This Week's Top Space Stories!

Photo Credit: A. Verdier

Photo Credit: NASA

Photo Credit: USPS via collectSPACE.com

Photo Credit: OneSpace

Photo Credit: Bill Ingalls/NASA

Photo Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

Photo Credit: Aubrey Gemignani/NASA

Photo Credit: copyright MPS/NASA/HormesDesign

Photo Credit: Donald E. Davis/NASA/JPL

8. Greenhouse gases and dinosaur extinction

Earth may take a long time to recover from human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new study that analyzed the dinosaur extinction period. Researchers analyzed the fossil record from before and after the dinosaurs were wiped out. They found that the carbon dioxide gas released into the atmosphere after the fatal asteroid impact 66 million years ago warmed Earth's climate for 100,000 years.

[Full Story: Dino-Killing Asteroid Impact Warmed Earth's Climate for 100,000 Years]

Photo Credit: A. Verdier

Photo Credit: Shutterstock

10.  Why Earth isn't a red planet

The precious stone garnet may be the reason why Earth isn't red like Mars, according to a new study published May 16. Earth's surface would rust if there was slightly more iron lying on it, and scientists wondered what was pulling iron out from the planet's crust and preventing the reddening. Scientists studied rocks at a site in southern Arizona, and found that the region where an ancient volcano spewed rocks onto Earth's surface correlated with an abundance of garnet stones.

[Full Story: Something Is Sucking Iron Out of Earth's Crust, and Scientists Think They Know What]

Ghost or UFO? Video triggers controversy, MUFON probe is on

A video showing an alleged spirit on the ground that suddenly shoots up to the sky in the most mysterious manner is generating a heated debate on spirits to aliens.

A peek at what will go down in Indian Wells this June, when it becomes the epicenter of the search for aliens

Seekers have been wandering the desert in search of answers at least since Moses. Some might say also Zarathrustra.

But the search for answers about UFOs, ancient aliens and mysterious megalithic monuments has become so popular in this desert that producers Paul Andrews and Victoria Gevoian are moving their annual Contact in the Desert conference from Joshua Tree, a reputed vortex of metaphysical energy, to the Renaissance Indian Wells Resort & Spa, where the Republican Koch brothers lead conservative think tanks.

Georgio A. Tsoukalos, star of “Ancient Aliens,” will speak at “Contact in the Desert.”

Courtesy photo

The June 1-4 conference was moved, Andrews said, partly because its international audience was seeking more comfort than it was getting in the high desert. But most guests come to hear the world-class speakers, participate in panel discussions and conduct workshops on subjects such as UFO and alien abduction documentation.

If you watch TV programs like “Ancient Aliens” or read books like “Chariots of the Gods,” you know the marquee names like Giorgio A. Tsoukalos and Erich Von Daniken. But the 50 speakers at this year’s Contact in the Desert also include professors, investigators and even former Congressman Merrill Cook, R-Utah, who has demanded greater disclosure of government files on extraterrestrial sightings.

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This conference isn’t purely academic. It will include a field trip to the mysterious Giant Rock near Landers. Programs such as NightVision SkyWatch will have participants don night vision goggles and search the skies for UFOs under the guidance of former FBI agent Ben Hansen, host of SyFi’s “Fact or Faked: The Paranormal Files.”

Contact in the Desert is even building a 360-dome on a Renaissance lawn so guests can digest programs, such as the origin of matter, in 3-D augmented reality. Andrews, who had a mysterious experience as a kid, is serious about promoting dialogue on issues long relegated to esoterica. But he and Gevoian are event producers, so they'll break up the intellectual discourse with programming such as a Saturday night magic show, which prompted the first skeptical question in a wide-ranging Desert Sun interview.

DESERT SUN: Why do you have a magic show, which is illusion or trickery, when you’re trying to prove that many of these unexplained phenomenon are real?

GEVOIN: It’s like, this is such a serious subject for so many people, it’s a little levity. It just lightens things up and makes people smile.

You have workshops on how to locate UFOs and I notice you had a sighting in 2016. Did it come out of a workshop?

GEVOIN: Actually, every year we have what is called the NightVision Experience, and we’ve had sightings almost every single year (at it). But it just so happened that we had a film crew (in 2016). They were going out to give us B role of people looking up at the stars with the night vision goggles. They happened to be there when the sightings took place, so, we have the footage on our website.

MORE: Off the grid and on the edge: Community and isolation in California's high desert

MORE: Sound bath a 'transformative' experience

Victoria Gevoian is a producer of this year's Contact in the Desert conference taking place at the Renaissance Indian Wells Resort.

Courtesy of Contact in the Desert

ANDREWS: (Radio host) Jimmy Church witnessed it first-hand and went on the radio nationally and talked about it two or three hours. I’ve been to a lot of shows and, as far as I know, we’re the only show that ever demonstrated an actual sighting and was able to document it.

What made you think it was a UFO?

ANDREWS: The movement. It was moving in a way that no known craft that we know of could move.

GEVOIN: Any time it does 90-degree turns and it moves around all over the place, you go, “Wait, what’s going on there?”

The New York Times ran a story about the Pentagon’s secret Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program that was shut down in 2012.  Do you think there’s more interest in your subject matter because of news stories like that?

ANDREWS: Definitely. The New York Times doesn’t publish something casually. They have enough sources at this point that they think there’s something significant going on and I think that has been a catalyst to the renewed interest in this whole field. It’s not just UFOs. It’s also a lot of what Giorgio Tsoukalos is doing on the History Channel.

GEVOIN: Right. “Ancient Aliens” and Forbidden Archaeology is huge. We are bringing scientists, NASA whistle-blowers, high-ranking military personnel, FBI people. archaeologists focused on forbidden archaeology, and we have the grandfather of them all, Erich Von Daniken.

MORE: Columnist's experience at second Contact in the Desert

MORE: Koch brothers have their own conference in the desert

Erich Von Daniken (shown here) popularized theories about extra-terrestrials visiting earth with a bestselling book and successful feature film called “Chariots of The Gods.”

The Clarion Ledger (1996)

ANDREWS: I’ll give you an obvious example. There’s no way the culture that existed in Europe even 2,500 years ago had the technology or the slave power or whatever you want to call it to build such incredibly precise monuments as the pyramids. So, the thesis goes that there’s enough of these kinds of anomalies around the Earth to suggest a probable solution is that there’s an extra-terrestrial interaction with our planet going back perhaps tens of thousands of years.

An alien figurine stands stoic as Contact in the Desert attendees browse UFO theory books and other souvenirs on Friday, May 29, 2015.

Brett Kelman/The Desert Sun

GEVOIN: And also the study on Antarctica. There are a lot of things going on in Antarctica and we have people who have the most up-to-date information on that.

I was going to ask if you think the government has files on things like whether there was an Atlantis in Antarctica (being discussed at 2:15 p.m. Friday). Has the government studied this and are they hiding it?

ANDREWS: Absolutely. What’s going on is, the ice caps are melting and as they’re melting they’re revealing more and more structures. Also, the government’s level of infrared technology has been able to go deeper into the earth to see structures they’ve never been able to see before. It’s no accident that (former Secretary of State) John Kerry just happened to go down to Antarctica a couple months ago.

But, how do you jump from observing something in infrared to a conclusion that some ancient alien, or the Anunnaki were there?

Paul Andrews is a producer of Contact in the Desert, which is exploring the theme, "Full Disclosure."

Courtesy of Contact in the Desert

ANDREWS: I didn’t necessarily make that leap. What I did say is there is some anomalous things that have never been discovered. It goes back to, how did these things get built? Who built them? Peasant slaves on a starvation diet? You mention the Anunnaki and to me they’re key to this whole thing. The Anunnaki were written about extensively by Zachariah Sitchin in his 13-book series. Essentially where his information came from were these ancient clay tablets found first in Mesopotamia but then in other very ancient civilizations. Pretty much they all tell the same story of the Anunnaki coming to Earth and building these structures and mining minerals and creating a hybrid race that was essentially a group of humans in service to the so-called gods. He makes a very strong case. I would say even stronger than Erich Von Daniken. But it’s been carried forward by a number of other people, most notably by Giorgio Tsoukalos.

MORE: The argument for Sitchin's thesis

MORE: The argument against Sitchin's thesis

When we’re talking about gold-mining by the Anunnaki, I have to think, why do superior beings need gold? It’s like saying God needs gold in heaven. But you make that a topic of conversation.

ANDREWS: A number of people propound that thesis based on these tablets that have been transcribed by Stichin and others. So, we include it as part of a broader conversation on UFOs and ancient aliens.

GEVOIN: It’s important that we show all these different ways to look at these subjects and expose people to new ideas.

My feeling is, when you even have someone like (attorney) Daniel Sheehan, who has represented the Lakota tribe and investigated Watergate and UFOs, it’s so all-over-the-place you tend to think it’s a gathering of conspiracy theorists.

ANDREWS: Let’s step back for a second. Daniel Sheehan also represented Harvard Professor John Mack, who wrote one of the best, most academic books on the abduction phenomena, and he documented all of his work. As a result, it created a furor within the Harvard faculty and Daniel Sheehan stepped in to defend him and allowed him to retain his tenure.

I’m not trying to deprecate Daniel Sheehan, I’m just saying your speakers are all over the map. So, I’m wondering, is the government studying all of these issues and not being transparent, creating a need to show what they’re studying?

ANDREWS: The key here is disclosure. Everybody who’s in this field in any serious level believes the government isn’t giving us full disclosure of what they know. That’s why Victoria and I decided to make the theme of this year’s show, Full Disclosure. They’re keeping it hidden and discouraging people like us from talking about it.

So, how much data are they collecting and what is the scope of their research?

ANDREWS: There’s an excellent book about this by one of our speakers, Michael Sallala, called “Exo Politics (Political Implications of the Extraterrestrial Presence).” It talks about the relationship between government and this phenomenon, and Michael Sallala is a Ph.d. He’s done terrific research on this.

But has the government researched topics you’re discussing like crop circles and their connections to megalithic monuments around the world? Are they keeping that from us?

ANDREWS: No. I think the research they’re doing is tied in with the defense establishment: Are these sightings a threat.

So, how do you make the leap that these monuments…

ANDREWS: Were built by extraterrestrials? There again, we go back to the clay tablets that were written thousands of years ago that are just now being deciphered.

GEVOIN: You’ll see a symbol that is clearly an airplane, but (airplanes) didn’t exist hundreds of years ago. So, we use forbidden archaeology to lay the groundwork for study. We’re trying to figure out if what we’re seeing has any connection to these beings flying around, doing astounding things aeronautically.

I find it interesting that you have a former Congressman, Merrill Cook.

ANDREWS: He is very supportive of the full disclosure process. He does not believe the government is fully disclosing everything and, when a high-elected official stands up and says he knows for a fact that the government is not disclosing everything they know, people pay attention. That’s one of the reasons people come to our show. They know intuitively there’s something missing and they want someone to verify it for them.

GEVOIN: Another thing that draws people to the show, there are individuals that have had their own sightings. So, they’re confused. They have no one to talk to. When they come here, they’re surrounded by others who have had these experiences and they share them at what we call the Cosmic Café.

