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

The most common classification system is called the Morgan–Keenan (MK), which classifies stars based on temperature and luminosity. The MK system essentially merges two different systems:

the Harvard classification, where stars are classified on their surface temperature using a single letter of the alphabet: O (the coldest), B, A, F, G, and M (the hottest). These are the so-called main-sequence stars, but as we’ll see, there are also more extreme types of stars (like giant stars, supergiant stars, and white dwarfs). These broad types are also split, so you can have G1 stars, G2 stars, and so on.

the Yerkes spectral classification (sometimes used synonymously with the MK system), which is luminosity, where stars are named using Roman numerals: 0, I (Ia, Iab, Ib), II, III, IV, V, VI, and VII.

In the MK system, stars are defined with a letter from the Harvard classification and a Roman numeral from the Yerkes one (the Sun is a G2-V star).

Over the years, astronomers have created different catalogs where stars are classified in somewhat different ways, and it’s not always a straightforward process, nor is the classification set in stone — it has changed over the years, as our understanding of stars has improved. So if anything, the stellar classification discussed is a general indication more than anything else.

Now, let’s look at things in a bit more detail and see why this matters.

There can be massive variation between the different types of stars.

Image via Wiki Commons.

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A star is born

The universe is big, dark, and cold — the vast majority of it, at least.

But if you were to wander this universe, you’re bound to come across something that’s hot and bright. Stars, as these objects are called, are giant thermonuclear reactors. They’re responsible for heating up some planets to a livable temperature, they produce the vast majority of the chemical elements we know of, and they’re basically the reason why the universe is not a completely frozen and barren place.

A star’s life begins when a gaseous nebula of material starts to collapse on its own gravity.

Just like planets, all stars are round, because of this gravitational collapse. When the stellar core gathers sufficient mass, it starts to develop a significant gravitational attraction, which packs the particles even more tightly, increasing the density. Then, once a crucial point is reached and the stellar core becomes sufficiently dense, hydrogen starts to be converted into helium through nuclear fusion, releasing energy in the process — and thus, a star is born.

This hydrogen-helium fusion is the fuel of the star, and the heat it produces also creates a pressure that prevents stars from collapsing on themselves. Depending on how massive they get, stars will also end up on a different course.

In general, larger stars have a shorter lives, although we’re still usually talking about billions of years. However, their lifecycle greatly depends on their mass.

For instance, a star with a mass greater than 0.4 times the Sun will expand and turn into a red giant. Then, as it ejects much of its mass violently across the galaxy, the star would become a white dwarf. Based on its mass, the star might also become a brown dwarf, a neutron star, or, if it is sufficiently massive, a black hole. So already, we’re seeing that different types of stars can turn into different things after they use up their fuel.

Average stars become white dwarfs. They eject their outer layers but still maintain a hot core comparable in size to the Earth. Counterintuitively, the smaller the white dwarf, the larger its mass — this happens because it’s the pressure from fast-moving electrons that keeps these stars from collapsing, so the more massive the star, the more it is able to overcome this pressure, and thus, massive white dwarfs tend to become smaller.
White dwarfs can become active stars once again. If a white dwarf is close enough to a companion star, it can start sucking material from the second star, and if it acquires enough, it can produce a burst of nuclear fusion, causing it to brighten and turn into a nova. This typically lasts a few days, after which the process starts again. If enough material is gathered in one go, the white dwarf can erupt into a supernova.
Larger stars become supernovae. A supernova is not only a big nova. In a nova, the star’s surface explodes but in a supernova, the core also collapses and explodes. The supernova-generating process is cataclysmic — in mere seconds, the core shrinks from thousands of miles to only a few dozen, and the temperature can spike by over 100 billion degrees. A supernova eruption can outshine an entire galaxy. Every year, we discover 20-40 supernovae in other galaxies.
Supernovae can become neutron stars . After this ungodly process, the core collapses. If the collapsing stellar core has a mass of 1.4-3 solar masses, what’s left behind is a neutron star. Neutron stars are the smallest and densest stars, if we exclude black holes or hypotheticals such as white holes. Neutron stars have a radius on the order of 10 kilometers, and the ones we’ve observed so far seem very hot, although they don’t actually produce heat anymore and slowly cool down over time.

