Gordon Cooper, Ufo's en Overheidscover-up: Een Analyse van een Pionier in de Ufo-verschijnselen

Inleiding

De geschiedenis van de menselijke zoektocht naar buitenaards leven en mysterieuze luchtverschijnselen is doorspekt met verhalen, getuigenissen en controverses. Een figuur die een bijzonder prominente rol speelt in deze geschiedenis, is Leroy Gordon Cooper Jr., een van de eerste Amerikaanse astronauten en een man die niet alleen de ruimte verkende, maar ook de grenzen van publieke overtuigingen over UFO’s verlegde. Cooper’s overtuigingen dat sommige UFO’s buitenaardse voertuigen waren en dat de Amerikaanse overheid bewijzen verborgen hield, hebben een blijvende impact gehad op de publieke perceptie van het fenomeen. Dit essay onderzoekt Cooper’s leven, zijn overtuigingen, de bewijsvoering en de kritische tegenstand, en plaatst zijn verhaal binnen de bredere context van de UFO-discussie en overheidsgeheimen.

1. Het Leven en de Carrière van Gordon Cooper

Gordon Cooper werd geboren op 6 maart 1927 en overleed op 4 oktober 2004. Als een van de originele Mercury Seven astronauten wordt hij herinnerd als een van de meest ervaren en gerespecteerde ruimtevaarders van zijn generatie. Zijn carrière begon als piloot bij de Amerikaanse luchtmacht, waar hij zich onderscheidde als testpiloot en militair tacticus. In 1963 behaalde hij een historische prestatie door als laatste Amerikaanse astronaut solo in de ruimte te vliegen tijdens de Mercury-Atlas 9 missie, waarbij hij meer dan 34 uur in orbit doorbracht. Twee jaar later leidde hij de Gemini 5 missie, die een record vestigde voor de duur van een ruimtevlucht tot dat moment.

Deze indrukwekkende prestaties zorgden ervoor dat Cooper een reputatie opbouwde als een betrouwbare en competente ruimtevaarder. Zijn ervaring en status maakten zijn latere uitspraken over UFO’s en de overheid extra opvallend. Cooper’s publieke profiel was daarmee niet alleen dat van een ruimtevaarder, maar ook die van een kritisch denker en een man die zich niet liet afschrikken door de publieke opinie of de officiële standpunten van NASA en het Amerikaanse leger.

2. De Edwards Air Force Base en de UFO-ervaringen

Een van de meest bekende incidenten die Cooper aanhaalt, vond plaats rond 1957 op Edwards Air Force Base. Volgens Cooper was er een camerateam betrokken bij een project voor precisielandingen, dat een metallic, schotelvormig object vastlegde dat kort op een droogmeer landde. Het object zou met behulp van landingsondersteuning even hebben gestaan, alvorens stil en geruisloos op te stijgen en met hoge snelheid weg te vliegen. Cooper beweert dat hij de film die hiervan gemaakt was heeft ingezien en dat deze een bijzonder onbekend en authentiek object liet zien.

Het mysterieuze aspect van dit verhaal is dat de film nooit is vrijgegeven, nooit is teruggevonden en dat er geen officiële documenten of onafhankelijke bevestigingen bestaan die het incident ondersteunen. Desondanks hield Cooper vol dat de film echt was en dat het bewijs van een buitenaards voertuig was. Hij stelde dat de film naar militaire autoriteiten was gestuurd volgens de protocollen, maar dat hij nooit te weten kwam wat er verder mee gebeurde. Het ontbreken van fysiek bewijs en de afwezigheid van officiële documentatie zorgen voor twijfel en scepticisme onder onderzoekers.

Officieel NASA-portret – Cooper in zijn Mercury-ruimtepak, een van de bekendste afbeeldingen van de originele Mercury-astronauten.

3. Cooper’s overtuigingen over buitenaardse bezoekers

Vanaf de jaren 1970 tot aan zijn overlijden bleef Cooper zich uitspreken over UFO’s. Hij was ervan overtuigd dat niet alle waarnemingen door mensen konden worden verklaard door natuurlijke of menselijke oorzaken. Tijdens interviews stelde hij dat ervaren militaire piloten en radaroperatoren objecten hadden gezien die zich ver hielden van de mogelijkheden van conventionele vliegtuigen en meteorologische verschijnselen. Hij benadrukte dat veel van deze getuigen betrouwbare en getrainde waarnemers waren, die hun rapporten niet uit eigenbelang of voor sensatie hadden gedaan.

Volgens Cooper waren de prestaties van sommige UFO’s zo geavanceerd dat ze niet konden worden toegeschreven aan de technologie van de aarde in de jaren 1950 en 1960. Hij beschreef objecten die plotseling konden versnellen, scherpe bochten maakten, stil konden zweven zonder zichtbaar voortstuwingssysteem en geluidloos opereerden. Cooper stelde dat deze kenmerken duidden op buitenaardse technologie, mogelijk afkomstig van een geavanceerd buitenaards ras dat de aarde bezocht.

Hij betoogde dat de overheid zich bewust was van deze fenomenen en dat er bewijs was dat geheime documenten en buitenaardse artefacten werden verzameld, maar dat de publieke kennis werd onderdrukt. Cooper riep op tot een internationale samenwerking om deze fenomenen serieus te onderzoeken, en stelde dat de meeste UFO-rapporten niet konden worden verklaard door natuurlijke of menselijke oorzaken.

4. Overheidsbedekking en geheime documenten

Een kernpunt in Cooper’s betoog was dat de Amerikaanse overheid, en mogelijk andere overheden, bewijs van buitenaardse bezoekers had gevonden en dat dit werd verborgen voor het publiek. Hij beweerde dat militaire en inlichtingendiensten UFO-incidenten classificeerden en dat belangrijke bewijzen, zoals crash-landers en mogelijk buitenaardse lichamen, in geheime dossiers waren opgeborgen. Volgens Cooper was de reden hiervoor vooral nationale veiligheid: men wilde geen paniek zaaien of de militaire strategische belangen schaden.

Cruciaal is dat Cooper nooit concreet bewijs kon leveren dat de overheid daadwerkelijk buitenaardse voertuigen of lichamen had ontdekt. Zijn claims waren gebaseerd op persoonlijke observaties, anekdotes van collega’s en zijn interpretatie van de informatie die hij had. NASA en het Amerikaanse ministerie van Defensie hebben altijd volgehouden dat er geen bewijs is voor buitenaardse aanwezigheid en dat geen enkele officiële onderzoeksinstantie bevestigde dat de VS informatie achterhield.

De recente openheid van de Amerikaanse overheid over zogenaamde Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) heeft de discussie nieuw leven ingeblazen. Hoewel sommige rapporten onverklaard blijven, heeft de overheid benadrukt dat er geen bewijs is dat deze objecten buitenaards zijn. Cooper’s overtuiging dat er een grote geheime operatie gaande was, blijft daarmee een controversieel en onverifieerbaar standpunt.

Gordon Cooper – nette, formele kleding.

5. Kritische Beschouwing: Skeptici en de Beperkingen van Cooper’s Verhaal

Hoewel Cooper’s status en ervaring hem een zekere geloofwaardigheid geven, staat zijn verhaal niet los van kritische beschouwing. Een belangrijk punt van twijfel is dat het nooit officieel bewijs van de door hem genoemde incidenten is vrijgegeven. De film van de Edwards-landing, die volgens Cooper bewijs zou zijn, ontbreekt nog altijd in het publieke domein. Dit gebrek aan tastbaar bewijs voedt scepsis onder onderzoekers en wetenschappers.

Daarnaast is het belangrijk om te erkennen dat menselijke herinneringen over lange tijd kunnen vervormen. Het is niet ongebruikelijk dat getuigen, vooral bij complexe of ongebruikelijke gebeurtenissen, details aanpassen of verkeerd interpreteren. Cooper’s verhalen evolueerden over de jaren; wat begon als een eenvoudige observatie, werd later uitgebreid tot uitgebreide theorieën over overheidsbedrog en buitenaards bezoek.

Critici wijzen er ook op dat sommige waarnemingen en getuigenissen kunnen worden verklaard door natuurlijke fenomenen of menselijke technologie, zoals geheime militaire vliegtuigen of experimentele wapens. Daarnaast kunnen misinterpretaties van weersverschijnselen, sterren of atmosferische lichten leiden tot foute identificaties van UFO’s. Dit ondermijnt de stelling dat alle UFO’s buitenaardse oorsprong hebben.

6. De Technologie en de Mogelijkheid van Buitenaardse Bezoeken

Een van de kernargumenten van Cooper was dat bepaalde waargenomen kenmerken van UFO’s niet konden worden verklaard door de toenmalige menselijke technologie. Hij benadrukte dat objecten konden accelereren zonder zichtbaar voortstuwingssysteem, stil konden zweven, plotseling van richting konden veranderen en snelheden konden bereiken die voor menselijke vliegtuigen onmogelijk waren.

Deze beschrijvingen worden vaak aangehaald door voorstanders van het buitenaardse thema en worden ondersteund door diverse getuigenissen van piloten en radarwaarnemingen. Sommige onderzoekers stellen dat deze prestaties inderdaad de technologische capaciteiten van een geavanceerde buitenaardse beschaving suggereren. Anderen betwijfelen dat dergelijke waarnemingen niet kunnen worden verklaard door natuurlijke verschijnselen of geheime aardse technologie, zoals nieuwe geheime wapens of vliegtuigontwerpen.

De wetenschap staat voor de uitdaging om deze fenomenen te verklaren. Tot nu toe hebben geen technologische of fysische principes bevestigd dat zulke prestaties mogelijk zijn met onze huidige kennis. Hierdoor blijven deze waarnemingen een mysterie dat mogelijk wijst op buitenaardse technologie, maar ook kan worden toegeschreven aan nog onbekende natuurlijke of menselijke oorzaken.

Mercury-Atlas 9 (“Faith 7”) – Foto's genomen vóór zijn historische missie in mei 1963, waarin hij 22 keer rond de aarde draaide.

7. De Erfenis en de Betekenis van Cooper’s Verhaal

Gordon Cooper’s betrokkenheid bij de UFO-discussie geeft het onderwerp een bijzondere dimensie. Als een van de meest gerenommeerde astronauten en testpiloten, wekt zijn geloof in buitenaardse bezoekers en geheime overheidsdeksels de aandacht van zowel believers als skeptici. Zijn verhalen hebben bijgedragen aan de publieke interesse en hebben de discussie over de mogelijke aanwezigheid van buitenaards leven in de ruimte versterkt.

Toch is het belangrijk te onderkennen dat Cooper’s claims niet door onafhankelijke, fysische bewijzen worden ondersteund. Zijn verklaringen blijven gebaseerd op persoonlijke observaties, getuigenissen en interpretaties. De officiële standpunten van overheden en wetenschappelijke instanties blijven dat er geen bewijs is dat UFO’s buitenaardse oorsprong hebben of dat er een grootschalige dekmantel gaande is.