I’m interested in the disclosure aspect and the fact that it doesn’t seem to be a Republican or a Democratic thing. Luis Elizondo (who the New York Times said ran the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program) quit the Pentagon over lack of disclosure and his program was cut during the Obama Administration. Is the government afraid of giving credibility to this research?

ANDREWS: Exactly. It’s a nonpartisan issue and it’s tied into defense. There’s a book about this called “Day After Roswell” about how this major in the Air Force was tasked with taking the technology from downed UFOs and feeding it into the American defense industry. I think that’s at the core of it. They feel a lot of this technology is giving them an edge over other countries. They’re helping us develop as a society, but then there’s the abduction phenomenon, which they are powerless to prevent and they don’t want to admit to the American public that they’re powerless.

So, is our tie to the military-industrial complex making us more secretive than other countries, like England and Australia, which have been more transparent?

ANDREWS: Yes. We have captured the most downed UFOs. There’s another one captured in Aztec, New Mexico, and there’s a real well-documented book about it, called “The Aztec (UFO) Incident” (by Ramsey Scott and Suzanne Ramsey). There’s a blanket of secrecy that has been thrown over all of this stuff.

You have some talks on a UFO crash in Brazil. Why is that significant?

GEVOIN: I thought it would be fascinating to sit down with a panel of individuals and let each one talk about their country. This is a worldwide thing. We’ve got A.J. Javaerd from Brazil, Clifford Mahooty (a Zuni Pueblo leader) talking about the Native Americans and their history with the star people, Hugh Newman (a British author on ancient origins), Paul Stonehill (a U.S.S.R. native) who’s talking about Russia, Freddy Silva (who leads international tours of sacred sites).

ANDREWS: Nick Pope was in British intelligence. He’s well known for the Rendlesham Forest event.

GEVOIN: There is a changing within all of us right now, a transformation experience, and our brain is just not able to keep up with everything that’s going on. So, what’s happening is, we feel this shift in our consciousness and we also feel it may have some connection to why all of a sudden more and more people are experiencing abductions or seeing UFOs.

How is an overload of information related to abductions?

GEVOIN: That’s a really good question. I was thinking about this the other day and I was wondering if it was because we are becoming more aware. More awake. These beings have found they can control the way you see things in this reality. I believe they use your consciousness when you’re not present. You know when you’re in your car and you’re not "there" and all of a sudden you’re "there"? I feel like when you’re in that space they can make you see whatever. Somehow there’s a connection.

You have a workshop on abductions and alien hybrid programs.  What are you teaching there?

GEVOIN: Just what they look like, how they think, what they do.

ANDREWS: A lot more people than you think have had the abduction experience and most of them, when they come back from it, there’s an element of missing time and missing memory. So, why is this happening and why can’t the people who have had this experience remember all the details? This panel is dedicated to going into all the reasons why people have problems remembering what happened.

There’s also been an increase in the number of borderline personality disorder cases, where people make up their own histories.

ANDREWS: I’ve interviewed kids who are 6, 7 and 8 years old who have had an experience and have pretty good recall of it, and they’re not trying to write a book. They’re not trying to convince anybody. They’re just telling us openly from their heart what happened to them and asking us to empathize and believe what they said. I see that over and over again.

Making new contacts

• What: Contact in the Desert, co-produced by Victoria Gevoian and Paul Andrews
• Where: The Renaissance Indian Wells Resort & Spa, 44400 Indian Wells Lane, Indian Wells
• When: Conference opens Thursday with Giant Rock tours from 12:30 p.m., Dome Experience at 7:30 p.m. Runs through Sunday, June 3 with last talks and workshops at 7 p.m.
• Cost: Weekend passes $260 or $470 per couple in advance, $285 or $505 per couple at the door. See the website for other ticket options and schedule.
• Information: contactinthedesert.com

{ https://eu.vcstar.com/ }

Google Maps: Alien hunters discover UFO CRASH landing on uninhabited South Pole island

GOOGLE MAPS: Alien hunters have discovered a suspected UFO crash landing site on an uninhabited island in Antartica. The mysterious “cigar shaped” objects points to proof of aliens inhabiting Earth.

FOO FIGHTERS: UFOS IN WORLD WAR II

Even before pilot Kenneth Arnold saw strange craft skipping through the air like flying saucers in 1947, people were spotting strange objects zipping across the sky. No one is in a better position to see a UFO than a pilot, and when the fighter pilots of World War II started seeing mysterious lights zooming past them, a new phenomenon was born: Foo Fighters.

UFOS: NAZI WEAPONS?

It’s nighttime, and the pilot is flying near the border of Nazi Germany. Without warning, a luminous red ball zooms nearby, moving far too fast for him to identify—much less give chase.

So many World War II pilots saw strange zooming orbs high in the skies that for a while, they presumed they were dealing with a new Nazi weapon. They rarely varied in appearance: they were round and multicolored, often fiery red. Sightings became an almost-routine feature in mission reports; one early report reads:

Saw a brilliant red light at 2000 feet going E at 200 MPH in the vicinity of Erstein. Due to AI failure could not pick up contact but followed it by sight until it went out. Could not get close enough to identify object before it went out.

Intelligence investigations revealed that similar sightings were being made by German and Japanese pilots as well, so the Allies were relieved to learn that they didn’t have a new weapon to contend with. The Foo Fighters never seemed to act aggressively or threaten attack; they would appear, almost taunting pilots with their superior speed and maneuverability, then dart out of sight.

LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS!—BUT TALK ABOUT FOO FIGHTERS ALL YOU WANT

Cartoon Character Smokey Stover Gave the Foo Fighters Their Name

Spies were everywhere in World War II, and soldiers everywhere were admonished to keep their mouths shut about missions and plans; there could be dire consequences. “Loose Lips Sink Ships!” read one common poster of the era.

It’s a surprise, then, that military censors apparently had no problem with newspaper reporters writing about Foo Fighters. Most of the articles reported the orbs as being transparent or silver, instead of the red or multicolored balls of light the pilots actually said they saw. Newspapers often claimed the Foo Fighters were a “new Nazi weapon” rather than the complete mystery that they really were.

The media did a lot to propagate the name “Foo Fighters“, which had originally been inspired by the popular comic Smokey Stover. In the comics, Smokey, a fireman, referred to fire as “foo” for no apparent reason, and fancied himself to be a “foo fighter”. Radar operator Donald Meiers, a Smokey Stover fan, is credited for first using the Foo Fighter name to refer to the UFOs—this is years before the terms “unidentified flying object” and even “flying saucer” were coined.

WHAT WERE THEY, REALLY?

Surprise: it’s an unsolved mystery. There’s a pattern with UFO sightings: they’re reported and recorded, and then denier-skeptics make up mundane explanations for the extraordinary experiences of witnesses. After that, the sightings are completely dismissed (“it was just a weather balloon, dude, everyone knows that”). In later years, UFO sightings would be explained away as swamp gas and maybe misidentifications of the planet Venus, but skeptics had other excuses to account for Foo Fighters.

Chief among the invented explanations: St. Elmo’s Fire, a weather phenomenon that mainly occurs during thunderstorms. The fact that most or all of the Foo Fighter sightings occurred when no thunderstorms were actually present did not deter the deniers.

Other denying skeptics tried to pawn off Foo Fighters as mere reflections from ice crystals, an “explanation” that has a multitude of problems: ice crystals don’t zoom off at 200 MPH, and there were many Foo Fighter sightings in the South Pacific war theater, where the likelihood of ice forming in the atmosphere is remote.

Worst of all for the denying skeptics: the Foo Fighters would sometimes be spotted on radar, and would be seen to be moving at near-impossible speeds. Ice crystals and weather phenomena do not, in fact, appear on radar screens.

SO WAIT, WHAT ABOUT THE BAND?

The band The Foo Fighters does, of course, get its name from the phenomenon. “Around the time that I recorded the first FF tape,” founder Dave Grohl told an interviewer, “I was reading a lot of books on UFOs. Not only is it a fascinating subject, but there’s a treasure trove of band names in those UFO books!” he said.

“So, since I had recorded the first record by myself, playing all the instruments, but I wanted people to think that it was a group, I figured that ‘Foo Fighters’ might lead people to believe that it was more than just one guy. Silly, huh?”

{ http://www.area51.org/ }

Unidentified flying object(ufo)- PART I

An unidentified flying object or "UFO" is an object perceived in the sky that is not readily identified. Most UFOs are later identified as conventional objects or phenomena. The term is widely used for claimed observations of extraterrestrial craft.

Photograph of an alleged UFO in Passaic, New Jersey, taken on July 31, 1952.

US F/A-18 footage of a UFO (circled in red).

An unidentified flying object or "UFO" is an object perceived in the sky that is not readily identified. Most UFOs are later identified as conventional objects or phenomena. The term is widely used for claimed observations of extraterrestrial craft.

Terminology

The term "UFO" (or "UFOB") was coined in 1953 by the United States Air Force (USAF) to serve as a catch-all for all such reports. In its initial definition, the USAF stated that a "UFOB" was "any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object." Accordingly, the term was initially restricted to that fraction of cases which remained unidentified after investigation, as the USAF was interested in potential national security reasons and/or "technical aspects" (see Air Force Regulation 200-2).

During the late 1940s and through the 1950s, UFOs were often referred to popularly as "flying saucers" or "flying discs". The term UFO became more widespread during the 1950s, at first in technical literature, but later in popular use. UFOs garnered considerable interest during the Cold War, an era associated with a heightened concern for national security, and, more recently, in the 2010s, for unexplained reasons.^[1][2] Nevertheless, various studies have concluded that the phenomenon does not represent a threat to national security, nor does it contain anything worthy of scientific pursuit (e.g., 1951 Flying Saucer Working Party, 1953 CIA Robertson Panel, USAF Project Blue Book, Condon Committee).

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a UFO as "An unidentified flying object; a 'flying saucer'." The first published book to use the word was authored by Donald E. Keyhoe.^[3]

The acronym "UFO" was coined by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who headed Project Blue Book, then the USAF's official investigation of UFOs. He wrote, "Obviously the term 'flying saucer' is misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced Yoo-foe) for short."^[4] Other phrases that were used officially and that predate the UFO acronym include "flying flapjack", "flying disc", "unexplained flying discs", and "unidentifiable object".^[5][6][7]

The phrase "flying saucer" had gained widespread attention after the summer of 1947. On June 24, a civilian pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier. Arnold timed the sighting and estimated the speed of discs to be over 1,200 mph (1,931 km/h). At the time, he claimed he described the objects flying in a saucer-like fashion, leading to newspaper accounts of "flying saucers" and "flying discs".^[8][9]

In popular usage, the term UFO came to be used to refer to claims of alien spacecraft.^[3] and because of the public and media ridicule associated with the topic, some ufologists and investigators prefer to use terms such as "unidentified aerial phenomenon" (UAP) or "anomalous phenomena", as in the title of the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP).^[10] "Anomalous aerial vehicle" (AAV) or "unidentified aerial system" (UAS) are also sometimes used in a military aviation context to describe unidentified targets.^[11]

Studies

Studies have established that the majority of UFO observations are misidentified conventional objects or natural phenomena—most commonly aircraft, balloons, noctilucent clouds, nacreous clouds, or astronomical objects such as meteors or bright planets with a small percentage even being hoaxes.^{[note 1]} Between 5% and 20% of reported sightings are not explained, and therefore can be classified as unidentified in the strictest sense. While proponents of the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) suggest that these unexplained reports are of alien spacecraft, the null hypothesis cannot be excluded that these reports are simply other more prosaic phenomena that cannot be identified due to lack of complete information or due to the necessary subjectivity of the reports.

