Artist’s illustration of comet 3I/ATLAS. On the side facing the Sun, methanol is shown in blue, while icy dust particles remain present in the gas. On the comet’s dark side, hydrogen cyanide is shown in orange.

Credit: NSF/AUI/NSF NRAO/M. Weiss

Interstellar comets form in disks of gas and dust around other stars before leaving their home systems and wandering through the Galaxy. Unlike local comets, which follow closed orbits around the Sun, interstellar travelers pass us only once before disappearing forever. The age of 3I/ATLAS dates back to the dawn of the Universe, making it a unique “time capsule.”

An international team led by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) used James Webb’s NIRSpec spectrograph for three observing sessions between August 2025 and April 2026. As the Sun warmed the comet, it released gas that carried dust and icy grains into its coma.

The upper image shows interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, photographed with the MIRI instrument on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, along with contours illustrating the distribution of different gases at the time of observation. Water vapor extends far beyond the nucleus because much of it is released from icy grains in the coma, while carbon dioxide and methane are most concentrated near the comet’s nucleus. The lower image shows the spectrum, with labels identifying features of the various gases that the telescope detected escaping from the comet.

Source: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

By splitting the comet’s light into a spectrum, scientists expected to see the standard signature of water ice: characteristic absorption bands at 1.5, 2.0, and 3 microns. But 3I/ATLAS surprised them: the bands at 1.5 and 2.0 microns were barely visible. Computer modeling showed that the comet consists of microscopic ice grains approximately 1 micron across or smaller, heavily mixed with dust. In such tiny particles, light penetrates only a short distance into the ice, suppressing the shorter-wavelength absorption bands. 

A “Twin” from the Outskirts of the Solar System

The properties of the released dust changed as the comet traveled. As 3I/ATLAS moved away from the Sun in April 2026, James Webb detected the appearance of larger icy particles. This could have resulted either from uneven solar heating or from deeper layers being exposed as the surface vaporized.

The biggest surprise was the spectral similarity between 3I/ATLAS and trans-Neptunian objects—icy bodies orbiting in the distant outskirts of our Solar System, beyond Neptune’s orbit. These distant worlds are considered remnants of primordial mate

RELATED

{ https://universemagazine.com/en/articles-en/ }

During the 1970s, a bizarre phenomenon spread across ranching regions of the American West and Midwest: cattle and other livestock were being found dead with portions of their bodies apparently removed. Some carcasses appeared to have their eyes, tongues, ears, udders, reproductive organs, rectums, or sections of the hide missing. In some cases, ranchers reported little blood around the carcass, few obvious tracks, and wounds that appeared unusually clean.

The incidents became known as cattle mutilations, and they eventually became one of the most enduring mysteries associated with UFOs and alleged extraterrestrial activity. The subject remains controversial. There is good evidence that large numbers of cattle really were found dead and in unusual condition.

There is not, however, conclusive scientific evidence that extraterrestrials caused those deaths. Investigators have proposed everything from predators and insects to deliberate human activity—and, at the far end of the spectrum, extraterrestrial biological experimentation.  Although reports of mysteriously injured or dead livestock existed before the 1970s, the phenomenon became a major national story during the mid-1970s. Colorado became one of the principal centers of the controversy.

In 1975, reports of nearly 200 cattle mutilations between April and October were made in Colorado. The story became sufficiently prominent that Colorado Senator Floyd Haskell asked the FBI to become involved. Reports subsequently appeared throughout New Mexico, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas and other areas.

Ranchers often described remarkably similar discoveries: A cow found dead in an isolated pasture. One or both eyes missing. The tongue apparently removed. Portions of the lips or jaw missing. The reproductive organs or udder damaged or removed. The rectal area apparently removed. Patches of hide missing. Little obvious blood. Few or no human footprints around the animal. No obvious indication of a struggle. In some reports, the carcass appeared to have been disturbed very little despite the supposedly extensive injuries. To ranchers accustomed to seeing animals die from disease, injury, weather, predators, and old age, some of these scenes seemed profoundly unusual.

One reason the phenomenon became so mysterious was the appearance of certain wounds. Some ranchers believed the edges of the missing tissue looked too smooth to have been produced by coyotes, wolves or other predators. Others reported what appeared to be circular or extremely precise cuts. There were also claims that certain carcasses appeared to have been completely drained of blood. These observations became central to the extraterrestrial theory.

However, an important distinction must be made: what a carcass looks like several days after death does not necessarily reveal how the animal died. As the body dries, the hide contracts. Soft tissues decompose at different rates, and insects, birds and mammals preferentially consume exposed or easily accessible tissues. The resulting damage can sometimes look surprisingly clean or surgical.

A 1989 study published in the Canadian Veterinary Journal specifically examined alleged cattle mutilations and compared reported mutilation patterns with known scavenging behavior. The researchers concluded that the Alberta cases they studied were consistent with postmortem scavenging and emphasized that scavenging must be excluded before human involvement is proposed.

Why Were the Eyes, Tongues and Genitals So Often Missing? This is one of the most interesting aspects of the mystery. Those areas are composed partly of relatively soft tissue and are attractive to scavengers. Flies and their larvae, birds, coyotes and other animals can concentrate on the eyes, mouth, anus and reproductive areas after an animal dies.

There is another important phenomenon: dehydration and shrinkage. The hide surrounding an opening can contract as the carcass dries. The resulting separation between skin and underlying tissue can produce edges that look remarkably sharp. Thus, an animal that died naturally might initially have had no unusual wound whatsoever, yet several days later its corpse could appear to have been surgically altered. This explanation doesn’t necessarily account for every historical case, but it provides a scientifically documented explanation for at least some alleged mutilations.

The cattle-mutilation controversy eventually reached the federal government. The FBI’s own records confirm that during the mid-1970s reports of livestock mutilations were causing considerable concern. The Bureau notes that it was asked to investigate, although its jurisdiction was limited, particularly to cases involving Indian lands. The FBI’s released files contain correspondence, press reports and other material concerning the phenomenon from roughly 1974–1978.

The FBI’s involvement helped give the mystery an aura of official significance. To many people, the reasoning was simple: If the FBI was investigating cattle mutilations, perhaps there really was something extraordinary happening. But an FBI investigation does not establish an extraterrestrial explanation. The Bureau was responding to reports and allegations, not confirming their cause.

The controversy continued into the late 1970s. New Mexico became particularly important because cattle mutilations were being reported in remote areas, including areas involving Native American lands. In 1979, an investigation into reported mutilations on New Mexico Indian lands received FBI attention. The federal investigation ultimately did not find evidence establishing an exotic cause. Contemporary accounts of the FBI investigation report that the Bureau concluded the examined cases appeared consistent with ordinary predators rather than an unknown mutilating force.

At approximately the same time, however, some local investigators and ranchers remained convinced that something more unusual was occurring. This disagreement became a defining feature of the entire mystery. One of the most important investigations was conducted by Kenneth M. Rommel Jr., a former FBI agent who investigated New Mexico cattle-mutilation reports. Rommel’s work ultimately supported conventional explanations involving predators and scavengers acting upon animals that had generally died naturally. This conclusion was profoundly unsatisfying to people who had personally discovered the carcasses.

A rancher might look at a dead cow and say: “I’ve seen coyotes eat cattle before. This doesn’t look like that.” That testimony is important historically because it demonstrates why the mystery persisted even after official investigations offered conventional explanations.

The biggest belief in extraterrestrials responsible comes from a hoax story perpetrated by a certain Alexander Hamilton, a rancher and a former state legislator who fictitious story was published in a newspaper called “The Yates Center Farmer’s Advocate” in Kansas on April 23, 1897, during a time when much of America claimed to see strange airships. Mister Hamilton claimed he, his son, and a hired hand at night were awakened by his barking dogs to observe a massive 300 foot long cigar shaped airship “mystery airship” with a well lit glass carriage that had 6 people inside speaking a gibberish foreign language. Then, a red cable was dropped which lassoed a heifer. Hamilton and the other men tried to cut the cable with axes but to no avail. A loud turbine on the craft was activated and the ship carried the young cow away into the sky. Hamilton claimed the cow’s butchered remains were found the4next day in an adjacent field of a neighboring farmer.

Alex Hamilton had a reputation as a prankster with a gruesome sense of humor. He invented the fable to win T^he Yuma Township’s Liars Club contest for the best sensational; outlandish lie. That club disbanded shortly after the article’s publication. The newspaper’s original editor, Ed F. Hudson admitted in a letter the4 article was a deliberate hoax. (And such hoaxes sold lots and lots of newspapers, of course.)

The extraterrestrial interpretation developed; evolved from several observations and coincidences. During the 1970s, America was experiencing enormous public interest in UFOs. The subject had already been popularized by decades of UFO reports, military investigations and books about flying saucers. When mysterious cattle deaths began receiving national publicity, some investigators naturally asked: “Could UFOs be responsible?”

The theory proposed that extraterrestrial visitors might be using cattle for biological research. According to different versions of the hypothesis, aliens supposedly removed specific tissues to: Study bovine biology. Examine blood. Obtain genetic material. Test terrestrial diseases. Study reproductive organs. Analyze digestive systems. Monitor environmental contaminants.
Conduct biological experiments. Investigate Earth’s food animals.

Some theories proposed that cattle were being temporarily abducted, examined aboard UFOs and then returned to Earth. Others suggested that extraterrestrials were killing the animals directly on the ground. But, there has never been scientifically verified evidence demonstrating that such activities occurred.

One of the most dramatic claims concerned blood. Witnesses sometimes said that a mutilated cow had been completely drained of blood, seemingly without leaving a pool of blood on the ground. This became one of the strongest arguments for an extraordinary explanation. But forensic and veterinary considerations complicate this observation. After death, blood does not necessarily remain where a person expects to see it. It can settle internally through gravity, undergo clotting and decomposition, and be consumed or altered by insects and microorganisms. Furthermore, a carcass lying in the field for days can look dramatically different from a freshly killed animal. Consequently, the absence of a large pool of blood does not by itself demonstrate that an animal was somehow drained by an extraterrestrial device.

The Strange Reports of Helicopters. Another recurring element of the cattle-mutilation mythology involved unidentified helicopters. During the 1970s, ranchers sometimes reported seeing helicopters near areas where mutilated cattle were later discovered. This produced another theory: perhaps mysterious government or military helicopters were secretly collecting biological samples. The story became particularly attractive because the United States was in the midst of the Cold War, when secret military programs and classified experiments were very real.

