Jacques Vallée: Pursuing Unidentified Aerial Phenomena and ‘Impossible Futures’
ON APRIL 17, 2013, attendees at an independently organized TEDx event in Geneva, Switzerland, were offered a glimpse at a seemingly impossible future.
Presented under the theme of “eCulture 360° and Wikinomics”, the event offered something unique even to a gathering of some of the most renowned international speakers on science and technology: the organizers billed it as a “TEDx with the opportunity to meet Jacques Vallée, one of the founder[s] of ARPANET, the first version of the Internet.”
Vallée’s lecture at the event, titled “The Age of Impossible: Anticipating Discontinuous Futures,” dealt with how the speed at which modern technology accelerates has resulted in events that would have seemed impossible to many people only years before they transpired. With examples ranging from the collapse of General Motors in 2009 to Bernie Madoff’s role in the financial crisis of 2007-2008, Vallee presented what he called a “Typology of the Impossible” that hinged on four main kinds of scenarios: events that escalated too quickly, convergences of “low-p scenarios,” events that appear to violate current cultural norms, and finally, scenarios that involve the appearance of a “completely alien concept within a particular culture.”
“There are many things in our culture today that fit that model,” Vallée said at one point during the talk, as he described historical instances where things that seemed unimaginable at one time later became technological norms. Such things, Vallee said, “are possible, but we cannot imagine them. The public is not aware that they can be done. History provides many examples, and the internet itself is an example of something that was unimaginable.”
After discussing his own part in helping create ARPANET, Vallée went on to share several more examples from recent history where unforeseen scientific advancements occurred, seemingly out of the blue.
“And finally,” the scientist said, never evincing a change in his measured tone and demeanor, “the Pentagon could not imagine that fast, erratic, mobile, oval objects in the sky were anything other than mental illusions, and they…” After a brief pause, Vallée cryptically added, “and you can fill out the answers in the next few years.”
Despite his success as a venture capitalist and “co-creator of the Internet”, most of the attendees at the 2013 TEDx event in Geneva were likely aware of what Vallée is best known for: his decades of involvement with the study of unidentified aerial phenomena. As a young computer scientist and astronomer in the 1960s, Vallee not only worked alongside Northwestern University astronomer J. Allen Hynek, the official scientific advisor to the U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book but also authored Anatomy of a Phenomenon, one of the earliest popular books written on the UFO subject by a professional scientist. Though he never uttered any of the popular names or abbreviations for the phenomenon, it was obvious what Vallee had been alluding to during this brief, passing reference to “oval objects” during his talk.
At least at that time, what had not been so obvious had been why Vallée specifically referenced the Pentagon’s relationship to UAP, nor why a series of seemingly impossible future events might come to pass involving this subject “in the next few years.”
THE CALL FROM DR. VALLÉE came through earlier than I expected.
The scientist’s voice, softened by age yet still resonant with the French he learned as a youth in Pontoise before emigrating to America many decades ago, was unmistakable to me, having heard it in many interviews and documentaries over the years. Vallée, now 83, is a man whose work in the study of unidentified aerial phenomena is only one finger on the glove of his impressive resume, spanning decades of work in astronomy, physics, computer science, and venture capitalism.
As evidenced by his billing at the TEDx event in 2013, one could indeed argue that Vallée is partly responsible for the creation of the Internet, although the affable Frenchman is modest on this point, nearly to a fault. This much was evident almost immediately as we began our discussion, and I wasted no time in bringing up the talk in Geneva and some of the intriguing hints he had dropped at that time.
“I’ve seen the development and the unfolding of a number of technologies,” Vallée told me during our call. “Very often what happens is that a discovery is made, and everyone agrees that it is important, and people write papers, and so on. And then it disappears.”
Vallée with collaborator and fellow author Chris Aubeck
(Credit: Chris Aubeck).
“You know, the Arpanet was essentially dead for a while,” Vallée recalls from his years working on the project decades ago. “Until [the] National Science Foundation picked up the funding, thinking that there would be several internets.” Initially a simple matter of accounting, the NSF initially believed it would be easier to fund three separate projects that looked at using networks through which computers could connect for purposes of communication.
“And then they picked it up from the DOD, and it became the Internet, as we know it now.”
Vallée offered several similar examples of predecessors to the Internet—not all of them American innovations—a point which Vallée emphasized as he shifted back to our subject of greater mutual interest: UAP.
“When I watched the meetings in Congress recently, all they talk about is American cases,” Vallee said. “And among American cases, all they talk about is military cases.”
“I can tell you, having developed a lot of databases over the years, the U.S. is less than 2% of the habitable surface of the Earth,” Vallée said.
“So, if this is extraterrestrial, what about the other 98%?”
THE PATH THAT BROUGHT Vallée into the tempest that is the study of unidentified aerial phenomena is a long one, which stems back to his early years in Pontoise at an age when the world was still at war.
“There are things you don’t forget,” Vallée said during our call, describing his memories of seeing American aircraft being shot down over his town when he was five years old.
A modern view of Pontoise with the Cathédrale Saint-Maclou visible in the distance
(Credit: Rozinante/CC BY-SA 4.0).
The object reminded them of the parachutists the family had watched descending from the skies during the war. His mother, who continued watching it, recalled how it sped away, leaving only a few wisps of white vapor where the object had been. Vallée would later learn that a schoolmate nearby had also noticed the object, observing it through binoculars.
Despite his father’s disapproval, Vallée maintained his interest in these unusual aerial objects. “I realized,” he would later write in his journal, “that I would forever be ashamed of the human race if we simply ignored ‘their’ presence.” The young Frenchman began to educate himself on the topic by reading the works of Aimé Michel, one of the earliest serious French researchers to undertake the study of unusual aerial phenomena. It was an interest he maintained through his college years, completing his degree in mathematics at the University of Paris in 1959 and going on to receive his M.S. from the University of Lille Nord de France two years later. By 1961, Vallée was employed at the Paris Observatory as an astronomer with its artificial satellite service, tracking space objects through theodolites by night.
“Naively, I started work here with great enthusiasm, assuming that we would be engaged in genuine research,” Vallée would recall of his years at the observatory. “That is not what I found.” In July of 1961, he and the other astronomers recalled a few instances where they observed objects passing overhead that they could not identify. “The next morning,” he recalled of one incident, his superior “simply confiscated the tape and destroyed it.” Vallée inquired as to why they hadn’t sent this seemingly important information along with their normal Telex tape dispatches to U.S. Navy officials in Paris.
“The Americans would laugh at us,” his superior scoffed.
Having his fill of the prevailing attitudes in Paris, by 1962, Vallée had emigrated to the United States, first working at the University of Texas, Austin, as a research associate in astronomy, and thereafter for a short stint at the McDonald Observatory, where he helped to compile the first informational map of the planet Mars with fellow French astronomer Gérard de Vaucouleurs. However, by the summer of 1963, Vallée was looking ahead at new opportunities, one of which arrived following a meeting in September with astronomer J. Allen Hynek, chair of Northwestern University’s astronomy department, who helped the young scientist find work as a systems analyst on campus. Hynek, at the time the scientific advisor to the U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book UFO investigation, was a natural ally; not only would he serve as a mentor to Vallée, who went on to receive his Ph.D. from the institution in 1967, but for years thereafter the two would remain close colleagues in the pursuit of their mutual interest.
An undated photo of astronomer J. Allen Hynek and Jacques Vallée
(public domain).
However, by the late 1960s, it seemed evident that scientific opinions on the UFO subject in the United States had finally begun to sour, despite the efforts of Hynek, Vallée, and a close network of like-minded scientists looking into the problem. By the end of 1968, the University of Colorado UFO Project, a U.S. Air Force-funded study headed by physicist Edward U. Condon, had delivered its findings; in an introductory summary to the lengthy report, Condon wrote that “nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added to scientific knowledge,” adding that “further extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be justified in the expectation that science will be advanced thereby.”
Vallée, musing over the Condon study during our call, remembered his incredulity at the time he first heard about its conclusions.
“That’s an interesting chapter in science,” he said. “Or the failure of science.”
By then, Vallee had already returned to France. As he, his wife Janine, and their son, Oliver, were acclimating to life in Europe again, Vallée was quietly readjusting his approach to the UFO question.
“Once I was back in France, in a way, it served to give me the space to rethink what we had done,” Vallée told me. “I mean, I knew the Condon Committee was a joke… and that science was somewhere else. So it forced me to ask some fundamental questions that I would not have asked if I had stayed at Northwestern.”
“So I thought, where does all this come from, anyway?”
Vallée began haunting the old Paris bookshops, acquiring rare historical texts and early treatises on the sciences. An interesting question had begun to form in his mind, as he recorded in a journal entry on October 29, 1967: What about the forgotten accounts of Little People, of Elementals, of Leprechauns? If these beings are part of the same phenomenon we see now, what does that mean for their nature? Are we necessarily dealing with extraterrestrials?
“I found that the phenomenon has always been there,” Vallée says of his years spent mining observations of unusual aerial phenomena from texts that date back to classical antiquity. “Of course, they are describing it in the language of the time,” he notes, “but they are describing something that’s very, very much like what I get from witnesses today.”
The fruits of such musings culminated in Vallée’s seminal 1969 effort, Passport to Magonia, widely regarded as one of his most influential early works and, paradoxically, the effort that cast him as a pariah in the eyes of many of his ufological peers.
Mass market paperback edition of Passport to Magonia
(Credit: Archives for the Unexplained)
“At first, it was completely rejected.” he says, recalling one UFO magazine that featured his likeness shortly after Magonia was published, accompanied by the headline, “Vallée has gone off the deep end.” Today, Vallée laughs about the chiding he received from his peers, and I note a hint of nostalgia about those early works behind the dry chuckle that emerges.
“Maybe the truth was in the deep end.”
OVER THE COURSE OF the ensuing decades, Vallée would continue to challenge the extraterrestrial hypothesis favored particularly among American UFO researchers. Parallel to this effort, his professional career brought him into work with the Institute for the Future in the mid-1970s, where he worked as principal investigator on the National Science Foundation computer networking project that gave rise to one of the earliest iterations of the ARPANET conferencing system. In the following decade, Vallée would become involved in venture capitalism, first as a partner at Sofinnova, then moving on to become a general partner in multiple different Silicon Valley funds, including his involvement in private investments today.
As his professional career flourished, Vallée never lost sight of his fascination with strange aerial phenomena. He authored a string of follow-ups to Magonia on the topic of UFOs throughout the 1970s and 80s, each continuing to build on the premise that the phenomenon could be far more complex than conventional opinions on UFOs would offer. His pioneering work continued to garner attention along the way, even serving as the inspiration for Claude Lacombe, a French scientist portrayed by actor François Truffaut in Stephen Spielberg’s classic film Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
In the 1990s, Vallée authored a trilogy of books that focused on the prospects of alien contact. However, he always maintained a healthy distance from drawing conclusions about what any exotic technologies behind UFOs might represent. It was also during this period that Vallée began working with real estate developer Robert Bigelow’s National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS), a privately funded scientific research effort that looked at UFOs and related phenomena.
In July 2014, Vallée presented a paper at the GEIPAN International Workshop in Paris, France, titled “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena: A Strategy for Research,” offering both a snapshot of what he had learned about the complexities of the phenomenon over several decades of study, as well as what he believed might be a path toward more fruitful future research.
“After years of ideological arguments based on anecdotal data the field of UAP research appears ready to emerge into a more mature phase of reliable study,” Vallée wrote in the paper’s abstract. Citing the mounting scientific interest in UAP around the world, based in part on documents conveying an official military interest in these phenomena, the scientist argued that the path forward would require the analysis of hard data, paired with intelligently informed theoretical studies.
“Without pre-judging the origin and nature of the phenomena, a range of opportunities arise for investigation,” Vallée wrote, warning that “such projects need to generate new hypotheses and test them in a rigorous way against the accumulated reports of thousands of observers.”