Zijn nalatenschap is daarom dubbelzinnig: hij heeft de discussie over buitenaards leven en overheidsgeheimen sterk beïnvloed, maar zijn claims blijven controversieel en niet volledig verifieerbaar. Zijn verhaal symboliseert de menselijke zoektocht naar antwoorden op de meest fundamentele vragen over ons bestaan en onze plaats in het universum.

Gemini 5-missie – Afbeeldingen van Cooper met astronaut Charles “Pete” Conrad Jr. voor en na hun achtdaagse Gemini 5-vlucht in 1965.

Conclusie

Gordon Cooper was niet alleen een pionier in de ruimtevaart, maar ook een belangrijke stem in de UFO-discussie. Zijn overtuigingen dat sommige UFO’s buitenaardse voertuigen waren en dat de Amerikaanse overheid informatie verborgen hield, hebben bijgedragen aan de publieke fascinatie en het debat over buitenaards leven. Hoewel zijn verhalen en observaties een intrigerend beeld schetsen en de verbeelding prikkelen, ontbreekt het aan concreet bewijs dat zijn beweringen bevestigt.

De discussie rondom Cooper’s claims illustreert de spanning tussen menselijke nieuwsgierigheid en wetenschappelijke scepticisme. Het roept vragen op over de aard van observaties, de betrouwbaarheid van getuigenissen en de rol van overheidsinformatie. Totdat er tastbaar bewijs wordt gevonden, blijven Cooper’s verhalen een belangrijk, maar debatachtig hoofdstuk in de geschiedenis van de UFO-verschijnselen.

Einde

Bronnen:

• Overheidsrapporten over UAP en UFO-waarnemingen.
• Interviews en publicaties van Gordon Cooper.
• Historische documenten over de Mercury- en Gemini-missies.
• Kritische analyses en wetenschappelijke evaluaties van UFO-verschijnselen.
  • Deze uitgebreide analyse van Gordon Cooper’s verhaal en zijn rol in de UFO-discussie biedt een genuanceerd overzicht dat ruimte laat voor zowel geloof als twijfel, en benadrukt de complexiteit van het fenomeen dat nog altijd de menselijke verbeelding prikkelt.

{ PETER2011 }

Cape Girardeau UFO Crash (1941)

The Cape Girardeau UFO crash of 1941 is an incident said to have occurred in southeast Missouri in late April 1941, several years before the more widely known Roswell crash and roughly one year prior to the Battle of Los Angeles. Most retellings place the event in the late evening, around 9:00–10:00 p.m., during a period of rising pre‑war tension in the United States.

According to family testimony and later UFO researchers, the crash site was located in a rural field west of Cape Girardeau Municipal Airport, between Cape Girardeau and Chaffee, Missouri, near the Mississippi River. Authorities initially described the scene as a downed aircraft. Some accounts add that debris from the crash ignited a small fire in the field, scattering metallic fragments across the area. Reverend William G. Huffman, a local Baptist minister and pastor of Red Star Baptist Church, was reportedly contacted by local authorities—possibly the sheriff’s office or emergency responders—and asked to provide last rites to presumed victims.

Upon arriving at the scene, Huffman allegedly realized the situation was not a conventional airplane crash. Instead of human victims, he encountered three small, non‑human beings lying on the ground outside a disc‑shaped craft. Beyond Huffman, later accounts suggest that local police officers, sheriff’s deputies, firefighters, and possibly medical personnel were present during the early stages of the response. Some sources also claim that photographers, including at least one civilian, arrived before the military assumed control. Military personnel reportedly arrived shortly afterward, possibly from nearby installations such as the Sikeston Army Air Base, and took command of the site. Witnesses were allegedly sworn to secrecy under national security warnings, with threats of serious consequences for speaking about what they had seen.

Huffman reportedly observed a round, saucer‑like craft, often described as silver or metallic in appearance and measuring roughly 15–20 feet in diameter. Some versions of the story describe the craft as broken in half or cracked open. Strange symbols resembling hieroglyphics were said to be etched along the craft’s exterior and interior walls. A few retellings also mention an unusual sulfur‑like odor near the wreckage. Inside, the craft allegedly contained a small metal chair along with simple gauges and controls. Later retellings expanded this description to include multiple chairs and a central pedestal topped with a gyroscope‑like mechanism, details that do not appear consistently in the earliest accounts. Charlette Mann later remarked that these interior features closely resemble descriptions found in other UFO reports that surfaced decades afterward.

The beings found near the craft were consistently described as small, gray‑skinned figures with disproportionately large heads and dark, oversized eyes. Primary descriptions place their height at roughly three to four feet, often described as child‑sized, though later retellings introduced wider estimates. They reportedly had no visible hair, minimal facial features, small nostrils, thin mouths, and either no external ears or only small indentations where ears would normally be. Accounts agree that there were three beings in total: two deceased and one still alive. The living being was described as barely responsive, with long arms, three fingers on each hand, and cool, moist skin likened to that of a fish. Some sources suggest it reacted defensively when approached, discouraging closer examination. Reverend Huffman reportedly performed prayers over the beings, an experience said to have deeply shaken him and altered his worldview and faith.

One of the most striking elements of the story is the alleged photograph taken at the scene. According to Mann, the image showed two men holding one of the beings upright by the armpits. The being appeared unclothed, with soft, grayish skin and large, dark, octopus‑like eyes. The photograph was reportedly taken using a personal Brownie camera, secretly brought to the scene by a civilian—possibly a firefighter or photographer—before the military arrived. Fearing repercussions, the photographer allegedly gave the image to Reverend Huffman for safekeeping.

Mann has stated that she saw the photograph repeatedly during her childhood. After Huffman suffered a stroke in the 1950s, the photo was kept by his son, Guy Huffman. At some point thereafter, the image disappeared, and its fate remains unknown. No verified copy has ever surfaced, though illustrated recreations based on Mann’s descriptions appear in books and documentaries.

Despite being warned to remain silent, Huffman reportedly shared the incident privately with his wife and children after returning home. The story remained largely confined to family discussions for decades. According to Mann, her grandmother, Floy Huffman, disclosed the full account to her on her deathbed in 1984, urging her not to let the story disappear. The incident entered wider UFO literature through correspondence with researcher Leonard Stringfield, culminating in his 1991 Status Report publication, and gained broader attention that same year as Mann began speaking publicly about her family’s experience. She later recounted the story in interviews and at events such as the 2019 UFO Congress.

Supporters of the story emphasize that the incident predates both Roswell and widespread public awareness of flying saucers. Some speculate that it represents an early, secretive recovery of non‑human technology, possibly connected to later U.S. government programs. Others draw parallels to alleged WWII‑era recoveries, such as the 1933 Magenta case in Italy.

Charlette Mann has acknowledged the skepticism surrounding the story but maintains that her role is simply to preserve what her family told her. She has stated that the incident profoundly shaped her life and that sharing it publicly has not been easy.

{ https://unidentifiedphenomena.com/ }

The story says he found something entirely unexpected. Instead of a conventional aircraft, witnesses later claimed there was a disc-shaped metallic craft lying on the ground. Which years later would be called a “flying saucer”.  Nearby the wrecked craft were three small humanoid dead bodies. According to later re-tellings, the corpses were said to be: About 4 feet (1.2 meters) tall. Hairless. Possessing unusually large heads. Having large eyes. Small mouths. Thin arms and legs. Wearing what appeared to be a seamless  and tight metallic suit. Some versions claim strange; unrecognizable  hieroglyphic-like symbols or writings were visible inside or on parts of the craft.

The Military Arrives

According to the legend, military personnel soon arrived and secured the crash site. Witnesses were allegedly instructed never to discuss what they had seen. One frequently repeated part of the story claims a military photographer secretly gave Reverend Huffman a photograph showing him standing beside one of the bodies. The photograph has never been produced publicly.

How the Story Became Public

One reason the case remains controversial is that no reports from 1941 describing the event have been found. Instead, the story first entered UFO literature decades later. In the early 1990s, UFO researcher Leonard Stringfield published an account after receiving information from Charlette Mann, Reverend Huffman’s granddaughter. She said her grandfather privately told the family about the extraordinary incident shortly before his death and had remained silent for many years because of alleged government pressure.

Leonard H. Stringfield is one of the best-known figures in UFO research, particularly for his investigations into alleged UFO crash-retrieval cases. Although he did not claim to have personally witnessed the alleged 1941 Cape Girardeau incident, he was the first researcher to publish it in detail, bringing the story to the attention of the UFO community. Stringfield (1920–1994) served in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II and became interested in flying saucers shortly after the war. During the 1950s he was associated with the civilian UFO research organization CRIFO (Civilian Research, Interplanetary Flying Objects). Later, he became famous for a long series of reports investigating claims that the U.S. military had recovered crashed UFOs and non-human bodies. Rather than insisting every story was true, he generally presented witness testimony and discussed its strengths and weaknesses.

According to Stringfield, the story reached him through another respected UFO researcher, Raymond E. Fowler. In the late 1980s or about 1990, Fowler received a letter from Charlette (or Charlotte) Mann, a woman whose grandfather had allegedly witnessed an extraordinary event in 1941. Fowler believed Stringfield would be especially interested because he was collecting reports of crashed UFOs, so he forwarded the letter to him. Stringfield then contacted Mann directly. He interviewed her by telephone and asked her to prepare a more detailed written account of what her grandfather had told the family over the years.

When Stringfield published the case

Stringfield first published the Cape Girardeau story in July 1991. It appeared in Status Report VII: UFO Crash/Retrievals – The Inner Sanctum, one installment of his well-known UFO Crash/Retrievals report series. This was not a mass-market magazine article but a special research publication distributed primarily among UFO investigators and interested readers. The publication included: Charlette Mann’s letter. Stringfield’s personal comments including that Mann’s story could be true, even though there was no real proof.  His assessment is that the report deserved preservation because it fit the pattern of other alleged crash-retrieval accounts he had collected.

Why Some People Believe It

Supporters point to several factors: The account predates the Roswell incident by six years. Reverend Huffman was reportedly considered an honest and respected minister. The family’s version of the story remained fairly consistent over time. Later researchers attempted to identify possible officials and locations that might match the narrative. No evidence about a fraud or a hoax regarding the story ever surfaced to the public, even after eighty five years, 2026, the year of this online article.

Reasons for Skepticism

Most historians and many UFO researchers remain unconvinced because: There are no official police, military, or newspaper reports from 1941 describing such a crash. No wreckage or artifacts have ever been recovered. The famous alleged photograph has never surfaced. The principal account is secondhand, based on what Reverend Huffman’s granddaughter said he privately told family members years later. The story only became widely known roughly fifty years after the alleged event.

