“If you’re standing on the surface of that planet, there are three suns in the sky, but two of them are pretty far away and small-looking. They’re like two red, ominous eyes in the sky.”

That’s the made-for-a-sci-fi-novel description of the otherwise boringly-named planet LTT 1445Ab discovered recently just 22.5 light-years away from Earth. It’s hot – three suns will do that to a planet – but it has an atmosphere, so it’s getting some interest from astronomers. How about a better name first? Ghidorah? Triple Sol? My Three Suns? Ta-three-ine?

“It is the second nearest transiting exoplanet system found to date, and the closest one known for which the primary is an M dwarf.”

Artist’s rendition of the view from a hypothetical moon in orbit around the first known planet to reside in a tight-knit triple-star system.

(Credit: JPL)

According to their new report, “Three Red Suns in the Sky: A Transiting, Terrestrial Planet in a Triple M Dwarf System at 6.9 Parsecs,” submitted this week to The Astronomical Journal, astronomers led by Jennifer Winters of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics used data from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) space telescope launched last year to search for exoplanets using the transit method to locate changes in the light of a star that indicates a planet passing in front of it. While LTT 1445Ab is in a three-star system, it only orbits one of them, and that orbit is a scorchingly-fast once every 5.36 Earth days – extremely speedy for a planet just slightly larger than Earth (1.35 times the size) but much denser (8 times the mass) and hotter (surface temperatures 311 °F (155 °C or 428 Kelvin).

“The presence of a transiting planet in this system raises the possibility that the entire system is co-planar, which implies that the system may have formed from the early fragmentation of an individual protostellar core.”

Spider’s view from LTT 1445Ab?

While the atmosphered planet is interesting, the three suns are more intriguing, and LTT 1445Ab could shed some light (by ironically blocking it) on how these three-sun systems formed. Yes, there’s more – ScienceAlert points out that planet HD 131399Ab, discovered in 2016, orbits three suns 340 light-years away in a very slow 550-year orbit, making it far less suitable for study. The study surmises that the three suns of LTT 1445Ab may be the fragments of a single star that broke apart early in the history of the universe. The astronomers are hoping that the new James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to be launched in 2021, will help answer the question.

Three Suns and a Rock. Great name for a band or a sci-fi movie. Any other ideas?

The Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities announced this week that a team of divers has made some pretty remarkable discoveries in the ancient sunken city of Heracleion. Because the only thing better than a lost ancient Egyptian city is a lost and sunken ancient Egyptian city.

According to a statement by the Ministry of Antiquities, the team found multiple ancient temples, gold coins, precious jewels, and a sizable ceremonial boat during their two month long excavation of the site. The city of Heracleion rose to prominence during the last days of the Pharaohs, as the Ptolemaic dynasty began their rule over the Egyptian coast. The city was named for the Greek hero of myth Heracles (better known by his Roman name: Hercules) who, according to ancient legend, actually visited the city and was presumably such a cool guy that they changed the name from the original Egyptian name, Thonis, to Heracleion in his muscly honor.

Beyond Heracles, the city was mentioned in many stories, both legendary and historical. Myth holds that Heracleion was one of the last stops of Paris and Helen of Troy fleeing from the jealous King Menelnaus before the Trojan war. Queen Cleopatra was also crowned in a temple in Heracleion. The website of Franck Goddio, the underwater archaeologist who discovered Heracleion, describes the city’s mysterious history:

Thonis-Heracleion (the Egyptian and Greek names of the city) is a city lost between legend and reality. Before the foundation of Alexandria in 331 BC, the city knew glorious times as the obligatory port of entry to Egypt for all ships coming from the Greek world. It had also a religious importance because of the temple of Amun, which played an important role in rites associated with dynasty continuity. The city was founded probably around the 8th century BC, underwent diverse natural catastrophes, and finally sunk entirely into the depths of the Mediterranean in the 8th century AD.

Archaeologist Franck Goddio with an engraving found at Heracleion.

