LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS - 05 - 08 - 2021

UFO Sighted By Moon From Joshua, Texas ( August 2, 2021 )

Impressive UFO sighting of a UFO flying past the moon from a telescope on August 2, 2021 in Joshua, Johnson County, Texas.

Here I present the original and following with approaching and speed reduction

• credit : U.D.

UFOs Sighted Over Nagoya, Japan ( August 3, 2021 )

UFOs were sighted over Nagoya, Japan on August 3, 2021

STATEMENT : I recorded this in the city of Nagoya, Japan; can someone explain to those ′′ lights ′′ that by the way flew over the clouds

• credit : Orlando Yamaguchi

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Strange Lights Over Jinan, Shandong, China

UFOs or Strange lights were sighted over Jinan, Shandong province China on June 6, 2021 

STATEMENT : 中国.山东.济南
外星人降临地球!
China. Shandong. Jinan
Aliens come to Earth!

• credit : 刘剑

Huge Fireball Sighted Over İzmir, Turkey ( August 1, 2021 )

A huge fireball lights up the night sky in Izmir, Turkey. During the night between 31 July and 1 August

Inhabitants reported a heavy explosion and tremors at some points in the city. A meteor explosion took place in Turkey that caused the sky to turn green. Several users shared videos of the same on their social media platforms.The phenomenon is that when the meteors enter the earth's atmosphere, they heat up.

A user wrote, 'A green meteor was seen over Izmir Turkey. This is not a meteor, just a tiny/demo missile/bomb shot from a satellite. Notice the fire as meteor enters the earth's atmosphere.'

{  https://www.youtube.com/ }

LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS - MUFON CASES - - 5 - 8 - 2021

MUFON CASE : 117166 Manhattan, New York ( August 4, 2021 )

Mutual UFO Network : MUFON SUBMISSIONS : Huge ufo ejects orb video 

Long Description of Sighting Report - Case 117166

Date aug 3 2021

Date Submitted : 2021-08-04

Date of Event : 2021-08-03

MUFON SUBMITTER FILE : ufoorb.mp4

{  https://www.youtube.com/ }

Astrophysicist J. Allen Hynek displays a photo of a fake UFO at a 1966 press conference.

Image: AP

UFOs and the Boundaries of Science

GREG EGHIGIAN

On June 25 of this year, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a brief report entitled “Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.” It fulfilled a 2020 directive from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, chaired at the time by Marco Rubio, which ordered the national intelligence director to publish an unclassified, public appraisal of the “potential aerospace or other threats posed by the unidentified aerial phenomena to national security, and an assessment of whether this unidentified aerial phenomena [UAP] activity may be attributed to one or more foreign adversaries.” The request came partly as a response to news reports that Navy personnel had, in recent years, filed a number of incident reports involving UFOs.

Since 1947, UFOs have been caught in cycles of periodic, animated interest from government officials, enthusiasts, and scientists. But results are always inconclusive.

In the lead-up to the report’s release, both believers and skeptics were abuzz with anticipation. Chatter on social media was lively, and the self-styled crusader for government disclosure about UFOs, former intelligence officer Luis Elizondo, announced he would run for Congress if the report seemed misleading.

In the end, the preliminary assessment proved a mixed bag. Enthusiasts could be buoyed by the government’s admissions that most reported UFOs were real objects, that only 1 in 144 could be definitively explained, and that fear of ridicule had thus far stymied witnesses and thereby inhibited effective inquiry. Debunkers, on the other hand, could point to the fact that most reports suffered from a lack of “sufficient specificity,” that the overwhelming majority of UAP demonstrated conventional flight characteristics, and that there remained a great many mundane explanations for the phenomena. All sides felt vindicated, all could claim victory.

And so, ambiguity reigns. To anyone familiar with the history of unidentified flying objects, this represents a familiar state of affairs. The first modern report of a UFO took place in Washington State in 1947, and since then the phenomenon has been caught in cycles of periodic, animated interest from government officials, civilian enthusiasts, and scientists. During such moments, it always seems that the riddle of UFOs is about to be solved. But the result is always inconclusive findings and a dispersal of interest, leaving few minds changed and everyone returned to their corners to await the bell for the next round. The seeming effervescence of our current moment notwithstanding, it’s doubtful we should expect anything different this time around.

It’s easy to forget that, not long ago, the media was not giving regular updates on UFOs.

This most recent fanfare surrounding UFOs—or UAP, as those seeking distance from UFOs’ outsize reputation now prefer—began in December 2017, when the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Politico all published exposés revealing the existence of a secret government program which, between 2007 and 2012, had investigated UFOs. Then followed viral videos of Navy pilots encountering unusual objects (reported upon in the same outlets); a cable television series on the incidents featuring Elizondo and former Blink 182 band member Tom DeLonge; announcement of the first human-detected interstellar object to enter our solar system (’Oumuamua); and a highly publicized, though admittedly frivolous, attempt to storm Area 51 in Nevada. And in July, astronomer Avi Loeb announced the creation of a new project at Harvard University, called Galileo, that will use high-tech astronomical equipment to seek evidence of extraterrestrial artifacts in space and possibly within Earth’s atmosphere. This follows closely on the publication of Loeb’s book Extraterrestrial, in which he argues that ’Oumuamua might be an artificial light sail made by an alien civilization.

It’s easy to forget that, not long ago, the media was not giving regular updates on UFOs. On the contrary, during the past two decades, public discussion of UFOs has been limited. But interest in UFOs has cycled through a couple of phases of ups and downs. The 1960s ushered in a revival of the supernatural in popular culture that flourished throughout the seventies, eighties, and into the nineties. If you’re old enough—say, over the age of forty—you may still have memories of Leonard Nimoy narrating the occult and mystery TV series In Search Of (1977–82); of listening to interviews with telepathic spoon benders and alien abductees on the daytime talk shows of Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, and Phil Donahue; or of browsing through the extensive paranormal section at your local public library or Waldenbooks. New Age philosophy, extrasensory perception, exorcisms, reincarnation, telekinesis, astrology, channeling, psychic healing, cryonics, Satanic ritual abuse claims: UFOs were sucked up into this paranormal wave and boosted by the lively syncretism of it all. The rising paranormal tide lifted all boats.

All this publicity surrounding the supernatural also gave rise to a revival of debunking, with prominent figures taking it upon themselves to call out erroneous claims and expose frauds. In 1976 a group of dedicated skeptics founded the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), headed initially by philosopher Paul Kurtz and sociologist Marcello Truzzi. At the organization’s inaugural conference, Kurtz expressed worry about the growing number of “cults of unreason and other forms of nonsense.” Noting the popularity of related beliefs in Nazi Germany and under Stalinism, he lamented the fact that “Western democratic societies are being swept by other forms of irrationalism, often blatantly antiscientific and pseudoscientific in character.” Skeptics needed to be decisive. “If we are to meet the growth of irrationality,” he insisted, “we need to develop an appreciation for the scientific attitude as a part of culture.” During the seventies and eighties, a number of well-known personalities associated with SCICOP—including aviation journalist Philip J. Klass, illusionist James Randi, and astronomer Carl Sagan—agreed and assumed the roles of public myth-busters.