Some researchers therefore proposed that cattle mutilations might have been associated with secret government biological or chemical experiments rather than extraterrestrials. Again, no conclusive evidence established that cattle mutilations were part of a secret nationwide military program. The Government-Experiment Theory. The government explanation became a kind of halfway point between conventional explanations and extraterrestrials.

Some theories proposed that cattle were being used to monitor: Radiation. Chemical contamination. Biological warfare agents. Environmental pollutants. New diseases. Agricultural experiments. The idea was attractive because cattle are excellent biological indicators of environmental conditions. But the theory encountered the same basic problem as the extraterrestrial explanation: there was no convincing chain of physical evidence connecting the carcasses to such programs.

Another possibility was that some mutilations were deliberate acts by people. Possible motives suggested over the years included: Pranks. Criminal acts. Satanic or occult activity. Sexual violence toward animals. Scientific experimentation. Hoaxes. Attempts to conceal ordinary livestock deaths. The difficulty with this explanation is that the reported incidents varied greatly. Some could conceivably have resulted from human activity, while others may simply have been natural deaths followed by scavenging. It is therefore probably a mistake to assume that every reported mutilation had one single cause.

Newspaper stories about mysterious cattle quickly became part of the larger UFO and paranormal culture. The controversy did not simply disappear when the major investigations ended. During the 1980s, books, magazines, television programs and UFO researchers continued discussing cattle mutilations. The subject became closely associated with the broader UFO phenomenon. Later stories about mysterious livestock deaths also helped preserve the legend.

By then, cattle mutilations had become a classic component of UFO folklore alongside: Alien abductions. Crop circles. UFO crashes. Secret government facilities. Missing-time experiences.
Strange lights in the sky. Alleged underground alien bases.

The Most Important Question: Did Extraterrestrials Really Do It? This is where the historical evidence and the legend separate. There is strong evidence that people really did discover dead cattle in unusual conditions. There is also strong evidence that at least some apparent mutilations can be explained through decomposition, insects, birds and terrestrial scavengers. The 1989 veterinary study is particularly important because it experimentally and observationally addressed how cattle carcasses can acquire mutilation-like characteristics. But there is no scientifically confirmed evidence that extraterrestrials caused cattle mutilations.

No alien spacecraft has been recovered in connection with a cattle case. No extraterrestrial instrument has been conclusively identified. No verified extraterrestrial biological material has been demonstrated. No controlled investigation has established an extraterrestrial mechanism for removing the tissues. And no reliable chain of physical evidence has connected a particular mutilated cow to a UFO. That does not mean every historical case has been perfectly explained. It means that “unexplained” and “extraterrestrial” are not the same thing.

Cattle mutilations remain fascinating because they occupy an unusual territory between established facts and unresolved questions. The established facts include the existence of numerous reports, the discovery of genuinely dead and damaged livestock, and extensive concern among ranchers and investigators. The FBI’s own archives document how widespread the controversy became during the 1970s. The unresolved part concerns individual cases in which investigators could not determine exactly what happened.

That uncertainty created an enormous space for speculation. For UFO believers, cattle mutilations became possible evidence of extraterrestrial biological experimentation. But even in alleged cases of human abduction from extraterrestrials who have been returned; the humans were not subject horrible mutilations and were returned whole, living, and generally in good health. For skeptics, they became an example of how ordinary biological processes can appear extraordinarily mysterious when viewed after the fact.

For many ranchers, however, the issue was much more personal: they had found their animals dead in their own fields, sometimes under circumstances that they found impossible to explain. But, very highly knowledgeable people of various studies, some of science, some controversial,  did offer their explanations, even, at least, at times as their own personal theories which may or may not be correct.

The cattle-mutilation phenomenon of the 1970s and 1980s therefore has two histories. One is the physical history of dead livestock, decomposition, scavengers, investigations and disputed forensic observations, which the available evidence strongly supports. The other is the cultural history of UFOs, extraterrestrials, government secrecy and the belief that something intelligent and unknown might have been visiting rural America, which requires very strong evidence.

RELATED

{ https://mysticsciences.com/ }

Dems gearing up to seize UFO disclosure issue from GOP after midterms

Democrats are preparing to seize the UFO disclosure issue from the Republicans and the Trump administration, accusing them of dragging their feet on promises of transparency, according to one House leader.

The Dems are gearing up to form their own UFO caucus and select committee to supplant the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets led by Florida Republican Anna Paulina Luna — if they take control of the House after the midterms, insiders told The Post.

Rep. Andre Carson (D-Ind.), who chaired the first congressional hearing in 2022 on UFOs, has long pushed to bring the subject into the mainstream on Capitol Hill.

Rep. Andre Carson (D-Ind.) claimed the Trump administration is holding back critical information on the subject of UFO disclosure.
Mattie Neretin – CNP

“Unfortunately, the current administration has not been fully transparent on UAP and has slow walked several of the statutory requirements Congress established for UAP disclosure,” Carson said in a statement to The Post.

Carson said the report could shed light on decades of government investigations into UFO sightings — including whether classified programs were kept from Congress.

“I’m calling for the immediate release of this report, which is expected to provide additional findings of historical military and intelligence investigations of UAP, including how incidents were investigated, the role of classified programs, and whether relevant activities were appropriately disclosed to Congress,” the statement concluded.

A digital rendering prepared by the FBI in 2026 depicts a reported incident potentially involving an unidentified anomalous phenomenon near Colorado Springs.
U.S. Department of War

Carson’s office did not clarify what specific file they were referring to, which statutory deadline had been missed or where it is being held.

Republican insiders are worried that the Democrats could eclipse what could be a defining achievement of the Trump administration by taking ownership of the disclosure issue.

UFO whistleblower David Grusch has warned that the Trump administration needs to act fast if it wants to secure complete disclosure.

“It has to happen before Trump leaves because I just don’t trust another president to follow through on the president’s directive,” Grusch told podcaster Joe Rogan in a Sept. 30 appearance.

Rep. Luna did not respond to a request for comment.

{ https://nypost.com/us-news/ }

'Black triangle' UFOs swarm British skies as they're seen gliding over housing estates

Mystery “black triangles” are haunting our skies with nearly 2,000 sightings logged in the past five years by UFO Identified researchers.

BY Nadeem Badshah and Richard Ault

UFOs have been seen over the UK

(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Manchester is the latest city to be hit by a UFO epidemic that’s gripping the UK, experts have said. Mystery “black triangles” are haunting our skies with nearly 2,000 sightings logged in the past five years by UFO Identified researchers.

They include 164 reports of the strange wedge-shaped objects, silently gliding over housing estates and farmland before zooming off at incredible speeds.

In the most recent report on July 22, witnesses spotted a “large black triangle” boasting a red light hovering over Stretford in Greater Manchester for more than 30 minutes.

Ash Ellis, founder of UFO Identified, said: “There are thousands of people across the UK who have seen something they could not readily explain, but the reports are often difficult to find once initial interest has passed.”

Manchester is the latest city impacted(Image:

Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Earlier this year, a “perfect triangle” was seen speeding across the sky above Chesterfield, Derbyshire.

Other spooky incidents include a “black V-shaped boomerang” spotted over the Fylde coast in Lancashire and a soundless black wedge above Exmouth, Devon.

Orbs, spheres and “star-like” sightings make up the bulk of British sightings, researchers said.

It comes after Pentagon chiefs in the US recently unveiled their latest release of declassified UFO files.

According to the report, a black triangular object hovered silently 300 feet in the air before whisking away into a canyon at high speed without leaving a trail.

Elsewhere, ex-US president Barack Obama has said the chances Earth has been visited by aliens is "low".

He said: "They're real but I haven't seen them.

"They're not being kept in Area 51. There's no underground facility unless there's this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States."

{ https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/ }

The former head of the Pentagon's UFO investigation office is pouring cold water on a mysterious black triangular object reportedly spotted by FBI personnel, telling Fox News Digital that the newly released account lacks the evidence needed to determine what the witnesses actually saw.

Sean Kirkpatrick, the former director of the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), said strange sightings detailed in recently declassified government records should be viewed through an evidence-based lens rather than as proof of something extraterrestrial.

The records include a 2026 sighting involving FBI personnel who reported seeing a dark, nonreflective triangular object with no visible engines, exhaust or conventional propulsion system rise above a mountain ridge before rapidly disappearing into a canyon.

• NEW TRUMP UFO FILE DUMP INCLUDES MILITARY FOOTAGE OF MYSTERIOUS STAR-SHAPED OBJECT

A separate AARO report described a matte-black triangular object that climbed about 200 to 300 feet above the ridgeline, hovered for roughly 20 seconds and then appeared to accelerate almost instantly.

An image released with a 2026 FBI report depicts a black triangular object above mountainous terrain. Federal agents reported seeing a silent, triangular object hover above a ridgeline before accelerating into a canyon. Authorities have not confirmed whether the image is an actual photograph or a reconstruction.

 (Department of War)

Kirkpatrick, who spent nearly 30 years in the Department of Defense and intelligence community, said the witnesses' FBI backgrounds alone are not enough to validate what they reported seeing.

• NASA CHIEF PULLS BACK CURTAIN ON TRUMP UFO FILES AFTER BIZARRE FINDS SURFACE IN BURIED FED RECORDS

"There's a lot of people that like to point to folks as being credible witnesses and therefore their testimony must be taken at face value," Kirkpatrick told Fox News Digital. "And that is a classic case of authority bias."

Kirkpatrick said the lack of photographs or other supporting evidence makes it difficult to determine what, if anything, the witnesses encountered.

• NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON DARES GOVERNMENT TO 'JUST SHOW THE ALIEN,' AS DISCLOSURE FERVOR CONTINUES TO GROW

"Some of this is just, ‘hey, I saw something, I don't know what it is,’" Kirkpatrick said. "People sometimes have a tendency to fill that gap with very extreme beliefs that have time and again proven to be inaccurate and fallible."

Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, the director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, testified before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities on April 19, 2023.

(U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services)

He pointed to advanced aerospace technology as one possible explanation for some triangular sightings, comparing them to reports involving the F-117 stealth aircraft before the technology became widely known.

