further said: “There has been and is an existing presence, an ET presence.”
He continued: “I spent millions and millions and millions – I probably spent more as an individual than anybody else in the United States has ever spent on this subject.” “You don’t have to go anywhere” to find aliens and they are here right in front of people. Bigelow had his own close encounters but declined to go into detail.
When award-winning journalist George Knapp asked his comment on this interview, he said: “There are different ways to go at this. So one is from a hardware standpoint. The other one is from the presence standpoint, ET presence. And, you know, a lot of people say, well, whether they’re, you know, that they can be among the population, whether they’re hybrids, or there’s some other kind of, really look alike, you know, kind of thing. But so, so you can look at it in different kinds of ways. And, and so, I know of a really good high quality researcher who has fantastic academic credentials and background. And he would be predisposed to the latter, saying that, yeah, it could be among us, you know, but he’s probably on the more extreme, he’s definitely on the more extreme. Others would say, well, we’re safe in saying that there’s hardware, you know, so that’s among us, and hardware kind of context.” (Source)
Skinwalker Ranch, a property located in northeastern Utah has been the subject of alleged paranormal activity, including UFO sightings and other strange occurrences. The ranch gained notoriety in the 1990s when it was purchased by Mr. Bigelow, who funded a number of studies of the phenomena reported at the ranch.
However, the specifics of what has been reported at the ranch and the credibility of those reports have been the subject of much debate and skepticism. Some people believe that the ranch is a hotspot for extraterrestrial activity, while others believe that the reports of strange occurrences at the ranch are the result of hoaxes or misidentifications of natural phenomena.
Bryant “Dragon” Arnold (Chief Security Officer on Skinwalker Ranch), Casey Smith, Erik Bard and Kaleb Bench, from left, check the radiation in a sinkhole pit on Skinwalker Ranch, in a moment from History’s series “The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch.” Image via The Salt Lake Tribune
Following his interview with Mr. Bigelow, Knapp then asked if the entities at Skinwalker Ranch would be investigated through the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies (which he founded in 2020 after his wife passed away). Besides, he wondered that if they are among us, can they also be considered alien? Bigelow said: “Well, if you if you follow the literature and pay attention to a lot of other kinds of sources, they absolutely are.”
Further, Mr. Bigelow shared his personal experiences and losses that prompted his interest in life after death, as well as UFOs. He talked about possible links between consciousness research and UFOs. He also talked about the risks of trying to establish communications with the unknown.
“That’s been mainly what I’ve been doing except for the skinwalker ranch thing for 20 years as the space world has been huge in my life to pursue the legitimate parochial kind of you know using fire engines rockets to get you there. We didn’t expect anything like this to happen and so there this is different. This is the holy grail and is different than the second holy grail. If the second one is ‘Beings’ (E.T.), then the first one: Is there any part of your consciousness that survives your bodily death? That’s a big deal. That’s a huge story. That’s gigantic.”
“Be a little careful about what you wish for. So on the face of it, communication sounds great and that by the way has been tried forever ever since the oracle of Delphi. I mean you can go back thousands of years and that’s been attempted. So It’s not now you know the last 100 years through electronics and using some kind of electrical apparatus to try to have some kind of communications. And you know communication can be at all different kinds of levels. There might be communication that just causes you an awareness.”
Then Knapp asked him what triggered his curiosity about UFOs, possibly it was after Bob Lazar’s story came out. Mr. Bigelow replied that he was already into UFO research. He was looking at UFO stories worldwide to understand what they actually were.
In 1992, he started the Bigelow Foundation with Bob Lazar, who worked on reverse-engineering recovered extraterrestrial craft at Area-51. Mr. Bigelow also backed Dr. John E. Mack, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard who wrote two popular books about his work with people who told him they had been abducted by aliens, and Budd Hopkins, an artist who became an abduction investigator and also wrote popular books.
Mr. Bigelow’s investigative team, headed by Colm Kelleher, the institute’s scientific administrator and biochemist, documented their own paranormal events, according to a 2005 book “Hunt for the Skinwalker,” by Dr. Kelleher and Mr. Knapp.
Mr. Bigelow said he saw “interdimensional” forces at play through portals at certain paranormal hot spots like Skinwalker. But he also said he had frequently visited the ranch without experiencing the kind of chilling events others reported, as if some intelligence were selecting the people to act upon. “I slept like a log every single night,” he said. And no human was physically harmed, but he said he and other visitors often carried strange things home, like a sulfurous stink in a certain part of his house. His wife felt the presence of a faceless creature pressing down on her side of bed. (Source)
Bigelow amassed his fortune through the hotel chain Budget Suites of America and used this money to fund his UFO study. In an interview with The Associated Press, he said that UFOs are “under our noses” and wondered why news organizations had not extensively covered UFO sightings.
In 2008, Mr. Bigelow secretly created BAASS (Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies) to study the UFO mystery and related phenomena. The public did not know that he had signed a contract with the Defense Intelligence Agency to do an investigation under the AAWSAP program.
His political influence has been strong when it comes to UFO study. He once convinced his friend and then-Democratic U.S. Sen. Harry Reid to allocate $22 million to the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which investigated UFO reports from 2007 to 2012. The majority of the funds were sent to Bigelow’s company to investigate, and the allocation was not made public until a 2017 New York Times investigation. The Pentagon stated that the program was terminated in 2012, although Reid later stated that he had no remorse about the expenditure.
Later, he and his team hired dozens of investigators, scientists, and support staff to work on putting together a huge database of original investigations and UFO files from other countries. The now-famous 2004 Tic Tac encounter off the coast of Southern California was one of the cases that BAASS looked into.
"The results of my research suggest that the chance of life having existed on Mars is smaller than previously thought."
Main image: Illustration of NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter investigating Mars. Inset: a satellite image of Martian gullies with carbon dioxide ice visible at their edges.
(Image credit: Robert Lea/ NASA/ HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Experiment), a camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (photo no.: ESP_039114_1115))
Mars may be dry and barren today, but multiple lines of evidence show that water flowed across the Red Planet billions of years ago.
Now, new research has suggested that this water may have existed at the surface of Mars for less time than previously thought. That's because gullies observed on Mars by spacecraft like NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which had previously been thought to have been carved out by the flow of water, could have instead been created by explosively evaporating carbon dioxide ice.
Because liquid water is considered a vital ingredient needed for the emergence and sustenance of living organisms, the results may be bad news for the hunt for ancient microscopic life on Mars.
"This influences our ideas about water on Mars in general, and therefore our search for life on the planet," team leader and Utrecht University planetary researcher Lonneke Roelofs said in a statement. "The results of my research suggest that the chance of life having existed on Mars is smaller than previously thought."
Less time with water means lower odds of life on Mars
Roelofs explained that the atmosphere of Mars is composed of 95% carbon dioxide. During the winter on Mars, temperatures fall to below minus 184 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 120 degrees Celsius), cold enough to freeze carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere.
As it freezes, carbon dioxide gas can change directly to carbon dioxide ice, skipping an intermediate liquid phase altogether. A similar process is seen on Earth when water vapor forms ice crystals that blanket the ground.
When warmer temperatures arrive with the Martian spring, the carbon dioxide ice can go back to a gaseous form, straight from solid to gas again, skipping a liquid phase, a process called "sublimation" that is particularly violent on the Red Planet.
"The process is extremely explosive due to Mars’ low air pressure," Roelofs said. "The created gas pressure pushes sediment grains apart, causing the material to flow, similar to debris flowing in mountainous areas on Earth. These flows can reshape the Martian landscape — even in the absence of water."
Mars gullies with carbon-dioxide ice on their edges, as seen by the HiRISE camera on board NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. (Image credit: HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Experiment), a camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (photo no.: ESP_039114_1115))
Scientists had previously suggested that geological structures on Mars could have been heavily influenced by the sublimation of carbon dioxide ice, but those theories were based on satellite data or computer modeling.
Roelofs and colleagues, however, simulated Mars conditions in the lab using their "Mars Chamber" and then directly observed the sublimation of carbon dioxide ice under these conditions.
"Using this specialized lab equipment, we could directly study this process with our own eyes," he said. "We even observed that debris flows driven by carbon dioxide ice under Martian conditions flow just as efficiently as the debris flows driven by water on Earth."
So flowing water may not have been involved in the creation of some Martian gullies and channels.
"My research now shows that, in addition to debris flows powered by water, the sublimation of frozen carbon dioxide can also serve as a driving force behind the formation of these Martian gully landscapes," Roelofs said. "That pushes the presence of water on Mars further into the past, making the chance of life on Mars smaller."
From sightings by U.S. submarines to mysterious humanoids in the depths of Russian lakes, there is an even more mysterious cousin to the UFO - the USO, or Unidentified Submerged Object.
There are multiple reports of USOs from around the world, often from respected military and academic professionals - with some claiming that underwater ‘fast movers’ are a common part of life on board submarines.
Speaking to DailyMail.com, Nigel Watson, author of Captured by Aliens? A History and Analysis of American Abduction Claims, said: ‘We live on an ocean planet, so it is not surprising that UFOs are seen over or in the vicinity of the great expanses of water that surround us.
'Concentrations of USO sightings indicate bases in the North Sea, and off the coasts of California and Puerto Rico.
'USOs are as intriguing as UAPs but they are even more difficult to substantiate - and often get mixed with dreams about Atlantis and aliens living in the hollow Earth.
'Personally, to me, they are a myth, like mermaids or the Loch Ness Monster.'
Pilot sights ‘dark mass’ in the water
Retired Navy commander David Fravor
Retired U.S. Navy Commander David Fravor, who famously spotted the ‘Tic-Tac’ UFO in 2004, described how a fellow pilot had revealed to him an encounter with a USO.
The pilot said he had seen a ‘dark mass’, which he described as ‘big’ and ‘kinda circular’, and was not a submarine.
Fravor told the Joe Rogan podcast that the helicopter had dropped a swimmer in the water to pick up munitions.
He said: 'The first time they were out and they were going to pick up a munition, he’s sitting in the front—in the CH-53 you can see down by your feet—and as he’s looking down, they’re 50 feet above the water, he sees this kind of dark mass coming up from the depths.”
'He’s looking at this thing going, "What the hell is that?" And then it just goes back down underwater. Once they pull the kid and the munition out of the water, this object descends back into the depths.'
The pilot who was retrieving spent practice munitions out of the sea in a U.S. Navy MH-53E Sea Dragon helicopter said that a practice torpedo he was sent to recover was ‘sucked down’ into the sea by another object.
The torpedo never resurfaced.
The encounter occurred in the sea near Naval Station Roosevelt Roads, on Puerto Rico, Fravor said.
The UFOs of Guantanamo Bay
Did Marines see USOs in the late Sixties?
In the late Sixties, ‘heavy UFO traffic’ was seen at the Guantanamo Bay base.
An ex-Marine said: ‘'All of us Marines were amazed at the amount of UFO activity over and around this base,' the witness said.
'Virtually every night UFOs were flying overhead with altitudes of less than 300 feet.’
'Most of these UFOs were approximately 50 to 100 feet across, but to the naked eye came off as a dull, hazy hull with a small red light trailing behind it,'
The marine - who wished to remain anonymous in an interview with the paranormal sighting website MUFON - said that he was unsure of the exact dates
The Marine claims he was instructed not to discuss the sightings, and said he saw one UFO which looked like a 'big beautiful cloud with a blue and white pulsating light'.
Underwater craft buzzes U.S.S. Hampton submarine
The Los Angeles-class fast attack submarine USS Hampton
A craft moving through the water faster than the speed of sound ‘whizzed by’ the submarine U.S.S. Hampton, a professor has claimed.
Professor Bob McGwier of Virginia Tech and the Institute for Defence Analyses, said the craft’s onboard sonar detected a USO moving through the water faster than the speed of sound.
McGwier was on the submarine doing classified work, and says that the crew opted not to investigate so as to focus on their mission, but did not tell him that he could not talk about the strange encounter.
In an interview with the YouTube Channel UAP Encounters, he said: 'We were underway, and, all of a sudden, I heard a sound. It is really strange and clear that something is whizzing by us.
'When I left there with the knowledge in my head, not having been told to be quiet, not having been told it was classified... It is mine to tell whoever I want. They blew it,'
The encounter with the fast-attack submarine lasted just a few seconds, McGwier says.
Alien-hunters spotted what many described as an ‘alien base’ 2,000 feet beneath the waves off Malibu in 2014.
When Google Earth revealed what appeared to be a ‘structure’ beneath the waves, conspiracy fans went wild.
UFO author Preston Dennett said: 'I have collected probably 50 or 100 reports of people who have seen UFOs going in and out of the water there.
‘My problem is that the Google images are coming out different, depending on what viewpoint you're looking at this thing from. Some show a tunnel. Some don't.
"I'm very intrigued by the possibility. 'm convinced there's something down there."
Geologists however have dismissed the idea that the structure is an alien base, describing the structure as ‘perfectly ordinary’.
The USOs of Lake Baikal
Lake Baikal has seen multiple bizarre sightings over the years
Lake Baikal in Siberia has been the site of multiple sightings of USOs and UFOs, beginning in the Soviet era.
Russian former Navy officer turned UFO researcher Vladimir Azhazha said, "Fifty percent of UFO encounters are connected with oceans. Fifteen more - with lakes. So, UFOs tend to stick to the water,.”
Azhazha has claimed that humanoid beings in strange shiny suits were seen in the water by military divers in 1982.
In more recent years, photographers have captured strange lights and mysterious craft over the lake.
The chairman of the Union of Photographers of Buryatia, Sergey Konechnykh, said in 2009, When I saw it, it was flying low. Until it disappeared over the horizon, I kept looking at it. I call it a fireball, and what it really was - I cannot know.'
EXCLUSIVE / Veteran paratrooper reveals British special forces recovered a downed 'non-human' craft in northern England in late 1980s - supporting recent US whistleblowers' claims of a secret UFO crash retrieval program
EXCLUSIVE - Veteran paratrooper reveals British special forces recovered a downed 'non-human' craft in northern England in late 1980s - supporting recent US whistleblowers' claims of a secret UFO crash retrieval program
British paratrooper veteran Franc Milburn claims a former member of the British special forces came clean to him about the top secret operation in the late 1980s
'He just said it was obvious it was non-human, and it was obvious that there were occupants who had fled the scene on foot,' he told DailyMail.com
Milburn said he decided to come forward with the story to support recent US whistleblowers' claims of a secret UFO crash retrieval program
British special forces recovered a downed 'non-human' craft in northern England in the late 1980s, a former UK paratrooper and military intelligence officer claims.
Franc Milburn, a veteran of the British Army's elite Parachute Regiment, tells DailyMail.com he has spoken with a member of the MI6-run unit that conducted the alleged operation.
Milburn said he also spoke to UK Royal Air Force crew who chased and fired on a pair of 'disc-shaped' UFOs that traveled at hypersonic speeds outstripping their fighter jets.
Milburn refused to reveal the identity of his former elite comrade, citing security and his desire to remain anonymous. DailyMail.com will refer to him using the alias 'John.'
But in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, Milburn divulged eye-popping details of the story told to him by his ex-Special Forces friend after both had left the Army – saying that he wanted to support recent US whistleblowers' claims of a secret UFO crash retrieval program.
British veteran paratrooper Franc Milburn (pictured left in Iraq in 1997) claims a former member of the British special forces came clean to him about a top secret operation involving a downed 'non-human' craft in the late 1980s
A now declassified 2000 UK Defence Intelligence Staff report obtained by DailyMail.com states that the existence of 'Unexplained Aerial Phenomena' (UAP) is 'indisputable' and included a scatter plot (pictured) of UAP reports across the UK between 1987 to 1991
Milburn said that in the 1980s John worked for a reported secret unit now known as the 'E Squadron', which specialized in covert, clandestine, and paramilitary operations.
E Squadron, previously called 'The Increment', recruited the most experienced and reliable operators from the UK's Special Forces units: the Special Air Service (SAS), Special Boat Service (SBS) and Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR).
The US equivalent to E Squadron is the CIA's Special Operations Group and Joint Special Operations Command, staffed from 'Tier-1' units including Delta Force and SEAL Team 6.
Milburn said John served in the 1982 Falklands War and on numerous high-risk missions around the world, but one of the most disturbing was in his home country in the late 1980s.
'He told me they were deployed in a troop-sized unit, maybe 20-30 Special Forces operators,' Milburn said.
'They'd been told by the RAF [Royal Air Force] that a craft which wasn't Russian, British, or American had been downed.
'He said they were tasked to secure and retrieve the craft in the north of England. They were flown in by helicopter. They established a cordon, a perimeter, and they approached the craft.
'He didn't describe the craft, he just said it was obvious it was non-human, and it was obvious that there were occupants who had fled the scene on foot – or whatever you call it.
'He said then it became a task of tracking down these beings to try to bring them into custody.
'Part of the unit was left protecting the craft. They would have left maybe six to eight blokes to cordon the craft, and the others would have been on foot, quad bikes, or 4x4s trying to track down these entities that escaped from it, with helicopters supporting.
'He said after that it was totally passed over. He said, "scientists and technicians came in and it was completely out of our hands. We were flown away by helicopter, and we knew nothing more after that."'
The UK's Ministry of Defence (MoD) told DailyMail.com they are 'not aware of any salvage operations with materials of unexplained origin,' however,
After leaving the British armed forces in 1997, Milburn worked alongside US Special Forces and the State Department as a contractor in Iraq
Milburn (pictured) divulged eye-popping details of the story told to him by his ex-Special Forces friend - who he did not wish to identify citing security reasons - after both had left the Army
Milburn said John declined to give him further details, and did not provide any proof for his wild tale. But the ex-paratrooper said he trusted the word of his elite ex-comrade, after vetting him with other SAS veterans.
'I believe him 100%. I worked with the bloke in Civvy Street [post-military work]. This is a true-blue paratrooper. I spoke to former SAS and paratrooper mates of his.
'We're talking about a guy who fought bravely in the Falklands in some of the most brutal engagements,' he added. 'This is not the kind of guy who f***s around or talks s**t.'
Milburn worked in British military intelligence until the late 1990s, then as a contractor in Iraq alongside US Army Special Forces and the US State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security.
He is now an analyst for the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, an Israeli university think tank with close ties to Israeli military intelligence, where he has written public research papers on the US government's approach to UFOs.
He said he has been close friends with John for years, and that the Special Forces veteran shared the extraordinary tale with him several years ago to get it off his chest.
'John became like a brother to me. He told me one night because he was sick of keeping this big story bottled up, but knew he couldn't tell anyone who wasn't ex-Special Forces,' Milburn said.
Milburn told DailyMail.com that he is choosing to come forward now to support other whistleblowers who have testified to Congress about alleged UFO crash retrieval programs, and is concerned that the 'excessive secrecy' around the topic is preventing scientific progress.
'The various UAP [Unidentified Aerial Phenomena] programs need to be organized under one roof so that advances can be made before the Russians and Chinese get there,' he said.
However, Milburn's former commanders are staunchly opposed to any suggestion of recovered non-human craft.
The UK's Ministry of Defence (MoD) told DailyMail.com they are 'not aware of any salvage operations with materials of unexplained origin.'
Milburn told DailyMail.com that he is choosing to come forward now to support other whistleblowers who have testified to Congress about alleged UFO crash retrieval programs, and is concerned that the 'excessive secrecy' around the topic
This file video grab image obtained April 28, 2020 courtesy of the US Department of Defense shows part of an unclassified video taken by Navy pilots that has circulated for years showing interactions with 'unidentified anomalous phenomena'
And in 2021, then-defense minister Baroness Annabel Goldie told Parliament that the MoD 'holds no reports on unidentified aerial phenomena' but 'constantly monitors UK airspace to identify and respond to any credible threat to its integrity.
'In over 50 years no such reporting had indicated the existence of any military threat to the United Kingdom,' the Baroness said during a June 30, 2021 session in the UK's House of Lords.
'Credited with the ability to hover, land, take-off, accelerate to exceptional velocities and vanish, they can reportedly alter their direction of flight suddenly and clearly can exhibit aerodynamic characteristics well beyond those of any known aircraft or missile – either manned or unmanned,' the report said.
'Attempts by other nations to intercept the unexplained objects, which can clearly change position faster than an aircraft, have reportedly already caused fatalities,' the report warned, adding that 'no attempt should be made to out-maneuver a UAP during interception.'
The December 2000 report, titled Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in the UK Air Defence Region, was originally classified secret but released to the UK National Archives in 2006.
It denied any 'incursions' by UFOs into UK airspace and said that 'no artefacts of unknown or unexplained origin have been reported or handed to the UK authorities.'
'There is no evidence of the penetration of the UKADR by unauthorized air platforms… there are no reports of RAF aircraft intercepting UAPs,' it said.
But Milburn says he knows different.
He told DailyMail.com his credulity towards John was bolstered by his experience debriefing other veterans with shocking UFO encounters.
The former paratrooper said British military pilots told him about 'kinetic' encounters with UFOs, while he was working as an intelligence officer in the 1990s.
He said two pilots and two navigators of two Tornado jets told him they were ordered to intercept 'disc-shaped objects' – but when told to shoot them down, they were outmaneuvered.
Milburn also pointed to two former US Air Force pilots, Major Milton Torres (pictured) and Major George Filer III, stationed in the UK, who claimed to have taken part in intercepts with UFOs in British airspace in 1957 and 1962
In an archived video shared on YouTube, Major George Filer III said he flew to intercept a UFO 'hovering' at 1,000 ft over the British countryside in 1962
'They closed to within 20 nautical miles (nm). They were ordered to shoot them down. I wasn't told why, that was above my level,' Milburn said.
'They had radar homing missiles. The missiles left the aircraft having achieved lock on but then failed to impact the craft.
'They closed to within 10nm and released more missiles which were infrared homing. Those failed to impact the craft.
'They then flew to within one nm and closer. They were trying to shoot down these craft with the aircraft's 27mm cannon, and they failed to shoot them down.
'They said that they fired at the objects and the rounds hit, but had no effect on the craft whatsoever.'
Milburn said that although the pilots saw the craft with their own eyes, their radar had struggled to pick up the 'discs' when they were beyond visual range.
'They said to me that they were initially vectored onto the craft by the air intercept controller, because they couldn't see it on their own radar,' he said.
'Later they had the craft on their own radar, but then the ground controller lost it on his radar, which is obviously much more powerful.'
Then, according to the military aviators, the flying saucers 'disappeared.'
'The craft just basically just skipped off at hypersonic velocity far beyond what the jets had. They just disappeared,' Milburn said.
'I asked them, "what do you think those crafts were?" And they said, "well, it's nothing we have, it's nothing the Russians have, and nothing that the Yanks have."
'All four of them served in the first Gulf War. Before that they'd done years enforcing the no-fly zone over Iraq. They'd logged hundreds of hours of missions and intercepts. So these guys were no strangers to intercepting aircraft.´
David Grusch - a former high-ranking intelligence official – is one of three military whistleblowers who testified under oath about UFOs last year. Grusch claims he has evidence of secret programs involving technology far surpassing the US's capabilities
In July Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer co-sponsored a bill to allow disclosure of 'recovered technologies of unknown origin and biological evidence of non-human intelligence'
Milburn's claims follow allegations from three sources revealed by DailyMail.com in November, that the CIA has been conducting UFO crash retrieval operations, coordinated by a secretive directorate called the Office of Global Access, since 2003.
The three sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals, have all been briefed by individuals involved in those alleged UFO retrieval missions.
Though the shocking claims sound like they come from a science fiction novel, they are part of a growing body of evidence suggesting the US government could indeed be hiding advanced vehicles that were not made by humans.
Former top intelligence officer David Grusch told Congress as much in an explosive public hearing in July.
The same month, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer sponsored an extraordinary bill to allow disclosure of 'recovered technologies of unknown origin and biological evidence of non-human intelligence'.
Other witnesses of the alleged UFO crash retrieval program have briefed lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee over the past two years.
Speaking to the UK's BBC Radio 4 in August Grusch alleged that a cover-up of UFO programs extends to Five Eyes nations, of which the UK is a member.
'It does cross into other countries and other allies, including the Five Eyes alliance,' he said.
The Pentagon's UFO investigation unit, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, released a report this month saying it found no evidence for a clandestine crash retrieval program.
'AARO found no evidence that any USG investigation, academic-sponsored research, or official review panel has confirmed that any sighting of a UAP represented extraterrestrial technology,' the report's executive summary said.
'Although many UAP reports remain unsolved or unidentified, AARO assesses that if more and better quality data were available, most of these cases also could be identified and resolved as ordinary objects or phenomena.'
The Pentagon has once again released several new UFO videos as the U.S. government continues its attempt at transparency when it comes to unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP).
The new UFO footage, released by the Pentagon’s UFO investigative arm, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), includes a mix of videos which the office believes they can explain along with some that they say they can’t.
“To date, AARO has found no verifiable evidence for claims that the U.S. government and private companies have access to or have been reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology,” U.S. Department of Defense wrote in a statement.
“Also, AARO has found no evidence that any U.S. government investigation, academic-sponsored research, or official review panel has confirmed that any sighting of a UAP represented extraterrestrial technology.
“All investigative efforts, at all levels of classification, concluded that most sightings were ordinary objects and phenomena and the result of misidentification.
“AARO assesses that all of the named and described alleged hidden UAP reverse-engineering programs provided by interviewees either do not exist; are misidentified authentic national security programs that are not related to extraterrestrial technology exploitation; or resolve to a disestablished program.”
Okay, so what it going on in these latest UFO videos, like the clip taken by US Navy crew who were on board F/A-18 jets? Or the UFO caught on camera in the Middle East that the Pentagon admits was exhibiting “anomalous behavior?” Or how about the GIMBAL video? Or the GOFAST video?
There are multiple instances, just in the videos that were recently released alone in which the AARO admits that they have not been able to identify the crafts in the videos. So how do they know that these UFOs aren’t extraterrestrial?
Last year, three Army veterans claimed that while stationed at a American military base in the Middle East in 2014 they saw eight bright objects in the sky over Sinai, hovering and flying at speeds they had never seen before.
After the sighting, one of the men says a senior officer told him to “keep your mouth shut” about the whole thing. How about an explanation for that?
The AARO “Vision” mentions “adherence to the highest scientific and intelligence tradecraft standards; and with the greatest transparency and shared awareness.”
This is the “greatest transparency and shared awareness?”
The tricarbon molecule (C3) is likely produced in the upper atmosphere of Titan by the reaction of abundant acetylene with atomic carbon.
This view of Titan is among the last images NASA’s Cassini spacecraft sent to Earth before it plunged into the giant planet’s atmosphere.
Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute.
Among our Solar System’s more than 150 known moons, Saturn’s largest moon Titan is the only one with a substantial atmosphere.
And of all the places in the Solar System, Titan is the only place besides Earth known to have liquids in the form of rivers, lakes and seas on its surface.
Titan is larger than the planet Mercury and is the second largest moon in our Solar System. Jupiter’s moon Ganymede is just a little bit larger (by about 2%).
Titan’s atmosphere is made mostly of nitrogen, like Earth’s, but with a surface pressure 50% higher than Earth’s.
Titan has clouds, rain, rivers, lakes and seas of liquid hydrocarbons like methane and ethane.
“Home to a thick and chemically diverse atmosphere, Titan stands out among the giant planet’s icy satellites, as one of the most thoroughly studied objects in the Solar System,” said Dr. Rafael Silva, an astronomer with Observatório Astronómico de Lisboa and the University of Lisbon.
“Titan’s atmosphere works like a planetary-sized chemical reactor, producing many complex carbon-based molecules.”
“Of all the atmospheres we know in the Solar System, it is the most similar to the one we think existed on the early Earth.”
“Methane, which on Earth is a gas, provides information about geological processes and potentially about biological processes.”
“It is a molecule that does not survive long in the atmospheres of Earth or Titan because it is quickly and irreversibly destroyed by solar radiation.”
“For this reason, on Titan, methane must be being replenished by geological processes, such as the release of underground gas.”
They were able to identify 97 absorption lines for methane as well as one for the tricarbon molecule.
“Even in high-resolution spectra, methane absorption lines are not strong enough with the amount of gas we can have in a lab on Earth,” Dr. Silva said.
“But on Titan we have an entire atmosphere, and the path that light travels through the atmosphere can be hundreds of km long.”
“This makes the different bands and lines, which have a weak signal in laboratories on Earth, very evident on Titan.”
“In the Solar System, the tricarbon molecule, which manifests itself as a bluish emission, was until now only known in the material surrounding the nucleus of a comet.”
“The absorption lines on Titan that we associated with tricarbon are few and of low intensity, despite being very specific to this type of molecules, so new observations will be carried out in the future to try to confirm this detection.”
“The more we know about the different molecules that participate in the chemical complexity of Titan’s atmosphere, the better we will understand the type of chemical evolution that may have allowed, or be related to, the origin of life on Earth.”
“Some of the organic matter that contributed to the origin of life on Earth is thought to have been produced in its atmosphere by processes relatively similar to those we observed on Titan.”
A paper on the findings was published in the journal Planetary and Space Science.
Rafael Rianço-Silva et al. 2024. A study of very high resolution visible spectra of Titan: Line characterisation in visible CH4 bands and the search for C3. Planetary and Space Science 240: 105836; doi: 10.1016/j.pss.2023.105836
Beyond the Shadows: Ryan Wood’s Crusade for UFO Disclosure and the Secrets of MJ-12
Beyond the Shadows: Ryan Wood’s Crusade for UFO Disclosure and the Secrets of MJ-12
In the realm of UFO research and disclosure, few names are as synonymous with the pursuit of truth as Ryan Wood. With a unique background that blends technology, marketing, and a lifelong engagement with ufology, Wood has positioned himself as a key figure in unraveling the enigmatic web of government secrecy and the reality of extraterrestrial visitation. Central to his work are the Majestic-12 (MJ-12) documents, a collection of disputed classified materials that allegedly prove the existence of a secretive government group overseeing UFO and alien encounters.
Ryan Wood’s journey into the heart of UFO research began in the shadows of his father’s curiosity—Dr. Robert M. Wood, a pioneer in the field who sought to decipher the physics of UFOs. This familial legacy paved the way for Ryan, who, after earning degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science, ventured beyond the conventional confines of his professional life into the depths of UFOlogy. His expertise and dedication have made him a sought-after authority on the MJ-12 documents and related phenomena, such as the 1941 Cape Girardeau, Missouri, UFO crash.
Wood’s commitment to the subject is evident in his organization of seven worldwide UFO crash retrieval symposia from 2003 to 2009, events that gathered leading investigators and enthusiasts from across the globe to share findings, theories, and eyewitness accounts of UFO crashes and subsequent government retrievals. These symposia highlighted the complexities of UFO crash cases, including the challenges of evidence preservation, witness testimony, and the often formidable opposition from secretive government entities determined to maintain a veil of secrecy over such incidents.
Through his website, majesticdocuments.com, Wood offers an extensive repository of information on the MJ-12 documents, providing both skeptics and believers with materials to ponder. His work, alongside that of his father, was instrumental in the production of a television documentary that aired on the Sci-Fi channel, aiming to shed light on the authenticity of the MJ-12 documents and the government’s intricate dance of disclosure and denial.
Wood’s insights into the UFO phenomenon extend beyond historical document analysis. He is a proponent of using advanced technologies, like Artificial Intelligence (AI), to mine vast amounts of data for insights into extraterrestrial agendas and the nature of their interactions with Earth. This innovative approach suggests a merging of past and future, where traditional document analysis meets cutting-edge technology to unravel the mysteries that have long captivated humanity.
MUFON:
Episode 32 – Ryan Wood: MJ-12, Crashed UFOs, and the Fight for Disclosure
At the core of Ryan Wood’s mission is a call to action—a plea for increased funding, leadership, and public engagement in the field of UFOlogy. He recognizes the obstacles faced by researchers, from the scarcity of resources to the skepticism of the broader scientific community and the general public. Yet, Wood remains optimistic about the potential for breakthroughs in understanding and ultimately disclosing the truth about UFOs and extraterrestrial life.
As we stand on the brink of potentially paradigm-shifting disclosures, figures like Ryan Wood remind us of the importance of perseverance, open-mindedness, and the relentless pursuit of truth in the face of uncertainty and obfuscation. His work, deeply rooted in both personal conviction and a rigorous scientific approach, continues to inspire and challenge us to consider the vast, unexplored frontiers not only above us but also within the depths of government archives and beyond.
Inside the £160-a-ticket UFO conference where thousands of alien hunters flocked to French city to 'train humanity for the arrival of extraterrestrials' - as councillor slams 'eccentrics' peddling 'conspiracy theories'
Inside the £160-a-ticket UFO conference where thousands of alien hunters flocked to French city to 'train humanity for the arrival of extraterrestrials' - as councillor slams 'eccentrics' peddling 'conspiracy theories'
Around 2,200 paid between €150 to €190 to attend the three-day conference
Speakers at the conference included major conspiracy theorists
Organisers said they want to prepare humanity for the arrival of aliens
Thousands of UFO fanatics flocked to a small city in central France in the hopes of finally meeting extra-terrestrial life.
The event, organised by fringe group Alliances Célestes, reportedly drew around 2,200 people who each paid between €150 to €190 (£128 to £162) to attend the three day conference held in Zenith Limoges Metropole building in Limoges, a small city with a population of around 130,000.
Organisers said they wanted to prepare people for the arrival of aliens or 'new-style encounters.'
The event's website reads: 'The mission of this citizen delegation is to accompany humanity in this process, in order to properly inform and reduce the fear and stress that this type of encounter can generate.'
Though media was banned from the event, video of the conference was leaked to BFMTV, and showed thousands of people attentively listening to someone speaking on a set on the stage.
The event, organised by fringe group Alliances Célestes, reportedly drew around 2,200 people who each paid between €150 to €190 (£128 to £162) to attend
The stage was decorated with white furniture, including several seats and what appeared to be a high table on the right
The conference was held in held in the Zenith Limoges Metropole building (pictured) in Limoges, a small city with a population of around 130,000.
The stage was decorated with white furniture, including several seats and what appeared to be a high table on the right.
The background of the set was made up of 'futuristic' windows that portrayed stars rushing past the 'alien room' they were in.
The speaker can be heard telling conference attendees: 'We are in contact with civilizations. When I say in contact, it is with communication and a partnership, a collaboration.
'But they have a big problem, these civilizations, which is that they don't know how to communicate with the citizens of Earth.
'For what? Because the citizens of Earth are afraid.'
Two French reporters managed to sneak in, and said they saw Alliances Célestes' director Jean-Michel Raoux dressed in a blue and yellow outfit claiming he was a being from the planet 'Niam.'
Raoux reportedly claims he regularly meets with aliens and that he has the power to bring aliens to different parts of the Earth.
While many in France dismissed the event as a harmless conference, political figures warned that these events draw in conspiracy theorists and extremists
One person invited to the conference was QAnon sympathiser Antoine 'Q' Cuttitta
The crowd also heard from Anne Givaudan, a 'galactic reporter' who claimed she was from the land of 'Shambhala'. She told the conference's attendees that she has witnesses human-hybrid animals in Antarctica.
'That's why it's time to get up and say to ourselves, what are we doing? Do we trust beings who have always deceived us in all areas? A new world must emerge,' she told a crowd.
But while many in France dismissed the event as a harmless conference, political figures warned that these events draw in conspiracy theorists and extremists.
One person invited to the conference was QAnon sympathiser Antoine 'Q' Cuttitta.
The conspiracy theorist regularly posted conspiratorial videos to YouTube before the platform shut his channel down.
According to Conspiracy Watch, Cuttita helped set up the Human Health Alliance International, a group known for its embrace of 'alternative' medicine. It ran a platform that offered to connect patients with debilitating illnesses with 'aromatherapists', 'energeticians', 'magnetizers', 'massotherapists' or even 'naturopaths.'
'I was stunned that such an event took place in Limoges,' Thierry Miguel, vice-president of the Haute-Vienne department council tweeted.
'Who are these eccentrics who invite themselves to Limoges to put the ideas of charlatans and conspiracy theorists into people's heads?'
Miguel said he plans to organise a public meeting on the role of science and social progress.
'We cannot stand there with our arms crossed in the face of possible charlatans who will come and talk to us about theories from another time,' he told BFMTV.
'When a society is dysfunctional, it takes refuge in values like these. But we must strive to demonstrate the truth from the false by relying on science.'
In today’s episode: We’ll look at more Enigma UAP video submissions, cover the latest news including the controversial report released this week from the Pentagon’s UAP research team. We also have a special guest, Dr. Michael Masters, professor of Biological Anthropology, to discuss an alternative to the Extraterrestrial hypothesis he calls The Extratempestrial Model.
NASA is Working on Zero-Boil Off Tanks for Space Exploration
No matter what mode of transportation you take for a long trip, at some point, you’ll have to refuel. For cars, this could be a simple trip to a gas station, while planes, trains, and ships have more specialized refueling services at their depots or ports. However, for spacecraft, there is currently no refueling infrastructure whatsoever. And since the fuel spacecraft use must be stored cryogenically, and the tanks the fuel is stored in are constantly subjected to the thermal radiation from the Sun, keeping enough fuel in a tank for a trip to Mars with astronauts is currently infeasible. Luckily, NASA is currently working on it and recently released a detailed look at some of that work on a blog on their website.
The problem definition is very clear – cryogenic hydrogen and oxygen are used as fuel on most spacecraft missions. Once in space, the tanks the fuel is stored in heat up due to the constant solar radiation they’re subjected to. Since there’s no air, there’s no way to radiate out that heat, so eventually, it can get through even the most sophisticated passive thermal insulation system. When it does, the fuel starts to boil, and mission planners typically have chosen to eject the vaporous fuel out into space rather than leaving it as a potential medium to heat the rest of the fuel faster.
This resultant fuel lost to this sublimation can cost as much as half of the cryogenic fuel needed for a 3-year mission to Mars – in just a single year. In short, crewed trips to Mars are impossible using the current fuel storage technology in space. However, there are alternatives, known as Zero Boil-Off (ZBO) or Reduced Boil-Off (RBO) systems. These advanced tanks use a combination of “active” processes to maintain tank pressure and not allow too much loss of fuel during long space flights.
Fraser makes an argument for why refueling is so critical.
An “active” process must be actively controlled and typically requires some sort of power input. In particular, ZBO systems rely on two technology ideas – a jet mixing of the propellant and a droplet injection technology. Let’s take a look at the mixing technology first.
In this example, part of the fuel would be forcibly mixed back into the vapor space in a particular way that would allow it to control the phase changes of the vapor/fuel interface. In essence, it would stop the fuel from sublimating into a vapor in the first place. Similarly, a droplet injection system would use a novel type of spray bar to inject fuel droplets into the vapor area, causing it to condense and remove some of the pressure from the system.
To add another layer of complexity to these already complicated fluid dynamics systems, this all must be done in microgravity, where things like droplet formation and liquid mixing don’t always happen the same way as they do on Earth. So, NASA decided to do what it does best and run some experiments – in this case on the ISS.
Image of the ZBOT-1 experiment being installed on the ISS by astronaut Joseph Acaba. Credit – NASA
Back in 2017, NASA started the ZBOT-1 Experiment on the ISS. It was intended to quantify how the jet mixing would behave in microgravity, and the result of some 30+ tests was that we still understand very little about how these systems work in microgravity. While how they were is different than what most fluid engineers are used to, they are still acting according to physical laws, so more experiments would help narrow down the models that tank designers can use to understand how these ZBO systems might best be used.
Two other experiments are focused on furthering that understanding – one called the ZBOT-NC Experiment, is due to be launched to the ISS in 2025. It will study the effects of microgravity on “non-condensable gases,” which can be used to control the pressure inside the fuel tank. Data from its observations can also be fed into the CFD models, allowing scientists to understand better how the model differs from reality in microgravity.
The final test in the series will focus on droplet phase changes. Known as the ZBOT-DP test, this is the most ambitious of the three, as it tests a technology that has never been used in microgravity at all before. It will focus on understanding how droplets interact with their surroundings, including superheated tank walls, in microgravity environments. They could eventually lead to a fully functional droplet system and an active control system to ensure no tank boil-off happens.
The idea of in-space refueling has been around for a long time, as this VideoFromSpace feature shows.Credit – VideosFromSpace YouTube Channel / NASA Technology
That’s still a long way off those, with no planned date for the ZBOT-DP test. Given the importance of this technology to missions like the crewed Artemis mission planned in the next few years, it seems that the successful completion of these experiments and the design and testing of a fully ZBO fuel tank should be very high on NASA’s priority list. While the agency’s already supporting it, let’s hope that the researchers involved can prove their ideas before they’re needed for a real human mission.
The Enigmatic Falcon Lake Incident: Unveiling Canada’s UFO Enigma
The Enigmatic Falcon Lake Incident: Unveiling Canada’s UFO Enigma
In the vast expanse of UFO history, the Falcon Lake incident of 1967 stands as one of Canada’s most compelling and meticulously documented cases, overshadowing even the infamous Roswell event in its depth of investigation and the physical evidence presented. This occurrence not only captivates with its narrative but also challenges our understanding of the unexplained, offering a rare blend of eyewitness testimony, physical aftermath, and governmental intrigue.
The Incident Unfolded
On a day that seemed like any other, Stefan Michalak’s excursion into the wilderness near Falcon Lake, Manitoba, transformed into an encounter that would etch itself into UFO lore. Michalak, an industrial engineer and geology enthusiast, experienced a close encounter with what he described as two cigar-shaped objects descending from the sky. One landed on a nearby flat rock while the other hovered momentarily before vanishing into the ether.
Compelled by curiosity, Michalak approached the landed craft, which, to his astonishment, appeared to be made of a steel-like substance, with no seams or welding marks, and emitted a spectrum of colors from red to gray to the glow of polished steel. As he reached out to touch the craft, it scorched his gloves, a testament to its intense heat.
Physical and Psychological Aftermath
The encounter left Michalak with more than just memories. He suffered first and second-degree burns where the craft’s exhaust had hit him, leaving a grid-like pattern on his chest that puzzled medical professionals. His health deteriorated, symptoms akin to radiation poisoning manifesting shortly after the incident. The site itself bore witness to the encounter, with scorched vegetation and a deposit of radioactive silver found, further mystifying the case.
Governmental and Scientific Scrutiny
The Falcon Lake incident underwent extensive examination by Canadian authorities, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and even the U.S. Air Force, all of which corroborated Michalak’s account to varying degrees. The Canadian government, typically reticent about UFO matters, found itself unable to dismiss the incident outright, given the physical evidence and Michalak’s compelling narrative. This case stands out not only for the attention it received from governmental bodies but also for the physical evidence that was scrutinized, a rarity in UFO incidents.
Years have passed, yet the Falcon Lake incident remains a cornerstone of UFO study in Canada, challenging skeptics and believers alike. It raises questions about what lies beyond the bounds of our understanding and what other secrets may be veiled in the vast Canadian wilderness. The incident serves as a beacon for UFO researchers and enthusiasts, a reminder of the mysteries that hover just beyond our reach.
This case underscores the importance of keeping an open mind in the face of the unexplainable. While definitive answers may elude us, the Falcon Lake incident invites us to explore, question, and wonder about the vast universe we inhabit and the potential for encounters that stretch the boundaries of our understanding.
SpaceX’s Starship rocket, the most powerful ever built, successfully reached space for the second timeon Thursday. After the mighty first-stage booster Super Heavy delivered Starship into Earth orbit, the rocket achieved many firsts. But it also fell short.
The 397-foot-tall orbiter ended its test flight after flying longer and faster than ever before. It perished after entering Earth’s atmosphere during reentry and crashing into the Indian Ocean.
Unlike the last flight test in November, Starship survived long after separating from Super Heavy. Starship then entered Earth orbit for the first time, having crossed the designated border into space known as the Kármán line. It climbed to an altitude of at least 234 kilometers high and sustained speeds of more than 26,000 kilometers per hour. Following several tests and test omissions, Starship sent its last telemetry about 49 minutes after launch.
SpaceX is inching towards its own-established finish line. The Thursday flight was the third attempt for Elon Musk’s company to get the rocket into the sky from their Starbase launch facility at Boca Chica, Texas, by the Gulf of Mexico, and for Starship to take a 90-minute flight. But to be ready to carry hefty cargo and passengers on trips to deep space, Starship needs more work.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
SpaceX will assess the results of Thursday’s flight.
According to SpaceX’s presentation during Thursday’s test, Super Heavy did well, and SpaceX views this launch as a success. It ignited its 33 Raptor engines upon takeoff, and minutes later it successfully performed critical maneuvers. But it didn't quite complete its final maneuvers before it splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico.
Super Heavy is designed to be reusable, so subsequent testing will attempt to get the booster to land back on Earth like the much smaller SpaceX Falcon 9 boosters regularly do now.
Starship aced payload and payload door test during Thursday’s flight. SpaceX officials said they will need to review the data to confirm how well it performed. Starship is designed to carry 100 to 150 tons of cargo into space, a massive increase compared to its current International Space Station ferry, Dragon, which can deliver 13,000 pounds into space.
Starship also has to test out its ability to reignite its engines from microgravity in space, after the first burn and after entering a coast phase. It’s called the on-orbit re-light demo. On Thursday, Starship’s software skipped the test. One possible explanation is that Starship’s orientation in space wasn’t ideal for sudden changes in velocity.
Starship will need to do that test in the future. The reignition of Starship’s six engines is critical for future in-space maneuvers, like achieving a good deorbit burn to get the craft to land on Earth someday, or to get it going on a journey into deep space.
Thursday was also important because it was the first reentry test for Starship.
Its hypersonic reentry was more than five times the speed of sound, according to SpaceX. Much like launch, reentry packs a lot of dramatic phenomena in just a few minutes, which the team is still learning about. They’ll evaluate data about Starship’s motion control and the heat shield, which work in tandem to keep the heat shield facing downward to protect the spacecraft.
The team may create new models of the plasma field, too. The presenters in SpaceX’s Thursday broadcast said the massive size of Starship would hopefully prevent the plasma of reentry from enveloping the craft, but moments later, that’s just what happened.
BEYOND THE SPACECRAFT
Next, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will get involved. SpaceX will need their permission to fly again. And then along the way, some other things might be happening.
The Starship rocket launching on March 14, 2024 from Boca Chica, Texas.
HOUSTON CHRONICLE/HEARST NEWSPAPERS VIA GETTY IMAGES/HEARST NEWSPAPERS/GETTY IMAGES
SpaceX makes changes to each of their subsequent flights. They’re to address issues that happened previously, but the solutions might have their own consequences.
For instance, the first Starship flight in April 2023 resulted in the destruction of the launchpad’s foundation. Debris went flying because the power of Super Heavy’s 33 Raptor engines, and 16.7 million pounds of thrust, overwhelmed the structure. To address this issue, SpaceX’s second flight introduced a steel plate metal sheet that would create a barrier between the engines and the foundation. It works in tandem with a water deluge system to cool the surface down. Thursday’s flight would have been only the second time this system is evaluated and may have provided the team with new insights about how successful their metal plate is at protecting the launchpad.
The water component of this cooling system is also something to assess. According to an FAA report published after the first test, SpaceX personnel must test the water in the collection tanks after the launches to measure for any toxins or heavy metals present, which could have been released through a process called ablation as the high heat of the Raptor engines smashed into the metal plate, and mixing with the vapor or the liquid water.
These are some of the environmental assessments that SpaceX is required to perform more broadly to determine what negative effects the acute, powerful launches have on the surrounding coastal region, and how to address or restore them.
Starship’s future is yet to be seen, but testing has so far been beyond anything we’ve ever seen before.
Cylindrical UFO Photographed Over New York City March 20, 1950, UAP Sighting News.
Cylindrical UFO Photographed Over New York City March 20, 1950, UAP Sighting News.
Now I took the original photo and enhanced it. I notice there a re thick lines that encircle the craft all down it...kinda like a screw with lines that tilt more to one side than the other. Amazing and real alien spacecraft. Something hidden deep in the US gov Project Blue Books, and something the US Gov didn't want you to see today or ever.
NASA and Boeing Release New Rendering of their X-66 Sustainable Experimental Airliner
Climate change is arguably the single greatest threat facing the world today. According to the (AR6) by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), average global temperatures are set to increase between 1.5 and 2 °C (2.7 to 3.6 °F) by mid-century. To restrict global temperatures to an increase of 1.5 C and avoid the worst-case scenarios, the nations of the world need to achieve net zero emissions by then. Otherwise, things will get a lot worse before they get better, assuming they ever do.
This means transitioning to cleaner methods in terms of energy, transportation, and aviation. To meet our climate commitments, the aviation industry is developing technology to significantly reduce air travel’s carbon footprint. To help meet this goal, NASA and Boeing have come together to create the X-66 Sustainable Experimental Airliner, the first experimental plane specifically focused on helping the U.S. achieve net-zero aviation. Last week, NASA released a new rendering of the concept, giving the public an updated look at the future of air travel.
This configuration is identical to the one unveiled by NASA and Boeing at the Experimental Aviation Association‘s (EAA) AirVenture Oshkosh airshow last year. As you can see from the renderings (above and below), the design features the Transonic Truss-Braced Wing concept. Developed by Boeing, this design features extra-long, thin wings stabilized by diagonal struts. This configuration is based on “Subsonic Ultra-Green Aircraft Reach (SUGAR)” research, a series of studies that began in 2011 to evaluate the benefits of truss-bracing and hybrid electric technologies.
The X-66A is the X-plane specifically aimed at helping the United States achieve the goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Credits: NASA
Combined with an advanced propulsion system, a sophisticated systems architecture, and advanced materials, this configuration could reduce fuel consumption and the resulting emissions by up to 30% (compared to top-of-the-line commercial aircraft). Development of the X-66 began in early 2019 through the Sustainable Flight Demonstrator (SFD) project, which is an integral part of NASA’s Sustainable Flight National Partnership (SFNP) – where NASA Aeronautics partners with industry, academia, and other agencies to accomplish the goal of net-zero aviation by 2050.
To build the X-66A, Boeing has been working with NASA to modify a McDonnell Douglas MD-90 single-aisle passenger aircraft. Modifications include a shortened fuselage and the replacement of its wings with the longer, thinner truss-braced variant. The engines have also been relocated from the tail section to under the wings and replaced with gas-electric models. Boeing transported the MD-90 aircraft to its facility in Palmdale, California, in August of 2023 and has since removed its engines and completed the 3-meter (10-foot) model wing they will use for aerodynamic testing.
The project’s ultimate goal is to inform a new generation of more sustainable, single-aisle aircraft, which account for the largest share of air travel worldwide. The program is also part of the U.S. Aviation Climate Action Plan, which seeks to not only meet the nation’s ambitious climate goals but also to improve the quality of life for those living near airports and under flight paths through reductions in noise and pollutants. As NASA Administrator Bill Nelson remarked in a press statement last year:
“At NASA, our eyes are not just focused on stars but also fixated on the sky. The Sustainable Flight Demonstrator builds on NASA’s world-leading efforts in aeronautics as well [as] climate. The X-66A will help shape the future of aviation, a new era where aircraft are greener, cleaner, and quieter, and create new possibilities for the flying public and American industry alike.”
A 790,000 Year-Old Asteroid Impact Could Explain Seafloor Spherules
Our solar system does not exist in isolation. It formed within a stellar nursery along with hundreds of sibling stars, and even today has the occasional interaction with interstellar objects such as Oumuamua and Borisov. So it’s reasonable to presume that some interstellar material has reached Earth. Recently Avi Loeb and his team earned quite a bit of attention with a study arguing that it had found some of this interstellar stuff on the ocean seabed. But a new study finds that the material has a much more local origin.
The original study is based on a 2014 meteor that entered the Earth’s atmosphere off the coast of Papua New Guinea. Observations of its impact trajectory suggested it might have been extraterrestrial in origin. And since we had an idea of where it hit, why not look for its debris? This led Loeb’s team to the seafloor near Papua New Guinea, where they found small, iron-rich spheres known as spherules. The study analyzed the composition of these spherules and found the isotope distribution was so unusual they must have an interstellar origin.
The iron isotopes of these spherules show a local origin. Credit: Desch, et al
While that sounds compelling, there are a few caveats. The first is that the trajectory of the 2014 meteor isn’t that precisely known. We know the general impact region, but the data simply isn’t good enough to prove that these spherules came from this particular meteor. The second is that “unusual” isotopes aren’t uncommon within our solar system. As the new study shows, there is a distribution of iron isotope ratios for objects originating in the solar system, specifically the ratios of 57Fe and 56Fe. The ratio for the “alien” spherules is well within that range. So well that the odds of them being interstellar is less than 1 in 10,000. So these spherules have a local origin.
But they were likely formed from an impact event, so this new study went further. Is there a known impact from which these spherules originated? Turns out there is. The region in which they were found is part of what’s known as the Australasian tektite strewn field. It is a vast field that spans southeast Asia to Antarctica and was caused by a large impact 790,000 years ago. The team looked at other isotope ratios and found they are consistent with other known Australasian tektites.
So these particular spherules have a local origin. But that doesn’t mean interstellar meteorites don’t exist. Given what we know, there are almost certainly interstellar objects on Earth just waiting to be found. We just have to keep looking for them.