Mudslinging over convictions is familiar to historians of religion, a domain of human existence marked by deep divisions over interpretations of belief. But science has often found itself engaged in similar debates and conflicts.

Over the last fifty years, the mutual antagonism between paranormal believers and skeptics has largely framed discussion about unidentified flying objects. And it often gets personal. Those taking seriously the prospect that UFOs are extraterrestrial in origin have dismissed doubters as narrow-minded, biased, obstinate, and cruel. Those dubious about the idea of visitors from other worlds have brushed off devotees as naïve, ignorant, gullible, and downright dangerous.

This kind of mudslinging over convictions is certainly familiar to historians of religion, a domain of human existence marked by deep divisions over interpretations of belief. But science too has found itself engaged in similar debates and conflicts over the centuries. Venerated figures and institutions have regularly taken it upon themselves to engage in what has been dubbed “boundary work,” asserting and reasserting the borders between legitimate and illegitimate scientific research and ideas, between what may and what may not refer to itself as science.

When scientists engage in boundary work, they are doing something more than saying “this is true” or “that is false.” Instead, they are setting up the ground rules for what will be considered acceptable questions, methods, and answers when it comes to doing science. In essence, they are saying, “this is a question we may pursue in science” or “that is an impermissible way of conducting an experiment.” And there are any number of examples of this in the modern world.

Take psychology, for instance. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, it was a subject that largely fell under the domain of philosophy. Then, during the second half of the century, some scholars interested in psychology took their cue from the natural sciences and started conducting experiments with animals and human beings. In this way, psychology began to establish itself as an independent social scientific field. That status remained contested, however, and psychologists had to defend their claims of being a legitimate science for decades. Boundary work was essential to this mission. So, when prominent researchers such as William James, Frederic Myers, and Eleanor Sidgwick argued that psychical research—the study of the power of mediumship, telepathy, clairvoyance, and life after death—should be included as part of academic psychology, many practitioners bristled. Experimentalist Wilhelm Wundt, Science editor James Cattell, and Harvard psychologist Hugo Münsterberg were just some of the influential figures to repudiate the phenomena as “nothing but fraud and humbug” and to bemoan research about them for “doing much to injure psychology.” Their judgments eventually won the day and, as a result, parapsychology was shifted from science to pseudoscience.

Boundary work has also been evident in policing the how and what of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). When SETI takes the form of astronomers using telescopes to seek evidence of intelligent radio signals and mechanical objects in outer space, it is accepted as a mainstream (though, admittedly, underfunded) academic pursuit. The study of UFOs, on the other hand, is brushed off as pseudoscience. UFO investigation has, consequently, been largely privately funded and conducted by committed individuals in their free time.

This stark divide did not happen overnight, and its roots lie in the postwar decades, in a series of events that—with their news coverage, grainy images, celebrity crusaders, exasperated skeptics, unsatisfying military statements, and accusations of a government cover-up—foreshadow our present moment.

When astronomers use telescopes to seek evidence of extraterrestrials, it is accepted as a mainstream academic pursuit. The study of UFOs, on the other hand, is brushed off as pseudoscience. This stark divide did not happen overnight.

It all started in June 1947, when a private pilot, Kenneth Arnold, reported seeing a group of bat-like aircraft flying in formation at high speeds near Mt. Rainier. He described their motion to the media as moving like a saucer would if skipped across water, and an enterprising journalist had found his headline: he christened them “flying saucers.” That summer, flying saucers were reported across the United States, and the press began wondering what exactly was going on.

The thought that the objects might have been extraterrestrial visitors did not rank highly on the list of possibilities considered by most people at the time. A Gallup poll published just a few weeks after the Arnold sighting asked Americans what they thought the things were: while 90 percent admitted having heard of “flying saucers,” a majority either had no idea what they could be or thought that witnesses were mistaken. Gallup didn’t even mention if anyone surveyed brought up aliens. Ten years later, in August 1957, Trendex conducted a similar survey of the American public and found that now over 25 percent believed unidentified flying objects could be from outer space.

Three things had happened in the meantime that made this possible. First was media saturation. Newspapers and magazines across the world covered and outright promoted the flying saucer saga, especially after 1949. Then, what had begun as a distinctly U.S. phenomenon soon became a global one, as UFOs began to turn up in Southern Africa, Australia, Europe, and South America. By the mid-1950s, few in the world could say they had never heard of flying saucers.

Second was the rise of flying-saucers-from-outer-space promoters. In 1950, three influential books by pulp and entertainment writers—Donald Keyhoe’s The Flying Saucers Are Real, Frank Scully’s Behind the Flying Saucers, and Gerald Heard’s The Riddle of the Flying Saucers—hit bookshelves, each arguing that the overwhelming evidence showed that aliens were visiting, more likely than not in response to the detonation of atomic bombs. The authors provided the model for a new kind of public figure: the crusading whistleblower dedicated to breaking the silence over the alien origins of unidentified flying objects.

Third, some Americans were so curious about the phenomenon that they sought out like-minded others. Inspired by the development of science fiction fan clubs and newsletters in the 1930s and ’40s, enthusiasts beginning in the early ’50s organized local saucer clubs where members could meet to discuss the latest developments. By the end of the decade, some had grown into vibrant organizations, with national, even international followings and monthly newsletters which actively solicited contributions from members about their own sightings and theories.

So, by the end of the 1950s, flying saucers didn’t just make news; they had champions who helped make them news. Some enthusiasts, however, believed interest in UFOs needed to be channeled into something more than a hobby or pastime. The Air Force had been conducting its own investigations into the flying saucer phenomenon since 1947. Saucer groups, however, placed little confidence in the military and were especially frustrated by the secrecy surrounding its work. They believed it was time for civilians to seize the day and to begin investigating cases in a more thorough and open manner.

Keyhoe, Leonard Stringfield, Morris Jessup, and Coral and Jim Lorenzen were some of the leading pioneers in this effort. At first, most civilian investigators had to rely exclusively on newspaper and magazine articles for their source materials. By1965, however, the Lorenzens and Keyhoe were directing large organizations (the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization and the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, respectively) with national reach, allowing them to send members into the field to conduct interviews and examine sites. By 1972 the Lorenzens had put together a manual for field investigators, guiding them through the kind of equipment and procedures to use when going about their work.

The first generation of ufologists was buoyantly optimistic. They saw themselves as trailblazers who, though now dismissed, would one day be vindicated when ufology was established as a legitimate research enterprise.

In this way, a new field of study was born—“ufology,” as it was dubbed. That first generation of ufologists was buoyantly optimistic. They saw themselves as trailblazers—it was not uncommon for comparisons to be made to Galileo—who, though now dismissed by the establishment, would one day find their endeavors vindicated when ufology was established as a legitimate research enterprise.

Major scientific associations and most academic scholars saw matters differently. They considered ufology yet another example of a pseudoscience. While some went about publicly debunking its methods and findings, most academics opted to simply pay ufology no heed.