©Franck Goddio/Hilti Foundation, photo: Christoph Gerigk

Heracleion was first discovered in 2000 by Franck Goddio, and has slowly been excavated over the past 19 years. Goddio led the latest two-month-long excavation, which proved much more fruitful than previous endeavors thanks to modern technology. The team of European and Egyptian archaeologists used an underwater imaging tool to locate artifacts on the sea floor and those buried beneath.

On the latest expedition, the team discovered the crumbling remains of a large Egyptian temple including the massive stone columns, as well as a smaller Greek temple buried beneath three feet of sediment on the ocean floor. The team also found the missing chunk of a large ceremonial boat. Previous expeditions had uncovered 75 different boats, mostly incomplete. This find completes one of those previously discovered, a 43-foot-long ornate boat stuffed with coins and jewelry that the Ministry of Antiquities says was likely used for ceremonial purposes.

Statue of a Ptolemaic queen.

©Franck Goddio/Hilti Foundation, photo: Christoph Gerigk

The treasures found inside the boat include gold jewelry and coins that date to the reign of King Ptolemy II, who ruled from 283 to 246 B.C. They also found pottery dating to the fourth century B.C.

The team also surveyed another sunken city, Canopus, and found that the city was half a mile larger than previously thought. They recovered some coins and pottery from Canopus which, according to the Ministry of Antiquities, indicates that this city was also a bustling port town from the fourth century B.C. through the Islamic period.

The number of “lost” cities being found and excavated seems to be increasing exponentially as our ability to image previously unassailable locations gets better and better. There’s no telling how many forgotten places, people, and stories have yet to be discovered.

Based on new research conducted by Francois Costard, who is a scientist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, he believes that an ancient asteroid impact on Mars created a mega-tsunami. Although it was quite common for asteroids to slam into Mars around three and a half billion years ago, there was one in particular that Costard was interested in.

He believes that a huge asteroid hit Mars creating a gigantic crater and that impact sent a thousand-foot wall of water across the planet which made odd landforms across the surface. In fact, he says that Mars’ strange features could have only been created by a massive tsunami that would have crashed into shore and then went back over the landscape. Costard has been discussing his theory, in particular a location on Mars named the “Thumbprint Terrain”, and he now thinks that he has discovered the impact crater that caused the massive tsunami. His findings were published in the Journal of Geophysical Research Planets.

This wasn’t the first time that the mega-tsunami theory has been mentioned. In 2016, several astronomers discussed the possibility of an ancient asteroid impact causing two tsunamis across the Red Planet. Costard then did more research on the astronomers’ theory by trying to find out where the tsunami had originated from. He narrowed it down to ten possible impact craters that could have potentially caused the mega-tsunami, but one in particular caught his attention. Since the Lomonosov Crater is the correct age (approximately 3 billion years old), along with its huge size (75 miles across), and it’s shape (there are clues that suggests it was under water when the asteroid impacted the planet), it seems like that crater is the likely point of origin.

This new theory would change the timeline of when it is believed that Mars lost all of its water which was around 3.7 billion years ago after the core of the planet cooled down as well as the disappearance of the magnetic field. Since the planet didn’t have any atmosphere, surface water would have disappeared rather quickly.

Recently, however, scientists are finding new evidence that surface water was still present on the Red Planet a lot longer after the collapse of its magnetic field and possibly even as recent as in the last billion years. The Thumbprint Terrain is a fascinating area on Mars since it’s on the edge of a large low-lying plane that many scientists believe once held a huge northern ocean. And if the Lomonosov Crater is the actual impact site of the asteroid that caused the mega-tsunami, that means that there was still a huge ocean on Mars around 3 billion years ago. The timeline as to when a water-filled Mars turned into the “Red Planet” may be much more recent than previously thought.

Is it time to storm Pascagoula? Based on what’s been said about the remote possibilities of anyone finding anything should the unthinkable actually happen and someone trying to storm Area 51 on September 20th actually breaks through the military guards, enters the secure facility and somehow locates an unlocked door that just so happens to be holding a room full of dead aliens and UFO parts … it sounds like the odds might better storming the town in Mississippi where more and more witnesses are finally coming forward 46 years later to talk about what they saw or heard on one fateful day in 1973 when two men claimed they were abducted by aliens. Here’s the real question … what band is interested in playing and what beer company will sponsor selling Pascagoula Pale Ale?