• PENTAGON FILES REVEAL AGENTS' REPORTS OF 'ORBS LAUNCHING ORBS' NEAR SENSITIVE US SECURITY SITE

AARO approached UAP reports by examining three broad possibilities, Kirkpatrick said: advanced technology used by a foreign adversary, ordinary objects or sensor effects that are misunderstood, or an extraterrestrial explanation.

"You've got 3 very distinct buckets," Kirkpatrick said.

• PENTAGON’S NEW UFO FILE RELEASE LOGS NEAR-MISS AS ‘SUPER-HEATED’ ORBS APPROACH US HELICOPTER

Each possibility has specific signatures that investigators can compare against data collected from a sighting, he explained.

"When you get data from an observation, actual data, not just a story, you compare that data to those signatures," Kirkpatrick said.

A screenshot of video footage from an alleged unidentified anomalous phenomenon (UAP) sighting in the northeastern United States in July 2025, which was detailed in files released by the DOW and originally obtained by the FBI.

(DOW/FBI)

• UFO INVESTIGATOR WARNS TRUMP DISCLOSURE COULD HAND SENSITIVE MILITARY SECRETS TO CHINA, RUSSIA

"None of the data that we saw and reviewed and analyzed matches an alien hypothesis theory," he added.

Most of the cases his office examined involved ordinary objects or phenomena that sensors were not designed to recognize. A small number showed signs of possible foreign adversary involvement and were referred to national security officials for further investigation.

• SECOND BATCH OF UFO FILES SET TO BE RELEASED AFTER LAWMAKER TEASED ‘HOLY CRAP’ MOMENT

But the word "unresolved," which appears in government UAP records, does not necessarily mean investigators encountered something inexplicable, Kirkpatrick cautioned.

"When we say a case is unresolved, it generally means there is no data or there is insufficient data to actually analyze it," Kirkpatrick said. "And so you can't conclude one way or the other."

• LONG-HIDDEN UFO INFORMATION AT CENTER OF TRUMP PUSH TO FREE FORMER OFFICIALS

Investigators may have an idea of what an object likely was based on similar cases, he said, but without sufficient raw data, they cannot reach a definitive conclusion.

Kirkpatrick said some cases released publicly as unresolved had previously been resolved by AARO.

"Many of these cases, we did resolve, and I even briefed several of them to Congress with the answers and what they were and what they were likely to be," Kirkpatrick said.

He said Pentagon leadership directed AARO to remove language explaining what investigators had determined before some cases were released publicly as unresolved.

An Air Force intelligence report dated Aug. 28, 1952, documents claims by three Boy Scouts who reported seeing a silent, silver object moving faster than a conventional jet near California's Santa Catalina Island.

(Department of War)

"Pentagon leadership had told AARO to remove all of the resolution language and put these cases out as unresolved," Kirkpatrick said. "Letting, and I quote, ‘the people make up their own mind,’ which is the absolute worst thing that you could do because all you've done is continue to just feed the flames of conspiracy with a whole bunch of nonsense."

Kirkpatrick did not specify when the directive was issued or which Pentagon leaders were involved.

The War Department separately told Fox News Digital that it is not providing assessments of the newly released files, allowing the public to reach its own conclusions.

"We are not providing any comment or assessment on the files overall or on any specific file, so that the American people can make up their own minds regarding the files," a War Department official said on background.

The department also confirmed that images accompanying the FBI triangular-object report were illustrations rather than photographs of the object itself.

Kirkpatrick said "unidentified" carries a different meaning than "unresolved," though the terms are sometimes used interchangeably.

Read the report here:

"Unidentified generally means we can see and characterize an object and we have data to support that characterization, but we don't know what it is," he said.

He pointed to objects shot down over North America following the discovery of a Chinese surveillance balloon in 2023 as examples of objects that were initially unidentified before investigators determined they were balloons.

Other records released by the government stretch back decades, including reports of strange objects near California's Santa Catalina Island in the 1950s.

Kirkpatrick said historical sightings must also be considered alongside the technology that existed at the time, pointing to early high-altitude balloon programs as a possible explanation for some reports of bright objects in the sky.

Read the Catalina Island report here:

• SEND US A TIP

"There are thousands of these reports," Kirkpatrick said. "And so even if there were alien visitations to Earth, there are not thousands of them."

• GOT A TIP?

The possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe should not be confused with evidence that extraterrestrial beings have visited Earth, Kirkpatrick said.

• LISTEN TO THE NEW 'CRIME & JUSTICE WITH DONNA ROTUNNO' PODCAST

"It's statistically invalid to believe that's not going to be the case, but the probability of them being here is just as statistically unrealistic," he said.

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

Is the truth really out there? Studying UAP sightings

On a May evening back in 1950, Evelyn Trent had just finished feeding her rabbits when, she claims, she looked up and saw a slow-moving, metallic disk-shaped object hovering above her farm. Though some dismissed it as a hoax, her account was added to a growing list of unexplained events that sparked America's first UFO craze.

At the annual McMenamins UFO Festival in McMinnville, Ore., just a few miles from Evelyn Trent's farm, there are costumes, a parade, and some theories that might be generously described as fringe: "Well, based on what I've read, it could be us from the future visiting us from, you know, the past," said one attendee, "and then it could also be trans-dimensional or inter-dimensional beings." 

Fringe, but definitely something Americans seem interested in. According to a CBS News Poll, nearly one in five Americans (17%) has seen a UFO, which has led to an explosion in podcasts and documentaries on the topic.

CBS News

Matthew Szydagis, one of the UFO festival's invited speakers, teaches physics at the State University of New York at Albany. He spoke to us about Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (or UAPs), or what we used to call UFOs back in the old days: "I think the possibility that at least some small fraction of UFOs or UAPs represent a non-human intelligence," Szydagis said. "That will be the greatest discovery in human history. So, of course that's going to fire people up and get their imaginations going."

Szydagis would like to believe in aliens, but he also knows that extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, especially in the world of "UFOlogy," where the more extreme the claims, the more attention they get.

"We still don't have definitive evidence," Szydagis said. "We haven't been provided with a dead alien body, for instance, although claims of the existence have been made. But I think we have enough indirect evidence to say that the existence of non-human intelligence is no longer laughable, that it's not irrational."

Szydagis is part of a new Scientific Advisory Council, established by the Trump Administration, to study UAPs. The person in charge of that council is none other than respected Harvard professor Avi Loeb, former chair of the university's astronomy department.

"Now, there are some objects the U.S. government cannot figure out," Loeb said. "I would like to figure them out. Because at the very least, as an American citizen, I will be helping the Pentagon and the intelligence community fulfill their mission of, if these are human-made technologies, if they come from adversarial nations, then I can help them identify what they are and where they came from."

The things Loeb and the other council members are trying to identify are the many sightings over the years of lights and objects and movements in the sky that defy simple explanation. Someone who's experienced it firsthand? Former U.S. Navy pilot Ryan Graves, whose testimony in front of Congress got the nation's attention back in 2023, when he recounted an experience during a training mission ten miles off the coast of Virginia Beach: "Two F-18 Super Hornets were split by a UAP," Graves said. "The object, described as a dark grey or a black cube inside of a clear sphere, came within 50 feet of the lead aircraft."

For many people, seeing no-nonsense U.S. military personnel calmly describing things they'd seen and couldn't explain, along with actual images, made the whole thing seem a lot less crazy. Graves told us, "We were seeing these things, we were nearly hitting them, and yet we're still unwilling to talk about them in our safety briefs and incorporate them into the conversation."

Graves was also recently added to the Advisory Council, tasked with getting to the bottom of things, and there are a lot of things that have been released in the last eight months: seven tranches of first-person accounts, photographs, and lots of grainy video, more than 155,000 pages of files overall.

But not enough of the good stuff, says Graves: "What's being released is not satisfactory to me. What you are seeing are very short clips from infrared sensors aboard different platforms. And ultimately, these are not the high-end sophisticated tools that are used by pilots in order to make critical decisions about whether [an] object in the air is hostile, whether it's a decoy, whether it is a threat or not. And so, I think we're left with more ambiguity."

Loeb said, "The mistake that is often made about science is the belief that, 'Oh, the data will come and guide us.' But the problem is that to collect the data, you need to put in effort. And it's often a heroic effort to get the high-quality data."

Questions linger about what exactly the government knows about UFOs, after former Air Force intelligence officer David Grusch testified to Congress that he was told of the existence of recovered UFOs.

When Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) asked whether possession of a crashed craft also meant possession of the bodies of the craft's pilot(s), Grusch replied, "As I have stated publicly already in my News Nation interview, biologics came with some of these recoveries, yeah."

Of course, evidence for all of this is "classified," leading some ufologists to call Grusch and others making claims about government conspiracies "Trust Me Bros."

Loeb, who's floated a number of controversial theories on possible alien life, says the Advisory Council is working to get access to as much information as possible, starting with what's been publicly released. "My role is really simple, because it's like a detective," he said. "And the worst that can happen to a detective is that the detective is starved of data. So, if I don't have data, the quality of my deliberations [is] poor. I mean, only in politics, with very little data, you can make a huge story!"

For his part, Ryan Graves started an organization called Americans for Safe Aerospace, which encourages everyone (but especially pilots) to share their stories of UAPs. And of course, he's got a podcast.

"Recently I've been astounded, in fact, that almost everyone is willing to talk about this," said Graves. "It is fighter pilots. It is commercial aviators. And I think that really speaks to how this conversation has changed over the past few years."

Asked whether he believes he'll get answers within his lifetime, Graves replied, "My lifetime, yes. We are moving towards a point in time where we're perhaps not going to get every answer we want, but we're going to potentially have the confirmation that something truly strange is happening."

Until that conformation, the truth will have to remain (as they say) out there.

• Story produced by Anthony Laudato. Editor: Ed Givnish. 

RELATED

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

Town-terrorising 'werewolf' connected to UFOs 'exposed' in 13-year-long investigation

A retired teacher claims a 13-year, data-driven probe into the 'Beast of Bray Road' has unearthed eerie evidence of a 7ft 'werewolf' linked to disturbing UFO-like lights

BY  Andréa Oldereide - Senior Reporter

A “werewolf” has been reportedly terrorising residents in a quiet town. Now, a 13-year investigation has seemingly uncovered a bizarre link to UFOs.

The creature is known as the Beast of Bray Road, a hairy, wolf-like figure said to stalk the lanes around Elkhorn, Wisconsin, USA since the 1980s. Retired teacher Lee Hampel, who owns a 35-acre farm along Bray Road, has spent 13 years compiling what he believes is serious evidence, approaching the mystery with a data-led mindset shaped by his background teaching maths and computer science.

