The largest lake on Saturn’s largest moon Titan may be deeper than a thousand feet. Even though it’s been more than three years since NASA’s Cassini spacecraft finished orbiting Saturn (when it dove down into the planet’s atmosphere), experts are still finding valuable information from the data that it collected.

In one of Cassini’s last flybys of Titan (specifically, the 104^th flyby of the moon on August 21, 2014), it was able to capture significant data of the moon’s largest lake called Kraken Mare. Based on preliminary data, it was believed that the lake was at least 115 feet deep but according to more in-depth analysis, it has been revealed that it is much deeper – at least 1,000 feet. In fact, it is so deep that the radar on board the spacecraft couldn’t probe all the way down to the bottom of the lake.

They were able to figure this out by calculating how long it took the radar signal to bounce back from the lake and by considering the type of liquid the lake is comprised of as it would absorb a portion of the energy emitted from the radar signal.

Kraken Mare

There is a mixture of methane and ethane in Kraken Mare and scientists are still optimistic that they will solve the mystery of where the liquid methane originated from because based on the fact that Titan is so far away from the sun, it should have cycled through all of its methane in 10 million years. While there is a lot of debate on the exact age of Saturn’s moons, they are certainly much older than 10 million years.

And Kraken Mare is not only deep, but massive in size as it would cover all five of North America’s Great Lakes if it was situated here on Earth. In a statement from the Cornell University Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science, Valerio Poggiali, who is a research associate at the university and the lead author of the study, explained this further, “Kraken Mare … not only has a great name, but also contains about 80% of the moon’s surface liquids.”

At a thousand feet deep, NASA should have no problem putting a submarine down into the depths of Kraken Mare which is currently being discussed for a future mission to Titan sometime in the next decade.

Titan

And Kraken Mare wasn’t the only lake that the spacecraft collected data on. Specifically, researchers were very interested in finding out more about Ligeia Mare and its “magic island” that continuously disappears and reappears. They were also curious about an estuary called Moray Sinus that has a depth estimated at 280 feet. The spacecraft probed the surface of the moon with a radar altimeter at a distance of about 600 miles away.

• The study was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets where it can be read in full.

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Back in the day, the United States and the Soviet Union both had their eyes to the sky. Space was seen as the last frontier for the Cold War they had long been waging, and they constantly sought to one-up each other. Space was a potential battle ground not just for trying to gain an upper hand, but also as a stage on which they could flex and pose for the world stage, constantly trying to show who was best. It was in this climate of competition and trying to master the domain of space that the Soviets would build a tactical armed space station, and become the first, and so far only, nation to actually fire a space cannon.

There was a time when the Soviets were winning the space race. Initially they came out of the gate strong, with many decisive victories. The launching of the Sputnik on October 4, 1957 was the first manmade object placed in space, followed by putting the first living animal in space in the form of a dog named Laika, and then there was the Soviet unmanned space probe Luna II, which on September 14, 1959 became the first manmade object to land on the moon. They followed this up on April 12, 1961, when Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was launched into orbit for 108 minutes, becoming the first human being in space. At this time the Soviet Union were showing that space was their domain, which made the United States very nervous indeed. At the time space was being increasingly seen as sort of the battlefield of the future, with all manner of potential uses for reconnaissance satellites or even proposed orbital weapons. The early Soviet early dominance of space was alarming and unacceptable for the Americans, not only militarily but also ideologically, as it showed that communism was winning, so they did what they were good at and started throwing tons of money at their space programs.

Laika, the first Earth creature to go to space

Flush with cash from its newfound industrial and economic surge in the wake of World War II, the United States doubled their efforts in the space race, and it paid massive dividends. In quick succession they launched their own satellite, put astronaut Alan Shepard into space, and then performed their coup de grace on July 20, 1969, by landing astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon. In short order The United States had upped the ante and clawed ahead of the Soviets to leave them reeling. The U.S. now had the upper hand, and the thought of American satellites circling the globe unchecked terrified the Soviets, only made worse when the U.S. began preparations for a manned space station called the American Manned Orbital Laboratory (MOL) program. This just wouldn’t do, so they began a space station program of their own.