“A big orb of light up in the air. We saw that and nobody could say anything. Nobody could move.”

In an interview with the Jackson, MS, daily newspaper, the Clarion Ledger, Joey Nelson of Mobile, AL, described what he and three friends allegedly saw on the night of October 11, 1973, as they sped west through Mississippi on their way to New Orleans on US 90. Nelson was a front-seat passenger in the car and estimates they were between Pascagoula and Biloxi when he says everyone in the car saw the orb, which was hovering in front of the vehicle. They appeared to keep on driving when he claimed a smaller orb dropped down from the large one.

“It was about the size of a beach ball, I’d say. I don’t know how far away it was, but it seemed like if that windshield wasn’t there I could have touched it. It started flashing and clicking and flashing and clicking. We could audibly hear it. I know it sounds crazy, but it seemed like they were taking pictures. It seemed like it was in front of me ten minutes or so, I don’t know. We were just mesmerized.”

At that point, the orbs flew away and the three continued to New Orleans, never telling anyone what they saw. Nelson claims that recent articles about the incident prompted him to finally share this story 46 years later. Unfortunately, there’s no corroborating testimony from the other two witnesses in the car.

“I saw a falling star. Then I realized it wasn’t actually falling. It was moving across the sky. It was at the 2 o’clock position and when it got to the 10 o’clock position another light shot out of it.”

Rosey Nail told the Clarion Ledger she was in Bruce, Mississippi, when she allegedly had a similar experience that same night. Bruce is over 300 miles due north of Pascagoula, almost on the Tennessee border. Nail’s account of two lights seems similar to Nelson’s, although what she saw was not right next to her on a porch in Bruce but far away in the distant sky. One other similarity – Nail waited 46 years to tell her story and finally came forward after reading other recent accounts.

“They’re all coming out of the woodwork. It makes me feel pretty good I’m not the only one who saw something. Most of these people are credible people.”

Really? Calvin Parker, the survivor of the two actual alleged abductees, is obviously glad people are finally agreeing with him, but are 46-year-old accounts really credible? That may include Parker, who was the silent partner in this account, allowing his much older friend Charles Hickson to tell the story. As one might expect, the reason for the recent publicity about the alleged Pascagoula abduction is due to the long-awaited publication of Parker’s account – “Pascagoula – The Closest Encounter.”

What should we make of alleged eyewitness accounts that have had 46 years to absorb – intentionally or by osmosis — details from a well-publicized and much-written-about story before finally being told in an era of instant Internet fame and hopes of fortune? Do they reinforce the validity of the alleged incident or murky the waters some more?

One thing is for certain … these won’t be the last of the Pascagoula witnesses.

Does this qualify as a storming? Anyone for some Pascagoula Pale Ale?

My previous article was on the subject of one of the most controversial of all the Majestic 12 documents. It looks at the theory that the Russians were behind the creation of the papers. Whether you buy into that theory or not, the fact is that the document is not what it appears to be. Not at all. It’s important to note that there are significant problems with the overall content of the 1^st Annual Report. By that, I mean it’s a hoax; there is no doubt about it, whatsoever. I’ll show you why: The membership of what is described as Majestic 12’s “Special Panel” was said to have been the following: Dr. Vannevar Bush; General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, USAF; Brigadier General George F. Schulgen, USAF; Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer; Detlev Bronk, of the National Research Council; Jerome Hunsaker, of the National Academy of Sciences; James Doolittle; Lieutenant General Lewis H. Brereton; Rear Admiral Paul F. Lee, Office of Naval Research; Major General George C. McDonald, USAF; Dr. Hugh L. Dryden; Admiral John Gingrich; Major General George C. McDonald, USAF; and Major General Luther D. Miller, U.S. Army.