Almost no scientific papers about UFOs have been published in peer-reviewed journals.^[12] There was, in the past, some debate in the scientific community about whether any scientific investigation into UFO sightings is warranted with the general conclusion being that the phenomenon was not worthy of serious investigation except as a cultural artifact.^{[13][14][15][16][17][18][19]} UFOs have been the subject of investigations by various governments who have provided extensive records related to the subject. Many of the most involved government-sponsored investigations ended after agencies concluded that there was no benefit to continued investigation.^[20][21]

The void left by the lack of institutional or scientific study has given rise to independent researchers and fringe groups, including the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) in the mid-20th century and, more recently, the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON)^[22] and the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS).^[23] The term "Ufology" is used to describe the collective efforts of those who study reports and associated evidence of unidentified flying objects.^[24]

UFOs have become a prevalent theme in modern culture,^[25] and the social phenomena have been the subject of academic research in sociology and psychology.^[12]

Early history

Unexplained aerial observations have been reported throughout history. Some were undoubtedly astronomical in nature: comets, bright meteors, one or more of the five planets that can be readily seen with the naked eye, planetary conjunctions, or atmospheric optical phenomena such as parhelia and lenticular clouds. An example is Halley's Comet, which was recorded first by Chinese astronomers in 240 BC and possibly as early as 467 BC. Such sightings throughout history often were treated as supernatural portents, angels, or other religious omens. Some current-day UFO researchers have noticed similarities between some religious symbols in medieval paintings and UFO reports^[26] though the canonical and symbolic character of such images is documented by art historians placing more conventional religious interpretations on such images.^[27]

• On April 14, 1561, residents of Nuremberg described the appearance of a large black triangular object. According to witnesses, there were also hundreds of spheres, cylinders and other odd-shaped objects that moved erratically overhead.^[28]
• On January 25, 1878, the Denison Daily News printed an article in which John Martin, a local farmer, had reported seeing a large, dark, circular object resembling a balloon flying "at wonderful speed." Martin, according to the newspaper account, said it appeared to be about the size of a saucer, the first known use of the word "saucer" in association with a UFO.^[29]
• In April 1897, thousands of people reported seeing "airships" in various parts of the United States. Many signed affidavits. Scores of people even reported talking to the pilots. Thomas Edison was asked his opinion, and said, "You can take it from me that it is a pure fake."^[30][31]
• On February 28, 1904, there was a sighting by three crew members on the USS Supply 300 miles (483 km) west of San Francisco, reported by Lieutenant Frank Schofield, later to become Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Battle Fleet. Schofield wrote of three bright red egg-shaped and circular objects flying in echelon formation that approached beneath the cloud layer, then changed course and "soared" above the clouds, departing directly away from the earth after two to three minutes. The largest had an apparent size of about six Suns, he said.^[32][33]
• The three earliest known pilot UFO sightings, of 1,305 similar sightings catalogued by NARCAP, took place in 1916 and 1926. On January 31, 1916, a UK pilot near Rochfordreported a row of lights, resembling lighted windows on a railway carriage, that rose and disappeared. In January 1926 a pilot reported six "flying manhole covers" between Wichita, Kansas, and Colorado Springs, Colorado. In late September 1926 an airmail pilot over Nevada said he had been forced to land by a huge, wingless, cylindrical object.^[34]
• On August 5, 1926, while traveling in the Humboldt Mountains of Tibet's Kokonor region, Russian explorer Nicholas Roerich reported, members of his expedition saw "something big and shiny reflecting the sun, like a huge oval moving at great speed. Crossing our camp the thing changed in its direction from south to southwest. And we saw how it disappeared in the intense blue sky. We even had time to take our field glasses and saw quite distinctly an oval form with shiny surface, one side of which was brilliant from the sun."^[35] Another description by Roerich was of a "shiny body flying from north to south. Field glasses are at hand. It is a huge body. One side glows in the sun. It is oval in shape. Then it somehow turns in another direction and disappears in the southwest."^[36]
• In the Pacific and European theatres during World War II, "foo fighters" (metallic spheres, balls of light and other shapes that followed aircraft) were reported and on occasion photographed by Allied and Axis pilots. Some proposed Allied explanations at the time included St. Elmo's fire, the planet Venus, hallucinations from oxygen deprivation, or German secret weapons.^[37][38]
• In 1946, more than 2,000 reports were collected, primarily by the Swedish military, of unidentified aerial objects over the Scandinavian nations, along with isolated reports from France, Portugal, Italy and Greece. The objects were referred to as "Russian hail" and later as "ghost rockets" because it was thought that the mysterious objects were possibly Russian tests of captured German V1 or V2 rockets. Although most were thought to be such natural phenomena as meteors, more than 200 were tracked on radar by the Swedish military and deemed to be "real physical objects." In a 1948 top secret document, Swedish authorities advised the USAF Europe that some of their investigators believed these craft to be extraterrestrial in origin.^[39]

Investigations

UFOs have been subject to investigations over the years that varied widely in scope and scientific rigor. Governments or independent academics in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, Peru, France, Belgium, Sweden, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Mexico, Spain, and the Soviet Union are known to have investigated UFO reports at various times.

Among the best known government studies are the ghost rockets investigation by the Swedish military (1946–1947), Project Blue Book, previously Project Sign and Project Grudge, conducted by the USAF from 1947 until 1969, the secret U.S. Army/Air Force Project Twinkle investigation into green fireballs (1948–1951), the secret USAF Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14^[40] by the Battelle Memorial Institute, and the Brazilian Air Force's 1977 Operação Prato (Operation Saucer). France has had an ongoing investigation (GEPAN/SEPRA/GEIPAN) within its space agency Centre national d'études spatiales (CNES) since 1977; the government of Uruguay has had a similar investigation since 1989.

Project Sign

Main article: Project Sign

Project Sign in 1948 produced a highly classified finding (see Estimate of the Situation) that the best UFO reports probably had an extraterrestrial explanation. A top secret Swedish military opinion given to the USAF in 1948 stated that some of their analysts believed that the 1946 ghost rockets and later flying saucers had extraterrestrial origins. (For document, see Ghost rockets.) In 1954 German rocket scientist Hermann Oberth revealed that an internal West German government investigation, which he headed, had arrived at an extraterrestrial conclusion, but this study was never made public.

Project Grudge

Main article: Project Grudge

Project Sign was dismantled and became Project Grudge at the end of 1948. Angered by the low quality of investigations by Grudge, the Air Force Director of Intelligence reorganized it as Project Blue Book in late 1951, placing Ruppelt in charge. Blue Book closed down in 1970, using the Condon Committee's negative conclusion as a rationale, thus ending official Air Force UFO investigations. However, a 1969 USAF document, known as the Bolender memo, along with later government documents, revealed that non-public U.S. government UFO investigations continued after 1970. The Bolender memo first stated that "reports of unidentified flying objects that could affect national security ... are not part of the Blue Book system," indicating that more serious UFO incidents already were handled outside the public Blue Book investigation. The memo then added, "reports of UFOs which could affect national security would continue to be handled through the standard Air Force procedures designed for this purpose."^{[note 2]} In addition, in the late 1960s a chapter on UFOs in the Space Sciences course at the U.S. Air Force Academy gave serious consideration to possible extraterrestrial origins. When word of the curriculum became public, the Air Force in 1970 issued a statement to the effect that the book was outdated and that cadets instead were being informed of the Condon Report's negative conclusion.^[41]

USAF Regulation 200-2

Air Force Regulation 200-2,^[42] issued in 1953 and 1954, defined an Unidentified Flying Object ("UFOB") as "any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object." The regulation also said UFOBs were to be investigated as a "possible threat to the security of the United States" and "to determine technical aspects involved." The regulation went on to say that "it is permissible to inform news media representatives on UFOB's when the object is positively identified as a familiar object," but added: "For those objects which are not explainable, only the fact that ATIC [Air Technical Intelligence Center] will analyze the data is worthy of release, due to many unknowns involved."^[42]

Project Blue Book

Main article: Project Blue Book

Allen Hynek (left) and Jacques Vallée

J. Allen Hynek, a trained astronomer who served as a scientific advisor for Project Blue Book, was initially skeptical of UFO reports, but eventually came to the conclusion that many of them could not be satisfactorily explained and was highly critical of what he described as "the cavalier disregard by Project Blue Book of the principles of scientific investigation."^[43] Leaving government work, he founded the privately funded CUFOS, to whose work he devoted the rest of his life. Other private groups studying the phenomenon include the MUFON, a grass roots organization whose investigator's handbooks go into great detail on the documentation of alleged UFO sightings.

Like Hynek, Jacques Vallée, a scientist and prominent UFO researcher, has pointed to what he believes is the scientific deficiency of most UFO research, including government studies. He complains of the mythology and cultism often associated with the phenomenon, but alleges that several hundred professional scientists—a group both he and Hynek have termed "the invisible college"—continue to study UFOs in private.^[25]

Scientific studies

The study of UFOs has received little support in mainstream scientific literature. Official studies ended in the U.S. in December 1969, following the statement by the government scientist Edward Condon that further study of UFOs could not be justified on grounds of scientific advancement.^[15][44] The Condon Report and its conclusions were endorsed by the National Academy of Scientists, of which Condon was a member. On the other hand, a scientific review by the UFO subcommittee of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) disagreed with Condon's conclusion, noting that at least 30 percent of the cases studied remained unexplained and that scientific benefit might be gained by continued study.

Critics argue that all UFO evidence is anecdotal^[45] and can be explained as prosaic natural phenomena. Defenders of UFO research counter that knowledge of observational data, other than what is reported in the popular media, is limited in the scientific community and that further study is needed.^[25][46]

No official government investigation has ever publicly concluded that UFOs are indisputably real, physical objects, extraterrestrial in origin, or of concern to national defense. These same negative conclusions also have been found in studies that were highly classified for many years, such as the UK's Flying Saucer Working Party, Project Condign, the U.S. CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel, the U.S. military investigation into the green fireballs from 1948 to 1951, and the Battelle Memorial Institute study for the USAF from 1952 to 1955 (Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14).

Some public government reports have acknowledged the possibility of physical reality of UFOs, but have stopped short of proposing extraterrestrial origins, though not dismissing the possibility entirely. Examples are the Belgian military investigation into large triangles over their airspace in 1989–1991 and the 2009 Uruguayan Air Force study conclusion (see below).

Some private studies have been neutral in their conclusions, but argued that the inexplicable core cases call for continued scientific study. Examples are the Sturrock panel study of 1998 and the 1970 AIAA review of the Condon Report.