Countering The Skeptics

The important thing to remember is that the federal government, at least, wanted the whole incident to be keep secret and ordered a big “hush up”. There would also be severe penalties for anyone who would speak about the matter which can include instant arrest and jailing. In some cases, UFO talkers, allegedly claimed, without any proof, many, many years later, to have been threatened with “disappearing and would never by found” by military authorities as punishment for not remaining silent. So naturally there is going to be no government reports publicly known about the UFO crash with dead aliens, nor wreckage or artifacts publicly recovered, no UFO photograph; no extraterrestrials photograph publicly surfacing, and a private family member story about a crashed flying disk and dead aliens taking about fifty years to be mentioned publicly when there finally seemed to be a safe time to do so.

Legacy

Despite the lack of conclusive evidence, the Cape Girardeau case has become one of the most discussed alleged UFO crash stories before Roswell. It has inspired books, documentaries, podcasts, and continuing debate within the UFO community. Some researchers refer to it as the “First Roswell,” while skeptics view it as a compelling local legend that cannot be verified. Whether the event represents a genuine, hidden historical incident or a story that grew over time remains unresolved. At present, there is no verified evidence that extraterrestrial beings or a crashed spacecraft were recovered near Cape Girardeau in 1941. But, there might be an official government file in highly protected storage on the strange occurrence that is highly classified and marked as “top secret”.

{ https://mysticsciences.com/ }

Scramjets Face Challenges in Bridging the Supersonic-to-Hypersonic Gap

In their study, project leader Professor Jiro Kasahara and colleagues explain that hypersonic engines capable of propelling aircraft above Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound, “have been actively researched for the development of high-speed transport systems.” Among the most noteworthy designs developed in this pursuit is the scramjet engine.

While tests have shown they can reach these speeds, scramjets fail to maintain ignition below Mach 5. As a result, Professor Kasahara and colleagues note that “other propulsion systems are needed to accelerate a vehicle to those speeds.”

Turbo-ramjet engines have offered some support. However, these airbreathing engines top out at speeds approaching Mach 3-4. The study authors note that this discrepancy has resulted in “a gap with scramjet engines.”

To bridge this gap, the research team decided that rather than increasing the upper speed limit of the turbo ramjet, they would instead explore lowering the “operating limit of scramjet engines to Mach 3–4.”

According to the team, the primary challenge in reducing scramjet speeds below Mach 5 is the corresponding reduction in the total temperature of the airflow entering the engine. Consequently, they explain, “ignition becomes more difficult.” In fact, they concede, “autoignition is not expected” at the sub-Mach 5 speeds they were targeting. This meant the team had to find a way to improve igniter performance.

RD Torch “A Promising Candidate” for Scramjet Ignition

When selecting an ignition enhancer, the team noted that previous efforts have explored solutions ranging from spark plugs, glow plugs, and pulse detonators to lasers, plasma torch igniters, and even burned-gas (deflagration) torches. However, the authors observed that most previous studies focused on “higher Mach numbers than those targeted here.” As a result, they add, ignition performance in a scramjet engine under low-flight-Mach, low-temperature conditions “remains unclear.”

The team evaluated a cylindrical rotating detonation combustor (RDC). Unlike other electrically based solutions such as spark plugs or glow plugs, the team described the RDC as “a combustor in which detonation waves continuously propagate along the inner wall surface to burn the fuel–oxidizer mixture.”

The researchers explained that detonation waves are supersonic combustion waves initiated by shock waves inside the scramjet’s combustion chamber. Although the system has been studied as a rocket engine, to achieve their results, the team used what they called a rotating detonation torch (RD torch), comparing the design to conventional deflagration torches, which initiate ignition by “uniformly burning the fuel and oxidizer throughout the combustion chamber” and then continuously injecting the burned gas into the scramjet combustor.

“The RD torch, like conventional deflagration torches, burns fuel and oxidizer in the combustor and continuously discharges combustion gases into the cavity and is therefore also classified as an active ignition device,” the team explained, adding that “we consider the RD torch to be a promising candidate for use as an igniter in scramjet engines.”

“Ignition and Flameholding of the Main H2 Were Successfully Achieved”

Before conducting the tests, the Nagoya University team set out three primary objectives. First, they wanted to design a custom RD torch “capable of operating at a mass flow rate comparable to that of conventional deflagration torches” and use that design to “investigate the combustion conditions in the RD torch under supersonic flow.” Second, they planned to examine the detonation wave’s propagation characteristics within the RD torch, and third, they hoped to achieve ignition and flameholding under conditions equivalent to flight Mach numbers from 3 to 4.

After completing their testbed RD torch and thus the study’s first objective, the researchers conducted a series of combustion experiments. Critically, they performed these experiments in the scramjet model combustor and a vacuum chamber model.

According to their published results, the team’s RD torch, designed to bridge the supersonic to hypersonic gap, “successfully achieved continuous injection of burned gas into the cavity, with combustion nearly completed even during main H2 combustion.”

“Based on the observed increases in flame height and width in the flame chemiluminescence images, ignition and flameholding of the main H2 were successfully achieved under simulated flight Mach 3–4 conditions, with the RD torch operating in detonation mode,” they write. “Notably, the mainstream flow in the scramjet model combustor remained supersonic.”

The team presents these results as “demonstrating robust torch operation,” adding that “the RD torch functioned as intended.”

When discussing the success of the RD torch in their approach, the Nagoya University team said their results “confirm successful supersonic combustion and demonstrate the RD torch’s ability to reliably ignite and sustain main H2 combustion under low-Mach scramjet conditions, highlighting its potential for practical application in future airbreathing hypersonic engines.”

The study “Experimental Study of a Cylindrical Rotating Detonation Combustor for Scramjet Ignition” was published in the Journal of Propulsion and Power.

• Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and has spent the last six years as Associate News Editor and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him at christopher@thedebrief.org

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Researchers Document Ancient Egyptian Tomb in Detail

The Theban Necropolis contains over 400 tombs. Previous studies have determined that the burial space was used and reused from its construction during Egypt’s Twenty-fifth Dynasty (754-656 BCE) until its abandonment during the Ptolemaic period (305-30 BCE).

However, archaeologists are still searching for new clues to the people who built them and those buried inside. Dr Miguel Ángel Molinero Polo, a professor of Egyptology at the University of La Laguna and the senior author of the study detailing the team’s discoveries, said researchers have “few details” about how people who entered the tombs behaved. Dr. Polo also noted a lack of knowledge about these people’s motivation “in each historical period” the site was in use, and how they “conceptually reconfigured the pre-existing space” as time passed.

The research team ultimately determined that the best way to explain the methodology for placing the human remains and individual dog remains found in the ancient Egyptian tomb was to excavate the chamber and photograph the mummies. They also decided to create sketches and descriptions of the mummy’s position, orientation, and any possible relationship with the overall structure. 

Archaeologists Unearth 16 Mummified Bodies and Related Funerary Items

As the team began cataloging their findings, they realized the chamber contained nine funerary deposits, which they described as “individual and multiple burials.” The site also contained several “associated funerary objects.”

“We found a total of 16 mummified human individuals, a mummified dog, and a disturbed deposit containing the remains of at least four individuals,” explained Dr. Jared Carballo-Pérez, a researcher at the University of La Laguna and the study’s first author.

After further examination, a pattern began to emerge. For example, the earliest burials were relatively separated. These earliest bodies were also placed in coffins, with funerary nets and amulets. These burials also contained what Dr. Molinero Polo termed “an assemblage containing costly items, such as the contents held in Phoenician amphorae,” placed with or near them. The research said these discoveries suggest that these individuals were likely “of high social standing.”

When the researchers examined the second layer, they noted that bodies were less carefully placed and instead “inserted into any space available.” Critically, this shift occurred towards the end of the 25th dynasty and into the Persian period (around 680-404 BCE).

Examples of the new interment method include limb positioning. In one case, an arm was found folded in, and in others, two arms were folded.

This positioning differed from earlier burials, where the arms were stretched out. The team also cataloged a change in body position in the ancient Egyptian tomb, with later mummies deposited vertically. The team said the resulting “superposition of bodies” was found in two-thirds of the burial chamber.

Still, Dr. Molinero Polo explained, although the vertically positioned bodies were not placed in coffins, the remains were “carefully mummified.” The researcher said the later internments “can be associated with upright jars that point to a specific ritual not found in the earlier phases of the tomb’s use.”

Mummified Dog Buried with Humans Suggests Intimate Relationship

Perhaps the most unexpected find inside the ancient Egyptian tomb was the remains of a mummified dog. Even more unexpected, the animal’s remains were buried with human remains “one on top of another.”

“One detail I find quite beautiful is the presence of a mummified dog placed directly on top of the mummies of a man and a woman,” said Carballo-Pérez.

The researcher said this preferred, intimate placement could suggest a close relationship between the animal and its humans, “an idea that I think is quite easy to empathize with.” Carballo-Pérez said the unexpected placement could also reflect a change in funerary or ritualistic practices, “with an animal taking on the role of a psychopomp, a symbolic helper in the journey to the afterlife.”

Although an initial examination gave the team the impression the site’s internment became less organized over the centuries, they said that impression was likely false. For example, the team notes that bodies buried in the Osirian position, meaning both arms folded, suggest that the ancient Egyptian tomb “did not become disordered or without structure, or that cultural rites were lost.”

“The detailed study of the bodies indicates neither chaotic accumulation nor a loss of the original ritual over time,” Dr. Carballo-Pérez explained. “Rather, there was a spatial logic in which each new deposition was adapted to the presence of previous bodies – a kind of funerary memory in the processes of reuse.”

The team conceded that it was sometimes difficult to identify the sequence of some of the funerary deposits, including what they described as the “disturbed” remains of four individuals. They also suggest that the chamber was likely flooded several times over the centuries, experienced periodic fires, and human re-entry, which “transported debris within the tomb.”

Still, Carballo-Pérez concluded that their findings suggest deposits previously considered ‘disordered’ can now be reinterpreted.

“This helps us develop a better understanding of the social behaviors behind funerary practices,” the researcher explained.

The study “From individualized mummies to collective accumulations: an archaeothanatological analysis of funerary reuse in Theban Tomb 209 (Twenty-Fifth Dynasty–Ptolemaic Egypt)” was published in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology.

• Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and has spent the last six years as Associate News Editor and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him at christopher@thedebrief.org

{ https://thedebrief.org/category/science/ }

What seven decades of hunting for aliens tells us

by Mark Thompson, Universe Today

Since the 1950s, humanity has been searching for extraterrestrial life with increasingly sophisticated tools. But after decades of space probes, meteorite analysis, radio telescopes, and UFO investigations, what have we actually found? A new piece of analysis by a team led by Seyed Sina Seyedpour Layalestani from the Islamic Azad University in Iran has looked at the most compelling evidence to date; from ancient space rocks that fell to Earth carrying the building blocks of life itself. The paper is published in the International Journal of Astrobiology.

