Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
Io is small, but it’s the most volcanically active world in our solar system. It has hundreds of active volcanoes. Now the Juno spacecraft has found one more.
Image generated from data collected last December via NASA’s Juno spacecraft. It’s a new hot spot now thought to be a previously unknown volcano.
Image via NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM.
When it comes to volcanoes, we naturally tend to think of big eruptions like the recent ones in Hawaii or Mount St. Helens in Washington state, best known for its major 1980 eruption. Earth is a volcanically active planet, but there is another place in the solar system even more active, and that is Jupiter’s moon Io. In fact, Io is the most volcanically active body in the whole solar system, as far as we know. Space scientists have discovered more than 400 volcanoes on Io so far, with about 150 erupting at any given time, and now scientists think they’ve discovered yet another one, announced on July 13, 2018.
The possible new volcano was found in data sent back by NASA’s Juno spacecraft, which is currently orbiting Jupiter. Although Juno’s mission focuses on Jupiter itself, it can sometimes observe some of the moons also, from a distance. On December 16, 2017, Juno’s Jovian InfraRed Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument discovered a new heat source close to the south pole of Io that might be an undiscovered volcano. Juno was about 290,000 miles (470,000 km) away from Io at the time. As explained by Alessandro Mura, a Juno co-investigator from the National Institute for Astrophysics in Rome:
The new Io hotspot JIRAM picked up is about 200 miles (300 km) from the nearest previously mapped hotspot. We are not ruling out movement or modification of a previously discovered hot spot, but it is difficult to imagine one could travel such a distance and still be considered the same feature.
Colorful Io as seen by the Galileo spacecraft in 1997.
Image via NASA/JPL/University of Arizona.
The Voyagers 1 and 2, Galileo, Cassini and New Horizons spacecraft, as well as ground-based observatories, all have seen Io’s volcanoes. Why is Io such a volcanically active world? According to NASA:
Io’s surface is covered by sulfur in different colorful forms. As Io travels in its slightly elliptical orbit, Jupiter’s immense gravity causes ‘tides’ in the solid surface that rise 300 feet (100 meters) high on Io, generating enough heat for volcanic activity and to drive off any water. Io’s volcanoes are driven by hot silicate magma.
In other words, Jupiter’s gravity squeezes Io – which is the innermost of the four large Galilean satellites – like a rubber ball. The squeezing results in volcanoes.
Even the New Horizons spacecraft, en route to Pluto, caught a glimpse of Io’s volcanoes. This image show a giant plume from the Tvashtar volcano.
Image via NASA.
Close-up view of one of Io’s volcanoes, as seen by the Galileo spacecraft on February 22, 2000. Image via NASA/JPL.
Mosaic of images from Voyager 1 showing Io’s south polar region.
Image via NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory/USGS.
Io’s sulfuric volcanic plumes can reach up to 250 miles (400 km) high or higher, putting on an incredible ongoing display. In contrast, the highest Mount St. Helens plume on May 18, 1980 reached about 19 miles (31 km), and the highest plume from Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines – known for its powerful 1991 eruption – got as far as 27 miles (45 km). So you see Io’s volcanoes really are explosive! Learn why at this article at Wired.
Io’s volcanic activity is so extensive that it can resurface the entire surface of this Jovian moon in only about a million years. The volcanic activity is the result of tidal heating, where the moon is “stretched” by Jupiter’s strong gravitational pull as well as the lesser gravitational effects of the other satellites. Io also has mountains, some of which are as tall as our earthly Mount Everest even though Io itself is a much smaller world than Earth.
In 2013, it was announced that Io’s volcanos are not concentrated where scientists thought they would be, and are shifted eastward for some reason. According to Christopher Hamilton of the University of Maryland, College Park, lead author of a paper about this research published January 1, 2013, in Earth and Planetary Science Letters:
Our analysis supports the prevailing view that most of the heat is generated in the asthenosphere, but we found that volcanic activity is located 30 to 60 degrees east from where we expect it to be. We performed the first rigorous statistical analysis of the distribution of volcanoes in the new global geologic map of Io. We found a systematic eastward offset between observed and predicted volcano locations that can’t be reconciled with any existing solid body tidal heating models.
Model of the possible interior composition of Io and various surface features.
Image via Wikipedia Commons/Kelvinsong.
Juno will continue to monitor Io periodically during the rest of its mission, until at least July 2021.
Bottom line: Io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system, with over 400 volcanoes discovered so far and about 150 erupting at any given time. Now, NASA’s Juno spacecraft has discovered what appears to be yet another volcano on Io, with many more likely waiting to be found.
GOTCHA A new machine, shaped sort of like a five-fingered arcade claw, gently encloses soft-bodied sea creatures (like this cephalopod) to study before releasing them, unharmed, back into the ocean.
Like a submarine Poké Ball, a new robotic device gently captures and releases deep-sea creatures without a scratch. This critter catcher could be decked out with cameras and other sensors to give scientists an unprecedented view of life in one of Earth’s most mysterious environments.
The contraption, designed to be mounted on a remotely operated underwater vehicle, folds into a 12-sided box about 21 centimeters across. Using a joystick, an operator on board a nearby ship can carefully close this box around soft-bodied creatures, like jellies and cephalopods, that might be hurt or killed by other specimen-collection tools. Temporarily detaining creatures inside the enclosure, described online July 18 in Science Robotics, would create rare opportunities for closeup inspection of otherwise elusive deep-sea creatures.
Deep-sea free-floaters, including some jellyfish and their gelatinous ilk, are “sometimes considered the forgotten fauna,” says study coauthor David Gruber, a marine biologist at Baruch College, City University of New York. While many biologists survey the hustle and bustle of the seafloor, homing in on small creatures in open water is much more difficult, he says, so our understanding of these animals is “almost a blank slate.”
Researchers have a few tools in their arsenals for capturing open-water animals and bringing them to the surface for examination. Unfortunately, nets or suction devices well suited for nabbing sturdy deep-sea dwellers, like fish and crustaceans, can shred fragile life-forms like comb jellies and siphonophores (SN: 7/16/05, p. 46). The new creature-catching gadget offers “a really cool” way to handle the deep sea’s most delicate residents more gently, says Kelly Robinson, a biological oceanographer at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette not involved in the work.
CATCH AND RELEASE Watch how a new submarine “Poké Ball” nabs squishy sea creatures, like jellies and cephalopods, for examination before letting them go back into the ocean.
Zhi Ern Teoh, a mechanical engineer at Cooper Perkins Inc., an engineering firm based in Lexington, Mass., and colleagues tested their device in an underwater canyon in Monterey Bay off the coast of California. The researchers trapped and released jellyfish and squid up to 700 meters below the surface, but their machine is designed to work as deep as 11 kilometers.
Encasing animals inside this robotic box “is really the first step among many,” Gruber says. The team now hopes to rig the machine with 3-D cameras, DNA-swabbing technology and other sensors to gather information on specimens’ physiology. The chamber could also be equipped with instruments to tag animals before they’re released back into the ocean.
Using this technology to inspect deep-sea life on its home turf would be far less stressful for animals than bringing them up to the surface. At sea level, “you’ve got pressure changes, temperature changes, light changes and people staring at them,” says George Matsumoto, a marine biologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Landing, Calif., where Teoh and colleagues tested their device.
Observations of sea creatures in their element may reveal more about what they eat, where they travel, how they are reacting to changing climate conditions, as well as uncover new species. Given that we know “virtually nothing” about the deep sea, “almost anything we come up with is going to be useful information,” Matsumoto says.
Scientists have uncovered a "a stable body of liquid water" on Mars, in what some are calling a "game changer" in the search for alien life.
What is believed to be liquid water is sitting below Mars' southern polar ice cap and is described as a "well-defined, 20-kilometer-wide zone." 20 kilometers is roughly 12.5 miles.
The findings, which are published in the journal Science, were made possibly by Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS), an instrument that resides on the Mars Express spacecraft. MARSIS surveyed Mars' Planum Australe region between May 2012 and December 2015 and utilized radar pulses, sending them through the surface and the polar ice caps, ultimately measuring how the radio waves came back.
The pulses that came back created the aforementioned "well-defined, 20-kilometer-wide zone" and found that the radar reflected the brightness of the liquid water. The study's abstract notes that it is surrounded by "much less reflective areas," a sign that it is indeed water.
The team that wrote the study, including lead author Professor Roberto Orosei, have ruled out any other causes for the brightness.
Speaking with the BBC, Orosei said it probably isn't "a very large lake," but added that this is a body of water and not runoff from a glacier or something else.
"This really qualifies this as a body of water. A lake, not some kind of meltwater filling some space between rock and ice, as happens in certain glaciers on Earth," Orosei told the British media giant.
Following news of the findings, social media was understandably enthused, with some wondering what it might mean for the search for extraterrestrial life.
The presence of liquid water at the bottom of the Martian polar ice caps was first theorized more than 30 years ago, the researchers said, but it had been "inconclusively debated ever since." With the stunning findings, that debate is likely to be put to bed.
The water is likely to be below the freezing point for water (32°F or 0°C) given its location beneath the ice cap, but the presence of minerals such as magnesium, calcium and sodium perchlorate in the soil of the northern plains of Mars, "support the presence of liquid water at the base of the polar deposits."
The presence of these minerals could help form a brine with the water, which would allow it to remain liquid, a reaction that already exists on Earth in areas like Antarctica.
Despite the obvious excitement surrounding the findings, Mars' surface is "inhospitable to life," according to the Open University's Dr. Manish Patel, and researchers are not any closer to finding life than they were prior to the announcement.
“This is just one small study area; it is an exciting prospect to think there could be more of these underground pockets of water elsewhere, yet to be discovered," Orosei said in a statement on the European Space Agency's website.