United States

U.S. investigations into UFOs include:

• The Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit (IPU), established by the U.S. Army sometime in the 1940s, and about which little is known. In 1987, British UFO researcher Timothy Good received from the Army's director of counter-intelligence a letter confirming the existence of the IPU. The letter stated that "the aforementioned Army unit was disestablished during the late 1950s and never reactivated. All records pertaining to this unit were surrendered to the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations in conjunction with operation BLUEBOOK." The IPU records have never been released.^[47]
• Project Blue Book, previously Project Sign and Project Grudge, conducted by the USAF from 1947 until 1969
• The secret U.S. Army/Air Force Project Twinkle investigation into green fireballs (1948–1951)
• Ghost rockets investigations by the Swedish, UK, U.S., and Greek militaries (1946–1947)
• The secret CIA Office of Scientific Investigation (OS/I) study (1952–53)
• The secret CIA Robertson Panel (1953)
• The secret USAF Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14 by the Battelle Memorial Institute (1951–1954)
• The Brookings Report (1960), commissioned by NASA
• The public Condon Committee (1966–1968)
• The private, internal RAND Corporation study (1968)^[48]
• The private Sturrock panel (1998)
• The secret Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program which was funded from 2007 to 2012.^[49]

Thousands of documents released under FOIA also indicate that many U.S. intelligence agencies collected (and still collect) information on UFOs. These agencies include the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), FBI,^[7] CIA, National Security Agency (NSA), as well as military intelligence agencies of the Army and U.S. Navy, in addition to the Air Force.^{[note 3]}

The investigation of UFOs has also attracted many civilians, who in the U.S formed research groups such as NICAP (active 1956–1980), Aerial Phenomena Research Organization(APRO) (active 1952–1988), MUFON (active 1969–), and CUFOS (active 1973–).

In November 2011, the White House released an official response to two petitions asking the U.S. government to acknowledge formally that aliens have visited this planet and to disclose any intentional withholding of government interactions with extraterrestrial beings. According to the response, "The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race."^[50][51] Also, according to the response, there is "no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public's eye."^[50][51] The response further noted that efforts, like SETI and NASA's Kepler space telescope and Mars Science Laboratory, continue looking for signs of life. The response noted "odds are pretty high" that there may be life on other planets but "the odds of us making contact with any of them—especially any intelligent ones—are extremely small, given the distances involved."^[50][51]

Post-1947 sightings

Following the large U.S. surge in sightings in June and early July 1947, on July 9, 1947, United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) intelligence, in cooperation with the FBI,^[7] began a formal investigation into selected sightings with characteristics that could not be immediately rationalized, such as Kenneth Arnold's. The USAAF used "all of its top scientists" to determine whether "such a phenomenon could, in fact, occur." The research was "being conducted with the thought that the flying objects might be a celestial phenomenon," or that "they might be a foreign body mechanically devised and controlled."^[52] Three weeks later in a preliminary defense estimate, the air force investigation decided that, "This 'flying saucer' situation is not all imaginary or seeing too much in some natural phenomenon. Something is really flying around."^[53]

A further review by the intelligence and technical divisions of the Air Materiel Command at Wright Field reached the same conclusion. It reported that "the phenomenon is something real and not visionary or fictitious," that there were objects in the shape of a disc, metallic in appearance, and as big as man-made aircraft. They were characterized by "extreme rates of climb [and] maneuverability," general lack of noise, absence of trail, occasional formation flying, and "evasive" behavior "when sighted or contacted by friendly aircraft and radar," suggesting a controlled craft. It was therefore recommended in late September 1947 that an official Air Force investigation be set up to investigate the phenomenon. It was also recommended that other government agencies should assist in the investigation.^{[note 4]}

Project Sign

This led to the creation of the Air Force's Project Sign at the end of 1947, one of the earliest government studies to come to a secret extraterrestrial conclusion. In August 1948, Sign investigators wrote a top-secret intelligence estimate to that effect, but the Air Force Chief of Staff Hoyt Vandenberg ordered it destroyed. The existence of this suppressed report was revealed by several insiders who had read it, such as astronomer and USAF consultant J. Allen Hynek and Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt, the first head of the USAF's Project Blue Book.^[54]

Another highly classified U.S. study was conducted by the CIA's Office of Scientific Investigation (OS/I) in the latter half of 1952 in response to orders from the National Security Council (NSC). This study concluded UFOs were real physical objects of potential threat to national security. One OS/I memo to the CIA Director (DCI) in December read:

the reports of incidents convince us that there is something going on that must have immediate attention ... Sightings of unexplained objects at great altitudes and traveling at high speeds in the vicinity of major U.S. defense installations are of such a nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or any known types of aerial vehicles.

The matter was considered so urgent that OS/I drafted a memorandum from the DCI to the NSC proposing that the NSC establish an investigation of UFOs as a priority project throughout the intelligence and the defense research and development community. It also urged the DCI to establish an external research project of top-level scientists, now known as the Robertson Panel to analyze the problem of UFOs. The OS/I investigation was called off after the Robertson Panel's negative conclusions in January 1953.^[55]

Condon Committee

Main article: Condon Committee

A public research effort conducted by the Condon Committee for the USAF, which arrived at a negative conclusion in 1968, marked the end of the U.S. government's official investigation of UFOs, though various government intelligence agencies continue unofficially to investigate or monitor the situation.^{[note 5]}

Controversy has surrounded the Condon Report, both before and after it was released. It has been observed that the report was "harshly criticized by numerous scientists, particularly at the powerful AIAA ... [which] recommended moderate, but continuous scientific work on UFOs."^[15] In an address to the AAAS, James E. McDonald stated that he believed science had failed to mount adequate studies of the problem and criticized the Condon Report and earlier studies by the USAF as scientifically deficient. He also questioned the basis for Condon's conclusions^[56] and argued that the reports of UFOs have been "laughed out of scientific court."^[14] J. Allen Hynek, an astronomer who worked as a USAF consultant from 1948, sharply criticized the Condon Committee Report and later wrote two nontechnical books that set forth the case for continuing to investigate UFO reports.

Ruppelt recounted his experiences with Project Blue Book, a USAF investigation that preceded Condon's.^[57]

Notable cases

• The Roswell UFO incident (1947) involved New Mexico residents, local law enforcement officers, and the U.S. military, the latter of whom allegedly collected physical evidence from the UFO crash site.
• The Mantell UFO incident January 7, 1948
• The Betty and Barney Hill abduction (1961) was the first reported abduction incident.
• In the Kecksburg UFO incident, Pennsylvania (1965), residents reported seeing a bell shaped object crash in the area. Police officers, and possibly military personnel, were sent to investigate.
• The Travis Walton abduction case (1975): The movie Fire in the Sky (1993) was based on this event, but greatly embellished the original account.
• The "Phoenix Lights" March 13, 1997
• 2006 O'Hare International Airport UFO sighting

Document on sighting of a UFO occurred on December 16, 1977, in the state of Bahia, Brazil.

Brazil

On October 31, 2008, the National Archives of Brazil began receiving from the Aeronautical Documentation and History Center part of the documentation of the Brazilian Air Force regarding the investigation of the appearance of UFOs in Brazil. Currently this collection gathers cases between 1952 and 2016.^[58]

Canada

In Canada, the Department of National Defence has dealt with reports, sightings and investigations of UFOs across Canada. In addition to conducting investigations into crop circles in Duhamel, Alberta, it still considers "unsolved" the Falcon Lake incident in Manitoba and the Shag Harbour UFO incident in Nova Scotia.^[59]

Early Canadian studies included Project Magnet (1950–1954) and Project Second Storey (1952–1954), supported by the Defence Research Board.

{

Unidentified flying object(ufo)- PART II

An unidentified flying object or "UFO" is an object perceived in the sky that is not readily identified. Most UFOs are later identified as conventional objects or phenomena. The term is widely used for claimed observations of extraterrestrial craft.

France

On March 2007, the French space agency CNES published an archive of UFO sightings and other phenomena online.^[60]

French studies include GEPAN/SEPRA/GEIPAN (1977–), within CNES (French space agency), the longest ongoing government-sponsored investigation. About 22% of 6000 cases studied remain unexplained.^[61] The official opinion of GEPAN/SEPRA/GEIPAN has been neutral, stating on their FAQ page that their mission is fact-finding for the scientific community, not rendering an opinion. They add they can neither prove nor disprove the Exterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH), but their Steering Committee's clear position is that they cannot discard the possibility that some fraction of the very strange 22% of unexplained cases might be due to distant and advanced civilizations.^[62] Possibly their bias may be indicated by their use of the terms "PAN" (French) or "UAP" (English equivalent) for "Unidentified Aerospace Phenomenon" (whereas "UAP" as normally used by English organizations stands for "Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon", a more neutral term). In addition, the three heads of the studies have gone on record in stating that UFOs were real physical flying machines beyond our knowledge or that the best explanation for the most inexplicable cases was an extraterrestrial one.^[63][64][65]

In 2008, Michel Scheller, president of the Association Aéronautique et Astronautique de France (3AF), created the Sigma Commission. Its purpose was to investigate UFO phenomenon worldwide.^[66] A progress report published in May 2010 stated that the central hypothesis proposed by the COMETA report is perfectly credible.^[67] In December 2012, the final report of the Sigma Commission was submitted to Scheller. Following the submission of the final report, the Sigma2 Commission is to be formed with a mandate to continue the scientific investigation of UFO phenomenon.^[68][69]

The most notable cases of UFO sightings in France include the Valensole UFO incident in 1965, and the Trans-en-Provence Case in 1981.

Italy

According to some Italian ufologists, the first documented case of a UFO sighting in Italy dates back to April 11, 1933, to Varese. Documents of the time show that an alleged UFO crashed or landed near Vergiate. Following this, Benito Mussolini created a secret group to look at it, called Cabinet RS/33.^[70][71]

Alleged UFO sightings gradually increased since the war, peaking in 1978 and 2005. The total number of sightings since 1947 are 18,500, of which 90% are identifiable.^[72]

In 2000, Italian ufologist Roberto Pinotti published material regarding the so-called "Fascist UFO Files", which dealt with a flying saucer that had crashed near Milan in 1933 (some 14 years before the Roswell, New Mexico, crash), and of the subsequent investigation by a never mentioned before Cabinet RS/33, that allegedly was authorized by Benito Mussolini, and headed by the Nobel scientist Guglielmo Marconi. A spaceship was allegedly stored in the hangars of the SIAI Marchetti in Vergiate near Milan.^[73]

Julius Obsequens was a Roman writer who is believed to have lived in the middle of the fourth century AD. The only work associated with his name is the Liber de prodigiis (Book of Prodigies), completely extracted from an epitome, or abridgment, written by Livy; De prodigiis was constructed as an account of the wonders and portents that occurred in Romebetween 249 BC-12 BC. An aspect of Obsequens' work that has inspired much interest in some circles is that references are made to things moving through the sky. These have been interpreted as reports of UFOs, but may just as well describe meteors, and, since Obsequens, probably, writes in the 4th century, that is, some 400 years after the events he describes, they hardly qualify as eye-witness accounts.^[74][75]

