Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 12 YEARS AND 10 MONTHS.
ON 06/04/2024 MORE THAN 1.951.050
VISITORS FROM 134 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
12-11-2023
Mysterious UFO Sighting at Mori Point, Pacifica Captivates Observers
Mysterious UFO Sighting at Mori Point, Pacifica Captivates Observers
Pacifica, California – In an awe-inspiring display that has both enthusiasts and skeptics buzzing, a UFO was captured on a webcam at Mori Point, Pacifica, California. This remarkable event occurred on 9th June 2022 but it was just recently released.
The footage shows an enigmatic object performing intelligent movements, displaying an agility that defies conventional explanations. As it maneuvers through the sky, the UAP leaves behind a unique trail, only to disappear and then astonishingly re-emerge, further adding to the mystery surrounding its origins and intent.
What Sets This Sighting Apart?
Intelligent Movement:The UAP exhibited movement patterns that suggest a level of control and purpose, differentiating it from natural phenomena or identifiable man-made objects.
Disappearance and Reappearance:The object’s ability to vanish and then reappear is not only baffling but also challenges our understanding of known aircraft capabilities.
Captured on Webcam: The availability of clear webcam footage offers a rare and valuable opportunity for analysis and interpretation by both experts and the public.
A Hub for UFO Sightings
Mori Point, a scenic coastal bluff in Pacifica, is no stranger to UFO sightings, making this recent event part of a larger pattern that continues to intrigue and perplex observers. This latest sighting adds to the growing archive of UAP encounters along the California coast.
Implications and Ongoing Debate
This sighting at Mori Point ignites further debate about the nature of UFOs and their frequent appearances in our skies. Are they extraterrestrial visitors, secret military technology, or something else entirely? As the discussion continues, one thing is certain: the interest in and significance of UFO sightings remain as high as ever.
Diep onder het Afrikaanse continent en de Stille Oceaan, nabij het centrum van de aarde, bevinden zich vreemde en flinke ‘klonters’ (twee keer groter dan de maan). Decennialang was onduidelijk waar ze vandaan komen, maar Amerikaanse onderzoekers denken er nu uit te zijn: het zijn brokstukken van een andere planeet.
Dat schrijven onderzoekers in het blad Nature. Hun studie handelt over twee mysterieuze ‘blobs’ of ‘klonters’ die in de jaren tachtig van de vorige eeuw al zijn ontdekt (zie kader). Deze klonters – formeel aangeduid als Large Low-Velocity Provinces (LLVPs) zijn ongeveer twee keer groter dan de maan en bevinden zich nabij het centrum van de aarde. De ene LLVP bevindt zich diep onder het Afrikaanse continent. En de andere onder de Stille Oceaan. Onderzoek heeft reeds uitgewezen dat de LLVPs waarschijnlijk een andere samenstelling hebben dan de omringende aardmantel. Maar decennialang bleef onduidelijk waar het materiaal nu precies vandaan kwam.
LLVPs LLVPs bevinden zich diep in het binnenste van de aarde. Ze zijn niet te zien, maar toch weten onderzoekers vrij zeker dat ze er zijn. Hoe kan dat? Het is te danken aan seismische golven. Deze golven – die bijvoorbeeld ontstaan tijdens aardbevingen – kunnen door het binnenste van de aarde heen reizen. De snelheid waarmee ze dat doen, wordt bepaald door de samenstelling van dat binnenste. En tijdens metingen aan seismische golven ontdekten onderzoekers in de jaren tachtig dat die golven afgeremd werden. Het hintte op de aanwezigheid van twee grote klonters materiaal die een hoog ijzergehalte hebben en de seismische golven met hun hoge dichtheid en temperatuur vertragen. Onderzoekers besloten ze daarom aan te duiden als Large Low-Velocity Provinces, wat zoveel betekent als grote gebieden waarin de snelheid laag ligt.