Nonetheless, Wednesday's announcement is garnering significant attention, something Dmitri Titov, ESA’s Mars Express project scientist, called a "much-awaited result."
“This thrilling discovery is a highlight for planetary science and will contribute to our understanding of the evolution of Mars, the history of water on our neighbor planet and its habitability,” Titov said.
LAS VEGAS - Those secret UFO files at the Pentagon are still secret, but not for a lack of trying.
Thousands of researchers have filed requests via the Freedom of Information Act, hoping to force the military to unleash documents or videos generated during the secret study. The main contractor for the Pentagon was a Las Vegas company.
So far, the Pentagon hasn't complied with any of the requests for more information. But now, the I-Team has obtained key documents related to the UFO inquiry.
The Pentagon's release last December of a 2004 encounter between pilots from the USS Nimitz and a mystery machine dubbed the Tic Tac UFO generated huge headlines and demands for more releases.
Two more followed. The Gimbal video from 2015 and another nicknamed Go Fast. As many as two dozen more videos are still in the Pentagon vaults, according to the man who ran the military's secret UFO study for years.
(This image is from U.S. military footage of the Gimbal)
"AATIP (Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program) did find a lot of stuff. This wasn't just a one-off looking at the Nimitz incident. There were many incidents we looked at, and we looked at them on a continuing basis," said Luis Elizondo.
During his time running the AATIP program, Elizondo set into motion the release of these and other videos. He doesn't know if the spigot has been turned off now that he is longer there. Since October, he's been working with To the Stars Academy to help change the perception of the UFO issue, particularly in Washington. And without revealing too much, Elizondo hints that progress is being made.
"It's about changing the paradigm in which our government can finally take this issue seriously without worrying about their political survival, right, allowing Congress to have a conversation in open or closed session saying, all right guys, gals, what do we do about this?"
"What we can talk about now is, should this scientific study continue, that's already been started? That's huge, volumes and volumes of stuff, we now have the basis for doing it," said Sen. Harry Reid, former Senate Majority Leader.
Reid instigated the Pentagon study back in 2007 but kept it secret. Since his role was revealed last year, he's had calls from many others in Congress and believes there have likely been classified briefings involving military eyewitnesses.
Reid fought hard to keep AATIP going, as revealed in a 2009 letter obtained by the I-Team. He also wants the study to be made public. The Pentagon has yet to release any files, but some information is dribbling out.
"You've got these advanced aerospace vehicles flying around, that we don't know where they come from, what the intent is, possibly off-world even," said Dr. Hal Puthoff, physicist.
In June, physicist Hal Puthoff made the first public presentation about the UFO study. He was the chief scientist for BAASS (Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies), the Las Vegas company which won a Pentagon contract to study UFOs and related mysteries.
In his presentation, Puthoff listed the subjects explored in dozens of scientific studies initiated by BAASS: Star Trek worthy topics -- warp drive, invisibility, metamaterials but the titles and authors have not been released -- until now. The list made public for the first time includes subjects such as worm holes, antigravity and how to track hypersonic vehicles, and more.
Puthoff said his group has studied unknown materials recovered from crash sites. Make of that what you will. Elizondo says TTSA (To the Stars Academy) is actively looking for unusual materials so they can be analyzed.
"You don't know when you pick up a piece or have delivered a piece of metallic slag, could it be from a vehicle we've never seen before or could it be part of an alternator from a 1984 Cadillac? You don't know. We have to be careful," Elizonda said.
He doesn't know if more UFO videos will be released but says there is big news coming about the ones already made public. The Gimbal video, for instance. He points out that the pilots didn't encounter just one UFO.
Mars en bloedmaan samen aan de hemel. Volgens onze voorouders was dit een teken van de apocalyps
De bloedmaan komt eraan en wordt vergezeld door Mars, de god van de oorlog. Mars staat op vrijdag het dichtst bij de aarde in 15 jaar, wat ervoor zorgt dat de planeet zowel groot als helder aan de hemel staat. Dit is een ideaal moment om de rode planeet waar te nemen.
Mars is gemakkelijk met het blote oog te herkennen aan de hemel, als een heldere, roodachtige ‘ster’.
De laatste keer dat Mars groter en helderder was dan normaal, was in 2003. Gedurende twee weken zal de rode planeet zelfs nog helderder zijn dan Jupiter.
Brenger van doem
Daarnaast wordt vrijdag de langste maansverduistering van de eeuw verwacht. Dit fenomeen joeg onze voorouders schrik aan en wordt in sommige delen van de wereld nog steeds gezien als brenger van doem.
Het maximum van de totale maansverduistering vindt plaats om 22.22 uur. Vanuit Nederland en België is het grootste gedeelte van de eclips zichtbaar, maar het begin moeten wij missen.
Erg indrukwekkend
Een totale maansverduistering kan erg indrukwekkend zijn. Tijdens de totaliteit, die duurt van 21.31 uur tot 23.14 uur, valt er geen direct zonlicht meer op de maan.
Een klein beetje zonlicht valt nog op het maanoppervlak. Dit is met name rood licht, waardoor er een rode gloed over de maan komt. Deze fase wordt ook wel bloedmaan genoemd, en duurt ruim 1,5 uur.
Is Buffalo, New York, the new UFO hotspot of the U.S.? Does television station WKBW need to hire a reporter devoted to UFO sightings? Or does WKBW already have an on-the-UFO weathercaster trying to get a leg up on the competition with more accurate forecasts directly from outer space? Or is this just another ‘sweeps week’ promotion to compete with Shark Week? Whatever the reason, WKBW, ABC Channel 7 in Buffalo, has broadcast not one but two UFOs during weather reports just seven days apart. Is it time for meteorologist Autumn Lewandowski to frizz her hair and starting yelling “Aliens!”?
The first sighting occurred on June 14th during the late night news. Meteorologist Andy Parker was making his nighttime forecast when he and his viewing audience witnessed a fast-moving bright light zipping across the screen (around :07 on the video). Parker acknowledged it, wondered if it was a meteor and promised to put it on Facebook, where the comments ranged from aliens to bugs to meteors – in other words, no one, including Parker, knew exactly what they saw.
What most TV weather reporters really see.
That would have been the end of the story … except it happened again at the same station exactly one week later. This time it was an hour earlier and the meteorologist was Autumn Lewandowski, who did viewers a favor and stopped the video before the UFO whizzed by the Skywatch7 camera on the roof. Unlike Andy, she speculated this one was a drone, since it stayed low and parallel to the ground. However, it moved too fast to identify … unlike the stationary INMO (identified non-moving object) right behind it which Autumn correctly predicts with 100 percent certainty (highly unusual for a meteorologist) that it is a planet.
Buffalo as seen from a UFO
So, is Buffalo a new UFO hotspot or an old bug zapper or drone attractor? Sites like UFOStalker don’t seem to indicate that eastern Lake Erie or upstate New York have any more sightings than nearby locations. The two TV station sightings are different yet similar in that they only “kind of” look like meteors or drones. With cameras everywhere, UFO sightings SHOULD be more numerous and more easily identifiable.
And yet … they’re not. While it’s easy to poke fun (they’re meteorologists who look at the sky for a living – shouldn’t they know by now what they’re seeing?), the fact is that the skies are filling up with more objects that more cameras are recording. Those who want to believe or are convinced something is being hidden from us are being bombarded with more things to filter out. Is that intentional? Perhaps. By whom?
Maybe WKBW has its cameras pointing in the wrong direction.
The strange saga of Truman Bethurum – a man who, in the early 1950s, claimed flirty encounters with a hot space-babe named Aura Rhanes – is one which provokes either hoots of derision or deep intrigue. I have friends who fall into the former category and others who fall into the latter. A good case can be made, though, that Bethurum’s encounters were born out of a combination of sleep paralysis and a yearning for something beyond two failed marriages. But, according to Bethurum, it wasn’t all fun and flirty action.
On two occasions, Bethurum said, he encountered Aura Rhanesunder circumstances very different to those which occurred out in the desert, with Rhanes’ huge flying saucer and her crew of little men in view. These additional encounters saw Rhanes operating in what can only be termed disguise. There was nothing flirty or friendly about these close encounters, however: they were downright hostile. The first occurred around 3:00 a.m. – a time when a wealth of supernatural activity typically occurs – one August 1952 morning.
Bethurum and a work friend, “Whitey,” had just finished their shift and decided to head off in Whitey’s pick-up truck to a favorite, all-night diner in Glendale, Nevada. Whitey was someone who Bethurum had quietly confided in about his experiences with Aura Rhanes. He was also someone who, although fascinated by Bethurum’s claims, was somewhat skeptical of the story. That is, until they entered the diner. Any skepticism Whitey had was very soon to be wiped out. As the pair sat and drank coffee and ate pie, a noticeably quiet Whitey elbowed Bethurum in the ribs and motioned him to take a look at the end of the counter. Bethurum looked up. He was amazed and shocked to see Aura Rhanes, and an equally small male individual, standing there.
“It’s her, isn’t it?” asked Whitey. Bethurum nodded, pretty much in a state of near-shock. Both men watched carefully as Rhanes and her colleague took seats at a window table. In stark contrast to everyone else in the diner, Rhanes was dressed in black: black beret, wraparound black sunglasses, black velvet blouse, and black boots. The only thing that wasn’t black: a “glaring red” skirt.
A worried Whitey asked: “What are you going to do?” Bethurum knew exactly what he was going to do. He composed himself, and walk over and talk to them. Whitey, however, was having none of it. He quickly exited the diner, preferring to sit in his truck, in the overwhelming darkness of the desert, rather than confront creatures from another world.
Perhaps trying to be a gentleman and tactful at the same time, Bethurum asked: “I beg your pardon, lady, but haven’t we met before?”