Notable cases

• A UFO sighting in Florence, October 28, 1954, followed by a fall of angel hair.^[76]
• In 1973, an Alitalia airplane left Rome for Naples sighted a mysterious round object. Two Italian Air Force planes from Ciampino confirmed the sighting.^[77] In the same year there was another sighting at Caselle airport near Turin.^[78]
• In 1978, two young hikers, while walking on Monte Musinè near Turin, saw a bright light; one of them temporarily disappeared and, after a while, was found in a state of shock and with a noticeable scald on one leg. After regaining consciousness, he reported having seen an elongated vehicle and that some strangely shaped beings descended from it. Both the young hikers suffered from conjunctivitis for some time.^[79]
• A close encounter reported in September 1978 in Torrita di Siena in the Province of Siena. A young motorist saw in front of him a bright object, two beings of small stature who wore suits and helmets, the two approached the car, and after watching it carefully went back and rose again to the UFO. A boy who lived with his family in a country house not far from there said he had seen at the same time "a kind of small reddish sun".^[80]
• Yet in 1978, there has been also the story of Pier Fortunato Zanfretta, the best known and most controversial case of an Italian alleged alien abduction. Zanfretta said to have been kidnapped on the night of 6 December and 7 December while he was performing his job at Marzano, in the municipality of Torriglia in the Province of Genoa;^[81] 52 testimonies of the case from other people were collected.^[81]

United Kingdom

The UK's Flying Saucer Working Party published its final report in June 1951, which remained secret for over 50 years. The Working Party concluded that all UFO sightings could be explained as misidentifications of ordinary objects or phenomena, optical illusions, psychological misperceptions/aberrations, or hoaxes. The report stated: "We accordingly recommend very strongly that no further investigation of reported mysterious aerial phenomena be undertaken, unless and until some material evidence becomes available."^[82]

Eight file collections on UFO sightings, dating from 1978 to 1987, were first released on May 14, 2008, to The National Archives by the Ministry of Defence (MoD).^[83] Although kept secret from the public for many years, most of the files have low levels of classification and none are classified Top Secret. 200 files are set to be made public by 2012. The files are correspondence from the public sent to the British government and officials, such as the MoD and Margaret Thatcher. The MoD released the files under the Freedom of Information Act due to requests from researchers.^[84] These files include, but are not limited to, UFOs over Liverpool and the Waterloo Bridge in London.^[85]

On October 20, 2008, more UFO files were released. One case released detailed that in 1991 an Alitalia passenger aircraft was approaching London Heathrow Airport when the pilots saw what they described as a "cruise missile" fly extremely close to the cockpit. The pilots believed that a collision was imminent. UFO expert David Clarke says that this is one of the most convincing cases for a UFO he has come across.^[86]

A secret study of UFOs was undertaken for the Ministry of Defence between 1996 and 2000 and was code-named Project Condign. The resulting report, titled "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in the UK Defence Region", was publicly released in 2006, but the identity and credentials of whomever constituted Project Condign remains classified. The report confirmed earlier findings that the main causes of UFO sightings are misidentification of man-made and natural objects. The report noted: "No artefacts of unknown or unexplained origin have been reported or handed to the UK authorities, despite thousands of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena reports. There are no SIGINT, ELINT or radiation measurements and little useful video or still IMINT." It concluded: "There is no evidence that any UAP, seen in the UKADR [UK Air Defence Region], are incursions by air-objects of any intelligent (extraterrestrial or foreign) origin, or that they represent any hostile intent." A little-discussed conclusion of the report was that novel meteorological plasma phenomenon akin to ball lightning are responsible for "the majority, if not all" of otherwise inexplicable sightings, especially reports of black triangle UFOs.^[87]

On December 1, 2009, the Ministry of Defence quietly closed down its UFO investigations unit. The unit's hotline and email address were suspended by the MoD on that date. The MoD said there was no value in continuing to receive and investigate sightings in a release, stating

in over fifty years, no UFO report has revealed any evidence of a potential threat to the United Kingdom. The MoD has no specific capability for identifying the nature of such sightings. There is no Defence benefit in such investigation and it would be an inappropriate use of defence resources. Furthermore, responding to reported UFO sightings diverts MoD resources from tasks that are relevant to Defence."

The Guardian reported that the MoD claimed the closure would save the Ministry around £50,000 a year. The MoD said that it would continue to release UFO files to the public through The National Archives.^[88]

Notable cases

According to records released on August 5, 2010, British wartime prime minister Winston Churchill banned the reporting for 50 years of an alleged UFO incident because of fears it could create mass panic. Reports given to Churchill asserted that the incident involved a Royal Air Force (RAF) reconnaissance aircraft returning from a mission in France or Germany toward the end of World War II. It was over or near the English coastline when it was allegedly intercepted by a strange metallic object that matched the aircraft's course and speed for a time before accelerating away and disappearing. The aircraft's crew were reported to have photographed the object, which they said had "hovered noiselessly" near the aircraft, before moving off.^[89] According to the documents, details of the coverup emerged when a man wrote to the government in 1999 seeking to find out more about the incident and described how his grandfather, who had served with the RAF in the war, was present when Churchill and U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower discussed how to deal with the UFO encounter.^[90][91] The files come from more than 5,000 pages of UFO reports, letters and drawings from members of the public, as well as questions raised in Parliament. They are available to download from The National Archives website.^[83]

In the April 1957 West Freugh incident in Scotland, named after the principal military base involved, two unidentified objects flying high over the UK were tracked by radar operators. The objects were reported to operate at speeds and perform maneuvers beyond the capability of any known craft. Also significant is their alleged size, which – based on the radar returns – was closer to that of a ship than an aircraft.

In the Rendlesham Forest incident of December 1980, U.S. military personnel witnessed UFOs near the air base at Woodbridge, Suffolk, over a period of three nights. On one night the deputy base commander, Colonel Charles I. Halt, and other personnel followed one or more UFOs that were moving in and above the forest for several hours. Col. Halt made an audio recording while this was happening and subsequently wrote an official memorandum summarizing the incident. After retirement from the military, he said that he had deliberately downplayed the event (officially termed 'Unexplained Lights') to avoid damaging his career. Other base personnel are said to have observed one of the UFOs, which had landed in the forest, and even gone up to and touched it.

Uruguay

The Uruguayan Air Force has conducted UFO investigations since 1989 and reportedly analyzed 2,100 cases of which they regard approximately 2% as lacking explanation.^[92]

Astronomer reports

The USAF's Project Blue Book files indicate that approximately 1%^[93] of all unknown reports came from amateur and professional astronomers or other users of telescopes (such as missile trackers or surveyors). In 1952, astronomer J. Allen Hynek, then a consultant to Blue Book, conducted a small survey of 45 fellow professional astronomers. Five reported UFO sightings (about 11%). In the 1970s, astrophysicist Peter A. Sturrock conducted two large surveys of the AIAA and American Astronomical Society (AAS). About 5% of the members polled indicated that they had had UFO sightings.

Astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, who admitted to six UFO sightings, including three green fireballs, supported the Extraterrestrial hypothesis for UFOs and stated he thought scientists who dismissed it without study were being "unscientific." Another astronomer was Lincoln LaPaz, who had headed the Air Force's investigation into the green fireballs and other UFO phenomena in New Mexico. LaPaz reported two personal sightings, one of a green fireball, the other of an anomalous disc-like object. (Both Tombaugh and LaPaz were part of Hynek's 1952 survey.) Hynek himself took two photos through the window of a commercial airliner of a disc-like object that seemed to pace his aircraft.^[94]

In 1980, a survey of 1800 members of various amateur astronomer associations by Gert Helb and Hynek for CUFOS found that 24% responded "yes" to the question "Have you ever observed an object which resisted your most exhaustive efforts at identification?"^[95]

Claims of increase in reports

MUFON reports that UFO sightings to their offices have increased by 67% in the previous three years as of 2011. According to MUFON international director Clifford Clift in 2011, "Over the past year, we've been averaging 500 sighting reports a month, compared to about 300 three years ago [67 percent],".^[96][97]

According to the annual survey of reports conducted by Canadian-based UFO research group Ufology Research, reported UFO sightings doubled in Canada between 2011 and 2012.^[98][99]

In 2013 the Peruvian government's Departamento de Investigación de Fenómenos Aéreos Anómalos (Anomalous Aerial Phenomena Research Department), or "DIFAA", was officially reactivated due to an increase in reported sightings. According to Colonel Julio Vucetich, head of the air force's aerospace interests division who himself claims to have seen an "anomalous aerial object", "On a personal basis, it's evident to me that we are not alone in this world or universe."^[100][101]

In contrast, according to the UK-based Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena (ASSAP), reports of sightings in Britain to their office have declined by 96% since 1988.^[102]

Identification of UFOs

Main article: Identification studies of UFOs

Fata Morgana, a type of mirage in which objects located below the astronomical horizon appear to be hovering in the sky just above the horizon, may be responsible for some UFO sightings. (Here, the shape floating above the horizon is the reflected image of a boat.) Fata Morgana can also distort the appearance of distant objects, sometimes making them unrecognizable^[103]

Lenticular clouds have in some cases been reported as UFOs due to their peculiar shape

Studies show that after careful investigation, the majority of UFOs can be identified as ordinary objects or phenomena. The most commonly found identified sources of UFO reports are:

• Astronomical objects (bright stars, planets, meteors, re-entering man-made spacecraft, artificial satellites, and the Moon)
• Aircraft (aerial advertising and other aircraft, missile launches)
• Balloons (toy balloons, weather balloons, large research balloons)
• Other atmospheric objects and phenomena (birds, unusual clouds, kites, flares)
• Light phenomena mirages, Fata Morgana, ball lightning, moon dogs, searchlights and other ground lights, etc.
• Hoaxes

A 1952–1955 study by the Battelle Memorial Institute for the USAF included these categories as well as a "psychological" one.

An individual 1979 study by CUFOS researcher Allan Hendry found, as did other investigations, that only a small percentage of cases he investigated were hoaxes (<1 and="" that="" most="" sightings="" were="" actually="" honest="" misidentifications="" of="" prosaic="" phenomena="" hendry="" attributed="" these="" to="" inexperience="" or="" misperception="" sup="" class="reference" id="cite_ref-109">[104]

Claims by military, government, and aviation personnel

Since 2001 there have been calls for greater openness on the part of the government by various persons. In May 2001, a press conference was held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., by an organization called the Disclosure Project, featuring twenty persons including retired Air Force and FAA personnel, intelligence officers and an air traffic controller.^{[105][106][107][108][109][110][111]} They all gave a brief account of what they knew or had witnessed, and stated that they would be willing to testify to what they had said under oath to a Congressional committee. According to a 2002 report in the Oregon Daily Emerald, Disclosure Project founder Steven M. Greer has gathered 120 hours of testimony from various government officials on the topic of UFOs, including astronaut Gordon Cooper and a Brigadier General.^[112]

In 2007, former Arizona governor Fife Symington came forward and belatedly claimed that he had seen "a massive, delta-shaped craft silently navigate over Squaw Peak, a mountain range in Phoenix, Arizona" in 1997.^[113]

On September 27, 2010, a group of six former USAF officers and one former enlisted Air Force man held a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on the theme "U.S. Nuclear Weapons Have Been Compromised by Unidentified Aerial Objects."^[114] They told how they had witnessed UFOs hovering near missile sites and even disarming the missiles.