Olympus Mons is well known for being the largest volcano in the Solar System. It’s joined on Mars by three other shield volcanoes; Ascraeus, Pavonis and Arsia but a recent discovery has revealed a fifth. Provisionally called Noctis volcano, this previously unknown Martian feature reaches 9,022 metres high and 450 kilometres across. Its presence has eluded planetary scientists because it has been heavily eroded and is on the boundary of the fractured maze-like terrain of Noctis Labyrinthus.
Mars seems to like shield volcanoes. They are a type of volcano that have a broad gently sloping profile and are generally composed of basaltic lava flows. The flows spread out over large distances during eruptions before eventually solidifying and creating long gently sloping faces. They tend to be the result of divergent plate boundaries where tectonic plates gently drift apart. It’s not just Mars that hosts them, here on Earth Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea in Hawaii are great examples of shield volcanoes.
Olympus Mons, captured by the ESA’s Mars Express mission from orbit. Credit: ESA/DLR/FUBerlin/AndreaLuck
Noctis volcano was found on the edges of Noctis Labyrinthus, a region whose name means Labyrinth of the Night. It’s a fascinating surface feature with a complex valley, canyon and ridge system within Valles Marineris. It’s a distinctive feature on the Martian surface with disorderly, intersecting valleys and plateaus. Thought to be the result of erosion and tectonic activity the region has masked the new volcano, until now.
Noctis Labyrinthus on Mars as seen by Viking 1 orbiter. Courtesy NASA.
A team of scientists, led by SETI Institute planetary scientist Dr Pascal Lee said “We were examining the geology of an area where we had found the remains of a glacier last year when we realised we were inside a huge and deeply eroded volcano.” There were a number of signs that revealed the volcanic activity in the region and led to the volcano’s discovery. Located on the eastern edge of Noctis Labyrinthus there were a number of meseas – or flat topped mountains – arranged in an arc that seemed to reach a peak before descending away from an apparent summit area. A gentle slope softly slips away over distances of over 200km and close study seems to reveal the remains of a caldera. The study revealed what looked like a collapsed crater that once contained a lava lake and there was significant evidence of lava flows in the area including pyroclastic deposits.
The study of Mars over the years since the invention of the telescope and more recently the advent of space flight has revealed a complex geological history. The features across the planet seem to reveal significant modification too perhaps from thermal erosion, glacial erosion and fracturing of the crust.
The team conclude that the volcano is a shield volcano that has been built up of layers of accumulations of pyroclastic material, lava and ice. The ice it seems, just like volcanic lava, has built up over repeated years of snow and ice build up on the flanks of the volcano. With the fractures, likely driven by plate uplifts in the general Tharsis region, lava was able to seep through different regions of the volcano. Where the ice has been buried and subsequently melted, catastrophic collapses have occurred compounding the challenge of identifying it.
Space Force budget (secret space programs are integrated) exceeds NASA
Space Force budget (secret space programs are integrated) exceeds NASA
Dr Michael Salla discusses the following topics:
US Congress cuts funding to NASA while corporations are funding more space missions.
Detailed breakdown of UAP historical report cites glaring deficiencies. Article proclaims Pentagon is heading for disaster due to AARO UAP report – catastrophic disclosure more likely.
AARO Report: Lies, flawed, unresponsive, clueless, and knavish analyzed by Robert Powell (A must read).
Webinar Trailer released- Ancient Alien Experiments and Crypto Terrestrials.
Space Force budget exceeds NASA but will surge as elements of secret space programs are integrated.
UFO Disclosure Project Attorney Danny Sheehan recounts his encounter with secret Project Blue Book files in 1977 that contained photos of retrieved flying saucer craft.
Could Romanian President entering race for NATO leadership be a reward for him suppressing news of the discovery of an ancient Hall of Records under Bucegi Mountains in 2003?
President Eisenhower’s role in agreements reached with Aliens revealed by Great Granddaughter in New Book.
New JP video highlights ETs monitoring humanity’s consciousness and the importance of the love ethic.
The wise Reptilian entity depicted in Japanese art is similar to Naga beings in Vedic art and literature.
Analysis of AARO historical report discussing July 1952 shootdown attempt against a flying saucer involved in Washington flyover.
Four primary goals in AARO historical report point to a coming false flag UFO event.
Mysterious Triangular UFO Spotted in the Skies of Bratislava
Mysterious Triangular UFO Spotted in the Skies of Bratislava
In an extraordinary event that has captured the attention of UFO enthusiasts and skeptics alike, a remarkable sighting occurred in the night sky over Ru¸inov, a bustling borough of Bratislava, Slovakia, on March 14, 2024. This incident has swiftly climbed the ranks in the annals ofUFO sightings, stirring a whirlwind of speculation and intrigue.
The Sighting in Detail
Just before the clock struck 11 pm on that fateful evening, a resident and amateur UFO enthusiast known online as “ufoslovakia” managed to capture jaw-dropping footage of an unidentified flying object. But this was no ordinary sighting. The footage reveals a distinct triangular-shaped craft, looming ominously above. What makes this sighting particularly fascinating is the suggestion from the footage that we might be looking at a single, massive object rather than three separate entities.
The Eyewitness and the Video
“ufoslovakia,” known for his passion for filming and sharing aerial anomalies, could hardly believe his eyes. Through his lens, he witnessed what could very well be one of the most definitive pieces of visual evidence of UFO activity in recent history. The clarity and detail of the footage have left viewers in awe, prompting debates and discussions across various platforms.
What Makes This Sighting Unique?
Triangular UFO sightings have been reported globally, but the Bratislava incident stands out for several reasons. First, the quality of the footage is unusually high, providing a clear view of the object’s shape and movements. Secondly, the size of the craft, as suggested by the footage, indicates that this could be an unusually large object, distinguishing it from more common reports of smaller, drone-like objects.
Skeptics and Believers Alike Are Intrigued
While some skeptics propose explanations ranging from advanced military aircraft to atmospheric phenomena, the distinct characteristics observed in the Bratislava sighting challenge conventional understandings. Enthusiasts point to the lack of sound, the steady flight pattern, and the uniformity of the object’s lights as indicators that this sighting cannot be easily dismissed.
This remarkable sighting in Bratislava has added a fascinating chapter to the ongoing narrative of UFO sightings. Whether you’re a staunch believer in extraterrestrial visitors, a curious skeptic, or simply someone fascinated by the unknown, this incident invites you to explore the endless possibilities that our universe holds.
Aliens and the Origins of Human Life: Insights from David Grusch on The Joe Rogan Experience
Aliens and the Origins of Human Life: Insights from David Grusch on The Joe Rogan Experience
In an enthralling episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, David Grusch joined Joe Rogan to delve into the enigmatic possibility of extraterrestrial influence on the development of human life. This thought-provoking discussion explored various aspects of alien life, the hypothesis of extraterrestrial seeding of life on Earth, and the implications of such interventions.
The Hypothesis of Extraterrestrial Seeding
David Grusch presented a captivating hypothesis that extraterrestrial beings could have played a pivotal role in the genesis or acceleration of life on Earth. This theory suggests that aliens, through genetic intervention, could have fast-tracked the evolution of emerging intelligent life forms on our planet. The underlying idea is that such interventions would not only boost the natural progression of evolution but also imbue these life forms with an innate drive for innovation, control, and the expansion of influence.
Beyond Biological Limitations
A significant portion of the discussion was dedicated to the concept that advanced extraterrestrial entities might have evolved beyond the biological constraints known to human beings. Grusch and Rogan speculated about the existence of beings that operate in realms undetectable to us, free from the limitations of physical space and the conventional life-death cycle. This advanced state would allow them to engage in and influence processes in ways that are currently beyond human comprehension.
Technological Evolution and Communication
Reflecting on the rapid evolution of human communication technologies, from face-to-face interaction to instant global connectivity, the conversation touched upon the potential for future advancements. This led to discussions about the possibility of instant physical presence across vast distances, drawing parallels between human technological progress and the speculated capabilities of advanced extraterrestrial beings.
Theoretical Frameworks and Cosmic Perspectives
The dialogue ventured into discussions on theoretical frameworks that could potentially explain the universe’s complexities, including Eric Weinstein’s Geometric Unity. The notion that the universe itself could be considered a creator or a form of god was explored, suggesting a meta-perspective on the origins and nature of creation. This perspective invites contemplation on the universe’s ability to generate complex systems, potentially including other universes.
Exploring Existential Questions
The conversation between Grusch and Rogan raised profound existential questions regarding the nature of the universe, the origin of life, and the concept of a cyclical universe that undergoes endless cycles of expansion and contraction. They discussed the limitations of human understanding and the exciting potential for discoveries that lie beyond our current observations of the cosmos.
David Grusch’s appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience provided a fascinating exploration of the hypothesis that extraterrestrial life forms might have contributed to the creation or acceleration of human life. This discussion spanned the potential for biological and technological advancements beyond our current understanding, theoretical frameworks for comprehending the universe, and the deep existential questions these ideas evoke. The possibility of alien influence on human evolution invites us to reconsider our place in the cosmos and the untapped mysteries of the universe.
The Enigma of Scotland’s UFO Encounter: Unraveling the Mystery with Physical Evidence
The Enigma of Scotland’s UFO Encounter: Unraveling the Mystery with Physical Evidence
In the captivating landscape of Scotland, nestled within the enigmatic expanse known as the Falkirk Triangle, an incident unfolded that would forever etch its name in the annals of UFO research. The event centers around Bob Taylor, a forest service supervisor, whose ordinary day transformed into an extraordinary encounter, presenting what many believe to be undeniable evidence of an extraterrestrial presence.
The Unforgettable Encounter
On a day like any other, Bob Taylor ventured down a wooded path, only to be greeted by a sight that defied explanation—a massive, hovering object, with a distinctive disc-like shape, adorned with peculiar propellers. This was not merely a fleeting vision; it was a tangible entity that marked its presence in the physical world. Taylor’s attempt to approach the object led to an unforeseen altercation, culminating in him being forcibly drawn towards this mysterious craft, an experience that left him staggered and bewildered.
The Investigation Unfolds
What sets the Bob Taylor incident apart is not just the encounter itself, but the aftermath. Disturbed and disheveled, Taylor managed to return home, promptly alerting the authorities. Thus began one of the few UFO cases to be officially investigated as a criminal matter. The scrutiny it attracted was not limited to law enforcement; young UFO researchers Malcolm Robinson and Andrew Collins, alongside researcher Hugh Newman, took it upon themselves to delve deeper, seeking answers to a mystery that had lingered for over four decades.
Physical Evidence: A Tangible Proof
The investigation into Taylor’s encounter is distinguished by the compelling physical evidence it amassed. The site of the encounter bore witness to peculiar ground markings, arranged in a circular pattern, defying conventional explanations. These were not mere anomalies; they were physical imprints of an otherworldly visitor. Further corroborating Taylor’s account was the condition of his trousers, torn in such a unique fashion that it suggested a struggle with an unseen force, a testament to the physical reality of his experience.
VIDEO:
Ancient Aliens: Scottish UFO Landing PROVED By Physical Evidence (Season 29)
The Bob Taylor incident offers a rare glimpse into the potential for extraterrestrial encounters, bolstered by tangible evidence and an official investigation. It challenges us to reconsider our understanding of the unknown, urging a more open-minded and rigorous exploration of unexplained phenomena. As we continue to ponder the mysteries of the cosmos, cases like Taylor’s serve as a beacon, guiding us through the uncharted territories of our universe in search of the truth.
Craig Muir discovers a monolith on a hillside in Wales this week.
(Craig Muir via Storyful)
"When I first saw it, I was a bit taken aback as it looked like some sort of a UFO," Muir told the Press Association.
"It didn't seem like it was chucked in there, instead it has been accurately put in the ground," he added. "However, there were no obvious tracks around it and one would think that there would be a lot of mess around it, but there wasn't."
The unusual discovery comes after similar monoliths have been found in locations such as the U.S., Belgium, Romania and the Isle of Wight – an island in the English Channel.
In November 2020, one of the monoliths, estimated at between 10 feet and 12 feet high, was found by Utah state wildlife employees who were counting sheep from a helicopter.
Craig Muir found the monolith near Hay-on-Wye on Tuesday, March 12.
(Craig Muir via Storyful)
Bret Hutchings, the helicopter pilot, said it was "about the strangest thing that I’ve come across out there in all my years of flying," according to Salt Lake City's KSL-TV.
Authorities said at the time that the mysterious object was installed in the ground in a remote area with "no obvious indication" of who might have put it there, according to a press release from the Utah Department of Public Safety.
Then a week later, another monolith was discovered in Atascadero, California, which is north of Los Angeles.
It’s unclear who is behind the placement of the monoliths. A New Mexico artist collective claimed responsibility years ago.
One of the monoliths was found by state wildlife officials in Utah in November 2020.
Tom Dunford, who discovered one of the monoliths in the Isle of Wight in 2020, told Sky News "The person who put it there knows what they're doing. It's really reflective. It's someone playing a practical joke, I don't believe in any of these conspiracy theories."
Why are bizarre metal pillars popping up in the British countryside? From the work of UFOs to mystery collectives planting the monoliths by helicopter in the dead of night and Banksy rumours... all the theories explained
Why are bizarre metal pillars popping up in the British countryside? From the work of UFOs to mystery collectives planting the monoliths by helicopter in the dead of night and Banksy rumours... all the theories explained
Humans have long been obsessed with the idea that we are not alone in the universe - which is why the appearance of random metal pillars in the British countryside have sparked fresh theories over whether a third kind truly does exist.
Last weekend, yet another mysterious shiny silver structure was spotted by walkers on Hay Bluff, near the town of Hay-on-Wye.
It was the latest in a series of bizarre structures to crop up, with pillars also spotted on a beach in the Isle of Wight, at the top of Glastonbury Tor, in the middle of Merry Maidens stone circle in Cornwall and on the fields at Dartmoor National Park.
The appearances that range from 2020 to last weekend have led to much speculation over who has put them there and why, with some even pondering whether or not the objects could be of extra-terrestrial origin.
Local builder Craig Muir, who discovered the 10ft monolith sticking up out of the mud, said he assumed it was 'some sort of a UFO' while out walking.
The latest sighting remains shrouded in mystery as no-one has come forward to claim responsibility for the Welsh metal pillar which bears striking similarities to the one featured in the Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The pillars have turned up in the UK following a spate of monoliths appearing around the world in 2020, including in Romania and the Utah desert.
Last weekend, yet another mysterious shiny silver structure was spotted by walkers on Hay Bluff, near the town of Hay-on-Wye
While some speculated that the structure could be the work of aliens or a sign of life on Mars, others said it was an elaborate piece of artwork
The latest sighting remains shrouded in mystery as no-one has come forward to claim responsibility for the Welsh metal pillar which bears striking similarities to the one featured in the Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey (pictured)
Conspiracy theorists believe that aliens are behind the structures but others have speculated that helicopters could be dropping them off in the dead of night.
Since there is no way to drive up to the top of the hill, Mr Muir suggested it could have been taken by a group of people or dropped off by the chopper on its spot.
'It didn't seem like it was chucked in there, instead it has been accurately put in the ground,' he said.
'However, there were no obvious tracks around it and one would think that there would be a lot of mess around it, but there wasn't.'
The latest discovery is similar to the structure found on Compton Bay on the Isle of Wight four years ago.
A number of photos from various different angles suggested that the monolith was buried in the sand and offers out a perfect reflection.
How the object ended up on the beach was unclear, as it is only accessible via a footpath.
Locals were quick to question whether images of the monolith posted on social media had been 'photoshopped' or if it was 'just a late April Fool's joke'.
On December 12 2020, local resident Luke Brown stumbled across another imposing monolith in Cornwall and captured a video of the metallic object
But photographer Alice Williams insisted it was real, sharing snaps of the eight-foot-tall structure at sunset in a local Facebook group.
Elsewhere, on December 12 2020, resident Luke Brown stumbled across another imposing monolith in Cornwall and captured a video of the metallic object.
He said: 'I was left in shock and awe earlier at finding a monolith at the centre of the Merry Maidens stone circle near sunset, the one time I left my camera at home.
'It was a thing of beauty but I can't help thinking of the damage that may have been done at this beautiful protected natural heritage site.'
The Merry Maidens also known as Dawn's Men - a likely corruption of the Cornish Dans Maen Stone Dance - is a late neolithic stone circle.
Just one day prior to the monolith being captured in Cornwall, another pillar was also spotted in Dartmoor National Park, Devon.
The structure was spotted on Dartmoor by photographer Sarah Clarke, who captured a shot of the monolith, before posting to X, formerly Twitter.
Dartmoor National Park swiftly removed the monolith after a picture of it was posted by photographer Sarah Clarke, with the body saying that the moorland is protected
Only 48 hours prior to the sighting of a monolith in Dartmoor National Park, another similar structure was seen on top of a hill in Glastonbury with 'Not Banksy' etched on it
She reassured her followers that the image was not made using photoshop software, stating: 'So, a very exciting morning - it's a real thing. 'Anyone who knows me, knows I just can't do Photoshop so, take it from me.'
Mark Bullock, who went to look at the pillar himself, said its vantage point on the hill made it appear like 'something was wrong with the sky'. He added: 'It was a bit surreal.'
Dartmoor National Park swiftly removed the monolith after Ms Clarke's post, saying that the moorland is protected.
Just 48 hours prior to the Dartmoor sighting, another similar monolith was seen on top of a hill in Glastonbury with 'Not Banksy' etched on it.
Walkers discovered the large silver structure at Glastonbury Tor - an ancient hill linked to King Arthur and Celtic mythology.
It is believed the monolith was placed there overnight before it was felled by a gust of wind.
Monolith found on beach at Compton in Isle Of Wight
On December 6 2020, another monolith was found by beachgoers at Compton Bay on the Isle of Wight
The shiny triangular pillar features a stencil drawing of a rat, similar to the style used by street artist Banksy.
Michelle Cowbourne spotted the metal structure at the National Trust site while on her regular morning walk.
'I walked up the long slope side and this was on the other side and when I saw it I couldn't believe my eyes,' she said. 'I just thought what on earth is that.
'There were two big metal bolts but they hadn't been fixed to the ground properly.
'It's a big chunk of metal and it was really heavy,' Ms Cowbourne added.
The first pillar in Utah was originally spotted in 2020 by state wildlife officials who were helping to count bighorn sheep from a helicopter. When the structure suddenly vanished, many thought it was the work of aliens.
However, a photographer revealed later that he had seen four men remove the pillar from the remote area of red rock in Spanish Valley, Utah.
Two weeks after the Utah pillar was discovered, another mysterious monolith, this one 13ft tall, appeared on Batca Doamnei Hill in Romania.
It is not known where there monuments are coming from but some have guesses it is a tribute to 2001: A Space Odyssey.
In the book by Arthur C Clarke, a monolith appears on Earth and gives wisdom to a group of apes.
Mars Drives Deep-Ocean Circulation in Earth’s Oceans, Study Suggests
Mars Drives Deep-Ocean Circulation in Earth’s Oceans, Study Suggests
Geoscientists from Australia and France have used the geological record of Earth’s deep oceans to discover a connection between the orbits of our home planet and Mars. They’ve discovered a surprising 2.4-million-year cycle where deep currents wax and wane which, in turn, is linked to periods of increased solar energy and a warmer climate.
This image from Mars Express’ High Resolution Stereo Camera shows the globe of Mars set against a dark background. The disk of the planet features yellow, orange, blue and green patches, all with an overall muted grey hue, representing the varying composition of the surface.
Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin / G. Michael / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.
“In 1976, scientists demonstrated for the first time the presence of 10,000 – 100,000-year astronomical cycles in Pleistocene deep-sea sediments, confirming Milutin Milankovitch’s theory that Earth’s climate is modulated by periodicities in perturbations of Earth’s orbit around the Sun and Earth’s spin axis,” said University of Sydney researcher Adriana Dutkiewicz and her colleagues.
“Apart from the well-known astronomical cycles with periods of 19,000, 23,000, 41,000, 100,000, and 400,000 years that pace Earth’s climate, the geological record also contains signals of much longer-period grand cycles, which are predicted by astronomical theory.”
“These grand cycles include orbitally-forced periodicities of millions and even tens of millions of years that are similarly linked to changes in incoming solar energy and paleoclimate.”
In their new research, the authors used the deep-sea sediment record to check for links between sedimentary shifts and changes in the Earth’s orbit.
They found that the vigor of deep-sea currents shifts in 2.4-million-year cycles.
“We were surprised to find these 2.4-million-year cycles in our deep-sea sedimentary data,” Dr. Dutkiewicz said.
“There is only one way to explain them: they are linked to cycles in the interactions of Mars and Earth orbiting the Sun.”
“The gravity fields of the planets in the solar system interfere with each other and this interaction, called a resonance, changes planetary eccentricity, a measure of how close to circular their orbits are.”
“For the Earth it means periods of higher incoming solar radiation and warmer climate in cycles of 2.4 million years.”
The researchers found that the warmer cycles correlate with an increased occurrence of breaks in the deep-sea record, related to more vigorous deep ocean circulation.
They identified that deep eddies were an important component of earlier warming seas.
It is possible these could partly mitigate ocean stagnation some have predicted could follow a faltering AMOC (Atlantic meridional overturning circulation) that drives the Gulf Stream and maintains temperate climates in Europe.
“We know there are at least two separate mechanisms that contribute to the vigor of deep-water mixing in the oceans,” Professor Müller said.
“AMOC is one of them, but deep ocean eddies seem to play an important role in warm climates for keeping the ocean ventilated.”
“Of course, this would not have the same effect as AMOC in terms of transporting water masses from low to high latitudes and vice-versa.”
“These eddies are like giant whirlpools and often reach the abyssal seafloor, resulting in seafloor erosion and large sediment accumulations called contourites, akin to snowdrifts.”
“Our deep-sea data spanning 65 million years suggest that warmer oceans have more vigorous deep circulation,” Dr. Dutkiewicz said.
“This will potentially keep the ocean from becoming stagnant even if AMOC slows or stops altogether.”
The study was published in the journal Nature Communications.
A. Dutkiewicz et al. 2024. Deep-sea hiatus record reveals orbital pacing by 2.4 Myr eccentricity grand cycles. Nat Commun 15, 1998; doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-46171-5
Casually having a conversation with a robot butler might not be as far out as we thought.
Figure, an AI robotics company that’s attracted the financial backing of Microsoft and Nvidia, showed off why it deserves that investment money. In its latest demo, its Figure 01 is seen having a full-on conversation with another human, even completing tasks and requests.
The eerily conversational robot is a result of Figure’s robotic design and OpenAI’s intelligence on the backend. It may not be able to backflip off a skateboard, but the demo shows Figure 01 handing over an apple and putting away dishes. That’s not incredibly groundbreaking, but with how fast ChatGPT and other large language models are advancing, Figure 01 could see advancements quickly.
LAPPING THE COMPETITION
It’s impressive to see Figure 01 smoothly navigate anormal conversation with a human, all while responding to requests and handling simple tasks. Of course, putting away dishes isn’t the most complex task, but it’s a promising start considering how Figure 01 can already identify what’s in front of it and respond accordingly in real-time.
It’s a big difference compared to the demos we saw with Tesla’s Optimus bot. While Tesla has come out with a second-generation model already, Optimus has yet to show us the same fluidity and responsiveness we’re seeing with the Figure 01 demo.
Figure says the goal is to make a “fully electromechanical humanoid” robot to handle all the physical tasks that humans have to do. So far, the Figure 01 stands 5’6”, weighs more than 132 lbs, can handle payloads up to around 44 lbs, and tops out a brisk 1.2 m/s. Figure also says there’s a runtime of five hours, so it’s not quite meant to cater to your needs 24/7.
Figure debuted its 01 humanoid robot back in October.
FIGURE / X
NO RELEASE DATE YET
With Figure 01, it does feel like we’re inching towards a future of at-home robots. Still, we don’t have a release date for Figure’s robot yet, but the company’s founder and CEO Brett Adcock has already said that the company wants to produce its robots at “exceptionally high volume.”
Figure hasn’t detailed any prices for its robot yet, either, but Adcock expressed optimism for trying to bring the costs down to “affordable levels.” Considering how nascent this technology is, it’s tough to determine what’s affordable or not. For reference, Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk previously said that the Optimus robot is targeting a price of around $20,000.
Voyager 1 might be getting better after its recent bout of aphasia.
Since November, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has been speaking in electronic gibberish. NASA still hasn’t pinpointed the cause of the problem, but a likely culprit is a cosmic ray that corrupted a single bit of data in part of the spacecraft’s Flight Data System; specifically, the part that converts information about the spacecraft's status and data into binary code to send back to Earth. Instead of coherent lines of code, Voyager has been sending home random strings of 0s and 1s that don’t mean anything.
But over the last couple of weeks, Voyager 1’s issues seem to be improving. It’s putting its 0s and 1s together in patterns, not just random sequences. However, these patterns are more like baby babble than language.
“They're not exactly what we would expect, but they do look like something that can show us that the FDS is at least partially working.” Voyager program manager Suzanne Dodd tells Pasadena Star-News.
An artistic rendering of the interplanetary space probe Voyager II as it flies by Jupiter.
HISTORICAL/CORBIS HISTORICAL/GETTY IMAGES
Dodd recently told the press that it would take a miracle for Voyager 1 to pull through, but the hardy little spacecraft and its twin sister Voyager 2 have survived a lot over the 46 years of their joint mission. And their engineering teams have found creative ways to keep the aging sister spaceships flying — and most importantly, to keep them sending new data home. Inverse talked with a Voyager engineer about what the team has learned from those years of jury-rigging solutions and how it might help other missions.
“In the last decade, I have learned from Voyager that there is (almost) always a way around a problem, no matter how dire it is,” Voyager mission assurance manager Bruce Waggoner tells Inverse. “You just have to think ‘outside the box’ when people tell you not to do so.”
Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are on different trajectories out of the Solar System.
The team of engineers running the twin Voyager spacecraft have had to get increasingly creative over the last 46 years, as aging parts and systems have started to develop glitches and the power supply has begun to dwindle. Most of the people who designed the Voyagers and worked on the spacecraft in the early years of their mission have long since retired (and several have died), and they would probably be surprised by the ways today’s Voyager team has kept the pair of space probes running.
“Recently, the team found a way to keep the instruments powered for an additional 2 to 4 years by operating the spacecraft with an unregulated voltage,” says Waggoner. “This is a first as far as I know: operating the power system in a completely different way than the designers intended.”
The Voyagers’ designers built a safety mechanism to protect the instruments from sudden changes in the flow of electricity. If that happens, a regulator allows the spacecraft to access a small reserve of power, which is supposed to help it ride out the voltage fluctuation. But recently, Voyager engineers decided that after 45 years of the electrical systems working smoothly, Voyager 2 needed the extra power more than it needed the safety feature — because the alternative was shutting off one of Voyager 2’s instruments. (Voyager 1 is already down an instrument due to a hardware failure earlier in the mission, but its payloads will eventually face the chopping block, too.)
That kind of off-script improvisation has been the Voyager team’s standard operating procedure for decades.
“I would say that 100 percent of it has been figured out along the way,” Dodd told Inverse last year. “Absolutely nothing was known about flying for 45 years at 175 AU from us here on Earth, and we're into our 46th year now.”
And it’s been mostly trial and error. When something goes wrong with one of the Mars rovers, for instance, engineers can try out their solutions on a testbed: a replica of the spacecraft here on Earth kept on hand for exactly that purpose. But there is no Voyager testbed.
The goal is for each spacecraft to reach 19 billion miles away from the Sun with at least one instrument still running and communicating with Earth. Waggoner says the team has a 120-page book of ideas on how to keep the aging Voyagers working. Along the way, they’ve learned some tricks that may help extend the lives of future space missions.
An artist's impression of the Voyager 1 space probe flying past Saturn in the outer solar system, circa 1980.
SPACE FRONTIERS/ARCHIVE PHOTOS/GETTY IMAGES
KEEP THE SPACECRAFT SIMPLE
“Hopefully, people will look back at the lessons of Voyager and apply them,” says Waggoner. I work on many missions, and I use ideas from Voyager all the time, especially to think outside the box.”
Another key lesson is that it’s easier for a space mission’s engineering team to be flexible if the spacecraft itself is simple, study, and has backups for most of its hardware. The Flight Data System that’s currently on the fritz, for example, is Voyager 1’s backup; it's original one failed in 1981, and without redundancy, scientists would have missed 33 years of exploring the outer fringes of our Solar System.
Compared with more recent spacecraft, the Voyagers’ hardware is pretty bare-bones, its software is programmed in languages most modern engineers don’t even learn, and it sports about 64 kilobytes of memory (about 240,000 times less than the smartphone you’re probably reading this article on). But as strange as it sounds, that antique simplicity is actually one of Voyager’s biggest assets because it makes troubleshooting easier.
“I like the simpler code on Voyager because people can understand what the system will do, in most cases without simulation,” says Waggoner. That especially helps when trying to fix a pair of spacecraft with no testbeds here on Earth “just by thinking through the problems,” as Waggoner puts it.
Dodd, speaking to Inverse last year, compares operating the Voyagers to repairing an older-model car, compared with a more modern version with more complex systems and electronics.
“The simplicity of Voyager helps if you want to change things over time as the spacecraft gets older and the mission lasts longer,” says Dodd. “It's kind of like having an old car, and you can look under the hood and know what the key pieces are. When you have a new car, it's all driven by software and it's really hard to just go in there and tweak the carburetor and have it still run.”
Waggoner has a story about that, too. The Voyagers’ thrusters, which keep the distant spacecraft’s antennas pointed toward Earth, are slowly clogging with silicon dioxide. Last summer, it looked like the clogged thrusters could doom the missions within the next couple of years.
“Again, the team found workarounds by changing the way the thrusters are fired and pointing is managed,” says [source]. “Once the worst [clogged] thrusters fail, there may even be a way to allow the spacecraft to roll and return data.”
Of course, for Voyager 1, that depends on whether the spacecraft ever learns to speak again.
During the summer of 1952, the United States was on high alert as UFO sightings over the nation’s capitalwere making frequent headlines. Buried amid the otherworldly clamor occupying the minds of Americans around that time, an obscure report conveyed that one of the objects—a small, glowing disc—was pursued and shot at by a military aircraft, blasting off a fragment that fell into a field near Washington D.C., which a naval officer later retrieved.
More than a decade later, an official government-funded scientific inquiry into UFOs—or what the United States government now calls unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP)—would investigate the incident, ultimately determining claims involving the 1952 UFO incident were unlikely to be true.
Without question, the notion that a fragment might have been recovered after a shoot-out with a flying saucer in the 1950s offers a textbook example of what most would call a dubious claim. Yet a deeper look into this Cold War-era rumor reveals, surprisingly, that there could potentially be more to this odd story than past assessments would seem to indicate.
However, you would never have gleaned that from reading the latest report issued by the U.S. Defense Department’s official UAP investigative office.
Last week, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) released a long-awaited historical report on its findings involving the United States government’s involvement with UAP and related programs since the end of World War II.
In the report, AARO investigators maintained the U.S. federal government’s longstanding position that it has never found any convincing evidence of extraterrestrial technologies operating near Earth, nor of any secret programs involving the acquisition or reverse engineering of crashed exotic technologies that have remained hidden from Congress.
The report was met with heavy criticism following its publication, partly due to a number of errors it was revealed to contain. Despite this, there were also a few intriguing inclusions made by AARO’s investigators, based on their relevance to the question of whether UAP materials have ever crashed on Earth and been studied.
One of these appears in a section of the AARO report that discusses the University of Colorado UFO Project, more commonly called the Condon Committee, a U.S. Air Force-funded evaluation of cases that were collected under its long-running Project Blue Book investigations that studied UFOs during the 1950s and 1960s.
According to AARO’s recent report, the Colorado scientific panel, led by American physicist Edward U. Condon, “investigated a claim made by radio broadcaster Frank Edwards in a 1966 book that a piece of a UFO was recovered near Washington, D.C. in the summer of 1952 during the spike in UFO sightings over the U.S. Capitol in July and August.”
The account in question appeared in Edward’s book Flying Saucers: Serious Business, of which AARO’s investigators recount that Edwards “claimed that a USN jet fired on a two-foot diameter glowing disc and dislodged a one-pound fragment that was recovered by a ground team.” At the time of their study, the Condon Committee’s investigators inquired about the incident with Project Blue Book, who told the University of Colorado team that they were unaware of the purported 1952 incident.
Above: Excerpt from Frank Edwards’ 1966 book, Flying Saucers: Serious Business, where the author discussed the alleged 1952 UFO incident.
“The USAF and USN found no incident report of weapons engagement with a UFO that summer, no USN aircraft were present, and the retired officer who was the original source of the claim had retired before the summer of 1952, when the event allegedly occurred,” the AARO report’s summary reads.
The report then attributes another claim to Edwards, this time involving fragments from a UFO that were loaned by the United States to the Canadian government. “It is not clear if this claim was linked to the alleged Washington, D.C. incident,” the AARO report’s authors state, adding that “The Condon panel determined that these claims most likely were false.”
The reason any connections between the 1952 UFO incident and Frank Edwards’ claims of a flying saucer fragment being loaned to the Canadian government remained unclear to AARO’s investigators is probably very simple. In likelihood, their investigation of these claims took them no further than the Condon Committee’s report (as evidenced by the relevant source citations found at the end of AARO’s document). Indeed, the two events are connected, as a deeper examination of the literature regarding this alleged 1952 incident readily reveals.
Additionally, much like other assertions that appeared in the recent AARO report, some of the facts about this case have been misrepresented. However, this may not be entirely the fault of AARO’s team in this instance; a closer look at this case also reveals how much of the confusion arises from the Condon Committee’s original investigation, and problems involving their main source for the claims.
THE CONDON COMMITTEE’S CONFUSION
In the late 1960s, under contract No. 44620-67-C-0035 with the United States Air Force, the University of Colorado conducted an extensive analysis of UAP incidents collected by Project Blue Book, which resulted in the publication of its findings in a lengthy report titled Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects.
Despite the title of the Condon Committee’s report, many viewed it as being anything but a truly scientific evaluation of existing data on aerial mysteries. As British physicist Peter Sturrock later noted in his analysis of the Condon Committee’s findings, “most case studies were conducted by junior staff, the senior staff took little part, and the director took no part, in these investigations.” Additionally, after concerns were raised by some of the Committee’s members over apparent biases and other issues they identified with its leadership, several either resigned or were dismissed, resulting in the final report being partly assembled by staff who had only joined the project as it neared completion.
Above: Original title from John G. Fuller’s article, “Flying Saucer Fiasco,” published in Look Magazine, May 14, 1968
(Credit: CIA CREST/Public Domain/Fair Use).
The saga of the 1952 UFO shoot-down over Washington was addressed in a section of the Condon Committee’s final report titled “Parts of UFOs, or UFO Equipment,” where the Colorado team’s investigators wrote that “Representatives of Air Force Project Blue Book claimed no knowledge of the disc fragment discussed by Edwards, who claimed the successful search for this fragment was confirmed by Lt. Cdr. Frank Thompson of the U.S. Navy.”
“The fragment, said to have been dislodged by gunfire from a Navy jet, reportedly fell to the ground, where it was found, still glowing, an hour later by U.S. military ground search crews,” the Committee’s report states. “Reports of UFO events over Washington, D.C., in 1952 contain no reference to such a gunfire incident,” they add, though noting that had the fragment ever really existed “and was classified ‘Secret’ as was claimed, its existence and whereabouts would not necessarily be revealed to this project.”
On the outside chance that such an incident might have occurred, the Committee’s members reached out to U.S. Air Force headquarters for clarification. A response came from J.W. Clinton “by direction of the Chief of Information, Department of the Navy,” who indicated that a search of all Navy records revealed no documentation related to the purported incident, nor could they find any records involving the retrieval of fragments at any time that were believed to have come from a UFO.
That wasn’t the only damning revelation that came from a search of the Navy’s records. “Perhaps more significant, however, were the facts that Navy records of the year 1952 carried only one Frank Thompson, an individual who had retired from active duty several years before 1952 with the rank of lieutenant, not lieutenant commander,” the Condon Committee’s report states. In addition to this, the Committee’s investigators were told that it was unlikely that U.S. Navy aircraft would have participated in any shoot downs of objects over the nation’s capital, since in doing so they “would have been usurping an Air Force function if they had been present over Washington, D. C., as interceptors.”
“The incident is not beyond the realm of possibility,” Clinton nonetheless conceded to the Colorado team, though ultimately concluding that the incident was “very highly unlikely” given the jurisdictional issues limiting any Navy aircraft’s involvement.
Although Clinton had admitted that the incident reported by Edwards might at least have been possible, the fact that there had been no evidence of a “Frank Thompson” with the rank of lieutenant commander in active service at the time seemed to pour cold water on Edwards’ claims.
However, a closer look at Edwards’ sources for this account reveals something that may help to clarify the matter, since it turns out the name of the Lieutenant Commander in question was not “Frank Thompson” at all.
In the relevant chapter of Flying Saucers: Serious Business, Edwards states that one of his sources regarding the 1952 affair had been an earlier book from 1955 by Major Donald E. Keyhoe, titled The Flying Saucer Conspiracy. In Edwards’ book, he even provides the page number (272) for Keyhoe’s account of the incident, a review of which helps to shed some light on the situation.
“I also listed a recent report given me by Lieutenant Commander Frank Thomas,” Keyhoe wrote in his brief account of the 1952 incident, immediately revealing that the “Frank Thompson” Edwards had been referencing was, in fact, instead a Lieutenant Commander Frank Thomas.
Above: Excerpt from Donald Keyhoe’s 1955 book, later cited by Frank Edwards, where the actual name of Keyhoe’s source is shown as “Frank Thomas.” Edwards mistakenly wrote this individual’s name as “Frank Thompson” in his 1966 book.
“According to Thomas, a peculiar object had fallen near Washington during the mass saucer sightings in 1952,” Keyhoe writes. “Retrieved by a naval officer, it was later analyzed by the Bureau of Standards.”
Keyhoe goes on to describe the object, noting that “one side of it was flat with odd markings, as if it had been milled. During tests the unknown substance proved to be fire-resistant. But the analysis, Thomas said, had failed to determine whether it was an artificially constructed object or a fragment of some unknown type of meteorite.”
Keyhoe concluded the brief account by adding that “Afterward the object had been sent to W. B. Smith at Ottawa for further analysis by Project Magnet engineers.”
One must wonder whether the Condon Committee might have had better success locating the Lieutenant Commander in question if onlythey had asked the Navy to search for Frank Thomas, rather than Frank Thompson, as Edwards later mistakenly spelled the individual’s name.
However, further adding to the confusion is the fact that nowhere in the original account written by Keyhoe is it stated that the fragment was dislodged from the UAP during the purported 1952 incident by fire from an aircraft. In Keyhoe’s account, the author only conveys that “a peculiar object had fallen near Washington during the mass saucer sightings in 1952,” though adding that it was “Retrieved by a naval officer.”
Although Edwards initially only referred to a “military jet” in his retelling of the account in 1966, later in the same chapter he makes passing references to “the fragment collected by gunfire from that Navy jet.” It seems likely that Edwards had merely inferred that a Navy jet had been involved; confusion that may have stemmed from his misreading, again, of Keyhoe’s original account involving a “naval officer” who retrieved the fragment, as well as his primary source, a USN lieutenant commander.
Based on this, it would appear the insinuation that a Navy jet had been involved was another error made by Edwards, which ultimately the Condon Committee’s investigators relied on without attempting to validate the author’s sources. Add to this the fact that they had the wrong name of the alleged lieutenant commander they were looking for, and it becomes quite clear why the Navy was unable to corroborate any of the details in Edwards’ 1966 account.
THE WILBERT SMITH INTERVIEW
Although the recent AARO historical report only provides a cursory summary of the alleged 1952 incident based primarily on the Condon Committee’s findings (which, as demonstrated above, were doomed to fail from the outset based on inaccuracies in Frank Edwards’ account), there is still more to this bizarre story of alleged UAP debris. Much of this involves the Canadian engineer and UFO researcher Wilbert Smith, who eventually received the alleged flying saucer fragment according to Keyhoe’s original 1955 narrative.
A Canadian Department of Transport engineer, Smith ran Project Magnet, a UFO investigative effort that formally ran out of the Canadian government from December 1950 until mid-1954, although Smith’s informal studies involving UFOs continued for many years after the project ended.
“Smith assessed that UFOs were of extraterrestrial origin and that they flew by magnetism,” the recent AARO historical report states in a summary of Project Magnet that appears in a section addressing Foreign and Academic Investigatory Efforts. “Smith believed he was in personal contact with extraterrestrial beings through telepathy and ‘tensor beams’,” AARO’s investigators add, noting that in a 1961 interview Smith had “claimed that in 1952, the USAF lent him a piece of a UFO to study. He also claimed it was composed of magnesium orthosilicate.”
A rather revealing transcript of this interview with Smith appeared in Edwards’ 1966 book, based on a recording supplied to the author by Ohio-based researchers C.W. Fitch and George Popovitch, who conducted the 1961 interview. At one point while speaking with Smith, Fitch asked Smith about his association with the retired U.S. Navy Admiral Herbert B. Knowles, to whom Smith had reportedly shown the fragment of the saucer that the U.S. government had loaned him:
FITCH: You’re a friend of Admiral Knowles, Mr. Smith? [Rear Admiral H. B. Knowles, U.S. Navy, Retired.]
SMITH: Oh, yes. Admiral Knowles and I have been very good friends for many years.
FITCH: I have been told by a mutual friend that in 1952 you showed Admiral Knowles a piece of a flying saucer. Is that statement correct, sir?
SMITH: Yes. It is correct. I visited with Admiral Knowles and I had with me a piece which had been shot from a small flying saucer near Washington in July of that year—1952. I showed it to the Admiral. It was a piece of metal about twice the size of your thumb which had been loaned to me for a very short time by your Air Force.
FITCH: Is this the only piece you have handled which definitely had been part of a UFO, Mr. Smith?
SMITH: No. I’ve handled several of these pieces of hardware.
FITCH: In what way, if any, do they differ from materials with which we are familiar?
SMITH: As a general thing they differ only in that they are much harder than our materials.
FITCH: What about this particular piece from that UFO near Washington . . . did it differ from conventional materials? Was there anything unusual about it, sir?
SMITH: Well, the story behind it is this: The pilot was chasing a glowing disc about two feet in diameter—
FITCH: Pardon me, sir. But did you say two feet . . . ?
SMITH: That is correct. I was informed that the disc was glowing and was about two feet in diameter. A glowing chunk flew off and the pilot saw it glowing all the way to the ground. He radioed his report and a ground party hurried to the scene. The thing was still glowing when they found it an hour later. The entire piece weighed about a pound. The segment that was loaned to me was about one third of that. It had been sawed off.
FITCH: What did the analysis show?
SMITH: There was iron rust—the thing was in reality a matrix of magnesium orthosilicate. The matrix had great numbers—thousands—of I5-micron spheres scattered through it.
Fitch then questioned Smith about the whereabouts of the sample the U.S. Air Force had loaned him, to which he responded by providing the following very intriguing remarks:
FITCH: You say that you had to return it—did you return it to the Air Force, Mr. Smith?
SMITH: Not the Air Force. Much higher than that.
FITCH: The Central Intelligence Agency?
SMITH: [Chuckles] I’m sorry, gentlemen, but I don’t care to go beyond that point. I can say to you that it went to the hands of a highly classified group. You will have to solve that problem—their identity—for yourselves.
Smith’s insinuations about “a highly classified group” within the United States government that the alleged UFO fragment had been returned to is certainly intriguing, although for more reasons than merely those which are immediately obvious. Another has to do with a memorandum dated November 21, 1950, addressed to the Canadian Controller of Telecommunications, in which Smith discussed inquiries he made at the Canadian Embassy in Washington shortly after acquiring a copy of author Frank Scully’s book Behind the Flying Saucers, an early book on UFOs that recounted a dubious story involving the alleged crash of a flying saucer near Aztec, New Mexico (the incident was later deemed to have been a hoax).
Smith’s 1950 memo included a series of intriguing remarks that eventually became widely discussed in UFO circles, following the rediscovery of the memorandum in the Canadian National Archives decades later. Specifically, Smith stated that:
I made discreet enquiries [sic] through the Canadian Embassy staff in Washington who were able to obtain for me the following information:
The reference to Vannevar Bush in the 1950 memorandum is noteworthy, particularly because Bush’s name would later appear in an infamous series of documents sent to filmmaker Jaime Shandera in 1984, which consisted of briefing papers describing “Operation Majestic 12,” an alleged secret U.S. investigation into UFOs and extraterrestrials that began in the aftermath of the supposed crash said to have occurred at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. The Majestic 12 documents, as they have since become known, also later appeared in British researcher Timothy Good’s book Above Top Secret.
Despite a few intriguing references from over the years like the one in the Smith memorandum, no evidence verifying the existence of “Operation Majestic 12” has ever surfaced. The documents were deemed to be hoaxes in a series of separate investigations, including one conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which concluded the documents were “completely bogus.”
A page from the FBI’s copies of the alleged Majestic 12 documents, which they deemed to have been faked(Credit: FBI).
It is worth noting that in the recent AARO report’s summary of the Condon Committee’s findings regarding the alleged 1952 saucer fragment affair, the AARO authors state that Frank Edwards “claimed that Dr. Vannevar Bush, a prominent inventor, defense industry scientist, and founder of the National Science Foundation, led the effort to study the fragment.” The citation given for this in the AARO report, number 49, lists “The Condon Report” (Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects) as the source for this, although a search of both the PDF linked to by the AARO report’s authors, as well as an online text version of the Condon Report, reveals no references to Vannevar Bush. This could represent another error on the part of AARO’s investigators, who may have mistakenly attributed Wilbert Smith’s alleged knowledge that a “concentrated effort is being made by a small group headed by Doctor Vannevar Bush,” as stated in the 1950 memorandum, with details in the Condon Committee’s final report.
THE LETTER FROM REAR ADMIRAL KNOWLES
There is a final addendum to the story of the 1952 Washington saucer fragment, which involves testimony from the man who was allegedly shown the sample of the object while it was in Smith’s possession. As conveyed earlier in the transcript of C.W. Fitch and George Popovitch’s interview with Wilbert Smith, the latter had confirmed his friendship with U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Herbert B. Knowles, an individual with whom Fitch also corresponded about the alleged 1952 UFO incident.
In the March 1986 edition of Just Cause, the newsletter of the FOIA activist group Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS), a letter provided to the editor, Barry Greenwood, from none other than C.W. Fitch lent additional corroboration to the story of the saucer sample Wilbert Smith claimed the U.S. Air Force had loaned him in the 1950s.
“We must thank long-time UFO investigator C. Wesley Fitch for the following information, which CAUS regards as of great historical interest to our subject,” an entry at the end of the newsletter stated. “Fitch is one of a shrinking group of researchers who knew many of the pioneers of UFOlogy. We regard ourselves as fortunate that he chose to give this impressive little tid-bit to us.”
The item in question had been a series of then-25-year-old correspondences shared with CAUS, revealing “that former Navy Rear Admiral Herbert B. Knowles was involved in the examination of fragments of a UFO shot at over Washington, D.C. in 1952.” As it turned out, in addition to recording the interview where Wilbert Smith acknowledged his friendship with Admiral Knowles, Fitch had also corresponded with Knowles about the saucer fragment Smith claimed to have shown him while on loan from the United States.
As explained in the CAUS newsletter, Fitch, a member of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) had been told by one of the organization’s board members, the Reverend Albert Baller, about a visit he received from Admiral Knowles (also a board member of NICAP at the time) during which the two men discussed UFOs. Throughout their discussion at Baller’s home, Knowles recounted how he was allowed to examine the purported UFO fragment in Smith’s possession, which he said had been shot off a small glowing disk in 1952.
Fitch managed to track down Admiral Knowles, who at the time (1961) had been living in Eliot, Maine, and wrote to him asking for confirmation as to whether he had indeed examined the alleged saucer fragment. In a response dated August 27, 1961, Knowles wrote back to Fitch, divulging the following intriguing account of his recollections about the visit with Smith:
Yes, I have had a piece of a small disc in my hands. It was shown me by Mr. Wilbert Smith (address given- Ed.). At that time (1952), Mr. Smith was heading the “Flying Saucer” research of the Canadian government and working in very close cooperation with our authorities in Washington, D.C. He is still very much interested in this matter and does independent research. The Canadian Govt. has “officially” abandoned the project.
To the best of my recollection the object was shot down by a plane and seen to fall in the yard of a farmer across the river in Virginia. Upon searching the area several pieces were found, one of which was turned over to Mr . Smith for independent research. In one of his trips down to see me he brought the piece along for my inspection.
It was a chunk of amorphous metal-like structure, brownish in color where broken, with a curved edge indicating the whole thing to have been not over 2′ in diam. The edge was rounded in cross section, perhaps a quarter inch thick and obviously swelled to a considerably greater thickness at the center. The outer surface was smooth but not polished, and at the broken sections there were obviously iron particles and even evidence of iron rust. I would say that the weight was somewhat lighter than if of solid iron, but it was not extremely light.
Mr. Smith told me that a chemical test had been made of the piece at hand, that iron had been found in it but little if anything else could be identified.
Concluding his account, the retired Admiral then asserted his belief that the fragment he examined had belonged to a “remotely-controlled observation disc,” the likes of which have been “seen many times, most often in the vicinity of defense installations.”
A follow-up letter from Knowles, dated October 11, 1961, included a sketch of the alleged UFO fragment, a version of which was redrawn and included in the CAUS newsletter based on faded originals provided to Fitch (see below).
Above: Reconstructed drawing which appeared in the March 1986 CAUS newsletter (Credit: Barry Greenwood/Fair Use).
CONCLUSIONS
As a deeper analysis into this alleged 1952 incident has revealed, the DoD’s recent investigations into the matter amounted to little more than a rehashing of the flawed conclusions of the Condon Committee from decades ago, whose investigators, as we have now seen, relied on incorrect data provided in a popular book on UFOs from the 1960s as the basis for their investigations.
Thus, to briefly summarize:
AARO’s recent historical report features a short entry on the University of Colorado UFO Project (i.e., the Condon Committee) and its findings, including its investigation into claims made in a 1966 book by Frank Edwards involving a fragment allegedly shot off a UFO by a U.S. Navy aircraft near Washington, D.C., in 1952.
While the Condon Committee determined the incident had likely never occurred, the information used as the basis for its investigations had been incorrect details from Edwards’ book, resulting from his probable misreading of information in an earlier 1955 book by author Donald Keyhoe. The Condon Committee’s investigators seemingly did not scrutinize this information before providing it to the U.S. Navy, which, understandably, was unable to verify the erroneous claims.
AARO’s report attributes unverified claims involving American defense industry scientist Dr. Vannevar Bush to statements from Frank Edwards in 1966, although his book published that year makes no references to Bush, nor does the Condon Committee’s final report, which AARO cites as its source for this assertion in its recent report. It seems likely that a possible origin for the claims involving Bush may have been a 1950 memorandum attributed to Wilbert Smith, who was allegedly loaned a portion of the UFO fragment by the U.S. Air Force two years later.
A recording of a 1961 interview the Ohio-based researcher C.W. Fitch conducted with Smith, partially transcribed in Edwards’ 1966 book, details Smith’s recollections about the purported UFO fragment he was loaned and insinuated that it was returned to a “highly classified group” within the United States government. Additional correspondences between Fitch and Rear Admiral Herbert B. Knowles from 1961, and later supplied to the activist organization CAUS, confirmed that Knowles had been shown the object during a meeting with Smith in 1952, corroborating Smith’s claims of having once had the fragment in his possession.
If the AARO report had indeed conducted an “exhaustive analysis” of U.S. government records associated with UAP, one would expect they would have also easily spotted errors in the publicly accessible resources like the Condon Committee report, as well as Frank Edwards’ 1966 account involving the alleged UFO fragment from 1952.
Instead, as indicated by AARO’s contention that “it is not clear” whether the alleged 1952 incident had been associated with claims that the Canadian government was loaned a sample from a UFO, it is hard to see past the fact that the AARO’s investigators performed little more than a cursory examination of the 1952 UFO case… just like the Condon Committee had done decades ago. Thus, one wonders: what else might they have overlooked?
This all may seem inconsequential to some, especially since the present analysis alone cannot “prove” that a fragment was indeed blasted off a small, drone-like UFO near Washington in 1952. However, what this analysis does help to illustrate, taken alongside the numerous other factual errors within AARO’s recent report, is that questions regarding the merit of AARO’s broader historical investigations are indeed warranted. It is also not impossible that, if such problems as those addressed here were taken into further consideration by AARO in advance of the publication of Volume II of its historical report, perhaps they may be better equipped to satisfactorily resolve some of these lingering questions.
Altogether, maybe these decades-old claims about a fragment shot off of a flying saucer, which past studies (and more recent ones) have claimed “were most likely false,” should warrant further attention after all.