Rhanes slowly looked up, glared at Bethurum with a wide-eyed and hostile stare, and uttered just one word: “No.” In private correspondence with fellow contactee, George Hunt Williamson, Bethurum said that Rhanes’ “no” was uttered in a chilling, “demonic” tone. Almost like a “deadly hiss,” to use Bethurum’s own words.
Bethurum wasn’t taking that for an answer: “You very closely resemble a lady I met some time ago out on Mormon Mesa.”
The only response was another “No” of a very threatening style. Bethurum evidently didn’t get the message. He blundered on with his line of questions. The answer was the same again and again. All the time, the weird little man with Aura Rhanes – who also sported dark sunglasses – said not even a single word. Bethurum clearly recognized this odd behavior (or, rather, non-behavior) on the part of Rhanes’ comrade: “The man did not give a hint that he either heard me or was even aware of my presence. He could have passed as a blind [and] deaf mute.”
As Bethurum walked away, and back to his table, the waitress came over – she just happened to be someone else that Bethurum had told of his otherworldly experiences. She said to him: “They are surely the saucer people you told us about.”
He replied: “I thought so, too. But it may not be. The lady has on dark glasses and the man had a scar on his face.”
The waitress gave a strange response: “I noticed that too, but it is not a scar. It is only penciled on.”
With that, the odd little man motioned for the check. In a few moments, it was paid and the pair headed for the door. The waitress raced over to Bethurum and said: “The lady told me to tell you that she knows you, and that she was sorry and ‘yes’ is the answer to some of your questions.”
It was then that something very strange happened, as Bethurum noted: “I saw them only a step from the door, before I turned to pay my check. When I turned back they were gone. I rushed outside, and there stood Whitey puffing nonchalantly on his cigarette.”
When a dumbfounded Bethurum asked where the pair was, Whitey replied: “They never came out. Honest, Tru; not a blessed soul passed through that door until you came out.”
Siberia is weird. Always has been, always will be. Siberia is one of the most sparsely populated areas on our planet, making it a perfect place for the Russian and/or Soviet government to hide all sorts of stuff: top-secret nuclear research facilities, closed cities, and things far stranger. On top of these man-made mysteries, Siberia has been the site of many strange and unexplained events in the sky including one of the world’s most anomalous natural phenomena: the Tunguska event of 1908.
Trees leveled after the Tunguska event.
Perhaps due to its sheer size, Siberia is no stranger to things exploding or appearing in its skies. Aside from the Tunguska event, strange glowing clouds which light up the night sky have been seen over Siberia before, but an odd cloud which enveloped several Siberian towns this week was significant for the opposite reason: turning day into night. Even stranger, local officials have offered either no explanation or a series of conflicting explanations which have led residents to believe that a full-blown government conspiracy or cover-up might be afoot. What exactly happened in Siberia?
According to eyewitness accounts, a strange fog, dust cloud, or mist appeared seemingly out of nowhere around noon on Friday, July 20th, completely blanketing several towns and villages in the Eveno-Bytantaisky and Zhigansky districts of Yakutia, a region of Siberia well-known to players of the Parker Bros. classic tabletop game Risk. The cloud – or whatever it was – completely blocked out the sun, forcing residents to use flashlights in the middle of the afternoon. Some residents reported that the cloud had a yellowish tinge, while others described it as red. Photos taken during the event show a strange twilight similar to that experienced during total solar eclipses.
As soon as the cloud appeared, speculation, rumors, and conspiracy theories immediately began to surface. Some residents accused the Russian government of carrying out undisclosed tests of missiles or explosives, some believed a meteorite exploded overhead, while others of course said “this can only be explained by a UFO.” A few eyewitnesses even reported seeing a flash of light shortly before the ‘cloud’ appeared.
That doesn’t sound good.
Konstantin Starostin, an official in the Nizhne-Bytantaisky settlement, said the anomalous event was unlike anything the village has witnessed before:
When the Sun vanished, people started calling us in the administration. Many got scared, especially elderly people. People who live here for many years said they had never witnessed anything like this. The darkness was pitch black. It didn’t come at once, but grew gradually.
The leading theory is that the darkness was caused by smokefrom a nearby wildfire, which are common in Siberia this time of year. However, locals doubt that explanation, as the air temperature did not change during the event and there were reportedly no airborne dusts or particulates accompanying the cloud. As of now, this anomalous event remains unexplained. Good old Siberia!
Bombshell Video Shows Police Helicopter Circling A UFO Above Los Angeles
Footage surprisingly shows a police helicopter circling a UFO several times. The clip was reportedly recorded in Los Angeles, California, USA. A resident allegedly captured the video after he heard a loud sound outside his house. Videographer Tom revealed that he used his phone to record the UFO sighting. He described it as something unusual being tracked by the LAPD.
He said that the helicopter was circling non-stop for about 12 minutes.
Initially, he thought the helicopter was looking for someone but when he walked outside something stood out that it was circling.
The witness was not sure about the UFO, but it sounded ridiculous and looked like a craft with two windows on it.
One viewer commented that it was surprising the military did not show up or the government, but they know that many things were not being told to the citizens.
Another commenter speculated that the UFO was probably staying still because it was afraid of the helicopter.
UFO blasts across French sky and then mysteriously disappears
Footage showing a UFO moving fast in the skies of France has brought speculations about global governments running secret projects. The camera appears to struggle to keep up with the unidentified flying object, which seems to have a U-shape body.
One commenter says "the object is like a shape of an alien craft from the movie Prometheus."
Another added: "Looks like something straight out a Sci-Fi movie."
And a third claimed: "It's the government's new secret weapon.
"They are experimenting on us for future use on war."
You know, you don’t have to go trawling around the controversial Wikileaks website to discover the truth behind closely-guarded government secrets.
In recent years the powers that be in the United Kingdom and the United States have declassified thousands of fascinating documents, which were kept secret from the public for decades.
In the UK, the National Archives website and the museum in London hold a treasure trove of information on wartime Britain and alien sightings, while various CIA releases document Cold War struggles, the Area 51 base and the Watergate scandal that donated its name to every half-cocked controversy ever since!
Here are some of our favourite subject matters we’re able to explore online.
Alien sightings – The Truth is Actually Out There
The National Archives have detailed reports of UFO sightings across the UK. The final papers were released in 2013 and covered sightings from 2007 to 2009, before the MoD’s UFO desk shut down.
Did you know the second highest number of sightings (748) recorded by the desk occurred in 2009? Of course, conspiracy theorists claimed this disclosure was just a cover-up story, to hide the real alien landings in the UK.
These documents, like the one chronicling Mork and Mindy’s alleged landing in East Dulwich in 2003, can each be viewed for a small fee (£3.30) on the National Archives website.
Another fascinating section of the brilliant Gov.UK website allows those with a morbid curiosity to read the wills of some of the most notable Brits ever.
These include Sir Winston Churchill, Alan Turing, Princess Diana, AA Milne and Beatrix Potter and 41 million others who’ve died in England and Wales since 1858. For example, Winnie The Pooh creator Milne, left his widow and literary agent a total of £64,173 13 shillings and 6 pence when he passed away on January 31 1956.
Last year, the CIA finally declassified its role in covertly publishing and distributing Boris Pasternak’s (above) banned novel Dr. Zhivago in Russia during the Cold War period.
“We have the opportunity to make Soviet citizens wonder what is wrong with their government when a fine literary work by the man acknowledged to be the greatest living Russian writer is not even available in his own country [and] in his own language for his people to read,” a senior CIA agent wrote in 1958.
You can read over 100 documents relating to this Cold War-era success at the CIA’s website.
The extent of Nazi plundering and allied restitution efforts
This fascinating section of the National Archives details the scale of the German Army’s looting of artwork, cultural artefacts and historic monuments across Europe prior to and during World War 2.
It also documents British-led Allied efforts “to do their utmost to defeat the methods of dispossession practised by the Axis Powers and their associates against countries and peoples whom they have so wantonly assaulted and despoiled”. The declaration focused on protecting historic monuments in war areas and investigating items already seized by the Germans.
Every scandal has the word “gate” annoyingly attached to it these days, but the original Watergate Scandal, from which the trend gets its name, shook the United States to its core in the 1970s.
The break-in at the Democratic National Convention and subsequent cover-up forced President Richard Nixon to resign in 1974 under threat of impeachment. Back in 2011, the Nixon Presidential Library opened files from the Watergate Special Prosecution Force including Nixon’s secret Grand Jury testimony, during which he answered questions about an infamous 18 ½ minute gap in a recording of a conversation in the Oval Office, believed to have been erased as part of the attempted cover-up.
The Cabinet Papers section of the National Archives holds some enthralling insights into the efforts of Churchill’s Cabinet to assess the threat of the “imminent” German invasion and strategies for the defence of the home front during and following the fall of France in 1940.
The documents include discussions of plans to evacuate children to the United States, the possibility of using gas on British beaches to thwart the invasion and the need for the United States to join the war effort as soon as possible.
While the UFO phenomena in the UK is detailed above, there’s no site conspiracy theorists take more interest in than the famous Area 51 military base in Nevada, USA. In 2013, the CIA officially acknowledged the base for the first time, releasing a 355-page document detailing its existence as a secret Cold War military base for testing spy planes. So, all those UFO sightings by commercial pilots were actually Lockheed Martin U-2 planes, which were eventually flown over Russia, Vietnam and Cuba at various points during the crisis.
George Gorman, left, discusses his flight over the skies of North Dakota Air National Guard Base at Hector Field with Dan Oxley and Duane Lund on October 2, 1948.
(Credit: Image Bank/Alamy)
In the words of Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, the man who investigated unidentified-flying-object reports for the U.S. Air Force in the early 1950s, the Gorman Dogfight remains one of the “classics” among UFO sightings.