The problem was that in 2014, despite the existence of several notable independent catalogs containing information on historical incidents, there was no single collection of reliable UAP reports—a centralized database, in other words—upon which such studies could rely. This had been part of what prompted Vallée to assemble such a database for NIDS, work that would later carry over as Bigelow’s efforts moved out of the private sector and into the official world as part of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Advanced Aerospace Weapons Systems Application Program (AAWSAP).
(Credit: Jacques Vallée/fair use)
“In the United States the National Institute for Discovery Science (“NIDS”) and the Bigelow Aerospace Corporation have initiated a series of special catalogues to safeguard their own reports from public sources and from their staff,” Vallée wrote in his 2014 paper, adding that he had been asked to develop a UAP data warehouse containing 11 individual databases.
“The project is known as ‘Capella,’” it stated.
According to slides accompanying Vallée’s 2014 presentation, the Capella project focused on several areas that ranged from patterns emerging from UAP data to possible physics underlying the phenomenon and its impact on humans.
During our call, Vallée spoke candidly about the project and what he hopes it might still be used to achieve.
“There is such a database. It is the one we built as part of the AATIP/BAASS project in Las Vegas,” Vallée told me. Comprising roughly 260,000 cases from countries around the world, the scientist said during our call that the Capella database had been one of the major focal points of the program.
“Contrary to what people believe, [Capella] is the largest part of the budget that was spent on the classified project,” Vallée said. This included paying for translations of incident reports from Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, and several other languages into English, and providing funding for teams that conducted additional research on-site.
“It was a large effort for two years, Vallée said, though he added that in reality, “probably close to fifty or sixty years of work went into the database.” Although Capella constitutes what is arguably the most extensive database containing information on UAP ever built, don’t expect to see it any time soon; it remains classified as a part of the data developed under the DIA’s AAWSAP program managed by James Lackatski between 2008 and 2010.
“The database is still classified, to my knowledge,” Vallée said during our call, prompting me to ask whether such a vast amount of historical information on the UAP subject shouldn’t be made publicly available.
Speaking with The Debrief in December 2021, Mark Rodeghier, Ph.D., director of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies and a longtime colleague of Vallée, expressed frustration over previous statements made by Colm Kelleher, Ph.D., another of the scientists who worked on the AAWSAP program, who noted that much of the AAWSAP data will likely remain classified.
“I mean, isn’t that discouraging, disappointing, [and] ridiculous,” Rodeghier told The Debrief. “It’s not work on how we can get a hypersonic missile. It’s UFO investigations. How can that be classified at this point? And the answer, of course, is that it shouldn’t be classified now.”
During our call, Vallée expressed similar sentiments to Rodeghier’s, although he also defended Capella’s current classified status on account of some of the information it protects.
“You make a good point,” Vallée told me. “That’s the kind of thing that should be accessible to science,” although adding that “it will be accessible to very highly competent people who can continue to look at it under the proper classification.”
“I think it’s properly classified,” Vallée added, “because it contains a lot of medical data that should be private.” However, he said that he thinks that over time, perhaps portions can be “sanitized” for release to the public, “so that we don’t invade the privacy of individuals who have reported those things, especially their medical data.”
“It’s not classified for any military or intelligence reason as far as I know,” Vallée said. “But I’m not part of the project anymore.” Vallée noted that even he no longer has access to Capella, although several longtime colleagues of his who still work in government do.
“I’m very proud to have worked on that,” Vallée said. “It’s probably the high water mark in the computer study of UFOs so far.”
“But as we know, the high water mark is going to go even higher after this.”
DESPITE HIS OWN LEVEL of involvement with government UAP studies, as well as the level of interest generated by videos of unidentified objects collected by the U.S. military—the existence of which Vallée himself hinted at in Geneva as early as 2013—the 83-year-old scientist still doesn’t necessarily hold military UAP data in higher regard than that collected by civilians.
“The military cases in the databases I know of are less than ten percent in every country,” Vallee said during our call. “They are really good because the military has radar. They have, of course, planes that can chase the objects… pilots who are very well trained and very well positioned to give a description.”
“Those are excellent reports,” Vallée concedes. “But what about the farmer in the field, who sees [an object] close to him, and has traces, and has materials? Who has felt physiological reactions?”
“What about those cases?” he asks. “They are full of information.”
Vallée’s appreciation for UAP information collected from non-governmental sources is particularly evident in his latest book, Trinity: The Best-Kept Secret, coauthored with Italian journalist Paola Leopizzi Harris. In it, they unravel the story of two men, Jose Padilla and Reme Baca, who claim to have witnessed the crash of an unusual aircraft near San Antonito, New Mexico, in August 1945. Padilla, who went on to become a State Trooper in Rowland Heights, California, maintained that as children, he and Baca had seen a large, dull-gray avocado-shaped object—along with its frantic occupants—where it had apparently crashed near his family’s ranch. The object, they say, was later recovered by the military.
Vallée while conducting field research in New Mexico in advance of the publication of Trinity: The Best-Kept Secret
(Credit: Jacques Vallée).
In a newly updated second edition of the book, Vallée and Harris present additional witness testimony they have gathered about the alleged incident, which includes an observation of the crash remembered by the family of Lt. Colonel William J. Brothy, who at the time had been piloting a B-25 on a training mission. According to Brothy, he and his crew had flown over the site and recalled, “There were a lot of pieces.”
In Trinity, Vallée emphasizes what he believes are undeniable similarities between descriptions of the 1945 incident and a UAP landing in New Mexico observed by police officer Lonnie Zamora in 1964. Then, the following year another strikingly similar incident occurred near Valensole, France, involving the close observation of a landed craft and its apparent pilot or occupant.
“There is a case in Valensole, in France, and the case in Socorro. The object is identical to the Trinity object,” Vallée said. “And the [occupants] are identical to the creatures that Mr. Padilla is describing to me at Trinity, that he saw.”
“I was involved in Socorro, and I was involved in Valensole. Those are cases I know very well,” Vallée said, adding that Trinity contains new information on the Socorro case, once referred to by Hector Quintanilla, director of the U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book at the time of the incident, as being “the best documented case on record.”
Today, much of Vallée’s research is focused on the collection and study of material samples believed to have been collected from UAP. Compared with his earlier work, which challenged popular notions about extraterrestrials being associated with UAP, this might surprise longtime followers of the scientist’s work. For Vallée, however, it is only the next phase in the many decades he has spent working toward resolving the mystery.
“It’s all one thing,” Vallée said during our call. “The first book I wrote was Anatomy of a Phenomenon, which… I took as a study of extraterrestrial intelligence in general, and how it was I thought UFOs illustrated the idea of life elsewhere and intelligence elsewhere… that’s definitely the place from which we started.”
“Then, when I started working with Dr. Hynek, and I started working with—in those days, it was just called ‘computer catalogs,’ it wasn’t dignified as databases or data warehouses—but those catalogs held thousands of cases. My first complete catalog was donated to the Condon Committee at the University of Colorado, when they did the study funded by the Air Force.”
“Which,” Vallée notes, “to my surprise, concluded the problem didn’t exist. So, we’ve come a long way from that.”
Given his level of involvement in working to resolve the UAP question—an effort now spanning more than six decades, including his involvement in official government UAP investigations in several countries and having authored some of the most popular books ever written on the subject—perhaps the most surprising thing expressed by Vallée during our discussion had been his predictions about how he thinks his own work will be remembered by future generations.
“I think everything I’ve done, and everything my contemporaries have done, is going to be forgotten,” he said, mirroring his observations of the invention, and subsequent reinvention, of so many other innovations in science over time, not least among them the World Wide Web.
“And then in a few years, it’s going to be reinvented by, you know, great people at Stanford and Harvard in a new way,” he tells me, accompanied by the distinctive chuckle I had by now come to expect after one of his witty responses.
“That’s always the way science works.”
Archaeologists Unearthed a 6,200-Year-Old Megastructure. Its Purpose Is Still a Mystery.
Archaeologists Found an Ancient Megastructure
Jakub Specjalski - Getty Images
Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:
Archaeologists in Romania have uncovered portions of an ancient megastructure from around 6,200 years ago.
The oak-floor building was located at the entrance to a settlement that included roughly 45 houses.
The megastructure is only the sixth of its kind ever found, and experts are planning further research and excavation at the site.
Excavations in the hills of northeastern Romania have unearthed one of the world’s oldest known megastructures, a massive communal building dating to around 4000 B.C.E. that still holds plenty of secrets after only a quarter of the site has been excavated.
The building sits at the center of a settlement called Stăuceni-Holm in Romania’s Botoșani County, a site first identified in the 1960s but not excavated until 2023. It belongs to the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture, a network of farming communities that spread across modern-day Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine from roughly 4800 to 3000 B.C.E. According to a study published in PLOS ONE, the structure is only the sixth megastructure from this culture ever to be excavated, and radiocarbon dating makes it one of the earliest examples on record.
Romania dig reveals 6,200-year-old megastructure with unknown purpose
© Zehra Rekibe Başol/Pexels
At roughly 350 square meters, the building dwarfs the ordinary houses around it, and its prominent position near the settlement's entrance suggests that it played a special communal role. The Stăuceni-Holm settlement itself is relatively modest, home to an estimated 320 to 350 people, far smaller than some Cucuteni-Trypillia mega-sites in Ukraine that likely housed thousands. Yet even this smaller community built the same kind of oversized gathering place, a pattern that suggests megastructures were a standard organizational feature of the culture rather than a phenomenon limited to its largest towns. With three-quarters of the site still unexcavated, researchers expect the building has much more to reveal about how these early European communities lived and governed themselves.
The megastructure’s scale suggests that it held great significance for the people who built it. The rectangular building of over 3,700 square feet sat between defensive ditches and a palisade system at the entrance to the settlement. At three to five times larger than any of the homes, the structure offers a stark contrast to the rest of the settlement.
Inside, the oak wood floor covered in burnt clay contained a dense concentration of pottery pieces, including a “remarkable” example of a carved bull’s head attached to a bowl. Excavations also revealed a conical idol with an unknown purpose, although it’s a common find among Cucuteni sites. Three ladles were found, including one with painted patterns, along with a grooved pottery vessel painted in red ochre. Flint tools were found throughout the building.
Originally, the megastructure may have had an upper floor built like an open-air terrace. The inner portion had several rooms, likely for living, cooking, storage, and maybe even ritual purposes. Amid the remains of cereals and fruits, the team found henbane seeds, a psychotropic plant common in both medicinal and ritual use over 6,000 years ago.
While early geomagnetic surveys indicated the building featured hearths and storage pits, actual excavation proved that wrong. The authors wrote that at this stage of the research it’s “unrealistic to consider the function of the building as storage building or a communal place for consumption of food.” And there’s no real indication it was strictly a cult building. “Perhaps the megastructure was just a bigger house for a bigger family, a communal building for decision making, or a meeting place for special high-ranking inhabitants reflecting the change toward a more hierarchized organization of the community,” they wrote.
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'God of chaos' asteroid will be visible with the naked eye, NASA says
An illustration shows NASA's OSRIS-APEX spacecraft as it watches the asteroid Apophis zoom past Earth in April 2029.
(Image credit: Robert Lea/NASA)
A rare asteroid will soon be visible to the naked eye in a rare celestial event, according to astronomers.
Asteroid 99942 Apophis – named after the Egyptian deity of chaos, darkness and fire – is expected to safely pass close to Earth on April 13, 2029, according to NASA.
The asteroid will pass within roughly 20,000 miles of Earth – nearly 12 times closer than the moon's average distance from Earth, and closer than many satellites in geosynchronous orbit – making it one one of the closest approaches ever recorded for an object if its size and a "very rare event," according to NASA.
The approach will be visible to observers on the ground in the Eastern Hemisphere, weather permitting, according to NASA. It will be close enough that sky-watchers won't need a telescope or binoculars to see it, astronomers say.
When Apophis was first discovered in 2004, it was labeled a potentially hazardous asteroid because of the possibility that it could impact Earth in 2029, 2036 or 2068, according to NASA.
After closely tracking the asteroid and its orbit using optical telescopes and ground-based radar, astronomers are now confident that there is no risk of Apophis impacting Earth for at least 100 years.