The Murchison meteorite, which crashed into Australia in 1969, is older than our solar system at 7 billion years. Recent analysis revealed something extraordinary, that all five nucleobases that form DNA and RNA (adenine, guanine, thymine, cytosine, and uracil) were present in this ancient stone. These molecules, confirmed as extraterrestrial in origin, fundamentally challenge the assumption that life's ingredients formed exclusively on Earth.

The Orgueil meteorite that exploded over France in 1864 tells a similar story. This carbonaceous rock contains not just amino acids like glycine and alanine, but structures resembling microfossils, tiny forms that look similar to magnetotactic bacteria found in Earth's oceans. While scientists initially dismissed these as contamination or mineral formations, recent studies have confirmed their extraterrestrial origin.

Space probes have expanded the search beyond meteorites. Rovers on Mars discovered liquid water streams and frozen ice. The Cassini spacecraft found massive glaciers on Saturn's moon Enceladus. The Phoenix lander confirmed water ice just three centimeters below the Martian surface. These discoveries reveal that the basic requirements for life; water, organic compounds, and energy sources, seem to exist throughout our solar system.

Radio telescopes have detected more than 100 organic molecules in interstellar dust clouds, including amino acids and nucleic acid components. These findings strengthen the panspermia hypothesis, the idea that life's building blocks are distributed throughout space, potentially seeding planets across the galaxy

But what about intelligent alien civilizations? Despite decades of UFO reports and SETI programs broadcasting messages into space, no confirmed evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence exists. Most UFO sightings have conventional explanations, from ball lightning in the atmosphere to plasma phenomena in the thermosphere. The supposed alien bodies presented to Mexico's Congress in 2023 were quickly dismissed as artificial constructs.

The challenge isn't lack of evidence for life's ingredients, instead it's proving that these ingredients actually formed living organisms elsewhere. The presence of DNA building blocks in billion-year-old meteorites doesn't confirm that alien bacteria existed, only that the chemistry for life occurs naturally in space.

Enter artificial intelligence. New AI algorithms can analyze meteorite chemistry to distinguish biological from non-biological origins of organic compounds. Machine learning helps filter noise from radio signals and identify atmospheric biosignatures on distant exoplanets. Where human analysis might overlook subtle patterns in vast datasets, AI excels.

We've found the pieces. The building blocks of life exist throughout space. Whether those pieces assembled into living organisms, microbial or intelligent, remains the universe's most tantalizing unanswered question.

{ https://phys.org/space-news/ }

Lost 'mega-escarpment' across ancient USA may explain Grand Canyon's missing billion years

by University of Southampton

edited by Sadie Harley, reviewed by Robert Egan

Scientists have found evidence that a colossal cliff stretching thousands of kilometers across ancient North America may have exposed the heart of the Grand Canyon nearly a billion years before it was carved by the Colorado River.

The study, led by the University of Southampton in the UK, proposes that a vast "great escarpment" of steep rocky cliffs formed when the supercontinent Rodinia broke apart 800 million years ago.

Experts suggest the 1-kilometer-high (0.6-mile-high) cliffs extended along much of western North America, driving erosion of enormous volumes of rock and exposing an ancient crystalline basement now visible in the Grand Canyon in southern Arizona.

Lead author Thomas Gernon, a professor of Earth science at Southampton, said the Grand Canyon has a geological record spanning 2 billion years, but more than half of its rock record appears to be missing.

He added, "Our paper suggests the Canyon's basement rocks were progressively brought to the surface as part of an immense escarpment that developed during the breakup of an ancient supercontinent.

"The findings also shed light on the formation of the Great Unconformity, a mysterious gap in the rock record that spans over a billion years."

A cliff line across a continent

The study, published in Geology, included experts from the University of Southampton, GFZ Helmholtz Center for Geosciences and the University of Potsdam, both in Germany, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the U.S.

According to their findings, the ancient great escarpment would have stretched across what are now Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri and Illinois.

This is where intense erosion ultimately exposed some of North America's oldest rocks, most famously those at the Grand Canyon, Gernon said.

The researchers combined plate tectonic reconstructions with landscape evolution data to recreate how western North America evolved as Rodinia fragmented.

The reconstruction showed the Grand Canyon occupied the same position relative to the ancient continental margin as many of today's great escarpments in South Africa and Brazil.

As the escarpment slowly retreated inland over tens of millions of years, it is predicted to have stripped away up to 8 kilometers (5 miles) of rock in places.

The findings are consistent with evidence that the region experienced extraordinary erosion of some 5–10 kilometers (3–6 miles) of rock long before the modern canyon formed.

Clues to a missing rock record

"This long-lived tectonic landscape provides a missing piece in understanding why erosion associated with the Great Unconformity varies so dramatically across the southwestern U.S.," Gernon said.

"Our work suggests that tectonic uplift related to continental rifting and breakup created both steep slopes and high ground, providing the mountainous terrain that rivers and glaciers could readily erode."

The study also reveals the ancient escarpment may have influenced far more than the Grand Canyon itself.

By creating a long-lived mountainous rim around western Laurentia—the ancient core of North America—it may have controlled where rivers flowed, sediments accumulated and when rising seas flooded the continent before the so-called Cambrian explosion, when complex life rapidly diversified.

Gernon added, "Today's escarpments in Africa, Brazil, India and Antarctica provide windows into the forces that shape continents over hundreds of millions of years.

"By comparing the Grand Canyon's ancient history with active landscapes like the Great Escarpment of South Africa, we're able to see North America's most iconic geologic landmark in an entirely new light.

"Our findings could help geologists reinterpret other ancient continental interiors where similarly large gaps occur in records, offering a better understanding of how Earth's continents have changed over hundreds of millions of years."

{ https://phys.org/earth-news/earth-sciences/ }

In a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers demonstrate a method that combines mass spectrometry with machine learning to estimate what researchers call “molecular assembly,” or MA.

The concept comes from Assembly Theory, which attempts to quantify molecular complexity by identifying the minimum number of construction steps needed to build a molecule. Researchers argue that when highly complex molecules appear repeatedly and in abundance, their existence may point to a process that is consistently steering chemistry down particular pathways.

That could make molecular assembly useful as an “agnostic” biosignature—one that does not depend on alien life sharing Earth’s chemistry.

A novel framework suggests life might be revealed not by single clues, but by subtle patterns spanning many worlds, offering a different lens for detecting life in the universe.

Credit: Stock

“There is a growing interest in ‘agnostic’ life detection strategies: methods that can identify molecular signs of life without needing an exact understanding of what that life might look like, or how it might interact with a complex, poorly characterized environment,” the researchers write. “The measured assembly index, defined as the number of steps along the shortest construction pathway, is fixed for each molecule and does not depend on external conditions, such as the environment in which the molecule might be detected or the specific ‘alien’ biochemistry from which it might arise.”

The researchers’ proposed “agnostic” approach could become increasingly important as scientists encounter tantalizing, but often ambiguous, chemical signals in the search for alien life.

Methane on Mars, phosphine reported in Venus’s atmosphere, and dimethyl sulfide proposed as a possible biosignature within exoplanet atmospheres have all attracted attention because living organisms can produce those compounds.

However, biology is not the only way to make them. Methane, for example, can emerge from geologic processes. Dimethyl sulfide is strongly associated with life on Earth, yet it has also been detected in cometary material and produced in laboratory experiments simulating primordial chemistry.

The presence of a particular molecule, in other words, does not necessarily tell scientists what produced it. Molecular assembly approaches the problem from a different angle. Under Assembly Theory, researchers calculate the shortest possible pathway for constructing a molecule from simpler building blocks. A molecule with an MA of 40, for example, has a shortest construction pathway twice as long as one with an MA of 20.

The reasoning is rooted in probability. Undirected chemistry has an enormous range of possible molecular structures. As molecules become more complex, the odds of repeatedly producing the same highly elaborate structure shrink unless something constrains the process.

Biological systems store and use information to direct chemical reactions toward particular outcomes, permitting organisms to manufacture the same complicated molecules again and again instead of wandering randomly through the immense space of possible chemistry.

Previous experiments cited in the study found an approximate dividing line between abiotic and biological samples at an assembly index of around 15.

Perhaps more importantly, in the search for alien life, scientists would not necessarily need to know what a molecule is before recognizing that it is unusually complex.

That could be especially useful on worlds such as Mars, Europa, Enceladus, or Titan, where spacecraft may encounter compounds unlike anything commonly found on Earth.

Several proposed planetary missions use, or could use, mass spectrometers. These instruments analyze molecules by measuring ions’ mass-to-charge ratios.

More sophisticated multistage mass spectrometers can repeatedly break molecules apart, giving indications of their structure and assembly history. But spacecraft operate under severe limits on power, mass, computing capacity, and instrument complexity. Many planetary missions, therefore, rely on simpler, single-stage mass spectrometry.

To close that gap, the researchers trained an XGBoost model on standardized mass spectra from the National Institute of Standards and Technology Chemistry WebBook. The model learned to estimate molecular assembly directly from single-stage spectra.

According to the study, it reduced relative mean squared error threefold compared with the best-performing baseline model, cutting the figure from 0.12 to 0.04.

The model also tended to underestimate molecules with especially high MA values. For a life-detection system, that bias could be preferable. It means the model was more likely to be conservative than to classify a molecule as an unusually strong biosignature mistakenly.

Researchers envision future spacecraft using this kind of analysis autonomously. A rover or lander that detects molecules with unusually high assembly scores might flag the surrounding area for closer inspection, prioritize certain samples, or identify material worth returning to Earth.

The study explicitly evaluated conditions designed to resemble instruments proposed for missions to Titan and Europa.

The same framework also raised another, more speculative possibility: when the researchers compared very large molecular databases, they identified several medical compounds with unusually high MA values. Their complexity was not the product of biology alone, but of deliberate human synthesis.

That led the team to suggest that particularly complex artificial molecules might serve as “molecular technosignatures”—chemical evidence oftechnology, rather than life itself.

For now, however, the method remains far from being a ready-to-fly alien-life detector. Instrument settings strongly affected performance. In simulated experiments, changing impact energies could nearly double prediction error, while one comparison increased it by more than 2.3 times. Molecules that break apart unusually easily can also cause the model to overestimate assembly, while molecules that resist fragmentation may be underestimated.

The researchers therefore describe the study as a proof of concept. Turning the approach into an effective tool for planetary investigation would require standardized databases, careful instrument calibration, and chromatographic separation to isolate individual molecules before analysis.

Future versions could also combine mass spectrometry with other techniques, including nuclear magnetic resonance or infrared spectroscopy. Infrared measurements, the researchers suggest, extend aspects of the approach to the remote study of exoplanet atmospheres.

Yet the wider goal is significant. Instead of deciding beforehand what alien biology should produce, scientists could search for evidence that a process has persistently directed chemistry toward highly specific, complex outcomes.

“In this work, we presented a proof-of-concept demonstrating the potential use of ML to predict the MA molecular complexity as a biosignature from in situ mass spectrometers during future space missions,” the researchers write. “Although the application of ML in life detection remains a nascent endeavor, it holds significant promise.”