By the mid-1960s, however, a few scientists working at major U.S. universities had reached a different conclusion. They believed that UFOs were genuine physical phenomena that warranted serious scientific study. Northwestern University astronomer J. Allen Hynek was one such figure. Hynek was the scientific consultant to the Air Force in its investigations into unidentified flying objects. At first skeptical about the claims of witnesses, he grew puzzled by the growing number of cases that seemed to defy conventional explanation.

In the early sixties, Hynek began holding UFO discussion meetings in his home with interested colleagues—at first from Northwestern, but then from other universities as well. The group included French computer scientist Jacques Vallée, who would go on to become a leading voice in ufology. Soon, Hynek was referring to the circle as The Invisible College—a reference to the secretive group of seventeenth-century natural philosophers who had touted experimental research and defied church dogma. The name stuck, and continues to be used to refer to academics who study and exchange ideas about UFOs but do so clandestinely for fear of hurting their careers.

Another ufologist who rose to prominence in the 1960s was James McDonald, an internationally respected atmospheric physicist at the University of Arizona. An expert in cloud physics and micrometeorology, he had begun privately looking into UFOs in the late fifties and joined a leading UFO organization. In 1966 he suddenly went public as an outspoken advocate for the position that UFOs were, as he put it, “the greatest scientific problem of our times.” Though a latecomer to the scene, McDonald was a constant public presence, making the case for the scientific study of UFOs in press conferences, public lectures, and TV and radio interviews. He railed against what he considered the Air Force’s incompetence in handling the matter, and he took it upon himself to interview hundreds of witnesses.

Though widely acknowledged to be accomplished and eloquent, many of his fellow scientists found McDonald to be dogmatic and abrasive. So when it was announced in October 1966 that the University of Colorado at Boulder had agreed to serve as the home for a scientific committee funded by the Air Force to study the UFO phenomenon, McDonald was not invited to serve as a member. Like Hynek and Vallée, McDonald instead was asked to consult now and again with the committee, but all three were left out of the group’s day-to-day activities and deliberations.

The project’s director was nuclear physicist Edward Condon, who had spent decades working in and with the government dating back to the wartime Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb. His involvement with the military, however, hadn’t stopped him from criticizing it for being too secretive. After the war, he was also a leading voice insisting that civilian authorities be put in control of atomic energy, and he had to face down accusations before the House Un-American Activities Committee on several occasions. Here, then, was a no-nonsense academic, who was not easily intimidated and despised government secrecy. He seemed the ideal choice to head up this first-ever funded scientific study of UFOs by academic researchers.

The Condon Committee began its work in November 1966. Excitement and anticipation surrounded the start of the project. Ufologists, UFO enthusiasts, members of the Invisible College, the Air Force, and the general public all expressed high hopes that the world would finally have an answer to the riddle of the flying saucers. Their enthusiasm was soon quashed. While some ufologists were asked to make presentations before the committee, word inside the Colorado group was that Condon considered the possibility of alien visitors to be preposterous. Disgruntled insiders reported that researchers were being steered toward concluding that the UFO phenomenon had a psychological explanation.

Condon came to consider his involvement in the study of UFOs “the biggest waste of time that I ever had in my life.”

McDonald was careful to cultivate contacts within the Colorado project. His personal papers, now housed in the archives at the University of Arizona, show that he received surreptitious updates from Boulder on an almost daily basis. As he did, he became more and more frustrated by what he saw as Condon’s attempt to stop any serious consideration that UFOs might have extraterrestrial origins. In early 1968 he, along with several people serving on the Condon Committee, confronted Condon with evidence that he had no intention of conducting a legitimate scientific investigation into unidentified flying objects.

The move outraged Condon, who fired the committee members for dereliction of their duties. McDonald went to the media, finding a journalist at Look to write an exposé chronicling what was portrayed as Condon’s incompetent and imperious management of the project. And with that, all bridges had been burned. Ufologists dismissed the work of the committee even before it had released its report in January 1969. McDonald demanded a new scientific study be conducted. The Air Force formally shut down its UFO task force. And Condon came to consider his involvement in the study of UFOs “the biggest waste of time that I ever had in my life.”

The Condon Committee’s final report did not mince words. “Our general conclusion,” it stated, “is that nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added to scientific knowledge”—this despite the fact that around a third of the cases examined remained unexplained. No one was terribly surprised, least of all people in the UFO community. Rather than settling the matter of UFOs for good, it simply escalated the mutual mistrust between believers and skeptics, between amateur ufologists and academic scientists.

Was the Condon Committee a failure then? At first glance, it would appear so. Without question, it fell victim to the political machinations of bad actors such as McDonald. Nevertheless, one has to wonder if any study at the time could have resolved the matter. If the 2020–21 UAP task force found itself confronted with ambiguities and a lack of information, this was surely even more the case in the 1960s.

And it must be said that both back then and today, there are many people for whom the mystery is the matter. UFOs may well be far more interesting to ponder than to actually solve. And fittingly, the decades that followed saw the rise of the UFO as mystery, with increasingly bizarre stories of alien abductions capturing the attention of readers and TV audiences between 1975 and 1995. Yes, there had always been outlier abduction reports dating back to the ’50s and ’60s. But now the floodgates opened, and with them a new generation of UFO advocates.

Chief among them were artist Budd Hopkins, horror writer Whitley Strieber, historian David Jacobs, and psychiatrist John Mack: each came onto the scene in the 1980s and ’90s insisting on the veracity of those claiming to have been kidnapped, examined, and experimented upon by beings from another world. The ufology of investigating the nuts and bolts of unidentified flying objects gave way on the public stage to these new missionaries who simultaneously played the role of investigator, therapist, and advocate to their vulnerable charges.

There are many people for whom the mystery is the matter. UFOs may well be far more interesting to ponder than to actually solve.

In many ways, it was Mack’s involvement that signaled both the culmination and end of the headiest days of alien abduction. A distinguished Harvard psychiatrist, when Mack began working with and publishing accounts of abductees—or “experiencers,” as he called them—in the early 1990s, he lent the study of extraterrestrial captivity an air of legitimacy it had been lacking. A five-day conference at MIT in 1992 on the alien abduction phenomenon, followed by a book on the subject two years later, brought him the affection of many in the UFO community and the scorn of many of his colleagues. The Harvard Medical School initiated a review of his position; he retained tenure, but after, as review board chairman Arnold Relman later put it, he was “not taken seriously by his colleagues anymore.” Claims of alien abduction have continued since then, but one would have to search far and wide to find a clinician of Mack’s stature who would go on record saying they believed them.

And so here we are a quarter century later, and we are again hearing some rumblings from within the scientific community. Some scientists involved with SETI have publicly called for the interdisciplinary study of UFOs. And now Loeb (another Harvard professor) has announced the Galileo Project. With an initial private investment of nearly $2 million with which to work, the Galileo Project will certainly have access to equipment qualitatively better than what existed in the fifties and sixties. Will this make a difference? Many of Loeb’s colleagues are skeptical about the prospect. If history is any guide, it’s questionable a project like this will succeed in persuading diehard believers and skeptics to rethink their positions.