According to an investigative report by NewsNation, Hampel has amassed thousands of files during his long-running probe, including a huge collection of images from motion-activated cameras set up across his land.

He reportedly claims to have gathered more than 100,000 photos across around 200 SD cards using trail cams. Moreover, one of his key pieces of evidence is said to be an iPhone photo showing a dark figure standing near a cornfield.

Hampel says a scale analysis of the image suggested the figure was around 7ft tall with shoulders roughly 3.5ft wide, News Nation reported. If accurate, these measurements would be far larger than a typical wolf or coyote.

Additionally, Hampel reportedly says he has personally seen the beast three times and managed to take plaster casts of its tracks. The prints, he claims, show a massive five-toed, seven-pad footprint that doesn’t match known local wildlife.

A 13-year investigation has seemingly uncovered a bizarre link to UFOs

He even took one 3.5-inch track to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, but says they brushed it off as an abnormal coyote. Hampel also admitted he tried to lure the creature out by leaving roadkill - including deer and raccoons - on his property, as per News Nation.

He reportedly claims the carcasses didn’t just disappear, but were found “surgically” gutted and stacked neatly in piles, with no human footprints around to suggest a person was responsible. Hampel now also believes the Beast of Bray Road may be tied to UFO activity after repeatedly noticing strange electronic failures right as the meat vanished.

Rather than capturing clear footage of a predator dragging off heavy carcasses, he claims his cameras recorded unexplained flashing orbs, bright white lights and what he described as a thick “black mist”. He also claims the heavy animals seemed to vanish without triggering motion sensors.

Are werewolves real?

(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)

According to Hampel, there are strange objects in the night sky blinking out of existence. “Elkhorn doesn’t like to talk about it, so we don’t really know how often it is seen,” Hampel told the Chicago Tribune.

“But science, of course, is full of unknown things.” He further said: “Maybe in 75 years, we’ll know for sure.

“People will say, ‘Oh, back in 2026, Lee Hampel had all sorts of information on that dogman.’ I have a neighbour who has lived here 50 years, never seen it.

“But he’s seeing all these odd tracks and tells me he doesn’t know what’s making them. Well, I know.

“It’s the Beast of Bray Road!”

{ https://www.dailystar.co.uk/ }

UK UFO sightings mapped as 'black triangles' worry Pentagon officials

Hundreds of UFOs have been seen in Yorkshire, including six in Huddersfield.

BY Richard Aultand Elizabeth Mackley Content Editor

From "star-like" phenomena, oval orbs and strange "perfect triangles", the skies can be full of bizarre sights.

But a certain few have triggered security concerns in America after peculiar black triangles were seen speeding above military sites - and identical UFOs have been haunting British skies.

Nearly 2,000 Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) have been documented and logged in the UK during the last five years by research group UFO Identified. Now, a searchable interactive map allows you to explore every unexplained encounter logged in your area between 2021 and 2026.

Hundreds of those recorded sightings have taken place in Yorkshire - including six in the Huddersfield area. Around 12 sightings took place in the Sheffield area while Leeds played host to 19.

You can find out the weird and wonderful things which have been spotted in the skies near you using the interactive map below. Just plug in your postcode to find out how many unidentified phenomenon have been spotted near you.

Many of the sightings reported in this country closely mirror sightings reported across the Atlantic. The Pentagon recently published its latest release of declassified files on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP – the American term for UFO), following an executive order signed by Donald Trump.

Among the documents is an account from two federal agents stationed at a US “sensitive national security site” in June 2026. According to the report, a matte-black triangular object with an estimated 15-foot wingspan hovered silently roughly 300 feet in the air for 20 seconds before descending into a canyon at high speed without leaving an exhaust trail.

While orbs, spheres and “star-like” sightings make up the bulk of British sightings, researchers have logged 164 reports of similar wedge-shaped objects – meaning roughly one in every 12 sightings involves a distinctive triangle. Witnesses across the country have reported seeing dark, matte triangles gliding soundlessly at low altitude over housing estates, farmland, and coastal areas before darting away at incredible speeds, just like the sighting made by federal agents in the USA.

The most recent was on July 22 of this year, when a “large black triangle” featuring a red light on each point was witnessed hovering over Stretford in Greater Manchester for more than 30 minutes. Earlier this year, a “perfect triangle” was seen speeding across the sky above Chesterfield in Derbyshire, a “black V-shaped boomerang” was spotted over the Fylde coast in Lancashire, and a soundless black wedge above Exmouth in Devon.

Our map reveals hotspot areas across the UK where clusters of UFOs have been spotted above Greater Manchester, London, Essex, Lancashire, Cheshire, Merseyside, Kent and West Yorkshire. The accounts have been gathered by UFO Identified to create a central, searchable public archive, called the UK UFO Database, to help researchers identify patterns.

Ash Ellis, founder of UFO Identified, said: “There are thousands of people across the UK who have seen something they could not readily explain, but the reports are often difficult to find once the initial interest has passed. We wanted to build a serious, easy-to-use public archive that keeps those accounts accessible and allows people to look for patterns for themselves.”

• To examine the UK UFO Database, or report sightings, visit: https://ukufodatabase.co.uk/

{ https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/local-news/ }

However, the professor noted, a new analysis of such events, including the well-known “Tunguska” cosmic airburst that exploded over Siberia in 1908, suggests they could be even more devastating than previously believed, motivating researchers like himself to prepare for such “what-if” scenarios, however unlikely.

Halloween Fireball Cosmic Airbursts Are Real, But Rare

Earth crosses paths with the Taurid meteor stream twice a year, producing brilliant flashes of light in the sky. During the fall season, media reports often call these atmospheric meteor airbursts “Halloween Fireballs” because of their seasonal proximity to the spooky October 31^st holiday.

Most Halloween Fireballs pose no real danger to people or structures on the ground. However, the 1908 crossing included what researchers believe was a “Taurid swarm.” One comparatively large object within that meteor swarm slammed into Earth’s atmosphere before exploding above the Podkamennaya Tunguska River region of Siberia in a brilliant fireball.

Although that cosmic airburst occurred over a relatively unpopulated region, the damage caused by the high-energy aerial explosion stoked fears that a returning Taurid swarm could deliver one or more life-threatening Halloween Fireballs in the future.

By Leonid Kulik, the expedition to the Tunguska event.

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

During his presentation, “Will Tunguska’s Evil Twin Return on Halloween 2026? Science and Skepticism in a Clickbait World,” Boslough highlighted the science behind the possibility, including the real potential return of a Taurid swarm.

For example, previously published models suggest the Taurid swarm is in an approximate 61-year resonance with Earth, placing the next event in 2030. However, the professor said the models also showed that the fall crossing would be 4 years earlier, “within a few weeks of October 31, 2026.”

This ominous date, combined with memories of Tunguska, has once again fueled fears and media speculation that this year’s Halloween Fireball swarm may include a hidden meteor that could cause a deadly cosmic airburst over a more populated region.

To address those fears, while also offering some hope that future events will help researchers spot potentially dangerous Taurid space rocks before they can cause any damage, Boslough reached out to The Debrief and helped separate media-driven ghost stories from potentially real Halloween horrors.

“Such Events Are More Dangerous Than We Had Previously Thought”

According to the UNM professor, new research has shed more light on the types of airbursts caused by Tunguska-type asteroids that “explode in the air but don’t hit the ground.” This includes supercomputer simulations by planetary defense researchers that have produced potentially horrifying conclusions.

“We have learned that such events are more dangerous than we had previously thought, because they are directional explosions,” Boslough told The Debrief.

In his presentation abstract, the UNM professor explained that the mainstream narrative for the past century has suggested that had the Tunguska space rock arrived 4 hours and 47 minutes later, it would have destroyed St. Petersburg. However, he added, while intentionally mimicking the clickbait style some media reports use to overstate the actual risk, “new orbital calculations have revealed the stunning truth.”

“If it had been mere minutes late, it could have destroyed a city in the US or Canada,” the professor explained. “A couple (of) minutes after that, it would have missed Earth altogether, only to return and menace our planet in the future. That time could be now.”

Boslough told The Debrief that if a Halloween Fireball-style cosmic airburst is large enough, it can incinerate everything on the planet’s surface directly beneath it “like a cosmic blowtorch.” He also noted that there are a million Tunguska-sized asteroids for every dinosaur killer, with most remaining undiscovered.

“One fear is that we still don’t know how many (if any) could be hidden in the Taurid stream that strikes Earth every year at this time,” Boslough explained, adding that “these small ones dominate the risk.”

The Probability is ‘Very Close to Zero’

Although scientists agree that another Tunguska-sized airburst is certainly possible, Boslough told The Debrief that the mathematical chances of a Tunguska-level event this October 31st are far lower than some more sensational media reports suggest.

“The probability that the Tunguska object had an evil twin that will create a cosmic blowtorch that destroys Denver (or any other city) on Halloween is very close to zero,” he explained, including the highly populated Colorado city as an example of the cities his team modeled for a possible airburst scenario.

Boslough said that such horrifying Halloween Fireballs events “are precisely the types of hypothetical scenarios we discuss at our Planetary Defense Conference every two years to practice our preparedness and mitigation planning.”

When addressing the chances of a Tunguska-level airburst scenario during the next Taurid swarms scheduled to swing by Earth six and ten years from now, respectively, the UNM professor’s conference abstract explained that the Taurid resonant swarm model does “predict close approaches of a hypothetical swarm in 2032 and 2036.”

Although the chances of a catastrophic Halloween Fireball during either event are also extremely low, the professor told The Debrief that a 2032 swarm could offer astronomers a chance to hunt for potential future dangers, including space rocks capable of producing deadly airburst scenarios.

“The good news is that new and more powerful telescopes for discovering and tracking asteroids will be in operation by 2032, when the next time the hypothetical Taurid swarm gets close to Earth,” Boslough explained,” and can provide advance warning if there’s a Tunguska-sized object on the way.”

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

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

Life after death mystery deepens as scientists find signs of consciousness in 'clinically dead' patients

• READ MORE: I bled to death. As an atheist, I expected oblivion... but I entered the afterlife for six minutes and saw proof of what God is REALLY like. Everything on Earth is fake

By STACY LIBERATORE, US SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR

What happens after death remains one of humanity's greatest and most enduring mysteries.