The recent study, “Molecular Assembly as a Universal Biosignature Measurable by Mass Spectrometry,” appeared in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

• Tim McMillan is a retired law enforcement executive, investigative reporter and co-founder of The Debrief. His writing typically focuses on defense, national security, the Intelligence Community and topics related to psychology. You can follow Tim on Twitter: @LtTimMcMillan.  Tim can be reached by email: tim@thedebrief.org or through encrypted email: LtTimMcMillan@protonmail.com 

{ https://thedebrief.org/category/space/ }

Dolphin researchers have spotted the intelligent mammals teaching each other to hunt for food in a way that has never been seen before along Australia's east coast.

A team from the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia captured video of bottlenose dolphins using large shells like a bucket to scoop up fish and eat them.

Moreover, researchers watched as one dolphin's offspring picked up a shell and copied their mother's clever new hunting hack - known as shelling.

The tool-using dolphins were seen catching fish along Australia’s east coast in both July and October 2025, showing researchers that this was a consistent behavior and not a fluke.

The only other time scientists have ever recorded dolphins picking up an empty shell to scoop food with was a group living in Shark Bay on Australia's west coast, nearly 20 years ago and 3,700 miles away.

Although the team noted that there had been stories and reported sightings of dolphins using tools to fish with in the 1990s, scientists have never captured images or video of the animals doing this outside of that group of 19 bottlenoses in Shark Bay.

Dr Alexis Levengood, a marine mammal expert who led the new study, said in a statement: 'Our observations in Queensland show that dolphins on opposite sides of Australia have learned to use tools in the exact same way, independent of one another.'

The scientists added that the images of the young dolphin, nicknamed Bentley, copying its mother, Maserati, were also groundbreaking, as it proved dolphins not only copy their peers in the ocean, but also take after their parents as well.

Bottlenose dolphins along Australia's east coast were spotted using shells as tools to fish with for the first time in history in 2025

The behavior, known as shelling, involves the dolphins taking large empty shells and scooping up fish. They then empty the water, leaving the fish to flop out an be eaten

The researchers made two direct observations in 2025 during boat surveys along Australia's eastern shores.

On July 6, an adult female nicknamed Stevie Nicks was seen lifting a large empty bailer shell out of the water several times while maneuvering it with her mouth, although rain made it hard for the team to see if Stevie Nicks scooped up a fish on that attempt.

'We were on a research boat off Hervey Bay when we spotted a dolphin raising something large out of the water. I started screaming because I know what shelling looks like,' Levengood said in a university release.

However, on October 1, 2025, the mother dolphin named Maserati brought a shell to the surface while scientists were recording.

The dolphin was spotted draining at least one fish from the shell, dropping the bucket and chasing after the fish.

Minutes later, her calf Bentley picked up the same shell, held it the same way and slapped it on the surface - revealing a fish inside waiting to be eaten.

'Our footage provides the first potential evidence of maternal social transmission - a process by which offspring learn behavior by observing the actions of its mother. It challenges the belief that dolphins learn this tool use from their peers,' the study author explained.

Although bottlenose dolphins are a common sight along the US East and West Coasts, as they regularly migrate between warm water locations, scientists have not seen any of these mammals learning to shell yet.

Dolphins in the US have never been seen shelling (Pictured) like the bottlenose population in Australia

Dolphins were thought to learn most of their behaviors from peers. The new study finds they also learn from their parents (Stock Image)

Levengood noted that tour boats in Australia may have photographed more instances of shelling in 2013 and 2019, but scientists did not learn about those sightings until this study, published in the journal Marine Mammal Science.

The scientists added that this new skill has not been learned by every dolphin in the area yet, however, it could be easy enough for all of these mammals to pick it up once they see enough of their peers doing it.

'We know they don't all do it. It takes some skill, it takes some knowledge of where to find these empty shells, how to maneuver those shells, and how to be successful in getting the fish out,' Levengood told ScienceAlert.

'All it takes is one dolphin doing something clever that is easily learnable for it to spread.'

RELATED

{ https://www.dailymail.com/sciencetech/index.html }

Move aside, Usain Bolt! Watch as a humanoid robot dubbed 'Superman' sets a new world speed record – hitting 28.3mph or 45,5 kmph

• READ MORE: Self–dressing robot puts your clothes on for you in 10 seconds 
  

By XANTHA LEATHAM, EXECUTIVE SCIENCE EDITOR

Chinese scientists have developed a robot that can outrun Usain Bolt.

An incredible video shows the prototype, nicknamed 'Superman', reaching speeds of 12.66m per second (28.3mph) as it races along a track.

In comparison, sprinting champion Usain Bolt reached a speed of 12.42m per second (27.78mph) when he set the world record at the World Athletics Championship in 2009.

The robot has been designed by Unitree, a Hangzhou–based Chinese robotics company best known for developing high–performance robot dogs and humanoid robots.

A separate part of the video shows the machine jumping an impressive two metres vertically into the air from standing.

This also beats the current human world record, set by US's Christopher Spell in 2021, of 1.7m (5ft 7in) from a standing jump.

Sharing the video on X, the company wrote: 'Unitree new robot preview: "Superman" breaking the limits of humanity.

'This new machine has only been in development for a little over three months, with significant room for further improvement in the coming months.'

An incredible video shows the prototype, nicknamed 'Superman', reaching speeds of 12.66 metres per second (28.3mph) as it races along a track

The spectacular demonstrations appear to have been designed to showcase the robot's raw physical capabilities, rather than a practical task it could currently perform.

However, the video is simply a company demonstration, and the impressive sprint and jump claims have not yet been verified independently.

The robot, which has been developed incredibly quickly, has a reported leg length of just 0.85m (2.8ft).

This makes the speed achieved particularly striking given the relatively short stride of the robot.

While the video is impressive, some people online have also found it amusing.

One person commented: 'That's probably the goofiest running I've ever seen', while another added: 'He runs like a dork.'

Someone else joked: 'School sports days are never going to be the same ever again.'

However, others appeared to be dazzled by the display, with one person writing: 'If the hardware keeps improving at this pace, humanoid robots are going to become capable of some seriously impressive things very quickly.'

The machine, which has allegedly been developed incredibly quickly, has a reported leg length of just 0.85 metres (2.8 feet). This makes the speed achieved particularly striking given the relatively short stride of the robot

The team say their robot could outrun Usain Bolt. Pictured: Bolt wins the men's 100m final race of the 2009 IAAF Athletics World Championships

A separate part of the video shows the machine also appearing to jump an impressive two metres vertically into the air from standing

Man vs Humanoid

{ https://www.dailymail.com/sciencetech/index.html }

Did Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan have UFO Experiences?

by Steve Paslow

Jimmy Carter had a well-documented UFO sighting in Georgia in 1969, several years before he became governor and eight years before becoming President. The incident is particularly interesting because Carter was a trained Navy officer and nuclear engineer, and he later personally filed a written report describing what he saw. The National Archives confirms that the Carter Presidential Library holds the report.

The sighting occurred near Leary, Georgia, while Carter was attending a Lions Club meeting where he was scheduled to give a speech. The original report was filed several years later, in 1973, after the International UFO Bureau asked him to document the experience.

Carter described a very bright object or light in the sky. It appeared to be approximately the size of the Moon at its brightest. It changed colors, including blue, white, and red. The image appeared to move toward him and then away. He watched it for roughly 10–12 minutes.

Approximately 10–12 other people were reportedly watching it with him. Carter’s written report described the object as apparently luminous rather than solid. The report also indicates that the observation occurred after dark, with stars visible.

Carter’s original 1973 report apparently gave the date as October 1969. A later examination of Lions Club records established that the meeting at which Carter spoke was actually held on January 6, 1969, at approximately 7:15 p.m. Modern accounts therefore generally use that date, although Carter himself originally remembered the event as occurring in October.

One proposed explanation for the sighting has been the planet Venus. Skeptic Robert Sheaffer argued that Venus was exceptionally bright that evening and was located in the appropriate region of the sky. However, if Carter’s description of the object’s apparent size is taken literally, Venus becomes a very poor explanation.

The Moon spans about half a degree across the sky, while even at its largest apparent size Venus is only about one-thirtieth the Moon’s diameter and appears to the unaided eye essentially as an extremely bright point of light. Atmospheric glare can make Venus seem somewhat larger or cause it to shimmer and change color near the horizon, but it cannot give the planet an actual Moon-sized visible disk.

Carter reported that the luminous object at its brightest appeared approximately the size of the Moon, changed between blue, white, and red, changed in apparent size, and seemed to move toward the observers and then away again during the roughly ten-to-twelve-minute observation.

A planet would maintain essentially the same position and angular size over such a short period. For these reasons, particularly the enormous difference between the apparent sizes of Venus and the Moon, Venus does not satisfactorily account for Carter’s reported observation. Whatever Carter and the other witnesses saw, dismissing the entire incident simply as a sighting of Venus leaves several important elements of their description unexplained.

Barium cloud as it could appear in the night sky,

However, years later researchers examined the records of the Lions Club in Leary, Georgia, where Carter said he had been preparing to give a speech when the sighting occurred. Those records indicate that Carter actually spoke to the club on January 6, 1969. If that was indeed the night of the sighting, an important piece of evidence emerges that may explain what Carter and the other witnesses saw.

On that same evening, the U.S. Air Force was conducting an upper-atmosphere experiment from Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. According to a U.S. space-science report, a rocket released a large barium cloud at approximately 7:35 p.m. EST, only about twenty minutes after the time Carter remembered seeing the object. The barium was released at an altitude of approximately 152 kilometers, or about 94 miles, where it could still be illuminated by sunlight even though it was already dark on the ground.

The location also fits Carter’s account remarkably well. Eglin Air Force Base is approximately 234 kilometers from Leary, Georgia, in a west-southwesterly direction. From Leary, a barium cloud at the reported altitude would have appeared roughly 33 degrees above the horizon. Carter estimated that the mysterious object was about 30 degrees above the horizon and reported that it appeared in the western part of the sky.

Even more significant is the object’s appearance. Carter described it as luminous rather than solid, initially bluish and later reddish, changing in brightness and apparent size. That is consistent with the behavior of an artificial barium cloud in the upper atmosphere. Barium illuminated by sunlight can initially produce a bluish or greenish glow, while portions of the cloud can become reddish as the material ionizes. As the cloud rapidly expands and disperses, its apparent size, shape, brightness, and position can also seem to change to observers on the ground.

This explanation also fits Carter’s statement that the object became approximately the apparent size of the Moon. Unlike Venus, which remains essentially a brilliant point of light to the unaided eye, an expanding chemical cloud can cover a substantial area of the sky.