The Orbital Piloted Station (OPS), code-named Almaz, meaning “Diamond,” was a top-secret program launched in 1964 and carried out by the Soviets to put their own manned space station into orbit for the purpose of military reconnaissance. To this end it was to be fitted with cutting edge spy equipment, cameras and radar, and it was designed to be able to be resupplied while in orbit. It was to be the first of several planned military space stations, and money was poured into it. All of this was very hush hush, of course, hidden behind the façade that it was to be a part of the civilian space station program called Salyut. They didn’t want the Americans getting wind that they were planning on putting a military apace station in orbit, but they had to be sure their investment stayed safe. At the time, both sides were very concerned with anti-satellite and space station weapons, paranoid that anything put up into space was liable to be shot down or straight out stolen, so the Soviets made sure that one aspect of the Almaz was developed, and that meant they wanted to mount a big space cannon on it.

In order to arm their fancy space station, the Soviets designed the R-23M Kartech, basically a modified version of the Rikhter R-23, which was a 23mm, fully automatic tail gun designed for the Tupolev Tu-22 Blinder supersonic bomber. The new modified cannon weighed 37 pounds and could supposedly fire up between 950 to 5,000 rounds per minute, that could hit targets with accuracy up to two miles away. It was designed to be mounted on the forward belly of the Almaz station, but firing the weapon was the tricky part. As the cannon was to be mounted in a fixed position, actually aiming it would require the entire space station to be moved into a firing position. Another problem was that thrusters would be needed to counterbalance the recoil of the weapon, as every shot fired would potentially push the space station out of orbit, a big problem in the weightless vacuum of space. Nevertheless, the Soviets went ahead with arming their space station.

Between 1973 and 1976, the Soviets would launch three crewed military reconnaissance stations with the Almaz program, which were disguised under the civilian Salyut program and launched under the names Salyut 2, Salyut 3 and Salyut 5. While the Salyut 2 failed shortly after achieving orbit, the Salyut 3 and 5 were successfully tested, and the Salyut 3 managed to be a historic first when it actually test fired its space cannon in orbit. The test occurred on January 24, 1975, and although the cannon had been tested on land, since no one had ever fired it in space no one was really sure how the weapon was going to affect the station. For this reason, the test was scheduled for shortly before the Salyut 3 was to deorbit and long after the crew had left. The station was at the time being remotely operated, and when the weapon was fired thrusters were used to counteract the recoil. According to reports, approximately 20 rounds in one to three controlled blasts, all of which purportedly burned up in orbit, although the exact results have remained classified. To this day, the Almaz program represents the only armed and crewed military spacecraft ever flown, a rather interesting and somewhat unsettling milestone.

At the time of this space cannon test, the U.S. had no idea that any of this was going on. They of course knew about the Salyut 3, but at the time they were unaware that it was a military spacecraft and certainly knew nothing about the fact that it was armed or that the Soviets planned to actually test the weapon. In fact, it was not until long after the Cold War had ended and the end of the Soviet Union, that the information on the test firing would get out with the Russian Defense Ministry finally revealing it on the Russian military show Voennaya Priemka. However, the test results are still classified, the footage from the experiment was destroyed on reentry, and there is only one known photo of the actual cannon used aboard the Salyut 3.

Although we don’t know the exact results of the test firing, it must have been successful enough for the Soviets to see space-based weapons as viable, as they planned for future space stations to be armed with interceptor missiles. However, in the end the Almaz program never really caught on. Manned space stations were increasingly seen as to cost-inefficient, and the military lost interest, instead focusing on automated satellites for reconnaissance purposes. The Almaz program was grounded and absorbed into the civilian Salyut program, but much of it still remains classified. This was the first, and as of yet as far as we know the last time anyone tried to fire weapons from space, but make no mistake the interest is still there, and who knows how many secret programs there might be. Although there are many laws now in place to keep this sort of thing from happening, there will likely always be those who see space as a potential battleground, and now you know that the Soviets took the first step with their clandestine operation.