The incident, which still lacks an airtight explanation, involved a 27-minute air encounter between a veteran World War II fighter pilot named George F. Gorman and a mysterious white orb at high altitude above Fargo, North Dakota. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Gorman told a local newspaper following the October 1, 1948 event. “If anyone else had reported such a thing I would have thought they were crazy.”
Captain Ruppelt operated Project Blue Book, which continued the work of Project Sign and Project Grudge, a series of hush-hush studies conducted by the U.S. Air Force between 1947 and 1969. His mission: to determine if UFOs were a threat to national security and to scientifically analyze UFO-related data.
What makes the Gorman Dogfight unique in the now-declassified pages of Project Blue Book is not only the length of the encounter, but that it was recorded both on the ground and in the sky by numerous reputable sources.
George Gorman’s depictions of his UFO encounter.
(Credit: The Project Blue Book Archive)
Chasing—and being chased by—a light
At the time of the incident, Gorman, a 25-year-old former fighter pilot, served as a second lieutenant in the North Dakota Air National Guard. It was this role that placed him behind the flight controls of a P-51 Mustang on Oct. 1, 1948, taking part in a cross-country flight alongside other National Guard airmen.
While the other pilots landed at Fargo’s Hector Airport, on that fateful evening Gorman stayed in the air in order to get in some night-flying time in the cloudless conditions. Having circled his P-51 over a lighted football stadium, he was preparing to land at about 9 P.M. Advised by the control tower that the only other plane in the vicinity was a Piper Cub (which Gorman could see about 500 feet below him), he witnessed what he believed to be the taillight of another craft passing on the right, though the tower had no other object on the radar.
Deciding to take a closer look at the unidentified object, Gorman pulled his plane up and closed to within about 1,000 yards. “It was about six to eight inches in diameter, clear white and completely without fuzz at the edges,” he said of the object in his report. “It was blinking on and off. As I approached, however, the light suddenly became steady and pulled into a sharp left bank. I thought it was making a pass at the tower.”
Deciding to follow, Gorman tried in vain to catch up with the object, reporting that he finally got behind it at around 7,000 feet, where it made a sharp turn and headed straight for the P-51. Almost at the point of collision Gorman dived and said the light passed over his canopy at about 500 feet before cutting sharply once more and heading back in his direction. Just as collision seemed imminent once again, Gorman said the object shot straight up in the air in a steep climb—so steep that when he tried to intercept, his plane stalled at about 14,000 feet. The object was not seen again, but according to Gorman he had been engaged in aerial maneuvers with it for 27 minutes by the time he brought his plane in to land.
‘Definitive thought behind its maneuvers’
Shaken by the encounter, the pilot went on to report he noticed no sound, exhaust trail or odor from the object. And while he had reached speeds of up to 400 m.p.h. while in pursuit—he couldn’t keep up with whatever it was.
“I am convinced that there was definite thought behind its maneuvers,” Gorman said in a sworn statement to his commander. “I am further convinced that the object was governed by the laws of inertia because its acceleration was rapid but not immediate; and although it was able to turn fairly tight at considerable speed, it still followed a natural curve.”
Gorman reported blacking out temporariliy due to the excessive speed he reached in attempting to turn with the object. “I am in fairly good physical condition and I do not believe that there are many, if any, pilots who could withstand the turn and speed effected by the object, and remain conscious,” he wrote. “The object was not only able to out-turn and out-speed my aircraft… but was able to attain a far steeper climb and was able to maintain a constant rate of climb far in excess of my aircraft.”
Three P-51 Mustangs circa 1945, the same aircraft George Gorman was flying during his UFO encounter.
(Credit: Toni Frissell/Interim Archives/Getty Images)
Other witnesses
Gorman wasn’t the only one to see the mysterious object that night. It was also witnessed by air-traffic controllers Lloyd D. Jensen and H.E. Johnson, who were manning the Hector Airport tower. According to Johnson, who reported seeing the Piper Cub and the UFO at the same time, the object was “travelling at a high rate of speed” and was “fast enough to increase the spacing between itself and [Gorman’s] fighter.” Johnson described the object as appearing to be “only a round light, perfectly formed, with no fuzzy edges or rays leaving its body.”
Dr. A. E. Cannon, the pilot of the Piper Cub, and his passenger also viewed the object—both in the sky and upon their return to the airport, where they immediately joined the traffic controllers in the tower. Cannon described the light as moving “very swiftly, much faster than the 51.” Two Civil Aeronautics Authority employees on the ground also reported seeing the object.
Exploring the options
Could it have simply been another aircraft? Taking the technology of the time into account, Dr Travis S. Taylor, aerospace engineer and author of Introduction to Rocket Science and Engineering, believes any other aircraft would have been apparent to Gorman.
Earlier that year, he points out, Chuck Yeager made his famous flight in the Bell X1 at record-breaking speed, in which he broke the sound barrier. “A craft like that would have been very obvious to a pilot in a P-51. [Gorman] would have known what he was looking at—the X1 looked like an airplane,” says Taylor. “If he was chasing something that didn’t look like a standard aircraft and he couldn’t keep up with it, either it was too far away, and he didn’t realize how far away it was, or it was moving faster than a P-51 could move.”
U.S. Air Force investigators from Project Sign (later to become Project Grudge and ultimately Project Blue Book) soon arrived in Fargo, where Geiger counter measurements of Gorman’s plane revealed heightened radioactivity, though this was later explained away as a side effect of the high-altitude flying that took place.
Was Gorman a kook, or maybe touched in the head by his war experiences? Government investigators found him to be a credible witness, noting that he “did not make the impression of being a dreamer. He reads little, and only serious literature. He spends 90 percent of his time hunting and fishing; drinks less than moderately; smokes normally; and does not do drugs. He appears to be a sincere and serious individual who was considerably puzzled by his experience and made no attempt to blow his story up.”
A model of a R-1, the first Soviet guided missile.
(Credit: Mikhail Dyuryagin/TASS/Getty Images)
What about Cold War testing?
One conspiracy theory speculated that Gorman’s encounter may have been with a top-secret test craft. With World War II a very recent memory, tensions in 1948 were heightened both in military and civilian circles. And as the Cold War tightened its grip on the American psyche, the U.S government sought to boost its scientific firepower with a clandestine initiative called Operation Paperclip, through which it recruited former Nazi scientists, engineers and technicians (including Wernher von Braun and his V-2 rocket team) to America, to boost the nation’s chances in the Cold War and looming space race.
Further afield, the Soviets had begun testing the R-1 Rocket (a Soviet version of the German V-2 of WWII) the same year as Gorman’s encounter, raising questions of whether the object he and the others saw could have been a Soviet craft or weapon. “The R-1 didn’t have the range to go from wherever their launch capability was in the Soviet Union to Fargo,” says Taylor. “It was a dumb rocket. All the rockets at that time were projectiles. They used aerodynamics mostly to guide them. They could do slow maneuvers, but if they did a fast maneuver they’d start tumbling apart.”
The weather-balloon theory
Back in Fargo, after the Air Weather Service revealed it had released a lighted weather balloon 10 minutes before Gorman first saw the object, investigators pounced, proclaiming the balloon the likeliest explanation for the object seen.
As for the seemingly incredible movements witnessed, the report said those were due to Gorman’s own maneuvers as he tried to chase the bright object. Essentially, investigators wrote, his high speed gave the balloon the appearance of moving in opposite directions as he passed by. Added to that theory, investigators noted the bright appearance of Jupiter on that date, hypothesizing that Gorman had been attempting to chase the bright dot of the planet at the same time the weather balloon was in range.
The lighted weather balloon would become the official cause of the encounter in the Project Blue Book file.
“We were doing Project Mogul at the time, which was high-altitude balloons [fitted with high-powered microphones] that we were trying to listen to see if the Soviets were doing above-ground nuclear testing,” says Taylor, who points out that the famous Roswell, New Mexico UFO sighting was explained away as a Project Mogul balloon.
Whether Gorman was happy with the official outcome remains unknown. Maintaining his silence, he returned to the Air Force full-time, eventually retiring at the rank of lieutenant colonel in 1969. He never spoke publicly about the encounter again, though according to The Bismarck Tribune, he did tell friends “he was never convinced that he had been dueling with a lighted balloon for 27 minutes.” Gorman died in 1982.
Taylor has his own theory: “Possibly somebody was playing around with rocketry.” But, he notes, there were no known test facilities or scientists in the Fargo area when the encounter took place. All the [Operation Paperclip] Germans were at the missile grounds in White Sands, New Mexico, while rocket guru Robert H. Goddard, had died in 1945. “It makes no sense,” says Taylor, “that there was anything there that was manmade that they were chasing.”
VIDEO: Comic-Con Trailer: Project Blue Book Watch an exclusive clip of the new series Project Blue Book, coming soon on HISTORY.
The Flatwoods Monster has not hissed at boys in the little village of Flatwoods, West Virginia, since Sept. 12, 1952.
People grin about it now—and take Monster souvenir money, from hundreds of Monster tourists every week. But it scared people plenty back then, including the eyewitnesses: six boys aged 10 to 17, a dog and a Mom.
“One of the boys peed his pants,” said John Gibson, a high-school freshman at the time, who knew them all. “Their dog (Rickie) ran with his tail between his legs.”
The encounter made the local and national news, scaring a wider swath of people. Then it prompted a U.S. Air Force UFO inquiry, part of a project called Project Blue Book that dispatched a handful of investigators around the country to look into such claims.
It also became a local legend, a Southern spook story that defined the tiny village of less than 300 people for more than six decades. To this day, tourists come out of their way to Flatwoods—secluded in the low, timbered Appalachian hills of central West Virginia—to visit its monster museum and buy Green Monster tchotchkes and T-shirts.