Therefore, if the Lions Club records have correctly established January 6, 1969 as the actual date of Carter’s sighting, the barium-cloud experiment from Eglin Air Force Base is probably the strongest explanation for the mysterious object. The date, approximate time, direction, altitude, colors, luminosity, changing apparent size, and non-solid appearance all correspond closely with what Carter reported. It cannot be proven with absolute certainty that the barium cloud was what Carter saw, but the coincidence is sufficiently strong that it offers a far more convincing explanation than the planet Venus.

{ https://mysticsciences.com/ }

Department of War 'Actively Investigating' Hidden 100-Foot Triangle UFO Base Cellphone Videos

Unverified cellphone footage reportedly shows a 100-foot triangular object near a military base, sparking an official investigation

Two figures dressed as extraterrestrials sit inside a car as an eerie orange glow fills the sky, creating a scene straight out of a sci-fi film 

PHOTO Miriam Espacio/Unsplash

The Department of War is investigating claims that the US Air Force is withholding two cellphone videos allegedly showing a 100-foot-wide triangular object near a Colorado military base. Acting Pentagon Press Secretary Joel Valdez said officials were 'actively investigating' the whereabouts of recordings reportedly made by a service member on consecutive nights in 2023.

The videos have not been publicly released or independently authenticated. Details about the object's size, movements and apparent ability to blend into clouds come from anonymous sources cited by the New York Post. Officials have confirmed only that they are investigating the reported footage.

Valdez said any material uncovered would be released through the administration's Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters, known as PURSUE. The government launched the system in May as part of President Donald Trump's push to release previously classified material concerning unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs.

What The Classified Videos Allegedly Show

According to sources cited by the New York Post, the recordings allegedly show a black triangular object approximately 100 feet (30 metres) across flying near a military installation somewhere in Colorado.

The object was reportedly seen moving rapidly above mountain ranges and appearing to blend into or conceal itself within clouds. The videos were allegedly recorded on a service member's personal phone on consecutive nights in 2023.

Sources also claimed the footage is held by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) in Colorado under file numbers IRR1669S015524 and IRR1669S005024. Neither the reported file numbers nor the contents of the alleged recordings have been independently verified.

If genuine, cellphone footage would provide a different type of evidence from UAP observations captured by military aircraft, radar or infrared systems. The original recordings would still need to be examined to establish the object's apparent distance, size, speed and identity.

Colorado Already Has Triangle Sightings

The alleged videos have emerged alongside government records describing other triangle-shaped objects reported near Colorado Springs.

One FBI recorddescribes a former Pentagon employee who said he saw a silent, nearly translucent triangular object pass over his Colorado home in 2023. The account was included in the government's wider UAP disclosure effort.

The geographical and chronological overlap has encouraged UAP researchers to consider whether the cases could be connected. However, no publicly available evidence currently establishes a connection between them.

The witness report documents what the former employee said he saw, but does not establish what the object was. The same distinction applies to the alleged cellphone videos until the original recordings can be located, authenticated and independently analysed.

The Videos Remain Unverified

The Department of War's statement does not confirm that the videos depict a 100-foot unidentified craft. Officials have not publicly released the recordings, confirmed the reported file numbers or established that the Air Force is deliberately concealing evidence of unidentified or extraterrestrial technology. The most dramatic details currently depend on unnamed sources.

If the videos are located and released, investigators could examine perspective, atmospheric conditions, camera movement and the object's relationship with surrounding terrain. That could help determine whether its reported size and behaviour are consistent with the original claims.

Secrecy Does Not Prove Aliens

Even if the recordings exist and remain classified, that would not necessarily indicate extraterrestrial technology. Footage recorded near a military facility could reveal sensitive information about the installation, surveillance capabilities, aircraft movements, security arrangements or the identity of the service member who recorded it.

There are legitimate national-security reasons why military footage might remain restricted even when officials cannot immediately identify what appears in it. Classification therefore does not settle what the videos show. It could simply mean officials have reasons for limiting access to the material.

PURSUE Faces Its First Big Test

The investigation comes as the Trump administration continues its UAP disclosure programme through PURSUE. The Department of War's official PURSUE database contains hundreds of UAP-related records, including documents, images, audio and videos from multiple government agencies.

The first tranche was released on 8 May 2026, followed by additional batches on 22 May, 12 June and 10 July. The fourth release brought the publicly searchable database to 334 files, according to the department's portal.

The administration also announced efforts to remove barriers preventing some former government employees and contractors from discussing information concerning UAP programmes through authorised channels.

The policy does not automatically make classified recordings public. Information supplied to the government still has to undergo appropriate security and declassification reviews. That makes the alleged Colorado videos a test of whether the administration can turn its transparency campaign into evidence that the public can actually examine.

Investigation Continues Without a Timetable

Valdez said the government would release what it finds through PURSUE, but no timetable has been given for the alleged videos. For now, the story rests on anonymous claims, publicly released Colorado UAP reports and an official investigation into footage that has not been publicly examined or authenticated.

If the recordings are found, released and authenticated, they could become significant evidence in the administration's UAP disclosure programme. Until then, the 100-foot triangle remains an allegation and the missing cellphone videos remain the key evidence needed to determine whether the reported encounter can be substantiat

{ https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/ }

Are UAP Orbs Adversary Drones?

 Avi Loeb

A UAP orb spotted in the Gulf of Oman on September 8, 2021. A U.S. AC-130 Gunship was conducting live fire training during a period of darkness. The AC-130 first observed UAPs when the aircraft dropped a water-activated flare to use as a mock target. The AC-130 entered an orbit around the flare and the Combat Systems Officer conducted collateral scans with the aircraft’s Electro Optical/Infrared sensor. When the infrared sensor was slewed back to the flare, two ~4-foot diameter cold orbs between 0 and 20 feet above the surface of the water were observed to be stationary over the flare for about 15 seconds. Afterwards the aircraft fired its 105mm cannon. Immediately upon pulling the trigger, during the slight delay between trigger pull and the cannon’s recoil, the pair of UAPs rapidly flew away from the flare and out of the sensor feed without changing altitude. The AC-130 crew observed ~25 instances of UAPs viewed in the infrared as cold orbs during the sortie. Two UAPs were observed flying in a loose but coordinated formation, increasing and decreasing altitude like a wave while maneuvering around, over, and under each other in a manner similar to how dolphins swim. UAPs were also separately observed flying in a formation of three and separately observed flying erratically and maneuvering aggressively. The AC-130's crew attempted to save the footage of the UAP observations but the aircraft’s Digital Video Recorder (DVR) inexplicably failed and the video data became corrupted. ( Image credit: DoW)

Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) are a mixed bag. It is therefore important to separate the wheat (truly anomalous) from the chaff (human-made technologies). Let us illustrate this challenge in the context of orbs.

The mysterious orbs mentioned in the records of the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE) here, have the following physical properties:

1. Size: of order 1 meter.
2. Speed: 100–600 meters per second, between 0.3 and 1.7 times the speed of sound, as reported in videos from the Gulf of Oman, available here, here, here and here.
3. Thermal Signature: The orbs appear cold on infrared sensors, meaning they register as colder than background on thermal imagery, the opposite of what one might expect from any combustion-based propulsion or from aerodynamic heating at the reported speeds.
4. Radar Cross-Section: some orbs are independently tracked by multiple radar systems while others appear to have been characterized primarily via optical/infrared sensor data rather than confirmed radar returns. Note that infrared-only detections are more vulnerable to sensor artifacts, lens flare, and out-of-focus point sources than radar-confirmed contacts.
5. Color and Visual Appearance: Reports span black, white, and unspecified metallic/reflective appearances.
6. Coordinated Behavior: Formation flying.
7. Apparent reactivity to aircraft firing its main cannon in the Gulf of Oman incident.
8. No visible propulsion, exhaust, or control surfaces.
9. Transmedium behavior: Air-water transition capability was documented in some cases.

The following properties fit conventional drones:

1. Size: The inferred dimension is squarely in the range of fielded small quadcopter or multirotor drones used for both commercial and military applications.
2. No visible propulsion, exhaust, or control surfaces: Small electric multirotor drones have no exhaust plume and their rotors are often too small and fast-spinning to resolve on standard military infrared or handheld camera footage.
3. Coordinated behavior: This is common technology of fielded drone swarms, either pre-programmed or centrally piloted, which is likely deployed in the Gulf of Oman where several such incidents occurred.
4. Apparent reactivity: Response to weapons fire is fully explicable by a remotely piloted or sensor-equipped drone. A human or AI operator or onboard threat-detection system responding to being shot at (visually, acoustically, or via radar-warning-type sensing) is unremarkable. This is precisely the kind of evasive behavior military drones are designed to exhibit. The concentration of reports in active conflict zones, such as the Gulf of Oman, Bagram in Afghanistan or U.S. Central Command, is expected if these are adversary drones rather than a phenomenon indifferent to human geopolitics. A genuinely exotic or natural phenomenon has no reason to cluster around the most heavily-instrumented, most militarily contested airspace on Earth.
5. Transmedium behavior: Experimental and fielded transmedium drones (labeled as UUV-UAS hybrid programs) exist (as discussed, for example, here). They include Chinese research into craft that can transition between air and water (as discussed here and here).

However, the drone interpretation is strained by the following properties:

1. Speed: The Gulf of Oman orbs reach sustained supersonic speeds which is not currently possible for small, rotor-based or ducted-fan drones. The aerodynamics and propulsion requirements for a multirotor-type craft at that speed are not remotely compatible with known small-drone engineering. If the high end of that speed range is accurate and correctly attributed to the same small objects rather than reflecting a measurement error, sensor artifact, or conflation with a separate fast-moving object like a missile in the same scene, this genuinely exceeds what any known drone technology, small or large, can do.
2. Thermal signature: Small electric drones typically do show a modest but detectable thermal signature from motors, batteries, and electronics and should not appear as cold orbs. Appearing cold relative to background is unusual for an active, powered device, although it might reflect a novel drone design which evades a thermal fingerprint given the distance and sensor sensitivity threshold.
3. Radar Cross-Section: Small drones, especially plastic/composite-bodied commercial ones, notoriously have very low radar cross-sections. This could explain why some orb incidents lack solid radar confirmation, but it suggests that other objects which were tracked on radar with a strong return, are different.

The most likely resolution for the mixed message in the above analysis is that not a single explanation covers all reported orbs. It is plausible that the majority of the low-speed, formation-flying, radar-quiet orbs are genuinely human-made drones, while the outlier high-speed or high-radar-cross-section cases within the same dataset represent either measurement error or an attribution mistake, whereby a fast-moving object like a missile or aircraft momentarily conflated with a slower drone swarm in the same scene.

Better digital data is needed to decide whether any of the UAP orbs represent a new class of objects of non-human origin. Such data could be obtained through future campaigns for new data collection, coordinated by the partnership between the U.S. Government and the UAP Science Advisory Council (https://uapsac.com/) under my leadership.

The Science of Orb UAP - What are they, if not drones? PLUS, EXCLUSIVE UFO FOOTAGE!