The formation of a neutron star.

Image via Wiki Commons.

Large supernovae turn into black holes. If the stellar core remaining after the supernova explosion is larger than three solar masses, it will collapse into a black hole. Black holes are the most massive objects we know of in the universe, so massive that even light cannot escape their grasp. Black holes are so exceptional that they start to break our current understanding of physics. Black holes are thought to be extremely cold on the inside, but incredibly hot just outside.
Stellar debris often forms new stars. The dust and debris ejected by novae and supernovae are excellent seeds for new stars, recycling the material and potentially forming new generations of stars.

A supernova remnant

Understanding stars

We’ve already seen some types of stars but before we dig into the classification per se, let’s take a brief look at what we know and don’t know about stars.

Outside of the sun, the closest star to Earth is one of the three stars in the Alpha Centauri system, some 4.3 light-years from Earth. That’s very, very far. To get an idea how far it is, the distance from Earth to Mars is around 0.00001 light-years away and, with our best available space ships, it would still take around 7 months for the trip. To get to Alpha Centauri at that speed, it would take over 100,000 years. So while mankind has looked at the stars since forever, we’ve only recently started to look at them closely.

Of course, we’re not physically close to the stars, but with the aid of telescopes, we can get a closer look at them. Ground-based telescopes enable scientists to study stars in different wavelengths of light, including the visible spectrum, radio waves, and even infrared light.

It’s not just observation — researchers also conduct experiments in the lab to infer the properties of stars and investigate the processes that fuel stars. Ultimately, computer modeling has also helped improve our understanding of stars.

Thanks to modern research we know that stars have stratified, onion-like layers. Here we see a massive star before exploding.

Image via Wiki Commons.

With computer models, we can approximate different properties of stars (such as density, pressure, velocity, composition) and see how they influence observations.

Enough chit-chat. Let’s look at some stars.

Main sequence stars — and beyond

In astronomy, the ‘main sequence‘ is a term used to denote stars that fit in the common group of stars on the color versus luminosity charts. These plots, also called Hertzsprung–Russell diagrams after their co-developers, are the common classification tool for stars.

The Hertzsprung–Russell diagram is essentially a square where stars are plotted with color on the horizontal and luminosity on the vertical. Color is dependent on temperature, and brightness depends on size so you can also see it as a temperature-size chart.

The main sequence of stars is exactly what the name says: the main sequence in which these stars are grouped, from top left (bright and blue/hotter) to bottom right (less bright and less hot).

Hertzsprung–Russell diagram, via Wiki Commons.

It’s hard to say why stars are grouped along this chart, but about 90% of all the known stars in the universe (including the sun) are main-sequence stars.

That doesn’t mean that main sequence stars are monotonous — quite the opposite. There can be huge variation, ranging from a tenth of the mass of the sun to up to 200 times as massive.

There are also other clusters of stars — to the left we see the less bright white dwarfs, which we’ve discussed already, and above the main sequence, we have the giants and supergiants. Here’s what a real diagram of stars looks like, from 22,000 stars plotted from the Hipparcos Catalogue and 1,000 from the Gliese Catalogue of nearby stars, with the most prominent being the main-sequence diagonal.

Image via Wiki Commons.

So the first stellar classification is into main-sequence stars and non-main-sequence stars. Main sequence are stars are the norm, other types of stars can exist scattered around the diagram (though they also tend to group into clusters).

Types of main sequence stars

As we’ve already mentioned, main sequence stars are also extremely varied, so there is also a separate classification for them.

The traditional classification here is called the Harvard classification, a one-dimensional classification where stars are grouped by their temperature, with a letter representing each category. However, this classification does not distinguish between stars with the same temperature but different luminosities. So a new classification system was devised — the Morgan–Keenan (MK) classification, which also includes the luminosity.

The modern classification system for them is called the Morgan–Keenan (MK) classification and also includes the luminosity.

Each star is assigned a spectral class from the older Harvard spectral classification, as well as a luminosity class using Roman numerals as explained below, forming the star’s classification. So you’d have, for instance, B0 stars, BI, stars, BII, and so on.