The Earth's gravitational pull could change the asteroid's orbit around the sun as it passes in 2029, making the orbit slightly larger or the orbital period slightly longer, but the risk of impact with Earth will remain the same, NASA says. Its close passage will also afford astronomers around the world the opportunity to learn more about the asteroid.
Apophis is the Greek name for the Egyptian god known as Apep. The name was proposed by the astronomers who discovered the asteroid: Roy Tucker, David Tholen and Fabrizio Bernardi of the Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona.
The asteroid is a relic of the early solar system from about 4.6 billion years ago, made of leftover raw material that was never part of a planet or moon, according to NASA. Though its exact size and shape is unknown, it has a mean diameter of about 1,115 feet and a long axis of at least 1,480 feet.
Apophis' surface is weathered due to eons of exposure to space weather, including solar wind and cosmic rays, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Observatories around the world and in space will observe the asteroid's historic approach to Earth in order to better understand its physical properties.
NASA has redirected a spacecraft to rendezvous with Apophis shortly after its close approach in 2029, while the European Space Agency is sending a spacecraft to study it.
When the April 2029 flyby occurs, Apophis will become a member of the "Apollo" group, the family of asteroids that cross Earth's orbit but that themselves have orbits around the sun that are wider than the Earth's, according to the ESA.
Artemis II isn’t the farthest human spaceflight, and it’s not even close
Artemis II, NASA’s first crewed mission of the Artemis era, sent four astronauts on a sweeping journey around the Moon before bringing them safely back to Earth. The mission carried the crew farther from Earth than any humans had traveled before, using a free-return trajectory that looped around the Moon and set up a fiery return through Earth’s atmosphere. It ended with Orion splashing down in the Pacific Ocean after nearly 11 days in space, closing out a mission designed to test the spacecraft, its life-support systems, and the agency’s readiness for future lunar expeditions.
According to NASA, the mission reached a maximum distance of 252,760 miles from Earth, passed within about 4,070 miles of the lunar surface, and covered 695,081 miles from launch to splashdown. By the measure of how far humans had ever gotten from home, Artemis II set a new record.
That is not the same record as longest trip.
A simple everyday comparison helps. A former job might have been 20 miles from your house. A new one could sit only 10 miles away. But if the route to the closer job snakes through bad roads and detours, your odometer might still rack up 30 miles. The closer destination becomes the longer drive.
That is essentially what happened here.
Artemis II went farther outward than any earlier crewed mission. It headed toward the Moon, looped around it, and came back to Earth. So when NASA describes it as the farthest human spaceflight, the claim holds up, but in a very specific sense. Artemis II set the record for maximum distance from Earth, not for total miles traveled.
That distinction matters because another lunar mission still leads in NASA’s own mileage totals.
Apollo 17, the final crewed Moon landing mission, lasted 12 days, 13 hours, and 52 minutes, according to NASA’s mission page. It spent 75 hours on the lunar surface, completed 75 revolutions, and traveled 1,484,933.8 miles. Artemis II’s published total was 695,081 miles.
By NASA’s own figures, Apollo 17 covered a little more than twice as much ground.
The gap is striking, especially since Artemis II just set the record for getting farthest from Earth. The explanation is less mysterious than it first sounds. Artemis II flew by the Moon. Apollo 17 got there and did much more.
Once Apollo 17 reached the Moon, the mission did not simply swing around and head home. It entered lunar operations, circled the Moon again and again, landed, remained on the surface for more than three days, launched back into space, and then returned to Earth.
NASA’s public mission page does not break that 1.48 million-mile total into a detailed accounting. Still, it provides enough to explain why Apollo 17’s number climbs so much higher than Artemis II’s.
The biggest clue is the 75 revolutions.
A rough geometric estimate helps show the scale. A low orbit around the Moon runs a little more than 7,000 miles per lap. Over 75 revolutions, that alone adds up to more than 500,000 miles. Then come the descent to the surface, the ascent back to orbit, and the other local maneuvers near the Moon.
That estimate is not an official NASA breakdown. It is a back-of-the-envelope way to understand the mission profile. Even so, it points in the same direction as the published totals. Apollo 17 racked up its extra miles because it spent far longer operating in the Moon’s neighborhood.
Artemis II did not.
It went out, looped around, and came back.
There is also another way to think about travel in space, though it is separate from NASA’s official mission-mileage totals.
NASA says Earth sits about 93 million miles from the Sun and takes 365.25 days to complete one orbit. That works out to roughly 1.61 million miles of travel per day around the Sun. By that measure, every crewed mission is also being carried through space by the motion of the Earth-Moon system.
Using that frame, Apollo 17’s 12.58-day mission corresponds to roughly 20.2 million miles of solar-orbit travel. Artemis II’s 10.98-day mission comes out to about 17.6 million miles.
Those are not NASA’s official mission-distance numbers. They are separate calculations based on NASA’s Earth-orbit facts and the length of each mission. They help clarify what NASA’s published totals are measuring, and what they are not.
Apollo 17’s official 1,484,933.8 miles and Artemis II’s official 695,081 miles make the most sense in the Earth-Moon flight frame. If solar motion were part of the official count, both totals would be dramatically larger.
That point cuts both ways. It means solar motion is real, but it does not explain why Apollo 17 beats Artemis II in NASA’s official numbers. That advantage still comes from what Apollo 17 did around the Moon.
Once the frame widens to include the Sun, lunar missions stop looking like the mileage champions.
Long-duration space stations take over almost immediately.
The reason is simple. If Earth moves about 1.6 million miles per day around the Sun, then any occupied station is also covering that distance day after day, week after week, year after year. On top of that, the station is circling Earth the whole time.
By this method, the International Space Station sits in a category of its own. NASA says the ISS has been continuously occupied since November 2, 2000 and travels around Earth at about 17,500 miles per hour. From November 2, 2000 to April 13, 2026, that uninterrupted human presence spans about 9,293 days. Earth’s motion around the Sun over that stretch adds up to about 14.86 billion miles. The station’s own orbit adds about 3.90 billion miles. Together, that comes to roughly 18.76 billion miles traveled while humans were aboard.
Mir also leaves the lunar missions far behind by the same method. NASA says human occupancy resumed in September 1989 and continued without interruption for 10 years, until August 1999. NASA also says Mir traveled at an average speed of 17,885 miles per hour. Over that inhabited stretch, Earth’s motion around the Sun accounts for about 5.84 billion miles, while Mir’s orbit adds another 1.57 billion. Combined, that comes to about 7.41 billion miles.
Even Skylab looks surprisingly strong once the calculation changes. NASA says its three crewed stays lasted 28 days, 59 days, and 84 days. NASA also says Skylab orbited at about 435 kilometers altitude and completed one orbit every 93 minutes. Using solar motion plus Skylab’s own movement around Earth, the three inhabited stays work out to about 56.3 million miles, 118.6 million miles, and 168.9 million miles.
These are estimate-based totals, not official NASA mileage tallies. They combine Earth’s orbit around the Sun with each station’s orbit around Earth, and they count only periods when humans were continuously aboard. That makes them useful for comparison, but not interchangeable with NASA’s official mission-distance figures.
What this really changes is the language around space records.
Artemis II holds the record for the greatest distance from Earth ever reached by humans. Apollo 17, using NASA’s own mission totals, traveled many more miles. In a wider Sun-centered frame, long-occupied stations overwhelm both of them.
That does not shrink Artemis II’s achievement. It sharpens it.
The mission took humans farther from Earth than any mission before it. But farthest from home and longest trip are not the same measurement, and space makes that difference impossible to ignore.
The original story “Artemis II isn’t the farthest human spaceflight, and it’s not even close” is published in The Brighter Side of News.
Subaru telescope captures comet 3I/ATLAS composition change
The Subaru Telescope observed the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS on January 7, 2026, after it made its closest approach to the sun. By observing colors in the coma around the comet, astronomers could estimate the ratio of carbon dioxide to water. This ratio is much lower than that inferred from earlier observations by space telescopes. These findings suggest that the chemistry of the coma is evolving over time and offers clues to the structure of comet 3I/ATLAS. The work appears in The Astronomical Journal.
Comet 3I/ATLAS (C/2025 N1) has garnered much attention as a comet which originated outside of the solar system. A research group led by Yoshiharu Shinnaka of the Koyama Space Science Institute, Kyoto Sangyo University, used the Subaru Telescope to observe comet 3I/ATLAS after perihelion, the comet's closest approach to the sun. The team applied analytical methods and expertise accumulated through investigations of solar system comets to the data.
From this analysis, the team was able to estimate the ratio of carbon dioxide (CO2) to water (H2O) in the coma, the cloud of gas around the nucleus of the comet. Because the gas in the coma comes from the nucleus, the coma composition provides hints to the composition of the nucleus.
Thanks to its notoriety, 3I/ATLAS had already been observed by space telescopes prior to perihelion. The CO2/H2O ratio calculated from the Subaru Telescope data was lower than the ratio suggested by the space telescope data. This change is consistent with the idea that the composition of the nucleus's interior differs from that of the exterior, and as 3I/ATLAS heated up during its pass by the sun, gas started to escape from different parts of the nucleus.
Shinnaka comments, "With the full-scale operation of survey telescopes in the coming years, many more interstellar objects are expected to be discovered. By applying the observational and analytical techniques we have developed through studies of solar system comets to interstellar objects, we can now directly compare comets hailing from both inside and outside the solar system and explore differences in their composition and evolution.
"Through studies of such objects, we hope to gain a deeper understanding of how planetesimals and planets formed in a wide variety of stellar systems, including our own solar system."
Rep. Luna, Lawmakers Demand UFO Videos by April 14
By Sandy Fitzgerald
Lawmakers are giving War Department Secretary Pete Hegseth and other federal agencies until April 14 to turn over dozens of classified UFO videos while warning the unidentified objects could pose a threat to U.S. military operations.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., sent a letter to Hegseth requesting 46 specific Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) videos, and said in a statement that the lack of disclosure "regarding the very real threat" posed by the objects being near U.S. restricted airspace is "concerning," The Daily Mail reported Wednesday.
"The presence of UAPs in and around the sensitive airspaces of U.S. military installations poses a threat to the security of the armed forces and their readiness," Luna said.
Lawmakers are seeking footage of encounters recorded by the military that shows spherical, cigar-shaped, and Tic Tac-like objects observed over war zones, oceans, and restricted airspace.
Some of the clips reportedly show formations near Iran and Syria, incidents near U.S. bases and airports, and a 2023 shootdown over Lake Huron.
The videos could help identify patterns of activity near sensitive sites and assess whether the objects present a national security risk, lawmakers say.
Luna chairs the House Federal Secrets Task Force, which is investigating UAP sightings, declassifying federal records, and working with whistleblowers.
She said the panel has received incomplete responses from the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, which is tasked with analyzing such incidents.
The letter follows a September 2025 hearing in which whistleblowers told lawmakers that additional UAP video records exist.
Congressional Letter
Among the requested materials is footage labeled "Spherical UAP over AFG in and out of clouds, 11/23/20," reportedly recorded during a reconnaissance mission near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
Investigative journalists Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp previously released portions of that video.
Other clips were captured by fighter jets, drones and surveillance aircraft operating in regions including the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, and the East China Sea.
In several cases, multiple objects were tracked moving at high speeds simultaneously, raising concerns about coordinated activity.
Officials have warned the unidentified craft could be conducting surveillance, testing U.S. defenses, or interfering with aircraft, posing risks to pilots and military readiness.
The push for disclosure comes after President Donald Trump ordered the release of government files related to UAPs and extraterrestrial phenomena on Feb. 19.
Hegseth said in February that the War Department is working to comply with the order.
"I did not have that on my bingo card at all," Hegseth said at the time. "We've got our people working on it right now. We're going to be in full compliance with that executive order, eager to provide that for the president."
He added that he does not yet know how long it will take to review and release all relevant materials.
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
Artemis II mission encountered Microsoft glitches in deep space
Even if you’re hundreds of thousands of kilometers away from Earth aboard the Orion spacecraft, that doesn’t guarantee you’ll be spared the everyday problems familiar to every office worker. During the live broadcast of the Artemis II mission, viewers witnessed not only majestic scenery but also a humorous—albeit somewhat stressful—moment: the astronauts’ struggle with Microsoft software.