The original drawing of the Flatwoods Monster by a New York sketch artist.
(Credit: The Flatwoods Monster Museum
What they witnessed
It was dusk when they saw it. The May brothers Ed, 13, and Freddie, 12, had been playing in their schoolyard with their 10-year-old friend Tommy Hyer. After noticing a pulsing red light streak across the sky and crash on a nearby farm, the three youngsters ran to grab the Mays boys’ mother, then high-tailed it up that hill to check out where the light had landed. A few other boys, one with a dog, showed up too.
They ran back down—in sheer and credible terror.
“Seven Braxton County residents on Saturday reported seeing a 10-foot Frankenstein-like monster in the hills above Flatwoods,” a local newspaper reported afterward. “A National Guard member, [17-year-old] Gene Lemon, was leading the group when he saw what appeared to be a pair of bright eyes in a tree.”
Lemon screamed and fell backward, the news account said, “when he saw a 10-foot monster with a blood-red body and a green face that seemed to glow.” It may have had claws for hands. It was hard to tell because of the dense mist.
The story made the local news, then got picked up by national radio and big papers all over the country, said Andrew Smith, who runs the Flatwoods Monster Museum and the Braxton County Convention Visitors Bureau. “Mrs. May and the National Guard kid ended up going to New York to talk to CBS,” Gibson said.
Flatwoods residents Gene Lemon and Kathleen May, who claimed to have seen the monster and provided descriptions for the famous sketch.
(Credit: The Flatwoods Monster Museum)
Believers, doubters and cashers-in
“Those people were the most scared people I’ve ever seen,” said local newspaper publisher A. Lee Stewart, in that 1952 news story. Stewart himself had marched up that hill with a shotgun after witnesses told what they saw. “People don’t make up that kind of story that quickly,” Stewart said then.
Others doubted.
“State police laughed off the reports as hysteria,” the newspaper story said. “They said the so-called Monster had grown from seven to 17 feet in just 24 hours.”
Gibson doubted too, though he’s since sold 1,000 of his 12-inch-tall ceramic Green Monster figurines in just the last two years (at $30 apiece).
“I don’t believe in the Easter Bunny,” says Gibson, an insurance agent still working at 81. “I don’t believe in Santa. And I really don’t believe in the Flatwoods Monster. But I do want to boost our community.”
An era of bomb scares and demagogues
But rattled eyewitnesses weren’t the only reason the story took off.
Americans were truly frightened in 1952, made anxious by atomic bombs and what seemed like a new world made by mad scientists. Even LIFE magazine, probably the most popular publication in the nation at the time, had, just a few months earlier, published a seemingly credible trend story about flying saucers.
Spook stories sprout best when the seed lands in a bed fertile with anxiety, and that was 1952 Cold War America—a hothouse of anger, disillusionment and anxieties, made to order for conspiracy theorists, political demagogues and tellers of suspenseful tales.
The May brothers’ monster story hit just three years after the Soviet Union successfully tested an atomic bomb in 1949. The Air Force was scanning for bombers over our skies.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were awaiting execution for sending American nuclear-weapons designs to the Soviets—selling hellfire to our mortal enemies.
A political demagogue, Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Minnesota, had spent the previous two years stoking fears that communists had infiltrated not only the U.S. Department of State, but almost every industry and corner of the nation.
And communists had killed thousands of American soldiers in Korea by 1952, including four youngsters 21 or younger from Braxton County, West Virginia, who died just months before the Monster landed. One of those killed in action, U.S. Marine PFC Lantry R. Frame, age 20, had grown up in Sutton, only six miles from the May boys in Flatwoods.
Into that fertile American atmosphere of fear and death and demagoguery, LIFEdropped a bombshell headline:
“HAVE WE VISITORS FROM SPACE?”
“The Air Force is now ready to concede that many saucer and fireball sightings still defy explanation,” LIFE’s summary headline said. “LIFE offers some scientific evidence that there is a real case for interplanetary saucers.”
The story, filled with seemingly “credible” accounts, including from eyewitness Air Force pilots, appeared in April 1952—just five months before Ed and Freddie May climbed that hilltop.
A piece of wood that was taken from the once-standing tree where the Flatwoods sighting occured on September 12, 1952.
(Credit: The Flatwoods Monster Museum)
The hope of ‘something bigger’
How do these stories gain credence? It’s not necessarily that millions believe in UFOs, says behavioral psychologist Clay Routledge. Many UFO devotees usually don’t believe, he says. “But they are seduced by the story.”
Why? “There’s the hope that we are not just insignificant organisms walking around aimlessly on a rock floating in space,” says Routledge, who has studied brain science, UFO beliefs and culture. “There’s the hope that we’re part of something bigger.”
Call it “cosmic loneliness,” Routledge says.
That may be. But if the May brothers are familiar with that phrase, they are probably rolling their eyes. Freddie and Ed are still alive—and still standing by their story.
They are in their late 70s now. They are no longer talking to reporters.
“They got tired after 100,000 interviews,” Smith says.
But the brothers did appear in a recent documentary about the Flatwoods Phantom. And in the video trailer teasing to that show, Freddie looks calmly into the camera. “As far as for myself,” he says, “It doesn’t matter to me whether people believe, or don’t believe.”
One writer who stoked the story (a lot) was Gray Barker, a Braxton County native who investigated the Monster—and then became one of the more prominent UFO myth makers ever. It was Barker who wrote about Flatwoods, then introduced the mythology of government “Men in Black,” after he heard that two Air Force investigators had “reportedly” shown up in Flatwoods, posing as magazine writers.
But Barker’s friends later said he didn’t believe—and did the UFO writings cheerfully and for money.
To this day, locals still wonder.
“The universe is a mighty big place,” says Joan Bias, news editor at The Braxton Democrat, a local newspaper. “I can’t imagine we might be alone in it—though I’m a Baptist, so maybe I shouldn’t say that!”
There were fewer than 300 people Flatwoods in 1952, and a few less than that now.
“You could say that local embrace of the Monster was a little slow going,” Smith says.
(Credit: The Flatwoods Monster Museum)
Could it have been an owl?
The U.S. Air Force doubted too. They later revealed that they’d done UFO research and investigations since 1947, collecting thousands of stories, investigating some with a skeleton staff.
About this one, they concluded that bright but common meteors had streaked across the eastern U.S. at dusk that night, seen by many in Baltimore, among other places. And the monster with the claw-like arms? Likely an owl, they said.
Even if it’s just unproven folklore, the tourists seem to keep coming, so locals did that most Earthling of things: They made bumper stickers, shot glasses and giant monster-shaped chairs that whole families could get into and have their picture taken while sitting in the Monster’s scary, embracing arms. They created the Monster museum. They put up signs on highways: “Home of the Green Monster.”
And they learned, to their surprise, that people wanted to hand them money.
From spring to fall, peak tourist season, hundreds of people a week stop in the Spot, Flatwoods’ ice cream and sandwich eatery. They eat the Flatwoods Monster Burger (double burger, double cheese), and look at all the historic Monster photos and news clippings hanging on the wall. The Museum has artifacts, including a chunk of the oak tree that the Monster had floated out from behind.
And so the Flatwoods Monster, also known as the Green Monster, also known as the Phantom of Flatwoods, who was reportedly seven feet tall, or 10 feet tall, or 13 feet tall, or 17 feet tall, became that most peculiar American invention—a legend emblazoned on T-shirts.
“If you know how I could get a 26-foot fiberglass Green Monster statue made for Flatwoods, let me know,” Gibson said.
“That would be a big draw, don’t you think?”
VIDEO: Comic-Con Trailer: Project Blue Book Watch an exclusive clip of the new series Project Blue Book, coming soon on HISTORY.
An illustration featured on the cover of Gray Barker's book on men in black, "They knew too much about Flying Saucers."
(Credit: Mary Evans Picture Library/Everett)
It’s possible that the story of the Men in Black, the mysterious figures that would become the subject of fascination in UFO conspiracy circles and eventually break into mainstream popular culture, can be traced back to one day: June 27, 1947. It’s quite possible that it all started with a man, a boy and a dog on a boat.
As the story goes, Harold Dahl was on a conservation mission on the Puget Sound near the eastern shore of Washington’s Maury Island, gathering logs, when he saw six donut-shaped obstacles hovering about a half a mile above his boat. Before long, one of them fell nearly 1,500 feet, followed by raining, metallic debris, some of which hit Dahl’s son, Charles, on his arm, as well as the family dog, who didn’t survive the ordeal. Dahl was able to take some pictures of the aircraft with his camera, which he later showed to his supervisor, Fred Crisman. A skeptical Crisman went back to the scene to look for himself and saw a strange aircraft with his own eyes.
The following morning, Dahl was visited by a man in a black suit. They end up at a local diner, where the man was able to recount in extraordinary detail what Dahl had just experienced. “What I have said is proof to you that I know a great deal more about this experience of yours than you will want to believe,” the man said, according to author Gray Barker’s 1956 book They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers.
Dahl was told not to speak of the incident. If he did, bad things would happen.
The Puget Sound in Washington state, where the Maury Island Incident occurred.
(Credit: Lowe Stock/Getty Images)
The supposed events of Maury Island have continued to fuel conspiracy theories to this day, even though a U.S. government investigation deemed it a hoax after Dahl and Crimson later admitted as much. In particular, the mention of the man in the black suit would evolve into a key obsession for UFO enthusiasts and spread into American popular culture, thanks to a comic-book series and a blockbuster movietrilogy.
In all of their different incarnations, the Men in Black (MIB) usually have one main purpose: to muzzle witnesses of strange, paranormal phenomena. They almost always wear black suits and hats with dark sunglasses, drive black cars and arrive in groups of two or three. Some describe them as one would an FBI agent, while others recall the MIB as having strange appearances, sometimes with supernatural features like glowing eyes and strange complexions.