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Grey and Nordic (tall white) aliens get all the love and Reptilians get all the fear, so there’s not much left to give the Mantis aliens, even among insect lovers. The experience of a man in England who claims he not only witnessed a 7-foot-tall alien mantis exiting from a spacecraft (which he photographed), it forced evil thoughts into his mind and caused him to lose his job at a dog food company. Is that last part a reason to love or to fear Mantis aliens?

“On a Thursday morning at 5am I was cycling home from work and I saw something odd in the sky. It was a glowing orange sphere just hovering on the horizon. At first I thought it must be Venus or a satellite, but it seemed to be much closer than either of these things.”

So begins the 7-foot mantis tale of Paul Froggatt, a resident of Warwick and a former night shift employee at a local dog food warehouse. Froggatt shared his alleged encounter with The Daily Star and no other accounts appear to be available, so take that into consideration as describes the encounter.

This sounds interesting.

“I stopped on my way to take some photos – the object looked a fair bit bigger in person than visible in the photos. This is when the object started to move around and rotate in shape. I could see it was circular with a part sticking out from the main body. When this started, I got the chills down my back and felt like there was something wrong here, I hurried on my way home.”

Froggart’s photos (see them here) appear to be closer to dawn than 5 am and the object definitely looks like a planet from afar and a balloon closer up. He claims it seemed to follow him until he entered the forest, which he remembers was unusually quiet. That’s when he saw it.

Paul Froggatt holds up his drawing of the 'evil 7ft alien mantis' 

(Image: Paul Froggatt)

Paul Froggatt is appealing for witnesses to get in touch 

(Image: Paul Froggatt)

“Standing a few meters ahead is what I can only describe as a humanoid praying mantis. This thing was at-least 7 foot tall, light green with triangular head and big oval black eyes. It had all the features of a mantis but stood on two legs and had a somehow human like shape about it. I was completely frozen with fear. For what felt like an age – but was probably only seconds – I stared into this creature’s eyes and it stared back. I felt like it could read my mind and I could read its. My fear was replaced with completely alien thoughts of utter hatred and evil I felt projected from this thing. I suddenly snapped out of this hypnotic kind of state and it made a step back as if it was gonna pounce on me.”

Unfortunately, that’s the end of his account – except for the picture he drew of the creature. (See it here.) That depiction and his account adhere pretty closely to the description of mantis aliens by other witnesses and abductees. Believed by many to be from the Draco (dragon) constellation, they’re generally described as being 6-7 feet tall with bodies identical to but bigger than insect praying mantises, with dark brown or black slanted eyes. The article doesn’t give a color and the drawing is in black pen, but most accounts describe mantis aliens as being brown or green, with some having them in colored robes. They’re bipedal and said to communicate with each other using clicks and with humans using telepathy. They’re believed to be shapeshifters, are sometimes seen with small Grey aliens which follow them and are said to be evil beings harvesting DNA in order to conquer humanity, possibly in conjunction with Reptilians.

Most of that description matches what Froggart to the Daily Star, which could mean he had a real encounter with a Mantis alien, had a very real hallucination or he knew quite a bit about their alleged description and behavior ahead of time. Again, the photo of the UFO doesn’t clarify anything – it may be a coincidence and not associated with the alleged mantis – and the drawing doesn’t either. There are no other witness reports as of this writing.

Will they be back?

Froggart didn’t have any answers so he asked his co-workers — who he claims instead nicknamed him the “Mantis man of Warwick” and tormented him so much that he had to quit the job at the dog food warehouse. Did the evil Mantis alien play a part in this? If this is true (again, no other accounts pop up), it shows Froggart was serious enough about the encounter to put his job in jeopardy.

Is this a real Mantis encounter or a hoax? The needle is still on the ‘Skeptical’ side.