NASA astronaut and Artemis II mission commander Reid Wiseman looks out the window of the Orion spacecraft. The Outlook illustration was added to the lower display “as a joke”; in reality, telemetry was displayed there, and the software glitch actually occurred on a Windows-based tablet.
Photo: NASA
Attentive social media users, particularly on BlueSky, noticed an unexpected exchange between the crew and Mission Control in Houston. Instead of reporting on orbital parameters, Commander Reid Wiseman was forced to complain about glitches with his email.
About 13 hours into the flight, Wiseman reported, “I see that I have two instances of Microsoft Outlook running, and neither of them is working.” The phrase instantly went viral. Users joked that sending people to the moon is difficult, but making them use Outlook while they’re there is downright cruel.
NASA astronaut and Artemis II mission commander Reid Wiseman.
Photo: NASA
The problem was so serious that specialists on Earth had to connect to the spacecraft’s systems remotely to “resurrect” the email client. An hour later, the problem was resolved, even though the program continued to display an “offline” status—a phenomenon NASA experts described as “expected behavior.”
To many readers, the presence of ordinary commercial software on board a multibillion-dollar spacecraft may seem strange. However, this is part of the COTS (Commercial Off-The-Shelf) strategy.
A “selfie” of the Orion spacecraft returning to Earth after a lunar flyby as part of the Artemis II mission.
Photo: NASA
It is important to understand that Orion’s mission-critical flight systems rely on specialized, radiation-resistant hardware and unique software that has undergone years of testing. However, for everyday tasks—such as checking schedules, writing personal letters to family, or reading instructions—astronauts use standard Windows tablets and laptops. This allows the crew to work in a familiar interface without tying up the resources of the main onboard computers for administrative tasks.
While searching for information about Microsoft Outlook in the broadcast, the researchers stumbled upon another, more physiological problem facing the mission. Almost at the very start of the flight, a warning light indicating a malfunction in the waste disposal system (UWMS) lit up on the control panel.
In this photo, astronaut Christina Koch is illuminated by a screen inside the darkened Orion spacecraft on the third day of the Artemis II mission. To the right, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen looks out one of the windows.
Source: NASA
As it turned out later, the urine drain fan jammed two hours after takeoff. In microgravity, this is not merely an inconvenience but a serious technical hazard: without forced airflow, the liquid does not flow into the collection container but instead begins to scatter chaotically throughout the cabin.
Fortunately, one of the astronauts had experience as a maintenance engineer; he managed to reach the mechanism and manually clear the jam. NASA confirmed that the system had resumed operation, but the incident served as yet another reminder that in space, even the slightest fan malfunction can turn a triumphant mission into an ordeal of endurance.
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The Zhamanshin Impact Event Was Likely Much More Destructive Than Thought
Earth and the course of life on Earth have been shaped by impacts. Scientists have uncovered links between massive impacts and changes in climate that altered the planet forever. But the further scientists look into the past to try to understand these changes, the more difficult it is to link them together.
Impact craters don't retain their shapes for long on Earth. When examining ancient craters, researchers are dealing with degraded structures that don't reveal all of the impactor's secrets. Impactor size, angle of impact, velocity, even the composition of the impactor can all change a crater's shape, making it difficult to determine how energetic the impact was, and impact energy is critical to understanding how impacts shaped life on Earth.
The Zhamanshin impact crater in Kazakhstan is believed to be the most recent hypervelocity cratering impact event. The impactor struck Earth around 900,000 years ago during the Pleistocene. It may have caused a nuclear winter, but scientists think it wasn't powerful enough to trigger a mass extinction.
The Zhamanshin crater is visible on the surface and measures about 14 km in diameter. The belief that it was not powerful enough to cause an extreme aftermath is based largely on that crater size. But new research is casting doubt on that measurement, which in turn casts doubt on the effects of the impact. Could the Zhamanshin impact have triggered more powerful changes than thought?
The new research is titled "The Zhamanshin Impact Event: Potential Implications for Environmental Responses and Biological Linkages on Earth and Beyond." It's been submitted to the Planetary Science Journal, and is currently available at arxiv.org. The lead author is James Garvin from the Sciences and Exploration Directorate at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
There are a handful of complex impact craters from the last 1 million years, and they're all degraded to different degress by erosion. "Zhamanshin is the youngest (< 0.90 Ma) and likely best-preserved complex impact structure known within the Earth record within the past one million years," the authors write.
The Zhamanshin impact crater is located in Kazakhstan.
Image Credit: Garvin et al. 2026. PSJ.
It may seem difficult to get the size of an impact crater wrong, especially one that was created only 900,000 years ago. But lead author Garvin has been arguing for years that some craters, including Zhamanshin, are actually multi-ringed craters with outer rings at large distances from the easily visible inner rings. These rings don't pop out of the landscape in visual images, but remote-sensing techniques like LiDAR can detect them.
"Analysis designed to reduce uncertainty in the dimensions of the Zhamanshin structure employing high resolution topography demonstrated that it likely generated a ~ 26.5 km diameter multi-ring crater," the authors write. "This is at least two times larger than the current best estimates."
The researchers measured the elevation of small peaks in the area around the main crater to determine the size of the outer rings.
The top row shows measurements of small peaks in the region around the main crater. The middle row shows different ring solutions. The bottom panel shows the final apparent outer ring solution.
Image Credit: Garvin et al. 2026. PSJ.
They also used five different types of Digital Elevation Models (DEM) from LiDAR and other data sources to determine the diameter of the entire crater.
This is the highest spatial resolution elevation data available for the Zhamanshin impact region. The red dotted line shows the predicted outer ring of the crater.
Image Credit: Garvin et al. 2026. PSJ.
Size matters in craters because it's directly linked to impact energy. If Zhamanshin is two times larger than thought, then its impact energy and effect on Earth were also far more pronounced.
"Using a range of accepted impactor sizes, velocities, compositions, and angles of impact, such impacts typically yield kinetic energies of impact over 240,000 Megatons (TNT)," the researchers explain. The combined explosive power of both WW2 atomic bombs was only about 35 kilotons.
That puts the Zhamanshin impact in the same category as other more energetic explosions throughout Earth's history, like the eruptions that occurred in the Yellowstone Caldera. These events were powerful enough to create global climate impacts. "The factor of two discrepancy in the dimensions of Zhamanshin increases the kinetic energy yield by factors of 7-10, with significantly larger environmental consequences," the researchers write.
An oblique view of the crater DEM. The solid red line indicates the 12.5 km inner ring diameter. The dotted red line indicates the 26.4-26.8 km predicted outer ring.
Image Credit: Garvin et al. 2026. PSJ.
In the researchers' view, it's critical to examine Zhamanshin in this context, since it could be responsible for abrupt climate changes with biological consequences that happened around 900,000 years ago. "Quantitative study of Earth’s hypervelocity impacts is essential as they could have affected plant and animal populations amidst various environmental challenges during periods of known climate variations," Garvin and his colleagues explain.
The issue is that Zhamanshin's outer rings are not clearly visible. Previous research by Garvin and others has shown that the crater has been modified by erosion. Research also shows that the outer ring region is covered in loess. Loess is wind-blown silt that formed during the last ice age as glaciers ground rocks into dust. The loess is obscuring the full extent of the crater's outer rings, according to this research.
"The deposition of widespread loess atop the landscape further subdues its relief in comparison to other contemporaneous complex craters," the authors explain. Runoff from the nearby Aral Sea could also help explain why the crater's full extent has been difficult to discern.
So if the Zhamanshin impact was far more powerful than thought, what does that mean for our understanding of Earth at the time?
"The environmental consequences of a ~ 26.5 km diameter impact cratering event in the ~ 870,000 (± 20,000) yr (BCE) time interval of Earth history (early Middle Pleistocene Transition) have not previously been considered," the authors write. "The duration of the post-impact events and whether they were of consequence to regional (or beyond) biological systems is not known nor established at this time."
The authors write that further analysis of climate records from this time period involving pollen, spores, and even fossilized plankton, could discover any biological effects from the Zhamanshin impact. "The terrestrial impact record for the past one million years is of known consequence to the evolution of biological systems on Earth and additional efforts to unravel its incomplete history are compelling, considering key goals associated with planetary protection of Earth," the researchers explain.
Researchers have uncovered changes on Earth following the Zhamanshin impact. The impact occurred during the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, when the behavior of Earth's glaciers changed significantly. The two may be linked, but as of now there's no direct evidence connecting them via cause and effect. "The duration of the post impact events and whether they were of consequence to regional (or beyond) biological systems is not known nor established at this time," the authors write.
As the climate changes, the landscape changes. Climate, landscape, and biological changes are all interrelated, something that won't surprise Universe Today readers. While impactors from space have an external source, once they impact Earth, they become part of these interrelating cycles and cause-effect relationships. Where exactly Zhamanshin fits in isn't clear, but if it was so much more powerful than originally thought, it must have played a role.
"These initial results, while suggestive, require follow on research in the form of regional geophysical surveys like those conducted at complex impact structures such as Haughton and others including the Ries impact event at ~ 14.8 Ma," the authors write.
If these results lead to a better understanding of actual impact crater sizes, then the results also apply to other planets.
"Extending this work to the most recent multi-ringed complex impact events on Mars is another fertile area of research to be considered in an astrobiological context and in support of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration priorities," the authors conclude.
1.5 Mile Long UFO Docked In Crater On Earths Moon, UFO Sightings Daily
Egypt's Great Pyramid history shattered as new 'evidence' reveals how the ancient structure was really built
The mystery of how Egypt’s Great Pyramid was built may finally be solved.
For decades, experts have struggled to explain how ancient workers lifted and positioned millions of huge stone blocks - some weighing up to 15 tons - without modern machinery. No written records reveal how they did it.
Now, a new study suggests the Pyramid of Khufu was built using a hidden spiral ramp running inside the structure.
Computer scientist Vicente Luis Rosell Roig believes workers used an ‘edge ramp’ - a sloping path along the pyramid’s outer edges that was gradually covered as each new layer was added.
Instead of relying on massive external ramps, this would have allowed workers to move stones steadily upward, one level at a time.
The scale of the project is staggering. The pyramid stretches around 755 feet along each side of its base and rises to about 481 feet.
Historians estimate it was built from roughly 2.3 million stone blocks - a feat that required extraordinary planning and coordination during Pharaoh Khufu’s reign.
The new model also sheds light on how long the construction may have taken.
Simulations suggest blocks could have been placed every four to six minutes - a fast, consistent pace.
At that rate, the pyramid could have been completed in just 14 to 21 years.
When quarrying, transport, and breaks for workers are factored in, the total timeline rises to around 20 to 27 years, in line with existing estimates.
Crucially, the theory could also explain why mysterious empty spaces have been detected inside the pyramid. It suggests parts of the hidden ramp could still be inside.
'Old Kingdom technology precluded iron tools, wheeled heavy transport, and compound pulleys, but allowed copper chisels, water-lubricated sledges, ropes, levers, earthen works, and Nile barges,' Rosell Roig said in a study in NPJ Heritage Science, published in March 2026.
'Accordingly, we bound ramp slope, lane width/clearance, and friction, and evaluate the dispatch headway (time between placing successive blocks) required to satisfy the 20–27-year window, encoding these constraints as model parameters.'
For centuries, experts have debated how ancient builders managed to raise such massive materials with limited technology while maintaining the pyramid's precise geometry.
Many earlier ramp theories struggled to explain how construction could continue efficiently without creating obstacles or requiring vast amounts of additional material.
Now, a new study proposes that the Pyramid of Khufu may have been built using a sophisticated hidden ramp system capable of moving stone blocks every few minutes
Rosell Roig's research aimed to address these challenges by combining multiple forms of analysis into a single system.
According to the study, he built a computer model that simulated how stones were moved and how the structure stayed stable as it rose layer by layer.
At the center of the system is the ramp itself, a gradual path built into the pyramid's outer structure rather than relying on massive external ramps.