And if nothing else, perhaps, given such considerations, we can better understand why many Americans remain skeptical about their government’s latest proclamations regarding the long-reviled subject of UFOs.
Watch this amazing raw footage of a UFO creating another UFO over a river in Wyoming last week. The orange craft has the shape of a classic disk with a hump on its top center area. The craft has a glow around it and a rhythmic pattern of moving forward and back that is perfectly timed. Very unusual and looks 100% alien. With aliens coming closer and closer and the publics evidence getting more and more clear, more and more indisputable...it wont be long before the world all agrees on one thing...that intelligent aliens exist.
The Pentagon Introduces a New Surveillance System for UFO Investigations
The Pentagon Introduces a New Surveillance System for UFO Investigations
In a groundbreaking development, the Pentagon has announced the deployment of a sophisticated surveillance system specifically designed to monitor and investigate reports of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs). This new initiative, known as the “gremlin system,” marks a significant step forward in the way the military approaches the phenomenon of unidentified objects.
Overview of the Gremlin System
The gremlin system is described as a deployable surveillance tool equipped with a suite of configurable sensors. These sensors can be quickly dispatched in response to UFO sightings, capturing detailed information about the encountered objects. Whether the sightings occur in the air, outer space, or underwater, the gremlin system’s versatility allows it to gather critical data from virtually any environment.
The technology behind the gremlin system is encapsulated in Pelican cases, making it not only highly portable but also ready for rapid deployment. This ensures that whenever reports of unidentified objects emerge, the system can be swiftly sent to the location to begin the investigative process.
Pentagon’s Commitment to Transparency
Despite past controversies surrounding the Pentagon’s handling of UFO information, this new development indicates a shift towards greater openness and diligence in investigating such reports. The introduction of the gremlin system is part of a broader effort to address the public’s curiosity and concerns about unidentified aerial phenomena with a more structured and scientific approach.
The system’s deployment underscores the Pentagon’s acknowledgment of the importance of thoroughly investigating reports of unidentified objects. By leveraging advanced technology, the military aims to demystify sightings and provide clear explanations for what are often perceived as mysterious occurrences.
Skepticism and Ongoing Debate
While the Pentagon’s report and the unveiling of the gremlin system suggest there is no concrete evidence of extraterrestrial life, the topic remains a hotbed of speculation and debate. Journalists and researchers who have dedicated their careers to studying UFO phenomena are skeptical of official denials of secret programs or encounters with alien life.
This skepticism is fueled by insider accounts and whistleblowers who challenge the official narrative, suggesting that there might be more to the story than what is publicly acknowledged. The debate continues, with many urging for more in-depth investigations and transparency from the government.
The Future of UFO Investigations
With the gremlin system now in play, the Pentagon has reaffirmed its commitment to investigating every report of unidentified flying objects. This commitment is critical, as the military receives over a hundred cases every month from various sources, including military branches and civilians.
VIDEO:
Pentagon has new surveillance system for UFO reports | NewsNation Now
The ongoing investigations, bolstered by the new technology, aim to shed light on the nature of these sightings, ensuring that the public receives accurate and comprehensive information. As the debate around UFOs persists, the gremlin system represents a crucial tool in the quest for clarity and understanding of these mysterious occurrences.
In conclusion, the Pentagon’s introduction of the gremlin system for UFO reports is a significant milestone in the ongoing investigation of unidentified aerial phenomena. By employing advanced surveillance technology, the military seeks to approach the subject with renewed rigor and transparency, hoping to demystify the sightings that have captivated public interest for decades.
A historical report issued by the Pentagon’s office tasked with the investigation of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), commonly referred to as UFOs, says it found no evidence that sightings of mysterious aerial objects represent extraterrestrial technology, or that secret programs related to the recovery of crashed exotic vehicles have been hidden from Congress.
Released on Friday, the report is the first installment in a two-volume series produced by the Defense Department’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) and explores the history of the U.S. government’s involvement in investigations of UAP under a requirement established in the fiscal year (FY) 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
“To date, AARO has not discovered any empirical evidence that any sighting of a UAP represented off-world technology or the existence a classified program that had not been properly reported to Congress,” the report said.
Citing investigations that revealed most sightings to result from the “misidentification of ordinary objects and phenomena,” the report acknowledged that “many UAP reports remain unsolved,” though adding that better data could lead to the resolution of some of the currently unresolved cases.
In advance of the report’s release, Tim Phillips, acting director of AARO on assignment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), provided a briefing to a limited number of reporters on Wednesday, where he discussed the new report and revealed details about a new system called “Gremlin” designed to acquire real-time data on UAP. The Debrief did not participate in Wednesday’s media briefing.
Following the release of the report, Department of Defense spokesperson Sue Gough said in an email to The Debrief that “AARO reviewed all official USG investigatory efforts since 1945, researched classified and unclassified archives, conducted dozens of interviews and site visits, and partnered with the Intelligence Community and DoD officials responsible for special access program oversight.”
“AARO created a secure process in partnership with the highest-level security officials within the DoD, IC, and other organizations to research and investigate these claims,” Gough said. “AARO was granted full, unrestricted access by all organizations.”
Major Jesse Marcel poses with mysterious wreckage associated with the purported crash of a flying saucer near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. AARO’s recent historical report says the incident involved a once-secret U.S. covert operation called Project Mogul, as determined by the USAF in the 1990s
(Public Domain).
Although there were notable exceptions, most media coverage of the new AARO report focused almost entirely on the lack of evidence linking UAP sightings to extraterrestrial technologies, as well as the absence of classified programs involved in the recovery of crashed vehicles of non-human origin.
Also commanding media attention had been revelations involving the existence of a proposed program pitched to the Department of Homeland Security in the 2010s under the codename “Kona Blue,” which involved a prospective reverse engineering program for any extraterrestrial technologies acquired by the U.S. government.
According to the AARO report, Kona Blue had been proposed by former members of a DIA program called the Advanced Aerospace Weapons Systems Application Program (AAWSAP), whose personnel are identified in the report as some of the main proponents behind ongoing assertions involving secret U.S. government UAP programs.
The report says that AARO investigators found no evidence that extraterrestrial craft or their occupants had ever been acquired by the U.S. military and that Kona Blue was ultimately rejected by DHS leadership due to a lack of merit.
Friday’s report was met with significant criticism online following its release, with many arguing that its findings were invalid, while others expressed skepticism over its assertions that no evidence of cover-ups involving crashed UAP retrieval programs had been found.
The report’s findings appear to run in stark contrast to whistleblower allegations that first received widespread public attention last June, involving an official complaint filed with the Intelligence Community Inspector General by David Grusch, a former U.S. intelligence officer whose duties included participation in the U.S. government’s investigations into UAP in recent years.
In January, Inspector General of the Intelligence Community Thomas Monheim spoke with members of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee during a classified briefing on UAP, with some who attended claiming it left them with more questions than answers regarding ongoing claims of secret programs and exotic technologies.
Following the release of AARO’s report on Friday, amidst all the attention surrounding what AARO investigators did or did not find, and programs that were proposed but never came to fruition, few mainstream outlets discussed the numerous intriguing allusions to legitimate advanced capabilities the U.S. possesses that are peppered throughout the report—many of which, in likelihood, actually have contributed to UAP sightings over the years.
These seemingly went unnoticed, as well as several factual errors that appear throughout the new report that, for some, potentially undermine the level of rigor AARO appears to have applied in its investigations.
FACT-CHECKING AARO’S HISTORICAL REPORT
Among the many mistakes that appear in the new report, one of the most glaring appears in references to the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his involvement in helping acquire funding for a controversial UAP investigative effort run out of the Defense Intelligence Agency in the early 2000s. The report refers to the Democrat Senator’s home state as being New Mexico, whereas Reid was a U.S. Senator from Nevada.
In another instance, a famous sighting reported by pilot Kenneth Arnold near Mount Rainer, Washington in the summer of 1947 is described as having taken place on “June 23,” one day earlier than Arnold’s sighting occurred.
The report similarly claims Arnold described the objects he observed as being “saucer-like aircraft”, although this now-famous characterization was only later applied by members of the media who, at the time, were referencing Arnold’s description of their movement resembling “saucers” skipping across water.
In yet another example, the AARO report repeatedly refers to a statistical analysis of sightings collected by the U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book conducted by the Battelle Memorial Institute as “Project BEAR,” which had, in fact, only been a nickname given to the program by Blue Book’s original director, Edward J. Ruppelt. The project’s actual name—one that has now been known publicly for decades—was Project STORK.
“The name Project BEAR was an intentionally false name made by Edward Ruppelt,” wrote Robert Powell, an Executive Board Member with the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies, in a posting on X, “so as not to reveal the true name of the project.”
Powell also noted that the recent AARO report seemingly misstated the date of the Battelle project as having been issued in late 1954, whereas the date on the folder in the Air Force’s Project Blue Book files indicates a date of May 5, 1955.
Beyond mere problems with dates, AARO’s report makes further assertions that Battelle’s study, the results of which were published in a report titled Project Blue Book Special Report #14, “concluded that all cases that had enough data were resolved and readily explainable.” Quite the contrary, the study actually found that among the UFO sightings categorized within a reliability group of reports deemed “Excellent,” only 4.2% had “insufficient info,” whereas 33.3% of these cases remained “Unknown.”
In a posting on X, Marik von Rennenkampf, an analyst who worked with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, called the error “Blatantly, demonstrably false.”
INTRIGUING ACCOUNTS AND UNSOLVED CASES
Despite the number of factual errors that appear throughout the final AARO report, there are nonetheless a handful of intriguing references in it that appear to describe advanced U.S. technologies, although again, few of these have received significant attention in mainstream coverage.
In one example, which describes an individual’s account provided during an interview with AARO investigators, the report states that “AARO was able to correlate this account with an authentic USG program because the interviewee was able to provide a relatively precise time and location of the sighting which they observed exhibiting strange characteristics.”
Test flight during the 1970s of Lockheed’s then-secret Have Blue, the code name for its stealth fighter
(Public Domain).
AARO concluded the technology mistaken for being an exotic UAP technology by the unnamed witness correlated with DoD tests “of a platform protected by a [Special Access Program]” occurring at roughly the same time. “The seemingly strange characteristics reported by the interviewee match closely with the platform’s characteristics,” the AARO report’s authors state, “which was being tested at a military facility in the time frame the interviewee was there.”
“This program is not related in any way to the exploitation of off-world technology,” the report’s authors emphasize, offering no further details on the technology that is believed to have been mistaken for a test involving an exotic craft.
The report’s authors later add that “All the programs assessed to be authentic were or—if still active—continue to be, appropriately reported to either or both the congressional defense and intelligence committees.”
In another instance, material believed to have been retrieved from a UAP was subjected to analysis by the U.S. Army, with subsequent analysis conducted by AARO and “a leading science laboratory,” concluding that “the material is a metallic alloy, terrestrial in nature, and possibly of USAF origin, based on its materials characterization.”
Although most of AARO’s reported findings dismissed any verifiable connections to exotic craft or genuine unexplained phenomena, linking them instead to known U.S. government programs, there are a handful of incidents AARO said it was still investigating, which included a series of widely discussed UAP events that occurred at U.S. strategic sites during the 1960s and 1970s.
“AARO is researching U.S. and adversarial activity related to these events,” the report states, “including any U.S. programs that tested defensive ballistic missile capabilities.”
The report also maintains AARO’s past positions regarding the likelihood that prosaic explanations exist for the majority of UAP sightings, although its authors nonetheless acknowledge that there are still some cases the Pentagon’s UAP investigative office has been unable to solve.
“A small percentage of cases have potentially anomalous characteristics or concerning characteristics,” the report’s authors write. “AARO has kept Congress fully and currently informed of its findings. AARO’s research continues on these cases.”
Historic image of an A-12 test flight at Area 51 in 1962
(Public Domain).
QUESTIONS OF ACCESS AND ONGOING PROBLEMS
Last April, during a Senate Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities hearing led by U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, then-Director of AARO, agreed when asked about AARO’s Title 50 accessibility by Senator Gillibrand that “having additional authorities for collection, tasking, counterintelligence… those are all things that would be helpful, yes.”
In the U.S., most activities conducted by the Intelligence Community, including covert action missions, foreign espionage, and other activities best suited for combating unconventional external threats, operate under what is known as Title 50 authority.
Although Dr. Kirkpatrick emphasized having “good relations” with other agencies during last April’s hearing, his statements gave the distinct impression that AARO had been operating solely under Title 10 authority for the duration of its mission at that time, which would seemingly place limitations on its ability to acquire information related to the Intelligence Community’s involvement with UAP investigations, including but not limited to exchanges of data and tasking collection assets.
Responding to questions from The Debrief, Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough clarified that AARO does have access to U.S. intelligence information that falls under Title 50 authority.
“There is no impediment to AARO receiving all UAP-related information, past or present, regardless of level or origin of classification,” Gough told The Debrief. “By law, AARO may receive all UAP-related information, at all levels of classification, regardless of whether the original classification authority for such information is within DoD or the Intelligence Community.”
Although AARO does appear to have access to all the intelligence on UAP that it required, contrary to what was conveyed during last April’s Senate hearing, the Pentagon nonetheless continues to face challenges in its collection and management of information about UAP.
Earlier this year, an unclassified summary of a DoD Inspector General report evaluating the Pentagon’s activities related to UAP was released, which argued that the DoD lacks any comprehensive, coordinated means by which it can currently address UAP. The report further argued that the DoD’s apparent lack of coordination on the UAP issue could pose a threat to U.S. military forces and, more broadly, to national security.
“We determined that the DoD has no overarching UAP policy,” a portion of the DoD Inspector General report read, “and, as a result, it lacks assurance that national security and flight safety threats to the United States from UAP have been identified and mitigated.”
In a statement on Friday following the new AARO historical report’s release, Pentagon Press Secretary Major General Pat Ryder said the second volume of AARO’s historical review will be forthcoming later this year.
“AARO will publish a second volume that will provide analysis of information acquired by AARO after Nov. 1, 2023, including information received via interviews with current and former U.S. government personnel who contacted AARO via the secure reporting mechanism on AARO’s website,” Ryder said.
“Analyzing and understanding the historical record on UAP is an ongoing collaborative effort involving many departments and agencies, and the department thanks the contributing departments and agencies, as well as the interviewees who came forward with information,” Ryder added.
A long-awaited Pentagon report says there is "no verifiable evidence" of the U.S. government encountering or concealing evidence of alien life.
The Pentagon, Washington DC, USA.
(Image credit: Glowimages via Getty Images)
The U.S. government is not hiding aliens or their spaceships — although it did once propose a program to reverse-engineer any hypothetical alien technology it found, a Department of Defense (DOD) report reveals.
The Pentagon report, a highly anticipated review of classified documents from 1945 to 2023 that was submitted to Congress Friday (March 8), found no evidence that the U.S. government has encountered aliens or covered up their existence.
Instead, the report blames UFO sightings in the 1960s on top-secret flights of prototype American spy planes and spacecraft. And while the U.S. government did consider a program to reverse-engineer any captured alien ships in the 2010s, no craft were ever found and the proposal was rejected for "lacking merit," according to the report.
There is "no verifiable evidence for claims that the U.S. government and private companies have access to or have been reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology," Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said in a statement after the report's release. The report also found "no evidence that any U.S. government investigation, academic-sponsored research, or official review panel has confirmed that any sighting of a UAP [unidentified aerial phenomenon] represented extraterrestrial technology."
"All investigative efforts, at all levels of classification, concluded that most sightings were ordinary objects and phenomena and the result of misidentification," Ryder added.
The 63-page review was made by the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which was established in 2022 to investigate and manage reports of UFO sightings from the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force. The review included classified and unclassified archical evidence, full access to all secretive government programs related to UFOs, and 30 interviews with intelligence personnel.
The U.S. government's renewed interest in UFOs came after a 2017 leak of three now-infamous video clips that appeared to show mysterious, wingless aircraft flying at hypersonic speeds past dumbfounded U.S. Navy pilots. In 2020, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence called for an inquiry into UFOs, and in June 2021, the Pentagon released a report on more than 140 UFO sightings by Navy pilots. That report concluded there was no evidence of alien activity in any of the instances.
Despite those findings, the government's interest in UFOs drove news outlets and social media sites into frenzies of speculation. The conspiracy theories reached their apex when, in July 2023, David Grusch, a former U.S. intelligence official and whistleblower, claimed that the government had been secretly investigating crashed UFOs. In his congressional hearing, Grusch told the House Committee on Oversight and Reform that not only had spaceships been recovered but that "nonhuman" beings had been found inside.
Despite bluntly contradicting many of Grusch's claims, the report does mention a brief period when the Pentagon considered a program to reverse-engineer alien technology. Called Kona Blue, it was proposed to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) by individuals who suspected the U.S. government was hiding crashed UFOs.
"This proposal gained some initial traction at DHS to the point where a 35 Prospective Special Access Program (PSAP) was officially requested to stand up this program, but it was eventually rejected by DHS leadership for lacking merit," the report said. "It is critical to note that no extraterrestrial craft or bodies were ever collected — this material was only assumed to exist by Kona Blue advocates and its anticipated contract performers."
The AARO said that later this year it will publish a second volume of the report covering sightings made between November 2023 and April 2024. The office also announced that the DOD is working on a portable sensor kit called the "Gremlin system" to investigate UFO sightings as they occur.
NASA Scientists Unveil Design for Europa Clipper’s ‘Golden Record’
NASA Scientists Unveil Design for Europa Clipper’s ‘Golden Record’
NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraftwill carry a triangular metal plate with a special message when it launches in October 2024 and heads toward Jupiter’s moon Europa.
This side of a commemorative plate mounted on NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft features U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón’s handwritten In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa.
Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.
Made of the metal tantalum and about 18 by 28 cm (7 by 11 inches), Europa Clipper’s metal plate features graphic elements on both sides.
At its heart is an engraving of U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón’s handwritten In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa, along with a silicon microchip stenciled with more than 2.6 million names submitted by the public.
The microchip will be the centerpiece of an illustration of a bottle amid the Jovian system — a reference to NASA’s Message in a Bottle campaign.
The outward-facing panel features art that highlights Earth’s connection to Europa.
Linguists collected recordings of the word ‘water’ spoken in 103 languages, from families of languages around the world.
The audio files were converted into waveforms (visual representations of sound waves) and etched into the plate.
The waveforms radiate out from a symbol representing the American Sign Language sign for ‘water.’
In the spirit of the Voyager spacecraft’s Golden Record, which carries sounds and images to convey the richness and diversity of life on Earth, the layered message on Europa Clipper aims to spark the imagination and offer a unifying vision.
“The content and design of Europa Clipper’s vault plate are swimming with meaning,” said Dr. Lori Glaze, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters.
“The plate combines the best humanity has to offer across the Universe — science, technology, education, art, and math.”
“The message of connection through water, essential for all forms of life as we know it, perfectly illustrates Earth’s tie to this mysterious ocean world we are setting out to explore.”
In 2030, after a 2.6-billion-km (1.6-billion-mile) journey, Europa Clipper will begin orbiting Jupiter, making 49 close flybys of Europa.
To determine if there are conditions that could support life, the spacecraft’s powerful suite of science instruments will gather data about the moon’s subsurface ocean, icy crust, thin atmosphere, and space environment.
The electronics for those instruments are housed in a massive metal vault designed to protect them from Jupiter’s punishing radiation. The commemorative plate will seal an opening in the vault.
Because searching for habitable conditions is central to the mission, the Drake Equation is etched onto the plate as well — on the inward-facing side.
Astronomer Frank Drake developed the mathematical formulation in 1961 to estimate the possibility of finding advanced civilizations beyond Earth.
The equation has inspired and guided research in astrobiology and related fields ever since.
In addition, artwork on the inward-facing side of the plate will include a reference to the radio frequencies considered plausible for interstellar communication, symbolizing how humanity uses this radio band to listen for messages from the cosmos.
These particular frequencies match the radio waves emitted in space by the components of water and are known by astronomers as the ‘water hole.’ On the plate, they are depicted as radio emission lines.
Finally, the plate includes a portrait of one of the founders of planetary science, Ron Greeley, whose early efforts to develop a Europa mission two decades ago laid the foundation for Europa Clipper.
“We’ve packed a lot of thought and inspiration into this plate design, as we have into this mission itself,” said Europa Clipper project scientist Robert Pappalardo, a researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“It’s been a decades-long journey, and we can’t wait to see what Europa Clipper shows us at this water world.”
The European Space Agency (ESA)’s next generation heavy lift rocket is just months away from its first flight, and its major components are now being assembled for launch at the Vehicle Assembly Building in Kourou, French Guiana.
The new rocket is Europe’s upgrade to the retired Ariane 5, which flew for the last time in 2023. With a large payload fairing and lift capacity, Ariane 6 will be able to carry seriously heavy satellites (or multiple smaller ones). The heavy lift capability of the Ariane 6 is achieved using Hydrolox engines on both the first and second stages, assisted by up to four solid rocket boosters, enabling it to bring up to 11,000kg to geostationary transfer orbit.
The Ariane 6’s upper stage features the capability to relight its engine multiple times, giving it plenty of flexibility in the types of missions it can carry out, and improving the precision of the orbits it can reach. That makes it useful for both interplanetary missions and for unique orbital requirements around Earth.
Part of the first Ariane 6 rocket inside the Vehicle Assembly Building, Kourou, French Guiana. Credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/Arianegroup.
What it won’t be is reusable.
Ariane 6 is an expendable rocket, bringing critics to wonder if it can keep up with notable competitors pursuing reusability like SpaceX. But Ariane 6 has different capabilities and caters to different launch parameters than SpaceX, giving it a market share that the Falcon Heavy isn’t tuned for. Perhaps more importantly, independent access to space is a priority for Europe, making Ariane 6 a strategic imperative as much as a technological or competitive advancement. Still, Ariane 6 may not remain ESA’s workhorse rocket long-term – they are already investigating reusable alternatives that should come onto the scene in the 2030s.
The rocket stages themselves aren’t the only place where ESA can make eco-and-budget-friendly innovations, and some changes are happening now. The support and logistics infrastructure for the Ariane 6, for example, includes shipping the rocket stages aboard the Canopée, a wind-assisted hybrid cargo ship that can cut emissions by more than 20% – up to 30% depending on its speed – compared to a conventionally powered ship.
the Canopée, arriving in French Guiana in February, carrying the first Ariane 6 rocket for launch later this summer. 7Credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/Arianegroup/Optique Vidéo du CSG – S. Martin.
The Canopée delivered the first Ariane 6 to Kourou last month, arriving at port after a 10-day, 7,000km journey from mainland Europe in February.
The rocket now being prepared for flight within the vehicle assembly building will go vertical on the pad in the coming months.
Ariane 6’s first flight is set for no earlier than June 15. It will carry out a rideshare mission bringing multiple small spacecraft into orbit.
After that, the vehicle will have a steady launch cadence, with a series of flights scheduled for 2025 to carry upgraded satellites for Europe’s Galileo constellation (an independent GPS system). There are also plans to launch several deep space missions in the next few years, including ESA’s exoplanet hunting telescope PLATO, components of the Mars Sample Return infrastructure, and ESA’s Comet Interceptor mission.
Satellite Measurements Show That Global Carbon Emissions are Still Rising
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), human activities have significantly impacted the planet. As global greenhouse gas emissions (mainly carbon dioxide) have continued to increase, so too have global temperatures – with severe ecological consequences. Between 2011 and 2020, global surface temperatures rose by an estimated 1.07 °C (2.01 °F) above the average in 1850–1900. At this rate, temperatures could further increase by 1.5 to 2 °C (2.7 to 3.6 °F) in the coming decades, depending on whether we can achieve net zero by 2050.
Unfortunately, the data for the past year is not encouraging. According to the 2023 Global Carbon Budget (GCB), an annual assessment of Earth’s carbon cycle, emissions in 2023 continued to rise by 1.1 percent compared to the previous year. This placed the total fossil fuel emissions from anthropogenic sources at 36.8 billion metric tons (over 40 US tons) of carbon dioxide, with an additional 4.1 billion metric tons (4.5 US tons) added by deforestation, extreme wildfires, and other sources. This trend indicates we are moving away from our goals and that things will get worse before they get better!
Carbon budgets are essential for assessing humanity’s impact on the planet and implementing mitigation strategies. The budget quantifies how much carbon was added to the atmosphere from fossil fuel use, land-use change, and other factors relative to how much carbon was removed by the planet’s carbon cycle. This refers to how our planet and its ecosystems recycle carbon, which keeps carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere within certain parameters and ensures temperatures remain stable over time.
Carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere if half of global-warming emissions are not absorbed. Credit: NASA/JPL/GSFC
For eons, this balance was maintained by photosynthetic plants, organisms, and Earth’s oceans, which absorbed CO2 from the atmosphere. Meanwhile, geological forces (i.e., mantle convection) sequestered it in the Earth’s crust as carbonate rocks. Since the Industrial Revolution, fossil fuel consumption has sharply increased, which has become exponentially worse since the mid-20th century. In addition, the growth of global populations since the 19th century has also seen a commensurate increase in land clearance and ecological destruction.
In short, emissions increased rapidly while Earth’s natural sequestration mechanisms were simultaneously being disrupted. The Global Carbon Budget was established to analyze these trends and prepare reports that inform organizations and help guide climate policy development. This year’s report relied on several data sources, the most notable of which were inventories of emissions collected by governments and energy agencies. Satellite data was provided by NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) instrument to estimate the flux of carbon between the land and atmosphere.
CO2 concentrations have increased from 278 parts per million (ppm) in 1750 to 420 ppm in 2023. In addition to carbon emissions from transportation, power generation, and manufacturing, major contributors this year included the extreme wildfire season in Canada. The data also indicates that the average global surface temperature in 2023 was 1.2 °C (2.1 °F) warmer than the average for NASA’s baseline period (1951-1980), making it the hottest year on record. This is part of a trend where the past ten years (2014-2023) were either the hottest year on record or tied with another year during that same period.
Based on climate modeling and data from the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS), researchers at NASA also create visualizations that illustrate how carbon dioxide is produced and stored every year. The visualization below is based on the most recent full year of available information (2021) and includes data on vegetation, human population density, infrastructure, and wildfires to depict how carbon dioxide was added and removed from the atmosphere. The carbon dioxide emissions are color-coded based on source to show the two main contributors and removal systems.
These include fossil fuel emissions (yellow), burning biomass (red), land ecosystems (green), and the ocean (blue). The Earth’s crust and its oceans are both carbon sinks, meaning they remove more carbon from the atmosphere (and store it) than they emit. However, as the visualization shows, they can also be sources under certain circumstances, depending on the time and place. Surprisingly, the proportion of carbon dioxide that remains in the atmosphere (the airborne fraction) has remained remarkably stable over the past 60 years, even with the continued increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.
However, scientists question whether and for how long that stability will continue. Ben Poulter, a co-author of the report and scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, summarized in a recent NASA press release:
“Emissions are heading [in] the wrong direction that we need to limit global warming. Amazingly, the ocean and land continue to absorb about half of the carbon we emit. Only about 44 percent of emissions stay in the atmosphere each year, slowing the rate of climate change, but causing ocean acidification and altering how land ecosystems function.”
In 2023, a study led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) analyzed carbon storage in the ocean over two decades. Titled “Decadal Trends in the Oceanic Storage of Anthropogenic Carbon From 1994 to 2014,” this study indicated that this crucial carbon sink could be losing some of its storage capacity. The authors concluded that the ocean has likely slowed its absorption because it has already accumulated substantial amounts of CO2 and that changes in global ocean circulation (due to temperature increases) may be reducing the amount transferred from subsurface waters to the ocean floor.
The chart below, taken from the 2023 GCB report, illustrates how the absorption rates of carbon sinks have changed over time. The report also emphasizes how carbon dioxide emissions are declining slightly in some regions, including Europe and the United States, but are still rising globally. The countries with the largest increase in emissions in 2023 were India and China, reflecting the ongoing “economic miracle” these nations have undergone in recent decades. Based on these latest numbers, there is doubt that world governments will meet their climate goals, as spelled out in the Paris Agreement.
Visualization of annual carbon emissions vs. storage worldwide. Credit: NASA Goddard
Signed in December 2015, delegates from the 196 signatory countries committed to keeping average global temperature increases “well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels” while “pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C.” According to the GCB team, the current emissions level suggests that the planet’s current carbon budget for keeping temperatures within this range is running out. They also claim that, at present, “there is a 50 percent chance global warming will exceed 1.5°C consistently in about seven years.”
While it may not sound like a lot, this represents an average increase (both annually and globally), and the difference between these two scenarios is stark. As the IPCC explained in its A6 report, an increase of 1.5 °C would lead to more extreme weather (heavy rains and severe flooding), mass die-offs, and the extinction of many animal species. It would also mean that 8% of all farmland and 3 to 41% of fisheries worldwide would be lost due to increased famine and disruption to Earth’s oceans. These risks increase sharply with an average increase of 2 °C, with the projected extinction of up to 18% of all species on land.
Above all, it is important to note that this is not the worst-case scenario. According to the AR6 report, a temperature increase of 4 °C (7.2 °F) would result in irreversible damage to the planet and its species:
“[M]ass mortalities and extinctions are expected that will irreversibly alter globally important areas, including those that host exceptionally rich biodiversity such as tropical coral reefs and cold-water kelp forests and the world’s rainforests. Even at lower levels of warming of 2°C or less, polar fauna (including fish, penguins, seals, and polar bears), tropical coral reefs and mangroves will be under serious threat.”
Data collected by NASA and other federal agencies are now available through the recently launched U.S. Greenhouse Gas Center. This multi-agency effort consolidates information from observations and models to provide decision-makers with one location for data and analysis.
VIDEO – UFO Over Oklahoma City: Witness Describes Mysterious Smoky Circle
VIDEO – UFO Over Oklahoma City: Witness Describes Mysterious Smoky Circle
In a recent, captivating interview on “NewsNation Prime,” Steve Aragona shared his extraordinary experience of witnessing an unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAP) in the skies over Oklahoma City. This event, occurring on the evening of March 4, has added to the growing collection of UAP sightings that continue to intrigue both the public and researchers alike.
The Encounter
Steve, a Navy veteran, was enjoying a casual evening outside with his children and neighbors when their attention was abruptly drawn to the sky by an unexpected sight. A bright, stationary object appeared overhead, its brilliance and stillness in stark contrast to familiar aerial objects like aircraft or celestial bodies such as shooting stars and comets.
The object’s behavior became even more intriguing when it began to move, emitting what Steve described as a “smoky type circle.” This phenomenon defied the witnesses’ expectations, as conventional understanding suggests that any natural object, such as a meteor entering the Earth’s atmosphere, would move away from such a formation, not towards it.
Expert Insights
The sighting prompted discussions with experts who acknowledged that this event strongly aligns with numerous other UAP encounters reported not just in the United States but globally. These encounters often share a common thread of exhibiting behaviors and characteristics that challenge our current understanding of physics and aeronautics.
Speculation and Skepticism
The mention of a SpaceX launch earlier that day added a layer of complexity to the sighting. SpaceX clarified that if the launch were related to the observed phenomenon, it would have been visible in a completely different direction, thereby ruling out a direct connection. This detail further deepens the mystery, as it suggests that the sighting cannot be easily dismissed as a misidentified human-made object.
Broader Implications
Steve’s experience and subsequent reflection on the possibility of extraterrestrial life highlight a significant shift in the public discourse surrounding UAPs. Once a topic relegated to the fringes of serious conversation, the increasing number of credible witnesses and official investigations into UAPs has brought it into mainstream consideration.
VIDEO:
‘Smoky type circle’: Man describes seeing UAP over Oklahoma City | NewsNation Prime
The sighting over Oklahoma City underscores the need for continued research and open dialogue about UAPs. As we gather more evidence and testimonies, we inch closer to understanding the true nature of these phenomena. Whether they are natural, extraterrestrial, or something else entirely, stories like Steve Aragona’s play a crucial role in unraveling the mysteries that lie beyond our current comprehension.
Afew weeks before he died, President William G. Harding toured Yellowstone National Park. He said bluntly, “Commercialism will never be tolerated here as long as I have the power to prevent it.” The U.S. National Park system exists, in part, to protect some of our country’s most pristine wilderness from being destroyed by ventures like construction, mining, and logging.
While we’ve been able to create National Parks here in the U.S., nobody has the legal right to do that on the Moon. So what happens to the once-pristine Moon when the space miners show up?
Along with private missions like the recent Intuitive Machines’ lander IM-1, several countries’ space agencies all have their eyes on the same real estate around the Moon’s south pole, where water ice may lie waiting in permanently shadowed craters. Until recently, debates about what should and shouldn’t happen on the Moon have been abstract. Only one country’s space agency had ever sent humans to the Moon, and they didn’t stay long. That’s on the brink of changing. The next decade may see the once-pristine lunar landscape dotted with bases and riddled with mines, all jostling for space (and bandwidth) with telescopes and other scientific exploration. But is the lunar environment worth preserving, for science or in its own right, and who gets to decide?
There’s no life on the Moon, but the scenery is breathtaking (astronaut Harrison Schmitt for scale).
NASA
WHO OWNS THE MOON?
A recent (failed) mission to land cremated human remains on the Moon raised a high-profile example of the kind of ethical issues space ethicists say we should be considering. Astrobotic’s Peregrine One lander was scheduled to deliver the cremated remains of Gene Roddenberry and several members of the original Star Trek cast, and others to the Moon.
The Navajo Nation formally protested the mission’s launch; in Navajo beliefs, the Moon is a sacred object, and placing human remains there would be a desecration. In the end, a fuel leak forced the mission to return to Earth, where it ended in a fiery plunge into the upper atmosphere, but it drew attention to a larger debate about who gets to decide — for everyone — how we as a species relate to the Moon now.
“Every culture on Earth has conceptions about the Moon,” Santa Clara University space ethicist Brian Green tells Inverse. “There are lots of groups on Earth who have thoughts on how the Moon should be treated. This is why we need to have a larger conversation.”
Part of the unfolding discussion centers on what, if anything, we should try to protect on the Moon. Several groups here on Earth, such as For All Moonkind, have spent years arguing that the first crewed lunar landing sites are an important part of human history and should be preserved, but at the moment there’s no law or treaty preventing someone from erasing the rover tracks or astronauts’ footprints.
The Apollo 11 Lunar Module casts a long shadow over the surface of the Moon — and the footprints of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin — in July 1968.
NASA
The Navajo aren't the only people who consider the Moon sacred. Cultures around the world have always tended to connect the Moon with the divine. For Hindus, the Moon represents the god Chandra, who is associated with plants and the night. Shinto believers see the Moon as the god Tsukuyomi, and for the Inuit, it's Alignak, a god whose domain includes weather, tides, and earthquakes. In ancient times, the Greeks worshiped the virginal huntress and nature goddess Artemis, while the Egyptians worshiped the god Khonsu, a healer and protector of nighttime travelers.
These deities' domains reveal a lot about how people have seen the moon over the millennia. It's been something pure, a bright light in the darkness, sometimes protective but other times belonging more to wild things than to people.
But the Moon is also a place; in the late 1500s, Galileo pointed his early telescopes at the Moon and discovered mountains, valleys, and craters. Today, we know the Moon as a dusty landscape marked by ancient volcanoes and billions of years of meteors. We've crashed spacecraft into its surface (both accidentally and on purpose), a few people have walked and even driven around small parts of it, and most of them left behind bags of waste and piles of dead-weight junk. But most of the Moon is still what astrophysicist and space ethicist Erika Nesvold calls a “space wilderness." She acknowledges that it's hard to think of wilderness in a place with no life, but argues that perhaps we should.
“We also have to ask questions about things like resource overuse,” says Nesvold. “If we mine out all the water on the moon in the next three generations, what are future generations going to do? Do we need to make sure we're preserving any of that?”
Increasingly, national governments and private companies are seeing the Moon not as a deity, a symbol, or a scientific puzzle: they're beginning to see it as a resource: a source of fuel and water on the way to Mars, a site for radio telescopes, or a source of geopolitical clout.
And that's sparking an urgent debate about whether some parts of the Moon remain pristine -- and if so, which parts. Whose faith and traditions, whose scientific curiosity, whose sense of aesthetics, or whose billion-dollar business plan should decide the fate of the Moon's ancient landscape?
China is the Unites States’ main competitor in the current “space race,” with India close behind.
FUTURE PUBLISHING/FUTURE PUBLISHING/GETTY IMAGES
IF YOU’RE NOT FIRST, YOU’RE LAST
Part of the challenge of “space ethics” is to figure out what to do about these issues, but the really difficult part will be figuring out who gets to have a say. Can anyone tell a private company where, or whether, they can mine the Moon, open a lunar landfill, or turn a crater into a cemetery? How can countries with wildly differing values agree on the value – commercial, scientific, or ideological – of the Moon?
“At the more international level, that’s what international law is for,” says Nesvold.
At the moment, only the absolute basics are covered, starting with the Outer Space Treaty, in which most of the world’s nations have agreed that no one can claim territory in space, the Moon is to be used only for peaceful purposes, and nuclear weapons aren’t allowed in space. The Registration Convention requires states to register the orbital paths of their spacecraft with the UN to help prevent collisions. And the Rescue Agreement requires states to help spacefarers in distress, regardless of where they’re from.
Another treaty, the Space Liability Convention, says that spacecraft are the responsibility of the country they’re launched from — whether they’re publicly or privately owned. That means it’s up to an individual country to decide whether a company can launch human remains, soda cans, tardigrades, or anything else to the Moon (under U.S. regulations, any payload can go as long as it’s safe to launch and not a threat to national security).
What’s not covered by those laws is whether it’s okay to carve a giant advertising logo into a lunar basin, inter human remains or leave branded trinkets on the Moon, mine iconic lunar landmarks, or send tourists to the Apollo 11 landing site to walk in Neil Armstrong’s footsteps. And those are all very real possibilities in the near future. Space law, and space ethics, are urgent works in progress.
This artist’s illustration shows what future construction projects on the Moon might look like.
NASA
Meanwhile, the power to make those decisions is a big reason countries like the U.S., China, India, and Russia are all scrambling to get a foothold on the lunar surface before their rivals. Being the first to set up shop on the Moon is a huge way for a nation to show off its power, wealth, and technological chops. But on a practical level, being first also means first pick of landing sites, first dibs on lunar resources, and the first chance to choose which pieces of the lunar environment to protect.
“Ultimately, the people who get to make the decisions are the ones who are there,” says Green. “So that's why you hope that the people who are making the decisions and who are there are going to be ethical and actually considerate of other people's opinions.”
But that space race mentality can have its own problems.
“The space race dynamic always makes ethics more complicated,” says Green.
For one thing, there’s the question of what ethical shortcuts a nation or company might be willing to take to get there first. That could mean exploiting workers, taking undue risks with astronauts, or damaging the environment here on Earth.
“People who are arguing for more space telescopes, or people who are arguing for space launch centers on the path towards settling space often have really noble-sounding rhetoric: The idea of rocket launches and building more human civilization in space, versus the concerns about potential pollutants in local wetlands – the sorts of things you hear about in places like Boca Chica,” Nesvold tells Inverse. “I think that's very similar to the sort of manifest destiny rhetoric that you would see during colonization.”
Humans will go to great lengths to plant their country’s flag.
NASA
America’s crewed space program was built on a major ethical shortcut: the work of Nazi officer Werner von Braun, who also designed the V2 rockets that killed around 9,000 British civilians during World War II (thousands more forced laborers died building them). Operation Paperclip, which brought von Braun and his team of engineers to the U.S., might have been unthinkable without the pressure to stay ahead of the USSR in space.
What space ethicists like Green and Nesvold want to avoid is a future where we plow blindly forward, with whoever gets there first imposing their will on a satellite that has, for all of human history until now, belonged to everyone – but at the same time, to no one. Nesvold warns that if we do that, we risk repeating the injustices of colonialism here on Earth.
IS ANTARCTICA A BLUEPRINT FOR SPACE?
Nations whose interests and values often clash will have to agree on how to manage a commons: "a broad set of resources, natural and cultural, that are shared by many people," as the International Association for the Study of the Commons puts it. We've already done that here on Earth, to some extent. The future of the Moon and Mars may owe a lot to the system of treaties that protect Antarctica and the set of laws that apply in international waters.
The international agreements that protect these adorable penguins could provide a framework for cooperation on the Moon.
ANADOLU/ANADOLU/GETTY IMAGES
The 1959 Antarctic Treaty reserves the entire Antarctic continent for peaceful, scientific use. No commercial mining is allowed, and there are strict rules protecting plants, wildlife, and landscapes. Tourists, scientists, and even some military personnel are allowed to visit (or live there for months at a stretch), but only if the expedition or tour operator has a permit from one of the 56 countries that have signed the treaty.
Countries that issue permits have regulations about the type of activity and the number of people they'll allow; some of those rules are to protect the fragile polar environment, but others are for safety. For example, "the UK will also not normally authorize the use of helicopters for recreational purposes in areas with concentrations of wildlife, including the Antarctic Peninsula region." (As a side note, "for safety reasons the UK will not authorize snorkeling activities in the Antarctic." The more you know.)
Eight of the countries who signed the treaty claim sectors of territory in Antarctica, and some of them overlap. In theory, no one is allowed to claim new territory in Antarctica; the eight countries that claim sectors today had already made their claims before the Antarctic Treaty was written, and part of the treaty forbids anyone from making new claims. But both the U.S. and Russia argue that they've reserved the right to claim territory in Antarctica in the future.
On the other hand, several countries, including the U.S., have research stations in other countries' sectors without any major conflict.
If someone wants to violate the Antarctic Treaty, it's going to be hard to stop them without resorting to military force. That's even more true on the Moon. But so far, the Antarctic Treaty has worked fairly well.
"If we can look at what's worked and what hasn't in terms of preventing conflicts and protecting the environment, then we can apply those in space," says Nesvold.
The 4 Big Questions the Pentagon’s New UFO Report Fails to Answer
The 4 Big Questions the Pentagon’s New UFO Report Fails to Answer
The Pentagon says it’s not hiding aliens, but it stops notably short of saying what it is hiding. Here are the key questions that remain unanswered—some answers could be weirder than UFOs.
PHOTOGRAPH: TOM BRENNER/GETTY IMAGES
After a year of eyebrow-raising headlines about government whistleblowers alleging that the military was running secret programs focused on alien spaceships and a months-long study and dogged investigative work through the shadows of classified Pentagon programs, the United States Defense Department announced Friday that it found no evidence that the government is covering up contact with extraterrestrials.
The first sentence of the 63-page report on the government’s involvement with unidentified anomalous phenomenon—a report mandated and driven by Congress—seemingly left no wiggle room: The study “found no evidence that any USG [US government] investigation, academic-sponsored research, or official review panel has confirmed that any sighting of a UAP represented extraterrestrial technology. All investigative efforts, at all levels of classification, concluded that most sightings were ordinary objects and phenomena and the result of misidentification.”-
The report was issued by the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), the unit created and tasked in recent years with studying UAP sightings and untangling the truth of the government’s knowledge and understanding of generations of UFO reports. It follows media interviews and a blockbuster congressional hearing last summer where whistleblower David Grusch testified that the government was engaged in a decades-long cover-up of crashed alien spacecraft and in possession even of “non-human biologics,” e.g., alien bodies. Grusch and other witnesses and whistleblowers came forward to congressional committees and Pentagon investigators and hinted at astounding possibilities, including that the government was running secret UFO crash-retrieval programs, and defense contractors were running covert programs, hidden even from budget appropriators, to reverse-engineer captured alien technology.
There were many reasons to doubt the full expanse of the testimony by Grusch and others. Much of it was second-hand, and after spending two yearswriting a bookon the government, UFOs, and the search for extraterrestrial life, Isaid last summerthat many of the claims seemed more like an “intergalactic game of telephone,” where people with limited visibility into secret Pentagon and intelligence programs were misidentifying or misinterpreting more mundane program. But that’s not to say that the new AARO report is the end of the story nor that its conclusion should be the end of public interest in UFOs, UAPs, and the secret frontiers of government science.
In fact, while the report’s conclusion surprised almost no one except the most ardent of believers—people who might not be all that inclined to believe the Pentagon’s disavowal anyway—the report in its own way raises as many new questions as it answers, questions that could, with time, prove revolutionary to technology and science.
AARO investigators, for instance, dug through the claims of witnesses and whistleblowers and successfully traced back the underlying research projects, Special Access Programs (SAPs), and classified compartments. As the report says, “AARO investigated numerous named, and described, but unnamed programs alleged to involve UAP exploitation conveyed to AARO through official interviews,” and ultimately, “conclude[d] many of these programs represent authentic, current and former sensitive, national security programs, but none of these programs have been involved with capturing, recovering, or reverse-engineering off-world technology or material.”
But what, then, were those programs? Herein lies the most intriguing—and potentially ground-breaking—question that the Pentagon study leaves us wondering: What exactly are the secret compartmentalized programs that the whistleblowers and government witnessesmisidentifiedas being related to UAP technology? What, exactly, are the Pentagon, intelligence community, or defense contractors working on that, from a concentric circle or two away inside the shadowy world of SAPs, looks and sounds like reverse-engineering out-of-this-world technology or even studying so-called “non-human biologics”?
There are at least four clear possibilities.
Secret Tech From Foreign Nations
First, what exotic technological possibilities have been recovered from unknown terrestrial sources? For example, if the government is working on reverse-engineering technologies, those technologies are likely from advanced adversary nation-states like China, Russia, and Iran, and perhaps even quasi-allies like Israel that may be more limited in their technology-sharing with the US. What have other countries mastered that we haven’t?
A Question of ‘Peculiar Characteristics’
Second, what technologies has the US mastered that the public doesn’t know about? One of the common threads of UFO sightings across decades have been secret military aircraft and spacecraft in development or not yet publicly acknowledged. For example, the CIA estimated that the U-2 spy plane in the 1950s accounted for as much as half of reported UFO sightings. And the AARO report spends a half-dozen pages documenting how confusion over subsequent generations of secret US government aircraft appear to have also contributed to the great intergalactic game of telephone of UFO programs inside the government, including modern Predator, Reaper, and Global Hawk drones. AARO investigated one claim where a witness reported hearing a former US military service member had touched an extraterrestrial spacecraft, but when they tracked down the service member, he said that the conversation was likely a garbled version of the time he touched an F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter at a secret facility.-
There are surely other secret craft still in testing and development now, including the B-21 stealth bomber, which had its first test flight in November and is now in testing at Edwards Air Force Base in California, as well as others we don’t know about. The government can still surprise us with unknown craft—like the until-then-unknown modified stealthy helicopter left behind on the Pakistan raid to kill Osama bin Laden. And some of these still-classified efforts are likely causing UFO confusion too: AARO untangled one witness’s claim of spotting a UAP with “peculiar characteristics” at a specific time and place and were able to determine, “at the time the interviewee said he observed the event, the DOD was conducting tests of a platform protected by a SAP. The seemingly strange characteristics reported by the interviewee match closely with the platform’s characteristics, which was being tested at a military facility in the time frame the interviewee was there.” So what was that craft—and what were its “peculiar characteristics?”
Relatedly, the US military has a classified spaceship, the X-37B, that has regularly orbited around the Earth since its first mission in 2010—it just blasted off on its seventh and most recent mission in December—and its previous, sixth, mission lasted a record-breaking 908 days in orbit. The Pentagon has said remarkably little about what it does up there for years at a time. What secret space-related or aviation-related programs is the government running that outsiders confuse as alien spacecraft?
A Material Matter
The third likely area of tech development that might appear to outsiders to be UFO-related is more speculative basic research and development: What propulsion systems or material-science breakthroughs are defense contractors at work on right now that could transform our collective future? Again, AARO found such confusion taking place: After one witness reported hearing that “aliens” had observed one secret government test, AARO traced the allegation back to find “the conversation likely referenced a test and evaluation unit that had a nickname with ‘alien’ connotations at the specific installation mentioned. The nature of the test described by the interviewee closely matched the description of a specific materials test conveyed to AARO investigators.” So what materials were being tested there?
There are some puzzling materials-science breadcrumbs wrapped throughout the AARO report. It found one instance where “a private sector organization claimed to have in its possession material from an extraterrestrial craft recovered from a crash at an unknown location from the 1940s or 1950s. The organization claimed that the material had the potential to act as a THz frequency waveguide, and therefore, could exhibit ‘anti-gravity’ and ‘mass reduction’ properties under the appropriate conditions.” Ultimately, though, the new report concluded, “AARO and a leading science laboratory concluded that the material is a metallic alloy, terrestrial in nature, and possibly of USAF [US Air Force] origin, based on its materials characterization.”
A Knowledge Limit
Fourth and lastly is the category of the truly weird: Scientists at the forefront of physics point out that we should be humble about how little of the universe we truly understand; as Harvard astronomy chair Avi Loeb explains, effectively all that we’ve learned about relativity and quantum physics has unfolded in the span of a single human lifespan, and astounding new discoveries continue to amaze scientists. Just last summer, scientists announced they’d detected for the first time gravitational waves criss-crossing the universe that rippled through space-time, and astrophysicists continue to suspect that the universe is far weirder than we think. (Italian astrophysicist Carlo Rovelli last year posited the existence of “white holes” that would be related to black holes, which, he pointed out, were still a mystery just 25 years ago when he was starting his career.)
Answers here could be almost unfathomably weird—think parallel dimensions or the ability to travel at a fraction of the speed of light. And one of the most intriguing questions left by the UAP “game of telephone” is whether there are truly astounding advances in physics that government scientists, defense contractors, or research laboratories or centers could be feeling around that could also appear from the outside to be UFO-related.
Indeed, the AARO report references that at least some chunk of the “alien confusion” inside government may have grown out of a now well-known but then-secret effort in the late 2000s and early 2010s by Nevada entrepreneur Robert Bigelow’s aerospace company to study UAPs and paranormal activity by the Defense Intelligence Agency, through $22 million in funding secured by then-Senate majority leader Harry Reid. That effort, known as the Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Application Program (AAWSAP), included digging—without official authorization—into paranormal activity at a ranch out west, among other activities. Not much came out of that effort—and the AARO report dismissively notes that AAWSAP’s “scientific papers were never thoroughly peer-reviewed.” But people in and around the world of “ufology” have long noted that one of those papers intriguingly studied “Warp Drive, Dark Energy, and the Manipulation of Extra Dimensions.” Did the Pentagon know more about the outer boundaries of physics than it let on?
While other physicists who have reviewed that speculative 34-page AAWSAP report have said it had little real-world utility, it hints at how our modern understanding of the world around us may still be transformed by the unknown and future discoveries.
After reading thousands of pages of government studies, extraterrestrial research, and scientific papers related to the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, I’ve come to believe that in some ways aliens might be the least interesting answer to the questions around UAPs and UFOs. Similarly, the AARO report may one day be seen as closing the door on alien spacecraft while opening the door to something even more fantastical.
Former US intelligence officer David Grusch testified before Congress during the July 2023 UAP hearing, stating that we have numerous spacecraft of non-human origin. If this is the case, one might wonder if any contact has been established between humans and these extraterrestrial species. There have been persistent rumors suggesting that the US government may have signed treaties with these extraterrestrials and has been engaged in collaborative efforts with them over an extended period.
According to a rather extraordinary claim made by former US government consultant Timothy Good, it is alleged that the 34th President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, had three clandestine meetings with extraterrestrials. Good claimed Eisenhower met aliens at a remote air base in New Mexico in 1954. In more recent times, former Israeli Space Head Haim Eshed stated that aliens and the U.S. government had reached some type of deal to stay quiet about their experiments on Earth and secret facilities on Mars. Eshed went on to claim the existence of a “Galactic Federation” and implied that then-President Trump was on the brink of making significant revelations in this regard.
Video Evidence
During a podcast with former Fox News anchor Clayton Morris on his show Redacted, Joshua Reid, a former United States Navy serviceman with a background in missile weapons defense systems, brought a wealth of knowledge and experience to the table. He opened the conversation by referencing his personal experiences in the Navy, specifically during the years 2004 to 2006. Reid’s background made him intimately familiar with topics related to secret space projects, a subject that has piqued his interest for over two and a half decades.
It is worth noting that Joshua Reid’s extensive research in the field of UAPs and classified information has led him to the inner workings of certain government activities. His extensive four-year investigation revealed a disconcerting pattern. It appeared that military technology, particularly in special access programs, was unintentionally making its way to foreign adversaries, including China. This exchange of classified information seemed to involve universities and professors who were receiving grants to reverse engineer technologies from these programs.
The remarkable twist in this story was that Hillary Clinton’s emails were potentially facilitating the sale of this classified information to China and other foreign entities. China would fund universities, enticing professors to divulge information on special access programs. This enabled them to advance their technology rapidly, potentially reaching parity with the United States.
Former Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III, well-versed in these special access programs, played a crucial role in this unfolding drama. He represented David Grusch and became a central figure in the whistleblower saga. According to Reid, multiple whistleblowers were involved, with two possessing firsthand information and tangible evidence. The fear of repercussions led these individuals to testify in front of congressmen, notably, Indiana Congressman André Carson. However, it was not until these whistleblowers presented video evidence of intelligence community members communicating with extraterrestrials that congressmen took their claims seriously.