So how did we get from Harold Dahl to Will Smith?
“The transformation of the story from a first press report to a folkloric tale to a comic book and now to a film illustrates how the myth is transformed,” wrote Phil Patton in The New York Times around the time the first Men in Black movie was released in 1997. “That process is not unlike the children’s game of ‘telephone’ or what the literary critic Harold Bloom calls ‘innovation by misinterpretation.’ ”
Sticking with the telephone analogy, the first call was made to Kenneth Arnold, a pilot who had his own alleged UFO sighting on June 24, 1947 near Mt. Rainier, Washington. Though it happened three days after the Maury Island incident, it was the first widely reported sighting and it “touched off the saucer sensation,” as was written in a 1949 government report on “Flying Saucers.”
Kenneth Arnold, center, looks at a photo of an unidentified flying object they sighted while en route to Seattle, Washington with (L-pilots E.J. Smith and Ralph E. Stevens.
(Credit: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)
The report states that Dahl and Crimson reached out to a Chicago magazine in an attempt to sell their story, and the magazine editor then contacted Arnold, hoping he could help verify their account. Arnold then “summoned two officers of Army A-2 Intelligence to aid in the investigation of Dahl and Crisman’s claim,” according to the report.
In July 1947, two Army A-2 Intelligence officers came to investigate. After leaving in their B-25 the next day, the plane caught fire and crashed, killing both officers and doing nothing to quiet UFO conspiracists.
But the Maury Island story gained little notice in the UFO community until Barker’s 1956 book, in which he wrote of his “file on the Maury Island case” that largely consisted of the writings by Ray Palmer, the Chicago magazine editor referred to in the government’s report. Barker went on to connect the dots between “the man, who wore a back suit” who took Dahl to breakfast and three similarly dressed men who allegedly visited a young UFO enthusiast named Albert K. Bender in 1953.
It was Bender who “almost single-handedly ushered in the plague of the Men in Black—just as Arnold inaugurated the era of the UFO,” Ufologist Nick Redfernwrote in his book The Real Men in Black. But it was Barker’s book that told Bender’s story, thus introducing the concept of the MIB to a much wider audience.
(The telephone-game analogy is still holding.)
The cover of Gray Barker’s book, They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers.
(Credit: Mary Evans Picture Library/Everett)
“It still has an important legacy,” said Robert Sheaffer, a UFO researcher. “Before its publication, nobody outside a very narrow group of subscribers to flying-saucer newsletters had ever heard of Bender, or his MIB.”
Barker described Bender’s visitors as: “Three men in black suits with threatening expressions on their faces. Three men who walk in on you and make certain demands. Three men who know that you know what the saucers really are!”
Bender, in his own 1962 book Flying Saucers and the Three Men, described the MIB in much more frightening language.
“They floated about a foot off the floor… They looked like clergymen, but wore hats similar to Homburg style. The faces were not clearly discernible, for the hats partly hid and shaded them… The eyes of all three figures suddenly lit up like flashlight bulbs… They seemed to burn into my very soul as the pains above my eyes became almost unbearable,” wrote Bender.
Barker would go on to write several more books related to the paranormal and UFOs, including 1970’s The Silver Bridge, which helped spread the story of another popular paranormal figure, the creature known as Mothman. But how much of his writing was done in good faith has been called into question by many in the UFO-research community.
“Barker made it clear to me that he did not take the MIB or Mothman very seriously,” says Sheaffer, who corresponded with Barker on occasion. “However, he believed that there was still ‘something mysterious’ about the whole UFO and paranormal thing.”
Regardless of Barker’s motives, countless MIB encounters have been reported since They Knew Too Much was published nearly 60 years ago, and at least one more movie is on the way.
VIDEO: Comic-Con Trailer: Project Blue Book Watch an exclusive clip of the new series Project Blue Book, coming soon on HISTORY.
AHEAD of the Scottish UFO and Paranormal Conference 2018 in Glasgow next weekend (July 28), we recount some of the most intriguing unexplained cases of flying saucers, strange lights in the sky and alleged alien abductions.
Forestry worker Robert Taylor found himself at the centre of one of Scotland's most famous UFO mysteries when he stumbled across a "a huge flying dome" in a woodland clearing near Dechmont Law in Livingston on November 9, 1979.
Taylor was checking the progress of new saplings when he saw what he described as a large, circular sphere approximately seven yards (6.4 metres) in diameter, hovering above the forest floor.
He said the object was "a dark metallic material with a rough texture like sandpaper". The outer rim was "set with small propellers".
As he approached, two smaller spheres, each about three feet wide with protruding metal spikes "similar to sea mines", dropped down from the mother craft and rolled towards him. Taylor claimed to have experienced an acrid smell "like burning brakes" and the sensation of being dragged.
Taylor said he then lost consciousness and awoke to find the objects were gone. Head pounding and with a bitter taste in his mouth, Taylor was unable to walk or talk.
Eventually he managed to crawl to his van parked nearby but couldn't start it and had to walk the mile to his Livingston home.
Taylor's wife, shocked by his disorientated and dishevelled appearance, called the police and a doctor. There were grazes on Taylor's legs and chin, but no other signs of injury; although the heavy work trousers he had been wearing were ripped.
The police returned to the site with Taylor where they found "ladder-shaped marks" in the soil where the craft was said to have hovered, and further marks following the path of the mine-like objects.
The case remains unique in British history as the only example of a UFO sighting becoming the subject of a criminal investigation. Taylor, who died in 2007, never sought publicity or financial gain – and always stood by every word of his account.
There would later be suggestions that he had suffered an epileptic seizure, mini-stroke or hallucinated after ingesting deadly nightshade berries. Yet, Ron Halliday, co-organiser of the Scottish UFO and Paranormal Conference 2018, gives short shrift to such theories.
"There was no evidence that Bob had any illness before he had this encounter," says Halliday. "He was always personally convinced that he had seen something 'out of this world'. Everyone agreed that Bob was a sincere person. He hadn't made anything up. Something had happened to him.
"He definitely did see something 'out of this world' because I don't know what else can explain what he saw. There was physical evidence that something had been there and clearly something had happened to him.
"I would say that of all the Scottish cases it is the one that seems to me that gives the most direct evidence of contact from another world."
UFO capital: Bonnybridge and the 'Falkirk Triangle'
The phenomenon of the "Falkirk Triangle" – which includes Bonnybridge and Camelon – was first reported in 1992 and the area continues to register more UFO sightings, around 300 a year, than any other place on Earth.
Objects spotted range from "big, black and cigar-shaped" to "a bright light criss-crossed by stripes of different colours".
In October 1996, local man Barry MacDonald captured a video of an orange oval light in the skies above Falkirk which changed shape as he watched, becoming a white disc – the classic "flying saucer" shape. The clip went viral worldwide.
According to Halliday, the "Falkirk Triangle" continues to be a UFO hot spot. "What is interesting about this area is that there has been an accumulation of incidents stretching from the early 1990s right up until last year," he says.
"One theory is that there could be a window into another dimension, other worlds, the past or the future. These views are controversial – I understand that. There have been so many incidents reported that it's clear something strange has gone on in that area."
Sid and Gwen Freeman from Blairgowrie, Perthshire, experienced a series of odd incidents during April 1984 that included a UFO hovering over their garden and a visit from 12 men dressed in black.
Halliday believes the area surrounding the town is another hotbed of UFO activity, with reports of strange balls of light in the sky and the location of Scotland's first ever crop circle in 1990.
The most bizarre incident is what could be a UFO crash reported in the Annual Register of 1767. It described a pyramid-shaped object over the River Ericht that moved "with great speed and disappeared a little above Blairgowrie" leaving a trail of destruction in its wake including a partly destroyed house and bridge.
"You do find some areas seem to attract certain events and it is hard to explain precisely why," says Halliday. "But they do seem to be connected in some strange way."
West Lothian: The A70 Abduction
There have been many reports of glimmering discs, strange lights and bouncing balls of fire in West Lothian skies since Robert Taylor's 1979 encounter.
Garry Wood and Colin Wright had an unnerving experience on August 17, 1992, while travelling on the A70 near Harperrig Reservoir where they saw a two-tiered, disc-shaped object above the road.
Wood put his foot down on the accelerator to speed away, but as they passed beneath the UFO, it appeared to emit a "curtain of white light" and the pair reported being temporarily enveloped in a black void for what felt like 10-15 seconds.
The car began shuddering and they emerged to find themselves driving on the wrong side of the road. When Wood and Wright arrived in the South Lanarkshire village of Tarbrax, where they were due to drop off a satellite TV system, they discovered that several hours were unaccounted for.
Afterwards they underwent hypnosis sessions, with both men recalling an alien abduction scenario and being subjected to a medical-type examination.
"I have spoken to both Garry and Colin – in fact, I have spoken to Garry several times – and there is no doubt in my mind they're convinced that they had this strange encounter," says Halliday.
"The criticism in that case was that the story of the actual details of the encounter – the abduction – had only come out when they went under hypnosis. Hypnosis is quite controversial because of false memory syndrome.
"Interestingly, just a couple of years ago I was speaking to a chap who had no interest in UFOs, but he said to me quite spontaneously that he had been driving along the A70 and had come to this stretch of road and there was this huge bright light overhead which enveloped the car.
"That was very similar to what happened to Garry and Colin, but he didn't experience an abduction."
Forth Rail Bridge: A surprise centenary visitor
The centenary of the Forth Rail Bridge was celebrated on October 7, 1990, with a fireworks display. Watching the festivities was Lyn Livingston who caught sight of a circular object with a base made up of intermittent red, white and blue lights in the sky.