Sections of the outer stone layers were temporarily left open to form the upward path, then filled in as work progressed, removing visible evidence of the ramp once construction was complete.
Rosell Roig described this method as 'a helical path formed by omitting and backfilling perimeter courses,' allowing the ramp to rise alongside the structure.
Timing proved to be one of the most important elements of the study. The model calculated that maintaining steady block placement intervals would allow construction to proceed within realistic historical timeframes.
When expanded to include additional logistical steps such as quarrying stone and transporting materials along the Nile, the overall construction window increased but remained consistent with accepted estimates.
Structural stability was another major focus, with staged finite-element analysis used to simulate the pressure created as each new layer of stone was added to the growing monument.
The results showed that 'stresses and settlements remain within plausible limits for Old Kingdom limestone under self-weight,' indicating the structure could support its own immense mass throughout construction.
The model was also tested against physical observations already detected inside the pyramid. Imaging technology has revealed unexplained internal spaces, and the study found that the proposed ramp geometry corresponds with those features.
This design would have allowed workers to move stone blocks steadily upward without constructing massive external ramps that would have required enormous amounts of additional material
That alignment suggests the voids may not be accidental gaps, but structural elements created as part of the building process.
A key strength of the model is its ability to be tested. Rather than offering an unprovable idea, the research outlines measurable physical markers that archaeologists could investigate.
These include 'falsifiable predictions (edge-fill signatures, corner wear),' referring to specific patterns expected where ramps were filled in or where heavy traffic would have caused repeated wear.
According to Rosell Roig, the model helps solve several long-standing questions about how the pyramid was constructed efficiently without leaving visible traces.
He wrote that the system 'helps reconcile throughput, survey access, and zero-footprint closure,' meaning it allows construction to remain efficient while preserving the pyramid's final appearance.
By combining logistics, geometry and structural modeling into a single framework, the study presents what it describes as a workable construction pathway grounded in measurable constraints.
If future archaeological investigations confirm the predicted physical evidence, the findings could reshape modern understanding of how one of the world's most famous monuments was built, not through brute force alone, but through careful planning, engineering precision and a construction method designed to disappear into the finished structure itself.
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'Welcome home!' Watch the heartwarming moment the recovery crew opened Integrity's hatch after NASA's Artemis II astronauts splashed down following their historic moon mission
Footage has revealed the heartwarming moment a recovery crew opened Integrity's hatch, waving and smiling as they greeted NASA's astronauts following their historic moon mission.
The team arrived back on Earth in the early hours of Saturday after completing a 10–day journey that took them 252,756 miles (406,771 km) from home.
Their spacecraft reached blistering speeds of up to 25,000 miles per hour as it burned through the atmosphere.
Parachutes were deployed to slow its descent before it splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego, California.
A recovery team raced to the capsule, with a newly–released video showing them popping open the hatch and climbing inside to greet Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen.
They could be heard shouting 'welcome home' as they gave fist bumps to the crew, who beamed with joy after returning to Earth.
Commander Wiseman shared the video on social media with the caption: 'Jesse, Steve, Laddy and Vlad…such an incredible feeling to welcome you aboard Integrity after a nearly 700,000–mile journey.
'Forever thankful for your service to our crew and the nation.'
Footage has revealed the heartwarming moment a recovery crew opened Integrity's hatch, waving and smiling as they greeted NASA's astronauts following their historic moon mission
Pilot Victor Glover had a huge smile on his face as he fist–bumped one of the rescue team members
The splashdown marked the end of a 10–day journey that took the crew around the moon and farther than any humans have ever travelled in space.
NASA officials called the Artemis II mission a total success, with the capsule splashing down exactly where the space agency had planned.
Re–entry to Earth's atmosphere began just after 12:30am (UK time) on Saturday morning, with the Orion crew module blasting away from the spacecraft's service module.
The separation exposed the craft's heat shield, which protected the astronauts as they plunged through Earth's atmosphere, experiencing temperatures up to 2,760°C – just under half the surface temperature of the sun.
At this point, mission control lost contact with the spacecraft for six minutes as Orion collided with the upper atmosphere, causing what scientists called a 'plasma buildup.'
Once the radio blackout cleared as planned, Orion successfully deployed its parachutes and safely landed in the Pacific without incident.
A slight communications glitch between the astronauts waiting in the water and the US Navy recovery teams delayed the crew's exit from the craft.
But once flight surgeons were able to board the capsule, they were able to give all four astronauts a clean bill of health.
Delighted viewers said the video had brought them to tears. Pictures: Mission specialist Christina Koch
The video provides a different perspective to this one previously released, which shows the rescue team extracting the astronauts from the capsule
Victor Glover, left, and Christina Koch, right, after successfully splashing down following their historic moon mission
The rescue team could be heard shouting 'four green' as they opened the hatch, indicating that all four astronauts appeared healthy and well.
Delighted viewers have commented on the clip, with one remarking: 'Best unboxing video I've ever seen!'
Another said: 'Look at the astronauts waiting so cutely. And you can tell the recovery crew have the bets vibes!'
And someone else added: '"Welcome home" are actually such beautiful words.'
Once they had been recovered from the Orion module, the crew were examined by doctors on the John P Murtha, the naval vessel that was sent to pick them up.
All four astronauts were able to walk by themselves, in stark contrast to previous long–duration space flights where crew had to be carried by medical personnel.
They were then flown ashore by helicopter and taken to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston to be reunited with their families.
Dr Lori Glaze, NASA's deputy administrator, said her team was 'thrilled' to have the four astronauts home safely.
Shawn Quinn, manager of NASA's Exploration Ground Systems Program, added: 'We accomplished what we set out to do. It's good to be NASA, and it's good to be an American today.'
President Donald Trump added his congratulations Friday night and invited the crew to the White House.
'I look forward to seeing you all at the White House soon,' he posted on Truth Social. 'We'll be doing it again and then, next step, Mars!'
The Artemis II mission began back on April 1 with a successful launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
After orbiting Earth the crew set off on a four–day trip to the moon, where they would travel around the dark side and break the decades–old record of Apollo 13 for the farthest distance from Earth humans have ever travelled.
While the Apollo crew travelled 248,655 miles from Earth in 1970, Artemis II reached a maximum distance of 252,756 miles on day six of their mission.
While conducting their lunar flyby, the astronauts also named two new craters discovered on the lunar surface – including one Carroll after the late wife of mission commander Wiseman.
Amit Kshatriya, the associate administrator of NASA, said Artemis II was the 'most important human space exploration mission in decades.'
The sun is tearing an asteroid to pieces, and Earth is now flying through the fallout
Across Earth, every night, thousands of automated stargazers are waiting to take pictures of shooting stars. I am one of the scientists who study these meteors.
Most movies and news alerts focus on large asteroids that could destroy Earth. And your phone notifies you every few months that an object nine washing machines wide is going to just narrowly skim past. However, the small dust and rubble that enter our atmosphere daily tell an equally interesting story.
My planetary science colleagues and I use camera observations of the night sky to better understand dust, car-sized asteroids and debris from comets in our solar system.
In a study published in March 2026 in the The Astrophysical Journal , I searched through millions of meteor observations collected by all-sky camera networks based in Canada, Japan, California and Europe and found a small, recently formed cluster. The 282 meteors associated with this cluster tell the story of an asteroid that got a little too close to the sun.
When a sand-sized crumb of space rock hits our atmosphere, it heats up almost instantly, vaporizing its surface layer and turning it into an electrically charged gas. The whole fragment starts to glow—this is what we call a meteor. If the object is larger, like a boulder, and brighter, it's called a bolide or a fireball. On average, these objects hit our atmosphere going over 15 miles per second. For small dust or sand-sized objects, the whole process lasts only a fraction of a second before they completely disappear.
Most of these sand-sized fragments in the solar system originate from comets—cold, icy objects from the outer reaches of the solar system. As comets pass by the sun, their icy components turn to gas, releasing tons of dust. This is why comets are often called "dirty snowballs" and appear fuzzy in telescopic images.
Asteroids, on the other hand, are leftovers from the early solar system that formed closer to the sun. They are dry and rocky, and do not have the same ices that give comets their characteristic tails.
Astronomers call an asteroid or comet "active" when it sheds dust, gas or larger fragments. This activity is caused by some external force on the object in space, like heat from the sun, a small impact, or when asteroids spin too fast and fly apart.
Understanding and identifying activity helps scientists better understand how these objects change over time.
For comets, sublimation of ices—when solid ice turns directly into gas, skipping the liquid phase—is the primary culprit. However, for asteroids, the reason for activity can vary greatly.
For example, NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission, which launched into space to study an asteroid named Bennu, saw activity from its surface, with heat stress and small impacts among the leading explanations.
Other sources for asteroid activity include breakup when an asteroid spins too fast, tidal forces ripping apart asteroids during close encounters with a planet, or gas release.
Researchers most commonly search for activity using telescopes. Astronomers can look for a "tail" or fuzziness around the object. This tail is a clear sign that there is gas and dust around the body. But there is another way to search for activity—meteor showers.
The near-Earth asteroid Bennu (approximately 550 yards wide) ejected particles from its surface, which were observed by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft.
Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona/Lockheed Martin
The most famous active asteroid is 3200 Phaethon. It is the parent body of the Geminid meteor shower that occurs every year in mid-December. During past close approaches with the sun, Phaethon released vast amounts of dust and larger fragments. These morsels of Phaethon have spread out along its entire orbit over time, leading to the present Geminid meteor stream.
Each meteor shower we observe occurs when Earth passes through one of these debris streams. So if astronomers can detect meteor showers, they can also be used to find active objects in space.
At first, debris shed by an asteroid or comet travels closely together. Imagine squeezing a single drop of food dye into a moving stream of water: Initially, the dye stays in a tight, concentrated cloud. But as it flows, the water's swirling currents pull at the dye, causing it to spread out and fade.
In space, the gravitational tugs from passing planets act like those currents. They pull on the individual meteor fragments in slightly different ways, causing the once-tight stream to gradually drift apart until it completely dilutes into the background dust of our solar system.
This diagram shows the radiant—the point in the night sky from which meteors of the newly discovered shower appear to originate.
Credit: Patrick Shober—NASA JSC
In a study published in March 2026 in the Astrophysical Journal, I used millions of observations of meteors to search for recent, unknown activity from asteroids near Earth. I found one clear cluster of 282 meteors that stood out.
What makes this discovery so exciting is that we are essentially witnessing a hidden asteroid being baked to bits. This newly confirmed meteor stream follows an extreme orbit that plunges almost five times closer to the sun than Earth does.
Based on how these meteors break apart when they hit our atmosphere, we can tell they are moderately fragile, but tougher than stuff from comets. This finding tells us that intense solar heat is literally cracking the asteroid's surface, baking out trapped gases and causing it to crumble. This is likely a major source of past Phaethon activity and the main reason the meteorites on Earth are so diverse.
Why does finding a hidden, crumbling asteroid matter? Meteor observations act as a uniquely sensitive probe that lets us study objects that are completely invisible to traditional telescopes.
Beyond solving astronomical mysteries, analyzing this debris helps us understand the physical evolution of asteroids and comets in our solar system. More importantly, it reveals hidden populations of near-Earth asteroids, which is vital information for planetary defense.
The new meteor shower's parent asteroid remains elusive. However, NASA's NEO Surveyor mission, launching in 2027, offers a promising solution. This space telescope, dedicated to planetary defense and the discovery of dark, hazardous, sun-approaching asteroids, will be the ideal tool for searching for the shower's origin.
Journal information:
The sun is tearing a huge asteroid to pieces – and now Earth is flying directly through the fallout, scientists warn
The sun is tearing a huge asteroid to pieces – and now Earth is flying right through the fallout, a NASA scientist has warned.
Searching through millions of meteor observations, scientists spotted a cluster of 282 shooting stars that seemed to emerge from the same point in space.
According to the researchers, these pieces of rocky debris are the aftermath of a crumbling asteroid, or rock–comet, that got a little too close to the sun.