Now, researchers have found signs of consciousness in patients whose hearts had stopped for several minutes, bringing scientists closer to uncovering the truth about life after death.

More than 140 patients, who were at risk of cardiac arrest, across 13 hospitals in the UK and Spain, volunteered for an experiment that would see music played through a speaker during the first two minutes of resuscitation if their hearts stopped. 

After recovering, the survivors completed a ten-item memory test that mixed sounds played during resuscitation with others that had not been played.

The group hearing nature sounds, including rain and birdsong, and one hearing newly created melodies scored above chance, while a third group hearing the same melodies under different experimental conditions performed around guessing level. 

The findings suggest that 'consciousness may be preserved even during states of reversible clinical death,' the team wrote.

Lower brain oxygen readings were also associated with better recall, raising further questions about how the mind processes information under extreme physical stress.

The findings lend support to the idea that consciousness can outlast the heartbeat, a possibility central to the debate over life after death. 

Scientists have found new clues about what happens moments after death 

The study focused on vivid experiences people remembered from periods when their medical condition suggested they should have been unconscious. 

Here, 'clinical death' means the heart had stopped, but the person could still be revived. CPR can supply some blood to the brain, so cardiac arrest does not necessarily mean that all brain activity has ended. 

The work involved teams from Comillas Pontifical University in Spain, Manchester Metropolitan University and Liverpool John Moores University in the UK.

The experiment used three groups, with sounds played through a speaker connected to a laptop during resuscitation.

One group heard familiar natural noises, including birdsong, rain and crashing waves.

Another heard newly created melodies, designed to reduce the risk of patients confusing the experiment with something they remembered from earlier life.

For both groups, a quantum computer helped decide whether each sound would be played or withheld. 

It used entanglement, which links the computer's quantum bits, called qubits, so their measurement results are connected. 

Those results acted as switches controlling sound playback, allowing researchers to test whether this method of selecting sounds was linked to better recall. 

A third group heard the new melodies through a system that did not use entanglement.

Afterward, survivors completed a ten-item recognition test containing five sounds that had been played and five that had not.

The first two groups averaged around six or seven correct answers out of ten, while the comparison group scored about five, the number expected from guessing. 

Read More

I died for 32 seconds and saw the future... then I came back with a terrifying warning for humanity 

The researchers found that lower brain oxygen readings were also associated with more intense near-death experiences and better recognition of sounds played during resuscitation.

That raises a puzzling question about how the brain processes information under extreme physical stress, when a patient appears unconscious and their circulation has severely deteriorated.

The paper points to earlier research that recorded bursts of organized activity in dying brains, including electrical patterns associated with conscious processing.

Such activity could potentially help explain experiences reported by some survivors, including seeing light, recalling scenes from their lives or feeling unusually clear-headed.

The authors suggested that a severely stressed brain might briefly preserve enough activity to support experiences or memories, even as its normal functions begin to fail.

For patients and families, the most immediate implication is that a lack of outward response may not tell the whole story about someone's experience.

The authors argue that medical teams should consider the possibility of residual awareness and communicate respectfully while trying to revive a patient.

'Respectful verbal communication is also warranted during resuscitation, as patients may later recall events or dialogue,' they wrote.

They also recommend asking survivors about unusual memories and offering psychological support when those experiences are distressing, helping patients discuss something that may feel profoundly meaningful or difficult to explain.

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

NASA celebrates Halloween with its spookiest photos of the universe, including a jack-o'-lantern sun and an evil eye nebula

By JAMIE BOYS, REPORTER

Nasa is celebrating Halloween this year by releasing its spookiest photos of the universe.

The space agency revealed several astral oddities on Wednesday ahead of October 31. 

Skull shapes and ghostly eyes are among a gallery of Halloween-themed eerie space sightings.

One picture captured the Sun appearing like a giant jack-o'-lantern – with its active regions forming what looks like a carved pumpkin. 

Another pictures an evil eye. The turquoise-green eye-shaped circle is a young planetary nebula that is around 8,000 light years away

Showcasing four eye-like observations, the agency wrote: 'Do you ever get the feeling you're being watched? 

'Even though all of these cosmic objects are millions of light-years away, they can still send shivers down our spines when we find them staring back at us.' 

Active regions on the Sun combined to look something like a jack-o-lantern pumpkin's face on

A haunting image from the orbiting Chandra Observatory reveals the Perseus Cluster of Galaxies in x-rays. NASA say describes it as 'Like eyes in a skull, two dark bubbles flank a bright central source of x-ray emission'.

Looking like a spectral eye, this is an image of MyCn18, a young planetary nebula located about 8,000 light-years away, taken with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) aboard the Hubble Space Telescope (HST)

An 'eerie' new mid-infrared view of the Pillars of Creation was revealed in time for Halloween

An image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveals the vibrant green and red Ghost Head Nebula

NASA's Viking 1 Orbiter spacecraft photographed this region, which resembles a face, in the northern latitudes of Mars on July 25, 1976

RELATED

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

UFO Nearly Hits Space Station, Seen From DragonX Capsule Oct 13, 2026, UAP Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Oct 13, 2026

Location of sighting: Earths orbit at ISS

NASA Source video:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jPQmjMWy9I

Guys, you wont believe this, but its all true. I was watching video by NASA of the dragonX capsule as it was traveling to the spacestation and then...as the capsule showed video of the space station...something shot past it slowly. Coming within 25 meters of hitting the space station. This UFO was about 7 meters across and could have destroyed the station had it hit it. The crew on board the DragonX said nothing about it, not NASA control, not even the station itself. Oh...and I saw a UFO come within meters of the Dragon capsule not once...but twice. You heard me right. Watch this video and if you have doubts...go to the source NASA video and check it out for yourself. Aliens are watching our every move...like parents watching kids to keep them safe. 

Scott C. Waring - UFO Sightings Daily 

 

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

NASA Astronaut Winston Scott Convinced Alien Life Exists but Warns of an Impending Space Military War

Scott separates his belief in extraterrestrial life from claims that aliens have visited Earth, while backing competition in lunar exploration

NASA astronaut Winston Scott believes in life beyond Earth and warns that military tensions between world powers could lead to armed conflict in space By Latitude0116 at English Wikipedia, CC PHOTO  BY 2.5/Wikimedia Commons

NASA astronaut Winston Scott told Fox News's Jesse Watters Primetime on Wednesday that he believes alien life exists beyond Earth, while warning that military conflict in space remains possible.

Scott flew on two space shuttle missions in the 1990s. His comments came days after the Pentagon released declassified UFO files containing accounts of mysterious craft and alleged encounters with beings.

Why Winston Scott Believes Alien Life Exists

Scott's confidence rests on the number of planets in the universe. With billions of potential worlds, he reasoned, some must have developed in ways similar to Earth, allowing intelligent life to emerge elsewhere.

'I do believe there is life someplace else out there in the universe. Now, whether or not it's visiting us here on Earth or not is a topic of discussion. I think E.T. is out there some place,' Scott told the programme.

'We can't be the only one that has intelligent life,' he added.

His remarks distinguished that belief from the unresolved question of visits to Earth. The Pentagon files described by the Daily Mail included witness claims of unusual encounters, which do not establish proof of alien contact.

The US government's position is that no physical proof of extraterrestrials has been discovered on Earth.

Military Rivalries Shape Winston Scott's Warning

Scott's concerns about armed conflict centred on relations between the United States, Russia and China. He hoped space exploration could bring countries together, but cautioned that cooperation on individual projects did not remove wider political divisions.

'Russia is our partner in terms of the International Space Station, but they are not our ally,' he told Fox News.

He characterised the US relationship with China as more 'military-oriented' and pointed to preparations for potential threats beyond Earth.

'We live in a world where we have to be prepared to defend ourselves militarily. We hope we don't see conflict and combat in space but I would not rule it out,' Scott stated.

A military spokesperson separately told the Daily Mail that hostile satellites could pose threats to the United States.

'The US has warned about Russian and Chinese weapons testing and operationalization since 2007. Due to their actions, it is no longer a question that space is a warfighting domain,' the spokesperson stated.

Scott also referred to what he described as US Space Force confirmation that it had placed weapons in orbit to counter China. IBTimes UK cannot independently verify that deployment claim.

The Daily Mail noted that the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, signed and ratified by the United States, prohibits nuclear weapons in orbit but does not impose the same prohibition on conventional weapons, signal jammers or military satellites.

Winston Scott Backs Competition for the Moon

Despite those concerns, Scott remained optimistic about lunar exploration. He endorsed competition between Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin to develop vehicles capable of reaching the Moon's surface.

'Competition is the American way,' he declared.

Scott credited private space companies with making exploration cheaper, more efficient and more productive. He viewed their competition favourably even as he warned that rivalry between governments could extend to combat beyond Earth.

The vehicles being developed by SpaceX and Blue Origin are intended to reach the lunar surface by 2028.

RELATED

https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/science }

UFO Researcher Finds a 3,000-Foot Hole Near the Canadian Coast and Claims It Is an Alien Base Entry

Scott C. Waring proposed using an underwater drone to investigate the feature, while former officials have made separate claims about unexplained activity beneath the ocean

Scott C Waring claims a hole off Nunavut is an underwater alien base entrance and proposes a drone probe to investigate (Image is for illustrative purposes only)

PHOTO AI Generated/ChatGPT

UFO researcher Scott C. Waring claims a hole more than 3,000ft (914m) across in waters off Nunavut, Canada, is an entrance to an underwater alien base, describing the feature in a 28 October 2026 post on UFO Sightings Daily.

His assertion accompanies separate comments from retired US Navy admiral Tim Gallaudet, who suggested that unexplored ocean depths could conceal non-human technology. Gallaudet has not identified a location for an alleged base or corroborated Waring's Canadian claim.

UFO Researcher Proposes a Drone Mission

Waring claimed the feature lay at least 33ft (10m) beneath the surface and described it as a tunnel through which extraterrestrials could travel unseen.

No independent underwater survey has been presented to verify that the feature is an actual tunnel or an entrance to an extraterrestrial facility.

'I found an entrance to an underwater alien base, and it's in the most remote area of northern Canada that one could go,' Waring wrote on his website.

Waring proposed sending a remotely operated or autonomous underwater drone to investigate. He envisaged a mission lasting several days, with the craft returning with footage that could be examined for signs of extraterrestrial life.