The impact of these videos was profound. Congressmen were visibly shaken, with one trembling and another drinking water profusely. This sudden shift in demeanor signified that the evidence was both extraordinary and unsettling. The whistleblowers were introduced to Inspector General McCullough, who had an extensive background in the very special access programs at the center of the controversy.
“I’ve heard that we can confirm this later, but from what I’m hearing, André Carson is this Congressman that they testified in front of, along with a few others. The Congressman didn’t take these guys seriously, but what ended up happening is they pulled out the evidence, a DVD, and they showed these congressmen video evidence of intelligence community members communicating with extraterrestrials. After these videos were shown to congressmen, they were noticeably shaken in fear. One of them was holding a piece of paper and could not stop shaking. Another was drinking water profusely, and this is when they began to take this very, very seriously and introduce these gentlemen to the former Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, McCullough. Hence, he enters the picture as someone who understands these SAP programs, has been read into these programs from back in the day, and is now representing these gentlemen.”
Morris was eager to learn more about the DVDs and the physical evidence related to the astounding claims made by the whistleblowers. He posed the question of where this evidence was currently held and whether the public would ever have the opportunity to view it.
Joshua Reid responded by revealing that the evidence, in the form of DVDs and other materials, was regarded as an “insurance policy.” This meant that the evidence was securely in the hands of two prominent UFO researchers. Furthermore, Reid confirmed that these researchers had not only seen the evidence but also verified its authenticity, which was a significant factor contributing to the growing interest in this matter.
Morris was eager to learn more about the DVDs and the physical evidence related to the astounding claims made by the whistleblowers. He asked Reid where this evidence was currently held and whether the public would ever have the opportunity to view it.
Joshua Reid responded by revealing that the evidence, in the form of DVDs and other materials, was regarded as an “insurance policy.” This meant that the evidence was securely in the hands of two prominent UFO researchers. Furthermore, Reid confirmed that these researchers had not only seen the evidence but also verified its authenticity, which was a significant factor contributing to the growing interest in this matter.
One of the prominent UFO researchers who has been sharing insider knowledge on UAPs is investigative journalist Ross Coulthart. It is quite uncertain if Coulthart possesses this DVD evidence but he did reveal that there exists a huge UFO in the possession of the United States that cannot be moved, and he knows the location of the craft. Ross mentioned the existence of non-human intelligence engaging with Earth for a long time and the recovery of certain objects, but he could not disclose specific details due to concerns about revealing advanced technologies.
In a recent episode of “The UFO Podcast,” host Andy engaged in a thought-provoking conversation with Ross. The discussion centered around the secrecy surrounding UFO sightings and government knowledge. Ross, who has deep insights into the matter, shared his perspective on why certain details remain undisclosed.
Andy began by addressing a critical question that has been on the minds of many UFO enthusiasts: the location of the mysterious craft. He asked Ross whether he could reveal where the craft was being held.
Ross responded: “Let me tell you, I can’t tell you the country it’s in; it’s not America. But what I can tell you is that the place where it is kept is used for another purpose that is a laudatory purpose that’s as much in your interests in your country in the UK as it is in mine in Australia and as it is in America. The simple reasons are that there are other uses for the place where this object is stored, and we could end up with a storm Area 51-type scenario if you came out and announced it.”
Ross went on to explain the potential consequences of revealing such information, including international incidents and threats to the safety of personnel at the facilities. He also emphasized the importance of protecting sources, drawing on his experience as a journalist dealing with sensitive intelligence.
Interestingly, Steve Sprague, a UFO researcher who studied the UAP phenomenon for 30 years, claimed that an aerospace executive would come forward and share the information during the July 2023 Congressional Hearing on UAPs. This unidentified insider is described as a C-level executive within the United States-based company, which, according to Sprague, is a top firm reverse-engineering alien technology.
According to the insider, aliens not only exist but have been present on Earth for at least five millennia, if not longer. Startlingly, the individual revealed the existence of at least two civilizations currently residing on our planet: humans and a group known as the “Ganzi,” originating from a distant part of our galaxy, roughly forty light years away. The Ganzi are characterized as technologically advanced beings who possess knowledge far surpassing humanity’s capabilities.
The insider also touched upon significant presidential briefings that have taken place, shedding light on the United States government’s awareness of these developments. On various occasions, President Biden was reportedly briefed on advanced technologies recovered from the Ganzi. The briefings included demonstrations of lasers capable of remarkable feats, such as extracting elements directly from ore and analyzing biological and geological data.
Videos of these briefings purportedly exist, with one showing Biden interacting with three Ganzi beings through a small device placed in his ear. Notably, one of the individuals accompanying the beings was John Podesta, who later assumed the role of Senior Advisor for Clean Energy Innovation. The insider also linked breakthroughs in fusion energy and laser technology to the company’s efforts in reverse-engineering Ganzi technology.
Sprague wrote, “Date 4 – May 19, 2022, Biden is now in Alaska and stopped off to refuel at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. This video is the most incredible of all. Biden meets with three of the Ganzi. Biden puts a small device in his ear and a conversation occurs without sound. The video lasts for nine minutes and then four people enter the area. One of the people is John Podesta. The other three are unknown. The beings leave and the video ends. In September of 2022, Biden names Podesta as the Senior Advisor for Clean Energy Innovation. December 14, 2022, America has a breakthrough in fusion. To achieve this scientific feat – a laser is used. This laser has ‘unique’ properties.” (Source)
Sprague’s claims cannot be verified; however, it is certain that there exists an alien craft, and the United States has successfully accessed its interior. Dr. James Lacatski, a retired DIA intelligence officer who established the UFO program that operated from 2008 to 2010, has confirmed this. He stated that the craft possesses a streamlined configuration suitable for aerodynamic flight but lacks conventional features such as an engine, wings, intakes, exhaust, or fuel tanks.
A team of astronomers recently discovered that little red dots in the distant universe were actually baby quasars, the precursors to the supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies like our Milky Way. Astrophysicist Jorryt Matthee, of Austria’s Institute of Science and Technology, and his colleagues published their workin The Astrophysical Journal.
The small orange-red objects with the six refraction spikes are small, early galaxies with actively-feeding supermassive black holes, about 13 billion light years away.
MATTHEE AT AL. 2024
CONNECTING THE DOTS
Matthee and his colleagues used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to peer deep into a tiny slice of the sky. In older images from the Hubble Space Telescope, the faint red dots in the cosmic distance (13 billion light years away) had looked like very ancient, but otherwise ordinary, galaxies. However, JWST’s instruments picked up something else: specific wavelengths of light associated with hot, fast-moving hydrogen.
“These spectra tell us that we are looking at a very small gas cloud that moves extremely rapidly and orbits something very massive, like a supermassive black hole,” says Matthee in a recent statement.
The supermassive black holes in these “little red dot” galaxies are small: about 10 to 100 million times more massive than our Sun, which is tiny for a supermassive black hole. And if Matthee is right, they’re still young.
“My intuition says these are fairly young systems of maximally a few hundred million years old that are rapidly evolving (at least, on "astronomical timescales" of millions of years),” Matthee tells Inverse. To be sure about that, he and his colleagues will need to measure the ages of the stars around the black holes. Meanwhile, these “little red dots” look like small, early versions of the type of supermassive black holes that Matthee calls “problematic quasars.” (A quasar is an actively-feeding supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy.)
SOMETIMES SPACE IS PROBLEMATIC
Matthee’s problematic quasars are problematic because they’re too big to exist where and when they exist: between 11 and 12 billion light years away, when the universe was just a couple of billion years old. If supermassive black holes formed the way astrophysicists have long assumed — starting with a giant star collapsing into a black hole, then growing larger as it pulls in more material — then black holes that are billions of times more massive than our Sun shouldn’t have existed 11 billion years ago. Black holes that started as 30 times our Sun’s mass shouldn’t have had time to grow so large in less than a couple of billion years.
“It’s like looking at a 5-year-old child that is 2 meters tall,” says Matthee. “Something doesn’t add up.”
So either black holes grow faster than the laws of physics suggest they do, or they started as something more massive than an ordinary collapsed star. One possibility is that the “seeds” of supermassive black holes were already thousands of times our Sun’s mass, spawned by enormous clouds of gas collapsing under their gravity.
Much of what JWST has revealed about the early universe seems to support the idea that supermassive black holes formed from more massive “seeds,” not ordinary collapsed stars, but there’s not enough evidence yet to settle the debate.
“In my view, we currently can not yet discriminate between these scenarios,” Matthee tells Inverse.
WHAT’S NEXT?
To do that, astrophysicists will need more data. Matthee and his team want to measure the conditions in which these early black holes formed: the mass of the stars in their host galaxies, the amount of heavy elements in the galaxy’s ingredients list, and whether there’s galactic wind. They’re also curious about whether these precociously-large supermassive black holes tend to form in galaxy clusters or less-populated cosmic neighborhoods.
Over the next couple of years, Matthee and his team have booked more time on JWST, which they’ll use to search for more “little red dots” even farther away — and farther back in time.
“We want to extend the population of ‘baby quasars’ that we know of,” says Matthee. “By finding new ones even earlier in time, we should witness them closer to their birth, meaning we can learn more about their formation conditions. The same may be learned by finding even lower mass supermassive black holes, with masses ~100,000-1,000,000 times the Sun, and characterizing the properties of the galaxies they formed in.”
KONA BLUE: Top-Secret Government Program To Investigate “Human Consciousness Anomalies” Doesn’t Exist, New Report Says
KONA BLUE: Top-Secret Government Program To Investigate “Human Consciousness Anomalies” Doesn’t Exist, New Report Says
The 63-page-long document is part of an investigation into U.S. government programs that have been a springboard for alleged paranormal-related activity.
No, the United States government does not have alien bodies hiding somewhere, nor has it ever tried to reverse-engineer flying saucers. Really.
That’s one of the main stances that the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), an organization created in 2022 to resolve sightings of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), asserts in a report published Friday.
UAP is the modern moniker for UFO. Intelligence officials avoided reusing the popular term because it’s too closely associated, nowadays, with little green men.
UAP refers to sightings from pilots and members of the military, who haven’t been able to explain why they’ve seen objects that appear to reject the laws of motion and physics. Many have been proven to be weather balloons and tricks of perception. Several, however, remain unexplained. That has given credence to people who believe the U.S. government is hiding aliens.
The 63-page-long document is the first volume in a series of investigations into U.S. government programs through history that have been a springboard for alleged paranormal-related activity. “Analyzing and understanding the historical record on UAP is an ongoing collaborative effort involving many departments and agencies,” AARO officials wrote in an announcement published on Friday.
“To date, AARO has found no verifiable evidence for claims that the U.S. government and private companies have access to or have been reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology,” the statement says.
KONA BLUE NEVER EXISTED
The report makes several assertions, including a debunking of KONA BLUE.
KONA BLUE, as the report explains, was allegedly a top-secret program to investigate “human consciousness anomalies,” retrieve and exploit “non-human biologics,” and reverse engineer any alien craft they found.
“It is critical to note that no extraterrestrial craft or bodies were ever collected — this material was only assumed to exist by KONA BLUE advocates and its anticipated contract Performers,” the report authors emphasized.
As the authors do throughout the report, they take an instance of a program and explain where the pseudoscience claims may be emerging. In the case of KONA BLUE, the contract for a $22 million program, greenlit in 2008 to assess aerospace threats on the horizon — and which was never explicitly tasked with researching UFOs — was awarded to a private sector organization. But the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency canceled it in 2012, “due to lack of merit and the
utility of the deliverables,” though this didn’t stop non-government program advocates, who renamed the proposal as KONA BLUE, from seeking to investigate paranormal activity.
“KONA BLUE’s advocates were convinced that the USG [U.S. government] was hiding UAP technologies. They believed that creating this program under DHS would allow all of the technology and knowledge of these alleged programs to be moved under the KONA BLUE program,” according to the report.
This program was never rubber stamped, and as the report says, “was never approved or stood up, and no data or material was transferred to DHS [Department of Homeland Security].”
In the Friday announcement, AARO officials stipulate that they’ve approached their review of KONA BLUE and other topics “with the widest possible aperture,” that it is committed to reaching conclusions based on verifiable evidence, willing to “follow the evidence where it leads, wherever it leads.”
“To date, AARO has not discovered any empirical evidence that any sighting of a UAP represented off-world technology or the existence a classified program that had not been properly reported to Congress,” the report said.
Citing investigations that revealed most sightings to result from the “misidentification of ordinary objects and phenomena,” the report acknowledged that “many UAP reports remain unsolved,” though adding that better data could lead to the resolution of some of the currently unresolved cases.
In advance of the report’s release, Tim Phillips, acting director of AARO on assignment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), provided a briefing to a limited number of reporters on Wednesday, where he discussed the new report and revealed details about a new system called “Gremlin” designed to acquire real-time data on UAP. The Debrief did not participate in Wednesday’s media briefing.
Following the release of the report, Department of Defense spokesperson Sue Gough said in an email to The Debrief that “AARO reviewed all official USG investigatory efforts since 1945, researched classified and unclassified archives, conducted dozens of interviews and site visits, and partnered with the Intelligence Community and DoD officials responsible for special access program oversight.”
“AARO created a secure process in partnership with the highest-level security officials within the DoD, IC, and other organizations to research and investigate these claims,” Gough said. “AARO was granted full, unrestricted access by all organizations.”
Major Jesse Marcel poses with mysterious wreckage associated with the purported crash of a flying saucer near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. AARO’s recent historical report says the incident involved a once-secret U.S. covert operation called Project Mogul, as determined by the USAF in the 1990s (Public Domain).
Although there were notable exceptions, most media coverage of the new AARO report focused almost entirely on the lack of evidence linking UAP sightings to extraterrestrial technologies, as well as the absence of classified programs involved in the recovery of crashed vehicles of non-human origin.
Also commanding media attention had been revelations involving the existence of a proposed program pitched to the Department of Homeland Security in the 2010s under the codename “Kona Blue,” which involved a prospective reverse engineering program for any extraterrestrial technologies acquired by the U.S. government.
According to the AARO report, Kona Blue had been proposed by former members of a DIA program called the Advanced Aerospace Weapons Systems Application Program (AAWSAP), whose personnel are identified in the report as some of the main proponents behind ongoing assertions involving secret U.S. government UAP programs.
The report says that AARO investigators found no evidence that extraterrestrial craft or their occupants had ever been acquired by the U.S. military and that Kona Blue was ultimately rejected by DHS leadership due to a lack of merit.
Friday’s report was met with significant criticism online following its release, with many arguing that its findings were invalid, while others expressed skepticism over its assertions that no evidence of cover-ups involving crashed UAP retrieval programs had been found.
The report’s findings appear to run in stark contrast to whistleblower allegations that first received widespread public attention last June, involving an official complaint filed with the Intelligence Community Inspector General by David Grusch, a former U.S. intelligence officer whose duties included participation in the U.S. government’s investigations into UAP in recent years.
In January, Inspector General of the Intelligence Community Thomas Monheim spoke with members of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee during a classified briefing on UAP, with some who attended claiming it left them with more questions than answers regarding ongoing claims of secret programs and exotic technologies.
Following the release of AARO’s report on Friday, amidst all the attention surrounding what AARO investigators did or did not find, and programs that were proposed but never came to fruition, few mainstream outlets discussed the numerous intriguing allusions to legitimate advanced capabilities the U.S. possesses that are peppered throughout the report—many of which, in likelihood, actually have contributed to UAP sightings over the years.
These seemingly went unnoticed, as well as several factual errors that appear throughout the new report that, for some, potentially undermine the level of rigor AARO appears to have applied in its investigations.
FACT-CHECKING AARO’S HISTORICAL REPORT
Among the many mistakes that appear in the new report, one of the most glaring appears in references to the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his involvement in helping acquire funding for a controversial UAP investigative effort run out of the Defense Intelligence Agency in the early 2000s. The report refers to the Democrat Senator’s home state as being New Mexico, whereas Reid was a U.S. Senator from Nevada.
In another instance, a famous sighting reported by pilot Kenneth Arnold near Mount Rainer, Washington in the summer of 1947 is described as having taken place on “June 23,” one day earlier than Arnold’s sighting occurred.
The report similarly claims Arnold described the objects he observed as being “saucer-like aircraft”, although this now-famous characterization was only later applied by members of the media who, at the time, were referencing Arnold’s description of their movement resembling “saucers” skipping across water.
In yet another example, the AARO report repeatedly refers to a statistical analysis of sightings collected by the U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book conducted by the Battelle Memorial Institute as “Project BEAR,” which had, in fact, only been a nickname given to the program by Blue Book’s original director, Edward J. Ruppelt. The project’s actual name—one that has now been known publicly for decades—was Project STORK.
“The name Project BEAR was an intentionally false name made by Edward Ruppelt,” wrote Robert Powell, an Executive Board Member with the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies, in a posting on X, “so as not to reveal the true name of the project.”
Powell also noted that the recent AARO report seemingly misstated the date of the Battelle project as having been issued in late 1954, whereas the date on the folder in the Air Force’s Project Blue Book files indicates a date of May 5, 1955.
Beyond mere problems with dates, AARO’s report makes further assertions that Battelle’s study, the results of which were published in a report titled Project Blue Book Special Report #14, “concluded that all cases that had enough data were resolved and readily explainable.” Quite the contrary, the study actually found that among the UFO sightings categorized within a reliability group of reports deemed “Excellent,” only 4.2% had “insufficient info,” whereas 33.3% of these cases remained “Unknown.”
In a posting on X, Marik von Rennenkampf, an analyst who worked with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, called the error “Blatantly, demonstrably false.”
INTRIGUING ACCOUNTS AND UNSOLVED CASES
Despite the number of factual errors that appear throughout the final AARO report, there are nonetheless a handful of intriguing references in it that appear to describe advanced U.S. technologies, although again, few of these have received significant attention in mainstream coverage.
In one example, which describes an individual’s account provided during an interview with AARO investigators, the report states that “AARO was able to correlate this account with an authentic USG program because the interviewee was able to provide a relatively precise time and location of the sighting which they observed exhibiting strange characteristics.”
Test flight during the 1970s of Lockheed’s then-secret Have Blue, the code name for its stealth fighter (Public Domain).
AARO concluded the technology mistaken for being an exotic UAP technology by the unnamed witness correlated with DoD tests “of a platform protected by a [Special Access Program]” occurring at roughly the same time. “The seemingly strange characteristics reported by the interviewee match closely with the platform’s characteristics,” the AARO report’s authors state, “which was being tested at a military facility in the time frame the interviewee was there.”
“This program is not related in any way to the exploitation of off-world technology,” the report’s authors emphasize, offering no further details on the technology that is believed to have been mistaken for a test involving an exotic craft.
The report’s authors later add that “All the programs assessed to be authentic were or—if still active—continue to be, appropriately reported to either or both the congressional defense and intelligence committees.”
In another instance, material believed to have been retrieved from a UAP was subjected to analysis by the U.S. Army, with subsequent analysis conducted by AARO and “a leading science laboratory,” concluding that “the material is a metallic alloy, terrestrial in nature, and possibly of USAF origin, based on its materials characterization.”
Although most of AARO’s reported findings dismissed any verifiable connections to exotic craft or genuine unexplained phenomena, linking them instead to known U.S. government programs, there are a handful of incidents AARO said it was still investigating, which included a series of widely discussed UAP events that occurred at U.S. strategic sites during the 1960s and 1970s.
“AARO is researching U.S. and adversarial activity related to these events,” the report states, “including any U.S. programs that tested defensive ballistic missile capabilities.”
The report also maintains AARO’s past positions regarding the likelihood that prosaic explanations exist for the majority of UAP sightings, although its authors nonetheless acknowledge that there are still some cases the Pentagon’s UAP investigative office has been unable to solve.
“A small percentage of cases have potentially anomalous characteristics or concerning characteristics,” the report’s authors write. “AARO has kept Congress fully and currently informed of its findings. AARO’s research continues on these cases.”
Historic image of an A-12 test flight at Area 51 in 1962
(Public Domain).
QUESTIONS OF ACCESS AND ONGOING PROBLEMS
Last April, during a Senate Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities hearing led by U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, then-Director of AARO, agreed when asked about AARO’s Title 50 accessibility by Senator Gillibrand that “having additional authorities for collection, tasking, counterintelligence… those are all things that would be helpful, yes.”
In the U.S., most activities conducted by the Intelligence Community, including covert action missions, foreign espionage, and other activities best suited for combating unconventional external threats, operate under what is known as Title 50 authority.
Although Dr. Kirkpatrick emphasized having “good relations” with other agencies during last April’s hearing, his statements gave the distinct impression that AARO had been operating solely under Title 10 authority for the duration of its mission at that time, which would seemingly place limitations on its ability to acquire information related to the Intelligence Community’s involvement with UAP investigations, including but not limited to exchanges of data and tasking collection assets.
Responding to questions from The Debrief, Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough clarified that AARO does have access to U.S. intelligence information that falls under Title 50 authority.
“There is no impediment to AARO receiving all UAP-related information, past or present, regardless of level or origin of classification,” Gough told The Debrief. “By law, AARO may receive all UAP-related information, at all levels of classification, regardless of whether the original classification authority for such information is within DoD or the Intelligence Community.”
Although AARO does appear to have access to all the intelligence on UAP that it required, contrary to what was conveyed during last April’s Senate hearing, the Pentagon nonetheless continues to face challenges in its collection and management of information about UAP.
Earlier this year, an unclassified summary of a DoD Inspector General report evaluating the Pentagon’s activities related to UAP was released, which argued that the DoD lacks any comprehensive, coordinated means by which it can currently address UAP. The report further argued that the DoD’s apparent lack of coordination on the UAP issue could pose a threat to U.S. military forces and, more broadly, to national security.
“We determined that the DoD has no overarching UAP policy,” a portion of the DoD Inspector General report read, “and, as a result, it lacks assurance that national security and flight safety threats to the United States from UAP have been identified and mitigated.”
In a statement on Friday following the new AARO historical report’s release, Pentagon Press Secretary Major General Pat Ryder said the second volume of AARO’s historical review will be forthcoming later this year.
“AARO will publish a second volume that will provide analysis of information acquired by AARO after Nov. 1, 2023, including information received via interviews with current and former U.S. government personnel who contacted AARO via the secure reporting mechanism on AARO’s website,” Ryder said.
“Analyzing and understanding the historical record on UAP is an ongoing collaborative effort involving many departments and agencies, and the department thanks the contributing departments and agencies, as well as the interviewees who came forward with information,” Ryder added.
Massive explosion on Sun, enough energy to destroy a hundred planets 🪐 UFO Sighting News. 📰
Massive explosion on Sun, enough energy to destroy a hundred planets 🪐 UFO Sighting News. 📰
This explosion is so big that it could easily wipe out our planet and if we are in its line of fire then it will take a few days to get to Earth for us to know for sure, so lets hope if we are in the line of fire...that those egg heads at NASA will do their job for the first time in their life and tell the public whats about to hit. The fastest material from the sun could take 13-18 hours to hit Earth, the slower would take a few days.
UFO caught over Oklahoma City but Pentagon says UFOs and Aliens don't exist
UFO caught over Oklahoma City but Pentagon says UFOs and Aliens don't exist
A mysterious object and event was seen in the metro sky Monday night. NewsNation affiliate KFOR has been trying to track down where it came from. It is still a mystery. “What is that?” a voice can be heard on the video.
NewsNation special correspondent and investigative journalist Ross Coulthart joins "NewsNation Prime" with more about the Pentagon's highly anticipated UFO report that claims there is NO evidence of alien contact.
The report specifically addresses U.S. government investigations into sightings since 1945 and documents from secret government archives.
According to the Dailymail, the director of the Pentagon's UFO-hunting All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), told reporters that AARO has found no verifiable evidence that the US government or private industry has ever had access to extraterrestrial technology, read more...
However, the report's limited distribution to a select audience prior to its public release has faced scrutiny from other journalists and UFO researchers for its perceived lack of transparency.
In summary, despite the yet another Pentagon/AARO report, it's evident that the UFO/Alien cover-up persists.
The Enigmatic UFO Encounter: A Pilot’s Brush with the Unknown and the Men in Black
The Enigmatic UFO Encounter: A Pilot’s Brush with the Unknown and the Men in Black
In the annals of UFO lore, few incidents are as compelling as the experience of a captain who claimed a close encounter with an unidentified flying object. This intriguing event took place on December 5th, 1948, marking a significant chapter in the study of aerial phenomena and the mysterious figures known as the Men in Black.
The Encounter Above the Clouds
The incident began on a routine flight from Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane. What was expected to be an uneventful journey soon turned into an extraordinary tale of mystery and intrigue. The captain reported seeing a “large ball of fire” darting across the sky. Initially dismissed as a meteor, the object’s subsequent actions defied all logical explanations. It maneuvered with astonishing agility, moving upwards and causing the captain to question the nature of what he was witnessing. This sighting was not isolated; a commercial airline pilot reported a similar encounter, describing a bright object that abruptly changed direction and accelerated away.
The Investigation by Unidentified Intelligence Officers
Following these sightings, both pilots were approached by intelligence officers. These individuals, who did not disclose their affiliations, conducted interviews with the pilots, diving deep into the details of their encounters. The presence of these enigmatic figures, often referred to as the Men in Black due to their attire, adds a layer of mystery to the incident. Their interest in the case suggests a level of concern or knowledge about UFOs that goes beyond public understanding.
The Legacy of the Encounter
The Idaho sighting of 1948 is more than just a tale of a pilot and an unexplained phenomenon. It represents a critical moment in the ongoing dialogue between humanity and the possibility of extraterrestrial life. The involvement of the Men in Black in the aftermath of the sighting raises questions about the extent of government awareness and secrecy surrounding UFO phenomena.
Conclusion: Unanswered Questions and the Search for Truth
Decades have passed since the captain’s fateful encounter, yet the incident remains a topic of fascination and speculation. It serves as a reminder of the unexplained mysteries that persist in our skies and the lengths to which certain entities will go to investigate and perhaps conceal these phenomena. As we continue to explore the cosmos, both through technological advancements and through the study of reported encounters, the story of the captain and the Men in Black stands as a testament to the enduring human desire to understand the unknown.
VIDEO:
Captain Who Had A UFO Encounter Is Questioned By ‘Men In Black’ | UFO Witness
This incident encapsulates the intrigue and complexity of UFO sightings, blending eyewitness accounts with the shadowy involvement of intelligence officers. It underscores the ongoing quest for clarity in a realm that remains shrouded in secrecy and speculation.
Pentagon Report Rules Out UFO Cover-Up, But the Debate Goes On The Pentagon
References to an F-117A Nighthawk stealth fighter, shown here on display at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, were apparently misconstrued as a discussion about an encounter with alien technology, according to a newly released Pentagon report.
Pentagon Report Rules Out UFO Cover-Up, But the Debate Goes On
The Pentagon office in charge of investigating UFO reports — now known officially as unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs — today provided its most detailed explanation for what it said were false or misconstrued claims of alien visitations over the decades.
The first volume of a historical record report released by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, in response to a congressional mandate did include a fresh disclosure: During the 2010s, U.S. government officials considered a proposed program code-named “Kona Blue” that would have looked into the possibility that extraterrestrial technology could be reverse-engineered. But the Department of Homeland Security rejected the idea because it lacked merit, the report said.
“It is critical to note that no extraterrestrial craft or bodies were ever collected — this material was only assumed to exist by Kona Blue advocates and its anticipated contract performers,” according to the report. The same assumptions were made by outside investigators who delved into UAP reports as part of an earlier Pentagon-funded program, AARO said.
One of the investigators involved in that program — which was known as the Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Application Program or the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AAWSAP/AATIP) — made clear that he’d continue trying to keep the alien angle in the public eye.
“Today the Pentagon and its current UAP investigative program, AARO, issued a public report that is intentionally dishonest, inaccurate and dangerously misleading,” Lue Elizondo, who helped spark renewed interest in UFO reports in 2017, said in a posting to X / Twitter. “Myself and others who are aware of the truth are going to keep working to help Congress in their efforts to achieve disclosure.”
But Mick West, a retired software engineer who specializes in analyzing UFO/UAP reports, said the newly released report shows how a belief in alien phenomena can be self-reinforcing. “A belief in the supernatural … is what led to the current UFO flap that AARO is trying to pour cold water on,” West said on X / Twitter.
The ups and downs of UFOs
The 63-page report traces government-funded efforts to investigate sightings of unidentified flying objects going back to before the 1947 Roswell UFO incident, which was the subject of a “Case Closed” report on the 50th anniversary in 1997. Pages and pages are devoted to recounting projects that are well-known to the UFO community, including Project Blue Book and the Condon Report.
AARO acknowledged that there was “about a 40-year gap” in official efforts to investigate UAP sightings after Project Blue Book was terminated in 1969. The efforts resumed in earnest in 2009, primarily due to the interest of the late Sen. Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat who was Senate majority leader at the time.
For several years, the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency funded the AAWSAP/AATIP’s investigation into anomalous sightings. The review of aerial sightings by military personnel was conducted by Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies, which was created by Nevada billionaire Robert Bigelow.
When the funding for AAWSAP/AATIP ended in 2012, some of the people who were associated with the project — including Elizondo — continued their work in other roles. They also unsuccessfully tried to persuade the Department of Homeland Security to set up the Kona Blue program.
It took until 2020 for the Department of Defense to get back into the business of official UFO/UAP investigations. A series of initiatives focused on the possibility that some anomalous sightings might be due to novel technologies developed by Russia or China that might pose a threat to national security. Perhaps the best-known sightings of that type were last year’s reports about a Chinese spy balloon that crossed the U.S. and was eventually shot down by an Air Force fighter jet.
Highlights from the UFO files
In its previous reports, AARO has said it found no evidence of extraterrestrial explanations for UAP sightings. Instead, the office has traced all but a few of the sightings to more mundane causes such as balloons, drones, aerial clutter and natural phenomena. It said that some of the alien claims misconstrued sensitive national security programs — and that a small number of sightings remained unexplained, but did not merit being considered evidence of extraterrestrial activity.
“All investigative efforts, at all levels of classification, concluded that most sightings were ordinary objects and phenomena and the result of misidentification,” the Pentagon’s press secretary, Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, said today in a statement about today’s report. “AARO assesses that all of the named and described alleged hidden UAP reverse-engineering programs provided by interviewees either do not exist; are misidentified authentic national security programs that are not related to extraterrestrial technology exploitation; or resolve to a disestablished program.”
Today’s report addressed some oft-debated UAP cases:
One of the people interviewed by AARO claimed that a military officer explained in detail how he touched an extraterrestrial spacecraft. But the officer, now retired, recounted a story about touching an F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter — and said that tale could have been misconstrued by the person who heard the story.
Another interviewee claimed that he witnessed what he believed to be the testing of extraterrestrial technology at a government facility. AARO said that “almost certainly was an observation of an authentic, non-UAP-related technology test that strongly correlated in time, location and description provided in the interviewee’s account.”
Yet another claim had to do with a metallic material that was reportedly tested by Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies. Some suggested that the material couldn’t be identified by scientists and might have had extraterrestrial origins. But the AARO said further tests found that the material was a “manufactured, terrestrial alloy and does not represent off-world technology or possess any exceptional qualities.” AARO said the sample is possibly of U.S. Air Force origin — and is primarily composed of magnesium, zinc and bismuth, plus trace elements including lead.
What’s next on the UAP frontier
AARO said that it’s continuing to investigate unresolved UAP cases. The historical review in today’s report takes the story only as far as last Oct. 31 — and information gathered since that time will be addressed in a second volume to come.
Today’s report notes that UAP investigations have been challenged by insufficient data and the limitations of sensor technologies. “In terms of military reporting the sensors on which UAP most frequently are captured are calibrated and optimized for combat,” AARO explained. “UAP are not routinely captured by exquisite, high-definition, multi-capability, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance collection platforms — a threshold which is often required to successfully resolve a case.”
To address that shortcoming, AARO is developing a new surveillance capability known as the Gremlin System, which should be able to track anomalous phenomena with hyperspectral imaging.
“We’re working with some of the government labs, such as the Department of Energy labs, and we have a great partner with Georgia Tech,” DefenseScoop quoted acting AARO Director Tim Phillips as saying. “And what we’re doing is developing a deployable, configurable sensor suite that we can put in Pelican cases.”
hillips said the portable kit is being tested in Texas and will enable long-term collection of hyperspectral data in the field.
There’s also a chance that Congress will schedule a sequel to last summer’s House subcommittee hearing on UAPs, during which witnesses claimed that the Pentagon knew more than it was telling lawmakers. Today’s AARO report said such claims were in large part “the result of circular reporting from a group of individuals who believe this to be the case, despite the lack of any evidence.” But Rep. Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican who was in on last year’s hearing, criticized the report in a posting to X / Twitter:
The Pentagon releases footage of unexplained UFOs spotted around the world - from a spherical object in the Middle East to a milk bottle-like item over the US
The Pentagon releases footage of unexplained UFOs spotted around the world - from a spherical object in the Middle East to a milk bottle-like item over the US
New Department of Defense website uploads UFO clips that it cannot explain
The Pentagon has long been secretive regarding what it knows about UFOs.
But that's all changing as the government department has added an incredible selection of videos to its dedicated UFO website.
The clips, some just a few seconds in length, show aerial phenomena that it cannot explain, in all sorts of shapes and sizes.
They include a spherical object over buildings in the Middle East, a milk bottle-like item over the US and the famous Tic Tac captured by the US Navy in 2004.
A Department of Defense document reveals characteristics of the typical UFO
This was one of the clips presented by AARO director Dr Sean Kirkpatrick to the Senate Armed Services Committee in April 2023 – but the office thinks there is an innocent explanation.
'AARO assesses that the object likely is a commercial aircraft and that the trailing cavitation is a sensor artifact resultant of video compression ,' it says.
SPHERE #1
The next clip was taken by an MQ-9 unmanned aerial vehicle in the Middle East in July 2022.
The vehicle's camera is pointed down towards the ground, with buildings and people in view.
All of a sudden, an 'apparent silver, orb-like object' crosses the sensor’s field of view.
The MQ-9's camera detects the orb and tracks it as it flies in a north-easterly direction, seemingly quite close to the ground.
The office gives its verdict: 'While AARO assesses the object in the clip is not exhibiting anomalous behavior, the object remains unidentified.'
'This video is a representative example of many of the cases AARO receives where there is limited data surrounding the observation.'
UFO captured in the Middle East: Mote the 'orb-like object', spherical and a bit like a ball bearing, crossing the sensor’s field of view
SPHERE #2
This UFO, captured in an undisclosed location in 2021, shows a similar-looking sphere from the cockpit of a Navy fighter jet.
The jet is calmly flying through blue skies before the object suddenly bursts past the right of the cockpit.
The fleeting pass is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it event and leaves little time for interpretation of what it might be.
AARO says: 'This video, captured by the pilot in the cockpit of a Navy fighter jet, demonstrates the typical speed at which military aircraft may approach an unknown object.'
Sphere #2: This still is from the video of a US Naval aviator encounter with an unknown object (UAP) in a 'fleeting pass'
A bizarre face-shaped object changed colour while in the sky
TIC TAC
The original 'Tic Tac' is probably one of the most famous UFOs of them all.
Named due to its physical similarity to the oblong breath mint, it was captured in November 2004 by pilots aboard a US Navy fighter jet.
The pilots were conducting a routine training mission with the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz off the Southern California coast when they noticed it.
The smooth, white oblong object flew at high speed over the water, maneuvering and accelerating in ways which seemed to defy the laws of physics.
'It appeared to respond in a way that we didn't recognise', Navy Lieutenant Commander Alex Dietrich, one of those on board, told Reuters in 2021.
She added that it seemed to lack 'any visible flight control surfaces or means of propulsion'.
'We don't know what it was, but it could have been a natural phenomenon in human activity,' she said.
'But the point was that it was weird, and we couldn't recognise it.'
Other members of the public have since seen a Tic Tac-shaped UFOs in the sky, including people in the UK.
One of the most famous and unusual UFOs to date, spotted by the US Navy in 2004, was compared with the Tic Tac breath mint due to its white, oblong appearance (pictured)
MILK BOTTLE
This UFO, also captured by the US Navy, can only be described as looking like a 'milk bottle' or a bowling pin.
As the clip shows, Navy personnel have the object well under their sights as it moves serenely at an angle with the clouds underneath.
However, as it moves along, its shape appears to shift into a more of a saucer and its silhouette changes from white to black.
It's unclear when and where this clip was taken, although it's been on the internet since 2020 or potentially earlier before it was added to the AARO site.
MailOnline has contacted the AARO for more information.
This UFO, also captured by the US Navy, can only be described as looking like a 'milk bottle' or a bowling pin
However, as the mysterious object moves, its shape appears to shift into a more of a saucer
FAST SPECK
Little is known about the last clip, which shows a tiny speck of white travelling fast across choppy waters in an undisclosed location.
It was taken by crew aboard a US Navy F/A-18 jet who laugh and shout in amazement when the system's trackers focus in on it.
One crew member says: 'What the f*** is that?'
UFO stands for 'unidentified flying object' and so the term doesn't necessarily describe an object with an extraterrestrial origin.
This means there could be an innocent explanation for all the objects in these videos.
The world's UFO hotspots are revealed - as Pentagon admits hundreds of objects have been spotted 'all over the world'
The US government is notoriously secretive when it comes to sharing what it knows about extraterrestrial life.
But in a possible bid for transparency, the Department of Defense has released a new document disclosing the 'world's UFO hotspots'.
It includes a map disclosing where the most sightings of unidentified objects have been recorded, based on reports between 1996 and 2023.
The map discloses where the most sightings have been recorded based on reports between 1996 and 2023 - naming Japan and the coasts of the US as particular hotspots
Among them Nagasaki and Hiroshima in Japan, the east and west coasts of the US including California, as well as parts of the Middle East.
We are back! Open Minds UFO Radio is now Open Minds UAP News. It has been a wild ride the last few years for those interested in UFOs, or UAP? In this episode, we will talk about the difference. Despite the government finally coming out and admitting UAP demonstrates a potential threat that should be taken seriously, UFO researchers seem to be unhappy with anything the Pentagon or NASA does or says. Meanwhile, the UFO crowd feels all of the work that’s been done to get us to a place where the issue is taken seriously, is being dismissed, and that the mainstream community still has an overall dismissive attitude. We’ll talk about how we got to this place of stagnation, the players (The Pentagon, Congress, NASA, and the UFO Community) and their current positions, and how we’ll be moving things forward…together.
PLUS…COOL ENIGMA LABS UAP VIDEO Link to Enigma Labs UAP:
I'm sure I'm not alone here. Others must be seeing this in the news media across the globe. 95% of all UFO media articles are now about how the US gov says "UFO evidence," is actually wrong. That they are pushing an anti campaign of mental manipulation of the public in order to control their desire for the truth. This is something the US think tank must have come up with and yes, it always works to a high degree. Now that they are using social media, their efforts are now 1000X stronger with 10,000X more reach. This will intimidate actual eyewitnesses into not reporting what they saw and recorded.
Its basically the same as the 1950s repeating itself all over again, with claims that something seen is a weather balloon, Venus, Jupiter and oh...this is a new one...a truck in the middle of the ocean...never heard that one until today.
Just saying, don't allow the gov to manipulate you. Think for yourself.
Five Transformative Theories on Extraterrestrial Existence
Five Transformative Theories on Extraterrestrial Existence
In the vast expanse of the universe, humanity stands on the brink of the unknown, perpetually curious about what lies beyond the stars. The concept of alien life forms and their potential visitations to Earth has been a source of fascination and debate for centuries. As we gaze up at the night sky, numerous theories circulate, offering speculative insights into the nature of extraterrestrial beings and their interactions with our world. Here, we explore five transformative theories that challenge our understanding of the cosmos and our place within it.
1. Visitors from Antiquity
One of the most compelling theories posits that extraterrestrials have not only visited Earth but did so in the distant past. Advocates of this theory point to ancient artifacts, monumental structures, and millennia-old texts as potential evidence of alien influence. Could the architectural wonders of ancient civilizations, from the majestic pyramids of Egypt to the intricate Nazca Lines, be remnants of extraterrestrial contact? This theory suggests that early humans may have encountered these cosmic visitors, immortalizing them as deities in their cultures and religions.
2. Earth: A Cosmic Exhibit
Imagine a universe where advanced civilizations quietly observe us, akin to spectators at a zoo. The Zoo Hypothesis presents a scenario where alien life forms are aware of our existence but choose to remain unseen, allowing humanity to evolve without interference. This galactic non-intervention policy posits that Earth and its inhabitants are part of a vast, uncontacted nature reserve, watched over by extraterrestrial beings who ensure our natural development.
3. Navigating the Great Filter
The silence of the cosmos, as highlighted by the Fermi Paradox, raises an intriguing question: where are all the aliens? The Great Filter theory offers a possible explanation, suggesting a critical developmental stage that few, if any, civilizations surpass. This filter could represent a technological, environmental, or social challenge insurmountable for most. Are we approaching this filter, or have we unknowingly passed it, making us one of the rare exceptions in the galaxy?
4. Beyond the Bounds of Our Dimension
Rather than traversing vast interstellar distances, could extraterrestrials be visiting us from adjacent dimensions? This theory proposes that what we perceive as aliens might be beings capable of moving between dimensions, explaining their elusive presence and sudden appearances. Such a concept expands our understanding of the universe, suggesting that it comprises more than just the three-dimensional space we inhabit.
5. The Legacy of Artificial Intelligence
In a universe teeming with mysteries, another theory speculates on the nature of potential extraterrestrial visitors. Could the entities exploring our galaxy and possibly making contact with us be not organic life forms but advanced artificial intelligences? These AIs, survivors of civilizations that have long since vanished, might roam the cosmos, carrying the knowledge and ambitions of their creators. This theory prompts us to reconsider our definitions of life and consciousness, highlighting the potential for non-biological entities to exist and explore the universe.
As we continue to search the skies and delve deeper into the mysteries of the universe, these theories serve as a testament to human curiosity and our endless quest for understanding. Whether any of these theories hold the key to unlocking the secrets of extraterrestrial life remains to be seen. Yet, they undoubtedly enrich our imaginations and expand our perception of the possible, reminding us that in the grand tapestry of the cosmos, we may not be alone.
The report — which came in classified and unclassified formats, with the latter now available to the public online — claims that the office found 'no verifiable evidence that any UAP [i.e. UFO] sighting has represented extraterrestrial activity.'
The UFO office, which did not enjoy subpoena power for its inquiries, reported that c-suite executives at US defense contractors 'denied the existence' of any top secret UFO crash retrieval programs 'on the record.'
But it did reveal at least one proposed top secret project, dubbed 'Kona Blue,' reviewed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in the 2010s, and pitched as an effort to reverse-engineer hypothetically recovered extraterrestrial spacecraft.
'AARO has found no verifiable evidence that the US government or private industry has ever had access to extraterrestrial technology,' Phillips told select reporters in a closed setting.
But in the past week, the exclusive, invite-only nature of the report's pre-release has been criticized by other journalists and UFO researchers for its lack of transparency.
The Pentagon 's embattled, but official, UFO investigations office released it's Congressionally mandated report on 'historic' UFO cases dating back to 1945, Friday. Above, the office's first-ever director, former CIA laser physicist Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, who retired this December
But whistleblowers with knowledge of a classified UFO 'reverse engineering' program have opted to testify to the Senate intelligence committee, in part over their reported mistrust of Dr. Kirkpatrick and his Pentagon UFO office. Above, a page from Project 1794 declassified in 2012
'They've pledged openness and transparency to Congress on the subject of UAPs, but they're not following through on their actions,' said NewsNation correspondent Ross Coulthart, who secured the first televised interview with Grusch last summer.
UAP, short for 'unidentified anomalous phenomena,' has become the term of art for UFOs in recent years, deployed by Pentagon brass, NASA experts and academics.
The Pentagon, he said, is 'trying to constrain what people are allowed to know.'
Tim Phillips (above), current acting director of the Pentagon 's UFO-hunting All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), told press his office's new report casts doubt on the public testimony of UFO whistleblowers
But privileged reporters for the New York Times, the Washington Post and other hand-picked outlets were treated to news about Kona Blue, an aborted secret government proposal to reverse engineer UFOs.
That effort, apparently spearheaded by members of a previous Defense Intelligence Agency effort that investigated UFO cases from 2007-2012, according to AARO's acting director Phillips, never got off the ground.
'It is critical to note that no extraterrestrial craft or bodies were ever collected,' Phillips noted, according to ABC News, speaking on the 'Kona Blue' UFO plans.
'This material was only assumed to exist by Kona Blue advocates and its anticipated contract performers,' he clarified.
The 'Kona Blue' proposal, according to Phillips, was rejected by DHS leaders 'for lacking merit.' No other-worldly craft, he said, were recovered by the planned effort.
The new Pentagon report also detailed over two dozen once top secret programs and less secret US space programs that 'most likely accounted for some portion of UAP sightings.'
The list included everything from NASA's Apollo missions to Lockheed Martin's 'Have Blue,' its early proof-of-concept for the angular, futuristic stealth fighter, the F-117.
Best moments from new UFO government file release
A months-long tease has preceded AARO's 'Historical Record Report' on UFOs since the retirement of the office's first-ever director, former CIA laser physicist Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, last December.
Dr. Kirkpatrick appeared on CNN analyst Peter Bergen's podcast, 'In the Room,' late last January, revealing that his office intended to double-down on the Air Force's evidence-poor explanation for the infamous Roswell UFO case of 1947.
In fact, multiple ex-NASA scientists, as well as former US Air Force personnel, including the Air Force Colonel who authored the Pentagon's official 1994 Roswell report have cast doubt the 'Project Mogul spy balloon' explanation that Dr. Kirkpatrick and his AARO successors still maintain is correct.
In its official report today, AARO wrote of the Roswell UFO case: 'The materials recovered near Roswell were consistent with a balloon of the type used in the then-classified Project Mogul.'
Dr. Kirkpatrick's successor, acting director Phillips described Friday's release of AARO's historical review as the most comprehensive government-wide investigation of US government UFO records, classified and unclassified, ever conducted.
But critics of AARO have long maintained that the office has lost the trust of past and present government officials, military personnel and US defense contractors with any knowledge of the alleged top secret UFO crash retrieval programs.
On page 715 of the Air Force's 881-page report on the Roswell crash, a transcribed journal entry by Project Mogul's Field Operations Director, geophysicist Dr. Albert Crary, states that the key scheduled balloon launch never took place - and thus couldn't be confused for a UFO
Above,documents from Project 1794: a Cold War-era US Air Force effort to build a supersonic flying saucer in collaboration with a Canadian defense contractor
Prior to Grusch's sworn Congressional testimony last summer, which covered his UFO program knowledge, other ex-Pentagon officials came forward to corroborate his claims.
Chris Mellon, a former official with the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and an advocate for increased government diligence and transparency on UFOs, told NewsNation's Chris Cuomo, that similar information had been revealed to him.
'I've been told that we have recovered technology that did not originate on this Earth,' Mellon told NewsNation, 'by officials in the Department of Defense and by former intelligence officials.'
This summer, Dr. Kirkpatrick called Grusch's congressional testimony on a hidden and illegal UFO crash retrieval program, delivered under oath, 'insulting [...] to the officers of the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community.'
The public sparring between Grusch and Dr. Kirkpatrick has left other sources with firsthand testimony on purported top secret UFO programs skittish about delivering what they know to AARO, sources told DailyMail.com last year.
US Customs and Border Patrol, the agency responsible for keeping terrorists and weapons out of the country, uploaded 10 videos that appear to show craft moving in strange ways in our skies. The videos document a fighter jet pursued by an apparently baffling flying orb, as well as something that appears to be a propeller-powered hang-glider, and another apparent orb hovering near a parked 16-wheeler truck
As Daniel Sheehan, the Harvard-trained lawyer who represented past UFO whistleblower Luis Elizondo in his formal complaint to the DoD's Inspector General, explained: 'What they were doing is they were going straight through to the Senate Intelligence Committee.'
'That's where the queue is forming of people who have real direct immediate knowledge — and Dave Grusch is in communication with these people, and our people are in communication with these people.'
'None of the whistleblowers want to go in there,' Sheehan told DailyMail.com last year, 'because they don't view it as stable or safe.'
Sheehan, whose history litigating progressive civil rights law cases dates back to the Vietnam War-era 'Pentagon Papers,' is now chief counsel, president and co-founder of the New Paradigm Institute.
The institute, a branch of the 501(C)(3) nonprofit Romero Institute, describes itself as dedicated to public policy advocacy on 'societal, environmental, and cosmic objectives,' which presumably includes UAP transparency.
In the unclassified version of AARO's new UFO report — technically titled 'Historical Record Report on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, Volume One' — the office concluded that many sincere UFO whistleblowers had simply become confused.
In some cases, the report argued, defense personnel had misidentified genuine top secret programs involving advanced, but all too terrestrial, aerospace hardware.
'AARO concludes many of these programs represent authentic, current and former sensitive, national security programs,' the report reads.
'But none of these programs have been involved with capturing, recovering, or reverse-engineering off-world technology or material.'
This is a developing story and will be updated throughout the day.
KONA BLUE: Top-Secret Government Program To Investigate “Human Consciousness Anomalies” Doesn’t Exist, New Report Says
KONA BLUE: Top-Secret Government Program To Investigate “Human Consciousness Anomalies” Doesn’t Exist, New Report Says
The 63-page-long document is part of an investigation into U.S. government programs that have been a springboard for alleged paranormal-related activity.
No, the United States government does not have alien bodies hiding somewhere, nor has it ever tried to reverse-engineer flying saucers. Really.
That’s one of the main stances that the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), an organization created in 2022 to resolve sightings of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), asserts in a report published Friday.
UAP is the modern moniker for UFO. Intelligence officials avoided reusing the popular term because it’s too closely associated, nowadays, with little green men.
UAP refers to sightings from pilots and members of the military, who haven’t been able to explain why they’ve seen objects that appear to reject the laws of motion and physics. Many have been proven to be weather balloons and tricks of perception. Several, however, remain unexplained. That has given credence to people who believe the U.S. government is hiding aliens.
The 63-page-long document is the first volume in a series of investigations into U.S. government programs through history that have been a springboard for alleged paranormal-related activity. “Analyzing and understanding the historical record on UAP is an ongoing collaborative effort involving many departments and agencies,” AARO officials wrote in an announcement published on Friday.
“To date, AARO has found no verifiable evidence for claims that the U.S. government and private companies have access to or have been reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology,” the statement says.
KONA BLUE NEVER EXISTED
The report makes several assertions, including a debunking of KONA BLUE.
KONA BLUE, as the report explains, was allegedly a top-secret program to investigate “human consciousness anomalies,” retrieve and exploit “non-human biologics,” and reverse engineer any alien craft they found.
“It is critical to note that no extraterrestrial craft or bodies were ever collected — this material was only assumed to exist by KONA BLUE advocates and its anticipated contract Performers,” the report authors emphasized.
As the authors do throughout the report, they take an instance of a program and explain where the pseudoscience claims may be emerging. In the case of KONA BLUE, the contract for a $22 million program, greenlit in 2008 to assess aerospace threats on the horizon — and which was never explicitly tasked with researching UFOs — was awarded to a private sector organization. But the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency canceled it in 2012, “due to lack of merit and the
utility of the deliverables,” though this didn’t stop non-government program advocates, who renamed the proposal as KONA BLUE, from seeking to investigate paranormal activity.
“KONA BLUE’s advocates were convinced that the USG [U.S. government] was hiding UAP technologies. They believed that creating this program under DHS would allow all of the technology and knowledge of these alleged programs to be moved under the KONA BLUE program,” according to the report.
This program was never rubber stamped, and as the report says, “was never approved or stood up, and no data or material was transferred to DHS [Department of Homeland Security].”
In the Friday announcement, AARO officials stipulate that they’ve approached their review of KONA BLUE and other topics “with the widest possible aperture,” that it is committed to reaching conclusions based on verifiable evidence, willing to “follow the evidence where it leads, wherever it leads.”
"All investigative efforts, at all levels of classification, concluded that most sightings were ordinary objects and phenomena and the result of misidentification."
A sign in Roswell, New Mexico advertising a UFO crash site.
(Image credit: Getty Images/David Zaitz)
The Pentagon's UFO office has once again stressed that it has found no evidence of alien technology in the skies, in space or crashed in the American desert.
The All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) was created to help the U.S. government study and resolve reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), a new term that includes UFOs not only in the sky but also in space as well as under water, or even those that appear to travel between these domains.
On Friday (March 8), the office released its long-awaited "Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) Volume I." The report is sure to cause controversy among the UAP disclosure movement that argues the U.S. government does, in fact, know a lot more about alleged alien presence than it publicly admits.
"AARO found no evidence that any USG [U.S. government] investigation, academic-sponsored research, or official review panel has confirmed that any sighting of a UAP represented extraterrestrial technology," the report's executive summary notes.