Theia In een nieuwe studie denken Amerikaanse onderzoekers nu meer duidelijkheid te kunnen geven over de herkomst van de LLVPs. Hun onderzoek suggereert namelijk dat het om brokstukken gaat van Theia: een planeet die miljarden jaren geleden op de aarde klapte. Bij de zware botsing ontstonden grote brokstukken – zowel afkomstig van de aarde als van Theia – die uiteindelijk in een baan rond de aarde samenklonterden en zo de ons allemaal welbekende maan vormden.
Eureka! Die conclusie volgt uit een heus ‘eureka-moment’ dat zich voor onderzoeker Qian Yuan aandiende toen deze een seminar over planeetvorming bijwoonde. Eén van de sprekers presenteerde het verhaal over het ontstaan van de maan en het viel Yuan tijdens deze presentatie op dat de maan relatief rijk aan ijzer is. Het eureka-moment diende zich kort daarna aan, toen de spreker vertelde dat er op aarde – in tegenstelling tot de maan – geen spoor van Theia te vinden is. “Nadat hij gezegd had dat niemand wist waar de ingeslagen planeet nu is, had ik een ‘eureka-moment’,” vertelt Yuan. “Ik realiseerde me dat het ijzerrijke ingeslagen object getransformeerd zou kunnen zijn tot ‘mantelklonters’.”
Simulaties Samen met collega’s besloot Yuan dat scenario verder te onderzoeken. Ze gebruikten daarvoor onder meer modellen waarmee ze de botsing tussen de aarde en Theia simuleerden. En die bevestigden dat de botsing zowel de maan als klonters in het binnenste van de aarde kan hebben voortgebracht. “Middels simulaties van mantelconvectie ontdekten we dat de dichte, ijzerrijke materialen van Theia naar de onderkant van de aardmantel konden zinken en zich aldaar konden ophopen,” vertelt onderzoeker Mingming Li. “Het lijkt erop dat de klonters het resultaat zijn van een planetaire botsing die onze maan vormde,” concludeert collega Ed Garnero. “In andere woorden: de gigantische klonters die momenteel diep in de aarde, diep onder onze voeten, te vinden zijn, zijn buitenaards. De aarde bezit niet alleen klonters, de aarde heeft buitenaardse klonters!”
Het nieuwe onderzoek wijst erop dat de twee klonters in het binnenste van de aarde bestaan uit materiaal afkomstig van Theia. De klonters zijn flink; als je ze over het aardoppervlak zou uitsmeren, zouden ze een 100 kilometer dikke laag rond de volledige planeet vormen. Afbeelding: Hernan Canellas / Image courtesy of ASU.
Twee mysteries Met hun onderzoek lossen de wetenschappers mogelijk twee mysteries in één klap op. Allereerst natuurlijk het mysterie van de klonters: het nieuwe onderzoek verklaart – eindelijk – waar ze vandaan komen. Daarnaast lost het onderzoek ook een ander raadsel op, namelijk waarom er gek genoeg buiten de maan nooit materiaal van Theia is teruggevonden. Het onderzoek suggereert namelijk dat het leeuwendeel van de onfortuinlijke planeet door de jonge aarde is geabsorbeerd (en de resterende stukken zijn opgegaan in de maan).
“Dit onderzoek laat zien dat de enorme klonters (de LLVPs) diep in de aardmantel kunnen bestaan uit materialen van de planeet die op de proto-aarde insloeg en de maan vormde,” vertelt onderzoeker Mingming Li. “En dat de maan en de klonters dus dezelfde oorsprong kennen.” “Door naar binnen te kijken – naar het binnenste van de aarde – in plaats van naar buiten – naar de maan – hebben we nog een bewijsstuk gevonden voor de kosmische catastrofe die de gigantische inslag waarbij de maan ontstond, is,” concludeert onderzoeker Travis Gabriel.