Such equipment could, he argued, reach depths too dangerous for people to explore themselves. He also suggested that an expedition might establish communication between the public and extraterrestrials.

Ocean Depths Underpin Gallaudet's UFO Theory

Gallaudet, a former acting administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, outlined his reasoning on the Hang Out with Sean Hannity podcast.

'We've only explored with either drones, buoys [or] floats, about 10 percent of ocean volume,' he stated. 'So there's a lot of mystery out there right now.'

Drawing on decades studying the ocean, Gallaudet argued that its largely unexplored volume could offer somewhere to remain undetected. His suggestion concerned the wider ocean, rather than a specific site off Canada.

During the interview, he described footage that he claimed depicted objects moving between water and air. He also asserted that such objects could exceed the speed of sound without producing the sonic boom normally associated with supersonic flight.

'It goes into the ocean, no disturbance,' Gallaudet told Hannity.

He described another video filmed from above that he claimed depicted similar behaviour, arguing that it reflected engineering beyond current human capabilities. He also asserted that non-human intelligence was visiting Earth.

Gallaudet testified under oath before Congress in November 2024 that he received a Navy email warning of multiple near-midair collisions with unidentified objects during a 2015 carrier strike group exercise. He claimed the email disappeared the following day.

Grusch's UFO Claims Extend Beneath the Sea

Former intelligence officer David Grusch, who previously worked with lawmakers on UFO transparency, has advanced similar allegations about underwater facilities. In testimony under oath in 2023, he claimed the US government maintained secret programmes to recover and reverse-engineer crashed non-human spacecraft.

Speaking separately to Joe Rogan, Grusch alleged that officials knew of a large underwater facility serving extraterrestrial craft.

'There's clearly some sort of base of operations in certain locations. It's large. Don't know when it got there... Like multiple city-block-type stuff.'

Grusch attributed his information to classified programme files, videos and accounts from government and military insiders. He also claimed that 'stuff comes and goes' from the facility, without identifying it as the feature Waring described.

The Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office has maintained that it has found no verifiable evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity or technology.

{ https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/science }

Newly Declassified Pentagon Documents Suggest Popular California Tourist Spot Was Once Hub for UFO Sightings

The reports include “flying saucers” and a “purplish-white” object hovering in the sky over Catalina Island

An alleged UFO in California (stock photo).Credit 

Joe McBride/Getty

NEED TO KNOW

Newly released documents from the Pentagon reveal that California’s Catalina Island was once a hot spot for alleged UFO sightings.

The Department of Defense released 28 files involving unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs) — also known as UFOs — in an online drop on Friday, Oct. 23. The files were released as part of a federal initiative launched in May to make government records about UFO sightings and investigations publicly available.

Four of the 28 files involved sightings specifically on Catalina Island, a popular tourist destination located about 22 miles off the coast of Southern California, in the 1940s and 1950s, according to the Los Angeles Times. 

Catalina Island in California.

CREDIT Getty

The first alleged sighting was reported by a man named Percy Wackey, who lived in Avalon — the island’s only incorporated city — in May 1949.

Wackey claimed that his wife and an unnamed individual saw six objects over the island on April 28, 1949.

Another sighting in August 1952 involved three Boy Scouts who claimed they saw silver “flying saucers” flying faster than a jet plane.

In November 1953, a man said he saw a “purplish-white” object hovering in place over the island before heading toward Los Angeles, which is located about 50 miles east.

A report of three Boys Scouts observing a potential UFO in 1952.
CREDIT Department of War

The fourth and final sighting occurred in Avalon in March 1955, when a man named Paul J. Carr reported seeing a bright orange object “the size of a nickel held at arm’s length” fall “straight down” toward the island.

While speaking to CBS News about the reports, Bill Diamond, the president and CEO of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute, said that while it is statistically probable that life exists elsewhere in the universe, most reports of UFO sightings on Earth merit a healthy dose of skepticism.

Related Stories

New UFO Records Reveal More Sightings, Including Buzz Aldrin Spotting ‘Bright Light’ Near Moon on Apollo 11 Mission

Shocking Video of Pyramid-Shaped UFO Is Real — and Part of 'Ongoing Examinations,' Pentagon Says

“It’s hard to imagine coming all this way and then flying by for a couple of hours and then leaving,” he told the outlet.

He additionally noted that the reports dropped in the most recent tranche of files were from a time when science fiction and space exploration gripped the public consciousness and imagination.

A report of a man observing a potential UFO in 1955.

CREDIT Department of War

“There are more pictures of UFOs from that period than there are now, and we have literally billions of very capable high-resolution cameras in the hands of people all over the world,” he said.

The Department of Defense has released a total of 478 files across seven drops since launching the new initiative, per the L.A. Times. 

The department states that it encourages the public to study the files and apply their “private-sector analysis, information and expertise,” according to the initiative’s website.

RELATED

{ https://people.com/entertainment/ }

By Max Evry 

“Scientists representing the world’s foremost research centers took part in the examination of the evidence. The facts that will be presented are true. This may be the most startling film you’ll ever see.”

-Peter Graves, The Mysterious Monsters (1975)

During the turbulent era of Vietnam and Watergate, the happy veneer of America in the 1950s and ‘60s gave way to the conspiracy-minded ‘70s. Dark revelations about the government, justice system, military, and police made the public begin to rethink their perceptions about a great many things. This led to renewed interest in occult matters like ESP, UFOs, and cryptozoology. These subjects, along with other pseudoscientific phenomena like near-death experiences or the Bermuda Triangle, became the bread and butter of a Utah-based production house called Sunn Classic Pictures. The company made a fortune releasing partially-dramatized “documentaries” that tantalized viewers with possibilities of what could be out there beyond the veil.

Conway was a college senior at the University of Denver around 1971 when he was in the Mass Communications Department and the phone rang. It was Charles E. Sellier Jr., who ran an industrial film and commercial company in Denver.

Continues Conway, “Chuck was looking for cheap labor to edit his industrial films. I said, ‘I'm your guy.’ While I finished college I worked for Chuck, and after about three months I said to him, ‘You know, I can direct these shows better than the people you're hiring.’ Total chutzpah. He gave me a shot, I did really well, and that began our relationship.”

After producing a western comedy called The Brothers O'Toole, Sellier connected with Sunn Classic Pictures, which at that point was a distribution outfit in Utah and a newly-founded division of the Schick razor company. They had made several well-attended hunting pictures like The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams, and decided their next avenue would be a series of pseudoscience documentaries kicked off by a re-edited and English dubbed version of the 1970 German doc Chariots of the Gods. Based on Erich von Däniken’s popular claptrap supposing celestial beings who seeded early humanity, in 1973 it grossed over $25M and was nominated for an Oscar.

• 'From the late '60s we see a rise in interest in everything from occultism and psychic phenomena, new age philosophies, magic, astrology, paganism, life after death, anti-materialism, holistic medicine, reincarnation…'

Noted film scholar Dr. Gary D. Rhodes recently published a book titled Weirdumentary all about this era of strange docs throughout the ‘70s, of which he claims Chariots of the Gods is the urtext: “The fact that it was nominated for an Academy Award suggests how many more people were taking these ideas seriously. I hesitate to think a documentary on that subject now would get an Academy Award nomination. From the late ‘60s we see a rise in interest in everything from occultism and psychic phenomena, new age philosophies, magic, astrology, paganism, life after death, anti-materialism, holistic medicine, reincarnation… there's a desire to find alternate ways of examining our experiences that is unique to that era, including academia. You would not find many parapsychology departments in today's world.”

Once they found the winning formula, Sunn Classic released a wave of documentaries including 1975’s The Mysterious Monsters, where Mission: Impossible actor Peter Graves hosts a Whitman’s Sampler of cryptids.

“For me as a little kid, I certainly loved Mysterious Monsters the most of any of them because it was the era of fascination with Bigfoot, widespread belief that there might be such a creature,” says Rhodes. “There was equal interest in the Loch Ness monster and the Yeti. There were documentary films individually about all of those monsters, but here it was like the Universal monster rally films where you were getting all of them at once.”

The film was actually an amalgam of a few previously-released TV documentaries including CBS’ Monsters! Mystery or Myth, which helped popularize the supposed veracity of the Roger Patterson/Robert Gimlin footage of Bigfoot strolling through the woods. Narrates Graves, “If this film is legitimate, then there can no longer be any question about Bigfoot’s existence.”

Because Sunn Classic was a Mormon-run company, Rhodes says they “wanted to tap into films where everybody from a little kid to the grandparents could go and not feel out of place or offended.” Sellier himself called this demographic “the lost audience” who felt left behind by both the kiddie fare of Disney and the blood-and-nudity-soaked visions of New Hollywood auteurs (Taxi Driver, The Exorcist, etc.). Sunn’s product even included a few movies which attempted to present scientific evidence for aspects of the Christian faith. The most successful was In Search of Noah’s Ark, co-written and directed by Conway based on a book by Sellier and David W. Balsiger. It posits that (conveniently inaccessible) evidence exists that the remains of Noah's Ark lay on Turkey’s Mount Ararat. It includes several non-Russell Crowe re-enactments, as well as a supposed photograph that became the lynchpin for “proof.”

Intones narrator Brad Crandall, “The answer came in late September of 1974 when an expedition from the Holy Ground Mission in Frankston, Texas, scaled Mount Ararat, shooting across the Ahora Gorge with a 35MM Minolta camera. They took this picture that shows what looks like the fore part of a great vessel. The prow can be seen sticking out of the rocks 2000 feet above the location of the Eryl Cummings photo. When studied under photographic enlargement, the outline of the ship is not only clear but planking can actually be seen… the planking of Noah's Ark.”

“We didn't doctor anything… we had a photo that had been in other pieces of research,” Conway explained to us. “In those days, every expert you go to has their own data to support what they believe. Whether it's pseudoscience or not, all these people had books or research they could point to proving their point. A lot of it is things people wanted to believe, and so they'll accept the research more readily than a scientist might. I actually just saw there was a report on the Today Show last week about how they found this thing near Mount Ararat that they think is Noah's Ark. It just never goes away.”

Adds Rhodes of the questionable flood geology, “There's something atop Mount Ararat, and we think it's wood, and then this one explorer went up and claims to have seen it, and another explorer got close, but he couldn't quite get there. For some people, that's still tantalizing.”