From April 29 to May 3, 2013, the Paradigm Research Group held the "Citizen Hearing on Disclosure" at the National Press Club. The group paid former U.S. Senator Mike Graveland former Representatives Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, Roscoe Bartlett, Merrill Cook, Darlene Hooley, and Lynn Woolsey $20,000 each to hear testimony from a panel of researchers which included witnesses from military, agency, and political backgrounds.^[115][116]

Apollo 14 astronaut Dr Edgar Mitchell claimed that he knew of senior government employees who had been involved in "close encounters" and because of this he has no doubt that aliens have visited Earth.^[117]

Extraterrestrial hypothesis

Main article: Extraterrestrial hypothesis

While technically a UFO refers to any unidentified flying object, in modern popular culture the term UFO has generally become synonymous with alien spacecraft;^[118] however, the term ETV (ExtraTerrestrial Vehicle) is sometimes used to separate this explanation of UFOs from totally earthbound explanations.^[119]

Associated claims

Besides anecdotal visual sightings, reports sometimes include claims of other kinds of evidence, including cases studied by the military and various government agencies of different countries (such as Project Blue Book, the Condon Committee, the French GEPAN/SEPRA, and Uruguay's current Air Force study).

A comprehensive scientific review of cases where physical evidence was available was carried out by the 1998 Sturrock panel, with specific examples of many of the categories listed below.^{[120][121][122]}

• Radar contact and tracking, sometimes from multiple sites. These have included military personnel and control tower operators, simultaneous visual sightings, and aircraft intercepts. One such example were the mass sightings of large, silent, low-flying black triangles in 1989 and 1990 over Belgium, tracked by NATO radar and jet interceptors, and investigated by Belgium's military (included photographic evidence).^[123] Another famous case from 1986 was the Japan Air Lines flight 1628 incident over Alaska investigated by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
• Photographic evidence, including still photos, movie film, and video.
• Claims of physical trace of landing UFOs, including ground impressions, burned or desiccated soil, burned and broken foliage, magnetic anomalies^[specify], increased radiation levels, and metallic traces. (See, e. g. Height 611 UFO incident or the 1964 Lonnie Zamora's Socorro, New Mexico encounter of the USAF Project Blue Book cases.) A well-known example from December 1980 was the USAF Rendlesham Forest incident in England. Another occurred in January 1981 in Trans-en-Provence and was investigated by GEPAN, then France's official government UFO-investigation agency. Project Blue Book head Edward J. Ruppelt described a classic 1952 CE2 case involving a patch of charred grass roots.
• Physiological effects on people and animals including temporary paralysis, skin burns and rashes, corneal burns, and symptoms superficially resembling radiation poisoning, such as the Cash-Landrum incident in 1980.
• Animal/cattle mutilation cases, that some feel are also part of the UFO phenomenon.
• Biological effects on plants such as increased or decreased growth, germination effects on seeds, and blown-out stem nodes (usually associated with physical trace cases or crop circles)
• Electromagnetic interference (EM) effects. A famous 1976 military case over Tehran, recorded in CIA and DIA classified documents, was associated with communication losses in multiple aircraft and weapons system failure in an F-4 Phantom II jet interceptor as it was about to fire a missile on one of the UFOs.^[124]
• Apparent remote radiation detection, some noted in FBI and CIA documents occurring over government nuclear installations at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 1950, also reported by Project Blue Book director Edward J. Ruppelt in his book.
• Claimed artifacts of UFOs themselves, such as 1957, Ubatuba, Brazil, magnesium fragments analyzed by the Brazilian government and in the Condon Report and by others. The 1964 Lonnie Zamora incident also left metal traces, analyzed by NASA.^[125][126] A more recent example involves a tear drop-shaped object recovered by Bob White and was featured in a television episode of UFO Hunters.^[127]
• Angel hair and angel grass, possibly explained in some cases as nests from ballooning spiders or chaff.^{[citation needed]}

Ufology

Main article: Ufology

Photograph of "an unusual atmospheric occurrence observed over Sri Lanka", forwarded to the UK Ministry of Defence by RAF Fylingdales, 2004

Ufology is a neologism describing the collective efforts of those who study UFO reports and associated evidence.

Researchers

Main article: List of ufologists

Sightings

Main article: List of reported UFO sightings

Organizations

Main article: List of UFO organizations

Categorization

Some ufologists recommend that observations be classified according to the features of the phenomenon or object that are reported or recorded. Typical categories include:

• Saucer, toy-top, or disk-shaped "craft" without visible or audible propulsion.
• Large triangular "craft" or triangular light pattern, usually reported at night.
• Cigar-shaped "craft" with lighted windows (meteor fireballs are sometimes reported this way, but are very different phenomena).
• Other: chevrons, (equilateral) triangles, crescent, boomerangs, spheres (usually reported to be shining, glowing at night), domes, diamonds, shapeless black masses, eggs, pyramids and cylinders, classic "lights."

Popular UFO classification systems include the Hynek system, created by J. Allen Hynek, and the Vallée system, created by Jacques Vallée.^{[citation needed]}

Hynek's system involves dividing the sighted object by appearance, subdivided further into the type of "close encounter" (a term from which the film director Steven Spielbergderived the title of his 1977 UFO movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind).

Jacques Vallée's system classifies UFOs into five broad types, each with from three to five subtypes that vary according to type.

Scientific skepticism

A scientifically skeptical group that has for many years offered critical analysis of UFO claims is the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI).

One example is the response to local beliefs that "extraterrestrial beings" in UFOs were responsible for crop circles appearing in Indonesia, which the government and the National Institute of Aeronautics and Space (LAPAN) described as "man-made". Thomas Djamaluddin, research professor of astronomy and astrophysics at LAPAN stated: "We have come to agree that this 'thing' cannot be scientifically proven. Scientists have put UFOs in the category of pseudoscience.

{ https://mnb2222.blogspot.be/ }

UFOs Photographed by the International Space Station

• When: April 3rd, 2018 and December 28th, 2017
• Where: Space
• What: Strange round objects photographed outside International Space Station

A frequent viewer of the ISS live cam witnessed a UFO on two separate occasions, and fortunately took some screenshots and shared them with MUFON (case 92258).

December 28th, 2017

https://www.mufoncms.com/files_jeud8334j/92258_submitter_file2__ISSHDLive20180304115553.jpg

https://www.mufoncms.com/files_jeud8334j/92258_submitter_file3__ISSHDLive20180304115616.jpg

https://www.mufoncms.com/files_jeud8334j/92258_submitter_file4__ISSHDLive20180304115638.jpg

https://www.mufoncms.com/files_jeud8334j/92258_submitter_file5__ISSHDLive20180304115700.jpg

https://www.mufoncms.com/files_jeud8334j/92258_submitter_file6__ISSHDLive20180304115709.jpg

ok so, i have taken screenshots on my ISS app on my phone on 2 different occasions. the first was on the 28/12/17 and the 2nd occasion was on the 4/3/18. On the 28/12 i have taken 1 photo and my memory f that is a little vague. on the 4/3 i have taken 5 screenshots, all approximately 5 seconds after one another. I want to add I am using the same cell phone right now to submit this report so to submit the original photos i took with all the added info and details attached to the pictures, such as the date and time etc. and also i hope that helps to authenticate my photos are not modified at all in one way or another. I will concentrate on the 4/3 because that is more familiar in my memory. All i was doing was checking the app like i sometimes do and sometimes i see the ISS fly over my town when i am up early enough. and basically i saw the round object, and i have researched about the ISS before and know that stars and most planets are not visible through the cameras on the ISS, only the sun and moon and a not many planets. and definitely not other satellites because of the speed the ISS is traveling as well as the other satellites. i immediately begun taking screenshots and as you can see the time between the photos, i hope that will help if someone can calculate the speed of the ISS and whatever else may be to pinpoint a distance of the object and size, maybe. I have thought afterwards maybe this is just a planet or a secret human powered craft, and other ideas. but after finding this site i simply wanted to submit my info and get the experts to look at it. before the 28/12/17 i have never seen a ufo before and these are the only 2 times i have seen anything on the ISS app. i have been incredibly astonished and blown away this year to, to see a UFO with my own eyes very close to my town and i have a detailed description to tell in another report so i will just keep that brief for now. Basically i first saw the object up high then it hovered for a little while then slowly dropped downwards until it was out of sight behind earth. thank you anyone who puts time into this and can back to me if these sightings i am sharing are authentic or not. any info which i hope can be identified would be greatly appreciated. thank you

April 8th, 2018

https://www.mufoncms.com/files_jeud8334j/92258_submitter_file1__ISSHDLive20171228114945.jpg

videos peter2011

{ https://www.texasufosightings.com/ }

Alien languages might not be that different from ours

ETs may share a kind of 'universal grammar' with us, say leading linguists like Noam Chomsky.

It could be a Star Trek or Star Wars universe after all. One where a diverse set of intelligent extraterrestrial species from across the galaxies all easily communicate despite some pretty dramatic biological differences. 

Some of the world's leading linguists argue that human languages are connected by a shared "universal grammar." And now some, including perhaps the most well-known linguist, say they're optimistic that connection could extend to extraterrestrial languages too.

Noam Chomsky in 2015

"To put it whimsically, the Martian language might not be so different from human language after all," explained Noam Chomsky and Jeffrey Watumull in a presentation at the International Space Development Conference (ISDC) in Los Angeles on Saturday.

Chomsky is a noted author on both linguistics and global politics and is often referred to as the "father of modern linguistics" who pioneered the notion of a universal grammar. 

"Chomsky has often said that if a Martian visited Earth, it would think we all speak dialects of the same language, because all terrestrial languages share a common underlying structure," said Douglas Vakoch, president of METI (short for Messaging Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence), which organized a daylong Language in the Cosmos workshop at ISDC. "But if aliens have language, would it be similar to ours? That's the big question."   Linguists Bridget Samuels from the University of Southern California and Jeffrey Punske from Southern Illinois University also argued in a separate presentation at the workshop that some universal factors underlying language might be able to bridge big gaps in alien biology and environment.

"The whole universe is subject to the same laws of physics. For example, there are not that many ways a signal can be transmitted, particularly over large distances," they explained to me in an email. "Also, we can expect that extraterrestrial languages ... have a vocabulary consisting of building blocks of meaning that can be combined to create more complex meanings."

The notion here is that there are aspects of the universe that are, well, universal. While hypothetical aliens may have evolved very differently from us on very different worlds, all species -- and by extension all languages -- must spring forth from essentially the same elemental soup. 

"While the possibility of human contact with extraterrestrials seems remote, and the possibility of communicating successfully with them seems even more remote, the laws of physics, information theory, logic, and mathematics could provide some common ground to start from," said Samuels and Punske.

METI is trying to work out which type of message could be most understandable to extraterrestrials. The notion that a universal grammar connecting human languages could also underlie alien dialects changes things.

"That's a radical shift for SETI scientists, who have scoffed at the idea of creating interstellar messages inspired by natural languages," said Vakoch. 

In the past, messages sent into space have typically been encoded in principles of math and science rather than language. More recently, we've sent music:

Still, the notion of universal grammar applying to the whole universe is not accepted by everyone interested in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Also at the workshop, Professor Emeritus Gonzalo Munevar from Lawrence Technological University presented his argument that there's more reason for pessimism when it comes to communicating with ET. He argues there are plenty of examples on Earth of different species evolving different brains that work in very different ways.

Luna moths can see ultraviolet light, some snakes can see heat and certain fish perceive electric fields, just for starters. 

"An intelligent creature whose main sensory modality is electric rather than visual would have patterns of thought completely foreign to us," he explained, adding there's "no reason to expect similar scientific languages or math" to emerge on distant exoplanets.