The UFO is said to have rotated and appeared to change shape, forming a projecting cone of white-coloured lights. It stayed in position for 15 minutes before drifting off towards the Fife coast.
"There was a number of witnesses to that," says Halliday. "The location is part of this triangle of incidents and activity, stretching over from West Lothian into Fife. It got a lot of publicity at the time because a few people claimed to have seen it."
Glasgow: The flying railway carriage
Tom Coventry* was waiting at a bus stop on Menock Road near King's Park, Glasgow, when he claims what looked like a railway carriage-shaped object passed 20ft above his head.
The incident took place in December 1983, with Coventry reporting being able to see three windows at the front and a glimpse of swirling yellow smoke inside.
"He had this experience, which has been reported in other UFO sightings, where he had a sense that everything had stood still," says Halliday.
"It was almost like he was in another world for a moment as he watched this object passing over. I spoke to him several times and queried it, but he remained convinced that he saw this object."
In the west end of Glasgow two UFO incidents – 21 years apart – were reported within the same, small geographic area. The first, in 1955, was at Belhaven Terrace where children playing outside were terrified by several entities floating above the ground dressed in long white clothes.
Another incident is reported to have happened in nearby Westbourne Gardens in 1976. "A chap saw this silver disc-shaped object coming towards his flat window," says Halliday.
"He was dumbstruck by it. He described it as hovering about 100ft above an open space opposite where he was standing. There were other witnesses in two nearby flats who also saw it."
Dunblane: UFOs in the hills
David Evans* claimed that UFOs regularly flew over his home and that they had a base inside hills near Dunblane. His experiences began in 1992.
"I visited his house at Kinbuck near Dunblane and there was a little hillock in his garden," says Halliday. "He had been standing there when he saw this UFO fly over the top of him.
"He also believed that he'd had some UFO interference in his house where something – he wasn't sure what – had come in and disturbed various things.
"The most curious part is that he said he saw these UFOs disappear into a hill. He pointed out these white things to me. It was quite a distance away, but I did see round, white objects on the hill. They were so far away, however, that exactly what they were I don't know."
*Some names have been changed
Inside track: Scotland's X-Files Investigator
RON Halliday has been fascinated by unexplained phenomena since he was a child. The retired assistant registrar from Bridge of Allan has written nine books covering subject matter from UFOs and ghosts to vampires, witches and other supernatural experiences.
Alongside fellow investigator and author Alyson Dunlop, Halliday is co-organiser of the Scottish UFO and Paranormal Conference 2018 which takes place in Glasgow on Saturday.
He will be giving a talk, Mysteries of the Scottish Landscape, unravelling secrets behind standing stones, crop circles and ley lines among others.
How did you first become drawn to this field?
My granny was a psychic and forever seeing spirits of the dead. I was a bit scared initially when she would talk about ghosts, but I got used to it and began to get interested. My dad was a scientist, so I come at it from that side too.
Later I became interested in UFOs and that expanded into what I would call "mysteries of the landscape" such as ley lines, crop circles, mystic sites and so on. I think it all could be connected in various ways that may not seem obvious at first.
Sometimes UFOs are described as having a ghostly appearance; they come and go. It is the same when people see ghosts that appear solid and then seem to vanish instantly.
One theory is that witnesses to these incidents could be seeing into another dimension, other worlds, the past or the future – almost like looking through a window.
Many people associate UFOs with little green men in flying saucers. What are your thoughts?
One of the puzzles of the whole UFO phenomenon is that people do report different shaped objects and types of aliens.
An interesting case involved a 10-year-old girl who went out into the woods in Meigle, Perthshire, and came across a group of small, blue beings. She was beamed up into what she presumed was a spacecraft and these aliens looked at her. Afterwards they beamed her back down.
She arrived home to discover she had been gone for hours and her parents were about to call the police. In Scotland, blue traditionally was the colour associated with the supernatural such as Blue Men of the Minch and the Blue Stane in St Andrews.
Why does Scotland have such a rich history in supernatural tales and paranormal experiences?
I wish I had an answer to that. People talk about Bonnybridge being the UFO capital of the world. We have some of the most famous monsters in the world at Loch Ness and Loch Morar. It is hard to explain precisely why this happens.
If I come back to this idea of opening up a window into different dimensions, then perhaps for some reason Scotland has a particular interaction and connection with other worlds.
The Scottish UFO and Paranormal Conference 2018 takes place at Queen Margaret Union, University of Glasgow, from 10am to 6pm, on July 28. Tickets cost £10. Visit scottishufoandparanormalconference.wordpress.com
UFO Scotland by Ron Halliday is published by Black & White and available on e-book.
Climate Change Strengthens Earth's 'Heartbeat' — and That's Bad News
By Chelsea Gohd, Space.com Staff Writer
Seasonal temperature variations and trends are visualized and depicted on NASA's "Blue Marble" image.
Credit: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
It's no secret that human activity is changing the climate, and one new study shows how our influence is seriously affecting Earth's seasons and atmosphere.
Climate change is much more than rising temperatures and melting ice. In a new study, scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and five otherorganizations show that human action significantly affects the seasonal temperature cycle in the troposphere, or lowest layer of Earth's atmosphere — the layer that we live in where weather occurs.
These researchers used what is known as a "fingerprint" technique, in which they separated human influence from natural influence on climate. This allowed them to isolate human contributions and assess the specific effects of our species. And, while many fingerprint studies explore climate patterns over years and decades, this work shows how humans influence the changing seasons. [See the Effects of Climate Change Across Earth (Video)]
In this new study, scientists examined seasonal temperature cycles in the troposphere and observed the profound impact humans are having on the atmosphere and our seasons. Most notably, the researchers found that because of carbon dioxide emissions, Earth's seasonal "heartbeat," or the contrast between hot summers and cold winters, is becoming stronger.
The team used temperature measurements taken by satellites to study changes in the size of the seasonal temperature cycle in the troposphere at different points on the planet's surface. In this way, the researchers could see the difference between summer and winter temperatures and the difference between warm and cold seasons.
The investigators found that our summers are warming more rapidly than the other seasons as Earth's overall temperature rises, a phenomenon that is especially true in the Northern Hemisphere. Additionally, the measured temperatures in the troposphere are consistent with models that suggest a strengthening seasonal heartbeat.
"Our results suggest that attribution studies with the changing seasonal cycle provide powerful and novel evidence for a significant human effect on Earth's climate," Benjamin Santer, LLNL climate scientist and lead author on the new work, said in a statement.
Climate fingerprint research, which originated in the 1970's, studies climate patterns to find the source of large climate changes. It takes into account natural factors that contribute to climate like ocean heat, the water cycle, circulation in the atmosphere, sea ice, and extreme natural events, according to the statement. In this study, researchers studied model climate simulations driven by historical changes in human behavior.
The team found a highly significant "pattern match" between seasonal temperature trends and the human influence, or "fingerprint," on the troposphere, according to the statement. This shows that observed changes in our atmosphere and seasonal tropospheric temperature cycles are most likely caused by human action, the study said.
This is the first formal fingerprint study that has ever been conducted with the changing seasonal tropospheric temperature cycle, according to the statement.
Radiation mapping of Europa may lead to discovery of alien life
A new extensive mapping of Jupiter moon Europa’s radiation pummeling has revealed to the researchers as to where they should look for and till what length they would have to dig deep when hunting for extraterrestrial life.
A new study conducted by a team of researchers represented an almost complete mapping and modeling of the radiation at Europa and provided major clues to the unsolved puzzled.
The study’s lead author, Tom Nordheim, a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, said in a statement, “If we want to understand what’s going on at the surface of Europa and how that links to the ocean underneath, we need to understand the radiation.”
By making use of the information received 2 decades ago from the flybys of Galileo of Europa and electron measurements through the NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft, the team of researchers closely analyzed the electrons that were blasting the lunar surface. They discovered that the doses of the radiation differ with respect to location. The regions surrounding the equator, get the most intense radiation whereas the regions near the poles, get the least radiation.
The co-author of the study, Chris Paranicas at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, said in a statement, “This is the first prediction of radiation levels at each point on Europa’s surface and is important information for future Europa missions.”
Further, the researchers gauged the depth till which the radiation tends to penetrate into the surface. They also designed Europa’s most extreme radiation’s 3D models. The result told the researchers how deep they have to dig for finding biosignatures that may be preserved.
The depth varied from four to eight inches in the extreme radiation area to around 0.4 inches in the regions surrounding the two poles of the moon.
For achieving that inference, the researchers examined the impact of the radiation on the amino acids that are the fundamental building blocks of proteins, for understanding how the radiation of Europa would affect the biosignatures.
The co-author of the study, Kevin Hand, a Project Scientist of the Europa Lander mission, said in a statement, “The radiation that bombards Europa’s surface leaves a fingerprint.” Further, Hand added, “If we know what that fingerprint looks like, we can better understand the nature of any organics and possible biosignatures that might be detected with future missions, be they spacecraft that fly by or land on Europa.”
Meer met vloeibaar water gevonden op Mars: “Belangrijke vondst, maar heel voorwaardelijk”
door gjs | Bron: BELGA
FOTO: AFP
Voor het eerst is op Mars een groot ondergronds meer gevonden en nooit eerder een zo grote hoeveelheid vloeibaar water dat voor leven noodzakelijk is, zo hebben wetenschappers woensdag bekendgemaakt. Leven is nog niet ontdekt. Dat meldt het wetenschappelijk vakblad Science. KU Leuven-sterrenkundige Leen Decrin noemt de vondst belangrijk, “maar heel voorwaardelijk”.