While the report notes, importantly, that many UAP reports remain unsolved or unidentified, it adds that AARO believes this is mainly due to a lack of data. If more and/or better quality information were available, many of these sightings could be identified as "ordinary objects or phenomena," AARO's report states.
"The vast majority of reports almost certainly are the result of misidentification and a direct consequence of the lack of domain awareness; there is a direct correlation between the amount and quality of available information on a case with the ability to conclusively resolve it," AARO writes.
NASA's UAP study team reached similar conclusions in its first public report, which was published in September 2023. "The NASA independent study team did not find any evidence that UAP have an extraterrestrial origin, but we don't know what these UAP are," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said at the time.
AARO's report goes on to state that, despite widely publicized claims made in a July 2023 congressional hearing that included testimony from former U.S. military and intelligence community personnel, the office found no evidence suggesting the U.S. government is in possession of crashed or reverse-engineered alien technology, nor that any hidden "UAP reverse-engineering programs" actually exist, either in the U.S. government or in private industry.
"AARO determined, based on all information provided to date, that claims involving specific people, known locations, technological tests, and documents allegedly involved in or related to the reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial technology, are inaccurate," the report states. These claims are mostly "the result of circular reporting from a group of individuals who believe this to be the case, despite the lack of any evidence," it adds.
David Grusch, former National Reconnaissance Office representative on the Defense Department's Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, testifies during the House Oversight and Accountability Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs hearing titled "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety, and Government Transparency," in Rayburn Building on Wednesday, July 26, 2023. (Image credit: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Sean Kirkpatrick, the former head of AARO, published an op-ed in Scientific American on Thursday (March 7) arguing that while it is important for the U.S. government to study UFOs, it needs to do so from a scientific perspective and without resorting to conspiracy theories.
"Many outside observers nonetheless have criticized AARO as supposedly part of a continuing government cover-up of the existence of aliens," Kirkpatrick wrote in the op-ed. "Interestingly, they have not provided any verifiable evidence of this, nor are some of the more outspoken willing to engage with the office to discuss their positions or offer up the data and evidence they claim to possess."
Instead, Kirkpatrick wrote, these critics have relied on secondhand reporting without "rigor in their critical thinking."
The former AARO chief conceded that the report's conclusions are sure to be criticized by those who believe the Pentagon and private aerospace companies possess crashed alien technology that they are hiding from the public, but notes that his former office has given every opportunity for witnesses and whistleblowers to come forward with any evidence they might have.
"While those who came forward have provided valuable information (albeit not of extraterrestrials or cover-ups), those who chose to instead titillate the national interest only stir division and hatred against the credible men and women of AARO who are working faithfully to address this mission," Kirkpatrick wrote in the op-ed.
However, according to some accounts, many U.S. government or military personnel who refused to share their eyewitness testimony with AARO.
"This report is not going to satisfy critics in part because there are many witnesses who did not trust AARO and would not speak with them," says Christopher Mellon, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence in the Clinton and Bush administrations.
"However, what I find most concerning is the false conflation in some news coverage of the assertion 'There is no recovered alien technology' with the notion that 'we don't have evidence of craft doing things beyond our present understanding of science and technology,'" Mellon told Space.com via email. "In fact, hundreds of credible military reports remain unexplained and are continuing to pour in."
Mellon added that "the public needs to understand why it is imperative to continue to aggressively investigating UAP, for both national security and science, regardless of the accuracy of this report."
A guard gate at the Nevada Test and Training Range that includes the Area 51 test facility near Rachel, Nevada. (Image credit: Barry King/WireImage/Getty Images)
AARO's new report goes on to list U.S. military and space programs that could have accounted for some UAP sightings. At least "some portion of these misidentifications almost certainly were a result of the surge in new technologies that observers would have understandably reported as UFOs," the report states.
Some of the examples include Project Mogul, a high-altitude balloon program designed to spy on Soviet nuclear tests that reportedly was responsible for a balloon crash outside of Roswell, New Mexico. That incident led to the widely known story of a crashed flying saucer that persists to this day.
Another example is the Gambit project, which launched photographic spy satellites into orbit that jettisoned film canisters in reentry vehicles that were then recovered by U.S. Air Force (USAF) aircraft as they descended by parachute. Many of the USAF's formerly classified aircraft are also cited, including the U-2 spy plane, the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber and the SR-71 Blackbird.
The AARO report points out that UAP sightings and beliefs that UFOs represent alien technology have tended to spike at times of growing concern about national security and technological surprise, such as during the Cold War. The report found that at least some UFO sightings since the 1940s represent "never-before-seen experimental and operational space, rocket and air systems, including stealth technologies and the proliferation of drone platforms."
"It is understandable how observers unfamiliar with these programs could mistake sightings of these new technologies as something extraordinary, even other-worldly," the report concludes.
Update: This article was updated at 3:30 p.m. ET on March 8 to include comments from former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Christopher Mellon.
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WASHINGTON (AP) - A Pentagon study released Friday that examined reported sightings of UFOs over nearly the last century found no evidence of aliens or extraterrestrial intelligence, a conclusion consistent with past U.S. government efforts to assess the accuracy of claims that have captivated public attention for decades.
The study from the Defense Department´s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office analyzed U.S. government investigations since 1945 of reported sightings of unidentified anomalous phenomena, more popularly known as UFOs. It found no evidence that any of them involved signs of alien life, or that the U.S. government and private companies had reverse-engineered extraterrestrial technology and had conspired to hide it from the public.
It dispelled claims, for instance, that a former CIA official had been involved in managing the movement of and experimentation on extraterrestrial technology and said a purported 1961 intelligence community document about the supposed extraterrestrial nature of UFOs was actually inauthentic.
"All investigative efforts, at all levels of classification, concluded that most sightings were ordinary objects and phenomena and the result of misidentification," said the report, which was mandated by Congress. Another volume of the report will be out later.
U.S. officials have endeavored to find answers to legions of reported UFO sightings over the years, but so far have not identified any actual evidence of extraterrestrial life. A 2021 government report that reviewed 144 sightings of aircraft or other devices apparently flying at mysterious speeds or trajectories found no extraterrestrial links but drew few other conclusions and called for better data collection.
The issue received fresh attention last summer when a retired Air Force intelligence officer testified to Congress that the U.S. was concealing a longstanding program that retrieves and reverse engineers unidentified flying objects. The Pentagon has denied his claims, and said in late 2022 that a new Pentagon office set up to track reports of unidentified flying objects - the same one that released Friday's report - had received "several hundreds" of new reports but had found no evidence so far of alien life.
FILE - The Pentagon is seen from Air Force One as it flies over Washington, March 2, 2022. A new Pentagon study that examined reported sightings of UFOs over nearly the last century has found no evidence of aliens or extraterrestrial intelligence. That conclusion is consistent with past U.S. government efforts to assess the accuracy of claims that have captivated public attention for decades.
(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
The authors of Friday's report said the purpose was to apply a rigorous scientific analysis to a subject that has long captured the American public's imagination.
"AARO recognizes that many people sincerely hold versions of these beliefs which are based on their perception of past experiences, the experiences of others whom they trust, or media and online outlets they believe to be sources of credible and verifiable information," the report said.
"The proliferation of television programs, books, movies, and the vast amount of internet and social media content centered on UAP-related topics most likely has influenced the public conversation on this topic, and reinforced these beliefs within some sections of the population," it added.
Archaeologists have dated an assemblage of ancient stone tools excavated from the archaeological site of Korolevo on the Tysa River in western Ukraine at 1.42 million years old. As such, these artifacts — which are associated with Homo erectus — provide the earliest evidence of hominins in Europe and support the hypothesis that the continent was colonized from the east.
A stone tool from Korolevo I, Ukraine.
Image credit: Garba et al., doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07151-3.
“To the east of Europe stands the key site of Dmanisi, Georgia, where layers containing hominin skull remains and stone tools are dated securely to around 1.85-1.78 million years,” said first author Dr. Roman Garba, an archaeologist with the Institute of Archaeology and the Nuclear Physics Institute at the Czech Academy of Sciences, and his colleagues.
“A trail from Africa to Dmanisi via the Levantine corridor accords with the Mode-1 stone artifacts documented in Jordan’s Zarqa Valley, as early as around 2.5 million years ago.
“The earliest precisely dated evidence of humans in Europe occurs at two southwestern sites: Atapuerca, Spain, where the oldest human fossils at Sima del Elefante are reported at around 1.2-1.1 million years; and Vallonnet Cave, southern France, where stone artifacts are constrained to around 1.2-1.1 million years.”
“However, the vast spatial and temporal gap that separates the Caucasus and southwestern Europe leaves key aspects of the first human dispersal into Europe largely unresolved.”
The Korolevo site was first discovered by the Ukrainian archaeologist Vladyslav Gladylin in 1974.
It lies close to where the Tysa River — a tributary of the Danube — leaves the eastern Carpathian Mountains and spreads southwestward across the Pannonian Plain.
“We know that the layer of accumulated loess and paleosol here is up to 14 m deep and contains thousands of stone artifacts. Korolevo was an important source of raw material for their production,” said co-author Dr. Vitalii Usyk, an archaeologist with the Institute of Archaeology at the Czech Academy of Sciences.
“We identified seven periods of human occupation in the stratigraphic layers, although at least nine different Paleolithic cultures were recorded at the locality: hominins lived here from 1.4 million years ago to about 30,000 years ago.”
Selected stone tools from Korolevo I, Ukraine: (a) chopper core; (b) flake with bifacial treatment; (c) multi-platform core; (d) Kombewa flake; (e) flake with parallel scar pattern. Scale bars – 3 cm.
Image credit: Garba et al., doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07151-3.
The Korolevo stone tools were made in the Oldowan style, the most primitive form of tool-making.
“We applied two complementary dating approaches to calculate the age from the measured concentrations of cosmogenic beryllium-10 and aluminum-26,” said senior author Dr. John Jansen, a researcher with the Institute of Geophysics at the Czech Academy of Sciences.
“But the most precise age came from our own method based on mathematical modeling, known as P-PINI.”
“This study is the first time our new dating approach has been applied in archaeology.”
“I expect our new dating approach will have a major impact on archaeology because it can be applied to sedimentary deposits that are highly fragmented, meaning there are lots of erosional gaps.”
“In archaeology we nearly always find fragmented records, whereas the traditional long-range dating method, magnetostratigraphy, relies on more continuous records.”
First peopling of Europe: (a) archaeological sites and dispersal routes noted in the text; the maximum extent of the Eurasian ice sheets is indicated with gray dashes; blue arrows indicate possible early human dispersal routes; (b) Korolevo I, Gostry Verkh, viewed from the Beyvar hill with excavation XIII (red box), Ukraine.
Image credit: Garba et al., doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07151-3.
According to the team, the Korolevo site is the northernmost known presence of Homo erectus.
“The radiometric dating of the first human presence at the Korolevo site not only fills in a large spatial gap between the Dmanisi site and the Atapuerca site, but also confirms the hypothesis that the first pulse of hominin dispersal into Europe came from the east or southeast,” Dr. Garba said.
“Based on a climate model and field pollen data, we have identified three possible interglacial warm periods when the first hominins could have reached Korolevo following most likely the Danube River migration corridor.”
A paper on the findings was published in the journal Nature.
R. Garba et al. East-to-west human dispersal into Europe 1.4 million years ago. Nature, published online March 6, 2024; doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07151-3
Coulthart Exposes Pentagon’s Selective Silence on UFOs
Coulthart Exposes Pentagon’s Selective Silence on UFOs
In an evolving narrative that intertwines government secrecy with journalistic integrity, the Pentagon’s approach to disseminating information on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs) has raised eyebrows and sparked debate. At the heart of this discourse is Ross Coulthart, a seasoned investigative journalist and special correspondent for NewsNation, who has voiced concerns over what he perceives as the Pentagon’s efforts to steer the conversation on UFOs through a strategy of selective briefing.
Coulthart’s analysis points to a deliberate choice by the Pentagon to invite a restricted group of journalists to attend briefings on UAPs, a decision that, according to him, aims to curate the narrative that reaches the public. This method of information dissemination, Coulthart argues, effectively sidelines reporters who are known for their probing inquiries and refusal to shy away from tough questions. The implication is that by controlling the media presence at these briefings, the Pentagon can ensure that the narrative remains favorable or, at the very least, non-confrontational.
The backdrop to Coulthart’s critique is his own pioneering work in the realm of UAP reporting. It was Coulthart’s interviews with whistleblowers and his investigative efforts that catalyzed a broader public discussion on UFOs, ultimately leading to congressional hearings and the introduction of legislation aimed at enhancing transparency regarding UAPs. Despite this significant contribution, NewsNation found itself excluded from a recent Pentagon briefing on the subject, a move that Coulthart and others view as a snub that speaks volumes about the Pentagon’s desire to control the flow of information.
Coulthart’s concerns extend beyond the realm of personal grievance. He sees the Pentagon’s selective briefing strategy as symptomatic of a larger issue — an attempt to quell public curiosity and skepticism through media manipulation. This, he warns, could have the opposite effect, fueling suspicion and distrust among the public towards the Department of Defense and the intelligence community at large. The core of Coulthart’s critique lies in the belief that transparency and open dialogue are paramount, especially on matters of significant public interest like UAPs.
Through Coulthart’s lens, the Pentagon’s approach is not just about UFOs; it’s about the broader principles of accountability, transparency, and the public’s right to know. His experience underscores the challenges journalists face in piercing the veil of government secrecy, reminding us of the vital role investigative journalism plays in a healthy democracy. As the conversation on UAPs continues to evolve, Coulthart’s voice serves as a critical reminder of the need for vigilance in the pursuit of truth, encouraging both the public and the press to question, explore, and demand transparency in all matters of national interest.
Perseverance is Keeping Track of the Big Picture While it’s Exploring Mars
It’s always a real benefit to have scientists on the ground, able to use the wealth of their experience and ingenuity to ‘think on their feet’. It is therefore always quite challenging to use space probes that to a degree need to be autonomous. This is certainly true of the NASA Perseverance Rover that has been drilling core samples that will one day (hopefully) be returned to Earth as part of the Mars Sample Return mission. Until then, a team of Geologists have developed a technique to calculate the orientation of the core samples to help with future analysis.
The journey of Mars Perseverance began on 30 July 2020 when it was launched off to the red planet. Arriving less than a year later on 18 February 2021, the rover carried with it an array of instrumentation. Its goal to explore the past habitability of Mars, looking for signs of ancient microbial life and helping to pave the way for future human exploration.
A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket with NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover onboard launches from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Thursday, July 30, 2020, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Perseverance rover is part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort of robotic exploration of the Red Planet. Photo Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky)
One instrument in particular, the Sample Caching System, gathered and stored rock and soil samples for the potential return to Earth by future missions. Perseverance and the Ingenuity drone have been exploring the Jezero crater, an ancient lake bed since. To date, 20 of the 43 tubes have been filled with core bedrock samples and a team of geologists have been looking at the original orientation of the samples to help answer questions about the planet’s past.
The research, which appeared in Earth and Space Science journal by lead authors Benjamin P. Weiss and Elias N. Mansbach explains that the team have identified the original orientation of the majority of the samples collected so far. This crucial bit of information will help geologists to understand the magnetic field that may have existed at the time the rocks formed, how water and lava has flowed, the direction of wind and the tectonic processes that were going on too.
Using data from the rover itself including its location and the positioning of the drill it was possible to calculate the orientation of the bedrock sample before it was drilled out. This will be the first time scientists have managed to orient the rock samples from another world. By completing the process for a number of samples at different locations will give clues to the conditions on Mars when the rocks formed.
The challenge was made more difficult by the mechanism that extracted the sample. A tube shaped drill is screwed into the ground at a 90 degree angle and then the sample is pulled directly out along with the rock. To be able to reorient the sample with the original location the team take what is effectively pitch, roll and yaw of a boat or aircraft. Using pictures and aligning with true north the team could calculate the original orientation. They also used distinguishing surface features in the area that would help with location identification. If perchance they were in an area devoid of any feature then the onboard laser would mark an ‘L’ into the rock before taking the sample.
Of all the stars in the sky, betelgeuse must be among the most enigmatic. One of its many mysteries surrounds the speed of its rotation which is surprisingly fast for a supergiant star. If it were placed where the Sun was, then its photosphere (visible layer) would be out around the orbit of Jupiter and it would be moving at 5 km/s. A new study now hints that instead of high rotation, it may be that the surface is boiling so furiously that it has been mistakingly identified as fast rotation.
Betelgeuse is one of the first stars an amateur astronomer will learn. Its distinctive red colour in the upper left corner of Orion makes it a prominent star, easy to find and identify and a great signpost to other constellations. We all know that stars are big but Betelgeuse takes this to a whole new level at 1.2 billion km across, almost 2,000 larger than the Sun. Stars of this size are usually expected to rotate slowly but observations revealed its high rotation speed, far higher than expected of a star at this evolutionary stage.
Orion and the molecular cloud covering the region. Betelgeuse is the red star in the upper left. (Credit : Rogelio Bernal Andreo)
Observations from the Atacama Large Millimetre Array pointed at the rotation speed of Betelgeuse. The system, which is made up of 66 antennae is a radio interferometer that combines the signal from all dishes to increase its sensitivity. Using this instrument, astronomers had concluded that one hemisphere seems to be approaching while the other seems to be receding and the rate of this led to the conclusion of a 5 km/s rotation speed. If Betelgeuse was a perfect sphere then this would have been a reasonable conclusion however, the surface of Betelgeuse is not like that!
Two of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) 12-metre antennas gaze at the sky at the observatory’s Array Operations Site (AOS), high on the Chajnantor plateau at an altitude of 5000 metres in the Chilean Andes. There is now a total of 66 antennae, 54 of them with 12-metre diameter dishes, and 12 smaller ones, with a diameter of 7 metres each. The ALMA project is an international collaboration between Europe, East Asia and North America in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ESO is the European partner in ALMA.
Like all stars, convection is a prominent process in the photosphere that brings heat from the stellar interior. In the case of Betelgeuse the convection cells are massive, sometimes even as large as the Earth’s orbit around the Sun and they rise and fall at speeds around 30 km/s (that’s over twice the escape velocity of the Earth so is faster than any launching spacecraft).
Jing-Ze Ma PhD from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics now proposes that the dipolar velocity map which identified the approaching and receding hemispheres, may actually have been picking up convection cells instead. The theory postulates that the limited resolution of the ALMA system was observing (but not able to differentiate) convection cells rising on one side of the star and sinking on the other.
To reach that conclusion, the team had developed a new processing technique to produce synthetic data from ALMA and in 90% of cases, the boiling motion was not clear and led to an interpretation of high rotational speeds. Further observations are now needed to explore this exciting possibility but instruments with greater resolution are required. to that end, higher resolution observations were made back in 2022 but the data is still being analysed but it will, it is hoped, start to reveal much more about the nature of Betelgeuse.
How Long Will Advanced Civilizations Try to Communicate With Us?
Technosignature research is heating up, with plenty of papers speculating on the nature, and sometimes the longevity, of signals created by technically advanced extraterrestrial civilizations. While we haven’t found any so far, that isn’t to say that we won’t, and a better understanding of what to look for would undoubtedly help. Enter a new paper by Amedeo Balbi and Claudio Grimaldi, two professors at the Universita di Roma Tor Vergata and the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, respectively. They have taken a statistical model to the problem of understanding how old a technosignature might be before we are likely to find it – and their answer is, surprisingly young.
We’ve reported before on how another recent paper thought that any civilization that created a technosignature that we can see is likely to be much older than ours. Simply put, technosignatures can last a long, long time. Over those long periods, the technosignatures can travel to places that are farther away. Given the extreme longevity of some of these civilizations, it turns out we are more likely to come across a technosignature that has been around for a very long time rather than one just created recently.
However, one big assumption in the previous paper is that the technosignature would last for extremely long periods. That assumption might not always hold, as many technosignatures have to be actively supported, such as radio signals or artificial lights on a planet. Given the active support these require, it’s likely they wouldn’t be supported anywhere near as long as implied by the previous paper.
Fraser discusses the idea of technosignatures.
Drs. Balbi and Grimaldi instead use a statistical technique to more accurately reflect what they think the actual situation in the universe would be – civilizations actively support their technosignatures for some time but let them die off once they are no longer beneficial to the civilization itself – essentially eliminating our chance to find them. From a statistical point of view, this clusters the vast majority of observable technosignatures to the far left of the x-axis, where that axis is defined as the longevity of a civilization.
We could see some obvious technosignature that have been around for billions of years and don’t require any active support, such as the thermoradiation of a Dyson sphere. But it’s much more likely that, if we do see one, it is actively being supported by an active civilization.
In the paper, the researchers perform a more rigorous statistical analysis, including invoking an idea known as Lindy’s Law. That law is somewhat counterintuitive, as it states that the life expectancy of a technology is roughly proportional to its age. In other words, as a technology ages, its life expectancy increases. However, it has been proven in multiple scenarios and has various causes.
Dr. David Kipping, the author of a previous paper discussing how long technosignatures might last, discusses the research he did on his channel. Credit – Cool Worlds YouTube Channel
The impact it has on this particular analysis is clear – the probability distribution of the length of a technically advanced civilization’s existence should be skewed per Lindy’s Law to show that short-lived technosignatures are much more common than long-lived ones.
At the moment, this is all theoretical, and it would be interesting to see what Dr. Kipping, the author of the original paper arguing for longer-lived societies, has to say about this alternative view of the statistical treatment. Maybe it will be featured on an episode of his Cool Worlds channel soon. Until then, the hard work of SETI data collection will continue apace, and the theoreticians will continue fine-tuning their statistical models, hoping to one day catch a glimpse of something out there.
Thirty four years ago, thousands of Belgian citizens reported mysterious platforms flying silently over rooftops. The Royal Belgian Air Force got involved and cooperated fully with civilian investigators. To this day, however, the origins of these craft remain unknown.
It’s hard to convey the excitement caused by the Belgian UFO wave if you were not following UFO news back in 1989 and the early 1990s. There was no shortage of UFO reports back then, and interest in the phenomenon was at a high. The sightings and photos from Gulf Breeze, Florida, dominated the American scene, wild UFO reports and stories coming out of the old Soviet Union received huge international media attention, and the Mexican video wave took off in 1991. Yet the Belgian wave seemed to top all of these stories for awhile. The reports out of this small country, headquarters of both the European Commission and NATO, received unprecedented coverage, making even the front page of the Wall Street Journal on October 10, 1990, with a story entitled, “Belgium Scientists Seriously Pursue A Triangular UFO.”
The classic triangular-shaped UFO described by hundreds of eyewitnesses during the Belgium wave: sketch by witness used to create reconstruction of the object seen at the top of story.
Credit: SOBEPS
There were many reasons for the interest generated by the Belgian wave. One was the quality of the reports themselves, the bulk of which were registered in the French-speaking region of Wallonia. There were no landings or humanoid sightings but lots of detailed multiple-witness sightings of flying platforms moving slowly and silently above rooftops. Shapes varied, but the predominant form was triangular or delta-shaped crafts. Some of the descriptions were so precise that traditional explanations of misidentified natural phenomena or conventional aircraft were ruled out. Instead, stealth fighters and other U.S. secret military aircraft became the favorite explanations suggested by skeptics, but these were quickly ruled out by the Royal Belgian Air Force (RBAF). Another reason for the wave’s importance was that it was carefully investigated and documented by a local UFO organization called SOBEPS (Belgian society for the study of space phenomena).
SOBEPS was formed in 1971 by Lucien Clerebaut, Michel Bougard, and others, and built a small but highly dedicated cadre of field investigators. By the end of the wave in 1993, SOBEPS had collected over two thousand eyewitness reports comprising twenty thousand pages, four hundred hours of audio tapes, and six hundred full inquiries. Five hundred and forty cases remained unexplained. SOBEPS also had the assistance of top-notch scientists, including Léon Brenig, a nonlinear dynamics theorist at the Free University in Brussels, and Professor Auguste Meessen, a physicist from Catholic University at Louvain. Regarding his work with SOBEPS, Dr. Brenig has said, “here is an opportunity where we can apply the scientific method.” Brenig himself became a witness of the so-called Belgian triangle while driving in the Ardennes on March 18, 1990. The whole dossier was eventually published by SOPEPS in two massive volumes, five hundred pages each, entitled Vague d’OVNI sur la Belgique (UFO Wave ver Belgium), published in 1991 and 1994 respectively. Due to financial difficulties, SOBEPS dissolved on December 31, 2007, but some of its members formed a new, smaller organization called COBEPS (Belgian committee for the study of space phenomena) to preserve the archives and work done for thirty-six years.
The two volumes published by SOBEPS entitled, “UFO Wave Over Belgium.”
Credit: SOBEPS
A final and key element in the credibility of the Belgian UFO wave was the participation and validation by the RBAF, which showed an unusual degree of openness. As the Belgian wave gained steam, the Belgian Ministry of Defence was deluged with queries from the public and the media. The task fell upon the chief of operations of the air force, Col. Wilfried De Brouwer, who was later promoted to major general and deputy chief of the RBAF. Now retired from the service, Gen. De Brouwer has continued to speak about the wave. He was one of the many international officials who spoke at the famous event at the National Press Club (NPC) in Washington, DC, in November 2007, organized by filmmaker James Fox and journalist Leslie Kean. “The Belgian UFO wave was exceptional and the air force could not identify the nature, origin and intentions of the reported phenomena,” said De Brouwer at the NPC. He also gave a detailed presentation on the wave at the MUFON International UFO Symposium in San Jose, California, in July 2008, and was one of five generals to write an essay in Leslie Kean’s new book, UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On the Record.
Although the RBAF scrambled jets on three occasions during the wave, Gen. De Brouwer has explained on various occasions that they didn’t have the manpower or resources to mount a full-fledged investigation of their own, so instead they took the unusual route of cooperating fully with SOBEPS. The radar data was turned to Prof. Meessen for analysis, and Gen. De Brouwer agreed to write the postface for SOBEPS’s first volume when he was still in the service. “I must acknowledge that I somewhat hesitated when SOBEPS asked me to contribute my share to this book,” he wrote. “Indeed, I am not a UFO specialist and, moreover, it is quite delicate for somebody who occupies an official function to put on paper his personal ideas on such a disputed issue. However, I estimate that I would not have been honest towards the SOBEPS if I had refused. The air force always played a fair game on this subject and I regard this postface as a complementary element to the exceptional file written by the people of SOBEPS.”
THE EUPEN INCIDENT
Although some sightings were reported in October 1989, the first important incident of the Belgian wave took place a month later on November 29 around the small town of Eupen, which is in a region of Belgium near the German border. This initial case put the so-called “Belgian triangle” on the map and led to the start of the RBAF’s involvement. There were both daytime and nighttime sightings, although the latter were lengthier and more detailed. Gen. De Brouwer explained in his essay for Leslie Kean’s book, “a total of seventy reported sightings made on November 29 were fully investigated and none of these sightings could be explained by conventional technology. The team of investigators and I estimate that approximately fifteen hundred people must have seen the phenomenon at more than seventy different locations from different angles during this afternoon and evening.” There were a total of thirteen gendarmes (policemen) who saw the UFO from eight different locations around Eupen. Prof. Meessen summarized the case in SOBEPS’s book:
On November 29, 1989, a large craft with triangular shape flew over the town of Eupen. The gendarmes von Montigny and Nicol found it near the road linking Aix-la-Chapelle and Eupen. It was stationary in the air, above a field which it illuminated with three powerful beams. The beams emanated from large circular surfaces near the triangle’s corners. In the center of the dark and flat understructure there was some kind of “red gyrating beacon.” The object did not make any noise. When it began to move, the gendarmes headed towards a small road in the area over which they expected the object to fly. Instead, it made a half-turn and continued slowly in the direction of Eupen, following the road at low altitude. It was seen by different witnesses as it flew above houses and near City Hall.
In his 2008 MUFON lecture, Gen. De Brouwer provided additional details on this sighting: “The UAP [Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon] emitted repeatedly and simultaneously two red light beams with a red light ball at the spearhead of the beam. Subsequently, the red balls returned to the craft.” There was also apparently a second triangular craft, which made “a forward tilting maneuver, exposing the upper side of the fuselage,” continued De Brouwer. “They [gendarmes] saw a dome with rectangular windows, lighted up at the inside. It then disappeared to the North.” Two more gendarmes saw one of the craft from a monastery nearby; “one is currently the head of the police in that area, he was scared like hell,” added De Brouwer.
Statistical chart of Belgian sightings between October 1989 and September 1990, showing peaks in the November-December period and a second one in April.
Credit: SOBEPS
The Eupen incident was followed by many other UFO sightings, including several reported on December 11, 1989. One of the witnesses that evening was a personal acquaintance of Gen. De Brouwer, Col. André Amond, a civil engineer in the Belgian Army. Col. Armond worked next door to Gen. De Brouwer and wrote a detailed report for the Ministry of Defence. Col. Armond was driving with his wife around 6:45 p.m., when they noticed a strange object with flashing red lights. They stopped the car and got out to see it better. “Suddenly, they saw a giant spotlight, about twice the size of the full moon, which approached them to an estimated distance of 100 meters,” wrote De Brouwer, adding that “the colonel’s wife was frightened and asked to leave.” In his report to the Ministry, Armond “ascertained that this craft was not a hologram, helicopter, military aircraft, balloon, motorized Ultra Light, or any other known aerial vehicle.”
Various shapes were reported throughout the wave, including round, rectangular, and cigar-shaped, but the majority were triangular objects. Gen. De Brouwer notes that the differences may also be due to the eyewitnesses’ viewing angles. Researcher Marc Valckenaers listed some of the characteristics of the UFOs in SOBEPS’s second volume about the wave, including: irregular displacement (zig-zag, instantaneous change of trajectory, etc.), displacement following the contours of the terrain; varying speeds of displacement (including very slow motion), stationary flight (hovering), overflight of urban and industrial centers, and sound effects (faint humming to total silence).
Reconstruction of the incredible rectangular flying platform seen by two factory workers on April 22, 1990, described as “an aircraft carrier turned upside down.”
Credit: SOBEPS
One of the strangest reports came from two factory workers from the town of Basècles, southwest of Brussels, who saw a huge trapezoid flying platform (330 x 200 feet) just before midnight on April 22, 1990. The object moved slowly and silently, covering the entire factory courtyard. In the SOBEPS report, the factory workers described the UFO as “an aircraft carrier turned upside down.” Despite the science-fiction quality of this sighting, an almost identical report was filed nearly a year later, on March 15, 1991, by an electronic engineer in Auderghem, near Brussels, who woke up in the middle of the night when he “heard a barely audible, high-frequency whistling tone. He looked out the window and saw a large rectangular craft at very low altitude with irregular structures on the bottom,” wrote Gen. De Brouwer.
One characteristic of the Belgian wave was how close the objects were flying above the rooftops, as shown with this flying rectangular platform.
Credit: SOBEPS
Another view of the rectangular flying platform above the rooftop and sketch showing where the witness saw it.
Credit: SOBEPS
THE F-16 SCRAMBLE EPISODE
If the Eupen multiple-witness sightings of November 1989 triggered the Belgian wave, the jet fighter scramble incident during the night of March 30, 1990 marked the peak of public interest and global media coverage. The Belgian Air Force had scrambled jets on two prior occasions without positive results. The December 5, 1989 scramble was unsuccessful; when the jet reached the sky, the UFO was gone. Additionally, the December 16, 1989 case turned out to be a false alarm; the authorities quickly determined that it was a laser projection reflected by a cloud layer. Following these two fiascos, the RBAF implemented a new policy that jets would be scrambled only when a sighting was detected on radar and was visually confirmed on the ground by the police.
The SOBEPS team visiting the Royal Belgian Air Force radar facility at Glons: in the center group, left, the Society’s chairman Lucien Clerebaut and right, physicist Prof. Auguste Meessen, next to military officer.
Credit: SOBEPS
As put in a preliminary report prepared by Major P. Lambrechts of the RBAF, entitled “Report Concerning the Observation of UFOs During the Night of March 30 to 31, 1990,” the incident began at 10:50 p.m. on March 30 when the gendarmerie telephoned the radar “master controller at Glons” to report “three unusual lights forming an equilateral triangle.” More gendarmes confirmed the lights. When the NATO facility at Semmerzake detected an unknown target at 11:49 p.m., a decision to scramble two F-16 fighters was made. The jets took off at 12:05 a.m. from Beauvechain, the nearest air base, and flew for just over an hour. According to Major Lambrechts’s report:
The aircraft had brief radar contacts on several occasions, [but the pilots]…at no time established visual contact with the UFOs…each time the pilots were able to secure a lock on one of the targets for a few seconds, there resulted a drastic change in the behavior of the detected targets…[During the first lock-on at 12:13 a.m.] their speed changed in a minimum of time from 150 to 970 knots [170 to 1,100 mph] and from 9,000 to 5,000 feet, returning then to 11,000 feet in order to change again to close to ground level.
When Col. De Brouwer showed the computerized radar images of the UFO tracked by the F-16 onboard radar system in a heavily attended press conference at the Ministry of Defence on July 11, 1990, the international media went into a frenzy. Transcripts of the radio communications between ace fighter pilots, Capt. Yves Meelbergs, Lt. Rudy Verrijt, and the Glons Control Reporting Center near Liege, were also released and provide some dramatic moments. The transcripts paint a picture of the jets chasing ghost radar echoes that appear and disappear and then reappear again, but at no time are the pilots able to establish visual contact with the supposed objects. Belgium’s Electronic War Center (EWC) eventually undertook a detailed technical analysis of the F-16 computerized radar tapes, completed by Col. Salmon and physicist M. Gilmard in 1992, and later reviewed by Prof. Meessen.
An F-16 jet fighter of the Royal Belgian Air Force like the ones scrambled on the night of March 30-31, 1990.
Credit: Bernard Thouanel
Although some aspects of this case still remain unexplained, Meessen and SOBEPS accepted the Gilmard-Salmon hypothesis that most of the radar contacts were really echoes caused by a rare meteorological phenomenon. This became evident in four lock-ons, explained Meessen, “where the object descended to the ground with calculations showing negative altitude…. It was evidently impossible that an object could penetrate the ground, but it was possible that the ground could act as a mirror.” Meessen explained how the high velocities measured by the Doppler radar of the F-16 fighters might result from interference effects. He pointed out, however, that there was another radar trace for which there is no explanation to date. As for the visual sightings of this event by the gendarmes and others, Meessen suggested that they could possibly have been caused by stars seen under conditions of “exceptional atmospheric refraction.”
One frame from the F-16 onboard radar system showing the UFO lock-on during the March 1990 scramble episode, shown by the RBAF at a famous press conference in July 1990.
Credit: RBAF/ Bernard Thouanel
In a 1995 telephone interview, Gen. De Brouwer summarized his reflections on this complex case: “We always look for possibilities which can cause errors in the radar systems. We can not exclude that there was electromagnetic interference, but of course we can not exclude the possibility that there were objects in the air. On at least one occasion there was a correlation between the radar contacts of one ground radar and one F-16 fighter. This weakens the theory that all radar contacts were caused by electromagnetic interference. If we add all the possibilities, the question is still open, so there is no final answer.” De Brouwer took a more detached view of the F-16 scramble episode, however, in his 2008 MUFON lecture and his 2010 essay included in Kean’s book: “The conclusion of the Air Force, therefore, was that the evidence was insufficient to prove that there were real crafts in the air on that occasion.”
THE PETIT-RECHAIN PHOTO
The famous color slide of the Belgian triangle photographed in Petit-Rechain in early April 1990.
Seldom has the old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words become more true than in the case of the extraordinary photograph of a flying triangle taken in the small town of Petit-Rechain in April 1990. This color slide became the emblematic symbol of the Belgian UFO wave. It has been published and broadcast in television programs all over the world, and it appears on the cover of the two SOBEPS volumes on the Belgian wave. It’s also one of the most analyzed UFO photos in the history of ufology. During my trip to Brussels in 1995, I had the opportunity to talk at length with Patrick Ferryn, the investigator who researched the case initially and wrote the chapter about it in the SOBEPS book. Ferryn gave me copies of the photo and samples of computer enhancements made by Marc Acheroy, professor of electricity at the Royal Military School, where the image was analyzed by the Signal Treatment Center. The details of how the photo was taken are fairly simple and straightforward.
The photographer, P.M. (who wants privacy, but has fully cooperated with SOBEPS), was a twenty-year-old factory worker, who lived in the small community of Petit-Rechain, near Verviers. He was at home with his girlfriend on the night of either April 4 or 7, 1990 (he can’t pin down the exact date), when his girlfriend first noticed the object between 11:00 and 11:30 p.m. as she took the dog to the courtyard. According to P.M.’s statement to Ferryn, he was alerted by his girlfriend, went outside, and “saw the object practically stationary towards the southwest, at about a forty-five-degree elevation. It consisted of three white round lights on a barely perceptible triangular surface. In the center there was a blinking spot of the same color, or maybe a bit more reddish than the other lights.” P.M. grabbed his camera, a Praktica model BX20 with a 55-200 mm zoom and a “Cokin” 1A 52 mm skylight filter. He shot the last two frames of a roll of 36-200 ASA Kodak color slide film. The UFO then moved slowly towards Petit-Rechain, until it was hidden by the roofs in the village. The entire episode took about five minutes.
The roll of film was sent by mail to a development house offering a special discount, and when P.M. received the slides, he noticed only frame #35 had captured the UFO; frame #36 was entirely black. Ferryn estimated that “the photo was probably taken with a focal distance between 55 and 200 mm, and with exposition time ranging from 1 to 2 seconds.” P.M. showed the photo to his factory coworkers (all of whom were later interviewed by Ferryn), but otherwise didn’t do anything to analyze or commercialize the picture. One of his coworkers knew a local photo-journalist from Verviers, Guy Mossay, who immediately saw the image’s potential value. P.M. sold the photo rights to Mossay for a small fee. Mossay then proceeded to copyright it with SOFAM (Belgium’s multimedia society for visual arts authors).
Skeptics have naturally pointed to the possibility of a hoax with profit motive. However, if that is the case, why did P.M. sell the rights to Mossay for a minor fee? Moreover, hoaxers never supply original slides or negatives for scientific analysis, as was done by P.M. Having checked his background, interviewed acquaintances, and so on, Ferryn noted that “the account of the main witnesses was coherent.” Gen. De Brouwer spent quite a bit of time explaining the details of this case during his MUFON lecture, saying of the witness that, “this guy is genuine, he is a guy who would not fake at all, I can assure you of that.” More importantly, the Petit-Rechain photo has been subjected to more scientific analysis than practically any other UFO photo in history.
When the Petit-Rechain photo is overexposed, the triangular outline of the object appears clearly.
The list of experts and institutions that have analyzed this photo include Prof. Acheroy of Belgium’s Royal Military Academy; Prof. François Louange, an expert in photo interpretation of satellite images for the French space agency, CNES; Dr. Richard Haines, a retired senior NASA scientist and respected UFO researcher; Belgium’s Royal Institute of Artistic Patrimony; and André Marion, a nuclear physicist with France’s National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), who conducted an analysis in 2002 with improved technology. The technical details of these analyses are too numerous for this article, but suffice it to say that evidence of photographic trickery has never been found. Furthermore, of several efforts to duplicate the photo using a dark cardboard triangular model with holes and light bulbs, only one made by members of the Astrophysics Institute at Liege University somewhat resembled the Petit-Rechain photo. But the luminosity of the spots in the replica was uniform, while those in the original exhibited different shapes and spectral effects. The most recent CNRS study by Dr. Marion confirmed the previous analysis and found, as put by Gen. De Brouwer, a “halo around the craft with patterned structure,” which could have been caused by the object’s “propulsion system” of “magnetoplasma dynamic.” Marion also stated that “it would be extremely difficult to fake such a photograph.”
In the end, it’s almost impossible to guarantee the authenticity of a UFO image. There will always be a difference of opinions, but the verdict in the Petit-Rechain case appears highly favorable. Triangular UFOs were seen throughout Belgium during the early 1990s. Dozens of fuzzy videos and grainy photos were taken, but they were generally not impressive. Petit-Rechain was the great exception.
Note: Since the writing of this article, the photo turned out to be an admitted hoax.
NO EVIDENCE OF SECRET AIRCRAFT
Due to the high credibility of most witnesses in the Belgian wave and their descriptions of a silent, triangular craft being so precise, trying to explain the wave in terms of hoaxes, misidentified natural phenomena, or conventional aircraft seemed fruitless. Therefore, a number of skeptics and aviation journalists focused on trying to prove the hypothesis of secret U.S. aircraft flying over Belgium. A series of candidates were proposed, from the Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) to secret airships, from the F-117A stealth fighter to some other revolutionary U.S. secret military aircraft such as the alleged TR-3A Black Manta. First, you have to ponder why the U.S. would conduct tests of their most-secret aircraft in such a highly populated area like Wallonia, which is not only a U.S. ally, but also headquarters of the NATO alliance. Gen. De Brouwer put it bluntly in a 1991 interview with the French magazine, OVNI Présence: “Why would the Americans conduct tests here in Europe, without permission and with the risk of having an accident that could create a diplomatic incident on a global scale? This doesn’t involve only Belgium, but NATO, where its concept itself could be put in question. I don’t believe that the Americans could take such a risk, it’s evident.”
Major General (Ret.) Wilfried De Brouwer, who was the Royal Belgian Air Force point man for the UFO wave, during his trip to Washington, DC to participate at the National Press Club event in 2007.
Credit: Bernard Thouanel
Guy Coeme and Leo Delcroix, the two Belgian Ministers of Defence during the wave, denied emphatically the theory that the UFOs were actually U.S. aircraft and based their denial on official inquiries with the U.S. Embassy in Brussels. In a 1993 letter to French researcher Renaud Marhic, Minister Delcroix wrote: “Unfortunately, no explanation has been found to date. The nature and origin of the phenomenon remain unknown. One theory can, however, be definitely dismissed since the Belgian Armed Forces have been positively assured by American authorities that there has never been any sort of American aerial test flight.” A declassified 1990 document from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) entitled, “Belgium and the UFO Issue,” supports Delcroix’s position. After describing the basic events of the wave that had transpired up to that point, the unnamed U.S. official wrote at the very end of this memo: “The [U.S. Air Force (USAF)] did confirm to the [Belgian Air Force] and Belgian [Ministry of Defence] that no USAF stealth aircraft were operating in the Ardennes area during the periods in question. This was released to the Belgian press and received wide dissemination.”
Thirty years have now passed since the Belgian UFO wave, and no new significant evidence has been produced to prove that the sightings were caused by secret military aircraft. The reported cases remain unexplained. It seems certain that something massive and technologically advanced flew over Belgian territory during the 1989-93 period. Why and who was behind it are questions that remain to be answered. A suitable conclusion, for now, is to repeat what Gen. De Brouwer wrote at the end of his famous postface to the SOBEPS’s first volume: “The day will come undoubtedly when the phenomenon will be observed with technological means of detection and collection that won’t leave a single doubt about its origin. This should lift a part of the veil that has covered the mystery for a long time. A mystery that continues thus present. But it exists, it is real, and that in itself is an important conclusion.”
The author (left) with SOBEPS’ chairman Lucien Clerebaut at the Society’s headquarters in Brussels in 1995. The map in the background shows the locations of sightings in Belgium.
Credit: Antonio Huneeus
A version of this article originally appeared in Issue #5 (December/January 2011) of Open Minds UFO Magazine. Back issues can be found here.
Some view Carl Jung as a UFO debunker, others as a UFO believer, but the truth is he was somewhere in the middle. Either way, it is certain that Jung was an avid UFO researcher and fascinated with the topic. He wrote a book about the psychological symbolism and the role the UFO mythos plays in the unconscious mind.Moreover, on several occasions Jung complained that his studies would have been much easier if the UFO phenomenon was not real.
Jung the Psychologist
Jung was born in Switzerland in 1875. His father was a pastor in the Swiss Reformed Protestant Church, and his mother was from a wealthy Swiss family. He was the Jungs’ fourth child, but was the only child who survived into his childhood. As such, he grew up as an only child. Later, he wrote that he remembered enjoying his solitude.
His first experience with neurosis was at the age of twelve when a fellow student shoved him, causing him to fall and hit his head on the ground very hard. He remembered associating this experience with schoolwork, and whenever he had to go to school or do schoolwork he would faint. Overhearing his parents’ concern that this condition would cause him to be unable to support himself as an adult, Jung fought to overcome the problem and eventually returned to academics.
Although Jung had a profound interest in spirituality, his experiences triggered an interest in psychology and he decided to pursue a career in medicine. It wasn’t long before he realized that studies in psychology would allow him to combine his interests in medicine and spirituality, and in 1902, he completed his doctoral dissertation, which was titled “On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena.” He graduated with a medical degree from the University of Basel.
After graduating, Jung went to work with psychiatric patients at the University of Zurich asylum. He wrote a paper on word association that he sent to Sigmund Freud. Freud was impressed with Jung’s work, and they quickly became very close. Freud considered Jung his successor. However, after several years, Jung began to develop his own ideas beyond the work of Freud, and due to their disagreements, the relationship turned adversarial.
Carl Jung (bottom right), Sigmund Freud (bottom left), and others at a 1909 celebration of the founding of Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts.
Credit: Library of Congress
Freud’s work with the ego and unconscious served as a foundation for Jung’s work. They both felt that disconnects between the conscious and unconscious minds caused neurosis in people. They also both relied on dream interpretation to explore a person’s unconscious mind as a method for subsequently resolving neurosis. In fact, one story holds that Jung and Freud interpreted each other’s dreams and both completely disagreed with the other’s analysis, thus hastening the dissolution of their friendship.
A major area of disagreement between the two was that Jung did not believe a person’s unconscious was driven solely by sexual desires, as Freud did. Jung believed other strong emotions such as fear and aspiration were just as influential. He also conceived of a deeper level of the unconscious called the collective unconscious, which he believed is a part of our unconscious mind that holds ideas and concepts shared by all humankind. He believed these base ideas are then shaped by our cultural perceptions and personal experience. For example, we all have ideas around the notions of mothers, fathers, wise elders, etc. Jung called these shared notions archetypes. Jung felt that these archetypes not only would manifest in dreams, but could be seen in people’s creative works and behavior, including art, religion, and mythology.
Jung’s contributions to psychology are numerous. Even today his ideas of extraversion and introversion are a mainstay in personality psychology. He also came up with the idea of psychological complexes and synchronicities. All of these ideas and terms are commonly used in everyday conversation today, and all were made popular by Jung.
Jung and Alchemy
It is the idea of the archetype that brought Jung to have a particular interest in UFOs. When Jung interpreted psychological meaning he would search for archetypal figures. As mentioned earlier, such figures could be a mother or father.But, in a mythological story, the archetype may be the hero, a dragon, or even a planetary entity such as the sun. However, Jung also had an interested in alchemy.
Alchemy is typically connected to legends of ancient mystics attempting to unravel the secret of turning lead into gold. The work of alchemists is credited with the development of modern chemistry. However, another side of alchemy is spiritual in nature, relating to personal transformation. Jung had a passion for alchemy in this sense, and felt that the metal lead was a metaphor for an impure soul, whereas gold was a metaphor for a perfected soul. Jung’s interest in alchemy was thus as a method of purifying the soul.
The Tabula Smaradina (Emerald Tablet), a print by Mathias Merian from the 1600s displaying alchemical symbols and imagery.
Credit: Mathias Merian
Jung wrote a couple of books focused on interpreting alchemical symbolism and processes as different stages of personal growth that mirrored his ideas. He felt these symbols were archetypes that were unconsciously manifesting in the work of alchemists. Although he acknowledged the physical goals of alchemy (an attempt to transmute lead into gold), Jung did not give it much attention in his writing and focused on the non-physical aspects that related to his psychological theories. This is very similar to the way he approached the topic of UFOs.
Jung and UFOs
In 1951, Jung wrote to a friend in the United States: “I am puzzled to death about the phenomena, because I haven’t been able yet to make out with sufficient certainty whether the whole thing is a rumour with concomitant singular and mass hallucination, or a downright fact.”
Book cover to Jung’s Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies.
(Credit: Princeton University Press.)
Although Jung showed an interest in the mystery of the physical reality of the UFO phenomenon, professionally he stated, “As a psychologist, I am not qualified to contribute anything useful to the question of the physical reality of Ufos.” However, Jung could contribute by analyzing the unmistakable psychological side to the UFO phenomenon. In 1958, several of Jung’s papers regarding the psychology of UFOs were published in a book. It was originally published in German, but in 1959 it was translated to English under the title, Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies.
In the book, Jung argued that although there may be a physical reality to UFOs, there is certainly a portion of the phenomenon that is fantasy. He examined the difficulty many have in accepting fantastical stories of UFOs, even when they come from pilots, and points out, “What is worse, most of the stories come from America, the land of superlatives and of science fiction.”
For the sake of argument, and to examine the psychological aspects of the phenomenon, Jung presumed that UFOs are fantasy. This is an important aspect that many critics overlook when they characterize Jung as dismissive of the phenomenon altogether. UFO researchers also tend not to appreciate the portions of Jung’s book in which he examined the UFO phenomenon in regards to archetypal imagery and alchemic symbolism. Jung himself assures his readers that although his work may appear to be “unbridled fantasy” to those unfamiliar with psychology, it is actually based on “thorough research into the history of symbols.”
In his book, Jung observed that most UFO sightings describe the objects as disc shaped, which is a symbol that is often seen in alchemy and existed in the mythology of other cultures. For example, the Hindu and Buddhist symbol of the mandala is a circular disc-shaped symbol. Jung believed that the mandala is a protective sphere, which is elicited in the unconscious in times of emotional tension. Jung noted that, around the time of many of the UFO sightings, the world was under a collective stress due to “Russian policies and their still unpredictable consequences.” In short, he felt that perhaps UFOs were appearing in visions at the time because of the world’s Cold War jitters, and that the UFOs were a manifestation of a need for protection and salvation.
Jung’s book also provided detail of the analysis of particular sightings and art. One of the significant contributions to ufology made by the book is a focus on two historical broadsheets, a type of ancient newspaper, that recorded mysterious apparitions that many have speculated to be UFO related. Although Jung asserted that these reports were in the UFO literature prior to the publication of his book, Jung clearly made them popular as potential ancient UFO sightings.
The first is referred to as the Basel Broadsheet, and it dates back to 1566. It was written by Samuel Coccius and is a report of “many large black globes” that were seen flying in front of the sun “with great speed.” The Basel Broadsheet notes, “Some of them became red and fiery and afterwards faded and went out.” Jung noted the similarity of this phenomenon to modern UFO accounts.
The Basel Broadsheet from 1566 analyzed by Carl Jung in his Flying Saucer book.
The second report is called the Nuremberg Broadsheet and dates back to 1561. This report chronicles a “very frightful spectacle” that was witnessed by several people. Again, “globes” were seen near the sun, “some three in a row, now and then four in a square, also some standing alone.” There were also “two great tubes.” Jung noted that in UFO literature large tubes are considered “motherships,” and have been reported to have smaller discs that appear to fly out of them.
The Nuremberg Broadsheet from 1561 analyzed by Carl Jung in his Flying Saucer book.
In his book, Jung also examined the possibility of the physical reality of UFOs. He noted that, “unfortunately,” UFOs cannot be dismissed as purely psychological in nature. He pointed to numerous sightings, some of which have been caught in photographs and on radar. Jung even poked fun at astronomer Donald Menzel, a UFO debunker, saying that he “has not succeeded, despite all his efforts, in offering a scientific explanation of even one authentic UFO report.”
Jung was well-versed on UFO research. He wrote, “since 1947 I have collected all of the books I could get a hold of on the subject.” He was also a member of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), an early civilian UFO organization that included many credible members. In fact, in his book, Jung often referred to the work of Major Donald Keyhoe, a cofounder and director of NICAP.
Prior to releasing his book, Jung was considered by UFO researchers to be a proponent of the physical reality of UFOs. In 1955, he wrote an article on UFOs for a British journal called the Flying Saucer Review. In the article, Jung stated that he had never seen a UFO himself, but that “I can only say for certain: these things are not a mere rumour: something has been seen.”
He went on to argue that the U.S. Air Force “despite its contradictory statements,” considers the phenomenon to be real and they conduct official investigations. He warned that, by concealing information on the topic, the military is making it more likely that people will panic since the public is denied “an adequate picture of what is happening.”
Jung also stated that “the ‘disks’ (that is, the objects themselves) do not behave in accordance with physical laws, but as though without weight, and they show signs of intelligent guidance, by quasi human pilots, for their accelerations are such that no normal human could survive.”
Not much was made of Jung’s 1955 article until it was reprinted in 1958 by the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) in the organization’s bulletin in July 1958. APRO posted the story as part of an announcement that Jung had agreed to become an official consultant for the organization. The New York Herald Tribune quickly picked up on the report and printed a story with the headline, “Dr. Jung Says ‘Flying Disks’ Suggest Quasi-Human Pilots.”
APRO Bulletin from July, 1958 with reprint of Jung’s article on UFOs.