In a summary report on all of this that I wrote a number of years ago: “General J. Lawton Collins is described as Deputy Chief of Staff, United States Army. In reality, Collins was Deputy Chief only from 1947 to mid-August 1949. He attained the rank of Chief of Staff on August 16, 1949 and held that position until August 15, 1953. Likewise, Major General Luther D. Miller is listed in the Report as Chief of Chaplains with the Army. He was: but only from 1945 to 1949. Similarly, the reference to Lieutenant General Lewis H. Brereton being Chairman of the Military Liaison Committee to the Atomic Energy Committee is incorrect: he was attached to the Liaison Committee of the AEC in 1947 and through early 1948, but by June 1948 he was Secretary General of the Air Force. Hoyt S. Vandenberg is listed in the Report as Vice Chief of Staff with the U.S. Air Force; yet, in reality, he had attained the rank of Chief of Staff by April 30, 1948. George C. McDonald’s name appears in the Report as the Director of Intelligence with the Air Force. McDonald was indeed appointed to that position – in October 1947. However, in June 1948, he became Chief of the Air Section of the United States’ Military Commission at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and did not even return to the United States until June 1950, at which point he was assigned to the Office of the Department of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel.”

I continued: “Quite clearly, there is a very recognizable trend here: whoever wrote the 1^st Annual Report specifically described the ranks held by the alleged members of the Special Panel in 1947 and into the early part of 1948 only. The ranks that practically all of the members held in 1947 and 1948 were utterly redundant by 1951.” Someone screwed up with the timeline. For some Majestic 12 proponents, this was a big problem. For others, it wasn’t: they just ignored this glaringly huge elephant in the room and stuck rigidly to their ‘I want to believe’ stance. Then, there’s the matter of that mysterious virus referred to in my recent article on Majestic 12, HIV, and Russia. The writer of the 1^st Annual Report went on to say:

“BW [Biological Warfare] programs in U.S. and U.K. are in field test stages. Discovery of new virus and bacteria agents so lethal, that serums derived by genetic research, can launch medical science into unheard of fields of biology. The samples extracted from bodies found in New Mexico, have yielded new strains of a retro-virus not totally understood, but, give promise of the ultimate BW weapon. The danger lies in the spread of airborne and bloodborne outbreaks of diseases in large populations, with no medical cures available.  Current research in U.S. and U.K., can be accelerated when studies are complete. Understanding the human makeup through EBE [“Extraterrestrial Biological Entity,” allegedly a term used by MJ12 to describe aliens] research will bring a varied wealth of information in how cells replicate themselves and may help in developing new drugs and markets. Healthcare industries are considered the best source of R&D for DoD programs.

In “Annex A” of the report there’s this, which is equally controversial: “The Panel was concerned over the contamination of several SED personnel upon coming in contact with debris near the power plant. One technician was overcome and collapsed when he attempted the removal of a body. Another medical technician went into a coma four hours after placing a body in a rubber body-bag. All four were rushed to Los Alamos for observation. All four later died of seizures and profuse bleeding. All four were wearing protective suits when they came into contact with body fluids from the occupants. Autopsies on the four dead SED technicians are not conclusive. It is believed that the four may have suffered from some form of toxin or a highly contagious disease. Tissue samples are currently being kept at Fort Detrick, Md. In the opinion of the senior AEC medical officer, current medical equipment and supplies are wholly inadequate in dealing with a large scale outbreak of the alien virus.”

In my report, I added the following, which specifically addressed the references to Fort Detrick and the matter of retroviruses: “There are two aspects of these specific extracts [of the document] that have provoked extreme controversy within the tightly knit UFO research arena: namely, the allegation that tissue samples had been forwarded to Fort Detrick, and the reference to a poorly defined ‘retrovirus.’” I added:   “Medline states that the first modern usage of the term retrovirus did not surface until the 1970s.” And, as Merriam-Webster note, the first known use of the term was not until 1975.