De rode planeet is een beetje blauwer geworden. In de zoektocht naar bewijzen voor buitenaards leven hebben wetenschappers een meer met een doorsnede van 19 kilometer gevonden op Mars. Het lag anderhalve kilometer onder het ijsoppervlak aan de Zuidpool.
Het is de eerste keer dat zo een massa stabiel water op Mars is gevonden. Al decennia zochten wetenschappers naar vloeibaar water op de planeet. De vondst schept condities voor leven op langere termijn, zegt Alan Duffy van de Universiteit van Swinburn die niet aan het onderzoek heeft deelgenomen. Dat kan vroeger, of nog actueel leven zijn.
De ontdekking is ook goed nieuws voor bemande Marsmissies. Mogelijk is het onder de zuidelijke pool gevonden water echter niet drinkbaar.
“Spannende ontdekking”
FOTO: AFP
Onder leiding van Roberto Orosi van het Italiaanse Nationaal Instituut voor Astrofysica in Bologna onderzochten wetenschappers data van het radarinstrument tussen mei 2012 en december 2015. De radardata stemmen overeen met die van meren van vloeibaar water onder de Zuidpool en de ijslaag op Groenland op onze planeet. Wetenschappers opperden dat daar microbiologisch leven kan zijn, en dus ook op Mars.
“Het is een spannende ontdekking”, zegt Ashwin Vasavada, wetenschapper bij Nasa die meewerkt aan de Curiosity-missie. “Dit kan veel gevolgen hebben voor de bewoonbaarheid van Mars.”
Heel lang mee bezig
Die vondst was een werk van lange adem, zegt astrofysica Leen Decin, die aan de KU Leuven verbonden is. “Wat je nu ziet is iets waar men al heel lang mee bezig is. Men heeft al eens uitgedroogde ringen gevonden, wat zou kunnen wijzen op opgedroogde rivieren, maar dat hoeft niet per se water geweest te zijn. Nu hebben de wetenschappers aanwijzingen gevonden dat er onder de ijskappen vloeibaar water zit”, legt ze uit.
FOTO: AFP
De ontdekking is belangrijk, omdat vloeibaar water als een soort “katalysator” werkt om uiteindelijk levende organismen te krijgen, zegt Decin. “Om chemische elementen te doen samenwerken en uiteindelijk ook levende elementen te krijgen, is vloeibaar water geen noodzakelijke voorwaarde, maar wel een katalysator. Dat gaat ook op een droge rots, maar dat verloopt veel en veel trager.” Het ondergrondse meer “kan een aanwijzing zijn dat er op Mars een omgeving is waar dat proces zou kunnen plaatsvinden”. Allemaal heel voorwaardelijk dus, maar “dit is het beste bewijs van vloeibaar water op een planeet die niet die van ons is”, zegt Decin.
De volgende stap is verder onderzoek met de nieuwe robotjeeps, legt de KUL-wetenschapster uit. De huidige generatie van die onbemande tuigen kan nu al boren in de rotslaag van Mars, maar de nieuwste modellen geraken een stuk dieper. “Daarmee kan gezocht worden naar stalen van dat vloeibaar water, waarin heel misschien aanwijzingen van levende organismen - en dat kan heel primitief zijn - teruggevonden worden.” Wetenschappers kunnen ook op zoek gaan naar fossielen in de rotslagen van levensvormen die vroeger op de planeet geleefd zouden kunnen hebben.
Mars is vroeger warm en vochtig geweest. Minstens 3,6 miljard jaar geleden moeten er een grote hoeveelheid vloeibaar water en meren aanwezig zijn geweest.
FOTO: AFP
FOTO: AP
FOTO: AFP
Onder leiding van Roberto Orosi van het Italiaanse Nationaal Instituut voor Astrofysica in Bologna onderzochten wetenschappers data van het radarinstrument tussen mei 2012 en december 2015. De radardata stemmen overeen met die van meren van vloeibaar water onder de Zuidpool en de ijslaag op Groenland op onze planeet. Wetenschappers opperden dat daar microbiologisch leven kan zijn, en dus ook op Mars.
“Het is een spannende ontdekking”, zegt Ashwin Vasavada, wetenschapper bij Nasa die meewerkt aan de Curiosity-missie. “Dit kan veel gevolgen hebben voor de bewoonbaarheid van Mars.”
Heel lang mee bezig
Die vondst was een werk van lange adem, zegt astrofysica Leen Decin, die aan de KU Leuven verbonden is. “Wat je nu ziet is iets waar men al heel lang mee bezig is. Men heeft al eens uitgedroogde ringen gevonden, wat zou kunnen wijzen op opgedroogde rivieren, maar dat hoeft niet per se water geweest te zijn. Nu hebben de wetenschappers aanwijzingen gevonden dat er onder de ijskappen vloeibaar water zit”, legt ze uit.
De ontdekking is belangrijk, omdat vloeibaar water als een soort “katalysator” werkt om uiteindelijk levende organismen te krijgen, zegt Decin. “Om chemische elementen te doen samenwerken en uiteindelijk ook levende elementen te krijgen, is vloeibaar water geen noodzakelijke voorwaarde, maar wel een katalysator. Dat gaat ook op een droge rots, maar dat verloopt veel en veel trager.” Het ondergrondse meer “kan een aanwijzing zijn dat er op Mars een omgeving is waar dat proces zou kunnen plaatsvinden”. Allemaal heel voorwaardelijk dus, maar “dit is het beste bewijs van vloeibaar water op een planeet die niet die van ons is”, zegt Decin.
De volgende stap is verder onderzoek met de nieuwe robotjeeps, legt de KUL-wetenschapster uit. De huidige generatie van die onbemande tuigen kan nu al boren in de rotslaag van Mars, maar de nieuwste modellen geraken een stuk dieper. “Daarmee kan gezocht worden naar stalen van dat vloeibaar water, waarin heel misschien aanwijzingen van levende organismen - en dat kan heel primitief zijn - teruggevonden worden.” Wetenschappers kunnen ook op zoek gaan naar fossielen in de rotslagen van levensvormen die vroeger op de planeet geleefd zouden kunnen hebben.
Mars is vroeger warm en vochtig geweest. Minstens 3,6 miljard jaar geleden moeten er een grote hoeveelheid vloeibaar water en meren aanwezig zijn geweest.
FOTO: EPA-EFE
FOTO: EPA-EFE
FOTO: AFP
De ontdekking is belangrijk, omdat vloeibaar water als een soort “katalysator” werkt om uiteindelijk levende organismen te krijgen, zegt Decin. “Om chemische elementen te doen samenwerken en uiteindelijk ook levende elementen te krijgen, is vloeibaar water geen noodzakelijke voorwaarde, maar wel een katalysator. Dat gaat ook op een droge rots, maar dat verloopt veel en veel trager.” Het ondergrondse meer “kan een aanwijzing zijn dat er op Mars een omgeving is waar dat proces zou kunnen plaatsvinden”. Allemaal heel voorwaardelijk dus, maar “dit is het beste bewijs van vloeibaar water op een planeet die niet die van ons is”, zegt Decin.
De volgende stap is verder onderzoek met de nieuwe robotjeeps, legt de KUL-wetenschapster uit. De huidige generatie van die onbemande tuigen kan nu al boren in de rotslaag van Mars, maar de nieuwste modellen geraken een stuk dieper. “Daarmee kan gezocht worden naar stalen van dat vloeibaar water, waarin heel misschien aanwijzingen van levende organismen - en dat kan heel primitief zijn - teruggevonden worden.” Wetenschappers kunnen ook op zoek gaan naar fossielen in de rotslagen van levensvormen die vroeger op de planeet geleefd zouden kunnen hebben.
Mars is vroeger warm en vochtig geweest. Minstens 3,6 miljard jaar geleden moeten er een grote hoeveelheid vloeibaar water en meren aanwezig zijn geweest.
Foto: AFPWetenschappers hebben aanwijzingen gevonden van een bestaand ‘meer’ met vloeibaar water op Mars.
Het ondergronds meer situeert zich zo’n 1,5 km onder een ijslaag nabij de zuidpool van Mars en strekt zich over 20 km uit, zo staat in een artikel in het wetenschappelijke vakblad Science.
Het gaat om de eerste grote hoeveelheid vloeibaar water die op de planeet is gevonden. Hoe diep het water is, is niet duidelijk. De onderzoekers schatten dat het minimum één meter diep is.
Leven
Water is essentieel voor het bestaan van leven. Maar of Mars leven herbergt, of dat ooit heeft gedaan, is nog verre van zeker. Dit zou wel een goede plaats kunnen zijn om te zoeken.
‘Deze omgeving is geen plaats waar vissen zullen rondzwemmen’, zegt wetenschapper Roberto Orosei, die het onderzoek leidde. ‘Maar dit is een plaats die lijkt op een habitat waar leven zou kunnen bestaan. Er zijn op aarde organismen die kunnen overleven en gedijen in vergelijkbare omgevingen.’
De temperatuur van het meer ligt onder het vriespunt, naar schatting tussen -10 graden Celsius en min 70 graden Celsius, maar het blijft vloeibaar door de grote hoeveelheden van zouten.
Onderzoek
Verder onderzoek moet uitwijzen of er meerdere meren op Mars zijn, of dit een uitzondering is. Uit eerder onderzoek blijkt dat Mars vroeger veel water moet hebben gehad. Er zijn ook al een aantal plaatsen gevonden waar nog water(ijs) te vinden.
De ontdekking werd gedaan met een radarinstrument aan boord van de Mars Express-sonde. De metingen werden gedaan tussen mei 2012 en december 2015. Ze vonden een duidelijk afgelijnd, sterk reflecterend gebied. Het signaal lijkt goed op dat van aardse meren onder het ijs van Groenland en Antarctica.
Meer van UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
Wow! New volcano on Jupiter’s moon Io