Was the story planted in the media by the Mantises to get more publicity for their species? Now THAT’S evil!

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Today’s article is on the subject of some of the weirdest government projects that span more than a few decades. I’m going to focus on the United States and the United Kingdom. I’ll begin with the U.K. and reveal some of its strange secrets. And tomorrow I’ll focus on the U.S. In the heart of North Wales, U.K., there exists a body of water called Lake Bala. You may say, well, there’s nothing particularly strange about that. You would be correct. Lake Bala is not out of the ordinary, in the slightest. But what is rumored to dwell in its dark depths most assuredly is out of the ordinary. It’s the domain of a violent lake monster called Teggie. Or, is the story born out of secret, military experiments? It all very much depends on who you ask and who you believe. There are longstanding rumors in and around the Bala area that in the build-up to the First World War, the British Royal Navy clandestinely let loose a group of seals into the lake. The reason: to strap them with dynamite and train them to attacks specific targets, namely warships.

It should be noted that the dynamite was not real and the “warships” were just small rowing boats. In other words, the project was a test-run, in the event that the Royal Navy might find itself at war with Germany (which it did in 1914, when the First World War broke out), and suicidal seals, strapped with explosives, might be required to fight for their country.  So the story goes, the seals proved impossible to train, and the project was abandoned. And, so today, what people are seeing today are brief glimpses of the original seals that bred and bred and so on. Of course, it’s very possible this is nothing more than a tall tale, passed on through the generations and without any actual facts to support it. Thus, the legend of Teggie continues to thrive. Now, onto the matter of Aleister Crowley.

Aleister Crowley, the “Great Beast” who died in 1947, was the subject of sensitive files that are said to have been destroyed, but which may not have been. In this case, the records were said to have originated with MI5, which is the U.K.’s equivalent of the FBI. Richard B. Spence, of the International Spy Museum, has done his utmost to try and unravel the connections between Crowley and the intelligence community. Spence says of Crowley: “He was such a disreputable and even evil character in the public mind that arguably no responsible official would think of employing him. But the very fact that he seemed such an improbable spy was perhaps the best recommendation for using him.” Another theory is that during the Second World War, British Intelligence planned on using the world of the occult to try and prevent the Nazis from invading the U.K.

It was thanks to Spence that in 2003 something extraordinary happened. That was the year in which Spence found not a file on Crowley per se, but a file on another topic, but which referenced Crowley’s MI5 file. The claim that there had not been an MI5 file on Crowley, now had no merit. Caught in an awkward situation, MI5 went back on its previous stance and claimed that, yes, there had been a Crowley file, after all. But, it had been destroyed back in the 1950s. Spence dug deeper and found further references to Crowley-based files. They, too, had been destroyed, claimed MI5. W. Adam Mandelbaum, who worked for U.S. Intelligence, said that: “Given the political fallout that would have resulted from making this involvement public, it should be no surprise that there is a paucity of documentation concerning Crowley’s intelligence efforts.” Now, let’s look at a similar situation but a different person.

There are rumors that secret files exist within the U.K.’s MI5 – which is the British equivalent of the United States’ FBI – on “Britain’s Most Famous Witch.” Her name was Sybil Leek, who was rumored to have undertaken work of a very weird kind to help defeat the Nazis during the Second World War. I have tried to secure such files, but with no luck. But, there’s a chance they exist. The BBC says: “One of the most incredible claims about her is that she was recruited by the British Government during the Second World War. According to the Second World War author Michael Salazar, her role was to provide phony horoscopes for the Germans who believed in Astrology. She apparently wrote a chart which convinced the Nazi Rudolf Hess to fly to England, where he was captured.” Maybe, one day, we’ll know for sure the truth of this weird affair.

• Part-2 is coming!
  