Credit: APRO
Jung was not happy with the implication that he believed UFOs represented a physical phenomenon and later wrote a letter to United Press International news agency clarifying his position. He wrote: “I expressly state that I cannot commit myself on the question to the physical reality or unreality of the UFOs since I do not possess sufficient evidence either for or against.” He then stated, “Something is seen, but it isn’t known what.” Jung later repeated this statement in his 1958 book and in several letters.
Although Jung was clearly embarrassed by the public perception that he conclusively believed flying saucers were physical in nature, he later reiterated his prior statements and earlier criticisms of the U.S. Air Force’s handling of the matter in very strong words. He wrote:
In spite of the fact that I hold my judgment concerning UFOs—temporarily let’s hope—in abeyance, I thought it worthwhile to throw a light upon the rich fantasy material which has accumulated round the peculiar observations in the skies. Any new experience has two aspects: (I) the pure fact and (2) the way one conceives of it. It is the latter I am concerned with. If it is true that the [American Air Force] or the Government withholds telltale facts, then one can only say that this is the most unpsychological and stupid policy one could invent. Nothing helps rumours and panics more than ignorance.
It is no wonder that many have been confused as to Jung’s official stance on UFOs. He seems to have believed the phenomenon and sightings to be real, but is uncertain whether UFOs are a physical reality or are limited to a psychological phenomenon. He stated that although “by all human standards it hardly seems possible to doubt this any longer,” in the decade or more he had been studying the topic, neither he nor anyone else seems to have learned much from the study of the physical aspect of UFOs. Jung said that this is precisely why he found it much more fruitful to study the psychological aspects of UFOs, an area in which he felt he had gained an abundance of knowledge.
Jung may be right. Concrete physical proof of UFOs continues to elude us to this day. Yet, Jung is another example of a luminary who garners a great amount of respect in his field of study, who also had the vision to seriously consider the UFO phenomenon. His UFO interest is a story that should not be forgotten, and his insights into the phenomenon may help guide us today, just as his insights into the human mind continue to be a part of the bedrock of modern psychological understanding.
A version of this article originally appeared in Open Minds UFO Magazine. Back issues can be found here.
China en Rusland gaan een overeenkomst ondertekenen voor de bouw van een basis op de maan. De Chinese ruimtevaartorganisatie zegt dat dit station vanaf 2035 stroom en communicatiemiddelen moet hebben, evenals voorzieningen die menselijke bewoning mogelijk moeten maken.
De Chinese ruimteambities worden verder verduidelijkt in een vrijdag gepubliceerde whitepaper. Hierin meldt het ruimteagentschap dat China doelt op “verkenning en gebruik van de kosmische ruimte voor vreedzame doeleinden”. Het land wil onder meer ruimteschroot beter in kaart brengen en het verdedigingssysteem tegen aardscheerders uitbouwen.
China en Rusland kondigden vorig jaar al gezamenlijke plannen aan voor het station. Het was toen nog niet duidelijk of het om een station om of op de maan zou gaan. De partners beloven dat wetenschappers van over de hele wereld de basis mogen gebruiken. Momenteel ontwikkelen de Verenigde Staten onder meer met Europa een eigen ruimtestation in een baan om de maan, de Lunar Gateway.
China en Rusland hebben ook afgesproken om samen te werken aan een toekomstige robotmissie naar de zuidpool van de maan, Chang'e 7. Het vertrek staat gepland voor 2024.
China hoopt voor 2030 mensen voet te laten zetten op de maan. Het kan er dan nog om gaan spannen of China dan het eerste land wordt om sinds de laatste Apollo-missie in 1972 weer mensen op het hemellichaam te zetten. De Verenigde Staten werken momenteel aan hun eigen nieuwe maanprogramma Artemis. Deze hebben een bemande maanlanding gepland staan voor 2026.
De laatste Chinese maanmissie was in 2020. De Chang'e 5 keerde in december dat jaar, na een missie van 22 dagen, terug met monsters van het maanoppervlak. Er rijdt nog altijd een Chinese rover rond op de maan.
Rusland en China overwegen samen een missie naar de maan te sturen om daar een kerncentrale te bouwen. Yuri Borisov, het hoofd van de Russische ruimtevaartorganisatie Roscosmos, deelde dit plan tijdens een jeugdevenement in Rusland. De missie zou plaatsvinden tussen 2033 en 2035.
De technologie die nodig is voor deze ambitieuze missie zou volgens Borisov bijna gereed zijn. Hij benadrukte dat zonnepanelen alleen niet voldoende zouden zijn voor een betrouwbare stroomvoorziening op de maan. Het plan omvat een samenwerking met China om een krachtbron op het maanoppervlak te plaatsen, waarbij nucleaire ruimte-energie als oplossing wordt voorgesteld.
Geen verrassing
Het nieuws komt op een moment dat Rusland en China al samenwerken aan het International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), dat in 2021 werd ondertekend. Het ILRS is een geplande maanbasis die wordt geleid door het Russische Roscosmos en de China National Space Administration (CNSA).
Ondanks recente tegenslagen van Rusland zoals de mislukte maanlanding in 2023, blijven de plannen voor de samenwerking tussen beide landen wel staande. China boekt vooruitgang met zijn Chang’e-sondes, waaronder Chang’e 5, die met succes monsters van het maanoppervlak naar de aarde heeft gebracht.
Niet nieuw
Het idee van een kerncentrale op de maan is niet nieuw. Zelfs de Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie NASA heeft eerder voorgesteld om kernreactoren te gebruiken om toekomstige maankolonies van stroom te voorzien. In 1969 gebruikten Apollo 12-astronauten al een nucleaire generator voor wetenschappelijke experimenten op de maan.
The Enigmatic Case of Llanilar: Unveiling Europe’s Roswell
The Enigmatic Case of Llanilar: Unveiling Europe’s Roswell
In the quiet countryside of Llanilar, a small village nestled in the heart of Wales, lies a tale as mysterious as it is compelling. Dubbed “Europe’s Roswell,” this incident, much like its American counterpart, has spurred debates, investigations, and a quest for truth that spans over four decades. The event in question occurred in the early days of January 1983, when something extraordinary crashed, leaving behind a trail of intrigue and unanswered questions.
The story begins with a local farmer, Erwell Evans, discovering his fields littered with strange debris and a swath of his forest inexplicably cleared. This wasn’t just any crash site; the area was strewn with metallic fragments, some as large as two meters square, alongside smaller, foil-like pieces. The nature of the debris, coupled with the absence of any conventional aircraft wreckage, quickly attracted the attention of UFO researchers and government entities alike.
At the forefront of the investigation was British UFO researcher, Mark Olly, whose work has shed light on the peculiarities of this case. Olly’s exploration into the Llanilar incident reveals parallels to the Roswell event of 1947, including mysterious materials, government involvement, and the subsequent cleanup efforts that seemed to sweep the occurrence under the rug. However, what sets Llanilar apart is the physical evidence that was left behind and later analyzed, offering a tangible link to the unknown.
Initial investigations into the debris suggested a material composition unlike anything known at the time. Early assessments hinted at a form of aluminum, but later analyses conducted in the United States and Australia revealed far more intriguing properties. One sample was identified as aluminum foam, a known material, yet another was found to be comprised of over 94% lanthanum, a rare earth metal with properties and an extraction cost that made its abundant presence at the crash site all the more baffling.
VIDEO:
George Knapp – The Untold Story of Llanilar’s UFO Crash
The implications of these findings are profound, hinting at technology that was decades ahead of its time. The possibility that this could be a craft, either terrestrial in origin but highly classified, or perhaps even extraterrestrial, cannot be dismissed. The latter hypothesis is bolstered by accounts of unidentified flying objects in the region, suggesting a history of aerial phenomena that predates the crash.
One of the most enigmatic aspects of the Llanilar incident is the response it elicited from unknown operatives, colloquially known as “Men in Black.” These individuals purportedly visited one of the key witnesses, seeking the return of the collected materials. Their appearance, shortly after a meticulous cleanup operation, adds another layer of mystery to the narrative, hinting at a concerted effort to obfuscate the truth.
Despite the passage of time, the Llanilar UFO crash remains a subject of fascination and speculation. The evidence gathered, though limited, provides a tantalizing glimpse into a moment when the ordinary brushed against the extraordinary. As with Roswell, the full story of what occurred in Llanilar may never be completely unraveled, but it stands as a testament to the enduring allure of the unexplained and the lengths to which some will go to keep it hidden.
In the realm of UFOlogy, the Llanilar incident underscores the complex interplay between observable phenomena, government secrecy, and the quest for understanding that drives both professional researchers and casual observers. It is a reminder of the vastness of our universe, the potential for undiscovered technology, and the ever-present human desire to uncover the truth behind the mysteries that surround us.
A big revelation in the 1990 Calvine UFO incident has recently happened. The most awaited UFO photo that was set to be released on January 1, 2072, was somehow found and released by UAP Media UK. This new discovery is a shock to those who always bring skepticism to the field of UFOlogy. Vinnie Adams of the UAP Media UK disclosed that his team not only found the original print of the Calvine “UFO,” taken directly from the negatives, but also the original envelope which was sent from the Scottish Daily Record to Craig Lindsay who was the MOD Press Officer that dealt with the case at the time.
Brief Information About Calvine UFO Photo
There are many videos and photographs of UFOs on the Internet, and some of them have credibility. But there is one photograph sent to the UK defense ministry, the MoD, which is considered to be the most spectacular UFO photo although somehow, it has disappeared. The photograph contains a 100-feet diamond-shaped flying saucer, hovering over a village named Calvine in the Scottish Highlands. The photo was taken in 1990.
Nick Pope worked for the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) for 21 years. From 1991 to 1994, he was the head of the MoD’s UFO project. He said that during his time in the MoD, he came across several credible UFO cases. One such case involves the photograph from the Calvine Incident.
The story of how the photograph reached the MoD’s office is phenomenal. Mr. Pope said that when he began his investigation into UFOs in 1991, it led him to a poster, hanging on the wall near his desk. The poster was an enlarged-colored photograph of the UFO from the Calvine Incident.
“The X-Files first aired in the UK in 1994 and I acquired the same nickname (Spooky) as Fox Mulder, for obvious reasons,” Nick said. “Mulder famously had his ‘I want to believe’ UFO poster on his office wall and though uncaptioned, I suppose this was my equivalent.”
Most of the UFO photos are either fake, blurry, or just a small dot in the sky, but this particular photo was clear and taken in broad daylight. According to Mr. Pope, the photograph contained an 80-foot diamond-shaped craft with a military jet in the background.
Two unnamed hikers from the Perthshire region allegedly took the photo of a large UFO while walking near the village of Calvine on August 4, 1990. “The photos were then sent to the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) who then sent them on to imagery analysts at JARIC (Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence Centre). Yet at the time, the MoD hadn’t even publicly acknowledged that there was any intelligence interest in UFOs at all,” Mr. Pope explained.
Interestingly, the photo disappeared without any trace when the UFO investigators questioned the MoD whether Americans were testing secret prototype aircraft in the area. Mr. Pope asked the US if the craft belonged to them but they refused to admit it.
According to a 30-year rule in the UK, the MoD was supposed to release the secret UFO dossier on January 1, 2021, but the UK government banned the release for another 50 years. This secret file is said to contain the infamous UFO photo from the Calvine incident. Now, it is set to be released on January 1, 2072.
Photo found after 32 years
UAP Media UK is working hard to bring a serious resource to the British media outlets on the discussion of UFOs. One of the members of this project named Vinnie Adams has been working with Dr. David Clarke and a small team of researchers on the Calvine case from 1990 in Scotland for the last 11 months. (Source)
The original Calvine photograph, showing the diamond-shaped craft and a Harrier aircraft in what appears to be close proximity. credit: VINNIE ADAMS From UAP Media UK
This led him to discover an original print of the Calvine “UFO,” taken directly from the negatives that were sent by the witnesses to the Scottish Daily Record back in 1990, just after the event occurred.
He also found the original envelope which was sent from the Scottish Daily Record to Craig Lindsay who was the MOD Press Officer that dealt with the case at the time.
Original envelope which was sent from the Scottish Daily Record to Craig Lindsay who was the MOD Press Officer that dealt with the case at the time. Credit: VINNIE ADAMS
Mr. Adams wrote: “According to the copy of the hand-written sighting report that was released by The National Archives (TNA) in October 2008, the witnesses gave an account of their sighting plus the color photographs to what was the joint RAF/Royal Navy Headquarters at Pitreavie, near Dunfermline (which closed in 1996).”
Nick Pope mentioned the details of the Scottish sighting in his 1996 book “Open Skies, Closed Minds,” which prompted a British Parliamentary Question in July 1996 from Martin Redmond, Former Member of Parliament for Doncaster, about the incident:
“To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what assessment his Department made of the photograph of an unidentified craft at Calvine on 4 August 1990; who removed it from an office in Secretariat (Air Staff) 2a; for what reasons; and if he will make a statement.”
Nicholas Soames, Minister of State for the Armed Forces, gave a written reply to the MP’s question:
“A number of negatives associated with the sighting were examined by staff responsible for air defence matters. Since it was judged they contained nothing of defence significance the negatives were not retained and we have no record of any photographs being taken from them.” (Hansard HC Deb., 24 July 1996, vol.282, col 39248W)
Journalist Dr David Clarke, who is also a member of UAP Media UK, was put in touch with retired RAF press officer Craig Lindsay. Craig was involved in the Calvine case back in 1990 as the go-between for the Daily Record and the MOD.
Retired RAF Press Officer Craig Lindsay and Dr. David Clarke. Credit: VINNIE ADAMS
During his involvement in the case, Craig acquired an original print of the elusive photograph. Along with the photo, Craig also kept the original envelope containing the photograph sent by the Daily Record to the MOD.
In May 2022, David interviewed Craig in Scotland and was shown the original print. In June, Craig agreed to donate the photograph to the Sheffield Hallam University Archives, handing it to Dr. Dravid Clarke and Vinnie Adams. The image now resides in its new home at the Sheffield Hallam University folklore archives.
Authenticity of Calvine UFO Photo
Andrew Robinson, a senior lecturer in Photography at Sheffield Hallam University claims the authenticity of the 1990 Scottish highlands UFO photo. In his detailed analysis, he found the image showing no evidence of negative or print-based manipulation, and all visible signs suggest this is a genuine photograph of the scene before the camera. (Source)
Robinson concluded in his study:
The photograph is a color print from XP-1 or XP-2 chromogenic Black and White C41 film printed on a standard;
It is not possible to identify the object in the center of the frame. However, the evidence present suggests that this object was in front of the camera in the position shown when the photograph was captured;
Thus it follows that this is either a genuine unidentified flying object in the sky OR that any construction or manipulation used to create this effect occurred in front of the camera and not in the capturing of the scene on film nor in the subsequent processing and printing of the image;
The results of this analysis are consistent with, and support the claimed heritage of the print.
Check the video below by Nick Pope, speaking about how insiders view the Calvine UFO incident
A sample return mission carried out by China’s Chang’e-5 that collected and returned 1.73 kilograms of lunar regolith to Earth and discovered an all-new mineral in the process is helping expand our knowledge of the Moon and its mysteries.
The first sample return mission to have occurred since the Soviet era Luna 24 mission in 1976, Chang’e-5 collected regolith samples from the massive Oceanus Procellarum, where it located an unusual combination of silica minerals, as well as a newly recognized mineral dubbed Changesite-(Y).
During recent studies undertaken by researchers with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the samples retrieved by Chang’e-5 were compared alongside both lunar and Martian regolith samples, allowing scientists an unprecedented opportunity to search for answers to their unique compositions.
Oceanus Procellarum, located near the Chang’e-5 landing site (Credit: NASA).
The recent analysis also revealed an intriguing connection to a location on the Moon associated with sightings of anomalous activity that has long intrigued astronomers.
Extensive markings cover the surface of the Moon, many of which are visible on its Earth-facing side. While often viewed as resembling a man’s face in the West, according to Chinese traditions these same darkened regions are likened to the Yutu the rabbit, companion of the Moon goddess Chang’e after whom the country’s lunar lander was named.
The formation of these craters and other features that score the lunar landscape are the result of objects crashing into its surface over extensive periods. However, craters aren’t all that were left behind during these ongoing collisions.
During the extreme conditions that occur when asteroids and comets impact the lunar surface, alterations to the mineral composition and structure of the Moon also occur. Specifically, temperature and pressure conditions lead to changes that have certain characteristics that include the formation of silica variants known as polymorphs, offering researchers a valuable opportunity to analyze the resulting minerals and reveal clues about their past.
Wei Du, one of the authors of a new paper describing the Chinese team’s findings, says that although craters covering the Moon number in the tens of thousands, the presence of minerals that are formed as the result of intense pressure still isn’t very common.
A new impact feature on the lunar surface with freshly exposed regolith (Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University).
“One of the possible explanations for this is that most high-pressure minerals are unstable at high temperatures,” Du said in a statement, meaning that the ones that are likely to have been created during impact events may have undergone a retrograde process, meaning that the identifying characteristics of high-pressure conditions may not be readily apparent.
Fortunately, one silica fragment obtained in the CE-5 sample was found to possess both stishovite and seifertite, silica polymorphs that are unique because they should only be able to coexist under just such high-pressure conditions.
In their recent research, Du and his colleagues determined that seifertite becomes present in a phase that occurs between the formation of stishovite and another silica polymorph called α-cristobalite, which was also located in samples collected by Change’e-5.
According to Du, this means that seiftertite is likely to have formed from α-cristobalite as a result of compression that occurred following an impact event, whereas other portions of the sample would have become stishovite as a result of temperature increases.
Along with calculations that revealed the likely duration of the impact that formed the minerals and the peak pressure conditions that resulted, Du and his colleagues compared their data to shock wave models that allowed them to create estimates of the crater size.
An intriguing discovery made by the team involves the presence of materials believed to have resulted from ejecta from distant impact sites that were transferred to the site where Chang’e-5 collected its samples. Based on remote observations four craters were identified as sources of this ejecta, one of which had been the Aristarchus crater, which had been the likely source of the silica sample containing seifertite and stishovite.
Aristarchus crater (left) and the nearby Herodotus crater (right), located near the southernmost edge of the Cobra head, a feature produced by an ancient volcanic vent
(Credit: NASA/GSFC/ Arizona State University)
Aristarchus crater is unique for reasons other than being the youngest of the four craters believed to have contributed ejecta to the samples Chang’e-5 collected. For nearly two centuries, astronomers have observed anomalous flashes of light that appear to originate from within the center of the Aristarchus crater.
One early account of the phenomenon appeared in an 1836 letter from Captain W. Smyth in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, where he described his observation of “a light, resembling that of a star of the 9th or 10th magnitude”. Smyth reported that the unusual light source appeared “brilliant, and visible for several seconds together” and alluded to earlier observations of the same phenomenon “mentioned by Cassini, Sir W. Herschel, and Captain Kater,” among others.
Today, the Aristarchus “anomaly” is believed to result from the high reflectivity, or albedo, of lunar regolith located near the center of the crater, which could also be related to the presence of silicates found in the regolith there, and now also in the Change’e-5 samples.
Altogether, Du and his colleagues say the sample return mission has offered unprecedented insights into how the hidden history of celestial bodies like our Moon can be revealed through modern analysis techniques.
Duand his colleagues recently published their findings in Matter and Radiation at Extremes.
An unidentified object that was traveling under the ocean at a speed greater than the speed of sound came dangerously close to a nuclear submarine. This claim was made by a researcher who was working on a classified operation aboard the USS Hampton when he made the statement. For many years, Bob McGwier worked in clandestine intelligence. He disclosed two incidents aboutunderwater UFOs or USOs, that he saw while performing covert operations. This claim was made several months after a video had been made public by the United States military, in which it appeared to show an unidentified flying object moving from the sky into the water in the year 2019.
UFO researcher and former fighter pilot Chris Lehto heard the story from Bob McGwire, who said that the submarine passed at incredible speed while “going deep and fast” in the late 1990s. McGwire stated that this encounter was corroborated by a member of the crew who was surprised by the speed of the Unidentified Submerged Object, also known as the USO. (Source)
“We were underway and all of a sudden I hear the sound it was really strange… it was moving so fast. I just cannot believe it because this submarine is limited in the speed it can go by the incompressibility of the water in front of it and this thing blew by us like we were standing still. I’m not going to throw anybody else under the bus here but I guarantee you the following happened: a person with knowledge of onboard systems came out and said ‘oh my God’ this goddamn thing is going faster than the speed of sound underwater but that’s faster than the speed of sound in air.”
Robert G. McGwier is the founder and Technical Advisor at Hawkeye 360. He serves as Technical Director of Federated Wireless, Inc. Dr. McGwier is the Director of Research for the Ted and Karyn Hume Center for National Security and Technology, and Research Professor in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech. At Virginia Tech, he leads the overall execution of the Center’s research mission and leads the university’s program development efforts in national security applications of wireless and space systems. His area of expertise is in radio frequency communications and digital signal processing.
UFO researcher Chris Lehto with Scientist Bob McGwier: Image credit: YouTube screencap
McGwire had another USO encounter that took place onboard the USS Blue Ridge (LCC-19) in 2008 while it was in a violent Typhoon. “I wanted to look outside and see what I could see and I was on the bridge so I was right up there underneath the American flag looking out the windows. When I noticed that even though we were in a typhoon and it was raining like mad there was no rain hitting the ship and I’m going what the heck and I looked out the window and looked up and I could see a glow above us in the sky. It was not very bright but I could see it and whatever it was blocking off the rain from the entire ship stem to stern.”
McGwire continued: “I believe I was on the port side and the reason I say that is because I took a peek outside and I could do that because I was Leeward in other words the winds were from behind me and the bulkhead of the ship were blocking the winds. So, I could look up easily so anyway it suddenly grew brighter and took off straight up and the rain returned.”
Similar to McGwire’s second encounter, in 1991, USS Kirk FF108 USO Encounter took place off the west coast of South America. The witness stated that at that time, he was a Chief of Operations and Intelligence serving aboard the Knox-class escort destroyer USS Kirk FF1087 and that they were part of a drug interdiction force consisting of the USS Kirk and three other Navy ships. Their main task was to patrol using a network of radars to track and then intercept drug planes flying out of Colombia, Panama and Guatemala, as well as to seize any smuggling ships that they could find. (Source)
USS Kirk (FF-1087). Image credit: Wikimedia Commons
The witness said that his primary position was at the CIC Combat Information Center, which he and 22 other specialists maintained 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, rotating in two shifts of 11 people.
At 2 a.m. on December 16, he was on duty at CIC. The night was calm and nothing unusual happened. He said he used the break to go up to the bridge. At this time, the entire ship was in a status called “darkened ship,” when all external lights were turned off, as well as on the bridge, that is, everything around was dimly lit only by instrument panels. His friend was on deck duty that night, and they chatted when they had some free time. And suddenly, everything around was lit up in the red color:
“All of a sudden and out of nowhere, like a huge flash from a camera, emanating from the starboard bow sea level upward was a huge flash of red glowing light, which lit up our entire ship. It only lit up our ship, not the surrounding ocean, just our ship. It happened so fast, that the OOD, the navigator and I were speechless for about 5 seconds, at which time I looked at the OOD and asked him if he just saw that light. He stated yes in a sullen voice.
I then asked the navigator and he replied yes. I then took the navigator’s sound powered headset, and asked the forward and aft look outs, if they had just seen the same red flash, to which the forward look out stated, “YES! WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?”
After lookout said yes as well. I then immediately contacted CIC, and asked the CIC officer if we had any aircraft or surface ships in our vicinity, to which he replied clear as a whistle. I asked if we had any submarine activity in the area, to which he replied, no. At this point I looked at the OOD and asked him if we should wake up the captain or as we would call him, The Old Man. The OOD sat there stunned for a minute, as did I and everyone else.
What had just happened did not make any sense. The flash emanated from the sea, directly off of our starboard bow (like it was touching our bow), and ascended upwardly so rapidly, creating the effect of the bright red flash. The other weird aspect of this event was that only our ship was lit up within the red flash, not the surrounding sea, but our vessel only. The OOD elected not to wake the captain, and the entire incident was logged in our ship’s log as an unexplained phenomenon.
Up until this event, I did not believe in UFOss or USOss. I have no doubt that our ship, steaming along at 12 knots, came right up on a submerged unidentifiable aircraft. I don’t think the aircraft or USO had any idea we were sailing up to them. I think whatever it was, took off in a very unplanned and fast manner, and wanted to quickly identify us, thus the flash.”
In the end, after much deliberation, they decided not to wake the captain up, but simply to register it in the ship’s log as an “unexplained phenomenon.”
Many members of the United States Navy have reported fascinating sightings, and video showing UFOs entering water has even been made public. A video that was shot by the sailors of the USS Omaha in July 2019 off the coast of San Diego is one of the pieces of evidence that are being put up to support this claim. A spherical object is seen soaring over the ship and then plunging into the ocean in a video that was shared by UFO researcher and investigative director Jeremy Corbell. During this time, a member of the crew can be heard saying, “Wow, it splashed!”
The video generated considerable interest online, and when Corbell revealed that a Navy submarine had been dispatched to look for the object without success, things got even more intriguing. It is interesting to note that at around the same time, American submarines also spotted other mysterious anomalous objects that defied the laws of physics in the water nearby. The Navy has verified the authenticity of the video but claims to have no explanation for its existence.
More specifically, Luis Elizondo, a former director of the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, said:
“Imagine a technology that can do 6-700 g-forces, which can fly at 13,000 miles per hour, which can evade radar and which can fly through air and water and eventually. in the space. And oh, by the way, has no obvious signs of propulsion, no wings, no control surfaces and yet can still defy the natural effects of Earth’s gravity. This is precisely what we are seeing.” (Source)
When the Pentagon's UAP Task Force released an initial report in April of 2023, UFO researchers expressed frustration that a figure allegedly showing the shapes of anomalous craft being reported had been redacted. But when former AARO director Sean Kirkpatrick appeared before a congressional committee later that year, he brought the goods with him. He displayed a pie chart describing the various shapes of craft that had been reported, with a significant majority of them being depicted as "round" or "orbs." Many other less frequently seen shapes were listed as well, including triangles, cubes, and even classic saucers, described as discs. But there was one shape missing. There was no mention of egg-shaped UFOs.
You don't hear much about UFOs of that shape in the modern era, but that wasn't always the case. There was a time when such reports were quite common. If you do a search for the phrase "egg-shaped" in the Project Blue Book files in the National Archives, quite a few pages of results are returned, but they are almost entirely from the 1950s or early 1960s. Among the first, biggest, and most widely reported took place in the first week of November 1957. It started in the vicinity of Levelland, Texas on November 2nd and 3rd. Many people reported seeing the oddly-shaped, glowing objects flying around at various altitudes and distances. The media seized on the story, starting with the Lubbock Morning Avalanche (Page 1 and Page 2.) and it was soon being reported across the country on the newswires. The event wasn't restricted to the Levelland area, however. Soon sightings were being reported across the state and even by ships in the Gulf of Mexico. More reports came in from as far away as Chicago and other locations around the western half of the United States.
Not all of the witnesses described the objects as "egg-shaped," but many did. And the incidents had something else in common. Frequently, when motorists were approached by the objects too closely, they reported that the engines in their cars would mysteriously shut down, similar to Roy Neary's truck in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. One has to wonder if Steven Spielberg got the idea from the Levelland event. He has been quoted in interviews saying that some of the concepts in the film were inspired by the work of J. Allen Hynek. (Dr. Hynek makes an appearance later in this story.)
Other notable sightings were recorded in the following days and reports began flooding into the US Air Force. In Sacramento, California, an egg-shaped object was reported and the engine of the witness' car shut down. An almost identical report came in from El Paso, Texas, with another car engine being disabled. A mass sighting took place in Orogrande, New Mexico, where between six and ten cars lost power after a "pearl-colored, egg-shaped object" passed over. One of the witnesses was a naval Chief Petty Officer with decades of experience. On the same night, November 4, three police officers and a fireman in Elmwood Park, Illinois, near Chicago saw a huge, 200-foot-long, glowing egg-shaped object that seemed to "play tag" with them for nearly an hour. Before dawn on November 5, an oval or egg-shaped object circled a Coast Guard Cutter off of New Orleans for at least half an hour. The ship picked the object up on its radar for 27 minutes in addition to visual sightings by the crew. Two military patrols reported sightings of egg-shaped objects over the Trinity nuclear detonation site. That sighting was picked up in the New York Times.
The response from the Air Force and the offices of Project Blue Book was probably predictable for anyone who closely follows this topic these days. The final Blue Book file that eventually rounded up many of these sightings is massive, with more than eighty pages attached. But smaller files were also created for many of the individual reports generated by this flap. Those files are linked above and they are instructive in terms of how the Air Force attempted to explain these incidents away and how the witnesses were treated. Within two days of the initial events, the Air Force released another official report to the press saying that ten years of investigations of more than 5,700 reports had produced "no physical or material evidence that such things exist."
The sighting in Sacramento was written off as "mass hysteria" from the coverage of the Levelland event, with no explanation offered as to why the witness' car had died. The El Paso witness was written off as being "unreliable," despite working as a U.S. Border Patrol agent. For the mass sighting at Orogrande, Texas, the Navy veteran reporting it was similarly described as being a "suspect" and potentially unreliable witness. They blamed that one on a temperature inversion and claimed that his car had likely undergone an unremarkable, normal mechanical failure. No effort was made to explain how as many as nine other cars simultaneously experienced the same failure or how they all started again after the object departed.
The reports of the police officers in Illinois were initially dismissed as "optical phenomena." Other incidents were similarly waved away as wildlife. ATIC tried to blame this huge cluster of sightings on anything possible. They blamed planets, stars, erroneous data errors, balloons, and "unreliable witnesses." They blamed nearly everything but swamp gas... anything but a truly anomalous event. They even insulted the reputations of witnesses, including military members, police, and firemen. But in the end, they were forced to come up with a more cohesive explanation because there were simply too many sightings and too many witnesses. So, in the final Levelland report, they acknowledged that many of these people had probably seen "something." They then declared that after "detailed investigations," they had concluded that "the sighting was due to a very rare phenomenon, ball lightning."
Was that really the best they could come up with? Assuming you even believe that ball lightning is real (and that's certainly debatable), we are regularly assured that it's as scarce as hens' teeth. But suddenly the Air Force was suggesting that it's as common as falling autumn leaves after a huge UFO sighting flap that they were unable to simply explain away with the usual excuses. Blaming the media for covering the stories and causing "mass hysteria" obviously wasn't going to fly either.
People were still contacting the Air Force about these events years later. In August of 1959, someone from CUFORO (the Civilian UFO Research Organization) contacted the Air Force asking about several of these sightings, as well as some others from early 1959. Major Lawrence Tacker wrote back to him, claiming to have never heard of one of the incidents and offering prosaic explanations for the others.
In June of 1965, Project Blue Book was still talking about this spate of reports. J. Allen Hynek wrote a four-page letter to Major Hector Quintanilla describing some of the events and struggling to come to some sort of conclusion. He concluded by recommending that all similar reports be collected and studied as a whole. Hynek asked that the case not be closed until he could locate and interview some of the witnesses more thoroughly. There is no record showing that he was ever able to do so and the file was eventually closed.
The majority of these reports all unfolded in less than two weeks. Then, they tapered off as suddenly as they began. A few others were reported from time to time, such as one from Baltimore, Maryland in October of 1958. But the appearances of the "egg-shaped UFOs" seemed to fade into memory. Not every object sighted was described exactly the same way, but many were too similar to ignore what appeared to be a pattern. Was it a case of a few craft rapidly zipping around and covering the entire country or had a fleet of them arrived all at once? Or is it possible that the use of the phrase was simply a fad describing something that we assigned a different name to later? We may never know, but for ufology fans, November of 1957 must have been a very exciting time to be alive.
Back on October 3, 1958, the crew of a freight train traveling through Indiana had a remarkable experience in the middle of the night. Their train was buzzed and then pursued by four glowing, disc-shaped craft that flitted back and forth across the tracks at a low altitude in an encounter that lasted for more than an hour. Despite the impressive credentials of the witnesses, including one retired Air Force bomber pilot with extensive experience, the incident never wound up generating significant attention from the media. The event, hereafter referred to as the Indiana incident, is similarly rarely mentioned in documentaries that examine the history of the UFO phenomenon, which is surprising. But the response from the US Air Force when people eventually began requesting information from the offices of Project Blue Book may be even more shocking.
I will first note that I learned of this event while browsing through the Project Blue Book files entirely by accident. When the Blue Book files were originally collected at the National Archive, they were unfortunately assembled in a haphazard fashion. Among the more than 10,000 files are many that have pages completely unrelated to the event described on the file's record card stuffed into them. Such is the case with the Indiana incident, which is buried inside a file describing an unrelated sighting near Cameron, Arizona that took place during the same month. If you click through and review the file, you will see that it contains 18 pages. Only the first four relate to the event in Arizona, while three others deal with similarly unrelated reports from Oregon, Kentucky, and Illinois. But the rest tell the remarkable tale of the Indiana incident. A thorough search of the archives for a record card or other pages related to the Indiana incident produced no results, so either a record card was never created (unlikely), it was lost, or it was too damaged to be legible. No incident number was assigned, which is also not unusual with cases from the later stages of the project.
On the date in question, a freight train identified as Monon No. 91 was traveling from Monon, Indiana to Indianapolis. The crew consisted of three men in the engine and two in the caboose. In the cab were the train's engineer, Harry Eckman, the fireman, Cecil Bridge, and Morriss Ott, the brakeman. In the caboose were Paul Sosbey, the flagman, and Ed Robinson, the conductor. Cecil Bridge was a retired Air Force bomber pilot with more than 450 hours of flight experience. At roughly 2:00 am, the men in the engine cab observed four glowing lights in the sky well ahead of the train darting around in an erratic fashion. The crew had flashlights in the cab with them and they began flashing them at the objects. As if in response, the four objects immediately began moving toward the train.
The witnesses never described the craft as "flying saucers," but they did say that they were "large round things, circular shaped on the bottom." They estimated that the objects were "about forty feet in diameter and maybe ten feet thick." They glowed with a seemingly phosphorescent light that shifted in color from white to yellow to orange. Curiously, the men said that the light from the craft did not illuminate anything around them or below them. They were flying just above treetop level, so these were not simply "points of light in the sky."
The craft shot off to the east, returning to the tracks again before flying off rapidly to the west. They disappeared from sight again, only to show up behind the train, approaching the caboose. The conductor picked up what he described as a five-cell sealed beam flashlight that "throws a good beam a long way." He began shining the light on the objects that "dodged" out of the beam when it illuminated them, seeming to behave as if they were intelligently controlled and did not wish to be hit with the flashlight beam. This pattern continued for a time until the craft took off to the northeast and did not return.
Bridge and Robinson were interviewed for the newswires the next day, but after that, they were informed by Monon rail officials that they needed to "keep quiet" about it. This request apparently originated from the Bunker Hill Air Force Base near Kokomo, Indiana. They requested that any similar sightings in the future be reported directly to them and even set up a hotline for such reports to be called in.
If the Air Force didn't want people talking about this event, it was too late. Word had gotten around and some people began to raise questions. Later that year, someone from Brooklyn, New York (whose name has been redacted) wrote a letter to the Air Force requesting information about the incident and the military's conclusions about it. The letter was forwarded to Blue Book. Not having received an answer, he sent a second letter in March of the following year. In that missive, he stated that he was sending copies of the letter to "certain members of Congress, including Senator Lyndon Johnson." (The same Lyndon Johnson who would later go on to be President.)
The letter was fielded by Major Lawrence Tacker who was working on the program at the time. He sent a memo to his colleagues at ATIC simply asking. "Do you have this" with multiple question marks. Someone named Ted Hieatt responded, saying that they had "no report, either official or unofficial, of the incident in Indiana." Tacker dutifully wrote back to the original correspondent, simply stating, "The United States Air Force has no record of this sighting." But the Blue Book file tells a very different tale. The citizen requesting the information was given that answer despite the fact that Blue Book had already assembled numerous published reports of the sighting and had obviously discussed it. Also, the Bunker Hill Air Force Base command was clearly aware of the Indiana incident and had taken steps to monitor the situation. Stating that the Air Force "has no record" of the incident was clearly not accurate and it seems unlikely that such a breakdown in communications would happen by accident.
How much of this was going on during the later stages of the program before Project Blue Book was finally shut down in 1969? While the Indiana incident never seemed to garner major headlines in the mainstream press, the story did show up periodically, such as in this article from the Detroit Free Press in December of 1958. The nature of the events in Indiana should have made this incident of tremendous interest to the Blue Book investigators. Rather than someone catching a fleeting glimpse of a fireball in the sky, this event lasted for more than an hour and was reported by multiple credible witnesses. They were able to interact with the objects using flashlights and seemingly generated an intelligently controlled response. The objects were large and barely above the level of the surrounding trees. Short of photographs or video, what more could they ask for in an incident report? And yet they appeared to sweep it away into the dustbin of UFO history.
More worrying posts from Ryan Garcia's account are shared about 'demons' and 'UFOs', 'being heavily attacked' and saying 'before I go, I want to release everything' - as some fans claim boxer has been hacked
More worrying posts from Ryan Garcia's account are shared about 'demons' and 'UFOs', 'being heavily attacked' and saying 'before I go, I want to release everything' - as some fans claim boxer has been hacked
Ryan Garcia's account shared another string of bizarre posts on Wednesday
Fans have claimed the boxer has been hacked with posts quickly being deleted
Concerns have been raised over Garcia's well-being amid the social media posts
Boxing starRyan Garcia's account has shared another string of worrying social media posts amid growing concern for his wellbeing.
Previous posts from the 25-year-old's account appeared to allege that he was raped by a family member at the age of two, has photographic proof that aliens exist and that he was previously a witness to 'human trafficking'.
Garcia had sparked fears in the boxing community on Sunday when a video posted to his Instagram and X accounts - which showed a glimpse of an unidentifiable man in a house - claimed his 'throat had been slit' in the caption. The post also contained several satanic references.
One day later Garcia took to social media himself to explain the situation, suggesting his phone has been hacked and that he is being 'taken advantage of' while reassuring fans he is safe and well.
Garcia's account has since shared another series of bizarre posts on Wednesday to raise further concerns. Several of the posts have now been deleted from his account.
Boxing star Ryan Garcia's social media account has shared another string of worrying posts
The latest series of posts has come after concerns had been raised for Garcia's wellbeing
Posts from Garcia's account included references to 'demons' and 'UFOs', before claiming he is 'being heavily attacked' and saying 'before I go, I want to release everything'.
The first post of the tirade read: 'ATTENTION TO THOSE WHO SOLD THERE SOUL THERE IS A WAY BACK. YOU CANT SELL YOUR SOUL. YOUR SOUL BELONGS TO GOD. SO WASNT YOURS TO SELL ANYWAY. YOU DIDNT READ THE CONTRACT JUST SIGNED PROBABLY DIDNT CARE.
'3am Even in Dark I light it up. You see everything coming out now.'
'The files of UFO’s are coming out for a reason,' Garcia continued.
'THEY ARE SLOWLY RELEASING IT SO YOJ ARE BRAI WASHED AND ACCUSTOM OF ALIENS SO WHEN THE RAPTURE HAPPENS THEY BLAME IT ON ALINES AND EVERYONE ON EARTH IS STILL CONFUSED.'
Garcia's account also claimed he was being 'heavily attacked', before adding 'Spiritually I’m in a battle and I’m winning'.
Fans of the boxer have claimed the 25-year-old's account has been hacked amid the latest string of bizarre posts.
The now deleted posts included references to demons and him being 'heavily attacked'
Garcia is scheduled to face WBC super-lightweight champion Devin Haney on April 20.
The boxing community has been left concerned by his recent antics, leading to calls for his upcoming bout.
KSI, the YouTuber-turned-boxer, claimed on social media that next month's fight with Haney should be called off to get Garcia help.
Haney, howver, has been adamant that their world-title contest is very much still on and has accused Garcia of 'playing crazy' to promote their fight.
In a now-deleted post on X, the two-weight king wrote about one of Garcia's recent outbursts: 'The fight is happening April 20th.. he’s just playing crazy to “sell it” which is weird because it’s people who are actually crazy out there but he’s just acting for attention'.
There is no love lost between the pair, who are set to collide in the ring for a seventh time next month after six amateur meetings, with the scores level at three apiece.
Henry Garcia, the 24-1 fighter's dad, provided an update on Sunday saying that while his son was just trolling followers, there were larger issues at play.
His ex-wife, Andrea Celina, also claimed he 'may seem fine but he is not' amid concerns for his safety, while suggesting he is being 'heavily oppressed'.
The 25-year-old broke his silence on Monday after a disturbing video on his account claimed he was dead after having his 'throat slit'
He then alleged that he was raped as a child in another worrying outburst on Tuesday
Haney has accused his bitter rival of simply 'playing crazy' to promote their upcoming contest
Garcia and Celina, who have two children together, announced their divorce in January just days after the birth of their second child.
British promoter Eddie Hearn also admitted he is worried about Garcia's 'erratic' behaviour after his controversial antics at a press conference for his fight with Haney last week.
Garcia's social media account had seen an astonishing tirade on Tuesday, including posts alleging that he was raped as a child and that he has witnessed 'human trafficking'.
After posting about setting up a live drug tests to prove his wellbeing and making more satanic refences, Garcia wrote: 'I’ve been *grapes [raped] at 2 years old how would you act,' before continuing, 'by a family member. How would that feel to you how would you act'.
He added: 'I’ve seen the worst s**t in my life. I’m tired of being quiet'.
When another user quoted his post with laughing emojis, Garcia replied: 'It’s funny to people. I was raped as a two year old and I have proof and they laugh wtf is wrong with people.'
The account then appeared to suggest he has witnessed human trafficking in another string of cryptic yet concerning posts.
Garcia sparked fears when a video claiming his throat had been slit was posted online
That video was followed up with an astonishing tirade on his X account 24 hours later
A post read: 'What would you do if they held you down and made you watch yeah I’m losing it. The s**t I’ve seen I’m f****ng HURTING for the kids.
'Human trafficking is the biggest trade in the world. And I’m hurting for them and I’m the crazy one. No one is doing anything.'
'They held me down and made me watch of course I’ve lost it a little. They really begged me to join and I said F**K YOU'.
'Are you guys the crazy ones!!! Cause I’m not lying they are hurting kids!!! And everyone is standing back telling me to shut up I DONT CARE ANYMORE. I’ll die for innocent souls taken if you aren’t on my side you are on the devils side.'
We Need to Investigate UFOs. But Without the Distraction of Conspiracy Theories
We Need to Investigate UFOs. But Without the Distraction of Conspiracy Theories
A former government official calls for investigating unidentified anomalous phenomena without succumbing to conspiracy theories about extraterrestrials
Little else titillates and piques the national interest like unidentified flying objects and space aliens. After more than a century of films featuring intelligent creatures from other worlds, and over seven decades after the U.S. government began investigating them, UFOs remain a flashpoint for conspiracy theorists and science deniers. By any name, UFOs or unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) conjure the most vivid images and plots allowed by Hollywood and novels alike. Who doesn’t want to believe?
However, reality, as inconvenient as it can be, remains fundamental. In 2022 Congress found the courage to put into law the creation of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), jointly managed by the Department of Defense and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). Its mission is quite straightforward. Apply an unbiased scientific method and intelligence tradecraft to review existing information and data on historical UAP and investigate new data as these are provided to the office from military, federal, state and local entities as well as private citizens.
AARO’s underlying raison d’être is to investigate, evaluate, analyze and provide actionable information for use by our national security leadership. Its purpose is not to prove or disprove the existence of extraterrestrial life, but to address the safety and security of our people, our operations and our nation.
Unfortunately, it is also meant to investigate a conspiracy saturated with the distrust between our legislative and executive branches. It is time for the American people to understand that, and for the DoD, ODNI and Congress to step up to the plate and enable AARO to finish its mission absent this distraction.
AARO’s interest—all-domain phenomena (sea, air and space)—remains an ongoing concern to our national security enterprise, particularly when the phenomena are observed near our nation’s sensitive military and critical infrastructure facilities. Observations by experienced military personnel as well as data from highly capable sensors are being reviewed by AARO, accordingly, to weed out explainable observations and expose truly difficult-to-explain phenomenology using the most rigorous scientific analysis available. This is its real job: to minimize the risk of intelligence and technical surprise.
Many outside observers nonetheless have criticized AARO as supposedly part of a continuing government cover-up of the existence of aliens. Interestingly, they have not provided any verifiable evidence of this, nor are some of the more outspoken willing to engage with the office to discuss their positions or offer up the data and evidence they claim to possess. Too often these critics and their supporters rely on secondhand “friend of a cousin” reporting with no personal firsthand knowledge or rigor in their critical thinking. Some claim that those with firsthand knowledge of this supposed cover-up have relayed it to AARO, but no source in my tenure as director of the office had firsthand knowledge of anything to do with an alleged reverse-engineering program of extraterrestrial spacecraft. While those who came forward have provided valuable information (albeit not of extraterrestrials or cover-ups), those who chose to instead titillate the national interest only stir division and hatred against the credible men and women of AARO who are working faithfully to address this mission. The AARO continues to offer anyone an opportunity to provide their personal knowledge of an alleged program involving extraterrestrials for the record in a safe and nonadversarial environment. It remains perplexing that some critics are hiding behind their own cloak of secrecy and legal maneuvering, refusing to engage with the AARO when the office has been given full authority by Congress, DoD, ODNI and others in the interagency process to review all information regardless of its classification while legally protecting those who provide it.
If people claim to have evidence involving aliens, they need to come forward to AARO to enable the office to investigate it. Otherwise, hearsay in a scientific and fact-based investigation serves only as a distraction.
There also is the possibility that some observed and reported phenomena are associated with past or ongoing national security programs completely unrelated to extraterrestrials. Unfortunately, some who have been peripherally involved in these programs are taking advantage of the lack of understanding of security compartmentalization among the public—and some members of Congress—and feel that exposure of national security activities is a public right.
The harm of such exposure would be incalculable: billions of dollars and decades invested in military capabilities exposed to our potential adversaries to satisfy ill-informed curiosity. While some staffers and members of Congress may claim that they and the American people have a right to know of every classified research program, Congress already has an established process for notification of sensitive programs to the bipartisan leadership of both the Senate and House as well as the chairs and ranking minority members of the Senate and House intelligence committees, often referred to as the Gang of Eight. It is incumbent on both the speaker of the House, the Senate majority leader and both chairs of the intelligence committees to ensure that there is no risk of exposing any national security programs in a rush to find extraterrestrials, and that documents are reviewed within appropriate channels. If these members of Congress deem it appropriate not to share classified information, they are doing their job. These are not town hall topics.
Lost in the hyperbole about a government conspiracy to hide the existence of alien spacecraft and physical remains is the real potential that the unexplained phenomena represent a dangerous technological leap by our peer competitors, China and Russia (it could be weapons testing, spying or just technology testing). Such a leap would present a national security crisis. As mandated by Congress, DoD and ODNI must fully engage with and support AARO to ensure that it is receiving the resources and government-wide collaboration required. Likewise, critics of AARO must step up and become part of the solution by collaborating and providing the full disclosure of any and all information they hold.
While future book deals or selling a story to Hollywood may be hard to resist for some, they are not what this effort is about. Sensationalism and the politicization of science do not aid in finding the truth. While everyone wants an answer now, the truth will take time. Physics cannot be reinvented to fit a desired outcome, and analytic conclusions cannot be made based on questionable data and the word of “credible witnesses” alone. And when the data do not fit your theory, the theory is wrong, not the data.
In the multiple reports to Congress that I oversaw, full insight into AARO’s methodology, status and results, both unclassified and classified, has been provided. Anyone saying otherwise is not part of the 12 committees that oversee AARO’s mission; critics need to learn how access to information within Congress works. If the true issue is the scope of government classification and congressional notification, that should be addressed in the appropriate fora, not by chasing ET. This is a serious, national, fact-based scientific effort to avoid the potential for a grave intelligence failure that could lead to a devastating strategic surprise to our nation. Only science and objective evidentiary-based investigation will prevent that.
This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
Wow, this just out in the news at Hortonville, NY which has a population of 269. Two glowing spheres were seen passing over the city and across the horizon and the witnesses are swearing to the fact that they were UFOs and I have to agree. These spheres are flying very close, military formation style for aliens. They fly together to watch out for one another. This is 100% proof of aliens over New York states!
A new study out today in the journal Nature Astronomy used data from NASA’s Juno spacecraft to simulate how much oxygen could be circulating in Europa’s oceans. It turns out, it is a lot less than researchers previously thought. Researchers formerly thought that there was likely quite a bit of oxygen on Europa, and therefore a good chance of life there, too.
This illustration show’s what NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft may look like as it orbits Europa in the 2030s.
NASA/JPL
ANOXIC ALIEN SEAS
To figure out how much oxygen might be getting into Europa’s oceans, Jamey R. Szalay, a planetary scientist at Princeton University and lead author on the study, and his colleagues examined data from Juno’s Jovian Auroral Distribution Experiment (JADE), which measures the ions (electrically charged atoms) left in Europa’s wake as it orbits Jupiter. JADE captured the data during Juno’s close flyby of Europa in September 2022.
Specifically, the team measured the amount of ionized oxygen and hydrogen JADE detected in Europa’s wake and used a computer simulation to figure out how much total oxygen had to be released at Europa’s surface every second to produce the amount of ions JADE measured in space 200 miles from the moon’s surface.
The answer turned out to be a measly 12 kilograms per second. That’s a lot less than previous models had predicted. Only about a fraction of that amount makes its way into the ocean below. This means that there is hardly any oxygen in Europa’s oceans.
“Unless Europa’s oxygen production was significantly higher in the past, the oxygen production rates found here […] provide a narrower ranger range to support habitability than previous model-driven estimates,” write Szalay and his colleagues.
BREAKING BONDS
How do ions at Europa’s surface make their way into the ocean? On Europa’s surface, radiation and electrically charged particles, like electrons, constantly bombard the surface of the ice. That radiation breaks the bonds that hold water molecules together, releasing oxygen and hydrogen molecules from their frozen prison.
Some of those molecules escape into space and collide with other molecules or get zapped by yet more radiation and become the ions that JADE studies. Others become part of Europa’s thin wisp of an atmosphere. Still others settle back into the ice; they’re trapped in a crystalline matrix of frozen water, but this time they’re imprisoned oxygen molecules, not just pieces of water molecules.
Ice, and things trapped in it, are in constant motion, even if that motion is very slow. Over time, some of that trapped oxygen gets shifted slowly downward through Europa’s kilometers-thick layers of ice, where it “may work into the ocean as a possible source of metabolic energy for life,” write Szalay and his colleagues in their recent paper.
We’ll get a much more direct look at how much oxygen is in Europa’s oceans, or whether there’s alien life swimming around down there in the cold dark, when NASA’s Europa Clipper arrives in 2030.
Unraveling the Mystery: The 1970 Finland UFO Encounter
Unraveling the Mystery: The 1970 Finland UFO Encounter
In the quiet expanse of Finland’s snow-covered landscapes, a remarkable incident unfolded in 1970 that continues to intrigue and mystify UFO enthusiasts and skeptics alike. This incident, often overshadowed by more famous cases, involves a series of bewildering experiences reported by two Finnish skiers, casting a long shadow on our understanding of unidentified flying objects and potentialextraterrestrial encounters. Here, we delve into the heart of this enigmatic event, piecing together the narrative and examining its implications.
The Encounter
On the evening of January 7, 1970, in the southeastern village of Imjärvi, Finland, an extraordinary event took place that would forever change the lives of two men. Arno Heinonen, a 36-year-old forestry worker, and his friend Esco Viljo, embarked on a routine skiing trip through the dense forests that characterize the Finnish landscape. What started as an ordinary journey soon turned into an extraordinary tale of close encounter.
As dusk settled over the forest, the tranquility was broken by a buzzing sound, followed by the appearance of a bright light descending from the sky. The skiers described witnessing a luminous cloud that, upon closer inspection, revealed a metallic vessel. This object, about 10 feet in diameter, hovered above them, emitting a strong beam of light that created a brightly illuminated circle on the snow below.
Within this circle, a creature unlike any known earthly being appeared. Standing at approximately 2.5 feet tall, the entity was described as thin, with slender arms and legs, and dressed in light green overalls. The face, devoid of eyes but featuring a hook-like nose, and small ears closely set to the head, added to the otherworldly appearance of the visitor.
The Aftermath
The immediate aftermath of the encounter left both men with physical symptoms that were difficult to explain. Arno suffered from nausea, headaches, and a disturbingly dark discoloration of his urine, suggesting a severe physiological reaction. Esco experienced numbness and swelling, symptoms that did not align with any typical diagnosis. The days following the incident saw the men grappling with unexplained health issues, including joint pain, balance problems, and a general malaise that resisted conventional medical treatment.
The lack of concrete explanations for their symptoms led Arno to reach out to UFO research centers, seeking answers that science could not provide. His deteriorating health and inability to continue his work as a lumberjack only deepened the mystery.