Legislator Sergio Gutiérrez chairs a second UFO hearing in the Chamber of Deputies. I am again joined by Jimmy Church of Fade to Black Radio for LIVE coverage, and post-discussion of this second Mexican Chamber of Deputies landmark Public Hearing on UFOs. Mexico UFO Hearing
"That type of faulting can facilitate the exchange of surface and subsurface materials through shear heating processes, potentially creating environments conducive for the emergence of life."
(Left) a view of Titan around Saturn and (right) the Jovian moon of Jupiter.
(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ MSSS/ Kalleheikki Kannisto/ Space Science Institute)
Scientists are investigating specific geological features on the largest moons of both Jupiter and Saturn that could be ideal spots for the emergence of life elsewhere in the solar system.
The team, led by researchers from the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, looked at what are called "strike-slip faults" on the Jovian moon, Ganymede — the solar system’s largest moon, bigger even than the planet Mercury — and Saturn's moon, Titan. Faults like these happen when fault walls move past each other horizontally, either to the left or the right, with a famous example here on Earth being the San Andreas fault. It's sort of like a giant crack, rift, or certain type of crevice in the ground.
Such seismic features are generated on these icy moons, scientists believe, when these bodies orbit their parent gas-giant planets. The planets' immense gravitational influences generate tidal forces that squash and squeeze the moons, inevitably flexing the natural satellites' surfaces. Plus, these tidal forces aren’t very consistent because the orbits of both moons are elliptical, meaning they are sometimes closer to Saturn or Jupiter. Other times, they're much farther away. That, in turn, leads to even stronger tidal forces.
"We are interested in studying shear deformation on icy moons because that type of faulting can facilitate the exchange of surface and subsurface materials through shear heating processes, potentially creating environments conducive for the emergence of life," Liliane Burkhard, lead author of the research and a scientists at the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, said in a statement.
Saturn’s moon, Titan, has surface temperatures of around minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 179 degrees Celsius). This is incredibly cold — cold enough that the water of this moon actually plays the role of rock. It can crack, deform and, ultimately, form faults.
During its flybys of Titan, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft was able to determine that this moon of Saturn may have liquid water oceans tens of miles beneath its thick shell of ice. Additionally, Titan is the only solar system moon with a dense, Earth-like atmosphere, meaning it has a similar hydrological cycle with methane clouds, rain and liquid flowing across the surface to fill lakes and seas. For this reason, Titan is already considered one of just a few bodies in our solar system that could support life — as we know it, at least.
When the NASA Dragonfly mission (which launches in 2027) arrives at Titan in 2034, it will send a rotorcraft lander to fly across the frigid surface of this moon in an effort to hunt for those potential biological signs. That doesn't exactly mean it'll search for bug-eyed aliens, however. At the very least, the team hopes the lander will detect the chemical building blocks of life we're familiar with.
The Dragonfly mission is initially set to land at the Selk crater area on Titan, a region that is also of interest to Burkhard and the team. This is because when calculating the stress exerted on Titan’s surface as a result of tidal forces, the researchers weren't only focused on whether there might be signs of extraterrestrial life on the ground. They also explored the chance that the Selk crater region could be subjected to shear deformation to figure out whether it's a safe landing site option for Dragonfly in the first place.
"While our prior research indicated that certain areas on Titan might currently undergo deformation due to tidal stresses, the Selk crater area would need to host very high pore fluid pressures and a low crustal coefficient of friction for shear failure, which seems improbable," said Burkhard. "Consequently, it’s safe to infer that Dragonfly won’t be landing in a strike-slip ditch!"
Strike-slip faults at the San Andreas Fault (a) on Ganymede (b) and on Titan (Image credit: University of Hawaii)
Burkhard and colleagues also looked at the geology of the Jovian moon, Ganymede, to investigate the icy body’s history of tidal stress. In particular, the team looked at a bright region in the northwest of Ganymede called Philus Sulcus, which is composed of parallel sets of fractures.
The researchers basically looked at available high-resolution observations of the area to find that there were different degrees of tectonic deformation in bands of light terrain that cross over each other. The cross-cutting nature of these bands indicated to Burkhard and colleagues the existence of three distinct eras of geological activity — ancient, intermediate, and young.