Now, as our planet sweeps through the rock–comet's cluttered wake, keen stargazers on Earth will be able to spot a brand–new meteor shower lighting up the sky.
Meteor showers occur when Earth moves through a cloud of dust and small rocks littering space, which fall into the atmosphere and burn up with a dazzling flash.
Earth's latest meteor shower, dubbed M2026–A1, will be visible each year from March 16 to April 7.
While it won't be as spectacular as better–known meteor showers, this stunning display gives scientists a unique insight into the doomed rock–comet that created it.
Lead author Dr Patrick Shober, from NASA's Johnson Space Centre, wrote in The Conversation: 'What makes this discovery so exciting is that we are essentially witnessing a hidden asteroid being baked to bits.'
The sun is tearing a huge asteroid to pieces, leaving a wake of debris that Earth is now passing through
Each day, thousands of tiny space rocks fall to Earth and burn up in the atmosphere to produce glowing meteorites.
As they collide with particles of air at speeds over 15 miles (24 km) per second, their outer layers are instantly vaporised into an electrically charged gas, which glows brightly enough to be seen with the naked eye.
In the solar system, the majority of these sand–sized particles are produced by comets or asteroids breaking up into tiny pieces.
When an icy comet or rocky asteroid starts to crumble – either due to heating, or a collision with another object – scientists say that it has become 'active'.
When astronomers want to track down these active objects, they can either look for the glowing tail that is the tell–tale sign of a comet, or watch for the meteor showers produced by their trail of wreckage.
By carefully examining this small cluster of meteors, Dr Shober has managed to reconstruct their origin.
What makes this meteor shower so unique is that it appears to originate from a rare type of object known as a 'rock–comet'.
Most meteor showers come from comets, which disintegrate as their icy surfaces jump from solid to gas, in a process known as sublimation, as they approach the sun.
The wreckage of the rocky asteroid has created a new annual meteor shower which can be seen emerging from the area around Libra and Virgo between March 26 and April 7
Asteroids can become active when they are torn apart by the gravitational forces of a nearby planet or spin too fast, but they can also act like comets under certain conditions.
When a dry, rocky asteroid gets extremely close to the sun or faces extreme forces, it can also start to break up into a dusty wake that glows just like a comet's tail.
Dr Shober says: 'Based on how these meteors break apart when they hit our atmosphere, we can tell they are moderately fragile, but tougher than stuff from comets. This finding tells us that intense solar heat is literally cracking the asteroid's surface, baking out trapped gases and causing it to crumble.'
The asteroid's dramatic self–destruction is a product of its 'extreme orbit', plunging almost five times closer to the sun than Earth does.
Dr Shober says that this discovery 'reveals hidden populations of near–Earth asteroids, which is vital information for planetary defence'.
However, although the meteor shower is strong evidence, the parent asteroid remains elusive.
The chances of spotting the relatively dark and fast–moving object from Earth are slim, but Dr Shober is holding out hopes for NASA's NEO Surveyor mission launching in 2027.
He says: 'This space telescope, dedicated to planetary defence and the discovery of dark, hazardous, sun–approaching asteroids, will be the ideal tool for searching for the shower's origin.'
A lost biblical landmark may have just been found after three millennia
An ancient city, long studied and debated, has revealed a new piece of its past. Recent excavations in Jerusalem have uncovered a monumental rock-cut moat that is reshaping how historians understand the city’s defenses during biblical times. For decades, archaeologists suspected the existence of such a structure, yet its full form remained elusive.
The discovery, located in the historic City of David, exposes a trench carved directly into bedrock, measuring approximately nine meters deep and thirty meters wide. This scale suggests not only technical sophistication but also a highly organized society capable of executing ambitious construction projects nearly 3,000 years ago.
What makes this finding particularly compelling is how it aligns with ancient textual descriptions of Jerusalem’s layout. References found in biblical passages, including mentions of large-scale construction like the Millo, now appear to correspond more closely with physical evidence, offering new layers of interpretation for both historians and readers of these texts.
For generations, scholars attempted to piece together clues pointing to Jerusalem’s ancient northern defenses. Fragmented findings hinted at a significant man-made cut in the rock, but its full extent remained unclear, leaving a noticeable gap in the archaeological map.
Excavations in the Givati Parking Lot area provided the missing link. As new sections of the trench were uncovered and compared with earlier discoveries, researchers were able to connect the dots, revealing a continuous defensive feature that had gone unrecognized in its entirety for over a century.
This breakthrough illustrates how archaeology often depends on patience and accumulation. A single discovery rarely tells the whole story, but when combined with previous findings, it can transform scattered evidence into a coherent narrative.
The dimensions of the moat immediately stand out. This was not a simple ditch or natural formation, but a deliberate and labor-intensive excavation carved into solid stone. Such an undertaking would have required extensive planning, manpower, and authority.
Beyond its physical presence, the trench functioned as a powerful defensive barrier. Anyone approaching the most critical parts of the city would have faced a formidable obstacle, slowing movement and limiting access. This suggests a strategic approach to urban defense, where geography and engineering worked together to protect key areas.
At the same time, the moat likely served a symbolic purpose. Its sheer size would have communicated strength and control, reinforcing the authority of those who governed the city. In ancient societies, architecture often played a dual role, blending functionality with messaging.
According to researchers, the trench effectively separated Jerusalem into two distinct zones. On one side lay the upper city, associated with governance, administration, and religious activity near the Temple Mount. On the other, residential neighborhoods extended to the south, representing everyday urban life.
This division was more than physical. It created a controlled boundary between the centers of power and the general population, influencing how people moved through the city. Access points would have been limited and closely monitored, especially during periods of tension or conflict.
The location of the discovery beneath a modern parking area highlights another reality of archaeological work. Ancient cities often lie buried beneath contemporary infrastructure, requiring careful excavation through layers of history. Each layer adds complexity, but also the possibility of connecting past discoveries in meaningful ways. The identification of this moat also contributes to ongoing debates about historical references such as the Millo. While it does not definitively confirm these accounts, it provides a tangible feature that aligns with descriptions of large-scale urban construction and fortification.
The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis: In the Debate Over UAP Origins, Scientists Wrestle With Possibilities… and Biases
Few would dispute the fact that UFOs have undergone a renascence in public interest in recent years. According to recent data, it also appears that more Americans now seem willing to entertain the possibility that these aerial mysteries could represent a phenomenon unrecognized by science.
A recent Gallup survey found that while half of Americans remain skeptical about UFO sightings, that number has dropped ten points since 2019, when similar surveys found that 60% of Americans had reservations about the idea that UFOs could have anything other than earthly explanations.
One thing the new Gallup data seems to convey is the impact recent U.S. government involvement in the longstanding UFO question has had on public opinion. The presence of unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP as the military prefers to call them, were seemingly confirmed with the release of a nine-page preliminary assessment in June by the Navy’s UAP Task Force (UAPTF), which reported 144 cases involving objects of unknown origin observed by military pilots and others that currently remain unexplained.
Most of these incidents were collected following the institution of a formalized reporting mechanism by the Navy in 2019, the same year previous Gallup surveys found more than half of Americans remained skeptical about possible extraterrestrial origins of such objects. In late 2020, the U.S. Air Force followed suit, with the combined Navy and Air Force data constituting the majority of the reports discussed within the Task Force’s assessment delivered to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) at the end of June.
According to the report, additional information is also being provided by several other agencies, including the FAA, who in recent days confirmed in a statement provided to The Debrief its own role in documenting UAP incidents that can be corroborated with radar or other data on behalf of the UAPTF. Notably, the inclusion of data from the FAA would seemingly indicate that some incident reports from civilian pilots are also among the 144 incidents the UAPTF has currently examined.
In the days since the report’s delivery to the ODNI, several news outlets have tried to reign in on the subject’s current widespread appeal. Just days after the delivery of the UAPTF’s preliminary assessment, the New York Post Editorial Board called out most of the recent UFO “news” in advance of the report as clickbait, aimed at cashing in on widespread interest in the subject, rather than contributing anything meaningful to the ongoing discussion.
“Yes, UFOs and ‘little green men’ are fun and have inspired tons of entertaining fiction,” the Post editorial read. “But the US intelligence community was entirely right to dump all over the conspiracy theories and ‘They’re really out there’ nonsense in its report on sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP).” Although the Post Editorial Board noted that extraterrestrial sources were not specifically ruled out in the June report, “it also provides zero evidence supporting alien theories.”
More recently, The Guardian noted that people’s current UFO fascination is primarily “rooted in hope,” while elsewhere The Washington Post Magazine argued what it labels the current “UFO mania” simply has to end.
As the recent Gallup data helps show, it’s no wonder UFOs have been on the minds of so many Americans lately. Thanks in large part to the anticipation ahead of the UAPTF report’s delivery to the ODNI, during the first half of 2021 UFOs have seen more consistent, serious media attention than they have in decades. As a byproduct of this, the New York Post correctly notes that many outlets appear to have jumped on the UFO bandwagon in order to claim their share of traffic from all the attention the subject has received. It is a trend that has been slowly building since late 2017, following a New York Times article revealing the existence of the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), which analyzed aerial phenomena that might pose a challenge to national security.
However, there is something else the recent Gallup data reveals about people’s attitudes toward UFOs. Since 2019, Americans appear not only to have softened their skepticism toward the subject, but also appear more willing to accept the idea that the phenomenon might represent evidence of extraterrestrial technology. In the recent survey, 41% of adults in America now also associate their belief in UFOs with extraterrestrial spacecraft, representing an eight-point rise from 2019 when similar surveys found just 33% of Americans held such views.
And some scientists think this could represent a problem going forward.
“In the search for extraterrestrial life, scientists must be thoroughly open-minded. And this means a certain amount of encouragement for non-mainstream ideas and techniques,” wrote Peter Vickers, Associate Professor in Philosophy of Science at Durham University in an article for The Conversation.
However, even in a scientific community where open-mindedness toward non-mainstream ideas may occasionally be encouraged, many draw the line when it comes to UFOs.
“I have no doubt that there’s extraterrestrial intelligence,” SETI Institute senior astronomer Seth Shostak told CBS in May. “But it’s a different thing to say, ‘And not only are they out there, but they’ve come to visit!’”
For Shostak, a man who has devoted most of his professional career to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, the current evidence presented by UFO proponents simply “is not good.”
Although Shostak and many other scientists keep UFOs at arm’s length when it comes to the search for alien life, the extraterrestrial hypothesis (as it has come to be known mainly among UFO proponents) still represents a valid possibility in terms of what the origins of these objects might be.
The problem is that it also carries a lot of historical baggage.
In the years immediately following World War II, it would have been difficult for any reports of advanced, unrecognized aircraft in American skies not to have aroused concern. The appearance of what had first been dubbed “flying saucers” should be remembered in this context: although jokes and jabs about “men from Mars” and space aliens began to appear almost immediately in American newspapers, this had not been the interpretation that warranted attention from the U.S. Air Force. Instead, it was the concern that the Soviets might possess some new technology capable of surveillance, or even future attacks against the United States.
It didn’t take long to conclude that the objects being observed in U.S. airspace probably didn’t belong to the Soviets. By January 1950, word about a top-secret Air Force “Estimate of the Situation” had become public knowledge thanks to Major Donald E. Keyhoe, a former Marine Corps serviceman and contributor to popular magazines of the period. It was Keyhoe’s 1950 article, “Flying Saucers Are Real,” which not only argued that the objects existed, but that they originated from outer space. Citing examples that included the death of pilot Thomas Mantell, whose plane crashed while pursuing what he and others described as a large metallic disc, and the electrifying story of a large, glowing rocket-like craft seen over Alabama in July 1948 by pilots Clarence S. Chiles and John B. Whitted, Keyhoe drove home the idea that there was simply no better source for these aerial mysteries than outer space.
Major Donald E. Keyhoe, filmed at a Pentagon Press Briefing in Washington DC on July 31, 1952
(National Archives/Public Domain).
By some estimates, his True article from 1950 is still regarded as being one of the most widely read and discussed articles of all time, and in effect, Keyhoe successfully sold this “extraterrestrial hypothesis” to an interested American readership. With Keyhoe’s help, the saucers had finally landed on dimly lit runways within the public imagination, and their alien occupants had now been exposed.