Also, there’s this from me: “…Fort Detrick did not receive that title until 1956: from 1943 until 1955 the installation was designated Camp Detrick, having previously been known as Detrick Field. This has led some commentators to suggest that even though the 1^st Annual Report does not refer to any events that post-date 1951, the document must, therefore, be of 1956, or post-1956, vintage. This scenario, however, falls apart for one, specific reason. Of those listed as members of the Majestic 12 Special Panel, one is General Hoyt S. Vandenberg. Vandenberg died in 1954. Therefore, he could not possibly have been a member of such a Panel in 1956, two years after his death.”

Clearly, and whether you buy into the Russian theory or not, the fact is that the 1^st Annual Report is not a genuine document. All of the available evidence is stacked solidly against it.

Are UFOs invading Wyoming? It wouldn’t be the worst place to touch down. Wyoming has some amazing scenery, lots of open space, not a lot of people, and the Yellowstone supervolcano. I don’t know why aliens would be interested in Yellowstone, and frankly I’m not too keen on finding out. If this latest footage from Casper, Wyoming does indeed show an armada of UFOs flying overhead, hopefully they’re only here as tourists.

A video taken on July 26, 2019, around 9:30 PM in Casper, Wyoming seems to show a very large group of glowing objects flying in formation just after sundown. The video was originally uploaded by YouTube user Downbound Empire, and later re-posted by popular UFO channel The Hidden Underbelly 2.0. You can watch the footage for yourself here.

There’s clearly a group of glowing objects flying through the sky. They seem to be flying in a pretty tight formation, with just a few moving independently of the group. The objects make no sound in the video and according to the witness the objects were completely silent. A few of the UFOs seem to change in brightness, becoming briefly more intense at a few points in the video.

According to The Hidden Underbelly 2.0, when the witness agreed to allow the use of their footage they gave a statement describing the encounter:

“They weren’t orbs they look like crafts, I thought drones [but] if they were drones they had a really long range because they flew clear over the horizon out of sight but they were completely silent and they were pretty close I figured if they were drones I would have heard the propellers but I have no idea what it was, it was a trip.”

Yeah, a group of drones that size would definitely be audible. One possibility is that they’re a group of sky lanterns. That would explain the lack of sound and the tight formation. The only problem with that is the light emitted from these UFOs looks pure white and completely unlike any candle flame I’ve ever seen. Of course, that could just be an illusion caused by the camera filming in low light, hypersensitive to any points of brightness against the night sky.  If they are sky lanterns, that raises another, perhaps more pressing question: what kind of idiot lets loose a bunch of flying fires over Wyoming in the middle of summer? Seriously, that’s a bad idea.

At least this kid is letting one loose over a lake instead of the great plains.

Also, although it’s hard to tell from the video, there doesn’t seem to be much wind in the area. The clouds aren’t moving and there aren’t any trees shaking. It’s hard to imagine that anything would be able to be carried as fast as these objects are moving in an environment that still.

Who knows what these objects actually are. It’s a pretty intriguing video, even if there’s a good possibility there’s a mundane explanation. Maybe next week some company will announce their new glowing, silent drone. To be perfectly honest, I’d rather it be aliens on their way to nuke Yellowstone.

Throughout the Eastern United States, particularly in southerly states that include North and South Carolina, there are a number of unique, elliptical features of unexplained origin. Known as the “Carolina Bays,” theories of their origin favors ancient, naturally occurring lake formations, although some have proposed that the features could be the remnants of ejecta from an ancient comet strike.

While the Carolina Bays remain a popular (and controversial) item of geological discussion, elsewhere in the world there are similar enigmatic elliptical features that have garnered attention over the years.

One particularly curious series of long grooves that score the landscape of the Argentine pampas near Rio Cuarto have long suggested evidence of an ancient multiple-impact site. The location was first observed by an Argentinian Air Force pilot, Captain Ruben Lianza, who wrote a summary of his observations for an astronomy publication, providing photographs he obtained from air. The images he provided showed teardrop-shaped features on the landscape which were similar in appearance to low-angle impact features previously observed on the planets Mars and Venus, and even on the Moon. They had not, however, been observed anywhere on Earth to-date.

The Rio Cuarto “craters”

(Credit: USGS/NASA Landsat Program/Public Domain).