Whether or not there's any hope that aliens could ever understand the messages we send into space, Vakoch and METI aren't about to stop trying. Beyond the obvious language barrier, Vakoch says another challenge is the time required to send and receive messages across interstellar space. A two-way conversation between Earth and the nearest planet beyond our solar system, Proxima Centauri, would require eight years just for us to send out a "hello" and receive a response.

Unfortunately, the latest research suggests Proxima Centauri sends sterilizing flares in the direction of its lone Earth-like planet. METI has already targeted a message to another nearby world, but a response wouldn't arrive until 2042 at the earliest.

"The greatest shift of mindset that we need to succeed in a two-way conversation with ET is to think in multigenerational terms," Vakoch said. "The scientists who start an experiment in active SETI today will probably not be around when any responses get back to Earth."

Crowd Control: A crowdsourced science fiction novel written by CNET readers.

Solving for XX: The tech industry seeks to overcome outdated ideas about "women in tech."

{ https://www.cnet.com/ }

Decoding Alien Messages Could Be the Biggest Citizen-Science Project Ever

Are aliens real? From Roswell to fossils - dramatic evidence from some of the biggest UFO mysteries point to only one conclusion

From the Roswell conspiracy to mysterious signals from outer space - are we alone in the universe? We take a look at the theories on Alien Day

By Jeff Parsons Tech/Science Reporter

Humans have been trying to find out whether or not we're alone in the universe for centuries.

Aboard the Voyager 1 space probe - which has travelled further than any other man-made object - is a golden disc containing information about humans and the cultures of our planet.

As well as sending out potential communications to other worlds, many people have reported evidence of aliens here on Earth.

Recently, the mummified remains of what was believed to be an alien proved to be a small child.

The skeleton measured just six inches in height, and was found 15 years ago in Chile. UFO experts were convinced the mummified skeleton was extraterrestrial in origin, and a documentary suggested it was an alien.

Following five years of research, scientists concluded that the figure, nicknamed Ata, was actually a baby girl.

Even though Ata turned out to be a story of human tragedy rather than of alien visitors, there are plenty of other mysterious sightings that have yet to be explained.

READ MORE

• Are these ALIENS? Extreme close-ups taken on a smartphone make everyday creatures look terrifying

Evidence of aliens on Earth - Roswell, New Mexico

In July 1947 Sheriff Jess Slaughter and Deputy Sheriff Charles Fogus were travelling together to pick up a prisoner when they heard on their police radio reports of a crashed aircraft.

The two men, who were travelling to Roswell, New Mexico, decided to investigate and stumbled across the scene of one of the most famous UFO incidents in history.

While the US military have long claimed the crashed object was merely a weather balloon, conspiracy theorists believe the site was the scene of at least one alien aircraft crash and the recovery of extraterrestrials.

In a new book, UFOs TODAY – 70 Years of Lies, Misinformation and Government Cover-Up, law enforcement officer Fogus reveals he saw a downed flying saucer and military personnel removing a number of alien bodies from the scene.

It is the first time his statement has been published.

In the interview he says he say a flying saucer crashed into the side of a river bed which was "100ft across".

READ MORE

• NASA building 'HAMMER' spacecraft to save Earth from cataclysmic asteroid impact

Describing the scene he said: "When we got there, the land was covered with soldiers. They were hauling a big, a creature.

"The bodies must have been 5 feet tall.

"I saw the legs and feet on some of them. They looked like our feet.

"The skin was a brownish color…. Like they were in the sun too long.

"There were soldiers there….about 3 or 4 hundred of them.

"We seen them haul them (the bodies) out there, out of the canyon up to the trucks….puttin them on the tow trucks so they could haul them."

The story of the discovery at Roswell has become legend - and remained one of the most compelling conspiracy theories about the existence of alien visitors to Earth.

Evidence of aliens on Mars - trace fossils

Thanks to satellite imagery and on-site photography captured by the NASA rovers on the planet's surface, there have been many claims that aliens once inhabited Mars.

One of the most striking is the idea that fossilised remains of aliens have been preserved on the dusty surface of the red planet.

A series of pictures taken by the space agency's Curiosity rover have given rise to the idea, after researchers found what looks like fossils among the rocks.

READ MORE

• The controversial theories that made Professor Stephen Hawking one of the greatest physicists of our time

Barry DiGregorio, a research fellow at the University of Buckingham, believes these photos (taken on January 2, 2018) reveal "trace fossils" on the surface of Mars.

"They look remarkably similar to Ordovician trace fossils I have studied and photographed here on Earth," he said.

"If not trace fossils, what other geological explanations will NASA come up with?"

NASA described the formations as "stick-like figures" with each one "about a quarter-inch long".

The space agency used the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on board the Curiosity rover to take the close-up pictures of the patterns.

Trace fossils are the name given to remains of things left behind by creatures such as dead remains, footprints or burrows.

Evidence of aliens in space - the 'Wow' signal and FSBs

READ MORE

• Alien bugs hitching a ride to Earth on returning spacecraft could be a danger to humans

Some of the biggest evidence of alien life comes through signals we intercept originating from distant corners of the galaxy.

Often, these are known as "fast radio bursts" or FSBs for short.

Back in 1977, astronomer Jerry Ehman received such a strong radio signal coming in from the heavens, he wrote the word "wow!" next to his results.

The burst of activity lasted 72 seconds and - although it came from the Sagittarius constellation - it matched no known celestial object.

It's gone on to become a conspiracy theory favourite as proof of advanced alien life trying to communicate with us.

But now Professor Antonio Paris from the St Petersburg College in Florida believes he's solved the mystery.

"I have always been fascinated with astronomy, space and - more importantly - whether there is life in the universe," he told the Sunday Times .

"After 40 years, the Wow signal was a cold case I wanted to reopen.

According to Professor Paris, the signal came from the hydrogen cloud created by two comets as they passed by Earth.

Using celestial records, he found that these two comets were passing by our planet on August 15, 1977 - the day the "Wow!" signal was recorded. Of course, at the time, there was no knowledge that these comets even existed.

READ MORE

• NASA to send mission to Jupiter's moon to see if it can support life in mysterious ocean

Even without the "Wow" signal, scientists have been intercepting strange FSBs for years.

Some have been detected from an object called FRB 121102 and now a new study has found that the object is nearly 100 per cent polarised.

This polarisation suggests that the source of the bursts lies within a strong magnetic field, such as around a massive black hole - and could belong to aliens.

The findings were made by the Breakthrough Listen team at the University of California, Berkley, as well as another team of astronomers from the Netherlands.

What do most people think about aliens?

READ MORE

• Aliens WILL make contact with humans - but it won't be for another 1,500 years, astronomers predict

Nearly half of humans believe that intelligent extra-terrestrial life exists elsewhere in the universe, according to a study that asked 26,000 people across 24 countries.

When they were asked if they believed in the "existence of intelligent alien civilisations in the universe," 47% of the survey respondents said yes.

However, when those taking the survey were asked if they believed in "some form of life on other planets," 61% said yes.

Among those who reckon we aren't alone, 60% said we should try and communicate with aliens - something that is actually being attempted at the non profit Search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI) Institute.

Martijn Lampert, research director at Glocalities , which carried out the survey, commented: "People who believe in the existence of intelligent alien civilizations are not a marginal minority, but constitute a large (47%) and distinct segment of unconventional and anti-authoritarian thinkers with a passion for science, technology, culture, politics and the arts."

Only a quarter of respondents said they didn't believe that alien life exists beyond Earth's borders.

Are aliens real?

We may not have come into contact with them yet, but it seems certain that some form of live exists beyond our planet.

Whether that live is micro bacterial or intelligent in its own right remains to be seen.

What's for sure is that human beings won't stop trying to reach out and communicate with any other species that might be listening. The truth is out there.

{ https://www.mirror.co.uk/ }

Three chances for humanity to find life outside the Earth

Since the first people sent their views to the sky, to planets, stars and galaxies outside our native world, our imagination filled the possibility of finding extraterrestrial life. However, when we approach this issue from a scientific point of view, we still do not have the first convincing confirmation of life outside the Earth. The complex, diverse forms of life that we see on Earth are the result of more than four billion years of evolution, but in space, the ingredients for life are very often. We began to find organic molecules throughout our solar system, interstellar space and even other stars. How long will it take before we receive confirmation of the existence of something living beyond the Earth? Today we search through four main methods. Which one will justify itself first – nobody knows this yet.

To have a life, you need the fundamental ingredients that are necessary for life processes: raw materials from the periodic table. To do this, it is necessary that lived and died several generations of stars that have overtaken their nuclear fuel. We found stars with solid planets at their side, which are seven billion years older than Earth and have all the elements necessary for life. We found planets of terrestrial type in potentially inhabited zones of other stars throughout the galaxy. We found organic molecules, from sugars and amino acids to ethyl formate, which gives raspberry its smell, everywhere, from asteroids and young stars to protoplanetary disks and molecular gas clouds.

In general, we believe that in our Milky Way galaxy there are more than a trillion (1012) planets, and hence chances for life. But between the planets with the ingredients and the real, good life of extraterrestrials there is a huge difference. We do not know yet whether there are any other examples of life in the universe other than those we saw on Earth. Although scientists strongly suspect that if all the same ingredients and identical laws of nature exist throughout the universe, the uniqueness of life on Earth is extremely unlikely, we have no right to draw such a conclusion without foundation. In fact, we do not even know the answer to the question: how did we come from living things to the living?

Our existence proves that this is possible. We can assume that if life appears anywhere in the universe, it can reach three different levels:

– Life begins on the planet, but can not exist, prosper or change
– Life is thriving, held and preserved for billions of years, making significant changes in the properties of the surface of the world on which it lives
– Life becomes intelligent, technologically advanced and either tries to communicate with the cosmos, or to subdue it, or both

Obviously, more advanced opportunities are more pleasing to us and excite the mind, but they are less likely. However, sometimes the rarest things are easiest to find, because they will stand out against the background of everything else. Here are a few different methods that we can use to search for a variety of life forms. Three chances for humanity to find life outside the Earth.

Search in the Solar System

Although life has flourished on Earth for billions of years, other worlds seem to lack such splendor. If there is life on them, it must have hung in a primitive state. Mars and Venus had a moist, warm past, like the Earth, but today Mars is cold and deserted, and Venus is poisonous and hot. The meteorites that fall to Earth contain not only the amino acids necessary for life processes, but also many other elements not related to biological processes on Earth. The moons like Europe and Enceladus have subsurface oceans with liquid water, in which there may be hydrothermal vents. At the bottom of the oceans of the Earth they are usually associated with life.

Although we have not found any evidence of the existence of living beings, past or present, on another world, the possibility of such an indescribable excitement. On Mars there are sedimentary rocks formed by the water past; will we find fossils when we dare to unearth them? On Europe and Enceladus there can be entire oceans open for research; will we find germs or something better in their waters? There is even the assumption that diatoms, examples of primitive forms of life that are found in fragments of meteorites, can have extraterrestrial origin. This is the least developed form of life from all that we can imagine, but at our disposal there are many worlds that we can physically get, visit, measure. If a primitive, simple life is everywhere, a thorough exploration of our solar system will reveal this to us.