The problem with all this is that there was never anything conclusive as far as evidence in support of this idea. That was true in 1950, and it remains the case more than 70 years after the publication of Keyhoe’s article.
Despite this, many modern proponents seem to conclude that there are no other realistic possibilities, and therefore just like Keyhoe argued, UFOs must be extraterrestrial.
“The United States has the highest military technology in the world. Period. Everyone in the Pentagon down to the floor polishers knows this,” read a quote from Stephen Bassett, executive director of the Paradigm Research Group (PRG) which appeared in one of its newsletters dated June 6, 2021. According to its website, the PRG is an advocacy group that has for years sought to expose government knowledge of “an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race.”
According to Bassett, “there is only one option left to explain not 120 incidents over the past two decades, but thousands of incidents since 1947, and that explanation is extraterrestrial. PERIOD.” Bassett’s statement was in response to a New York Times article published in advance of the delivery of the UAP Task Force’s preliminary assessment to the ODNI in June.
Not all proponents of the study of unusual aerial phenomena are quite so married to the idea that they must have an extraterrestrial source. Dr. David Clarke is a professor of journalism and folklore who acted as a consultant and spokesman for Britain’s National Archives during the period when the Ministry of Defence (MoD) released its records on UFOs. Clarke says that while he would hesitate to link UFO sightings to extraterrestrials, he has found cases in the MoD’s files that left him stumped.
“There are lots and lots of accounts and experiences that I just find utterly baffling, but they aren’t really the ones that are well known,” Clarke says. “If I explained some of these stories, you would never have heard of them before, because no one knows about them. They’re not as media-friendly.”
Clarke published a feature earlier this year in Fortean Times which argued convincingly that many UAP encounters receiving widespread media attention may not be as rock-solid as they are often conveyed. “The idea that military detection of UFOs on radar provides empirical evidence of visitations to Earth by an unknown technology is an attractive one – if it were true,” Clarke wrote in the article.
However, speaking with Dr. Clarke about his research, he stops short of saying that all UFO reports can be easily explained.
“I’m not for one minute trying to suggest that science has got an explanation for everything,” Clarke says, adding that when it comes to UFOs, “I certainly don’t think that at all.”
Clarke says that in addition to reports he has uncovered from his own research at the Ministry of Defence archives, he was particularly intrigued by the conclusions of Project Condign, a secret study of UFOs that the British Government’s Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) conducted between 1997 and 2000. It resulted in a four-volume, 460-page report on the project’s findings, in which its author concluded, “that UAP exist is indisputable… [they] clearly can exhibit aerodynamic characteristics well beyond those of any known aircraft or missile – either manned or unmanned.”
“When I actually read that, and I actually got hold of that report twenty years ago, it was quite a stunning conclusion,” Clarke says. “So here was the guy, the UFO expert at the Ministry of Defence, he was actually saying ‘well, I’ve studied this for thirty years. My conclusion is these things exist.’”
While Project Condign’s conclusions seemed to affirm the MoD’s views about the existence of UFOs, they did not link such aerial phenomena to theories about an extraterrestrial presence on Earth.
“They’re not aliens,” Clarke says of the report’s findings. “They’re not extraterrestrials, but they’re some kind of atmospheric plasma. That was his explanation.”
To Clarke, the fact that Project Condign would leave open the possibility that an as yet unrecognized phenomenon could account for UFOs “was almost like an invitation to scientists to say ‘hey, come and have a look at this data. This guy’s taking it seriously.’” Clarke adds that the report’s author “had access to a lot of secret data that a lot of average atmospheric scientists perhaps wouldn’t be aware of.”
“But no one seems to be interested in that,” he laments. “It’s not showbiz, is it?”
“Atmospheric plasmas aren’t as interesting or as sexy as aliens in spaceships,” Clarke says. “So the media aren’t gonna go with that one.”
The legacy of the extraterrestrial hypothesis is one that has endured long enough for it to have become ingrained in our culture, and thereby it permeates much of our current thinking about UFOs. The presence of this “ET bias” in the current dialogue creates difficulties for scientists who wish to look objectively at the UFO subject, while also taking the possibility of extraterrestrial visitation seriously without becoming married to it.
Robert Powell, an Executive Board Member and co-founder of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (SCU), a group which applies science toward resolving the UFO/UAP question, is clear in pointing out that while the extraterrestrial hypothesis could one day be validated, presently it is still only one possibility.
“A hypothesis is simply that. It’s what theory best fits the facts with what we know today,” Powell says. “It doesn’t mean that we’ve said [a UFO] is an extraterrestrial spaceship.”
Before his work with the SCU, Powell served as Director of Research at the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) from 2007-2017 and established the organization’s Science Review Board in 2012. Although he emphasizes that theories about extraterrestrial technologies are only hypothetical, he also says they are a logical approach toward possibly understanding the phenomenon.
“What we’re saying is that the extraterrestrial hypothesis is the best of the hypotheses that we’ve come up with to explain [UAP],” Powell explains, adding that “someone could always come up with better hypotheses, or we get new data that makes us change [our minds].”
While some scientists like Powell see the extraterrestrial hypothesis as being potentially useful as an explanatory model for understanding UAP, others see the problem of categorizing UAP based on our current knowledge of the phenomenon as being nearly impossible at the present time.
“I truly do not know as to how and what to categorize [UAP],” says Ravi Kopparapu, a Planetary Scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Among his research interests, Kopparapu has been involved in NASA-funded searches for possible technosignatures of alien civilizations in recent years.
“Confirmed UAP completely defy any reasonable imagination that we could have,” Kopparapu told The Debrief in an email. “I would not categorize them, at this point, as technosignatures because there is no evidence that I know of that could indicate that they are from a technological civilization.”
Kopparapu, while interested in the study of UAP, takes issue with those who conclude that since they cannot be easily explained, they must therefore represent extraterrestrial technologies.
“‘What else could they be?’ is not a scientific explanation,” Kopparapu says. “We need hard evidence. And to collect hard evidence, we need a systematic collection of data on UAP, or access to data that may have already been collected.”
Kopparapu is one of the many scientists who, in recent days, have noted that current efforts to collect information about UAP by the U.S. government will be of little use to scientists if the data remains classified.
“The sky is not classified,” wrote Harvard Astronomer Avi Loeb in an article for Scientific American in June, adding that “only government-owned sensors are. By searching for unusual phenomena in the same geographical locations from where the UAP reports came, scientists could clear up the mystery in a transparent analysis of open data.”
“When the UAP report [was delivered] to Congress, it was quite intriguing to me,” Loeb recently told The Debrief, “because it defined some objects as real because they were detected by multiple instruments, so they couldn’t have been a malfunction of a particular camera or a hallucination of a pilot. And at the same time, it suggested that the government doesn’t know the nature of these objects.”
“That’s an unusual admission by the intelligence agencies,” Loeb says, “because they’re getting paid to figure out what flies in our sky. And they admit to Congress that they can’t figure it out.”
“So at that point, it became clear to me that this subject needs to move away from the talking points of politicians and military personnel, and to the realm of science.”
Dr. Avi Loeb
(Image Credit: Kris Snibble. Source: Harvard file photo)
In the days following the arrival of the UAP Task Force’s preliminary report, Loeb announced the launch of The Galileo Project, an effort that he and other astronomers will be undertaking that will attempt to obtain high-resolution imagery and other data related to UAP.
“I cannot stress enough how important it is to have the data available to scientists to know what they are,” Kopparapu told The Debrief. “Without access to proper data, un-substantiated hypotheses and conspiracy theories take the vacuum created by the lack of a science-based hypothesis. I equate this with superstitions we have had over the centuries until science replaced them.”
Although exploring the possibility that some UAP could have extraterrestrial origins is not inherently a conspiracy theory, over the decades there have been countless claims that involve alleged coverups of an extraterrestrial reality by the U.S. government. This, in addition to stories of alien abduction, purported wreckage retrievals of alien craft or technology, and a host of other claims involving extraterrestrial visitation to Earth.
Despite the widespread support they often see from many proponents of unidentified aerial phenomena, the majority of these claims remain unsubstantiated. Even if they were actually true, no conclusive evidence in support of the existence of extraterrestrials or their technologies has ever surfaced that would be capable of satisfying the requirements of science, let alone producing a testable hypothesis.
Despite his concerns about unsubstantiated theories—extraterrestrial or otherwise—which have often lead the UFO/UAP narrative in the past, Kopparapu does not doubt the presence of a genuine phenomenon behind the more credible reports.
“UAP are real and they exist,” Kopparapu says. “Many of them we see in our skies. Some may have perfectly sensible explanations, but not all of them can be explained away. That kind of thinking is not scientific.”
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10 Artemis II photos that define humanity's return to the moon
Four photos snapped by the Artemis II astronauts. Clockwise from left: Earth setting behind the moon; the astronauts wearing solar eclipse glasses; Christina Koch viewing Earth from the Orion capsule; and a rare total solar eclipse viewed from behind the moon.
(Image credit: NASA)
Since its historic April 1 launch from Kennedy Space Center, NASA's Artemis II mission around the moon has delivered a stream of extraordinary moments, from Earth fading into the distance to a rare solar eclipse seen from deep space.
After the crew returned safely to Earth on Friday (April 10), we've collected the most remarkable images from humanity's first journey to the moon since 1972.
The April 1 launch from Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39B signaled the beginning of humanity's first crewed lunar mission since Apollo 17. Powered by NASA's most powerful rocket, the Space Launch System, on only its second flight, Artemis II sent four astronauts on a 10-day, 695,000-mile (1.1 million kilometers) journey. The team's Orion crew capsule, nicknamed Integrity, sits at the top.
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2. Spaceship Earth
NASA astronaut Christina Koch gazes back at Earth from Orion en route to the moon. (Image credit: NASA)In a mission of firsts, NASA astronaut Christina Koch became the first woman to leave Earth's orbit and travel around the moon. Here she is on April 2, peering out one of the Orion spacecraft's main cabin windows at the delicate blue sphere of Earth. As Artemis II traveled toward the moon, Earth's continents and clouds blurred into a single living world.
This image of Earth with the sun behind it was taken just after Orion's translunar injection burn on April 2, in which Orion sped out of Earth orbit and toward the moon. Earth became a glowing crescent suspended in darkness, with its night side sitting in shadow, almost entirely hidden from view.
Also captured just after Orion's boost toward the moon on April 2, this image contrasts sharply with later views. Here, a longer exposure reveals Earth's unlit side, but several other features make it unique. In addition to being the first image ever to feature auroras at both poles, it includes a crescent Earth, Venus (bottom right) and a smudge of zodiacal light (sunlight reflecting from dust in the solar system's asteroid belt).
As Orion sped away from Earth on April 3, commander Reid Wiseman took this image of the terminator line, a sharp divide separating night from day on Earth — an everyday phenomenon transformed into a striking view from deep space.
Seen on April 6 just before lunar flyby observations began, a vast circular scar — the 600-mile-wide (1,000 km) Orientale basin — marks one of the moon's most dramatic impact features. This lava-filled relic of ancient volcanic activity was formed by a colossal impact billions of years ago.
On April 6, the crew took this image of the terminator on the moon. It's where low sunlight skims the lunar surface, casting dramatic shadows that exaggerate craters, ridges and mountains — the perfect time to study the moon's rugged terrain. According to pilot Victor Glover, who monitored the terminator line through Orion's window, the craters in front of him were so dark, they looked like "you'd fall straight to the center of the moon if you stepped in some of those."
Apollo astronauts saw total solar eclipses on their way to the moon, but the Artemis II crew was the first to witness one from the moon's far side. On April 6, totality lasted an extraordinary 54 minutes from Orion, during which the crew saw the sun's corona,stars and distant planets become visible nearby. It's a vantage point impossible on Earth.
Even at the moon, safe solar viewing remains essential. Before and after totality, the four astronauts — Wiseman, Glover, Koch and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen — donned the same eclipse glasses distributed for the recent solar eclipses in North America.