{ http://bostonreview.net/ }

A video has captured the moment a b

right object in the sky explodes over the city of Izimir in Turkey before crashing towards earth on July 31, 2021. 

The spectacular event has sparked speculation, many people are convinced that the object may have been a meteor, but others suggest that the object could have been space junk, rocket debris or even a crashing UFO.

  

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{ https://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/ }

Elon Musk Talks About Aliens

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{ https://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }

Now THAT'S a sunny garden! Amazing images of solar flares are captured by an amateur photographer in his back yard

• Dave Tyler, from a village near High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire used a five inch refracting telescope with specialist filters to take the images

• 72-year-old captured violent solar flares and spots on the sun’s surface, which is 5,505°C and 93million miles (150million km) away from Earth

• The images show solar flares as the sun goes through its ‘solar maximum’ – a period when it is most active that occurs approximately every 11 years
  

By SARAH GRIFFITHS

Most people are content with spotting birds and butterflies in their garden.

But a British amateur photographer has set his sights a lot higher and has taken incredible images of the sun’s raging surface from his back yard.

The 72-year-old managed to capture violent solar flares and spots on the sun’s surface, which is 5,505°C and approximately 93million miles (150million km) away from Earth.

This incredible image of a violent solar flare was taken by a British amateur photographer from his back garden in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire

Dave Tyler, from a village near High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire has spent the last 40 years scouring the skies using an array of powerful telescopes, which have set him back over £2,000.

His latest images are spectacular and show solar flares as the sun goes through its ‘solar maximum’ – a period when it is most active, which comes around every 11 years.

‘The sun is a star 10 times as close to us as the planet Saturn - a thought I always find sobering,’ Mr Tyler said.

The 72-year-old managed to capture violent solar flares (pictured) and spots on the sun¿s surface, which is 5,505°C and approximately 93million miles (150million km) away from Earth

Dave Tyler (pictured), from a village near High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire has spent the last 40 years scouring the skies using an array of powerful telescopes

‘Right now solar activity is at its maximum, but not its most spectacular.'

‘My favourite image is the solar flare with an associated outburst, just inside the solar limb [‘edge’ of the sun]. Its position gives a nice 3D effect.'

He added: ‘I also like the wide horizon shot showing general surface activity.’

The small black areas are sunspots, which are a little cooler than the surrounding surface of the star

The amateur astronomer and photographer has spent 40 years scouring the skies and used specialist equipment to capture the swirling surface of our star, including solar flares (the white flash) and dark sun spots (also pictured)

Mr Tyler captures the images by replacing the eyepiece on his telescope with a miniature charged-coupled device camera, a gadget often used for deep-sky, planetary, lunar and solar photography.

He can take thousands of frames before using computer software to piece them together like a jigsaw puzzle.

Mr Tyler said: ‘Sometimes the image is as much art as science and the image is often coloured to best serve the original wow factor from the live view.’

The amateur photographer's latest images are spectacular and show solar flares as the sun goes through its 'solar maximum' - a period when it is most active, which comes around every 11 years

Mr Tyler captures the sun's violent surface (pictured) by replacing the eyepiece on his telescope with a miniature charged-coupled device camera, which are often used for deep-sky, planetary, lunar and solar photography. This is one of his favourite images

Mr Tyler has been a keen astronomer for the last 40 years and built his first telescope when he was 29. He has been fascinated ever since. Here the sun's swirling gaseous surface is pictured

Solar flares are created when magnetic energy builds up and is suddenly released. They extend out to the layer of the sun called the corona – the outermost atmosphere of the sun.

The small black areas are sunspots, which are a little cooler than the surrounding surface of the star.

Mr Tyler has been a keen astronomer for the last 40 years and built his first telescope when he was 29. He has been fascinated ever since.

Mr Tyler captures the images by replacing the eyepiece on his telescope with a miniature charged-coupled device camera, a gadget often used for deep-sky, planetary, lunar and solar photography. His current telescope set-up is pictured

The father-of-one usually uses a five inch refracting telescope equipped with a hydrogen-alpha solar filter to take his images of the solar flares (pictured)

A flare (pictured) occurs when magnetic energy that has built up in the solar atmosphere is suddenly released. This image is the photographer's favourite as he thinks the solar flare, just inside the solar limb ['edge' of the sun] gives the image 'a nice 3D effect'

The father-of-one usually uses a five inch refracting telescope equipped with a hydrogen-alpha solar filter to take his images.

Despite being millions of miles away from the sun, he always urges caution when trying to capture it.

‘You have to be careful. Never look at the sun through anything other than equipment specialised for direct solar viewing or it will blind you,’ he warned.

Solar flares (pictured) extend out to the layer of the sun called the corona, which is the outermost atmosphere of the star and is made up of highly rarefied gas

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

NASA spots powerful X-Class solar flare for the first time in five years

Mysterious GodSelf Icon Found Worldwide: Lost Symbol of an Ancient Global Religion?

Significant evidence now exists that ancient cultures worldwide were all connected by a powerful religious symbol which I call the “GodSelf Icon,” that is especially conspicuous among the pyramid cultures.

The pyramid cultures shared the “Triptych Temple” and “GodSelf Icon.”

In my 2011 book, Written in Stone , I revealed how these pyramid cultures all employed the same three-door “Triptych Temple” pattern. Another discovery that I announced concerns the GodSelf Icon, an image depicting a central figure, a hero or god, facing forward and holding in either hand parallel objects or animals.

THE GODSELF ICON

My new book, The Missing Link, shows more than 500 spectacular images as evidence of the central role the GodSelf Icon played in civilizations as diverse as Egypt, India, China, Persia, Mexico, Peru, Colombia, and ancient Europe:

GodSelf Icons found worldwide.

Just as the crucifix symbol unites millions of Christians under one universal religion, so the GodSelf Icon symbol did the same for our ancient ancestors.

GodSelf Icons found worldwide.

TRIPTYCH TEMPLES
Parallel art and architecture in Antiquity—pyramid-building, corbel arches, and mummification—always interested me, so much so that I began traveling at a young age in an effort to examine these parallels as well as discover as many more parallels that I could find:

The ancients shared a common wisdom and possibly a common heritage.

Written in Stone tells the heroic story of how organized guilds of medieval stonemasons— who officially surfaced in 1717, calling themselves “Freemasons”— attempted to take back the religious narrative from priests by embedding the lost secrets of this universal religion into Gothic cathedrals. Gargoyles have nothing to do with Christianity. I realized that the standard blueprints of Gothic cathedrals, which called for a large central door flanked by two smaller doors, and two towers on either side of the central entrance hall, were a memory of pagan temples in Egypt, Mexico, Peru, China, India, etc.:

Central door flanked by two smaller doors seen in architecture around the world.

The center door is the “source”—the “soul” inside the body. The twin doors are the opposing bodily forces of duality that surround the soul on either side, and that the soul must confront and master in life.