{ https://medium.com/ }

Pilots Report Unexplained Lights Over Cyprus as EU Steps Up UAP Monitoring

by Bill Giannopoulos

Pilots have reported unexplained aerial phenomena over Cyprus and Greece, including a striking incident in which six crew members observed unusual lights for more than two hours during a flight south of Cyprus.

The Cyprus sighting was described by Dutch airline pilot Rob Ackermans, who said the incident occurred in 2023 while he and five other crew members were flying from the Middle East to the Netherlands.

According to Ackermans, the unusual lights first appeared while the aircraft was south of Cyprus.

“We saw a light suddenly become very bright and then slowly fade away,” he recalled.

The pilot said the crew observed three lights, with one apparently moving around the others in a way that resembled a chase.

The phenomenon continued for an extended period, with two or all three lights occasionally disappearing before reappearing.

Crew considered possible military activity

The crew initially wondered whether the lights could be connected to military activity in the region.

However, Ackermans said the phenomenon remained visible in the same direction even after the aircraft had reached the Balkans.

The sighting did not appear to be limited to the aircraft crew. One of Ackermans’ colleagues reportedly saw the same phenomenon from the Netherlands the following day.

The incident has renewed attention on unexplained aerial phenomena, commonly referred to as UAPs, a term increasingly used by authorities and researchers instead of the traditional term UFO.

European Commission monitoring UAP reports

The European Commission has also become more active in monitoring reports involving unexplained aerial phenomena.

Euronews cited a response from the Commission’s defence department to two amateur astronomers in Malaysia who had submitted images showing 37 unexplained objects.

The increased attention comes as governments and aviation professionals continue to examine reports of unusual objects and lights observed in the skies.

There is currently no evidence that the reported phenomena are extraterrestrial in origin. Many such sightings can potentially be explained by aircraft, satellites, atmospheric effects, military activity or other human made objects.

Another unexplained sighting reported over Greece

The Cyprus incident is not the only unusual aerial sighting involving commercial pilots in the region.

Dutch pilot Christian van Heist previously described an incident over Greece in 2005, when he and colleagues observed a bright light apparently travelling at extremely high speed.

The sighting occurred around the time the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier was travelling toward the Persian Gulf ahead of the second Gulf War.

The circumstances led the crew to consider whether the phenomenon could have been connected to military activity, although no definitive explanation was established.

France remains the only European Union member state with a dedicated, state funded centre focused on investigating UFO reports.

As interest in UAP sightings grows across Europe, reports from pilots and other trained observers are likely to receive increased scrutiny as authorities seek explanations for phenomena that remain unidentified.

{ https://greekcitytimes.com/greek-news }

EU Reportedly Monitoring Skies for UFOs

Pilots describe encounters over Cyprus and Mykonos as Brussels tracks such phenomena more closely than previously known, Euronews reports

For at least three years, the European Commission has quietly been monitoring “unidentified anomalous phenomena” (UAP), formerly known as UFOs, Euronews reported Monday, and the outlet also carries pilot accounts of incidents over Greece and Cyprus.

The report cites a reply that the Commission’s Defense department sent to two amateur astronomers in Malaysia, a father and son, who had sent Brussels images of 37 UAPs they spotted in the sky and space using their telescope.

The Malaysian pair wrote that they had also picked up various signals from above, through the Wi-Fi frequencies of local networks.

In its reply, the European Commission said it had no jurisdiction over incidents concerning Malaysia. It added that it is improving at spotting and identifying UAPs as its technological capabilities advance, though it still needs to get better. According to Euronews, the letter suggests Brussels is tracking such phenomena more actively than has been officially disclosed.

The two Malaysian astronomers appear to be Anamalai Muthu and his son Aarav Anamalai, who had also contacted NASA, ESA, and other space agencies in 2022, the same year they reached out to the Commission. The pair had told The Vibes at the time that NASA had encouraged them to expand and document their observations.

The term UAP was introduced by the U.S. Department of Defense in August 2020, when Washington created the UAP Task Force to look into unexplained incidents in restricted airspace.

The issue gained more serious attention after a 2017 New York Times report revealed that Pentagon files contained UFO footage recorded during military flights. Although there’s no evidence these phenomena are extraterrestrial or advanced hostile drones, the U.S. government now asks its military personnel not to hesitate in reporting such incidents, which could pose a potential threat to national security.

Recently, the Trump administration appointed a Scientific Council on UAP, headed by Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, known for his provocative claims about alien spacecraft in the Solar System.

In Europe, the debate centers on possible risks to air traffic. According to Euronews, France is the only EU country with a dedicated, state-funded center for tracking and investigating UFOs: GEIPAN (Groupe d’Études et d’Informations sur les Phénomènes Aérospatiaux Non Identifiés), the Study and Information Group on Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena.

Since its founding in 1977, GEIPAN has reviewed more than 3,300 UAP cases, of which 106 have been classified as unexplained. Another 1,014 cases remain unresolved due to insufficient data.

On June 29, the French Parliament held a significant debate on UFOs, focusing on the work done by GEIPAN and the French Air and Space Force, as well as the possibility of cooperating with the U.S. to secure “answers from public authorities.” French lawmaker Arnaud Saint-Martin told Le Parisien that the goal is to move past sensationalism and fantasy and instead address, seriously and rationally, an issue that draws significant public interest.

Euronews maintains that the EU is watching UFOs, though it notes that despite repeated calls for a standard UAP reporting procedure, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) said it already has a framework in place for reporting any incident that could affect aviation safety, including UAPs. EASA told Euronews that pilots and other aviation staff are encouraged to report anything they consider a potential safety risk, regardless of its nature, adding that for now it has found no evidence that UAP reports point to a systemic aviation safety issue requiring additional measures.

UFOs Over Mykonos and Cyprus

Euronews also spoke with European pilots who say they’ve encountered unexplained phenomena.

Christiaan van Heijst, 43, a Boeing 747 captain with more than 20 years of experience, described four incidents he witnessed between 2005 and 2010.

One happened late at night over Greece in 2005, most likely near the island of Mykonos. The Dutch pilot said that after a night landing, as they turned around on the runway, they saw a bright light in the sky at an extremely high altitude. It moved briefly, vanished, reappeared, covered roughly the same distance, and vanished again, about three times. He said that before it appeared, the light had been about twice as far away, then suddenly shot off at an instant, incredible speed with no acceleration, simply gaining speed instantly and disappearing from view. Van Heijst noted that that same night, the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt’s strike group was crossing the Mediterranean en route to the Persian Gulf, ahead of the second Gulf war, a detail that had appeared in the airspace closure notices (NOTAMs) among others; he said it isn’t known whether the events are connected.

A second incident over Cyprus was described by Rob Ackermans, a pilot for a Dutch airline who says he’s seen several UFOs. He said that in 2023, he and another pilot, along with four cabin crew members, were on a flight from the Middle East to the Netherlands. Starting around 19:30 UTC, they watched a strange phenomenon for more than two hours that struck them as truly remarkable, with all six crew members observing it from the cockpit. It began while they were south of Cyprus: on a bearing of exactly 300 degrees magnetic north, at an elevation angle of about 25 to 30 degrees, and at very high altitude, they saw a light suddenly flare brightly, then slowly fade. This kept happening more and more often, frequently with one or two additional lights that also flared and faded. He said the strangest part was that one of the three lights sometimes maneuvered around the others, resembling a chase, what air forces call dogfighting, after which two or all three would vanish again. They initially assumed it might be some military operation over the Balkans, but when they reached the Balkans themselves, they saw the same display still in the same direction, at the same angle, and at very high altitude. After around 21:30 UTC, the lights suddenly vanished at incredible speed and were never seen again. Ackermans added that the next day, one of his colleagues spotted the same phenomenon from his garden back home in the Netherlands.

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{ https://www.tovima.com/category/science/ }

4 alien species have been pulled from crashed UFOs, ex-government researcher claims

The US has recovered four distinct species of extraterrestrial life from crashed UFOs, a former CIA-funded government researcher sensationally claimed this week.

Dr. Hal Puthoff, former Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program advisor and CIA-funded researcher, made the claim alongside “Age of Disclosure” director Dan Farrah on Steve Bartlett’s “The Diary of a CEO” podcast on Thursday.

“People who have been involved in recoveries have said there are at least four types. Four separate types,” the 89-year-old said. “Now I have not had direct access to that but I believe the people who I talked to — four separate types of life.”

The Stanford-trained quantum physicist did not detail the supposed alien species — but his longtime collaborator and former AAWSAP colleague Dr. Eric Davis claimed last year that Grays, Nordics, Insectoids, and Reptilians are the names of the biological lifeforms pulled from the wreckage of downed or crashed UFOs. 

Nordics are a race of highly-human-like creatures who, despite being from a far-flung planet, closely resemble people of northern Europe here on planet Earth.

Reptilians are scaley skinned lizard-like creatures with human limbs, long tails, who walk upright, experts in the field speculate.

Grays are small, massive-eyed, hairless creatures — classically depicted in films such as “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

Insectoids are bug-like humanoids, sometimes referred to as Mantids because they resemble a praying mantis, ufologists speculate.

Former Air Force Intelligence officer and UAP Task Force member David Grusch testified under oath in Congress in 2023 that the US was in possession of “non-human biologics” recovered from dozens of crashed UFOs.

Those claims were based on testimony from members of the supposed crash retrieval program which was detailed in Farah’s film “Age of Disclosure,” which premiered in March.

“I’ve talked off the record with some people who are involved in recoveries,” Farah told Bartlett on Thursday’s podcast, adding: “They would not go on camera to do interviews.

“One I thought was going to do an interview and then a couple days before sent me a message saying ‘After further consideration and long talks with my wife, I decided I’d be forfeiting my life if I participated in your interview,’” Farah said.

{ https://nypost.com/us-news/ }

A scientist who worked with the Pentagon's UFO program for decades says he has seen the evidence that the US is hiding the bodies of four different alien races that crashed on Earth.

Dr Eric Davis, an astrophysicist specializing in advanced aerospace propulsion, said he has personally seen classified photos and records from the US government which allegedly confirm the existence of extraterrestrial life found in wrecked UFOs.

This included at least four distinct species which the US now has stored in top-secret facilities, however, Davis noted that the locations of the corpses changed during the Obama Administration.

Davis specifically mentioned alien races known as the Grays, the Nordics, a race of insectoids which look like a human-sized praying mantis and a species called the Reptilians, due to their humanoid-lizard-like appearance.

'There's a minimum of four that we know of. I've seen the evidence, I've seen the records,' Davis told NewsNation's 'Katie Pavlich Tonight.'

He compared the Grays to the aliens seen in the science fiction film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a small, gray-skinned humanoid with large heads and black eyes.

Meanwhile, the Nordics were described as looking like extremely tall Scandinavians with blonde hair and the most human-like features of all the alleged alien races.

Despite Davis's public claims and the ongoing rollout of previously classified files related to UFOs, both the White House and the military have maintained that no physical proof that alien life exists has ever been recovered.