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Today’s article is the second part of a two-part story on strange, secret programs. The first feature was on the secret files and projects of the U.K. Now, I’m focusing on the United States. We’ll begin with the field of Remote-Viewing. The whole RV phenomenon is well-known. But, how about a certain operation that the late RV expert, Pat Price, got into during the 1970s? In his 1997 book Remote Viewers, Jim Schnabel told the story of the U.S. Intelligence community’s involvement in the controversial issue of psychic spying that largely began in the early-to-mid 1970s. Commenting on the skills of a talented remote-viewer in relation to matters of a UFO nature, one Pat Price, Schnabel noted Price was of the opinion that “…Alaska’s Mount Hayes, the jewel of a glacial range northeast of Anchorage, housed one of the aliens’ largest bases.” According to Pat Price, the aliens that lived deep inside Mount Hayes were very human looking, differing only in their heart, lungs, blood, and eyes. Ominously, he added that the aliens use “thought transfer for motor control of us.” Price added: “The site has also been responsible for strange activity and malfunction of U.S. and Soviet space objects.”

Now, onto a completely different issue: dowsing. In 1978, staff at the Foreign Technology Division (FTD) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio prepared an extensive document titled Paraphysics R&D – Warsaw Pact [R&D referring to Research and Development]. Page twenty-three of the document details positive results of both U.S. and Soviet research in the field of dowsing. Notably, a copy of the entire FTD document was sent to the CIA’s Office of Science and Technology (OSI) shortly after its publication.

How about the FBI’s file on Spontaneous Human Combustion? That was a subject that the Bureau studied for a long time. It’s a little-known fact, however, that midway through the 20th century the FBI got involved in the controversy of SHC. The unfortunate person whose fiery death caught the attention of the FBI was Mary Hardy Reeser, a then-sixty-seven-year-old woman from St. Petersburg, Florida. It was some time on the night of July 1, 1951 when Reeser took her last breaths. Reeser’s son Richard (who was a physician), his daughter Nancy, and the landlady, Patsy Carpenter, were hanging out with Reeser in her room. Around 9:00 p.m. they all left. Their last image was of Reeser reclining in her chair and smoking a cigarette. It wasn’t until the next morning that it became clear something terrible had occurred overnight. As fate would have it, on the morning in question Carpenter received a telegram for Reeser and took it to her room. There was no response to Carpenter’s knock on the door. So, Carpenter turned the doorknob. She screamed and jumped back. The doorknob was red hot.

Carpenter quickly caught the attention of a couple of house-painters, who raced over and forced open the door. All three were hit by a blast of scalding hot air. The scene in front of them was like something out of a horror-movie. The chair in which Mary Hardy Reeser had been reclining was severely burned. Ashes were everywhere. Teeth and bones could be seen on what was left of the chair. And then there was the matter of Reeser’s head: it was shrunken significantly and burned almost raw. Undamaged was Reeser’s left ankle, as well as her left foot and left shoe. Those remains aside, she was pretty much gone. The FBI’s file on SHC, however, still exists.

Then, there’s the Collins Elite, a think-tank-type group that believes the UFO phenomenon is demonic in nature, rather than having extraterrestrial origins. I pursued them a great from 2007 onward and they were a sinister and strange bunch. Today, the Collins Elite still exists – despite the widespread denials of the U.S. Government that it has ever existed. And, in the 21^st Century, the group is a definitive secret society. Entrance to the group is strictly limited to those that move effortlessly between the domains of the Pentagon and the Trilateral Commission, the Department of Defense and fringe archaeologists, the Pope, and those well-versed in the black arts. As the Collins Elite sees it, the group is at the forefront of a worldwide, secret war to prevent a full-scale demonic invasion, worldwide martial-law, Armageddon, the rise of the Anti-Christ, and a planet and its people plunged into a literal, hellish nightmare. Time may tell if the theories of this secret network are valid or not.