• The Mystery of the Guanches and the Pyramids of Tenerife
• 16 Ancient Pyramids, Burial Sites for a Vanished Kingdom, Found in Sudan
• Pyramids of Meroë stand as Last Remnants of a Powerful Civilization

The Universal Religion of the Triptych Temple formed the foundation of other Secret Societies besides Freemasonry, including the Knights of Pythias, Skull & Bones, and Shriners, all of whom use the Triptych entrance into their headquarters:

The Lost Universal Religion of the Triptych Temple

The main façade of Rockefeller Center in New York City depicts one of the most striking esoteric Triptychs of modern times. It shows a "god" image in the center doorway (the “GodSelf”) balanced between male / female opposites. Note that the god holds a compass—a key Masonic symbol :

Triptych façade, Rockefeller Center, NYC.

As with the Triptych, the GodSelf Icon represents the soul of the hero or sage who balances his opposing bodily forces, represented by the twin objects held symmetrically in each hand. The GodSelf Icon calls upon us to develop our inner strength and spiritual potential by means of balancing the twin opposing forces within us (through meditation) and by carefully cultivating our physical and mental powers.

The concept of an external “God,” as in the familiar monotheistic and polytheistic religions, is a distraction from what I believe is the true purpose of religion, which is to recognize the eternal nature of our own spiritual being and to nurture the “GodSelf” within ourselves.

The GodSelf Icon inspired the logos of companies like Starbucks.

Starbucks logo. (Source: BrandsoftheWorld.com)

A beautiful variation of the GodSelf Icon is visible at Rockefeller Center. The “twin opposites” are symbolized by the Comedy and Tragedy masks, held aloft on the right and left sides of the goddess:

Rockefeller Center in New York City, USA

THE GOLDEN AGE
The origins of the GodSelf Icon can be traced to a Golden Age “Mother Culture” that may have existed in the prehistoric past. Some Victorian-era scholars associated the Golden Age with Plato’s Atlantis, and with ideas of the rise and fall of civilization over a period corresponding with the Zodiacal precession of the equinoxes which takes roughly 25,000 years. Plato called it the “Great Year”; the ancient Greeks, even before Plato, linked the Great Year with the seasons. Similar theories lay behind such phenomena as the Mayan and Aztec calendars, and the Hindu Yuga concept.

• Chronicles from the Future: A True Story Kept Hidden by the Masons now Revealed
• The Roman god Bacchus as a Christian icon

Recently, some alternative researchers have latched onto this Golden Age idea, claiming that a “technologically” advanced civilization flourished in the distant past. These researchers are making the mistake of projecting the spirit of our own times onto the distant past, rather than paying attention to what the ancients were trying to tell us. Plato describes the Golden Age as a “spiritually” advanced civilization, not “technically” advanced. The demise of this civilization occurred because the Atlanteans ceased identifying with their “divine” nature (i.e., their GodSelf nature):

“For many generations…they obeyed the laws and loved the divine to which they were akin…But when the divine element in them became weakened…and their human traits became predominant, they ceased to be able to carry their prosperity with moderation.”
—Plato, Timaeus

SURPRISING FIND: MORE ANCIENT = MORE ADVANCED

We see evidence of the remnants of the Golden Age not only in the common language of symbolism left by our ancient ancestors, but also in the common architecture (like the Triptych Temple). Ancient civilization is characterized by remarkable skill in stonemasonry. One of the most amazing facts about ancient stone masonry is that many of the greatest works are among the oldest: 

The most ancient stone structures are the most advanced.

In Italy, for example, Etruscan aqueducts and monuments are more tightly put together than later Roman-era constructions. The Great Pyramid at Cheops is thousands of years older than the inferior pyramids that surround it. The aqueduct in Segovia, Spain (said to be Roman) is far more advanced than later aqueducts. The development of many technologies in the ancient world often seems to reflect more degeneration and decay than progress. Perhaps this is really a result of a genuine pattern of a Great Year cycle of the decline and fall of civilizations, where the great period of spiritual achievement occurred over ten thousand years ago, and has been followed by a period of ever-accelerating spiritual decline. The purpose of my new book is to help uncover the real truth of the human past, in order to understand and eventually to reverse this decline.

MASONIC GODSELF ICONS
Much evidence that would illuminate the meaning of the GodSelf Icon was destroyed by the conquistadors, Crusaders, Mongol Hordes, and slave traders. My presentation emphasizes the critical role of medieval stonemasons in preserving ancient symbols like the GodSelf Icon into the present. Gothic cathedrals are full of marvelous examples of the GodSelf Icon:

GodSelf Icons in cathedrals.

The clincher for me was the image of the Rebis, an androgynous alchemical drawing published in 1613. The sun is over its right shoulder; the moon over its left:

The Rebis is an ancestor of Masonic tracing boards that feature similar dualities; like the tracing boards, the message of the Rebis is to overcome dualities by means of mystic techniques involving the ancient practice of balancing opposites to find the center. Note the Masonic Square and Compass symbols in the left and right hands of the Rebis—simple tools used to build incredibly advanced stone monuments (pyramids, aqueducts, cathedrals) which to this day remain a testament not to the “technological” power of the ancients, but to their “spiritual” centeredness.

Most Freemasons have no idea what their symbols mean. My research has convinced me that the “lost secret of Freemasonry” is the same as the “lost secret of the Incas” and the same as the “lost secret of the Egyptians.” The GodSelf icon, which is identical in form and meaning in places as far apart as Egypt and Peru, is an important key for understanding the origins and destiny of mankind.

• Richard Cassaro ’s new book, The Missing Link , is available on Amazon.com and on his website www.RichardCassaro.com.
• Top Image: Deriv; Step Pyramid of Djoser, Egypt. ( CC BY-SA 2.0 ), El Castillo (pyramid of Kukulcán) in Chichén Itzá, Mexico ( CC BY-SA 4.0 ), Candi Sukuh in eastern Central Java ( CC BY-SA 3.0 )
• Images, unless otherwise noted, via author Richard Cassaro.

By Richard Cassaro

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/ }

TWEE MEREN ONTDEKT ONDER DE ANTARCTISCHE IJSKAP

Vivian Lammerse

Bronmateriaal:

• "NASA Space Lasers Map Meltwater Lakes in Antarctica With Striking Precision" - NASA
• Afbeelding bovenaan dit artikel: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Dr. Kelly Brunt

GERELATEERDE VIDEO'S, gekozen en gepost door peter2011

{ https://www.scientias.nl/ }

In 2019, a National Geographic and OceanX underwater photographer appeared in a video and said this:

“I think, in the ocean, I have come across potentially beings from another heavenly body that are more highly advanced than humans.”

The photographer is Luis Lamar and the video appears to have been made by or for OceanX, an ocean exploration initiative whose website describes a “mission to explore the ocean and bring it back to the world.” Does that mission include bringing photos of underwater aliens back to the world?

“I’ve seen giant deep sea arachnids, venomous sea snakes far offshore with, like bright-yellow heads. Sharks in a frenzy, Orcas swarming all around me. Some sort of you know, hyper-advanced aquatic alien creatures inhabiting the shallow waters, which almost look like stingrays.”