Ia-O	extremely luminous supergiants
Ia	luminous supergiants
Ib	less luminous supergiants
II	bright giants
III	normal giants
IV	subgiants
V	main sequence dwarf stars
VI, or sd	subdwarfs
D	white dwarfs

Brightness stellar classification.

So M stars are the smallest, O stars are the biggest, and the luminosity ranges from I (brightest) to VI (less bright) and D (white dwarfs). As mentioned, the Sun is a type G2V star. Alpha Centauri A is also a G2V star, while Proxima Centauri is a type M5.5-V star.

The classification can also be expanded to stars outside of the main sequence. A plot of the stars would look like this:

Why we classify stars

Well, for starters, researchers love to classify all things — that’s how we better understand trends and patterns. That’s how we know, for instance, that M type stars are by far the most abundant in the known universe. The Sun belongs to a relatively rare group of stars.

Astronomers also calculate the habitable zone around different types of stars — the distance at which a planet can exist around the star so that it hosts liquid water, and therefore, could potentially host life.

NASA’s Kepler mission is searching for habitable planets around nearby main-sequence stars less massive than type A stars but more massive than type M — so mostly around K, G, and F types of stars.

Ultimately, we class stars because we want to better understand and define them. We’re still only scratching the surface of a very vast universe of knowledge, and it helps to group things in an orderly, systematic fashion.

More exotic stars

It’s not the only stellar classification, and it’s not entirely fixed and set-in-stone. There are other classifications and talk about changing classifications is not unheard of in the astronomical world, as our understanding progresses and improves.

There are also more exotic types of stars. For instance, recent research has suggested that Class L (small, dark, reddish) stars and Class T (methane dwarf) stars could be more common than all the other classes combined, but they are more difficult to discover.

There is yet another class — Class Y of brown dwarf stars, cooler than those of spectral class T and with different spectral signatures. So far, less than two dozen of these stars have been confirmed. Class C of carbon stars is also discussed, and Class D stars is typically used to denote any stars that are not currently undergoing fusion. It’s estimated that there are 300 billion stars in our galaxy alone, and we have very little idea how many galaxies there are in the universe, but estimates range in the trillions. I’ll let you do the math.

As our detection capacity and image processing power advances, we are likely to keep discovering new stars that improve and challenge our current understanding. There is much, much more to discover.

In 2006, Anomalist Books published my book, On the Trail of the Saucer Spies. It’s basically a full-length, historical examination of how and why government, military and intelligence agencies have secretly spied on certain elements of the UFO research community – and all across the world, no less – since that legendary year in which the Flying Saucer was born: 1947. The book revealed that numerous, central players within the UFO arena had been watched closely by the world of officialdom, including infamous UFO “Contactees” George Adamski, George Hunt Williamson and George van Tassel (all of who were the subject of FBI files); Gray Barker and Albert Bender – two of the earliest chroniclers of the Men in Black puzzle; Bill Moore, Stan Friedman and several other of the premier Roswell investigators; crashed UFO data-collector, Leonard Stringfield; and various early UFO research groups, including the National Investigations Committee for Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), and the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO), to name just a few.

Without a doubt, the most controversial data contained within the book was provided to me by a retired employee of the British Police Force’s Special Branch who, within the pages of the book, I termed “The Sandman.” He asserted to me that while working for Special Branch in the mid-1970s, he was engaged in a secret operation to monitor certain members of the British UFO research community. The Sandman further maintained that after his retirement from Special Branch, and during the 1990s – the time period in which he ran a private security company that occasionally undertook clandestine work for British Intelligence – he was recruited into a Special Branch-led operation to carefully monitor some of the newer faces on the ufological scene. Those same, newer faces included (a) UFO researcher, Matthew Williams; (b) computer-hacker, Matthew Bevan; and (c) Robin Cole, a Cheltenham, U.K.-based researcher who was busy at the time digging deeply into the links between UFOs and the Government Communications Headquarters, GCHQ, at Cheltenham.