In 1952 the U.S. Army secretly looked into the matter of teaching dogs to search for deadly landmines on battlefields. The strangest aspect of the program was that it would explore the feasibility of the dogs using extra-sensory perception (ESP) to find the landmines! The Army contracted Dr. Joseph Banks Rhine, PhD, to come on-board. The operation progressed quickly. According to the documentation – which has been released under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act – two dogs in particular, named Tessie and Binnie, scored very well. Rhine also suggested to the Army that pigeons might be good candidates for certain, tricky operations of the military and espionage type. The official records contain Rhine’s own words on this intriguing issue. He said: “The mystery of pigeon-homing and the possibility that extrasensory perception enters into that performance led us to undertake the solution of the problem of how these pigeons find their way home. At the termination of the contract the problem had not been solved.”

Rhine added, however, that regarding the matter of pigeon-homing: “…researchers have ruled out all existing sensory hypotheses, thereby making extrasensory perception a more plausible interpretation than it has been hitherto. This research has opened up possibilities of importance not only within but far beyond the scope of the projects specifically dealt with. The problems raised on this project involve basic research that may remain in the category of the inapplicable for many years. Measured against this is the enormous value, not only to intelligence but to application in a wide range of military uses of extrasensory perception.”

Venus, goddess of love that you are
Surely the things I ask
Can’t be too great a task

The most popular song about Venus was the tune sung by Frankie Avalon in 1959 – it reached #1 on the Billboard charts. That probably wouldn’t happen today since one of the “things” he was asking Venus for was a “a little girl for me to thrill.” That stinks, and apparently so does Venus and its chances for harboring life forms of any age or genders. The announcement in 2020 that phosphine had been detected in the Venusian atmosphere had talk of life at a fever pitch due to phosphine being a chemical that can only be produced by life forms – at least life as we know it. Not surprisingly, the announcement was controversial and other researchers took deeper looks into the toxic clouds over Venus and what they found stinks … and not just for the phosphine believers.

“Instead of phosphine in the clouds of Venus, the data are consistent with an alternative hypothesis: They were detecting sulfur dioxide. Sulfur dioxide is the third-most-common chemical compound in Venus’ atmosphere, and it is not considered a sign of life.”

In the press release for a new study submitted to the journal Earth and Planetary Astrophysics, co-author Victoria Meadows, a University of Washington professor of astronomy, explains why the “purported phosphine on Venus” idea smelled funny … her team showed it was most likely sulfur dioxide with that unique odor you whiff in burnt matches, rotten eggs and your grandfather’s flatulence. Even more embarrassing (to the phosphine crowd), the scientists from UW, NASA’s Caltech-based Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, the Georgia Institute of Technology, the NASA Ames Research Center and the University of California, Riverside (an impressive team) showed that the signal mistaken for phosphine was detected in an upper layer of the Venusian atmosphere which would have destroyed them almost immediately.

Before the phosphine crowd, which used data from the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT), could object, lead author Andrew Lincowski, a researcher with the UW Department of Astronomy, hit them with the radio astronomy data used to model conditions in Venus’ atmosphere.

“This is what’s known as a radiative transfer model, and it incorporates data from several decades’ worth of observations of Venus from multiple sources, including observatories here on Earth and spacecraft missions like Venus Express.”

The model showed that the mistaken phosphine signature was 50 miles above the planet’s surface in the mesosphere where it would have no protection from toxic chemicals and ultraviolet radiation.

“Phosphine in the mesosphere is even more fragile than phosphine in Venus’ clouds. If the JCMT signal were from phosphine in the mesosphere, then to account for the strength of the signal and the compound’s sub-second lifetime at that altitude, phosphine would have to be delivered to the mesosphere at about 100 times the rate that oxygen is pumped into Earth’s atmosphere by photosynthesis.”

Then came the slam-dunk.

“Our new work provides a complete framework that shows how typical amounts of sulfur dioxide in the Venus mesosphere can explain both the signal detections, and non-detections, in the JCMT and ALMA data, without the need for phosphine.”

That stinks.

That definitely stinks. Perhaps the musical answer to Frankie Avalon’s somewhat perverted request and the phosphine lovers passion for possible life on Venus comes not from Venus but from this J. Geils Band anthem which proclaimed about both of these that:

“Love stinks.”