I think I know that alien!

According to the Meeko TV YouTube channel, Lamar stated that he was waiting for an underwater film crew to assemble when he saw the sharks in a frenzy. When he approached them, he saw the “hyper-advanced aquatic alien creatures.” While they looked like stingrays, Meeko TV reports he said something about them didn’t feel right, something that wasn’t normal. The original report and video was said to have been made by The War Zone, which is well known for its in-depth reports on advanced military aircraft and strange encounters. In fact, in 2019 it was fact reporting on U.S. nuclear submarines having a number of encounters with unidentified submerged objects or USOs.

And that is where the plot thickens. The War Zone has no record of Luis Lamar. Links to the original video no longer work. Lamar is definitely a real person and National Geographic photographer — his photos appear in a 2019 story titled “If alien life exists in our solar system, it may look like this.” That’s “may.” However, the underwater alien encounter story is still alive, having popped up on various paranormal and UFO sites and on Reddit. This week on the UFO Reddit, a follow-up on this story was alluded to. u/MFLUDER posted a tweet by filmmaker Steven Greenstreet … who retweeted a post by Andrew Harbinson (@sSamscwantch), a “Para experiencer” who contacted Luis Lamar to asked for clarification on his encounter in light of the recent UFO/USO/UAP encounter disclosures by the Pentagon. Luis Lamar responded with this:

“this was a stupid joke video my friend made while we were bored on a shoot – for kids on Instagram or whatever. It’s complete bullshit. Stop wasting your time.”

What was that word again?

Sigh. This is why we can’t have nice things … like accurate and honest reports on UFOs and USOs. Some commenters tried to save it by saying that Lamar could have been pressured by the government to disavow the video and remove it, but it sounds more like his employers may have been behind it. Or Lamar just got tired of being contacted by serious researchers about his “joke” video. These days it’s hard to be a comedian or satirist or just a plain old person trying to have some fun, especially when trying to joke about politics or world affairs. It’s getting to be the same way with UFOs.

Let that be a warning to UFO or USO hoaxers – payback can be a bitch.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

My previous article was on the matter of some of the lesser-known aspects of the Rendlesham Forest “UFO landing” of December 1980. With that said, today I’ve decided to do something similar with the Roswell case. Namely, share with you some of the aspects of Roswell that many might not be aware of. So, let’s begin: when personnel at the Roswell Army Air Field announced, in July 1947, that they had recovered a crashed flying disc, one thing was one hundred percent absent: any mention of bodies. And, needless to say, the body angle was also absent from the hasty follow-up explanation of a weather-balloon recovery. The body angle was also denied in the Air Force’s July 1994 report on Roswell (titled Report of Air Force Research Regarding the Roswell Incident), as the following extract shows: “It should also be noted here that there was little mentioned in this report about the recovery of the so-called ‘alien bodies.’ The wreckage was from a Project Mogul balloon. There were no ‘alien’ passengers therein.'” Three years later, however, things had changed. In a then-new document – The Roswell Report: Case Closed – it was stated by the Air Force that: “‘Aliens’ observed in the New Mexico desert were probably anthropomorphic test dummies that were carried aloft by U.S. Air Force high altitude balloons for scientific research…The  reports of military units that always seemed to arrive shortly after the crash of a flying saucer to retrieve the saucer and ‘crew’ were actually accurate descriptions of Air Force personnel engaged in anthropomorphic dummy recovery operations.”

While the dummy theory is well-known in Ufology, there’s one far-lesser-known story that can be found in the U.S. Air Force’s large report. On one occasion northwest of Roswell, a local woman – who was wholly unfamiliar with the test activities – arrived at a dummy landing site prior to the arrival of the recovery personnel and had the scare of her life. The woman saw what appeared to be a person embedded head-first (no less!) in a snowbank and became hysterical. The woman screamed, “He’s dead! He’s dead!” Even though I don’t buy into the crash-test dummy picture, this tale is undeniably  bizarre! Moving on, there’s the story of Frank Edwards and Roswell – and of another lesser-known story. Edwards was a radio broadcaster and someone who had a deep interest in the UFO subject. Indeed, he wrote two books on UFOs. They were Flying Saucers – Here and Now! and Flying Saucers – Serious Business. Edwards also wrote a handful of books on the world of the paranormal. So, you might ask: what does any of this have to do with Roswell? Well, I’ll tell you. It was early July 1947 when the Roswell event took place. And although the story, at the time, got widespread coverage from the world’s media, it was actually quickly forgotten. That is, until the mid-1970s, when Bill Moore and Stan Friedman resurrected the story and dug deep into it. However, there’s something else. It’s a little-known fact that Edwards gave the Roswell story brief coverage in Flying Saucers – Serious Business. Indeed, between 1947 and the 1970s, when Moore and Friedman were getting moving on the case, Edwards was the only person to have promoted the case.

In Serious Business, in 1966, Edwards wrote: “There are such difficult cases as the rancher near Roswell, New Mexico, who phoned the Sheriff that a blazing disc-shaped object had passed over his house at low altitude and had crashed and burned on a hillside within view of the house. The sheriff called the military; the military came on the double quick. Newsmen were not permitted in the area. A week later, however, the government released a photograph of a service man holding up a box kite with an aluminum disc about the size of a large pie plate dangling from the bottom of the kite. This, the official report explained, was a device borne aloft on the kite and used to test radar gear by bouncing the signals off the pie pan. And this, we were told, was the sort of thing that had so excited the rancher. We were NOT told, however, how the alleged kite caught fire – nor why the military cordoned off the area while they inspected the wreckage of a burned-out kite with a non-inflammable pie pan tied to it.” Admittedly, Edwards’ version of the story was way off-course. But, the man – for all of his flaws – was the first to give Roswell any significant coverage in the post-1947 period.

Moving on, there’s another not particularly well-known story concerning Roswell. It all revolves around the matter of the United States Capitol. It goes as follows: Jesse Marcel, Jr. was the son of Major Jesse Marcel who was present at the Roswell crash-site itself in July 1947. According to Marcel, Jr., in the early 1990s he received an invite to meet with a “mysterious government official” in none other than the Capitol Building. The meeting went ahead. The subject: the Roswell events of 1947. Marcel, Jr. said of that same official figure: “He told me that he had been charged with the responsibility of investigating the operation of a ‘black government’ within the government, where funds were being spent without appropriate oversight to maintain a false story about the Roswell incident and cover the true story up. He said that his job was to report to the Senate Appropriate Committee, and advise them as to where these dollars were going, and why.” The mystery of all those secretly siphoned dollars still exists.

