A jaw-dropping 301 newly confirmed exoplanets have recently been added to the total of worlds outside of our Solar System. These planets are just the latest to be added to the staggering number of 4,569 that have already been confirmed.

As for why such a large number of planets were found in a relatively short amount of time, we can thank a new deep neural network named ExoMiner for that help. In fact, ExoMiner has been trained to pick out actual exoplanets from a variety of other space objects or “false positives”. ExoMiner is a huge help considering the tons of data collected by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft and K2 mission which observed thousands of stars – each with the potential of having at least one planet orbiting them.

And it certainly isn’t an easy task as there are confirmed exoplanets and those that are validated, which have two very different meanings. Based on different data statistics, a world can be validated on how likely or unlikely it is to be a planet. But when numerous different observations show definitive planetary features, it is categorized as a confirmed exoplanet.

ExoMiner found the 301 planets by combing through data on planetary candidates in the Kepler Archive. The planets were discovered by the Kepler Science Operations Center pipeline and then the Kepler Science Office categorized them as planet candidate status. Then ExoMiner validated them.

Jon Jenkins, who is an exoplanet scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, discussed the project by explaining, “Unlike other exoplanet-detecting machine learning programs, ExoMiner isn’t a black box – there is no mystery as to why it decides something is a planet or not,” adding, “We can easily explain which features in the data lead ExoMiner to reject or confirm a planet.”

While hundreds of new explanets have been confirmed, experts don’t think that any of them are located in the habitable zone or similar to Earth. Nevertheless, the discovery is certainly very important as Jenkins noted, “These 301 discoveries help us better understand planets and solar systems beyond our own, and what makes ours so unique.”

ExoMiner will also be able to help in other projects as explained by Hamed Valizadegan, who is the ExoMiner project lead and machine learning manager with the Universities Space Research Association at Ames, “Now that we’ve trained ExoMiner using Kepler data, with a little fine-tuning, we can transfer that learning to other missions, including TESS, which we’re currently working on.” “When ExoMiner says something is a planet, you can be sure it’s a planet.”

The study can be read in full here.

Since the 1980s, sightings of large, triangular-shaped UFOs, usually described as being black in color, making a low humming noise, and very often with rounded rather than angled corners, have been reported throughout the world. The sheer proliferation of such reports has led some ufological commentators to strongly suspect that the Flying Triangles (as they have come to be known) are prime examples of still-classified aircraft, the development of which was secretly begun in the 1980s by elements of the U.S. Department of Defense. Largely, UFO researchers are split into two camps: that the Flying Triangles are the creations of the American military or that have been flown by extraterrestrials. There is, however, another theory for all of this mystery. It’s a theory that pops up now and again; however. It is tied to the issue of nothing less than time-travel. I must stress that the theory was addressed in the early part of the 1990s, but faded away. The theory also kind of vanished into the woods – so to speak, and quite literally – of England’s Cannock Chase expansive woods.

The late Omar Fowler, a UFO expert who died in 2017, had a theory that the so-called Flying Triangles just might be nothing less than the aerial vehicles of time travelers. Fowler had a good reason for that. On one occasion, in September 1992, over a large area of woodland in central England called the Cannock Chase, Omar secured a piece of testimony from a man named Alan Ball. He agreed to meet Ball on the Chase one morning. Incredibly, Ball claimed that he was taken on-board a huge, black, Flying Triangle late one night – and while he was driving home – when he was “beamed into” the craft and subjected to a series of medical experiments by three small, humanoid figures in what “looked like a medical lab.”

(Nick Redfern)

The late U.K. researcher, Omar Fowler, with a model of a “Flying Triangle”-type UFO

Ten or fifteen minutes into the experimentation, Ball claimed that his mind was flooded by images of the U.K., in ruins. It was a definitive Armageddon: buildings, in all directions, were destroyed; charred human bodies lay everywhere; and it was clear that a nuclear event occurred. And the assumption was that the event was not alone. That the U.K. – and possible everywhere else – had been destroyed. After having the terrifying vision, Ball was dropped off the craft – literally, from a door about five feet above the woods. Ball was in a state of terror – and for several days. Particularly of interest is the fact that Fowler had in his files two extremely similar cases – and also at the Cannock Chase woods – of people taken onto Flying Triangles and exposed to images in their minds of a massive apocalypse. Fowler was still open on the idea that the Flying Triangles could be extraterrestrial in nature. However, he wasn’t able to shake off the disturbing possibility the craft were piloted by time travelers, and that what Ball and the two other people were seeing was a future still to come – and that all three victims had been taken to the future and then returned to in 1992. Should we consider those who pilot the Flying Triangles to be us, but from a faraway time?Maybe, so. To a degree, Omar Fowler did.

(Nick Redfern)

The lair of the Flying Triangles at England’s Cannock Chase

Admittedly, there is no reason why such a theory should be dismissed and tossed away. And, indeed, there is the intriguing fact that the Flying Triangles look like next-generation versions of our “Stealth” bombers and “Stealth” fighters. Moreover, the very fact that the FTs look like they came from our world – but from an Earth far ahead of us, time-wise – is yet another reason to think the Flying Triangles are flown by people just like us. Could they be historians? Looking to prevent us from destroying ourselves? The theories are many. The answers, though, are most definitely not.

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Workers digging on the property of an old spinning factory in Turkey in an area that had not been used in over 30 years found a mysterious intact skeleton of a strange looking creature with long hind legs, short front ones, pointy nails instead of feet and extremely sharp teeth. Better yet (for investigators, at least), the skeleton had some flesh still intact. Dinosaur? Mutant? Or should we start the countdown … 3-2-1 … is this the first known skeleton of a Chupacabra (ignoring the fact that it was found in Turkey, not Texas or Puerto Rico)?

Sharp teeth did you say?

Yusuf Kıtay, the operating officer of the excavation, said the workers found the animal skeleton while they were working in an area that has not been used for the last 30-40 years outside a factory in Iğdır, a far eastern near the border with Armenia. The long-tailed skeleton was of a creature that would have stood about one meter (3.3 feet) tall and appears to have died recently. While the long hind legs might suggest it was a kangaroo, the head is the wrong shape entirely for it to be an Australian marsupial. Kitay did the right thing – he had the workers carefully remove the skeleton intact from the site and, after photographing it (a series of photos can be seen here), delivered the remains to the Iğdır University’s Biodiversity Application and Research Center.

It’s not THAT big

“Then we will ensure that this skeleton is preserved in a museum.”

So this is not just a deformed stray animal but something that is museum quality? That sounds strange. Which museum? Archeology World reports that Belkıs Muca Yiğit, a lecturer at Iğdır University, told Anadolu Agency (AA) that researchers there would attempt to identify the species of the animal and then donate it to a museum. That’s curious … it it’s an out-of-place animal like an escaped pet, why donate it to a museum? If it’s indeed the most well-preserved dinosaur skeleton complete with DNA-filled flesh, why not study it more? If it’s cryptid (note: there were no telltale dead livestock reported), why not announce the unique discovery in a three-part miniseries on some cable channel? And why have there been no further updates besides the initial report over a week ago? Is this the victim of some sort of radiation leak or worse – a strange experiment?

This could just be a misshapen common animal or an escaped pet. The secrecy makes it questionable. Let’s hope we get an update soon.