Most interesting of all was the reaction of the UFO research community in late 2005 and early 2006, when the rumor-mill began to quietly report on both the above data and the then-forthcoming publication of On the Trail of the Saucer Spies. As I know personally from emails sent to me at the time, there was a high degree of anticipation that, finally, the UFO research community was going to see prime evidence that we were being watched because we were getting, as one commentator concisely put it, “too near the alien facts.” Similarly, a couple of contacts in the research field praised the book – before they saw it – and predicted it would open the floodgates to “a final proof the government knows we know they have aliens and crashed ships in their hangars.” Well, when the book was published several of those enthusiastic commentators vanished into the shadows in a flash; and the reaction was decidedly mixed, to say the very least. And I’ll tell you why. Time and time again, I found that the reasons why British, American and Australian Intelligence agencies (to name but three nations involved) were secretly spying on the UFO community actually had nothing whatsoever to do with UFOs, aliens, dead extraterrestrials held in cryogenic storage, or tales of Area 51 and Hangar 18.

Rather, the motivation was prompted by the fact that those same intelligence communities were acutely worried some UFO researchers were also tied with politics, the criminal underworld, and hostile, overseas intelligence agencies – such as those of the former Soviet Union and North Korea. They also feared that UFO research was acting as a form of ingenious camouflage to mask the fact that we were, in reality, trying to uncover defense and intelligence secrets of a distinctly down-to-earth nature for those same aforementioned hostile overseas intelligence agencies. Needless to say, this was not at all what the UFO research community anticipated; nor was it what they wanted to hear from me. Instead, they wanted tales of researchers getting too close to the extra-terrestrial truth. They desired stories of intimidation created out of a direct result of us uncovering cosmic conspiracies – and here I was giving them stories of espionage-based chicanery, of which the UFO angle was always secondary, and sometimes barely that, even.

Predictably, out came the old, tried-and-tested saucer-based chestnuts: I had been financially bribed by “them” to write the book and diffuse the controversy surrounding so-called “real saucer spying.” “They” had threatened me into writing the book. The utterly tiresome, and wholly anticipated, tirade went on and on. Certainly, one of the biggest criticisms leveled at me in many quarters was the fact that I had relied on a source – the Sandman – that had (a) insisted on anonymity; and (b) maintained that Special Branch was deeply engaged in spying on ufologists for strictly political and espionage-based reasons. Well, at the time that On the Trail of the Saucer Spies was published, there was no evidence – whistle-blower testimony aside, that is – that Special Branch were watching the UFO research community because of concerns of a political and security-based nature. It did eventually surface, however. And for that evidence we have to turn our attention to the most recent book from British ufologists Dave Clarke and Andy Roberts: Flying Saucerers. Clarke and Roberts have secured a body of intriguing official UFO-related documentation from Special Branch, via the terms of the Government’s Freedom of Information Act.

As their book amply demonstrates, one organization that Special Branch took more than a passing interest in was the Aetherius Society, founded by George King. The roundabout way in which King’s organization came to the attention of Special Branch is a convoluted story in itself – and I urge you to get hold of a copy of Flying Saucerers if you are in any way interested in how and why the world of UFO research can cross paths with that of officialdom. Consider the following from Clarke and Roberts that concerns the activities of the Aetherius Society in 1958: “…the Aetherius Society was by now very firmly on the establishment’s radar and in May 1958 they once again came to the attention of Special Branch.”

The pair continue that Special Branch’s report, copies of which are in the possession of the authors and me too, stated that the Aetherius Society was “…active in its campaign against nuclear weapon tests, and in this respect its policy is closely allied with that of the Communist Party” – even though, as the authors note, “no evidence of open Communist association with the Society” was ever found. Clarke and Roberts also learned from now-declassified Special Branch documentation that in both August 1958 and August 1959, Special Branch operatives secretly attended Aetherius Society demonstrations in London. With respect to the 1958 demonstration, Special Branch recorded that: “…it can thus be seen that the Aetherius society is molding its preposterous claims to conform with the popular concepts of religion…There is a possibility that all this high-sounding talk of ‘Karma’ and ‘Cosmic Parliaments’ is simply a system of financial gain for certain individuals and George King in particular.”