Lianza went on to co-author an article with P.H. Schultz which appeared in Nature two years after his initial observation, where the authors described the discovery as follows:

“During routine flights two years ago …, one of us (R.E.L.) noticed an anomalous alignment of oblong rimmed depressions (4 km x 1 km) on the otherwise featureless farmland of the Pampas of Argentina. We argue here, from sample analysis and by analogy with laboratory experiments, that these structures resulted from low angle impact and ricochet of a chondritic body originally 150-300 m in diameter.”

A total of ten features were noted across a distance of 50 kilometers. Analysis of geological samples from around the gouges produced evidence of meteoritic fragments and vitrified glass (i.e. stone or sand melted due to intense heat, which is often associated with meteorite impact sites). This led Schultz and Lianza to conclude that there was ample evidence that the sites were produced by an impact; it was also determined that the locations were just a few thousand years old, and likely occurred “well within the time of human habitation.”

The Rio Cuarto features

(Credit: Planetary and Space Science Centre University of New Brunswick).

As it turns out, the newly discovered impact regions had long been known to geologists in the region, although they had never been examined prior to the work conducted by Lianza and Schultz. Following the publication of their Nature article, American geologists also traveled to the site to provide further study and analysis.

The appearance of the impressions led to their being given rather unique names; one of the areas, measuring an impressive 2000 feet in length and 600 feet wide, was called “Drop.” A pair of nearby depressions were dubbed the “Eastern” and “Western Twin.” Yet another, which was comparable in size to the “Twins,” was named the “Northern Basin.”

Fundamental to the theory of an extraterrestrial impact site, each of the depressions shared a similar alignment with an orientation toward the northeast, which the researchers believed could support the idea of a low-angle impact.

However, some ballistics experts have challenged the impact theory over time, since the low entry angle proposed by Lianza and other proponents of an impact theory is an uncommon occurrence. In addition to this, key elliptical features of known impact features of this kind also produce a “butterfly wing” pattern of ejecta, which remains absent from the anomalous Argentinian features. To account for the depth of the Río Cuarto features as craters, an impact with a resulting blast 30 times greater than the 1908 Tunguska event would be required, which must have produced more visible ejecta.

Site of the Tunguska blast, circa 1927-1930

(Public Domain).

While ideas vary about the age of the features, it is interesting to note that the depressions have been suggested to have originated around the beginning of the Holocene; this could possibly have coincided with the Younger Dryas, a period of abrupt cold reversal that occurred approximately 12,900 years ago as Earth was emerging from the last ice age. However, estimates as to the age of the Río Cuarto craters places them anywhere between 10,000 years and as much as 100,000 years old. 

Further comparing the features to their cousins, the Carolina Bays, is the fact that satellite data indicates there are as many as 400 similar elliptical features in the same region. One theory proposed for the frequency and appearance of these elliptical features throughout the region is natural dune formations produced by wind over time, which could account for their shared angular orientation (a similar mechanism has been proposed in relation to the Carolina Bays, as outlined in a paper by Geoarchaeologist Christopher Moore and a number of colleagues, titled “The Quaternary evolution of Herndon Bay, a Carolina Bay on the Coastal Plain of North Carolina (USA): implications for paleoclimate and oriented lake genesis.”

Based upon physical and numerical modeling, proponents Río Cuarto event suggest that the object struck at an angle of no more than 15 degrees from the horizontal, with the impact itself having 10 times more explosive energy than the Barringer Crater event and 30 times more than the Tunguska event.[1] Although the age of the depressions has not yet been determined precisely, it is believed by some researchers[who?] they are about 10,000 years old, placing them at the start of the Holocene, though the EID gives a broader age of less than 100,000 years old.

Unique features such as these remain fascinating, whatever their ultimate cause, and provide compelling clues about the ancient world which, with any luck, will one day be well understood and easily recognized. Until that time, our many questions about the ancient world will rely on further studies of such features, which may ultimately help us unravel several key remaining questions about the ancient world, and abrupt changes that were occurring in the paleoclimate of the ancient Americas.