Finally, there’s the mysterious issue of Roswell files that can’t be found. But, that should have been found. This was a specific issue that the General Accounting Office (today, it’s called the Government Accountability Office) addressed when it went looking for the truth of Roswell in the early 1990s. Its staff said: “In 1947, Army regulations required that air accident reports be maintained permanently. We identified four air accidents reported by the Army Air Forces in New Mexico during July 1947. All of the accidents involved military aircraft and occurred after July 8, 1947 – the date the RAAF public information office first reported the crash and recovery of a ‘flying disc’ near Roswell. The Navy reported no air accidents in New Mexico during July 1947. Air Force officials told us that according to record- keeping requirements in effect during July 1947, there was no requirement to prepare a report on the crash of a weather balloon. In our search for records concerning the Roswell crash, we learned that some government records covering RAAF activities had been destroyed and others had not. For example, RAAF administrative records (from Mar. 1945 through Dec. 1949) and RAAF outgoing messages (from Oct. 1946 through Dec. 1949) were destroyed. The document disposition form does not indicate what organization or person destroyed the records and when or under what authority the records were destroyed.”

And, that’s where, today, our story comes to its end. No doubt, there are far more Roswell secrets that, one day, will surface. Whether they will provide answers or even more mysteries is something that, right now, is hard to predict.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS - 04 - 08 - 2021

UFOs Sighted Over Jiutepec, Mexico ( August 3, 2021 )

UFOs were sighted over Jiutepec, Mexico on August 3, 2021

STATEMENT : Will it be planes coming out of the cloud? One after another??

ORIGINAL : Serán aviones saliendo de la nube? Uno tras otro??

They are here

• credit : J Arellano

UFOs Sighted From Plane Over Middle East At 40, 000 ft ( August 2, 2021 )

STATEMENT : I saw these lights in the sky from our plane window, at 40,000 ft, on Monday morning, somewhere over the Middle East. I’ve not seen anything like it previously and wonder if anyone else has? What are they?

• credit : Miles Ellerby 

UFO Sighted Over Duque de Caxias. Brazil ( August 1, 2021 )

A personal friend of mine filmed this Sunday the 01/08/2021th Flamengo game time...Duque de Caxias RJ A strange and unusual situation.. stood still for about 5 minutes in the same spot without making a noise and in a blink of an eye it was gone

ORIGINAL : Um amigo meu pessoal filmou nesse domingo dia 01/08/2021 horário do jogo do flamengo ...duque de caxias ,RJ. Uma situação de fato estranha e inusitada ..ficou parada por volta de 5 minutos no mesmo lugar sem fazer barulho e num piscar de olhos sumiu

2 videos

• credit : Digo Arruda

Flying Saucer Shaped UFO Sighted Over Italy ( July 30, 2021 )

This UFO flying saucer or flying disc was sighted over Italy on July 30, 2021. : This flying craft has a disc or saucer-shaped body, Classic Flying saucer Saucer commonly : anomalous flying object.

STATEMENT : Classic Flying saucer Saucer

• credit : think tank

Future of flight? Black Fly electric flying vehicle. UFO?

August 1, 2021 Live : 09:20

STATEMENT : Future of flight? Black Fly electric flying vehicle. UFO? : The difficult thing will be for us to distinguish what comes from the outside and what is right here.

• credit : Marcel Evandro

{ https://www.youtube.com/ }

LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS - MUFON CASES - - 4 - 8 - 2021

MUFON CASE : 117150 Los Angeles, California ( August 3, 2021 )

Mutual UFO Network : MUFON SUBMISSIONS : 12 ufo orbs appear no airplanes or anything else around.

Long Description of Sighting Report - Case 117150

• There were no airplanes or anything else around. Witnessed by me & my g/f

Date Submitted : 2021-08-03

Date of Event : 2021-08-02

MUFON SUBMITTER FILE : 12ufos.mp4

{ https://www.youtube.com/ }

Strange object in sky caught on camera in Croatia. What is it?

In Croatia, residents have been thrown into a fright after a bizarre story emerged regarding peoples being scared at a street location by what has been described as a “strange UFO”.

That and more strange events caught on tape. Real or fake?

Video here:

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

'Top Secret UFO Projects: Declassified': Tom DeLonge's Mind Was Blown by This Encounter

Harry Reid tells the government to continue studying UFOs after landmark report leaves more questions

However, he explained, there are decades of reports and investigations about UFOs to uncover what they are. None of those were included in the report and Reid wants to know why sightings between 2004 and 2021 were the only things considered. Some of the videos have been examined and released to the public with little information. Reid believes that there should be ongoing study as we learn more and technology gets better.

"We've been talking about these UFO's for 70 years and we have not gotten any place other than to understand that the more we learn, the more we need to learn," he explained. "And so I am satisfied that the medical Pentagon is doing the right thing."

He said that he's "ready" to find out specifics about what these UFOs actually are.

• Listen to the full interview here.

Stealth Fighters, Not UFOs—What Really Goes On in Area 51

Area 51's location - Groom Lake - was perfect as an experimental aircraft testing site: it was far from prying eyes and "smooth as a billiard table."

Here's What You Need To Remember: The Groom Lake facility at this time acquired the designation “Area 51” as it expanded and developed specialized facilities for the striking supersonic jets: larger additional hangars, a longer 10,000 foot runway, safer backup landing areas, over 130 housing units for personnel, and enlarged fuel stores for the exotic high-temperature JP-7 fuel used in the A-12.

Area 51, the highly secretive U.S. Air Force test facility in the deserts of southern Nevada, is enjoying a resurgence of popular interest thanks to an internet meme—as if being featured in X-File episodes, arcade shoot’em up games and films weren’t enough.

Despite the countless dubious conspiracy theories attributed to the site also known as “Dreamland” or “Groom Lake,” there’s no doubt that for over six decades the base hosted all sorts of “black project” aircraft whose existence was not formally disclosed by the Pentagon. 

Though the CIA only obliquely admitted to the site’s existence in 2013, we actually know a fair bit about how Area 51 came to be—and even how it first became a subject of juicy UFO stories.

A Private Testing Ground for Eisenhower’s Top-Secret Spy Plane

In the early 1950s, the United States was super keen on monitoring the Soviet Union’s rapidly developing nuclear ballistic missile program. As the first spy satellites remained a few years away from being launched, the only way to reliably spy on these sights was to fly above them and snap pictures with giant cameras. But by the early 1950s, the Soviet Union’s new air defense system and high-flying jet interceptors made spy flights excessively risky.

To overcome these defenses, Lockheed engineer Kelly Johnson proposed a glide-liker spy plane that would simply fly too high to be intercepted at over 70,000 feet. This still involved illegally violating Soviet airspace—but as long as the spy planes couldn’t be shot down, Moscow couldn’t prove the spy flights were happening at all.

In November 1954, Eisenhower approved development of this U-2 spy plane in a program known as “Project Aquatone” to be operated by the CIA. While the plane would be built at Lockheed’s famous Skunkworks facility, an aircraft designed for illegal spy overflights needed to be tested somewhere more discrete.

Johnson asked Lockheed test pilot Tony LeVier to find a suitably clandestine airfield. As described in the book Dark Eagles by Curtis Peebles, test pilot Tony LeVier departed from the Skunkworks facility in Palmdale, California flying a Beechcraft Bonanza light plane, ostensibly on a “hunting trip.” In reality, they proceeded to survey 50 decertified sites in Arizona, California and Nevada over two weeks—but none seemed sufficiently remote.