A New Study Narrows the Search for Water on the Moon
The locations of ice, in blue, at the moon's South Pole, left, and North Pole, right, as detected by the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft.
Credit: NASA
When India's Chandrayaan-1 orbiter released the Moon Impact Probe (MIP) into the Shackleton crater on the Moon, they confirmed something scientists had speculated about for decades. The Moon, an airless and vacuum-desiccated body, has abundant sources of water ice around its poles! Located in the many craters that litter the region, these permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) prevent this water from being exposed to sunlight, which would cause it to sublimate and be lost into space.
The question of how and when the Moon acquired its water has been the subject of much debate. Until recently, scientists were generally of the opinion that it was deposited by asteroids and comets during the Late Heavy Bombardment period (ca. 4.1 to 3.8 billion years ago). However, contemporary findings suggest that this water may have been deposited slowly over time. This includes a recent paper by scientists from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) and the Planetary Science Institute (PSI), which found that the Moon's water accumulated over billions of years.
The study was led by Oded Aharonson, a Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the Weizmann Institute of Science, as well as a LASP and PSI researcher. He was joined by Paul O. Hayne & Norbert Schörghofer, a planetary scientist at LASP and an astrophysics Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, and a Senior Scientist at the PSI, respectively. Their findings were recently published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
*Craters near the moon's South Pole as seen by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. New research suggests that Haworth Crater might be an especially good spot to look for ice.
Credit: NASA*
The presence of ice water on the Moon is not only a goldmine for planetary scientists but also vital to the creation of lunar bases in the South Pole-Aitken Basin. In recent years, NASA, the ESA, China, and Russia have all announced plans to build habitats near PSRs to ensure access to these deposits. In addition to providing a source of drinking water and irrigation for crops, water can be chemically dissociated to produce liquid hydrogen (LH2) and oxygen (LOX) propellant.
Evidence for water on the Moon dates back to the Apollo missions, which brought home rock samples containing trace amounts of water. At the time, this was written off as contamination, but subsequent studies have verified these initial findings. However, this water results from solar wind particles (including protons) interacting with elemental oxygen in lunar regolith. In more recent years, multiple missions - including NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) - have uncovered evidence of abundant water ice existing in the "cold sinks" of PSRs around the poles.
Addressing the question of how it got there, Aharonson, Hayne, and Schörghofer used lunar surface temperature data from the LRO's Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment (DLRE) and a series of computer simulations to estimate the evolution of craters on the lunar surface. “Finding water beyond Earth in liquid and usable form is one of the most important challenges in astronomy,” said Aharonson in CU Boulder Today news release.
These simulations produced a list of the moon’s cold traps that have been darkest the longest, and revealed something very interesting. According to LAMP's readings, the moon’s oldest and darkest craters are also where the greatest signs of ice are found. The Hawthorn Crater, which sits near the lunar South Pole, has likely been in shadow for more than 3 billion years, making it a top candidate for future exploration. Said Haynes:
It looks like the moon’s oldest craters also have the most ice. That implies the moon has been accumulating water more or less continuously for as much as 3 or 3.5 billion years. What’s clear is that the ice has a patchy distribution. It’s not concentrated in the same quantities in every crater. And there was no great explanation for that.
7
*Artist's impression of Artemis astronauts performing extra-vehicular activity (EVA) on the lunar surface.
Credit: NASA*
As for where the water came from, their study identified several possible sources, including volcanism in the distant past that could have transported water from the lunar interior to the surface. Other sources likely included comets and asteroids, as well as solar wind. While the team’s findings can’t pinpoint the exact source of this water, they were able to rule out the possibility that it arrived in a single large delivery in the distant past.
Regardless, their findings indicate that the deposits of water ice observed in the Moon's polar regions built up in PSRs over billions of years. They also note that the Moon's orientation (its tilt relative to Earth) has changed over time, meaning that craters currently in shadow may not have always been that way. “Ultimately, the question of the source of the moon’s water will only be solved by sample analysis,” said Hayne. “We will need to go to the moon to analyze those samples there or find ways to bring them from the moon back to Earth.”
This could consist of a robotic sample-return mission exploring Hawthorne or other PSRs, or a crewed mission. The latter will likely be one of the main objectives of the Artemis astronauts, or the taikonauts that China hopes to land on the Moon beginning in 2030. In the meantime, researchers need to collect more detailed observations, and Hayne's group at CU Boulder is developing a new instrument for that purpose. It's called the Lunar Compact Infrared Imaging System (L-CIRiS), which NASA plans to deploy near the moon’s South Pole in late 2027
Further Reading:
The Craters that Made Us
Craters like 'Meteor Crater' in Arizona may well have been the spark that created life on Earth
(Credit : National Map Seamless Server)
How does something come from nothing? It is perhaps the most profound question in all of science and one we still cannot fully answer. How did a barren, lifeless planet transform itself, over billions of years, into a world teeming with life? Where did it actually begin?
For decades, deep sea hydrothermal vents have been a popular answer. First discovered in the late 1970s with Rutgers oceanographer Richard Lutz among the scientists descending more than a mile beneath the surface in the submersible Alvin to witness them firsthand. These remarkable systems sit on the ocean floor wand around them, superheated mineral rich water bursts through cracks in the Earth's crust. They host entire ecosystems that never see sunlight, running entirely on chemical energy. As a potential birthplace for life, they make a compelling case.
Deep sea hydrothermal vent at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean (Credit : P. Rona / OAR/National Undersea Research Program)
But new research is shining a light on a rival candidate that has been largely overlooked, the hydrothermal systems created by meteor impacts. The study, led by Shea Cinquemani argues that when large meteors smashed into early Earth, they didn't just leave holes in the ground. The colossal heat of impact melted surrounding rock, and as the crater cooled and filled with water, something extraordinary could have happened. A hot, mineral rich hydrothermal system formed, functionally similar to the deep sea vents already known to support life, but powered entirely by the energy of a meteoric collision.
"You have a lake surrounding a very, very warm centre and now you get a hydrothermal vent system, just like in the deep sea, but made by the heat from an impact.” - Shea Cinquemani from Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences.
To test the idea, Cinquemani examined three well documented crater sites spanning vastly different periods of history: the Chicxulub structure beneath Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, formed 65 million years ago; the Haughton structure in the Canadian Arctic, around 31 million years old; and Lonar Lake in India, a mere 50,000 years old and still holding water today. All three hosted long lasting hydrothermal systems and in some cases persisting for thousands to tens of thousands of years. That is a significant stretch of time for complex chemistry to get to work.
Imaging from NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission STS-99 reveals part of the diametre ring of the crater in the form of a shallow circular trough. Numerous cenotes (sinkholes) cluster around the trough marking the inner crater rim
(Credit : NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Crucially, early Earth was being bombarded far more heavily than today. Impact generated hydrothermal systems would have been widespread, dotting the planet and providing repeated opportunities for the chemistry of life to take hold. The research also touches on an elegant problem known as the water paradox which argues too much water can actually break down the delicate molecular structures life depends on. Impact crater systems, with their evolving wet and dry phases, may handle this better than deep sea vents.
Hydrothermal activity like this is thought to exist beneath the icy surfaces of Jupiter's Europa and Saturn's Enceladus, and may once have existed in impact craters on Mars. If these environments on Earth really were cradles of life, they become some of the most compelling targets in the search for life elsewhere in the Solar System and maybe even the Galaxy.
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The Moon Just Got a New Scar
The LROC team discovered a new crater that formed since LRO entered orbit, identifiable in the above image by its bright ejecta rays.
(Credit : NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University)
Look up at a full Moon on a clear night and you are staring at a face that has been punched, gouged, and battered for four billion years. Those dark patches are vast basins blasted open by impacts so colossal they reshaped a world. The lighter highlands are pocked and pitted, crater upon crater, each one a frozen record of a collision that happened long before humans walked the Earth. Unlike our own planet, the Moon has no weather to smooth things over, no rivers to fill the hollows and no wind to soften the edges. What hits it, stays.
Tycho is a fine example of a lunar crater seen here by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
(Credit : NASA)
These bombardments on the Moon are not just the stuff of history, it’s being bombarded right now and always has been. Space rocks of every size smash into its unprotected surface every single day, carving fresh craters into terrain that has no weather, no erosion, and nowhere to hide. We know this happens but we rarely get to catch it in the act.
In the late spring of 2024, something significant hit the Moon. A space rock travelling at extraordinary speed, punched a crater 225 metres across into the lunar surface. That's roughly the width of two football pitches placed end to end and thanks to NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, have been able to compare images taken before and after the impact to study the result in remarkable detail.
Before this discovery, the largest crater found to have formed during the entire LRO mission was just 70 metres across. This new crater is more than three times that diameter, it’s a rare event that, according to models of how often impacts of this scale occur, should happen only once every 139 years on any given patch of lunar ground. In other words, catching it so soon after formation is extraordinarily lucky.
Artist concept of NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
(Credit : NASA)
The crater itself is funnel shaped, 43 metres deep, with walls steep enough that you'd struggle to stand on them. Around its rim, enormous blocks of ejected rock with the largest measuring around 13 metres across. The direction of the impactor can even be inferred from the way that debris is distributed: the rock appears to have arrived from the south-southwest, punching through the surface and spraying material northward in a distinctive tongue shaped pattern.
Inside the crater, the team found areas of unusually dark material almost certainly glassy rock, flash melted by the colossal heat of impact and then instantly solidified. It is the fingerprint of a collision that released more energy in milliseconds than it’s possible to imagine.
What makes this discovery genuinely valuable is the high quality before and after imagery. For the first time, scientists have metre scale photographs of a crater of this size taken both before and after formation. That is an extraordinarily rare dataset and one that will allow researchers to test and refine the models we use to understand how craters form not just on the Moon, but across the entire Solar System.
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RELATED VIDEOS
Huge GREEN fireball streaks across the sky over Britain - as baffled viewers mistake it for a rogue firework
A huge green fireball streaked across the sky over Britain last night.
Doorbell cameras across the UK captured the object at around 00:30 BST.
'00:26 anyone see that big meteor burn up just now?' North Yorkshire Weather Updates asked on Facebook.
Hundreds of viewers have replied, with many revealing they mistook it for a rogue firework.
'I saw that. It was bright green. It was massive. I thought it was a firework at first it seemed so close,' one user replied.
Another said: 'Yes I saw it walking home in Derbyshire. Looked like a firework the colours it was giving off. Glad I read this...wasnt sure what Id seen.'
And one joked: 'Yep my bathroom lit up I thought I was hallucinating… lol.'
While the fireball may have been slightly alarming, there's a simple explanation – it's a meteor.
Incredible footage has revealed the moment a huge green fireball streaked across the sky over Britain last night
Keith Spirit captured a photo of the fireball as it zoomed through the skies over Northumberland last night
Videos filmed across the UK show the fireball zooming towards the Earth, before bursting into bright green.
Thankfully, it then disappeared, suggesting most of it burned up before reaching the ground.
'Saw that from the M62 and I'm still buzzing! Can't believe how bright it was!' one viewer wrote on Facebook.
Another said: 'Camera on edge of the moors in Winterburn just caught it.'
And one quipped: 'see we go round the moon and now we have space rocks been thrown at us,' in reference to NASA's Artemis II mission.
Fireballs that explode in the atmosphere are technically referred to as bolides.
'During the atmospheric entry phase, an impacting object is both slowed and heated by atmospheric friction,' NASA explained.
'In front of it, a bow shock develops where atmospheric gases are compressed and heated.
Videos filmed across the UK show the fireball zooming towards the Earth, before bursting into bright green. Thankfully, it then disappeared, suggesting most of it burned up before reaching the ground.
'Some of this energy is radiated to the object causing it to ablate, and in most cases, to break apart.
'Fragmentation increases the amount of atmosphere intercepted and so enhances ablation and atmospheric braking.
'The object catastrophically disrupts when the force from the unequal pressures on the front and back sides exceeds its tensile strength.'
Around the world, thousand of fireballs occur daily.
However, most are unnoticed because they happen over oceans, uninhabited regions, or during the day.