Sunn Classics had several innovations to make and market their movies. They would often spend tens of thousands doing market research on whether a subject was viable for public interest. Once a film was complete, they would circumvent Hollywood distribution through a practice known as four-walling.

• They'd say, 'We're going to pay you $25 cash for Friday night, $25 cash for Saturday night. We control the box office. Everything that comes in is ours.'

Conway claims that when Sunn approached local theaters, “They’d say, ‘We're going to pay you $25 cash for Friday night, $25 cash for Saturday night. We control the box office. Everything that comes in is ours.’ Because it was four-walled we did very heavy television commercials. We would only have, let's say, 300 prints of the movie. It would go into a city like Chicago, play two nights at this one theater, three nights at a different theater, four nights at another theater, and the commercials would list all the different movie theaters it was going to be on each night. They were enormously successful. On In Search of Noah's Ark I think our budget was $600,000 and it grossed $55 million. It was the 9th highest grossing movie of 1976.”

“Four-walling was a brilliant strategy,” opines Rhodes. “Sunn Classic were, in some respects, using old tricks of the trade not unlike the roadshow cinema of the early 20th century. In other respects, they were way ahead of their time. They were using surveys, polling at shopping malls: ‘What kind of film do you want to watch?’ They would look at advance weather reports in tandem with four-walling to try and avoid a snowstorm in the weeks ahead.”

“It may start in the Bible Belt, but it was huge everywhere you went,” continues Conway. “It was a huge hit, quite remarkable. That taught us that if you have a great commercial hook you can get a great box office return. That's where a lot of the supernatural elements come in, because there was an appetite for it. It's very easy to do a 15- or 20-second hook in a commercial to get people's interests up. It was so successful that theater runners made us go back to the standard splitting the box office, which was bad for us, good for them.”

Another “bad for us, good for them” was producer Alan Landsburg bringing the formula to television with an In Search of… docuseries hosted by Leonard Nimoy from 1976 to 1982. Landsburg helped popularize the style with the earlier docs In Search of Ancient Astronauts (1973), In Search of Ancient Mysteries (1974), and The Outer Space Connection (1975), the latter made and released by Sunn Classic. The show’s subjects (Extraterrestrials, Magic & Witchcraft, Missing Persons, Myths & Monsters, Lost Civilizations, Special Phenomena) were the same as Sunn’s, as was the format of a celebrity host. 

“He came after us with the In Search of… television series, basically ripped off our In Search of Historic Jesus and In Search of Noah's Ark,” says Conway. “He made it a TV series that was very successful, but that came after we had done our stuff.”

Many others were tapping into the same material, including the Oscar-winning insectsploitation doc The Hellstrom Chronicle (1971) and the Rod Serling-hosted UFOs: Past, Present, and Future (1974), but Rhodes says that “Sunn Classic was at the core of the weirdumentary.” The one defining aspect of all these sensational films was selling the audience on realms of existence which, whether truthful or not, absolutely fall into the category of “fun to believe.”

“Belief was not essential,” Conway says of his Sunn projects, which included The Lincoln Conspiracy (1977) and Beyond and Back (1978). “Some I believed in more than others. An example is Beyond and Back, which we did about life after death and near-death experiences. As I was interviewing all these different people, I became more of a believer in it. Some of the other things we did, the more people I talked to the less I might have actually believed it, but you still present it.”

Although Sunn had researchers on staff, the scientific accuracy of these movies was debatable. It seems the real science lay in how the movies were made, or – as Conway explains – edited: “We were one of the first people to do a lot of audience testing. We would make a film, and then we would screen it and people would have dials. If they like something they would go right, didn't like it, go left. We would actually adjust the editing based on if something just completely sucked.”

Much of the filmmaking in the dramatizations of Sunn movies is very effective, with Rhodes stating that “Beyond and Back shows the ingenuity of Conway because at times they were actually able to muster really good special effects on low budgets.” Another example is their take on Charles Berlitz’s wildly popular supermarket paperback The Bermuda Triangle (1979), where the famous disappearance of Flight 19 in 1945 – linked to UFOs – is told with eerie lighting and sound effects that transcend the cheapness. 

Still, critics were not typically kind, with Variety stating of The Bermuda Triangle, “As with the other Sunn films, recollections from people, both living and dead, who have experienced the phenomenon in question, are reenacted in a silly, unconvincing fashion. So-called experts with degrees and credentials are carted out in front of the camera to add weight to the arguments. Brad Crandall narrates, tying together the bits and pieces.” Yet as Rhodes writes in his Weirdumentary book, “To lesser men we leave these petty slights. As I see it, Sunn had perfected an art form, a very profitable art form, crystallizing a new genre for a new age.”

Eventually conspiracies and psychic phenomenon and weird creatures were no longer controversial, they were part of the norm… hence no longer a viable attraction for theaters. Big movies like Close Encounters of the Third Kind (which tied elements of Bermuda Triangle lore into UFO mythology), Carrie (telekinesis a-go-go), and The Amityville Horror (ghostly possession) made formerly exotic pseudoscience mainstream… and perhaps less exciting. Eventually Sunn and Conway moved on to fictional feature films like Hangar 18 or The Boogens before eventually being folded into the now-defunct Taft Entertainment, acquired by Aaron Spelling and finally Paramount.

• 'Once Hollywood realized how popular these subjects were, they were suddenly everywhere.'

“Once Hollywood realized how popular these subjects were, they were suddenly everywhere,” said Conway. “They were TV movies, they were episodes. The Landsburg television show was on every week exploring another mystery from this, that, or the other. Once it became more easily available, there wasn't as much hoopla. When they first happened, they fed on each other… it gave you ink in magazines and newspapers. They kept feeding it and finally ran out of things to exploit. You can only do so many ghost stories, so many UFO things. The first time you're exposed to it, it's all fresh and fascinating and leads you down a lot of rabbit holes. Rabbit holes are much easier now than they used to be to go down.”

Even though we live in an information age, audiences continue to buy into the myths perpetuated during the Weirdumentary era, as exemplified by the continued popularity of such pseudoscience programs on Discovery or The History Channel, covering everything from UAPs to skinwalkers. There’s also a legion of podcasts and blogs which dedicate whole episodes to, say, disappearances in national parks or the history of ghost sex. Ancient aliens is a mini-industry unto itself, despite von Däniken’s work having long ago been exposed as fraudulent. Although it was thought to be a vanished victim of the Bermuda triangle, the SS Cotopaxi was eventually identified in January 2020 off the coast of St. Augustine, Florida. Even the famous Patterson-Gimlin footage of Bigfoot seen in The Mysterious Monsters has now been debunked in this year’s documentary Capturing Bigfoot, where verified rehearsal footage of their Bigfoot costume is revealed. For some, even this has not been enough to dissuade people from believing in the footage.

“Certainly as kids these subjects resonated because you are more naïve,” says Rhodes. “There's always one more piece of possible evidence to be tantalizing. ‘Even if one thing was faked, that doesn't mean it's all fake. What about these others?’ There is a kind of whataboutism. If some UFO footage was fake or a photograph was fake, now we have Air Force footage that's been released that looks – perhaps to some – compelling. We have new Bigfoot recordings, so even if Patterson-Gimlin faked it, that's just their footage. Some of the shows I've been on – Coast to Coast or whatever – the people that speak to me are more interested in the topics than the actual films as films, right?

“From a historical film perspective, these movies are fun,” concludes Rhodes. “There's a nostalgia factor. James Conway, Charles Sellier, Alan Landsburg, Wheeler Dixon… they're heroes to me. They made incredibly fun movies, even if I disbelieve the subjects. They're wonderful.”

{ https://pk.ign.com/ign-misc  }

Tunguska's Evil Twin on Halloween: Real Threat or Clickbait Experiment?

Trees knocked down by the Tunguska explosion, photographed in May 1929 during Leonid Kulik's expedition, nearly 21 years after the blast.

Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Aris Manus

The Tunguska event was one of the most studied explosions of the 20th century, a blast over the Siberian forest on June 30, 1908, that flattened trees across a remote river basin. More than a century later, a scientist has asked whether its "Evil Twin" could return on Halloween 2026. But is anything actually heading toward Earth this Halloween?

A Headline Written to Scare

The question comes from Mark Boslough of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of New Mexico. His abstract, "Will Tunguska's Evil Twin Return on Halloween 2026? Science and Skepticism in a Clickbait World," appears in the Geological Society of America's Abstracts with Programs for 2026 and was scheduled for October 11, 2026, in a session on "Myths and Misrepresentations surrounding Cosmic Impact claims."

The opening paragraphs of the abstract are written like a tabloid story, asking whether the Tunguska object had "an unseen companion that missed the Earth in 1908" and whether this companion is "on its way back to finish the job." They describe the Taurid meteor stream, the source of the so-called "Halloween fireballs," and note that one published model places a swarm of debris in an approximate 61-year resonance with Earth.

However, the abstract then turns on itself, and Boslough explains what the reader has just been through:

"The previous paragraphs of this abstract are written in clickbait style. The idea of a dark Tunguska companion is pure speculation."

In the same abstract he adds that the Tunguska object's encounter with Earth came six years before the hypothetical swarm, and "there is no theoretical basis for it to have the same resonant period." The abstract says the presentation would weigh "arguments, pro and con, about whether we should try to exploit the clickbait industry to provide accurate scientific and skeptical information to the public."

What Happened at Tunguska in 1908

According to a NASA history article, the blast came at about 7:15 am local time. Evenki reindeer herders described "a fireball trailing smoke, then a flash brighter than the Sun, followed by a loud noise like thunder." Because the region was so sparsely populated, NASA notes that "very few human casualties resulted."

The geologist Leonid Kulik could not reach the site in 1921 and only got there in 1927. Later surveys in the 1950s and 1960s mapped a butterfly-shaped zone of damage covering 830 square miles (about 2,150 square kilometers), "with millions of trees knocked over." NASA adds that Kulik "failed to find physical evidence of the bolide," and that microparticles found by later expeditions "could not be conclusively tied to the blast."

A 2018 workshop at NASA Ames Research Center found that the leading models converged on an energy of 10 to 20 megatons released in an airburst at a height of about 10 kilometers (6 miles). If the object was a stony asteroid like the one that burst over Chelyabinsk in 2013, the report estimates it was roughly 50 to 80 meters (160 to 260 ft) across. Crucially for anyone worried about Halloween, the workshop concluded that "the interval between such events is millennia, not centuries as had been concluded previously."