Skepticism and Belief
The Imjärvi incident, as it came to be known, is a study in contrasts. On one hand, it presents a detailed account of an encounter with an unidentified entity, complete with physical evidence in the form of lasting health impacts. On the other, the fantastical elements of the story, including subsequent claims made by Arno of further encounters, cast doubt on the credibility of the witnesses.
This case embodies the challenge of UFO research: the delicate balance between belief in the extraordinary and the demands of empirical evidence. The medical symptoms experienced by Arno and Esco, while suggestive of an unusual encounter, lack the definitive proof that skeptics demand. Yet, the detailed descriptions of the encounter, the physical reactions, and the absence of a satisfactory explanation invite an open-minded consideration of what might lie beyond our current understanding.
VIDEO:
The extraordinary story of two skiers’ alleged close encounter of the third kind in Finland in 1970.
The 1970 UFO encounter in Finland remains an enigmatic chapter in the annals of UFOlogy. It serves as a reminder of the vastness of our universe and the possibility of encounters that challenge our perceptions of reality. Whether one views the incident with skepticism or as evidence of extraterrestrial visitation, it undeniably enriches the tapestry of human experience with the unknown. As we continue to explore the mysteries of the cosmos, stories like that of Arno and Esco remind us to keep looking up, wondering, and questioning.
On September 4, 1971, members of the Instituto Geográfico Nacional (National Geographic Institute) took photographs above Lake Cote for the Costa Rican governmental company that provides electricity and telecommunication services. The photographs were taken for the construction of a hydroelectric dam near lake Arenal, when the mapping agency members accidentally captured a UFO in their high-resolution camera that was mounted on the plane, pointing downwards. The photograph is considered to be the clearest and best UFO photograph ever taken.
Sergio Loaiza, Juan Bravo and Francisco Reyes were flying in a Canadian-made Areo-Commander model F680 piloted by Omar Arias, and Loaiza was in charge of aerial photography that day. They were flying above Costa Rica with a 100-pound map-making camera when Loaiza captured a photograph of a metallic disc like a typical alien “flying saucer” that can be seen flying between the F680 aircraft and the ground.
They were flying at 10,000 feet, mapping the landscape beneath with the high-resolution camera that was programmed to take photos every 20 seconds. While reviewing the negatives, Loaiza could not believe his eyes. He even said that they were completely banned from talking about it. According to UFO researcher Oscar Sierra, the photographs were analyzed in the USA and France and found to be 100% real. (Source)
The object can only be seen in the photograph in frame number #300 in the sequence, and there is no indication of it in either the frame of film that came before it or the one that was taken immediately after it. Due to the film stock and the quality of the camera, the image was incredibly clear. This object was not in either the frame before it (#299) or the frame after it (#301).
UFO photograph Taken in Costa Rica on September 1971
During the actual flight, the captain and his three crew members did not witness anything, and neither did the other passengers. It is estimated that the UFO was anywhere between 120 and 220 feet across, but the actual width would have depended on the object’s exact altitude.
New York Times writer and author Leslie Kean revealed that she has a framed copy of the photo taken at Lake Cote in the May 10, 2021 issue of The New Yorker by Gideon Lewis-Kraus. The article states, “…On the wall behind her desk, there is a framed black-and-white image that looks like a sonogram of a Frisbee. The photograph was given to her, along with chain-of-custody documentation, by contacts in the Costa Rican government; in her estimation, it is the finest image of a U.F.O. ever made public.”
On the New Yorker Radio Hour, she said: “I love this photo. It’s probably the best photograph of a UFO ever taken. It was taken in the 70s from a government mapping plane in Costa Rica which had a camera strapped on the bottom of the plane and it was like going over the terrain. There was this disc object and you clearly see the sun reflecting off this round object that’s got a little dot on the top and what’s important about it is that it was a government photo. There’s a clear chain of custody. It’s always been in possession of the Costa Rican government so you know it’s authentic and it’s completely unexplained.” (Source)
In 1985, computer scientist and astronomerDr. Jacques Valleeobtained a copy of the negative and circulated it to his contacts in the United States government and at a California tech company. However, none of them helped Dr. Vallee in analyzing the negative.
Eventually, in December 1987, Vallee took it to Dr. Richard Haines in San Francisco. Haines was a retired aerospace engineer who had worked for NASA, and Vallee knew him. The photo was scanned, blown up, and looked at. Haines’ first focus was on the lighting. In 1989, Vallee and Haines wrote a “Photo Analysis of an Aerial Disc Over Costa Rica” for the Journal of Scientific Exploration. The 19-page report concluded: (Source)
“In summary, our analyses have suggested that an unidentified, opaque, aerial object was captured on film at a maximum distance of 10,000 feet. There are no visible means of lift or propulsion and no surface markings other than dark regions that appear to be nonrandom… There is no indication that the image is the product of a double exposure or a deliberate fabrication.”
There has always been speculation as to whether the craft had just emerged from or was about to enter Lake Cote. There are numerous local stories concerning UFOs emerging from the water. But it is impossible to understand the path of the craft because it only appeared in one frame #300. The original negative has been kept by the Costa Rican government, and it may be found in the country’s National Archive. There are copies available, such as the one that Vallee and Haines analyzed.
Loaiza’s UFO photograph has never been explained, despite the fact that UFO skeptics have thoroughly examined it. UAP Media, a UK-based UFO research company has got a brand fresh ultra-high resolution drum scan of the original photograph.
Comparison of old and new crops of the Lake Cote image (old on left, new on right). via UAP Media UK
Graeme Rendall – Author of UFOs Before Roswell and Flying Saucer Fever: “It’s a really intriguing photograph, and one which totally captures the imagination. I’m always impressed as to how “right” it looks. As to its veracity, though, I can’t say, but I’d love it to be true. It definitely looks a lot more convincing than a lot of other images I’ve seen over the years. I’d have to leave it to the photo analysis experts to pronounce sentence on it though.”
Vinnie Adams – member of UAP Media: “After looking into the case, reading about the circumstances surrounding what was seen from that aeroplane that day, and reading the analysis done previously by Dr. Jacques Vallée, it does come across as a very compelling case. The fact that after 50 years it still hasn’t been conclusively proven or debunked is very interesting. Now that we have this high-resolution drum scanned version of the image, hopefully it might reignite interest in the case and lead to further analysis and some sort of conclusion.”
Luis Elizondo – Former director of AATIP: “Although I was not around during this incident, pilot reports of smooth, shiny, lenticular craft are not new. In fact, even to this day, pilots, both civilian and military, along with their aircrew, continue to witness these types of craft and oftentimes displaying performance capabilities well beyond state of the art. Thankfully, some of these newer incidents are finding their way to Congress due to the courage of our fine men and women in uniform. During my time in AATIP, these incidents were surprisingly common.”
Jeremy Corbell – Filmmaker: “As we search for meaning behind the UFO presence, it’s important that we remember we are more effective collectively when perusing analysis. Historic images like this one from Costa Rica still have stories to tell, and new insights are sometimes just around the corner. If we can socially democratize and crowdsource our search for answers – we will arrive closer to the truth than if we simply wait for further confirmation from our governments. I’m elated higher fidelity imagery continues to emerge, especially when it allows us to get a glimpse into our UFO past. Makes one wonder what other UFO evidence is lurking in boxes or files that have remained elusive until now. I’m confident that more and more people will be coming forward with valuable insight and evidence in the near future.”
Scientists have discovered that life may exist on Earth — wait, what?
An illustration shows the five spacecraft of the LIFE mission with Earth between them
(Image credit: ETH Zurich / LIFE initiative)
After conducting a fair bit of research, scientists have come to a conclusion that may sound redundant: Life could exist on Earth.
Of course, you're probably thinking "Well, duh." In fact, it may feel more accurate to say that life does exist on Earth — not simply that it could. But here's the thing. The team's conclusion isn't the focus of the research. It's merely a means to an end. The plot of this story, rather, lies in precisely why these scientists reached the resu
Humans are fascinated by the possibility of discovering life on planets outside the solar system, otherwise known as exoplanets. So, to see things from a different perspective, this team of researchers pondered how life and habitability on Earth would look to an alien that would see our world as an exoplanet. How might they spy on us from afar? What would indicate to them that our planet is occupied?
These questions go far beyond philosophical musings. There's a practical use for the answers as well. They'll be used to validate a forthcoming space mission, dubbed the Large Interferometer for Exoplanets or "LIFE," mission, which will hunt for habitable exoplanets. The mission will be comprised of five spacecraft that form a single, mid-infrared interferometer. They'll sit relatively close to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in an orbit around the sun known as Lagrange Point 2, or L2.
So, the team, which hails from ETH Zurich, turned the technology that'll support LIFE back on Earth to confirm that the mission will indeed be capable of hunting for life on distant worlds when it launches in late 2026 or early 2027. If it can't confirm life on Earth, how would it confirm life beyond?
The primary target of LIFE will be rocky or terrestrial planets that are similar in size and temperature to Earth. It's being built to pick up thermal emissions from these worlds and use their spectrums of light to deduce what elements and chemicals lie in their atmospheres.
This would be possible because elements and compounds absorb and emit light at characteristic wavelengths. This means light passing through a planet's atmosphere, perhaps from a star or in the form of thermal radiation, will carry spectral fingerprints of those chemicals. This would also apply to so-called "biomarker" molecules, such as methane, that are often produced by the biological processes of living things.
"Our goal is to detect chemical compounds in the light spectrum that hint at life on the exoplanets," Sascha Quanz, leader of the LIFE initiative, said in a statement.
Earth from afar
Rather than testing LIFE's capabilities using simulated spectra of light associated with an exoplanet, the team behind this research decided to validate the mission by using the only planet upon which life has been discovered. That's our planet, Earth.
The team took data from NASA's Aqua Earth observation satellite and used it to create the mid-infrared emission spectrum that would be expected from Earth if it was viewed as an unassuming speck from a great distance. At such a distance, our planet's beautiful mountains and blue seas would be indistinguishable.
The team then averaged out the spectra, and considered how the result would be impacted by seasonal fluctuations and our planet's geometry. The researchers accounted for three possible views, two from the poles of Earth and one from its equator. They also focused on data collected between January and July of 2017to calculate seasonal variations.
NASA's EPIC camera aboard the DSCOVR spacecraft views Earth nearly 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) away. But would life be detectable from 30 million light years away? (Image credit: NASA/DSCOVR EPIC team)
The team concluded that if LIFE or a similar instrument were to observe Earth from as far away as 30 light-years, it would successfully determine our planet is a warm, habitable world. The crew also determined that atmospheric gases like carbon dioxide, methane and water, all either important for or created by life, would be visible in our planet's spectra.
A distant observation of Earth by a LIFE-like telescope therefore would reveal the conditions needed for our planet to support liquid water at its surface.
The team found the same results were delivered regardless of geometry, which is positive news because scientists won't know the geometry of the exoplanets LIFE observes. However, less positively, they also found that seasonal variations would not be observed in detail by LIFE.
"Even if atmospheric seasonality is not easily observed, our study demonstrates that next-generation space missions can assess whether nearby temperate terrestrial exoplanets are habitable or even inhabited," Quanz concluded.
Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, large amounts of light were being
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, large amounts of light were being generated by what is today recognized as one of the most remote star systems ever seen. Now, astronomers are getting a glimpse at how it looked at a time when our universe was still in its relative infancy with help from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.
Given its extreme distance from Earth, this very bright galaxy, GN-z11, is a natural target for investigations by our most advanced space telescopes. The latest findings involve the research conducted by a team studying GN-z11 with the Webb telescope, which reported earlier this year that they had found the first clear evidence that the galaxy is hosting a central, supermassive black hole that is rapidly accreting matter.
The team’s findings indicate not only that this is the farthest active supermassive black hole spotted to date, which could help astronomers understand just what makes this region of stars so luminous, but they could also be revealing a few surprises too.
Hubble imagery depicting GN-z11, one of the furthest known galaxies ever observed (NASA/ESA/Hubble).
Roberto Maiolino, principal investigator in a recent study using Webb to study GN-z11, said that he and his team discovered an extremely dense region of gas that is commonly found where supermassive black holes exist.
“These were the first clear signatures that GN-z11 is hosting a black hole that is gobbling matter,” said Maiolino, a researcher with the Cavendish Laboratory and the Kavli Institute of Cosmology at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, in a recent statement.
Along with signs of dense gases present within GN-z11, Maiolino and his team found evidence of ionization in association with chemicals that are also commonly found near supermassive black holes, as well as signs of powerful winds that seem to be emanating from the galaxy that is consistent with a black hole’s accretion disk.
Based on data collected with Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera, or NIRCam, coloration within the center of GN-z11 also appears to be consistent with supermassive black hole accretion, according to Hannah Übler, who is also a researcher at the Cavendish Laboratory and the Kavli Institute.
The available data all appears to suggest that the galaxy possesses a supermassive hole that is actively consuming matter, which Maiolino, Übler, and their team say can explain the extreme luminosity GN-z11 displays.
In addition to the revelation of a supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s center, Maoilino also says that an intriguing region of helium was discovered in the halo around GN-z11, which is consistent with existing theories about galaxies from this early stage in the universe.
Evidence of a gaseous clump of helium in the halo surrounding galaxy GN-z11 is revealed in data (above) collected by the James Webb Space Telescope (Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI)).
“This is something that was expected by theory and simulations in the vicinity of particularly massive galaxies from these epochs,” Maoilino says, adding that “there should be pockets of pristine gas surviving in the halo, and these may collapse and form Population III star clusters.”
Such a discovery is extremely significant in astronomy, since it involves Population III stars, made mostly from hydrogen and helium and among the earliest ever to have formed, the discovery of which is a key area of research for astrophysicists.
Current theories expect Population III stars to be very hot and equally luminous, with signatures conveying an abundance of ionized helium. Going forward, Maiolino and Übler hope that their team’s ongoing observations will help them determine whether they have indeed observed Population III stars in the gaseous halo surrounding GN-z11.
Fundamentally, studying the earliest known stars grants astronomers a unique view of a period of significant change in our universe, where it emerged from a mostly dark and simplistic state to the far more structured version of the cosmos we observe in modern times.
Maiolino, Übler, and their team’s new study on GN-z11’s supermassive black hole was published earlier this year in the journal Nature.
Food fan reviews America's wackiest MCDONALD'S - from the UFO-themed Roswell restaurant and ultra-lavish eatery inside a New York MANSION to Orlando outpost that serves McPizza and McPasta
Food fan reviews America's wackiest MCDONALD'S - from the UFO-themed Roswell restaurant and ultra-lavish eatery inside a New York MANSION to Orlando outpost that serves McPizza and McPasta
Dylan Huynh from California set of on a McNugget filled adventure
He visited five of the country's wackiest outlets in a bid to rank the 'coolest'
The trip started in New Mexico +9where there is a UFO-shaped McDonald's
From an alien theme to a one-of-a-kind pizza, a foodie has lifted the lid on what the most unique McDonald's restaurants in America have to offer.
Dylan Huynh from California set of on a McNugget filled adventure to visitfive of the country's wackiest outlets in a bid to rank which one is the 'coolest McDonald's ever.'
In a YouTube video documenting his trip, he starts his journey in Roswell, New Mexico, where he checks into a McDonald's shaped like a UFO with 'little alien statues' installed outside.
Inside the restaurant, he says it 'actually feels like you're in a UFO' with 'metal plated walls' and even an 'astronaut Ronald McDonald' hanging from the ceiling.
Dylan Huynh from California set of on a McNugget filled adventure to visit five of the country's wackiest McDonald's. He starts his journey at a UFO shaped eatery in Roswell, New Mexico
Inside the restaurant, he says it' actually feels like you're in a UFO' with 'metal plated walls'
In the main dining area, Dylan found an 'astronaut Ronald McDonald' hanging from the ceiling
The colonial era McDonald's, dubbed the McMansion, is set in a 19th-century former farmhouse in Hyde Park, New York
As he opens the 'fancy door' and steps inside, Dylan is shocked by the interiors with a 'grand staircase leading up to the second floor' and exposed wooden beams in the ceiling
Dylan Huynh from California set of on a McNugget filled adventure to visit five of the country's wackiest outlets:
UFO-themed restaurant in Roswell, New Mexico: 'Feels like you're in a UFO'
The McMansion in New York state: 'Pretty to look at but not fun'
World's largest McDonald's in Orlando, Florida: 'Sells McPasta and McPizza'
McDonald's HQ in Chicago: 'The global menu rotates every three months'
CosMc in Illinois: 'Menu designed to boost your mood into the stratosphere'
In terms of the food, Dylan didn't find anything unusual, so he opted for a portion of 20 chicken McNuggets and a McFlurry. Both got his seal of approval.
Before leaving, he snapped a photo with a 'cool alien statue' and bought something from the gift shop.
Next up, Dylan heads to what he deems the 'world's fanciest McDonald's.'
The classical building was saved from being knocked down by local activists and it was given landmark status.
In his YouTube video, Dylan reveals that it became a McDonald's in 1991.
As he opens the 'fancy door' and steps inside, he is shocked by the interiors with a 'grand staircase leading up to the second floor' and exposed wooden beams in the ceiling.
He adds: 'It literally feels like I'm inside someone's house, a very rich person's house.'
Along with a fancy door, he found 'fancy lights, fancy windows, fancy plants, even the trash cans were fancy.'
While he was impressed by the regal interiors, Dylan wasn't so enthused about the ambience. He found the restaurant seemed very empty, with 'no kids' and 'just fancy looking old people.'
As he sits down he says: 'I don't know how to explain this but I feel very uncomfortable in this McDonald's. I feel like I have to whisper.
The third stop on Dylan's whirlwind tour is the world's largest McDonald's, which is located in Orlando, Florida
The sprawling restaurant, which opened in 1975, has a floor area of more than 19,000ft
Dylan reveals that the world's largest McDonald's is 'the only McDonald's in the world that sells the McPasta and the McPizza'
The pizza also gets his seal of approval, despite the floppy base not filling him with high hopes
'I'm just going to go right out and say it. I am not having that much fun at this McDonald's.'
After finishing a portion of chicken McNuggets, Dylan leaves the restaurant with the farewell message: 'Goodbye world's fanciest McDonald's you are pretty to look at but very weird.'
The third stop on Dylan's whirlwind tour is the world's largest McDonald's, which is located in Orlando, Florida.
The sprawling restaurant, which opened in 1975, has a floor area of more than 19,000ft and along with a restaurant, it has a 22ft tall play area and an arcade with more than 100 games.
Dylan reveals that it is also 'the only McDonald's in the world that sells the McPasta and the McPizza.'
As he walks through the restaurant, he points out some woodfired pizza ovens and he even passes an aquarium.
In terms of his food order, Dylan goes to town and spends $64 on a spread of treats including 'the usual chicken McNuggets,' an Oreo McFlurry, the McPasta and the McPizza.
Continuing on his quest, Dylan visits the McDonald's global headquarters in Chicago where they offer a global menu of their delicacies from around the world
Before he orders, the food experts says his initial impression of the restaurant is that it is 'very clean' and 'very modern,' with 'people wearing suits in the kitchen'
When he visits, he decides to order a 'BBQ bacon stack' burger from the UK
A 'filet-o-shrimp' burger from Japan gets the thumbs up from Dylan
Out of the three items, he deems the Korean salted caramel McFlurry with Oreo the winner and he puts in a plea for it to come to the states
He says the colorful bowl of tortellini he orders is 'a lot better' than he expected and he adds that it 'might be better than Olive Garden.'
The pizza also gets his seal of approval, despite the floppy base not filling him with high hopes.
After having a fill and boxing the remnants up, Dylan heads to the arcade to play some games and he spends $120 on a gaming card.
Lastly, he heads to the play area to test out the 'infamous big yellow slide.'
Summing up the world's largest McDonald's he says: 'This place is the exact opposite from the McMansion. The McMansion was dull, gray and quiet [but] this McDonald's was very lively, very colorful and definitely not quiet.'
Continuing on his quest, Dylan visits the McDonald's global headquarters in Chicago where they offer a global menu of their delicacies from around the world.
Before he orders, the food experts says his initial impression of the restaurant is that it is 'very clean' and 'very modern,' with 'people wearing suits in the kitchen.'
When it comes to the HQ's menu, Dylan explains that 'since McDonald's operates in over 118 countries, the global menu rotates every three months to highlight different locations.'
When he visits, he decides to order a 'BBQ bacon stack' burger from the UK, a 'filet-o-shrimp' burger from Japan and a salted caramel McFlurry with Oreo from Korea.
Lastly, Dylan makes his way to the new restaurant CosMc, which is also located in Illinois
The brand - which launched in December 2023 and is named after McDonald's alien mascot from the 1980s and early 1990s - offers a range of colorful slushes, iced teas and coffees
He orders a s'mores cold brew which he deems 'pretty nice,' and a portion of hash browns which he says is 'nice' but on the smaller side
Lastly he tests a drink, which he asked the drive-thru attendant to surprise him with. He tells viewers that it the 'radioactive red' drink features 'popping boba' beans in it
Out of the three items, he deems the Korean invention the winner and he puts in a plea for it to come to the states.
He concludes: 'Even though McDonald's started in America every other country has a better menu than the American one.'
Lastly, Dylan makes his way to the new restaurant CosMc, which is also located in Illinois.
The brand - which launched in December 2023 and is named after McDonald's alien mascot from the 1980s and early 1990s - offers a range of colorful slushes, iced teas and coffees with names such as the Sour Cherry Energy Burst and Turmeric Spiced Latte.
As he nears the new concept restaurant Dylan says: 'It's technically a drive-thru... but from the pictures it looks very, very exciting.
'According to the CosMc website their menu is supposed to be otherworldly and it's designed to boost your mood into the stratosphere. I don't even know what that means but I'm excited about it.'
He orders a s'mores cold brew which he deems 'pretty nice,' a portion of hash browns which he says is 'nice' but on the smaller side, and an Oreo McFlurry, which he says always takes him back to his childhood.
Lastly he tests a drink, which he asked the drive-thru attendant to surprise him with.
He tells viewers that it the 'radioactive red' drink features 'popping boba' beans in it and a lemon and as he tastes it he winces in response to its sour taste.
Following his epic journey across America, Dylan crowns the world's biggest McDonald's in Florida as the winning restaurant, with its unique restaurant-style dishes and big yellow slide.
Scientists give verdict on 'humanoid creature' discovered that people believed could be alien
Scientists give verdict on 'humanoid creature' discovered that people believed could be alien
Pictures of the alleged 'alien' were sent by an anonymous source to Spanish UFO research, Josep Guijarro.
Bec Oakes
In our never-ending search for evidence of extraterrestrial life, it is suspected that a mummified foetus found in Colombia could be either an 'alien' or a 'tiny humanoid' from more than 800 years ago.
The alleged alien has an elongated skull, slanted eyes and an unusual number of ribs — the body seems to have 10 ribs on each side compared to a human's 12.
It was discovered in Colombia, with pictures sent by an anonymous source to Spanish alien researcher, Josep Guijarro.
Guijarro confirmed that it died in the foetal position, but is ‘cautious’ to call it an alien.
In a post on X (formerly known as Twitter), the veteran journalist and UFO researcher wrote: "My source told me it came from Colombia... I can't know exactly because I lack verifiable data."
Jam Press
"I am sure that someone in Mexico would have already given it the label 'alien,'' Guijarro wrote in espaciomisterio last week.
"In my case, I prefer to be more cautious," he added.
Last year, Barcelona-based UFO hunter Ramón Navia-Osorio Villar, who had purchased 'Ata' from a treasure hunter, shared his theory that the remains were evidence of a race of tiny humanoids.
"They were very small people who lived in caves and only came out at night," he told Spanish television, "hence its strange almond-shaped eyes.
"A native friend from the Aymara tribe told me that these beings used to live with their ancestors before the Spanish settlers arrived."
Guijarro expressed an openness to the notion that the skeleton may be a member of this tiny race of people who were said to live in the Andes approximately 800 years ago.
Jam Press
He wrote: "The researcher Gilda Mora, from Colombia, said that she had news of these beings since the times of the Spanish conquest.
"Even today, there were references to them in a place called 'El cerro de los enanos,' ('the Hill of the Dwarves') in Colombia, which is very difficult to access."
However, researchers have previously called the theory behind 'Ata' absurd.
In 2018, Professor Siân Halcrow, a biological anthropologist at New Zealand's University of Otago published an analysis criticising Ata's 'alien' believers.
"We estimated the length of the femur, and we estimated that the foetus would have been about 15 weeks in-utero gestation," Halcrow explained to the Daily Mail.
Based upon this assessment, the skeleton most likely belonged to the foetus of a premature infant that died less than four months into pregnancy.
Skeptical scientists believe that the most recent discovery is also the remains of a human foetus.
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UFO Over Taitung, Taiwan on 1961, Almost Looks Like Black Hole! UFO Sighting News.
UFO Over Taitung, Taiwan on 1961, Almost Looks Like Black Hole! UFO Sighting News.
Now this is a very old photo from Taiwan of a UFO. They assumed the black circle is the UFO, but it is not. The UFO itself is more easily visible when put into negative format. It's 3X bigger! The black craft above around the white circle...thats the whole UFO. The circle is a some area below. This UFO is easily 1 mile across.
Curiosity Rover is Climbing Through Dramatic Striped Terrain on Mars
Just about every day we here on Earth get a breathtaking picture of Mars’s terrain sent back by a rover. But, the view from space can be pretty amazing, too. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) just sent back a thought-provoking picture of Curiosity as it makes its way up a steep ridge on Mount Sharp.
The rover is a tiny black dot in the center of the image, which gives a good feeling for what MRO’s HiRISE camera accomplished. For scale, the rover is about the size of a dinner table, sitting in a region of alternating dark and light bands of material on the Red Planet.
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover appears as a dark speck in this image captured from directly overhead by the agency’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, or MRO. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
Where’s Curiosity?
The Curiosity rover is exploring an ancient ridge on the side of Mount Sharp, which is the peak of a crater on Mars. It’s sitting on the side of a feature called Gediz Vallis Ridge, and the terrains and materials preserve a record of what things were like when water last flowed there. That happened about three billion years ago. The force of the flow brought significant amounts of rocks and debris through the region. They piled up to form the ridge. So, much of what you see here is the desiccated remains of that flooding.
Debris flows are pretty common here on Earth, particularly in the aftermath of floods, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and other actions. We can see them wherever material floods through a region or down a slope. In a flood-based flow, the speed of the water combines with gravity and the degree of slope to send material rushing across the surface. A debris flow can also be a dry landslide, and those can occur pretty much anywhere on Earth where the conditions are right. Another type of debris flow comes from volcanic activity. That occurs when material erupts from a volcano, or when earthquakes combined with an eruption collapse material into the side of the mountain. That results in what’s called a “lahar”. Folks in North America might recall the Mount St. Helens eruption in 1980; it resulted in several lahars that buried parts of the surrounding terrain.
Now that scientists see similar-seeming regions on Mars, they want to know several things. How did they form? Were they created by the same processes that make them on Earth? And, how long ago did they begin to form? Curiosity and Perseverance and other rovers and landers have been sent to Mars to help answer those questions.
Understanding the Debris Ridge
Did any of these actions happen on Mars? The evidence is pretty strong, which is why Gediz Vallis itself is a major exploration goal for the rover. It’s a canyon that stretches across 9 kilometers of the Martian surface and is carved about 140 meters deep. Gediz was likely carved by so-called “fluvial” activity (meaning flowing action) in the beginning. Later floods deposited a variety of fine-grained sands and rocks. Over time, winds have blown a lot of that material away, leaving behind protected pockets of materials left behind by the flooding. The size of the rocks tells something about the speed of the flows that deposited all the material. Geological studies of those rocks will reveal their mineral compositions, including their exposure to water over time.
The Gediz Vallis ridge resulted from the action of water pushing rocks and dirt around to build it up over time. Planetary scientists now need to figure out the sequence of events that created it. The clues lie in the scattered rocks in the region and the surrounding terrain. Mount Sharp itself (formally known as Aeolis Mons), is about 5 kilometers high and is, essentially, a stack of layered sedimentary rocks. As Curiosity makes its way up the mountain, it explores younger and younger materials.
NASA’s Curiosity captured this 360-degree panorama while parked below Gediz Vallis Ridge (seen at right), a formation that preserves a record of one of the last wet periods seen on this part of Mars. After previous attempts, the rover finally reached the ridge on its fourth try. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.
Curiosity’s Mission at Gediz
To put all this on a larger scale, Mount Sharp is the central peak of Gale Crater. It formed some 3.5 to 3.8 billion years ago from an impact. As time went by, water flooded the crater several times. It flowed out and eventually disappeared as Mars’s climate changed it to the dusty desert we see today.
Winds also played a role in filling the crater with dust and sand deposits. This so-called aeolian activity also helped carve out Mount Sharp. This history of wind- and water-based deposition and erosion made Gale Crater a very attractive place to explore. That’s why Curiosity was sent there and continues its journey up Mount Sharp.
As if the Mars Perseverance Rover and Ingenuity Drone were not exciting enough then the next step in this audacious mission takes it to a whole new level. Mars Sample Return Mission is to follow along, collect and return the samples collected by Perseverance back to Earth. However the status of Mars Sample Return is uncertain as engineers are still working on technology to retrieve the samples. The current challenge is the gripper arm that will collect the samples and stow them safely and securely before transportation without damaging them.
Mars, known as the “Red Planet,” is the fourth planet from the Sun. It’s named after the Roman god of war and has fascinated humans for centuries. The distinctive rusty-red colour and mysterious terrain has over the years, led many to believe Mars was inhabited by aliens. Exploration has shown us though that Mars is a barren landscape that is home to Olympus Mons, the largest volcano, and Valles Marineris, the deepest canyon, in the solar system.
Featured Image: True-color image of the Red Planet taken on October 10, 2014, by India’s Mars Orbiter mission from 76,000 kilometers (47,224 miles) away. (Credit: ISRO/ISSDC/Justin Cowart) (This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.)
Viking 1 was the first spacecraft to visit Mars, successfully touching down on 20 July 1976 in the Chryse Planitia region. It comprised an orbiter and lander both of which were equipped with high resolution cameras to undertake a detailed examination of the Martian surface and atmosphere. A host of other spacecraft have visited Mars since then, most recently the Perseverance rover which carried with it the Ingenuity aircraft.
One of the mission objectives of Perseverance was to collect samples from Martian rocks and soil using the onboard drill. The samples were collected during a process known as ‘sample caching’ and then stored in tubes before being deposited on the surface for later collection. It’s a procedure that has never been undertaken before but set the foundations for future missions to collect and transport the samples back to Earth. Perseverance has been busy, there are now 23 titanium tubes sat on the Martian surface just waiting to be delivered back to Earth.
Mars Perseverence rover sent back this image of its parking spot during Mars Solar Conjunction. Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech
Enter Mars Sample Return mission, a joint NASA and ESA project that is planned to collect the tubes and bring them home for study. Engineers are now working on a prototype robotic arm that will collect the tubes from the surface. It uses a grip with two ‘fingers’ to pickup the hermetically sealed tubes from various angles and positions. There is a mechanism that ensures enough grip to pickup but not damage the tube or its contents which are Martian samples about the size of a piece of classroom chalk. It can even collect them direct from the rover itself.
As with all space missions, backup plans must always be considered. In the case of the the Sample Return mission the backup is likely to be two helicopters based on the Ingenuity design that can collect the tubes and deposit them in front of the lander for collection. An audacious mission perhaps but we will have to wait until 2028 to see the lander on Mars and until 2033 for the samples to be returned to Earth.
Massive Stars Have the Power to Shape Solar Systems
This image is a Hubble image of the inner regions in the Orion Nebula, with a JWST image of a protoplanetary disk named d203-506. The disk is close enough to the massive Trapezium Cluster stars that their UV radiation is shaping the planet-forming process in the disk. Image Credit: NASA/STSCI/RICE UNIV./C.O'DELL ET AL / O. BERNÉ, I. SCHROTTER, PDRS4ALL
Massive Stars Have the Power to Shape Solar Systems
Stars shape their solar systems. It’s true of ours, and it’s true of others. But for some massive stars, their power to shape still-forming systems is fateful and final.
In their youth, stars are surrounded by a rotating mass of gas and dust called a protoplanetary disk. Planets form in these disks, and the process can take millions of years. But stars have different masses and different radiation outputs that affect how planets form, or if they form at all.
New research examines how the powerful UV radiation from massive stars affects planet formation in disks. The research article is “A far-ultraviolet–driven photoevaporation flow observed in a protoplanetary disk.” It’s published in the journal Science, and the lead author is Olivier Berne from the Institute for Research in Astrophysics and Planetology, University of Toulouse, France.
The research looks at large stars in their first million years of life, when they’re not only young but extremely luminous. The researchers focused on several stars in the Orion Nebula and its stellar nurseries. The stars are at least ten times more massive than the Sun and are 10,000 times more luminous. What effect does their luminosity and all that radiation have on disks where planets form?
These powerful young stars emit high levels of Far-Ultraviolet (FUV) radiation, which has the power to remove mass from planet-forming disks. This power extends beyond their own immediate surroundings into the disks around neighbouring low-mass stars.
“Most low-mass stars form in stellar clusters that also contain massive stars, which are sources of far ultraviolet (FUV) radiation,” the researchers explain. “Theoretical models predict that this FUV radiation produces photodissociation regions (PDRs) on the surfaces of protoplanetary disks around low-mass stars, which affects planet formation within the disks.” The PDRs can span several hundred astronomical units (AU).
The researchers examined one protoplanetary disk that’s within range of energetic, high-mass stars residing in the Trapezium Cluster in the heart of the Orion Nebula. The five brightest stars in that cluster range from 15 to 30 solar masses, making them prime candidates to study PDRs in neighbouring planet-forming disks. The Orion Bar PDR is an often-studied and prototypical PDR.
The Orion Nebula. The Trapezium Cluster is above and to the right of the three stars in Orion’s Belt in this image. The stars in Trapezium are mostly responsible for illuminating Orion, and their powerful FUV energy can strip gas from the protoplanetary disks surrounding lower-mass stars nearby. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Robberto (Space Telescope Science Institute/ESA) and the Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The disk in the image, d203-506, is being bombarded by intense FUV radiation from the massive Trapezium stars. The FUV radiation is dispersing matter in the disk, inhibiting planet formation. According to the research, it’s impossible for a Jupiter-mass planet to form in this disk because the radiation is stripping matter away.
This figure from the research has an optical image from Hubble on the left. On the right is a JWST NIR image of the same region, including a zoomed-in view of the d203-506 disk. The dotted line marks a feature named the Orion Bar PDR. On the upper right of the Bar, the gas is fully ionized, and on the lower left, the gas is neutral. The smaller inset image of the disk shows a bright spot where jets from the embedded star are sending material out into space. Image Credit: Berne et al. 2024.
“Planet formation is limited by processes that remove mass from the disk, such as photoevaporation,” the authors write. “This occurs when the upper layers of protoplanetary disks are heated by x-ray or ultraviolet photons.” Once heated, the gas exceeds the escape velocity of the disk, and the gas leaves the system.
After the radiation drives mass out of the disk, it collects in a diffuse envelope around the disk.
This schematic from the research illustrates some of the forces involved in the d203-506 planet-forming disk. Features like the bright spot and the jets are visible but unlabelled in the JWST images preceding this one. The brown arrows show gas being driven out of the disk by the FUV radiation, which produces the tan envelope around the disk. The orange outline is the dissociation front. Image Credit: Berne et al. 2024.
The powerful FUV radiation dissociates molecular hydrogen into atomic hydrogen. The PDR marks the transition between molecular and atomic hydrogen. As the hydrogen is converted into atomic hydrogen, it becomes warmer, and the heating helps drive the photoevaporation of the hydrogen.
When the star inside the affected disk is more massive, that helps restrict the loss of hydrogen from the disk. Its gravity can help the disk retain matter, making it available for planet formation.
This all plays out relatively quickly in a disk. In the d203-506 disk, the star is only about 0.3 solar masses. The researchers write that in only about 0.13 million years, enough material will be removed from the disk to prohibit the formation of a Jupiter-mass planet. “This is faster than even very early planet formation,” the researchers write.
But powerful FUV radiation and the PDRs they produce do more than just inhibit the formation of gas giants. They shape other aspects of the future solar system as well.
“The effect affects the disk mass, radius, and lifetime, its chemical evolution, and the growth and migration of any planets forming within the disk,” the authors explain.
The Insights of Michio Kaku on UFOs and Advanced Civilizations: An Overview
The Insights of Michio Kaku on UFOs and Advanced Civilizations: An Overview
In a remarkable and enlightening conversation, Ross Coulthart, a seasoned investigative journalist, engaged with Michio Kaku, a renowned quantum physicist and a key proponent of string theory, to unravel the mysteries surrounding Unidentified Flying Objects. This discussion, initially part of a broader documentary effort, sheds light on the growing interest and acknowledgment of UFO phenomena within both the scientific community and the general public.
Skepticism and the Burden of Proof
Kaku, a professor at City College of New York, addressed the skepticism that often surrounds the existence of UFOs, highlighting a shift in the burden of proof. He underscored the importance of data, indicating that the military’s disclosure of extensive video evidence has been pivotal. This transparency challenges the longstanding requirement for individuals to prove the existence of anomalous objects, instead placing the onus on the military to demonstrate that these observations are not extraterrestrial.
Technological Marvels Beyond Human Capability
The interview delved into the capabilities of the objects observed, with Kaku explaining that the maneuvers and speeds documented far exceed current human-made aircraft or drones. This includes instances where objects have demonstrated the ability to travel at speeds up to Mach 20 and perform aerial feats that would subject any known life form to lethal g-forces, suggesting the possibility of drone technology beyond our comprehension.
The Possibility of Extraterrestrial Origin
Kaku candidly explored the possibility that these UAPs could be of extraterrestrial origin, acknowledging that while some military and government officials have started to admit this as a possibility, the scientific community remains cautious. He emphasized the significance of following the data, which seems to suggest a technology that is potentially thousands, if not millions, of years more advanced than ours.
Advanced Civilizations and Energy Manipulation
Discussing the theoretical framework for exceeding the speed of light—a boundary firmly established by Einstein—Kaku introduced concepts such as wormholes and the Alcubierre drive. These ideas, grounded in the general theory of relativity, suggest mechanisms through which advanced civilizations might traverse vast cosmic distances. However, Kaku also noted the immense energy requirements for such feats, positing that only civilizations far beyond our current technological capacity could achieve them.
The Implications of Contact
The conversation also touched on the societal and philosophical implications of contact with advanced extraterrestrial life. Kaku speculated on the reasons advanced beings might visit Earth and how humanity might perceive and interact with them. He stressed the importance of cautious engagement, drawing parallels with historical encounters on Earth that led to the downfall of less technologically advanced civilizations.
Looking Towards the Future
As the interview concluded, Kaku and Coulthart contemplated the future of humanity’s quest to understand and possibly interact with extraterrestrial life. Kaku’s reflections on the potential for advanced civilizations to exist within the vast expanse of the universe serve as a reminder of the humbling and awe-inspiring possibilities that lie beyond our current understanding.
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Professor Michio Kaku & Ross Coulthart interview IN FULL | UFO UAP News
This dialogue between Coulthart and Kaku not only highlights the evolving discourse surrounding UFOs and UAPs but also underscores the importance of scientific inquiry and open-mindedness in exploring the unknown frontiers of our universe. As humanity continues to advance technologically, the prospect of encountering or even understanding advanced extraterrestrial life remains one of the most intriguing and profound challenges of our time.
Europa Produce Less Oxygen than Previously Thought
Europa Produce Less Oxygen than Previously Thought
Using data from the Jovian Auroral Distributions Experiment (JADE) instrument onboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft, planetary scientists have calculated the rate of oxygen being produced at Jupiter’s icy moon Europa to be substantially less than most previous studies.
This illustration shows charged particles from Jupiter impacting Europa’s surface, splitting frozen water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen molecules; scientists believe some of these newly created oxygen gases could migrate toward the moon’s subsurface ocean, as depicted in the inset image.
Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SWRI / PU.
With an equatorial diameter of 3,100 km (1,940 miles), Europa is the fourth largest of Jupiter’s 95 known moons and the smallest of the four Galilean satellites.
The moon hosts an internal liquid ocean with potentially habitable conditions below a frozen crust.
Its surface is constantly bombarded by radiation that breaks the icy crust into oxygen and hydrogen, most of which are freed from the surface, escaping into space, or remain behind to form Europa’s atmosphere.
The abundance of these atmospheric gases and ions — and consequently their production rate at the surface — has mostly been inferred by remote sensing observations and has large uncertainties.
“Europa is like an ice ball slowly losing its water in a flowing stream,” said JADE scientist Dr. Jamey Szalay, a researcher at Princeton University.
“Except, in this case, the stream is a fluid of ionized particles swept around Jupiter by its extraordinary magnetic field.”
“When these ionized particles impact Europa, they break up the water-ice molecule by molecule on the surface to produce hydrogen and oxygen.”
“In a way, the entire ice shell is being continuously eroded by waves of charged particles washing up upon it.”
In the new study, Dr. Szalay and colleagues analyzed data from a flyby of Europa performed by the Juno spacecraft on September 29, 2022, which saw the spacecraft fly 353 km (219 miles) above Europa’s surface.
Using the JADE instrument, they extracted the abundance of various pickup ions, which are charged particles generated by the breakup of atmospheric neutrals when they collide with energetic radiation or other particles.
From these data, they calculate that approximately 12 kg of oxygen are produced at Europa’s surface every second.
This is at the lower end of the expectations inferred from previous models that ranged from 5 to 1,100 kg per second.
The results indicate there may be less oxygen on Europa’s surface than previously thought, and that this implies a narrower range to support habitability in Europa’s ocean.
“Our ability to fly close to the Galilean satellites during our extended mission allowed us to start tackling a breadth of science, including some unique opportunities to contribute to the investigation of Europa’s habitability,” said Juno’s principal investigator Dr. Scott Bolton, a researcher at the Southwest Research Institute.
“And we’re not done yet. More moon flybys and the first exploration of Jupiter’s close ring and polar atmosphere are yet to come.”
The findings were published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
J.R. Szalay et al. Oxygen production from dissociation of Europa’s water-ice surface. Nat Astron, published online March 4, 2024; doi: 10.1038/s41550-024-02206-x
The Global Aviation Encounter with Unidentified Aerial Phenomena
The Global Aviation Encounter with Unidentified Aerial Phenomena
In the vast expanse of our skies, pilots navigate not only the complexities of modern aviation but also, occasionally, the mysteries of the unexplained. Among these enigmas, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs) present a perplexing challenge, sparking intense discussions on aviation safety and the need for a concerted global response. Far from being confined to the realm of science fiction, encounters with UAPs have been reported by credible witnesses across the globe, igniting concerns about the potential risks they pose to flight safety.
One of the most compelling cases that underscore the seriousness of these encounters occurred in 1986, involving Japan Airlines Flight 1628 over Alaska. The crew reported an inexplicably large object, several times the size of their aircraft, trailing them for a considerable duration. The incident, characterized by the pilot’s vivid description of the object’s enormity and his own fear, is far from isolated. Similar encounters have been documented worldwide, suggesting that the phenomenon of UAPs is not only real but also widespread.
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These encounters often share common characteristics: highly advanced maneuverability that defies conventional aviation technology, the ability to appear and disappear from both sight and radar, and, most alarmingly, the potential to come dangerously close to commercial aircraft. Such near misses raise legitimate concerns over passenger safety and the need for a deeper understanding of UAPs.
Despite the growing body of evidence, the official response has been tepid at best. In the United States, the government’s formal study of UFOs (an earlier term for UAPs) concluded in 1969, leaving a vacuum filled by civilian researchers and a handful of dedicated organizations. However, the lack of official acknowledgment or investigation into these phenomena means that many near misses go unreported or are dismissed, leaving pilots and air traffic controllers without the support they need to understand or mitigate these risks.
Internationally, the response has been varied. Some countries have taken the initiative to study UAPs more openly. For example, France has established a governmental agency within its space studies center to investigate UAPs, bringing together experts from various fields to analyze sightings. Similarly, Chile and Peru have recognized the importance of these investigations, often focusing on the implications for aviation safety.
The need for a unified approach to understanding and addressing UAPs is evident. The establishment of organizations like the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP) is a step in the right direction, offering a confidential reporting system for aviation professionals. Yet, the challenge remains global, and the response must be equally comprehensive.
The implications of these unexplained encounters extend beyond the immediate safety concerns. They challenge our understanding of the skies we navigate and the technologies we’ve mastered. As we continue to explore the boundaries of aviation, the conversation around UAPs serves as a reminder of the mysteries that still lie beyond our grasp.
A global, collaborative effort to investigate UAPs could not only enhance aviation safety but also expand our scientific horizons. By embracing the unknown with an open mind and a rigorous scientific approach, we may one day unlock the secrets of these phenomena, turning today’s mysteries into tomorrow’s knowledge. Until then, the skies remain a frontier of both exploration and uncertainty, a reminder of the endless quest for understanding in the vast expanse above us.
SpaceX and NASA recently performed full-scale qualification testing of the docking system that will connect SpaceX’s Starship Human Landing System (HLS) with Orion and later Gateway in lunar orbit during future crewed Artemis missions. Based on the flight-proven Dragon 2 active docking system, the Starship HLS docking system will be able to act as an active or passive system during docking. Image Credit: SpaceX
The Apollo Program delivered 12 American astronauts to the surface of the Moon. But that program ended in 1972, and since then, no human beings have visited. But Artemis will change that. And instead of just visiting the Moon, Artemis’ aim is to establish a longer-term presence on the Moon. That requires more complexity than Apollo did. Astronauts will need to transfer between vehicles.
All of that activity requires a reliable spacecraft docking system.
When Artemis astronauts blast off from Earth, they’ll be in the four-seat Orion spacecraft. Orion will take them to lunar orbit, where two will transfer into the Starship HLS, and two will remain in Orion. Starship HLS will deliver them to the lunar surface. In the future, the Lunar Gateway will be in orbit around the Moon, and astronauts will move from Orion to the Gateway to the Starship HLS.
These transfers are complicated and risky maneuvers. The docking system that will make this work is called SpaceX’s Starship HLS docking system. It’s based on SpaceX’s successful Dragon 2 docking system. The Dragon 2 system allows the Dragon 2 spacecraft to dock with the ISS so crew and equipment can be transferred. It’s been in use since 2020.
NASA and SpaceX are busy testing the new Starship HLS docking system. They recently completed ten days of testing at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas. They conducted more than 200 different docking scenarios involving different speeds and angles. The results from this full-scale testing will feed into ongoing computer models of the system, which will, in turn, feed into future testing and design.
This graphic shows the Artemis III Concept of Operations. Docking and crew transfers are a critical stage in the missions. Image Credit: NASA
The system has both an active and a passive mode. When two spacecraft dock, one is active, and the other is passive. The active one is called the chaser, and the other is the target.
During this round of tests, NASA and SpaceX demonstrated the soft capture procedure. In passive capture, the chaser extends its soft capture system (SCS) while the target spacecraft’s system remains retracted. The chaser does all the work, employing latches and other mechanisms to grab the target spacecraft and complete the docking.
HLS requirements state that there must be redundancy in crew egress/ingress. The soft capture procedure seems to address this if the docking system works while one docking system remains retracted.
This is just the latest round of tests. SpaceX has already reached a series of important milestones for the Starship HLS. Those milestones involved power generation, communications, guidance and navigation, propulsion, life support, and space environments protection.
While watching powerful rockets being tested and launched takes up a lot of attention, there’s far more to successful missions than just launch vehicles. According to NASA, “the Human Landing System program is at the center of Artemis, designed to yield groundbreaking science, develop and utilize lunar surface resources and leverage what we learn at the Moon for future Mars missions.” Docking systems might not garner much attention, but they’re obviously a critical part of success.
Through that lens, any progress on Artemis is good news because, on other fronts, the news is not always good. Artemis was initially scheduled to launch in 2025. But it’ll be at least a year late, and NASA says that SpaceX will need to perform more launches before the Artemis mission is given the go-ahead.
How Startups on Earth Could Blaze a Trail for Cities on Mars
If future explorers manage to set up communities on Mars, how will they pay their way? What’s likely to be the Red Planet’s primary export? Will it be Martian deuterium, sent back to Earth for fusion fuel? Raw materials harvested by Mars-based asteroid miners, as depicted in the “For All Mankind” TV series? Or will future Martians be totally dependent on earthly subsidies?
In a new book titled “The New World on Mars,” Robert Zubrin — the president of the Mars Society and a tireless advocate for space settlement — says Mars’ most valuable product will be inventions.
“We’re talking about creating a new and potentially extremely inventive branch of human civilization, which will benefit humanity as a whole enormously,” he says in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast. “But moreover, we’ll play from that strength to make money.”
Zubrin isn’t waiting until humans step foot on Mars to get started.
“We are in the process of drawing up business plans for two major initiatives — one in the artificial intelligence area and the other in the synthetic food production area,” he says. “And the idea is, fairly soon we’re going to be presenting these business plans to investors, with the idea of starting companies devoted to these two different technological ideas that we have put together.”
Zubrin says it’s too early to reveal exactly what these companies would do, but he claims the ventures have the potential to become extremely profitable. The AI concept could be “a billion-dollar idea,” he says.
“They’re both addressing critical questions for Mars that have tremendous terrestrial spin-off potential,” Zubrin says.
Income from the ventures would be split between investors and the Mars Society, which would use the funds to support a Mars Technology Institute. “We just did a fundraising drive and raised $150,000 to get this thing started,” Zubrin says.
Robert Zubrin is the founder and president of the Mars Society. (Credit: Mars Society CC BY-SA 3.0)
Once things get rolling, Zubrin envisions setting up a headquarters for the institute — perhaps in the Pacific Northwest or in Colorado (where the Mars Society is currently based).
The concept of using earthly ventures to support off-Earth adventures is by no means new. Back in 2015, when SpaceX founder Elon Musk was recruiting engineers for the Starlink satellite internet network, he said the profits from Starlink would go toward funding a city on Mars.
“Looking in the long term, and saying what’s needed to create a city on Mars — well, one thing’s for sure: a lot of money,” Musk told an audience of about 400 techies (including prospective employees) in Seattle. “So we need things that will generate a lot of money.”
Zubrin says the challenge of establishing settlements on Mars will promote invention in the same way that the challenges facing pioneers in the United States led to innovations ranging from steamboats to light bulbs to iPhones.
“Mars is even going to be much more technologically selective in terms of who goes there, and also a much more challenging environment,” he says. “It’s going to be America to the third power in terms of what it will be able to invent.”
He argues that settlers will be forced to innovate when it comes to developing nuclear fission and fusion plants for energy, finding ways to conserve and recycle resources for sustaining Martian communities, and maximizing food production amid the planet’s harsh conditions. All those innovations can then be exported back to Earth.
Zubrin has laid out the case for Mars settlement in a series of books that goes back to, well, “The Case for Mars” in 1996. He also wrote a fictional account of a crewed mission to Mars, titled “First Landing.” And he has appeared in more than a dozen TV shows about Mars and space exploration, including “Mars,” a National Geographic series that blends science fiction and science fact.
“The New World on Mars” deals with thematic territory that spreads out much more broadly than what was covered in “The Case for Mars.” And Zubrin says SpaceX’s rise is the reason why.
For years, Musk and his team have been focusing on development of a reusable super-heavy-lift launch system known as Starship. The next test flight could take place within weeks — and it’s likely to be only a matter of time before Starship offers a reliable way to get to Earth orbit and beyond. Musk envisions building a fleet of the rockets to send thousands of settlers to Mars, in line with his long-term ambition to make humanity a multiplanet species.
“The New World on Mars: What We Can Create on the Red Planet” by Robert Zubrin. (Diversion Books)
Zubrin assumes that Starship or something like it will be a success — which means there’s less need to dwell on the nuts and bolts of interplanetary transport in “The New World on Mars.”
“This book essentially says, ‘Look, it’s soon going to be possible for humans to go to Mars,’” he says. “So the key question is not how do we do that, but what do we do when we get there?”
Zubrin goes into great detail about how Mars’ harsh realities could affect every aspect of daily life, from energy production and terraforming to marriage and parenthood. For example, he suggests that Martians might clean their clothes simply by airing them out in the Red Planet’s low-pressure, bacteria-killing environment.
Zubrin went so far as to test the technique by stuffing dirty clothes into a laboratory vacuum chamber. “The only downside is that stains are not removed, so they don’t look clean. One remedy for this would be to use camo coloration for clothes, as it does not show stains,” he writes. “I predict this will be the style.”
“The New World on Mars” is more optimistic about Red Planet settlement than “A City on Mars,” a book by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith that was featured on Fiction Science last November. That book argues that the drive to create space settlements is premature — and that a host of uncertainties need to be cleared up first. For example, the Weinersmiths say that much more research should be done on the potential effects of Mars’ reduced gravity on human reproduction and development. They also raise concerns about the potential international conflicts over property rights in space.
As you’d expect, Zubrin strongly disagrees with such views — in his book, on the podcast, and in a book review published by Quillette. “They say there’s no point going into space. There’s nothing to be gained from it, and therefore, there should be laws to stop it, which makes no sense whatsoever,” he says.