However, Air Force liaison Col. Osmond Ritland recalled an abandoned X-shaped landing strip that had served as a gunnery field during World War II.

CIA officer Richard Bissell, LeVier and Johnson flew down to inspect the strip, which lay next to a dry Nevada salt flat called Groom Lake. Bissell described the site as “…a perfect natural landing field… as smooth as a billiard table without anything being done to it.”

Johnson indicated “We’ll put it right there. That’s the hangar.”

A fake company called CLJ, created to obscure Lockheed’s involvement, recruited contractors to build up the facilities in the sweltering summer of 1955 at a cost of $800,000.

The desolate site, deceptively nicknamed “Paradise Ranch,” started out with a nearly mile-long runway, two hangars, a control tower, fuel and water storage tanks, an access road, and trailers for onsite personnel. LeVier personally road about the lakebed to clear it of debris and spent shell casings to make it safe for landing.

Finally, on July 24, 1955, the prototype U-2, dubbed Article 341, was disassembled and stowed into a hulking C-124 Globemaster transport plane, which transported it to the “Ranch”—landing with deflated tires so as not to break through the thin runway.

LeVier took the gawky aircraft around on taxi tests, hitting 80 miles per hour on the runway—only for the aircraft’s lengthy wings to lift his plane twenty feet into the air during his second run. The U-2 flew over a quarter-mile, before LeVier was able to get the lift-prone aircraft back down on the lakebed on his second attempt—though the hard landing caused one of the jet’s tires to burst and catch fire.

The U-2 went on to see several successful flight tests and in a matter of months was deployed on spy flights over the Soviet Union with CIA pilots.

Civilian airline pilots and air traffic controllers began spotting the silvery U-2s flying at supposedly impossible heights. Given that the Air Force couldn’t explain the sightings by telling the truth, it devised weather-related incidents to explain them away. These often unconvincing explanations only fed the fervor of conspiracy theorists.

The Blackbirds: A-12, D-21 and SR-71

When a Soviet S-75 surface-to-air missile blasted Gary Powers’s U-2 in 1960, and he subsequently confessed to performing espionage flights) it became clear that altitude alone would not provide an adequate defense. Kelly Johnson had already anticipated this vulnerability in 1958, when he began exploring a new spy plane concept: combining high altitude with sustained speeds exceeding three times the speed of sound, and radar-stealth—hopefully making the jet too high and fast to ever intercept.

This CIA-Lockheed “black project”—codenamed “Project Oxcart”—spawned the futuristic-looking A-12 single-seat spy plane, the progenitor of the famous (and unclassified) two-seat SR-71 Blackbird flown by the U.S. Air Force. 

The Groom Lake facility at this time acquired the designation “Area 51” as it expanded and developed specialized facilities for the striking supersonic jets: larger additional hangars, a longer 10,000 foot runway, safer backup landing areas, over 130 housing units for personnel, and enlarged fuel stores for the exotic high-temperature JP-7 fuel used in the A-12.

The first A-12s arrived in 1962 along with elite military pilots temporarily discharged and placed in the employ of the CIA, a protocol known as “sheep-dipping.” Though the White House never dispatched A-12s on overflights of the Soviet Union, they did fly thirty-two missions over Vietnam and North Korea in Project Blackshield before being retired in favor of the Air Force’s SR-71s, which had side-looking cameras that didn’t require overflight of hostile airspace.

Lockheed also devised a D-21 spy drone that resembled a miniature, single-engined Blackbird, carried on top of a Blackbird-derived carrier aircraft called the M-21.   

Tragically, one of the piggybacked D-21 drones collided with its M-21 carrier during a test launch. Though both of the M-21’s crew ejected, one drowned before he could be rescued, and Johnson canceled M-21 program.

However, the CIA did later try to make use of the D-21s by launching them from B-52 bombers to snap footage of Chinese nuclear test sites. However, a series of mishaps meant the Air Force was unable to recover footage from any of the five drone missions it dispatched.

Birthplace of the Stealth Jet

While the A-12 and Blackbird had limited stealth characteristics, by the 1970s, the Air Force was interested in taking another crack at a low-radar-observable jet, this time with combat application.

In 1977, the Skunk Works used new computer modeling technology to design and build two pale aircraft with diamond-like faceted surfaces coated with radar-absorbent iron ball paint. These “Have Blue” aircraft were disassembled and flown to Area 51 in a giant C-5 cargo jet November 16, then rebuilt and test flown.

Lo and behold, the Have Blues did exhibit drastically reduced radar cross-sections—but they were also highly aerodynamically unstable, and both crashed in 1979.

Lockheed evolved Have Blue into the F-117 Nighthawk attack jet, which used computer fly-by-wire systems to correct the aircraft’s inherent instability. A YF-117 prototype too made its first flight at Groom Lake on June 17, 1981. Production F-117s were then stationed at Area 51 before being redeployed to the nearby Tonopah Test Range.

Though the Pentagon admitted to the existence of a stealth jet in 1983, the secrecy surrounding the F-117 was so effective that the public never had any inkling of the Nighthawk’s true appearance, nor even its designation (widely believed to be the “F-19”) until was finally unveiled in 1988.

Meanwhile, Northrop, too, began refining its stealth technology with the Tacit Blue demonstrator, dubbed the “whale” or “alien school bus” for its decidedly unglamorous appearance. This made its first flight at Groom Lake in February 1982—the first of 135 in all before the demonstrator was retired in 1985.

Conceived as stealthy surveillance plane with a discrete Low Probability of Intercept Radar, Tacit Blue instead pioneered the use of computer-engineered curved-surfaces in stealth aircraft which heavily informed Northrop’s forthcoming B-2 stealth bomber.

• Sébastien Roblin holds a master’s degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing, and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring.
• This article first appeared in 2019 and is being reprinted due to reader interest.

{ https://nationalinterest.org/ }

The footage was captured at the Glacier Bay National Park and Reserve. The park posted the video to its Facebook page and explained that the mirage is called a "Fata Morgana". 

The strange dome-shaped object in the video is actually your brain being tricked into seeing a distorted version of an island. 

A Fata Morgana is a mirage that appears just above the horizon and can significantly distort an object that's already there. Glacier Bay National Park and Reserve explained on Facebook: "Fata Morgana is a mirage seen within a narrow band on Earth’s horizon. 

Islands in glacier bay turn to UFOs or the flying Dutchman with a little imagination and a pinch of cool science! When air of different densities meet, the air in Earth’s atmosphere acts as a refracting lens, creating the mirage effect we see.

  

{ https://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/ }

The Man Who Says He Was Abducted by Aliens

In this clip from a 1994 episode of “The Oprah Show”, guest Peter Faust claims he was visited—and ultimately abducted—by aliens at the age of 8. As an adult, Peter says he’s had terrifying recollections of the abduction, which left him so unsettled he ultimately sought the help of a psychiatrist. Here, John Mack, MD, joins Peter on stage to give credence to his patient’s abduction story, and those of thousands of other people claiming similar experiences.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }