UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

Since childhood, I’ve always been fascinated with the subject of cryptozoology. The term itself was coined by the late scientist Bernard Huevelmans, who offered it in reference to the search for biological organisms as-yet unrecognized by science, but which are nonetheless represented in various belief systems (often folk traditions among indigenous cultures, for instance).

While reports of things like “sea monsters” and mysterious “wild men” in the remote forests are often eye-grabbing, they also represent the most sensational kinds of stories offered in the broader discussion of cryptozoology. Because of this, over the years I’ve grown to be more careful in my approach to the subject, as with similarly “fringe” topics like unidentified flying objects, etc.

Of course, some stories about sea monsters or wild men might be capable of bearing fruit; however, most often this ends up being of the lowest-hanging variety. In other words, deep, explorative cultural and biological studies seldom form the basis for what is offered as evidence of these creatures. Instead, what makes its way into the pages of books is tantamount to modern folklore, borrowing from existing stories that are well known in the cryptozoological literature, or the incorporation of new ones that build onto an already well-worn mythos.

By contrast, if we really wanted to take time to examine the varieties of unknown species waiting to be discovered on this planet, we would need to look no further than limestone caves that flourish beneath states like Kentucky and Tennessee. By some estimates, there are as many as several hundreds of unexplored subterranean systems in this region of North America, each probably teeming with tiny–or even microscopic–new lifeforms. However, “microscopic” is much harder to sell, whether in books or on reality television shows.

The point I’m making here is that, as far as the search for undiscovered animals, there is plenty yet to be found, although the likelihood that many of those will be exceptionally large (let alone manlike) becomes increasingly rarer with every passing year, and the acquisition of new knowledge about our planet. We have scoured our world, and our oceans, in search of new organisms, and while many new discoveries do turn up on a frequent basis, we continue to see little vindication for the classic “monsters” that have haunted our imaginations since time immemorial.

At this point, I should offer a caveat since there are, from time to time, what I feel to be good cases that lend substance to the idea that one or two “mystery monsters” may be out there. One of my favorites takes us back to Halloween 1983, where a group of construction workers at Stinson Beach, California, observed what they described as being a “giant snake” swimming several meters off the coast for a period of several minutes. I had the opportunity to interview one of the primary witnesses, Marlene Martin, who adamantly maintained that the creature was large, dark colored, and by all observations resembled a massive aquatic snake (further details of this incident can be read about in my MU post from last year).

Of course, the Stinson Beach incident is a modern corollary for countless similar stories from earlier times; accounts of oceanic creatures of serpentine appearance have been a mainstay in America since its founding, with stories the likes of the Gloucester sea serpent of 1817, and an earlier series of sightings around Cape Ann, Massachusetts, that occurred as early as 1639.

North America is by no means the only region of the world with legends about large, mysterious creatures; nor are such reports confined to our oceans. Consider the fact that reports of primal creatures, which often are likened to being “wild men,” stem from a remarkably diverse collection of regions around the world. The following examples make reference to different varieties of cultural beliefs involving such creatures; the first comes to us from a 1978 Nature article titled, “Yeti or Wild Man in Siberia?” (Nature, 271:603, 1978):

Reports from Russia tell of a creature known locally as the “Chuchunaa” which is over 2 m tall, clad in deerskin, and unable to talk, although it does utter a piercing whistle. A man-eater, the Chuchunaa often steals food from settlements. Observers say that the creature has a protruding brow, long matted hair, a full beard, and walks with its hands hanging below its knees. Soviet scientists speculate that the Chuchunaa represents the last surviving remnant of the Siberian paleoasiatic aborigines that retreated to the upper reaches of the Yana and Indigirka rivers. The last reliable sightings were in the 1950s, and this animal may now be extinct.

The next, from China, denotes the creature known as Yeren in various parts of the country, as discussed in the New York Times article, ”It’s Tall, It Has Wavy Red Hair and Chinese Keep Hunting for It,” (NYT, p. 5, January 5, 1980). It reads:

“Spurred by reports of large (6 -feet tall) animals with wavy red hair walking on two legs, Chinese scientists have been combing the thick forests of Shennongjia, in Hubei Province. Many footprints 12-16 inches long as well as samples of hair and feces have been found. So far, though, no photos or specimens.”

The next instance is a most interesting excerpt, which appeared in 1982 in Myra Shackley’s “The Case for Neanderthal Survival: Fact, Fiction or Faction?” published in the journal Antiquity (56:31). It reads as follows:

All continents have their tales of wild men, abominable snowmen, sasquatch, etc. Most anthropologists give little credence to these stories. Shackley, however, has assembled considerable evidence for the reality of the so-called Almas (plural form: Almasti), primitive men who closely resemble Neanderthal Man, or at least what we think Neanderthal Man looked like. Abundant, internally consistent data come from an east-west band running from the Caucacus, across the Pamir Mountains, through the Altai Mountains, to Inner Mongolia. Even today, sightings of these creatures are rather common; and several scientists have seen them. One incident occurred in 1917, when the Reds were pursuing White Army forces through the Pamirs. The troops of Major General Mikail Stephanovitch Topilsky shot an Almas as he was emerging from a cave.

“The eyes were dark and the teeth were large and even and shaped like human teeth. The forehead was slanting and the eyebrows were very powerful. The protruding jawbones made the face resemble the Mongol type of face. The nose was very flat …the lower jaws were very massive”In some instances the Almasti have even associated with modern man; and cases of successful interbreeding have been reported. After reviewing the mountains of evidence, Shackley feels that the Almasti are very likely surviving Neanderthals, because the physical characteristics of the Almasti and reconstructed Neanderthals are basically identical. This long review article also discusses the many Chuchunaa sightings from northern Russia — perhaps another relict population of Neanderthals.

As can be seen from the preceding reports (and their publication dates), the notion that some small groups of “wild men” had remained undiscovered in remote areas of the world was once given at least some serious consideration. However, more recent genetic studies that have examined the scant physical evidence available leave us with far less to imagine: in every case, the genetic evidence points to bears, rather than mystery hominids, existing primally at the outermost skirts of the modern world.

How can we reconcile the richness of these cultural traditions from around the world, with the lacking physical evidence for the existence of such creatures? It is difficult to make sense of, on account of the demands of modern science, which require indisputable physical proof before any credible argument can proceed.

Yet eyewitness reports, anecdotal though they are, shouldn’t be ruled completely out of hand; especially those which contain what are, at times, a remarkable degree of detail. Arguably, my favorite from recent memory involves an observation made in the early 1990s by Russian scientist Arkady Tishkov, who watched a strange, upright-walking apelike creature in the Himalayan mountains for a period of two hours in September of 1991:

“About midday, on the top of a moraine ridge at a distance of about 400 feet (120 m), I noticed a human-like animal sitting by a boulder on the sunlit side. My position was lower on the slope, and at first I did not see the full silhouette. A little later, however, I observed the animal in full. It had the following characteristics: erect, bipedal posture; dark brown color; cone-shaped head; no visible neck; long forelimbs; and short and slightly flexed hind limbs. When first observed, the creature was squatting in what seemed an unnatural position for an animal, with its back touching the sun-warmed surface of the boulder.”

A lengthier presentation on the Tishkov encounter can be read here.

We could discuss reputable articles and reasonably constructed eyewitness reports all day, but ultimately there is no clear resolution here. Hence, many in the scientific community would feel most comfortable concluding that if so little evidence exists, then there are probably no such creatures. I have never felt that this is the most logical way to reconcile the two opposing elements to the ongoing cryptozoological mystery; still, at what point will the remarkable observations–many of which no doubt involve valid and real circumstances–be complemented by equally remarkable physical specimens, which will settle the debate once and for all?

Stories about cryptids truly are a cultural phenomenon, stemming from places all around the world. For my part, I do hold onto some hope that certain technological advancements of the coming years may help us settle the debate over the existence of some of these creatures. Whether small microbial lifeforms or larger beasts lurking beyond the regions known well to us in modern times, the field of cryptozoology does bear certain promise for the patient and persistent among us.

In a world that grows seemingly ever-smaller as science teaches us more, it is likely just a matter of time before the next big (or microscopic) discovery in the frontiers of biology.

In space, we're used to dealing with large distances and objects. In the cosmic scheme of things, Earth is small. Even in our solar system, we are easily dwarfed by the planet Jupiter (more than 1,000 Earths would fit in the planet, according to NASA) and our sun (more than a million Earths would fit in there, according to Cornell University).

Even our sun looks puny when it is compared to the biggest stars we know of. The sun is a G-type star, a yellow dwarf — pretty average sized on the cosmic scale. But some "hypergiant" stars are much, much larger. Perhaps the biggest star known is UY Scuti, which could fit more than 1,700 of our suns. (Note that the margin of error is roughly 192 sun-widths, so at the lower end of the margin UY Scuti would move several ranks down the list of the biggest stars.) UY Scuti is only about 30 times more massive than our sun, however, so that shows that mass and size don't necessarily correlate in space.