As all of this demonstrates, Special Branch was certainly taking notice of King and Co., but not for reasons that had any direct bearing upon UFOs and/or official, secret knowledge of UFOs. Rather, it was for other, more down to earth reasons and theories, such as the issue of nuclear weaponry and politics – which is precisely what the Sandman had told me Special Branch was doing, years before the King documents surfaced officially to Clarke and Roberts from Special Branch. On the other side of the Atlantic, the picture is very similar. Thanks to the provisions of the U.S. Government’s Freedom of Information Act, files have surfaced on another individual implicated in the UFO puzzle – and again as a result of specific concerns about the man’s politics. That man was Oliver Kenneth Goff, described in now-declassified FBI files of 6 May 1955 as ‘a self-styled freelance Evangelist who for the past number of years has been speaking around the U.S. regarding the threat of communism to the U.S’. Interestingly, one of Goff’s regular lectures was titled: “Traitors in the Pulpit, or: What’s Behind the Flying Saucers – Are they from Russia, Another Planet, or God?” Other lectures that Goff routinely delivered to interested parties included: “Treason in our State Department;” “Should we use the Atom Bomb?” “Red Secret Plot for Seizure of Denver;” and “Do the Reds Plan to Come by Alaska?”

As the FBI additionally noted: “Also, some of the titles of Goff’s books, which he publishes voluminously are: ‘Will Russia Invade America?, One World, A Red World, and Confessions of Stalin’s Agent.’ The FBI further added that “Goff is a self-admitted former member of the Communist Party’, and that he ‘was found guilty by jury trial on February 25, 1948, in United States District Court, District of Columbia, and was fined $100 as a result of the subject’s placing anti-communist signs before the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C.” FBI files on Goff also record that: ‘The Rocky Mountain News on October 25, 1951, contained an article stating that three Englewood persons were ordered to appear in Denver Municipal Court as an aftermath of the ripping of the Soviet flag yesterday at Civic Center. Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Goff were two of these three individuals.”

Goff was certainly an interesting character, and someone who had made comments in the 1950s about communist based plans to covertly introduce fluoride into the US water-supply, to create a “spirit of lethargy in the nation.” Goff also claimed that – in the 1950s – he compiled a document titled Brain-Washing: A Synthesis of the Russian Textbook of Psycho-politics. Goff died in 1972 while still only in his early sixties. And while we now have access to at least some of the official world’s surveillance files on Goff, the full story of his links with communism and flying saucers remains tantalizingly incomplete.

Another interesting piece of data that surfaced in the wake of the publication of On the Trail of the Saucer Spies came from none other than well-known UFO researcher, Bruce Maccabee. In a review of my book for the Journal of Scientific Exploration, Maccabee wrote of his own run-ins with the official world: “After I spoke at a UFO conference near Washington, D.C. in February 1993, I was contacted by an assistant military attaché who was stationed at the Russian Embassy. He wanted to know how to obtain US government files on UFOs.” Maccabee continued that: “…you can imagine my surprise and amusement when, about six months later, while I was at work I got a call from the ‘dreaded’ FBI.” Notably, Maccabee added: “…it became obvious to me that the agent didn’t know much about the UFO phenomenon and was amused to learn about the FBI files on the subject. But he was especially interested in my interactions with the military attaché.” Almost certainly, given the fact that Maccabee has undertaken sensitive work of a non-UFO nature at an official level, this was a typical attempt to recruit Maccabee – using the UFO issue as a starting point, and one that would inevitably have led into other defense related avenues. Maccabee chose not to take the bait. Let us now turn our attention to the situation in Australia.

A file that originated with the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) has been declassified and details the strange saga of how, and why, Australian spies kept watch on elements of the nation’s UFO research community for years. The lengthy dossier is full of data that ranges from the strange and the esoteric, to the hilarious and the sinister. It contains a wealth of material on (a) Australian Flying Saucer groups; (b) concerns about communist-related issues and affiliations pertaining to members of some of those same groups; (c) fears of military personnel and non-military civilians with secret clearances becoming involved with such groups; (d) possible leaks of security data of a distinctly non-UFO nature; and (e) even issues pertaining to vegetarianism and nudism! In other words, yet again, we see a situation where the official world of Intelligence keeps close tabs on the UFO community – but yet again for reasons that are lacking in a direct UFO connection.