The Taurids and the Halloween Fireballs

The Taurids are a real and regular part of autumn skies. NASA identifies Comet Encke as the parent of the stream and explains the nickname: "Oftentimes, this particular shower exhibits fireballs on or around Halloween, making them known as the Halloween Fireballs." Fireballs are meteors at least as bright as the planet Venus.

The Royal Observatory Greenwich lists the Southern Taurids as active from September 10 to November 20, 2026, and the Northern Taurids from October 20 to December 10, with an estimated rate of about five meteors per hour at maximum. The observatory describes the showers as providing "a sprinkling throughout the two months."

Ancient Origins has covered the Taurid meteor shower and its fireballs before. The larger question is whether the stream also hides much bigger objects.

The Swarm Question in Peer-Reviewed Work

Boslough has also tackled that question in a peer-reviewed paper. Writing in Acta Astronautica with Peter Brown, David Clark and Paul Wiegert of the University of Western Ontario and Quanzhi Ye of the University of Maryland, he assessed the "Taurid resonant swarm," a proposed cluster of debris linked to Comet Encke and held in a 7:2 resonance with Jupiter.

The team found "no evidence for objects in the Taurid stream that are above the global catastrophe threshold." However, they noted that "the possibility of a few large objects and a significant population of objects the size of the Chelyabinsk or Tunguska bodies has not been eliminated." They also argue that eyewitness accounts and airburst models "suggest that the Tunguska object was a Beta Taurid," a branch of the same stream.

The paper does not point to Halloween 2026 as a time of special danger. Instead, it says that if the swarm holds a significant number of such objects, risk would peak "in November 2032 and June 2036," and it recommends targeted telescope surveys during those passes. His GSA abstract strikes the same note: "There is no evidence for a concentration of large objects, but there is no reason not to search for them in 2032 as a precaution."

Telescope searches have so far turned up little. A survey with the Canada France Hawaii Telescope, reported by Wiegert and colleagues, found results "consistent with no Taurid Swarm members observed," while setting an upper limit on objects 34 to 76 meters across. The same team notes that meteor observations have confirmed the swarm at sizes of a meter and smaller.

When Impact Stories Go Wrong

Gizmodo has described Boslough as an outspoken critic of a different impact idea, the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis, which proposes that comet fragments struck Earth about 12,800 years ago. On August 6, 2025, the journal PLOS One published a study by Christopher Moore and colleagues reporting cometary dust and platinum anomalies in sediment cores from Baffin Bay, near Greenland. When it appeared, Boslough told Gizmodo: "I do not see anything in this new paper that overcomes the chronic and ongoing problems with their previous papers."

On February 11, 2026, the PLOS One Editors retracted the paper. Their notice lists incorrect citations "raising concerns about undisclosed use of AI tools," problems with the radiocarbon calibration that would make the layers younger and "outside the Younger Dryas," and material reported as cosmic spherule fragments that experts "identified as marine foraminifera." The notice concludes:

"In light of the above concerns that call into question the validity of the reported results and the conclusions made, the PLOS One Editors retract this article."

According to the notice, eight of the authors did not agree with the retraction and one did. Ancient Origins reported the Baffin Bay study as support for the hypothesis in an August 11, 2025, article on the Baffin Bay comet debris, which now carries an editors' note pointing readers to the retraction. Readers who want the wider picture can turn to the site's fact check on whether a comet ended the Ice Age and its longer look at the Younger Dryas impact debate.

The Acta Astronautica paper makes the link between the two topics explicit. Its authors write that skepticism toward swarm risk in the planetary defense community stems partly from "misinformation, misunderstandings, and misinterpretations associated with the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis." Still, they argue that the swarm idea "is testable and should not be dismissed just because it has been invoked in association with unsupported claims."

Reading the Next Scary Headline

Boslough's abstract also points out that the scare has an old pedigree. The familiar claim that Tunguska would have destroyed St. Petersburg had it arrived 4 hours and 47 minutes later was, he writes, "a playful, but incorrect, idea first published by astronomer I.S. Astapowitsch in a 1934 version of modern-day clickbait."

So what should a skywatcher take from Halloween 2026? The Taurids will be up there, and a bright fireball is a fine reward for a clear night. However, the sources cited here give no sign of a dark twin of Tunguska returning this week, and the scientists studying the swarm are looking ahead to 2032 and 2036 for their best chance to test it. How many large bodies the Taurid stream really holds is still an open question.

How we label claims

Established: the Tunguska airburst of June 30, 1908, and the annual Taurid meteor showers linked to Comet Encke. Established: PLOS One retracted the Baffin Bay paper on February 11, 2026. Disputed: the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis. Disputed: that the Tunguska object was a Beta Taurid. Unverified: that the Taurid stream holds a significant swarm of Tunguska-sized objects. Unverified: that a dark companion of the Tunguska object will return around Halloween 2026, an idea Boslough himself calls "pure speculation."

By Aris Manus

Sources

• Mark Boslough, Will Tunguska's Evil Twin Return on Halloween 2026? Science and Skepticism in a Clickbait World, Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs 58, no. 5 (2026), doi:10.1130/abs/2026AM-15409
• Mark Boslough, Peter G. Brown, David Clark, Paul Wiegert and Quanzhi Ye, 2032 and 2036 risk enhancement from NEOs in the Taurid stream, Acta Astronautica 238 (2026), 710 to 715
• Paul Wiegert and colleagues, A limit on the mass of the Taurid Resonant Swarm at sub-100 meter sizes, arXiv 2506.03327
• The PLOS One Editors, Retraction: A 12,800-year-old layer with cometary dust, microspherules, and platinum anomaly recorded in multiple cores from Baffin Bay, PLOS One 21(2): e0342613, February 11, 2026
• Moore CR et al., RETRACTED: A 12,800-year-old layer with cometary dust, microspherules, and platinum anomaly recorded in multiple cores from Baffin Bay, PLOS One 20(8): e0328347 (2025)
• New Study Fuels Debate Over World-Changing Comet Strike 12,800 Years Ago, Gizmodo (updated February 20, 2026)
• John Uri, 115 Years Ago: The Tunguska Asteroid Impact Event, NASA, June 30, 2023
• Tunguska Workshop: Applying Modern Tools to Understand the 1908 Tunguska Impact, NASA Ames Research Center (NASA/TM report 20190002302)
• 2P/Encke, NASA Science
• Taurid meteor shower 2026: when and where to see it in the UK, Royal Observatory Greenwich

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/news }

UK's top UFO expert says government 'hiding truth about aliens' in final ever interview

EXCLUSIVE: He was the UK’s top UFO hunter until his untimely death in April. Now ex-MOD expert Nick Pope speaks out from beyond the grave to accuse the Government of hiding the truth about alien life

Nick said governments know more about UFOs than they are letting on

(Image: Sky History)

BY Ashley Pemberton - News Reporter

A top UFO hunter accused the government of hiding the truth about aliens in his final interview before his death. Nick Pope – dubbed the real life Agent Mulder from the X Files – said: “They know there’s more to this than just weather balloons and aircraft lights.”

The former civil servant, who spent three years on the Ministry of Defence’s “UFO desk”, also insisted the world’s leaders know we are not alone in the universe. He made the bombshell claims in an upcoming TV documentary filmed just before his death.

He told presenter Bradley Walsh that during his time investigating the phenomenon of UFOs, he would get hundreds of reports of sightings each year and could confidently explain around 80% of them.

Nick spoke to Bradley Walsh before his death

(Image: Sky History)

But of the other 20%, he said: “We were not able to find a definitive result. Some of this doesn’t quite add up. Objects running rings around the cutting edge of our own aerospace tech. Speeds, manoeuvres, accelerations we can’t match.

“At the very least, I think it’s fair to say it was enough to make me take another look at this.”

Nick, who died of cancer in April, said he had no interest in extraterrestrial activity until 1991, when he was asked to investigate the phenomena of unidentified flying objects.

Nick Pope was a leading UFO expert

(Image: Getty Images for A+E Networks)

He was interviewed by comedian and game show host Bradley for his upcoming Sky History show Out Of This World on Sky HISTORY, which starts on Tuesday. In the first episode, Bradley, 66, asks Nick if he thinks we are alone in the universe.

“We are definitely not”, the expert responds. “You know, the universe is nearly 14 billion years old. You’ve only got to imagine a civilisation with a million year, let alone a billion year headstart on us and all bets are off. So life out there, definitely.

“Us being visited, I’m less sure. I certainly hope so, because I tell you this, the world with aliens in it is going to be far more interesting and fun than the world with no aliens. So bring them on.”

Nick believes there is life out there

(Image: Getty Images/Science Photo Library RF)

Nick goes on to warn that AI technology could prove a major obstacle for sleuths hoping to prove the existence of extraterrestrials.

He adds: “I think the technology, which you would think works for us, works against us. Now with the rise of AI, you don’t really know if something is real or not.

“This is one of the biggest and most profound questions we can ask as human beings. Are we alone or not in the universe? Are we being visited? If we got an answer to that, it would change the world forever.”

Nick investigated about 1,000 unexplained sightings during his three years on the “UFO desk”.

(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Nick, who died shortly after speaking to Bradley, investigated about 1,000 unexplained sightings during his three years on the “UFO desk”.

After the department closed, he moved into the media, commenting on the unexplained, conspiracy theories, science fiction, and fringe science.

In his new show, Bradley says Nick was one of his heroes and he had been due to fly to Washington to meet him, but they were forced to talk over Zoom instead when he became very ill.

Nick Pope speaks out from beyond the grave to accuse the Government of hiding the truth about alien life

(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)

The host of ITV game show The Chase is later seen delving into Britain’s declassified Ministry of Defence files. One shows Winston Churchill asked for a report into flying saucers in 1952.

He then heads to Rendlesham Forest, dubbed “Britain’s Roswell”, the scene of the country’s most famous alleged UFO incident.

At one point, he asks: “If people have seen them, and UFOs or aliens have visited, why haven’t people taken notice? Why isn’t it on the News at 10? Are the news corporations keeping it from us? What is going on? I have no idea.

“It’s pretty naive of us to imagine that we’re the only planet sustainable of life in the entire universe. There’s gotta be something out there.” The Ministry of Defence did not respond to a request for comment.

RELATED

{ https://www.dailystar.co.uk/latest/exclusives }