Progressing up the list of big cosmic objects, other things to consider are black holes and, in particular, supermassive black holes that typically reside in the center of a galaxy. (Our Milky Way hosts one that is about 4 million times the mass of the sun.) One of the biggest supermassive black holes ever found resides in NGC 4889, which has a black hole roughly 21 billion times the mass of the sun.

There are things out there bigger than even supermassive black holes. Galaxies are collections of star systems and everything that is inside those systems (such as planets, stars, asteroids, comets, dwarf planets, gas, dust and more). Our own Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years across, NASA says; a light-year is the distance light travels in a year. It's difficult to characterize what the largest galaxies are, because they don't really have precise boundaries, but the largest galaxies we know of are millions of light-years across. The biggest known galaxy is IC 1101, which is 50 times the Milky Way's size and about 2,000 times more massive. It is about 5.5 million light-years across. Nebulas, or vast clouds of gas, also have impressively large sizes. NGC 604 in the Triangulum Galaxy is commonly cited as one of the largest; it's roughly 1,520 light-years across.

Now at last we are starting to approach the biggest structures in the universe. Galaxies are often bound to each other gravitationally in groups that are called galaxy clusters. (The Milky Way, for example, is part of the small Local Group that comprises about two dozen galaxies, including the Andromeda Galaxy.) At first glance, astronomers thought that these structures were the biggest thing out there. In the 1980s, however, astronomers realized that groups of galaxy clusters are also connected by gravity and connected in a supercluster.

What is the biggest supercluster?

The biggest supercluster known in the universe is the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall. It was first reported in 2013 and has been studied several times. It's so big that light takes about 10 billion years to move across the structure. For perspective, the universe is only 13.8 billion years old.

The structure first came to light as the research team (led by Istvan Horvath of the National University of Public Service in Hungary) was looking at brief cosmic phenomena known as gamma-ray bursts. It is thought that they come from supernovas, or massive stars that explode at the end of their lifetimes.

Gamma-ray bursts are thought to be a good indication of where huge masses of stuff lie in the universe, because big stars tend to congregate in dense areas. The first survey showed gamma-rays particularly concentrated about 10 billion light-years away in the direction of the Hercules and Corona Borealis constellations.

But it's a puzzle as to just how that big structure came to be. A 2013 article from Discovery News (a partner site to Space.com) pointed out that this structure appeared to go against a principle of cosmology, or how the universe formed and evolved. Specifically, this principle says that matter should be uniform when seen at a large enough scale. The cluster, however, is not uniform.

"I would have thought this structure was too big to exist. Even as a coauthor, I still have my doubts," Jon Hakkila, an astronomy researcher at the College of Charleston in South Carolina, said in a 2014 press release. He said there was a very small chance the researchers saw a random number of gamma-rays in that location, but it is far less than one in 100.

"Thus, we believe that the structure exists," he added. "There are other structures that appear to violate universal homogeneity: the Sloan Great Wall and the Huge Large Quasar Group ... are two. Thus, there may very well be others, and some could indeed be bigger. Only time will tell."

Large objects in our solar system

While the solar system is puny compared to the scale of the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall, here is a list of some of the largest types of objects in our own solar system.

Largest planet: Jupiter, roughly 88,846 miles (142,984 km) at its largest diameter, which is about 11 times the diameter of the Earth.
Largest moon: Ganymede, which coincidentally orbits Jupiter, is roughly 3,273 miles (5,268 km) in diameter and is a little larger than the planet Mercury.
Tallest volcano: Olympus Mons on Mars, roughly 15 miles (25 km) high and three times the height of Mount Everest on Earth. (Olympus Mons is also considered the highest mountain.)
Largest canyon: Valles Marineris on Mars, more than 1,865 miles (3,000 km) long, as much as 370 miles (600 km) across, and 5 miles (8 km) deep.
Largest crater: Utopia Planitia on Mars, which has an estimated diameter of 2,050 miles (3,300 km). It was the general landing area of the Viking 2 spacecraft that landed there in 1976.
Largest asteroid: 4 Vesta, which is 330 miles (530 km) across. It is located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Largest dwarf planet: Pluto is the largest dwarf planet, with a diameter of 1,473 miles (2,370 km). It was once thought to be smaller than dwarf planet Eris, but Pluto's measurements were confirmed up close by the New Horizons spacecraft in 2015.

Editor's note: This article was corrected on Jan. 19 to include the size of galaxy IC 1101.