Search on other exoplanets

Over the past 25 years, the field of exoplanetary science has given scientists a whole treasure trove of precious discoveries, thousands of planets in orbits of other stars. Many of these worlds are small, solid and are at the correct distance from their stars, which allows them to admit the presence of atmospheres and liquid water on the surface. We can not find individual microbes or fossils on them directly, because they are outside the solar system, but there are indirect methods that we could use to find life that survived and prospered: the search for changes that bring life into our atmosphere planet.

The Earth is the only known planet with such a ratio of molecular oxygen: 21% of our atmosphere is O2. Why did this happen? Life had billions of years to feed the atmosphere with its biological waste. We think that oxygen is necessary for life, but in fact, these animals evolved to use this ingredient, to find its use. As our technology improves, we will be able to measure the molecular signatures of exoplanetary atmospheres and perhaps even directly visualize exoplanets in search of clouds, oceans, seasons and continental greens. We have every reason to believe that a stable life on another planet, if we look for it correctly, should appear to us already in this century.

Search for signals of intelligent aliens

Here, on Earth, we had a unicellular life for billions of years, and then multicellular organisms developed. It took 500 million years since the Cambrian explosion, so that a complex, multicellular, well-differentiated life became a reasonable, technologically advanced civilization. People have already started sending signals to the stars and have already reached the point where these signals were to reach the nearest stars. The search for extraterrestrial life with an attempt to communicate with it is a high-risk, but at the same time, effective method of searching for aliens.

In the 1960s, we assumed that aliens would try to communicate using radio waves. It’s been 50 years, and we are not so sure about it. What alien types of signals can exist in nature? How do we decrypt them? How will they transmit or receive interstellar signals? Will they conquer outer space? Will they be able to overcome giant distances? Everything is possible. If the signal – or, better yet, the spacecraft – will fly to Earth, our view of the universe will completely change, just like our place in this universe.

Although at the moment this is just a hypothesis, scientists suggest that life in the universe is probably widespread, and the ingredients and opportunities for its emergence are found almost everywhere. Life that thrives and sustains itself on the planet, and also changes the atmospheric composition, will be less likely. Complex multicellular life will be even more rare. And the birth of a technologically advanced, intelligent civilization will be so incredible that it will not have a second chance. However, whatever the odds, we will continue to look. We do not have many options yet. And no matter which method shoots first, the day of the discovery of another life will be the greatest day in the history of life on Earth.

{ https://www.planet-today.com/ }

Who Or How Were Earth’s Ancient Structures Built? Ancient Aliens or Forgotten Technology? … Or Both?

{ http://coolsandfools.com/ }

Forgotten Element Could Redefine Time

VIDEO. Alan Bean, le quatrième homme à avoir marché sur la Lune, est mort

DECES Il a effectué deux missions dans l'espace, dont Apollo 12 en 1969...

Il avait été précédé par Neil Amstrong, Buzz Aldrin et Pete Conrad. L’astronaute Alan Bean, le quatrième homme à avoir marché sur la Lune, est mort samedi dans le sud des Etats-Unis après être brusquement tombé malade quelques semaines auparavant, a annoncé sa famille dans un communiqué diffusé par la Nasa.

NASA

✔@NASA

We remember Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean, who walked on the Moon in 1969, commanded the second Skylab crew in 1973 and went on in retirement to paint the remarkable worlds and sights he had seen like no other artist.

Learn more about his life at https://www.nasa.gov/feature/alan-beanhq ….

21:22 - 26 mai 2018

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• 1 821 personnes parlent à ce sujet

Informations sur les Publicités Twitter et confidentialité

Cet ancien pilote d’essai dans la Marine américaine, devenu peintre après avoir quitté en 1981, pour prendre sa retraite, l’agence spatiale américaine, s’est éteint à Houston, au Texas, à l’âge de 86 ans (il est né le 15 mars 1932 à Wheeler, également au Texas).

Voir l'image sur Twitter

Les Amis de la Cité de l'espace@AmisCiteEspace

#Apollo12 Alan Bean, 4ème marcheur lunaire, nous a quitté aujourd'hui.

00:43 - 27 mai 2018

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« Tout artiste a la Terre, et je suis le premier à avoir aussi la Lune »

Alan Bean s’est aventuré pour la première fois dans l’espace en 1969 pour la mission Apollo 12, à l’occasion de laquelle il a marché sur la Lune. Quatre ans plus tard, il est retourné dans l’espace en tant que commandant du deuxième équipage à se rendre à bord de Skylab, la première station spatiale américaine. C’est alors qu’il établit un nouveau record pour l’époque de durée de vol hors de l’atmosphère, avec plus de 59 jours et 24.400.000 milles (39.268.000 km).

En tout, 24 hommes ont volé vers la Lune, et 12 ont marché sur l’astre. Des quatre premiers hommes qui ont foulé sa surface (missions Apollo 11 et 12), seul Buzz Aldrin est encore en vie.

Techniques Spatiales@TechSpatiales

Alan Bean est mort.
Il a marché sur la Lune dès son 1er vol, puis a volé sur Skylab avant d'être connu pour ses peintures spatiales. C'était un des rares à avoir parlé de la peur qu'il a pu ressentir dans l'espace. Bon voyage.
Il ne reste que 4 "moonwalkers" encore vivant...

20:10 - 26 mai 2018

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« Tout artiste a la Terre ou son imagination pour inspirer ses peintures », avait expliqué en 1994 au New York Times celui qui s’était mis à reprendre dans ses œuvres des thèmes liés à la conquête spatiale. Avant d’ajouter : « J’ai la Terre et mon imagination, et je suis le premier à avoir aussi la Lune ».

{ https://www.20minutes.fr/ }

Maverick asteroid might be an immigrant from outside the solar system

Found in Jupiter's orbit, the rock travels around the sun in reverse from the planets

BY EMILY CONOVER 

 

NOT LIKE THE OTHERS  Many asteroids share Jupiter’s orbit (illustrated, not to scale). Most asteroids travel in the same direction around the sun as the planet. But there’s one moving in reverse, which could indicate it came from outside the solar system.

JPL-CALTECH/NASA

An asteroid that flouts the norms of the solar system might not be from around here.

The renegade asteroid travels around the sun in reverse — in the opposite direction of the planets and most other asteroids (SN: 5/13/17, p. 5). Now two scientists suggest that’s because the space rock originated from outside the solar system, according to a paper published May 21 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters.

Astronomers Fathi Namouni of the Côte d’Azur Observatory in Nice, France, and Helena Morais of Universidade Estadual Paulista in Rio Claro, Brazil, used computer simulations to show that the asteroid, which shares its orbit with Jupiter, could have been traveling in reverse ever since the solar system’s youth. Because asteroids in the infant solar system formed from one swirling cloud, they should have all been traveling in the same direction. So the best explanation, the duo suggests, is that the rock, known as 2015 BZ₅₀₉, migrated here from another star’s planetary system.

ON THE MOVE The asteroid 2015 BZ509 (circled), which orbits the sun in reverse, is shown surrounded by stars (larger black spots) in two sets of images taken by the Large Binocular Telescope near Safford, Ariz.

C. VEILLET/LARGE BINOCULAR TELESCOPE OBSERVATORY

In 2017 astronomers spotted the first interstellar asteroid, dubbed ‘Oumuamua, which cruised through the solar system and back out again (SN Online: 12/1/17). Asteroid 2015 BZ₅₀₉, however, appears to be a long-term inhabitant.

“It’s certainly an interesting possibility,” says astronomer Martin Connors of Athabasca University in Canada. But, he says, the study doesn’t nail down whether the asteroid actually came from outside the solar system.

Such asteroids are faint and hard to get information from, Connors says. “There isn’t really a blazing sign saying, ‘Hey, I’m not from here.’ ”

Citations

• F. Namouni and M.H.M. Morais. An interstellar origin for Jupiter's retrograde co-orbital asteroid. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters. Published online May 21, 2018. doi:10.1093/mnrasl/sly057.

Further Reading

• E. Conover. Asteroid in Jupiter's orbit goes its own way. Science News. Vol. 191, May 13, 2017, p. 5.
• E. Conover. Our first interstellar visitor may be a camouflaged comet. Science News Online, December 18, 2017.
• L. Grossman. We still don’t know where the first interstellar asteroid came from. Science News Online, December 1, 2017.
• L. Grossman. An interstellar asteroid might have just been spotted for the first time. Science News. Vol. 192, November 25, 2017, p. 14.

{ https://www.sciencenews.org/ }

US Intelligence Indirectly Confirms Existence of Russia's Hypersonic Weapons

The sources, speaking to CNBC on condition of anonymity, reported that Russia tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic glide vehicle (presumably the Avangard) twice in 2016, and again in 2017. The 2017 test was a failure, according to the sources. A fourth test is expected sometime this summer.

Citing an intelligence report, a source said the hypersonic glider's testing involved mounting it to an RS-18A intercontinental ballistic missile (NATO reporting name SS-19).

US intelligence says the vehicle is highly maneuverable, and thus unpredictable and hard to track. It is also fitted with onboard countermeasures, which no existing US missile-defense system can defeat. Furthermore, although it can carry a warhead, it is believed that the force of the glider's impact, as well as its precision, may be enough to destroy targets.

© SPUTNIK / DENIS ABRAMOV

Russian Vessels Armed With Kalibr Missiles Will Be on Guard in Mediterranean 24/7 Due to Terrorists Threat in Syria - Putin

The intelligence reports, allegedly created this past spring, calculate that the Avangard will likely be operational by 2020, according to CNBC's sources.

The news site doesn't specify whether the reports were released before or after President Putin's unveiling of of cutting-edge new Russian missile systems in a speech to lawmakers on March 1. Putin confirmed the existence of a hypersonic glider, dubbed the Avangard, as well as the Kinzhal air-launched hypersonic missile, an unnamed nuclear-powered cruise missile, and an unnamed sub-launched nuclear-powered submersible drone.

Putin said these systems, which are nearly operational, were aimed at guaranteeing Russian security amid the US withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, and NATO's continual expansion along Russia's western borders. The Kinzhal hypersonic missile appeared at the 2018 Victory Day parade in Moscow.

In late March, Strategic Command commander Gen. John Hyten told Congress that there was nothing in the Pentagon's arsenal capable of stopping Russia's new hypersonic weapons. Hyten confirmed that the United States was watching both Russia and China's hypersonic capabilities closely.

© SPUTNIK / GRIGORY SYSOYEV

Highlights of the 2018 Victory Day Parade in Moscow (PHOTO, VIDEO)

{ https://sputniknews.com/ }

Zealous Ufologist Says Extraterrestrials are Sabotaging Nukes to Stop Apocalypse

A ufologist, who preferred to remain anonymous, took to the website Alien Revelations to claim that aliens are seeking to stop humans from using nuclear weapons, “because we simply cannot be trusted with such massive power.”

• READ MORE: Beware ‘Demonic' Aliens: UFO Probes in US, UK Hampered by Religious Fears

The author recalled former US Air Force Lieutenant Bob Jacobs’ interview on the Larry King show a few years ago when he claimed that his superiors had warned him to remain silent about having seen a UFO at the Vandenberg Air Force Base.

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Pentagon Reportedly Admits UFO Encounter With US Navy

{ https://sputniknews.com/ }