An alleged alien race known as the Nordics is said to have human-like features

(Stock Image)

 that the photos and records his government access permitted him to see were still classified and there was no chance they would be released with UFO disclosure releases for decades.

'Those are still classified, and they are not subjec

During Monday's interview, Davis also claimedt to the Freedom of Information Act because they're probably classified for a 50 to 70-year period, 75-year period I believe,' Davis explained. 

Davis, who said he was no longer 'on the inside with the Department of War,' said he was not satisfied with the speed of the Pentagon's UFO documents team or the information that has been released in the first five batches, which started in May.

To this point, the thousands of photos, videos and decades-old files released by the Pentagon this year have yet to produce definitive proof that extraterrestrials exist or have visited Earth. 

Davis added that there were more images and videos capable of being released which provide proof of legitimate UFO encounters which also 'do not contain harmful information' that would reveal the secrets of how the US gathers its intelligence.

As for what the longtime astrophysicist has seen and knows, Davis publicly requested that President Trump grant him immunity so he could reveal the truth about these alien races without fear of prosecution for exposing classified government secrets.

In a video shared on X, Davis said: 'I investigated unidentified anomalous phenomenon (UAP) for 30 years. I’ve seen classified and proprietary defense intelligence industry evidence. Evidence that the American public and the world have a right to see.'

'Mr President, with your signature, you could waive the SF-312 NDA [non-disclosure agreement] to protect UAP whistleblowers like myself. I respectfully request that you take swift and decisive action as the nature of UAP should not be kept deeply classified,' he continued.

Descriptions from CIA reports and alleged UFO witnesses match descriptions of a claimed race of beings called 'the Grays,' the popular alien depiction in the mid-1960s

(Stock Image)

The reptilian theory, claiming shape-shifting reptilian aliens secretly control Earth, surged in popularity through conspiracy theorist David Icke in the late 20th century

(Stock Image)

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Davis claimed that all of the photos, reports and military records he saw documented incidents involving dead bodies pulled from crashed UFOs. He allegedly did not see  any information related to alien beings captured alive by the US military.

'I don't know what they eat. Most of them that I am aware were found dead. Although, I've heard that David Grusch had mentioned that there was one that he knew of that had been captured alive but I don't know anything else,' Davis explained.

Grusch has been one of the most outspoken government whistleblowers when it comes to UFOs and alien life.

The military veteran spent 14 years in the Air Force before working as an intelligence officer for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which builds and launches surveillance satellites for the Pentagon.

From 2019 to 2021, he represented NRO on the UAP Task Force, but eventually became a whistleblower after allegedly learning that elements of the US government had prevented Congressional oversight on matters related to extraterrestrials.

Grusch has also been calling for presidential immunity for all UFO whistleblowers so they can reveal what they allegedly saw while serving on classified projects tied to advanced propulsion research and national security.

The Trump Administration has released five batches of UFO files, including footage of a 'jellyfish' craft. One insider believes the government is only sharing 'bottom of the barrel stuff' with the public

Pictured: Dr Eric Davis, an astrophysicist specializing in advanced aerospace propulsion who allegedly saw classified files on crashed UFOs

Dr Davis, now a member of the Disclosure Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on advancing public disclosure of UFOs, formerly worked as a consultant for the Pentagon's UFO program starting in 2007.

He has previously spoken about crashed alien ships and extraterrestrials recovered at a congressional hearing last year.

Davis's claims, which have yet to be proven or disclosed by the Pentagon, have been supported by fellow UFO researcher and former CIA scientist Dr Hal Puthoff.

Puthoff has publicly claimed that the US government was in possession of at least ten spacecraft which had crashed or been left behind on Earth over the last 80 years.

Davis has also claimed to have spoken with the commander of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, who allegedly confirmed that the debris from the Roswell UFO incident in 1947 was taken to the base shortly after the crash.

UFO Files Hearing LIVE | Ex-UFO Investigator Alleges US Recovered Multiple Alien Bodies | World News

{ https://www.dailymail.com/sciencetech/index.html }

Mysterious structures spotted in NASA Mars images fuel claims of ancient city on the Red Planet

• READ MORE: I attended a secret UFO meeting preparing Christians for 'the truth' and saw shape-shifting beings. Trump's files hide a clue to where these 'aliens' come from 
  

By STACY LIBERATORE, US SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR

Mysterious formations on Mars have fueled extraordinary claims that an ancient city was built beside a long-lost shoreline.

The wild theory centers on the Cydonia region, where unusual hills and mesas have been compared to a human face, a pyramid and the remains of buildings.

Supporters claim NASA's Mars orbiter has captured a distinct boundary between rugged highlands and a smooth basin where an ancient body of water may once have stood.

Several of the region’s best-known formations, including the so-called Face, D&M pyramid and City, appear to be clustered along that boundary.

UFO researcher Jason Martell, a regular guest on the History Channel's show Ancient Aliens, argued that their arrangement resembled the waterfront cities built throughout human history.

Martell suggested that the Face may even have been positioned as a monument overlooking the water and nearby settlement.

But the argument is based largely on visual interpretations of the landscape rather than geological analysis or physical evidence.

There is no proof that the formations were constructed, that the proposed boundary was genuinely a shoreline or that an intelligent civilization ever inhabited Mars.

The wild theory centers on the Cydonia region, where unusual hills and mesas have been compared to a human face (pictured), a pyramid and the remains of buildings 

Supporters claim NASA's Mars orbiter has captured a distinct boundary between rugged highlands and a smooth basin where an ancient body of water may once have stood

The claim began with an apparent change in the terrain visible in orbital imagery of Cydonia.

On one side of the proposed dividing line, the ground appeared elevated, rugged and filled with prominent formations.

On the other was a flatter, smoother expanse that the writer suggested could once have been covered by water.

The search for life beyond Earth has taken another crazy twist on the web, and this time, all eyes are on a weird new photograph taken on the surface of Mars. A bizarre and anomalous rock formation spotted by a NASA rover has sparked a huge wave of speculation on social media, with conspiracy theorists and space enthusiasts claiming it could be definitive proof of ancient alien civilizations on the Red Planet.

A hand-drawn line was then added to the image to illustrate where the supposed ancient shoreline may have run.

The writer argued that the unusual formations appeared to follow this boundary in a pattern that was too striking to be accidental.

If they were artificially constructed, their location beside a possible basin would mirror the way civilizations on Earth developed around water, according to the claim.

Waterfront settlements gained access to food, transportation, trade and other resources that allowed them to grow.

In a blog post, Martell compared the proposed Cydonia settlement with cities including Venice, Alexandria, Amsterdam, Singapore, Dubai and Manhattan.

Several of the region’s best-known formations, including the so-called Face, D&M pyramid and City, appear to be clustered along that boundary

Ancient settlements such as Memphis on the Nile and Ur beside the Euphrates were also offered as examples of humanity’s tendency to build near water.

The theory further claimed that major monuments are frequently positioned where they can be seen from surrounding settlements or waterways.

From that perspective, the Face may have overlooked both the proposed basin and the elevated formations identified as a city.

However, that comparison depends on first assuming the Martian formations were monuments and buildings, the very assertion the theory is supposed to demonstrate.

The smooth basin does not, by itself, establish that an ocean or lake existed there, while a visible change in terrain can result from numerous natural geological processes.

The wild theory claims that the Face may have overlooked both the proposed basin and the elevated formations identified as a city

The proposed shoreline was also traced by hand, meaning its position depends heavily on the observer’s interpretation of the image.

No measurements, sediment analysis or geological examination were presented to confirm that the boundary was shaped by water.

Likewise, the apparent alignment of several formations does not demonstrate that they were intentionally positioned.

image credit nasa

Humans naturally recognize familiar shapes and organized patterns in random landscapes, a phenomenon known as pareidolia.

The Face, pyramid and supposed buildings may therefore be natural landforms that appear artificial when photographed under particular lighting conditions or viewed from certain angles.

The writer acknowledged not being a geologist and said specialists would need to determine whether the differences in the surface were actually caused by water.

Despite that admission, they described the visual evidence as compelling and suggested Cydonia could have represented the Martian equivalent of waterfront property.

For now, the idea remains an imaginative interpretation of orbital images, not evidence of a lost city, constructed monuments or an ancient civilization on Mars.

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Mysterious bright flashes were spotted near a top-secret military base in California over the weekend, triggering speculation over what caused the unexplained bursts in broad daylight.

Footage of the area, published on X by The Informant, shows a series of intense bursts of light erupting across the Mojave Desert before expanding glows illuminate the surrounding landscape near Edwards Air Force Base.

Edwards Air Force Base, about 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles, is known as a premier center for flight research and aircraft testing.

The lights were spotted in footage from a public ALERTCalifornia wildlife camera, part of the University of California San Diego's monitoring network.

While no official explanation has been released, X users have proposed their own theories, with some suggesting the lights are from secret weapon testing.

'This is a test,' one user shared, while another commented: 'It looks like a phenomenon coming from underground military authorities. Must investigate ASAP.' 

However, more people have suggested that the flashes are nothing more than light reflecting off the field of solar panels in the area.

The base hosts the massive Edwards & Sanborn Solar and Energy Storage Project, which spans 4,600 acres of private land and leased base property on the northwest corner of the facility.

Mysterious bright flashes were spotted near a top-secret military base in California over the weekend

The Daily Mail has contacted Edwards Air Force Base for comment.

A sprawling solar facility was unveiled on the northwestern edge of Edwards Air Force Base in February 2023.

Developed with Terra-Gen LLC, the project included nearly two million solar panels, making it the largest solar array in US Air Force history.

The facility could generate up to 1,300 megawatts of electricity for California's power grid, enough to supply more than 238,000 homes while preventing an estimated 320,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year. 

Although solar panels are designed to absorb sunlight, their glass surfaces can still produce intense momentary reflections known as glint when the sun and observer align at certain angles. 

The enormous solar farm near Edwards could therefore be one possible explanation. 

However, not everyone online is sold on the idea.

'Probably moving a secret aircraft and they're using floodlights to screen it from observers,' one user commented on the video.

Edwards Air Force Base, about 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles, is known as a premier center for flight research and aircraft testing

The footage has trigtgered speculation over what caused the unexplained bursts in broad daylight

Another said: 'All the people saying solar panels are bots you can easily tell. This is most likely some weapons test, or us getting got by a foreign state.' 

Described as an 'irreplaceable national asset,' these days Edwards Air Force Base remains at the center of a significant portion of the US Air Force's aircraft test and development efforts.

All Air Force aircraft are tested there, along with some Navy and Army aircraft, according to the base.

'Arguably, more major milestones in flight have occurred at this base than anywhere else in the world,' according to the base.

It’s run by the 412th Test Wing, which also conducts developmental testing of Air Force weapons systems, software and components before purchase by the service as well as throughout their life span. 

{ https://www.dailymail.com/sciencetech/index.html }