In Zubrin’s view, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty’s prohibition on claims of national sovereignty won’t tie the hands of Mars settlers. Instead, it would make it easier for them to stake their own claims. “If a Martian colony is set up, and declares property rights within its vicinity, [governments on Earth] have no jurisdiction to contradict it,” Zubrin says. “They have explicitly signed away their rights to interfere with Mars settlement.”
And what about the health effects of living on Mars? “OK, so yeah, we don’t know about the long-term effects of one-third gravity on people, but we’ll find that out,” Zubrin says. “When we send our first exploration missions to Mars, I believe it’ll be OK.”
The way Zubrin sees it, the main attraction for Mars settlers won’t be deuterium, or asteroid riches, or shiny red obsidian. It’ll be something money can’t buy: the freedom to create.
“I believe that there’s nothing more powerful than the creative power of life,” he says. “The grass finds a way to break through the pavement. Life finds a way. … And freedom is going to find a way.”
US Government Researched About UFOs Disguised As Clouds, UFO Sighting News.
US Government Researched About UFOs Disguised As Clouds, UFO Sighting News.
Now here is an interesting situation. The US Gov department of defense and the USAF both considered that UFOs could be cloaking within disk shaped clouds and did research recording the craft in the once top secret UFO report call the Condon Reports.
Some Intelligent Civilizations Will Be Trapped on their Worlds
With thousands of exoplanets discovered so far, astronomers are learning how different planets can be. What if intelligent alien civilizations arise on extremely different habitable worlds? Some civilizations could develop space exploration technologies, but others would be trapped underwater, under ice, or in enormous gravity wells. How could they escape? Image Credit: DALL-E
Some Intelligent Civilizations Will Be Trapped on their Worlds
Evolution has produced a wondrously diverse variety of lifeforms here on Earth. It just so happens that talking primates with opposable thumbs rose to the top and are building a spacefaring civilization. And we’re land-dwellers. But what about other planets? If the dominant species on an ocean world builds a technological civilization of some sort, would they be able to escape their ocean home and explore space?
We have no way of knowing if other Extraterrestrial Intelligences (ETIs) exist or not. There’s at least some possibility that other civilizations exist, and we’re certainly in no position to say for sure that they don’t. The Drake Equation is one of the tools we use to talk about the existence of ETIs. It’s a kind of structured thought experiment in the form of an equation that allows us to estimate the existence of other active, communicative ETIs. Some of the variables in the Drake Equation (DE) are the star formation rate, the number of planets around those stars, and the fraction of planets that could form life and on which life could evolve to become an ETI.
In his new research article, Quiroga comes up with two new concepts that feed into the DE: the Exoplanet Escape Factor and Fishbowl worlds.
Planets of different masses have different escape velocities. Earth’s escape velocity is 11.2 km/s (kilometres per second), which is more than 40,000 km/h. The escape velocity is for ballistic objects without propulsion, so our rockets don’t actually travel 40,000 km/h. But the escape velocity is useful for comparing different planets because it’s independent of the vehicle used and its propulsion.
“It could therefore be the case that an intelligent species on these planets would never be able to travel into space due to sheer physical impossibility.”
Elio Quiroga, Universidad del Atlántico Medio
Super-Earths have much greater masses and much higher escape velocities. While there’s no exact definition of a Super-Earth’s mass, many sources use the upper bound of 10 Earth masses to define them. So, an ETI on a Super-Earth would be facing a different set of conditions than we do here on Earth when it comes to space travel.
This simple graph from the research article shows how escape velocity rises with planetary mass. The x-axis shows Earth masses, and the y-axis shows the required escape velocity. Image Credit: Quiroga, 2024.
In this work, Quiroga implements the Exoplanet Escape Factor (Fex) and the Exoplanet Escape Velocity (Vex.) By working with them, he arrives at a sample of escape velocities for some known exoplanets. Note that the composition of the planets isn’t critical, only their masses.
This figure from the research shows how easy or difficult it would be to reach space from some known exoplanets. Green indicates that escape is possible, orange indicates likely problems, and red indicates the practical impossibility of space travel. Image Credit: Quiroga 2024.
Quiroga points out that a planet with a Fex value of <0.4 would struggle to hold onto any atmosphere anyway, making life unlikely. Conversely, a Fex value of >2.2 would make space travel unlikely. “Values of Fex > 2.2 would make space travel unlikely for the exoplanet’s inhabitants: they would not be able to leave the planet using any conceivable amount of fuel, nor would a viable rocket structure withstand the pressures involved in the process, at least with the materials we know (as far as we know, the same periodic table of elements and the same combinations of them govern the entire universe).”
“It could, therefore, be the case that an intelligent species on these planets would never be able to travel into space due to sheer physical impossibility,” Quiroga writes. In fact, they may never conceive of the idea of any type of space travel at all. Who knows?
Of course, space exploration isn’t a one-way street. Astronauts have to return from space, and a planet’s mass affects that. Re-entry imposes its own difficulties on a Super-Earth ten times more massive than our planet. The atmospheric density also plays a role. A spacecraft needs to control its velocity and frictional heating when re-entering, and that’s more difficult on a more massive planet, just as escaping is.
Quiroga also talks about the idea of the Fishbowl Worlds. These are the planets above Fex 2.2 from which escape is physically impossible. What could life for an intelligent species be like on a Fishbowl world?
Artist’s impression of the surface of a “Hycean” world. According to Quiroga, if a civilization arose on an ocean world, it could end up being a Fishbowl World where the inhabitants have no chance of ever exploring space. Image Credit: University of Cambridge
In his research article, Quiroga invites us to be speculative with a nod to science fiction. Imagine an ocean world that’s home to an intelligent species. In a fluid environment, unaided communication travels much further than in an atmosphere like Earth’s. Unaided signals could travel for hundreds of kilometres. In an environment like that, “… communication between individuals could be feasible without the need for communication devices,” Quiroga explains. So, the impetus to develop communication technologies might not be there. In that case, Quiroga says, the technology may not have developed and the civilization might not be considered “communicative” at all, one of the keys to the definition of an ETI.
“Telecommunications technology might never emerge on such a world, even though it could be home to a fully developed civilization,” Quiroga writes. “Such a civilization would not be “communicative” and would not be contemplated in the Drake equation.”
Other circumstances could effectively trap civilizations on their homeworlds. On a planet with continuous, unbroken cloud cover, the starry sky would never be visible. How would that affect a civilization? Can you wonder about the stars if you can’t see them and don’t know they’re there? Of course not. A similar thing is true in a binary star system with no nighttime. Stars would never be visible and would never be objects and sources of wonder.
Ocean worlds present a similar conundrum. On ocean worlds or moons with warm oceans and frozen ice shells kilometres thick, any inhabitants would have extremely limited views of the Universe they inhabit. It’s difficult to imagine a technological civilization arising in an ocean under several kilometres of ice. But we’re in no position to judge whether that’s possible or not.
Jupiter’s moon, Europa, has a warm ocean under a thick icy shell. Are there other worlds out there like Europa? What would it be like for intelligent creatures that lived in a world like this? They would never see the stars in the sky, their own stars, or any other planets in their solar systems. (Credit: NASA/JPL/Galileo spacecraft)
Quiroga’s Exoplanet Escape Factor (Fex) can help us imagine what kinds of worlds could host ETIs. It can help us anticipate the factors that prevent or at least inhibit space travel, and it brings more complexity into the Drake Equation. It leads us to the idea of Fishbowl Worlds, inescapable planets that could keep a civilization planet-bound forever.
Without the ability to ever escape their planet and explore their solar systems, and without the ability to communicate beyond their worlds, could entire civilizations rise and fall without ever knowing the Universe they were a part of? Could it happen right under our noses, so to speak, and we’d never know?
The Search for an Alien Base Off the California Coast
The Search for an Alien Base Off the California Coast
In recent years, the quest to understand the unknown has taken researchers to the depths of the ocean, particularly off the California coast, where an extraordinary discovery has sparked widespread intrigue. This area, often compared to the infamous Bermuda Triangle for its mysterious electromagnetic anomalies, has become the focal point of investigations into unidentified submerged objects (USOs) and potential extraterrestrial activity.
The Investigation Begins
Led by researcher Ben Hanson, a team embarked on a daring exploration to uncover the secrets hidden beneath the waves. Their journey took them to the Farallon Trench, a deep-sea canyon on the southwest side of Catalina Island, known for its unusual electromagnetic signatures. The trench, reaching depths of over a mile, lies within a dozen miles of numerous USO sightings, suggesting a connection between the location and unexplained phenomena.
Diving into the Unknown
Hanson and his team planned a dive to 120 feet below the surface to observe the trench’s abrupt descent. The objective was to explore the possibility of an underwater alien base in these waters. Equipped with diving gear and communication devices, they ventured into the depths, aiming to gather evidence and document their findings.
Encountering Anomalies
As they approached the undersea ledge, the team encountered unexpected challenges. Communication with the surface became sporadically unavailable, and Hanson reported a significant deviation in his compass readings—a 45-degree shift, an anomaly nearly three times stronger than that caused by a lightning strike. Such a drastic change in magnetic orientation is rare, with the largest known natural magnetic anomaly on Earth, located in Russia, affecting compasses by only 15 degrees.
The Magnetic Hotspot
Further analysis revealed that the area they were exploring was one of the most intense electromagnetic hotspots on the planet, marked by a small red dot on the backside of Catalina Island. This discovery raised questions about whether these anomalies were natural or indicative of something more extraordinary.
Speculations and Theories
The investigation proposed that extraterrestrial visitors might utilize the area’s natural magnetism to conceal their activities. The presence of military facilities nearby added to the intrigue, suggesting that the location’s geological features could be strategically advantageous for hiding advanced technology or bases.
Broader Implications
The findings from Hanson’s exploration contribute to a growing body of evidence suggesting that our planet may host more secrets than we realize. The idea of an alien base off the California coast, while speculative, opens the door to fascinating discussions about extraterrestrial life, advanced technology, and the mysteries lying in the depths of our oceans.
VIDEO:
UFO Investigation Exposes “Mini Bermuda Triangle” Off California Coast | UFO Witness
Watch this video created by "Fade to Black" radio host Jimmy Church about the Malibu underwater anomaly.
The search for an alien base off the California coast has unveiled a “mini Bermuda Triangle” marked by intense electromagnetic anomalies and unexplained phenomena. While definitive evidence of extraterrestrial activity remains elusive, the investigation into this mysterious region challenges our understanding of the natural world and the possibility of otherworldly visitors. As research continues, the quest for answers only deepens the mystery of what lies beneath the waves.
A mysterious black ring filmed in the sky moving slowly from side to side over Argentina had some locals wondering if a UFO was visiting their town.
The footage, taken from a farm in Argentina’s Tucuman province, had many area residents stumped as they tried to guess what it was that they were seeing.
A mysterious black ring filmed in the sky moving slowly from side to side over Argentina had some locals wondering if a UFO was visiting their town.
The footage, taken from a farm in Argentina’s Tucuman province, had many area residents stumped as they tried to guess what it was that they were seeing.
Some believed it was some sort of smoke ring. Others thought it may have had something to do with the weather. Another hypothesis was that it was some sort of swarm of insects. A few even thought perhaps it was a signal from aliens.
The strange black ring was estimated by some to measure over 1,600 feet in size.
Then it vanished without a trace.
There was good reason for concern because Argentina has been a bit of a hotspot for UFO and alien rumors over the past few years.
This also isn’t the first time that a mysterious black ring has appeared in the sky over Argentina.
In 2019, a construction worker was working in Buenos Aires when he and his crew spotted a similar black, circular UFO in the sky.
It also happened in 2015 when a giant black, circular ring appeared in the sky above Puertos del Fruto.
That particular black ring was eventually blamed on a fireworks display that was set off during a performance at the Parque de la Costa amusement park for a performance called “Zombie Invasion.”
While some plausible explanations have been given for all of these sightings, one man in Argentina named Werner Jaisli constructed a “landing strip” for UFOs called the “Star of Hope.”
He built the UFO monument in the middle of the Argentinian desert between 2008 and 2012, but shortly after it was built he disappeared. It was eventually learned that he had passed away in December 2021 without ever seeing the aliens who he says telepathically ordered him to create the ovniport.
Miniature Cyprinid Fish Can Produce Sounds over 140 dB, Ichthyologists Say
Miniature Cyprinid Fish Can Produce Sounds over 140 dB, Ichthyologists Say
Danionella cerebrum, a translucent fish species of only 12 mm length, produces high amplitude sounds exceeding 140 dB (re. 1 µPa, at a distance of one body length) — comparable to a jet engine during take-off in 100 m distance.
Danionella cerebrum has a pair of extrinsic, indirect sonic muscles that house the drumming cartilage. When a sonic muscle contracts, the fifth rib is pulled anteriorly and builds tension as it pulls the cartilage. The sudden release of the cartilage causes it to rapidly strike the swim bladder, producing a short, loud pulse. A burst of pulses is generated with either bilaterally alternating or unilateral muscle contractions. In sum, this mechanism enables loud and stereotyped sounds that can be elicited in structured sequences, making it a unique solution for acoustic communication and ultrafast skeletal motion in vertebrates surpassing the limitation of muscle contraction speed. Image credit: Ralf Britz, Senckenberg Natural History Collections.
“The snapping shrimp can generate a popping sound of up to 250 dB with its claws,” said Dr. Ralf Britz, an ichthyologist at the Senckenberg Natural History Collections.
“The mating calls of the flightless kakapo reach 130 dB, and elephants can produce noise of up to 125 dB with their trunks.
“Fishes, on the other hand, are generally considered to be rather quiet members of the animal kingdom.”
“However, there are certain fish species that can be surprisingly loud. For example, the male plainfin midshipman fish attracts its females with an audible vibrato of around 100 Hz and 130 dB.”
In the new study, Dr. Britz and his colleagues examined Danionella cerebrum, a miniature teleost fish with the smallest known vertebrate brain.
“This tiny fish can produce sounds of over 140 dB at a distance of 10 to 12 mm — this is comparable to the noise a human perceives of an airplane during take-off at a distance of 100 m and quite unusual for an animal of such diminutive size,” Dr. Britz said.
“We tried to understand how the fish manages this and what mechanisms are responsible for this achievement.”
Using a combination of high-speed video, micro-computed tomography, gene expression analysis, and finite difference methods, the researchers found that Danionella cerebrum males possess a unique sound-generating apparatus that includes drumming cartilage, a specialized rib, and a fatigue-resistant muscle.
“This apparatus accelerates the drumming cartilage with a force of over 2,000g and shoots it against the swim bladder to produce a rapid, loud pulse,” Dr. Britz said.
“These pulses are strung together to produce calls with either bilaterally alternating or unilateral muscle contractions.”
Due to its small size and lifelong optical transparency, Danionella cerebrum is an emerging model organism in biomedical research.
The species is native to shallow and turbid waters of Myanmar.
“We assume that the competition between the males in this visually restrictive environment contributed to the development of the special mechanism for acoustic communication,” Dr. Britz said.
The study’s results challenge the conventional notion that the speed of skeletal movement in vertebrates is limited by muscle movement.
“Understanding the extraordinary adaptation of Danionella cerebrum expands our knowledge of animal locomotion and highlights the remarkable diversity of propulsion mechanisms in different species,” the authors said.
“This contributes to a broader understanding of evolutionary biology and biomechanics.”
“The sounds produced by other Danionella species have not yet been studied in detail; it would be interesting to learn how their mechanism of sound production differs and how these differences relate to evolutionary adaptation.”
“In combination with its lifelong transparency, the genus Danionella offers a unique opportunity to compare the neural mechanisms underlying the sound generation between the different species.”
The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Verity A.N.O. Cook et al. 2024. Ultrafast sound production mechanism in one of the smallest vertebrates. PNAS 121 (10): e2314017121; doi: 10.1073/pnas.2314017121
Laurent Palka is a microbiologist at France's National Museum of Natural History.
Just over five years ago, on 22 February 2019, an unmanned space probe was placed in orbit around the Moon. Named Beresheet and built by SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries, it was intended to be the first private spacecraft to perform a soft landing. Among the probe’s payload were tardigrades, renowed for their ability to survive in even the harshest climates.
The mission ran into trouble from the start, with the failure of “star tracker” cameras intended to determine the spacecraft’s orientation and thus properly control its motors. Budgetary limitations had imposed a pared-down design, and while the command center was able to work around some problems, things got even trickier on 11 April, the day of the landing.
On the way to the Moon the spacecraft had been travelling at high speed, and it needed to be slowed way down to make a soft landing. Unfortunately during the braking manoeuvre a gyroscope failed, blocking the primary engine. At an altitude of 150 m, Beresheet was still moving at 500 km/h, far too fast to be stopped in time. The impact was violent – the probe shattered and its remains were scattered over a distance of around a hundred metres. We know this because the site was photographed by NASA’s LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) satellite on 22 April.
So what happened to the tardigrades that were travelling on the probe? Given their remarkable abilities to survive situations that would kill pretty much any other animal, could they have contaminated the Moon? Worse, might they be able to reproduce and colonize it?
Tardigrades are microscopic animals that measure less than a millimetre in length. All have neurons, a mouth opening at the end of a retractable proboscis, an intestine containing a microbiota and four pairs of non-articulated legs ending in claws, and most have two eyes. As small as they are, they share a common ancestor with arthropods such as insects and arachnids.
Most tardigrades live in aquatic environments, but they can be found in any environment, even urban ones. Emmanuelle Delagoutte, a researcher at the CNRS, collects them in the mosses and lichens of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. To be active, feed on microalgae such as chlorella, and move, grow and reproduce, tardigrades need to be surrounded by a film of water. They reproduce sexually or asexually via parthenogenesis (from an unfertilised egg) or even hermaphroditism, when an individual (which possesses both male and female gametes) self-fertilises. Once the egg has hatched, the active life of a tardigrade lasts from 3 to 30 months. A total of 1,265 species have been described, including two fossils.
Tardigrades are famous for their resistance to conditions that exist neither on Earth nor on the Moon. They can shut down their metabolism by losing up to 95% of their body water. Some species synthesise a sugar, trehalose, that acts as an antifreeze, while others synthesise proteins that are thought to incorporate cellular constituents into an amorphous “glassy” network that offers resistance and protection to each cell.
During dehydration, the tardigrade’s body can shrink to half its normal size. The legs disappear, with only the claws still visible. This state, known as cryptobiosis, persists until conditions for active life become favourable again.
Depending on the species of tardigrade, individuals need more or less time to dehydrate and not all specimens of the same species manage to return to active life. Dehydrated adults survive for a few minutes at temperatures as low as -272°C or as high as 150°C, and over the long term at high doses of gamma rays of 1,000 or 4,400 Gray (Gy). By way of comparison, a dose of 10 Gy is fatal for humans, and 40-50,000 Gy sterilises all types of material. However, whatever the dose, radiation kills tardigrade eggs. What’s more, the protection afforded by cryptobiosis is not always clear-cut, as in the case of Milnesium tardigradum, w
An image of a tardigrade as seen under a microscope. (Image credit: STEVE GSCHMEISSNER/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty Images)
Lunar life?
So what happened to the tardigrades after they crashed on the Moon? Are any of them still viable, buried under the moon’s regolith, the dust that varies in depth from a few metres to several dozen metres?
First of all, they have to have survived the impact. Laboratory tests have shown that frozen specimens of the Hypsibius dujardini species travelling at 3,000 km/h in a vacuum were fatally damaged when they smashed into sand. However, they survived impacts of 2,600 km/h or less – and their “hard landing” on the Moon, unwanted or not, was far slower.
The Moon’s surface is not protected from solar particles and cosmic rays, particularly gamma rays, but here too, the tardigrades would be able to resist. In fact, Robert Wimmer-Schweingruber, professor at the University of Kiel in Germany, and his team have shown that the doses of gamma rays hitting the lunar surface were permanent but low compared with the doses mentioned above – 10 years’ exposure to Lunar gamma rays would correspond to a total dose of around 1 Gy.
But then there’s the question of “life” on the Moon. The tardigrades would have to withstand a lack of water as well as temperatures ranging from -170 to -190°C during the lunar night and 100 to 120°C during the day. A lunar day or night lasts a long time, just under 15 Earth days. The probe itself wasn’t designed to withstand such extremes and even if it hadn’t crashed, it would have ceased all activity after just a few Earth days.
Unfortunately for the tardigrades, they can’t overcome the lack of liquid water, oxygen and microalgae – they would never be able to reactivate, much less reproduce. Their colonising the Moon is thus impossible. Still, inactive specimens are on lunar soil and their presence raises ethical questions, as Matthew Silk, an ecologist at the University of Edinburgh, points out. Moreover, at a time when space exploration is taking off in all directions, contaminating other planets could mean that we would lose the opportunity to detect extraterrestrial life.
40 Mile alien base on planet Mars, absolute proof of alien civilization, UFO Sighting News.
40 Mile alien base on planet Mars, absolute proof of alien civilization, UFO Sighting News.
Guys I found this alien base on Mars and made this short video for you to inspect. The building itself is over 40 miles long and 4 miles wide or more. On most maps this object does not exist and yet it was over looked on this particular map that I used.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
Ukrainian soldier who filmed UFO 'bigger than the Empire State Building' over warzone in Donetsk tells DailyMail.com it sat deathly still against winds and was 'hotter than anything I've ever seen'
Ukrainian soldier who filmed UFO 'bigger than the Empire State Building' over warzone in Donetsk tells DailyMail.com it sat deathly still against winds and was 'hotter than anything I've ever seen'
Ukrainian troops recorded a 'very hot' 1300-ft-long UFO over Donetsk battlefield
Unit drone pilot says he and his battalion have 'never seen things like this before'
A disc-shaped object longer than the height of the Empire State Building emerged from the horizon of Ukraine's embattled Donetsk province last Friday, hovering eerily still a mile off the ground, a soldier has told DailyMail.com
That soldier, a drone operator, had cautiously guided his infrared quadcopter 500-feet for a reconnaissance mission, struggling against high winds, when he suddenly spotted the flat, 1,300-foot-long UFO, which stood motionless despite those winds.
In an interview from the warzone, the soldier, who is with the Ukrainian army's 406th Battalion, said he and his fellow servicemen had 'never seen things like this before.'
Initially, I thought that it was something new invented by the Russians,' he added, 'but then I understood... 'No! It might be [a] UFO.''
The 'craft' was 36 to 54 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than any other object this 406th drone pilot says he has ever tracked in the warzone — ruling out atmospheric phenomena, balloons and known enemy aircraft, he claimed.
'Why isn't it moving?' troops with the Ukrainian's 406th Battalion can be heard debating as they witness a large UFO hovering, deadly calm, over their warzone
The 'craft' was 36 to 54 degrees hotter in Fahrenheit than any other object the Ukrainian military drone operator (above) has tracked in the warzone — ruling out atmospheric phenomena, balloons and known enemy aircraft, as he told DailyMail.com via an interpreter
'We were surprised, very surprised,' the soldier, whose first name is Vadym, recalled via an interpreter.
But Vadym told DailyMail.com that this 'surprise' was not quite fear, because he and his fellow soldiers have had to learn to suppress those emotions amid their effort to defend Ukraine from a now two-year-long invasion by Russia.
'We got scared on the 24th of February 2022,' Vadym said. 'After that, we aren't scared of anything.'
The 406th's drone pilot said he'd gotten his craft about 'a few kilometers' into its recon mission before spotting the UFO.
'I looked right and saw this,' Vadym said.
'After 30 seconds, we decided to film it. All the emotions we had at that moment, they're in the video... You you can hear it.'
As Vadym and his fellow 406th unit members scrambled to make sense of the apparent object, their confusion is palpable in the 17-second video, shared exclusively with DailyMail.com this week.
In between the swearing ('Holy s***') and the excitement ('What the f*** is this?'), one member of the battalion asks: 'Why isn't it moving?'
Another wonders: 'Why can't he fire missiles at us? What do you mean?'
Aside from the object's unusual heat signature, it appeared to more readily withstand the strong wind, but Vadym told DailyMail.com that no other extreme weather could help explain the unusual sighting.
'There was a very strong wind,' Vadym said. 'The wind was flowing into the same direction as we were flying basically.'
'But it [the UFO] just stayed at the same place — and the sky was clear,' he said. 'So no clouds, nothing.'
'We were surprised, very surprised,' the soldier, whose first name is Vadym, recalled - adding that this 'surprise' was not quite fear: he and his fellow soldiers (above) have had to learn to suppress those emotions while defending Ukraine from a now two-year-long Russian invasion
Ukrainian's 406th Battalion (right) was gifted their commercial, DJI brand Mavic 3T thermal-imaging drone (left) via the fundraising efforts of the DeepInspire Foundation, war correspondent Joe Lindsley, who runs Lviv Lab media center, and other humanitarian activists
'I use this [infrared, heat vision] filter very often,' the unit drone operator said, 'and just got experience so I can differentiate how bright an object should be according to what temperature.'
Based on that experience, Vadym stated that the UFO 'was very hot. I'm guessing 20 to 30 degrees [Celsius] hotter than other objects.'
Vadym estimated that the roughly 1,300 ft (400 meters) long UFO was also about 328 feet (100 meters) tall.
The apparent object, craft or phenomena, was caught on the camera of a commercial DJI brand Mavic 3T thermal-imaging drone on February 23, 2024.
The UFO, spotted around 9:02pm local time, appeared to be approximately 37 to 40 miles away from the soldiers, he said, in the direction of Donetsk Oblast, the southeastern Ukrainian province that has been most dominated by Russia's forces.
Vadym requested that his last name and other key details of the encounter not be disclosed for reasons of operational security amid the Ukrainian Armed Forces' (UAF) effort to repel the Russian invasion.
A spokesperson for Mavic's manufacturer DJI told DailyMail.com that, while it could not help in explaining what is present in the UFO footage, an equipment error could have played a role - but Vadym doubted this
But he noted that, while 'it's hard to count' just how many times he has personally flown his unit's Mavic 3T, it was probably 'more than 10,000 times.'
'We've seen different things [in the skies],' he said, adding, 'We've never seen things like this before.'
One potential explanation for the UFO was the well-known optical illusion phenomena called 'Fata Morgana,' a mirror-like atmospheric mirage produced by a 'temperature inversion' of hot air in the upper atmosphere.
But Vadym is adamant that what he saw was real.
'It wasn't a mirage,' Vadym told DailyMail.com, 'because in thermal vision you can't see a mirage. You can see it only with your naked eye.'
He continued to explain that the object did not ripple, shimmer or otherwise alter its shape, which would have been a tell-tale sign of a Fata Morgana mirage.
'Often, a Fata Morgana changes rapidly,' as the flight safety guide SKYbrary notes. 'The mirage comprises several inverted (upside down) and erect (right side up) images that are stacked on top of one another.
But according to Vadym, 'The object was in a stable form. It wasn't moving.'
That said, the UFO, whatever it was, wasted no time leaving its perch above Donetsk.
'At another position, we had another drone and put it up in about three minutes,' Vadym said, '[but] they didn't see it [the UFO] at that moment.'
'When we returned to the same position later, there was nothing there.'
The 406th unit member also relayed his recollection that the UFO did not ripple, shimmer or otherwise alter its shape, which would have been a tell-tale sign of a Fata Morgana mirage
In one photographic case of Fata Morgana (above), the Anthem of the Seas cruise ship, an 168,000-tonne Royal Caribbean liner, looked like it was hovering above the water
This past Tuesday, a spokesperson for Mavic's manufacturer DJI told DailyMail.com that, while it could not help in explaining what is present in the 406th's UFO footage, an equipment error could have played a role.
UFOs are 'not of human origin,' US Representative Anna Paulina Luna from Florida told Grant Mitterlehner this week on his podcast. She described government obstruction as she investigated UFOs.
But Vadym noted that he was confident the Mavic 3T's systems were functioning normally at the time of the encounter.
The red 'warning' or 'error' bar visible in the upper left-hand portion of the drone's display, he said, related to the consumer-grade drone's GPS navigation.
'It is a warning that we were flying without satellites on 100 percent manual controls,' Vadym told DailyMail.com.
'Because Russia does everything they can to deny Ukrainians the ability to fly over and understand [...] their plans.'
Vadym noted that similar combat-specific issues prevented the battalion from storing a recording of their UFO thermal-imaging footage directly on the Mavic drone itself.
'We remove the memory cards from the drones when we are doing flights over enemy territories,' Vadym said.
'There is a risk that if we lose a drone because of enemy electronic countermeasures, they could pick up the drone, they could pick up the card, and read what's there.'
When pressed again on how he and his fellow 406th Battalion members felt about the UFO, Vadym said, 'The best I could say would be that for this video to have never happened, for us [the Ukrainian military] to never have to do the work we do.'
In a better world, Vadym said, the Russian invasion of February 2022 'never happened' and 'we just use civilian drones to film weddings.'
Al tien jaar onopgelost: MH370 'grootste mysterie uit moderne luchtvaart'
Al tien jaar onopgelost: MH370 'grootste mysterie uit moderne luchtvaart'
Artikel door RTL Nieuws
Tien jaar geleden verdween vlucht MH370 van de radar met 239 mensen aan boord. Een van de grootste zoekacties in de geschiedenis van de luchtvaart mocht niet baten: nog altijd blijft de toedracht van de verdwijning een mysterie, dat velen tot op de dag van vandaag bezighoudt. "Als je veel geld en tijd hebt, is niets onmogelijk."
Tot nu toe zijn enkel onderdelen van het toestel teruggevonden
Dit weekend komen de families van de nabestaanden samen voor een herdenking in de Maleisische hoofdstad Kuala Lumpur. Nog altijd zitten zij vol vragen over het verdwenen toestel.
Vlucht MH370 van Malaysia Airlines vertrok op zaterdag 8 maart 2014 even na middernacht van de internationale luchthaven van Kuala Lumpur. Aan boord van de Boeing 777 zaten 2 piloten, 10 bemanningsleden en 239 passagiers. Zij kwamen uit 14 verschillende landen.
Het gros van de passagiers kwam uit China (153 personen) en Maleisië (50 personen). De enige Nederlandse inzittende was de 50-jarige Surti Dahlia uit Amsterdam. Zij hoopte in Maleisië haar grote liefde te ontmoeten.
De bestemming van de vlucht, de Chinese hoofdstad Peking, is nooit bereikt. Het toestel maakte 38 minuten na het opstijgen voor het laatst contact met de luchtverkeersleiding. De piloot wenste hen een goede nacht.
Uit koers
Wat er vervolgens precies is gebeurd in de cockpit, weet niemand. Achteraf is uit satellietgegevens gebleken dat het toestel van koers is gewijzigd en uiteindelijk - vermoedelijk zonder brandstof - in een zeer afgelegen deel van de Indische Ocean is neergestort.
"De plek waar het toestel verdween, is zo uitgestrekt en onmetelijk groot", zegt luchtvaartdeskundige Joris Melkert, die de zaak al die jaren is blijven volgen. "Er komt bijna niemand in dit deel van de oceaan, omdat er niets te halen valt. Ten tijde van het ongeluk was alleen een Noors vrachtschip in de omgeving. Waarvan ook nog de vraag was wat dat schip daar nu precies deed."
Al tien jaar onopgelost: MH370 'grootste mysterie uit moderne luchtvaart'
Het betreffende gebied wordt door zeevaarders de 'roaring forties' genoemd. Dit vanwege de ligging op de veertigste breedtegraad en de krachtige, onstuimige westenwind die er de dienst uitmaakt. Diezelfde wind en metershoge golven hebben de zoektocht vanaf het begin erg moeilijk gemaakt. Net als de diepte van het water: de Indische Oceaan is er op sommige plekken wel 4 kilometer diep.
Er zijn door de jaren uiteenlopende theorieën gevormd over de toedracht van de vermoedelijke crash in zee. Er zou misschien brand of een gebrek aan luchtdruk zijn ontstaan aan boord, waarop de piloten de dichtstbijzijnde luchthaven hebben willen bereiken. Dat dit niet is gelukt, zou mogelijk komen doordat beide piloten hun bewustzijn hebben verloren. Ook is gespeculeerd dat de piloot het toestel bewust liet crashen.
'Erger dan speld in hooiberg'
Alle denkbare middelen zijn bij het zoeken ingezet, van vliegtuigen en helikopters, tot onderzeeërs, drones en duikers. Het vermoedelijke crashgebied is zo'n 120.000 vierkante kilometer groot, legt Melkert uit. "Dat is drie keer het grondgebied van Nederland en dat is echt gigantisch. Dit is nog erger dan zoeken naar een speld in een hooiberg en de reden dat het complete wrak nooit is gevonden."
Door de jaren heen spoelden wel losse brokstukken aan, onder meer bij het Franse eiland Réunion, Madagaskar en Tanzania, maar de zwarte doos is nooit aangetroffen. Dat was al snel buitengewoon lastig: de batterij van zo'n 'flightdatarecorder' in een Boeing 777 is na dertig dagen leeg en zendt dan geen signalen meer uit.
De hoop is altijd blijven bestaan dat de romp van het toestel zou worden gevonden. Zoals gebeurde bij de verdwenen vlucht AF447 van Air France. Daarbij werd in 2011 (bijna twee jaar na de ramp) met behulp van robotduikboten op vierduizend meter diepte alsnog de romp van het toestel gevonden voor de kust van Brazilië.
In september vorig jaar werd via een nieuwe techniek, met behulp van radiogolven, een kleiner gebied van zo'n 130 bij 74 kilometer groot vastgesteld waarbinnen het wrak zich ergens moet vinden. Dat gebied ligt op ruim 1500 kilometer ten westen van Australië.
'Het kan nog altijd'
Want de zoektocht is nog altijd niet opgegeven. Familieleden en een groepje experts hopen dat het maritieme bedrijf Ocean Infinity, gespecialiseerd in zeebodemonderzoek, binnenkort een nieuwe poging waagt en zo eindelijk het mysterie oplost. Maar volgens sommige critici heeft de Maleisië overheid daar geen trek in omdat het teveel geld zou kosten.
Volgens Melkert kan het wrak na al die jaren nog altijd worden gevonden. "Het toestel bestaat grotendeels uit aluminium dat onder water afgesloten van zuurstof nog eeuwen kan blijven liggen. Wellicht dat het bedolven ligt onder sediment, maar als je veel geld en tijd hebt, is niets onmogelijk. Het wrak zal niet snel vergaan en moet er nog zijn. De vraag is nog altijd: waar?"
Investigation of History’s Largest UFO Mass Sightings
Investigation of History’s Largest UFO Mass Sightings
On a quiet evening in late November 2009, the serene atmosphere of a small town nestled in the shadows of the Andes mountains in northernArgentinawas shattered by an event that would etch its name into the annals of unexplained phenomena. The town of J V Gonzalez, located in the province of Salta, became the epicenter of what is considered one of the most significantUFO sightingsin recent history. This incident, characterized by the mass witness of an unidentified flying object, has since puzzled experts and enthusiasts alike, sparking debates and investigations into its origins and implications.
The Night That Changed Everything
It was approximately 15 minutes past midnight on November 25, 2009, when the tranquility of J V Gonzalez was disrupted by the appearance of a mysterious object in the sky. Described by over 30 witnesses as cigar-shaped, this object was not just another celestial body gracing the night sky. It hovered about 300 meters above the town, emitting a sparkling glow that captivated the onlookers. What made this sighting particularly noteworthy was the unanimity among the eyewitnesses regarding what they saw, a rare occurrence in mass sighting events.
VIDEO:
Experts Investigate One of History’s Largest UFO Mass Sightings | The Unexplained Files
As quickly as it appeared, the object began moving southward, and then, as if by some unseen command, it vanished into the night. Almost immediately after its disappearance, the town was plunged into darkness due to a sudden power outage, leaving the residents in a state of bewilderment and fear. It wasn’t until several hours later, the following morning, that power was restored, but the questions and the mystery surrounding the night’s events only deepened.
Seeking Answers
In the aftermath of the sighting, local journalist Daniel Barbosa made attempts to shed light on the incident by contacting the electric company, seeking a rational explanation for the blackout. Was it merely a coincidence, or had the UFO been responsible for the town’s sudden loss of electricity? Despite his efforts, and the undeniable experience shared by more than thirty individuals, official explanations were conspicuously absent, leaving the community to speculate and form their own theories.
The event prompted connections to be drawn to another peculiar occurrence in the same area 14 years prior, involving unexplained explosions and a subsequent search that led nowhere. Tony Galvano, a local resident, believed that these events were not only related but were indicative of something far beyond the ordinary.
The Quest for Understanding
The lack of concrete evidence or official acknowledgment has not deterred the pursuit of answers. The incident in J V Gonzalez stands as a testament to the enduring fascination and intrigue surrounding UFO sightings. It raises important questions about the nature of these phenomena, the existence of extraterrestrial life, and the challenges inherent in seeking truth in the face of the unexplained.
As investigations continue and theories abound, the 2009 mass UFO sighting in Argentina remains a compelling narrative, inviting us to explore the boundaries of our understanding and to consider the possibilities that lie beyond the known confines of our world. Whether viewed through the lens of skepticism or belief, the incident serves as a reminder of the mysteries that still await unraveling, encouraging a deeper inquiry into the unknown.
One fishing influencer posted a video of the clouds from below on TikTok, set to the theme music from Netflix's horror hit 'Stranger Things.' But, in reality, a well-known flying object was the cause: airplanes.
Captured from above late this January, by NASA's Terra satellite, the 'Cavum clouds' are 'so odd that people sometimes argue they are signatures of flying saucers,' according to the US Space Agency, which released the overhead image this week.
The true source of Cavum clouds, sometimes called 'hole-punch clouds' and 'fallstreak holes,' had eluded scientists for nearly 70 years, until meteorologists finally cracked the case in 2010.
The strange shapes, they found, are produced when aircraft fly through 'altocumulus clouds' — patchy banks of small clouds that form between 7,000 and 23,000 feet up.
BlacktipH, an online saltwater fishing show whose YouTube channel boasts over 1,000,000 subscribers, posted its own video of the clouds from below as they occurred. The fishing influencer set its TikTok video to the theme music from Netflix's horror hit ' Stranger Things'
A bizarre chain of clouds north of the Florida Keys looks like a giant floating jellyfish. Captured in January, by NASA 's Terra satellite, these 'Cavum clouds' (above) are 'so odd that people sometimes argue they are signatures of flying saucers,' according to the US Space Agency
Scientists with the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), which manages the National Science Foundation's center for atmospheric research, led the 2010 and 2011 studies that solved the riddle of the Cavum clouds.
These middle-altitude 'altocumulus clouds,' UCAR's team found, are comprised of unusually pure water vapor that is 'supercooled,' which means it has not transformed into ice, despite these floating droplets' chilly temperature of 5 degrees Fahrenheit.
But as the plane's wings or its propellers' movements change the pressure around these droplets, a process called 'adiabatic expansion' occurs in the ensuing vortices of turbulent air breaking the delicate conditions that kept the vapor liquid.
'Ice crystals beget more ice crystals as the liquid droplets continue to freeze,' as NASA Earth Observatory's Adam Voiland wrote in a statement.
A global network of astronomers keeps its eyes on the skies to warn the public about potential asteroids that could strike the planet. If one is spotted, they will jump into action to warn us. Lindley Johnson, the Lead Program Executive for the NASA Planetary Defense Coordination Office, explained how this would happen.
'The ice crystals eventually grow heavy enough that they begin to fall out of the sky, leaving a void in the cloud layer.'
The 'adiabatic' cooling produced by these pressure and volume changes, UCAR found, effectively drops the supercooled water vapor down another 36 degrees Fahrenheit, creating a spontaneous freeze or 'homogeneous ice nucleation.'
Although these newly formed ice crystals frequently fall, leaving the eerie 'hole punch' effect, sometimes they don't.
'The falling ice crystals are often visible in the center of the holes as wispy trails of precipitation that never reach the ground,' Voiland at NASA noted, 'features called virga.'
Latin for 'rod' or 'branch,' virga is the term meteorologists use to describe the streaks, wisps or tendrils of precipitation that fall from a cloud but evaporate in mid-air before ever reaching the ground.
While these descriptions of the behavior of the supercooled droplets that make up altocumulus clouds may sound exotic, the phenomenon is actually not rare.
At any given time, altocumulus clouds cover about 8 percent of Earth's surface.
The UCAR team's work that finally explained the atmospheric mechanism that produces 'hole punch clouds' combined data from aircraft flights, satellite observations and weather models to develop a robust theory of the process.
As first published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society in 2010, UCAR scientists were able to show that the angle at which a plane passed through the altocumulus cloud bank changed the features of the Cavum 'hole punch.'
When planes passed through at a sharp angle, the researchers reported, smaller and more circular Cavum were produced.
But, if the craft punched through the cloud bank at a more gradual and shallow angle, a longer sister phenomenon, called 'canal clouds,' with more lengthy virga trails, were produced instead.
Above, a representative of the NASA Earth Observatory identified key parts of their stunning January 30, 2024 satellite image of the Cavum cloud and its trailing 'Canal cloud'
NASA's Earth Observatory detected both kinds in the unique formation off the coast of the Florida Keys on January 30, 2024.
The space agency labeled both this week, when they posted the satellite photo as their Image of the Day.
But, even with this aerial mystery solved, it's easy for many in the moment to be awed by the unusual voids and arresting blue gaps of a Cavum cloud formation.
BlacktipH, an online saltwater fishing show whose YouTube channel boasts over 1,000,000 subscribers, posted their own complimentary video of the clouds from below as they occurred in the final days of January.
'Has anyone seen clouds like these before? We were fishing off Key West #strange #weather #clouds,' BlacktipH asked on TikTok.
One fan, who goes by Edit Profile, replied: 'I've seen enough Alien invasion movies to know exactly what those are.'
This incredible photograph shows a supernatural-looking sunrise with clusters of purple clouds resembling UFOs floating in the sky.
The stunning purple and orange display was captured by gardener Adrian Sparrowhawk, 50, who said the sky was a 'spooky' sight.
The golden morning light streaked through the dark purple clouds which dappled the sky above Tetbury, Gloucestershire, with six clusters of thicker clouds floating underneath, like flying objects from a sci-fi movie.
Adrian said he stopped to photograph the sunset as he set to work at 6.40am on Monday morning, as he had 'never seen anything like it before'.
He said: 'I just thought I had to capture it, it was absolutely wonderful. I've never seen anything like it. It looked really spooky at that time in the morning.'
He added that he has since been told the cloud formations are known as 'hole-punch clouds'. Also known as a 'fallstreak hole', hole-punch clouds are formed when the water temperature in the clouds is below freezing, but the water, in a supercooled state, has not yet frozen.
Experts say that the bizarre shapes are caused by aircraft. They form when part of the cloud layer forms ice crystals which are large enough to fall into water droplets - water below 0°C but not yet frozen.
These water droplets need a tiny particle to freeze or to be cooled below -40 °C. Aircraft punching through this cloud layer can cause air to expand and cool as it passes over the aircraft wings or propeller.
This change in temperature can be enough to encourage the supercooled droplets to freeze and fall from the cloud layer in this distinctive pattern.
Sometimes the holes in fallstreak formations can expand up to 30 miles (50 km) across within an hour of appearing. When ice particles form quickly, it causes a domino effect as the water droplets connect with the crystals.
These get heavier and then start to fall all of a sudden - leaving a large hole in the cloud. The wispy clouds that form in the centre of the hole are the water particles falling.
Passing aircraft are thought to be the reason behind the formation of these clouds, since a drop in pressure caused by their wings or propeller tips cools the air quickly.
Rainbows are sometimes seen with fallstreak clouds, thanks to light refracting off the water droplets.
This image from ESA’s Mars Express shows an area close to Mars’ north pole. The image comprises data gathered by Mars Express’ High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on April 14, 2023.
Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin.
Mars’ permanent north polar ice cap is a stack of water ice and dust layers up to 3 km thick and approximately 1,000 km in diameter.
These are divided into four stacked ‘packets’ of different thicknesses, which in turn are made up of finer layers
These layers contain information about the climate dating back several million years in the history of Mars.
The deposits were formed by atmospheric precipitation of dust and water ice and by direct frost formation.
They consist mainly of water ice, with fine dust sediments making up between 10 and 15% of the total.
They probably reflect changes in the orbit of Mars and the inclination of the planet’s axis of rotation, whose orientation is much more unstable than that of the Earth.
It varies in several cycles with periods ranging from a few thousand to a few million years.
The varying solar radiation results in a strongly varying climate, especially at the poles. It is assumed that the north polar ice cap is currently growing.
“The terrain surrounding Mars’ north pole, known as Planum Boreum, is fascinating,” said members of the Mars Express team.
“The pole itself is covered in layers and layers of fine dust and water ice; these stack several km thick and stretch out for around 1,000 km.”
“While most of this material is not visible here, you can see the beginnings of Planum Boreum to the right of the frame, with some subtle wrinkling showing where layers of material are starting to build up.”
“Ground has also built up more starkly in steps, as is most clearly visible in the topographic view of this region below.”
“The lowest altitude regions are blue/green and the highest are red/white/brown.”
“These layers formed as a mix of dust, water ice and frost settled on the Martian ground over time.”
“Each layer holds valuable information about Mars’ history, telling the story of how the planet’s climate has changed over the past few million years.”
“In Martian winter, the layers are topped by a thin cap of carbon dioxide ice a couple of meters thick. This cap completely disappears to the atmosphere each Martian summer.”
The left part of the image is dominated by a vast, elongated swathe of rippled sand dunes, stretching out for more than 150 km within this frame alone.
This wrinkled, turbulent appearance is highly at odds with the smooth and more pristine terrain visible to the right.
This smooth region lacks clear signs of erosion and has avoided being hit by incoming rocks from space — an indicator that the surface is very young, likely rejuvenating every year.
“Between these two extremes sit two semicircular cliffs, the larger of which is around 20 km wide,” the researchers said.
“Within the curves of these cliffs sit frost-covered sand dunes.”
“The grand scale of the cliffs is clear from the dark shadows they cast on the surface below — their steep, icy walls tower up to a kilometer high.”
“These two cliffs are located at a so-called polar trough, a feature created as wind pushes into and wears away the surface.”
“These show up as rippled ridges in the terrain and are common in this region, creating the distinctive spiral-like pattern of the polar plateau.”
In the realm of the unexplained and the mysterious, the subject of alien activity has long fascinated and perplexed humanity. For years, whispers and rumors have suggested that physical evidence of extraterrestrial encounters exists, hidden away from public scrutiny. This evidence, if brought to light, could revolutionize our understanding of the universe and our place within it.
The Roswell Enigma and Beyond
One of the most iconic incidents in the annals of UFO lore is the Roswell incident of 1947. Initially reported as a recovered “flying disc,” the military’s subsequent retraction and declaration of a weather balloon did little to quell the storm of speculation. This event marked the beginning of a series of claims regarding the recovery of extraterrestrial technology and encounters with unknown entities. Such incidents have fueled ongoing debates about the existence of secret research programs and the possibility of reverse-engineered alien technology.
The Mystery of Area 51
Area 51, a name synonymous with secrecy and conspiracy, stands as a testament to the enduring intrigue surrounding alien activity. Rumored to be a site for the examination of extraterrestrial artifacts and possibly even non-human beings, this highly classified Air Force facility epitomizes the intersection of fact and fiction. The lore surrounding Area 51 underscores the public’s hunger for answers about what the government may be hiding.
Wright Patterson Air Force Base: A Repository of Secrets?
Wright Patterson Air Force Base, with its legendary Hangar 18, is another focal point for speculation. Alleged to be the final resting place for remnants of the Roswell incident and other extraterrestrial recoveries, the base is enveloped in tales of advanced technology and alien biology. These stories persist, fueled by the government’s opaque stance on UFO investigations and the cloak of secrecy surrounding military research.
The Call for Transparency
Amidst these tales and theories lies a growing demand for transparency. The recent acknowledgment by officials of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) has reignited calls for the declassification of information relating to extraterrestrial encounters. Advocates argue that understanding these phenomena is crucial for national security and scientific advancement.
The Vatican and Extraterrestrial Life
Even the Vatican has been drawn into discussions about extraterrestrial life, highlighting the profound implications such discoveries could have on theology and human belief systems. The possibility of intelligent life beyond Earth challenges our most fundamental understandings of existence and our place in the cosmos.
A New Era of Disclosure?
The landscape of alien disclosure is changing. With former intelligence officers and government officials hinting at the existence of non-human biologics and advanced technologies, the once-firm line between science fiction and science fact is blurring. As the public’s appetite for knowledge grows, the question remains: will the future bring a new era of openness, or will the shadows continue to hold their secrets?
VIDEO:
Alien Activity – Physical Evidence Hidden For Years | Alien Disclosure Files 2024 | S1E11
In conclusion, the quest for evidence of alien activity transcends mere curiosity; it touches on the very essence of human inquiry. Whether through hidden artifacts or whispered accounts, the pursuit of truth remains a driving force in our collective imagination. As we stand on the brink of potential disclosures, the mysteries of the universe beckon with the promise of revelations yet to come.
Amerikaanse maanlander Odysseus stuurt (wellicht) laatste foto vanop de maan:
Amerikaanse maanlander Odysseus stuurt (wellicht) laatste foto vanop de maan: "Slaap zacht, Odie"
Artikel door Wim De Maeseneer
"Slaap zacht, Odie. We hopen nog van je te horen." Op het socialemediakanaal X heeft het Amerikaanse bedrijf Intuitive Machines de (wellicht) laatste foto gepost die zijn maanlander Odysseus heeft kunnen maken vanop de maan.
"Voor de stroom helemaal leeg was, kon Odysseus nog een passend afscheid verzenden", schrijft het bedrijf bij de foto. "Deze foto, van 22 februari (de dag van de landing, red.), die we vandaag hebben ontvangen, is een subtiele herinnering aan de aanwezigheid van de mensheid in het heelal."
Intussen is de nacht aangebroken op de maan en krijgen de zonnepalen geen stroom meer. De kans dat het ruimtetuig na de lange maannacht, die 14 dagen duurt, opnieuw ontwaakt, is klein. Het ruimtetuig is niet ontworpen om de extreem ijskoude temperaturen te overleven. Op de zuidpool van de maan kan het tot min 230 graden Celsius worden.
Maar het is ook niet helemaal uitgesloten. De Japanse maanlander, die op 19 januari op het maanoppervlak landde, heeft zijn eerste maannacht verrassend genoeg wel overleefd. Met dat verschil dat het Japanse ruimtetuig dichter bij de evenaar geland is, waar het 's nachts zo'n 100 graden minder koud wordt.
Intuitive Machines hoopt in elk geval dat Odysseus over 3 weken, wanneer de zon hoog genoeg staat, opnieuw zal ontwaken. Het bedrijf heeft gisteren nog software in de maanlander kunnen programmeren, zodat hij zelf een teken geeft wanneer hij terug ontwaakt.
Gebroken landingspoot
Odysseus zal de geschiedenis ingaan als de eerste maanlander van een privébedrijf die erin geslaagd is om te landen op de maan. De eerdere pogingen van andere bedrijven waren telkens mislukt. Het is ook de eerste Amerikaanse maanlanding in meer dan 50 jaar.
De landing zelf liep nochtans niet van een leien dakje. Enkele uren voor de afdaling ontdekte het team dat er iets fout was met de hoogte- en snelheidsmeters.
Er werd een oplossing gevonden, waardoor de maanlander uiteindelijk toch zacht kon landen, maar niet helemaal zoals gehoopt. Het toestel kwam harder neer dan gepland en 1 van de landingspoten brak af, waardoor Odysseus op zijn zij kantelde.
Eerst werd gedacht dat de missie daardoor enkele dagen minder lang zou duren. Uiteindelijk heeft Odysseus het toch uitgehouden tot de laatste zonnestralen op de zonnepanelen vielen.
Op deze foto is te zien hoe één van de landingspoten afbreekt tijdens de landing op het maanoppervlak
Intuitive Machines is 1 van de bedrijven die in opdracht van de Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie NASA meewerkt aan het uiteindelijke doel om opnieuw astronauten op de maan te zetten. Het bedrijf sloot in 2019 een contract om voor 118 miljoen dollar (ruim 108 miljoen euro) een maanlander te bouwen en 6 NASA-experimenten mee naar de maan te vervoeren.
Alle 6 de instrumenten hebben intussen ook wetenschappelijke gegevens kunnen verzamelen en verzenden. NASA spreekt daarom van een geslaagde missie.
Tijdens de vlucht naar de maan is ook voor de eerste keer met succes een raketmotor op vloeibare methaan en zuurstof ontstoken in de ruimte. Dat is ook de technologie in de motoren van de (voorlopig nog experimentele) Starship-raket die SpaceX naar de maan én naar Mars hoopt te sturen.
Methaan past in de langetermijnstrategie om ooit mensen naar Mars te brengen, omdat er methaan kan worden aangemaakt op de rode planeet. Op die manier zouden astronauten op Mars zelf hun brandstof kunnen maken om terug naar de aarde te vliegen.
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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 73 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
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