"I investigated strike-slip faulting features in intermediate-aged terrain, and they correspond in slip direction to the predictions from modeling stresses of a higher past eccentricity," said Burkhard. "Ganymede could have undergone a period where its orbit was much more elliptical than it is today."
When investigating other parts of Philus Sulcus, the team found the direction of slip features to have different alignments. This implies these features may have been generated by processes other than high tidal stress. "So, Ganymede has had a tidal 'midlife crisis,' but its youngest 'crisis' remains enigmatic," Burkhard added.
The geologic investigations undertaken by this team and others are vital for informing the missions of spacecraft that aim to explore solar system moons like Titan and Ganymede. said Burkhard.
“Missions such as Dragonfly, Europa Clipper, and ESA’s JUICE will further constrain our modeling approach and can help pinpoint the most interesting locations for lander exploration and possibly for gaining access to the interior ocean of icy moons,” Burkhard concluded.
The team’s research is published across two papers in the journal Icarus.
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Op 13 juli 2023 scheerde planetoïde 2023 NT1 op een afstand van 100.000 km langs de aarde, en dat zonder dat wetenschappers ook maar ergens vanaf wisten. Dit roept de vraag op: in hoeverre kunnen we als mensheid de aarde beschermen tegen kleine(re) planetoïden zoals 2023 NT1? Wetenschappers uit Amerika hebben hiervoor mogelijk een oplossing bedacht.
In het onderzoek schrijven de onderzoekers dat kleine planetoïden, zoals 2023 NT1, ook wanneer ze op het moment van ontdekking al heel dicht bij de aarde in de buurt komen, nog kunnen worden vernietigd middels een methode die bekend staat als PI, oftewel ‘Pulverize it’. In het Nederlands betekent dit ‘verpulver het’. Bij deze methode wordt er gebruik gemaakt van een raket die een aantal doorborende staven als lading heeft. Sommige van deze staven zijn compleet van één materiaal gemaakt, anderen zijn gevuld met traditionele explosieven. Zodra de raket in de buurt komt van de planetoïde worden de staven afgeschoten en doorboren ze het vliegende gevaar. Dit zorgt er uiteindelijk voor dat de planetoïde in kleinere stukken breekt met een diameter van maximaal 15 meter.
Snelle reactie Het grote voordeel van PI is dat er erg snel gereageerd kan worden. Zo schrijven de wetenschappers dat zelfs op het moment dat een inslag enkele uren verwijderd is, de planetoïde nog steeds onschadelijk kan worden gemaakt. Zelfs in dat geval zullen de overgebleven brokstukken grotendeels verbranden in de atmosfeer. De schokgolf van de brokstukken die eventueel zouden landen hebben dan niet genoeg energie om significante schade toe te brengen aan natuurgebieden en steden. Op aarde zullen omstanders op het moment van doorboring dan vooral een grote lichtshow zien, welke bestaat uit een reeks (ongevaarlijke) knallen en flitsen.
Onzichtbaar PI is niet de enige manier waarop planetoïden vernietigd kunnen worden; wetenschappers hebben eerder al een andere verdedigingstechniek ontwikkeld. Hierbij wordt er gebruik gemaakt van deflectie. Een goed voorbeeld hiervan is het experiment dat ongeveer een jaar geleden werd uitgevoerd met de ruimtesteen Dimorphos. Bij deze test werd er een DART-ruimtesonde met een snelheid van 6 km/s tegen de ruimtesteen aan geknald. Het resultaat was een succesvolle koerswijziging van de ruimtesteen.
Het nadeel van deflectie is dat het plannen, bouwen en afschieten van de ruimtesonde al snel enkele jaren, zo niet decennia kan duren. Daarnaast kost het ook veel geld en materieel om zo’n ruimtesonde te bouwen. Het probleem met kleinere planetoïden is dat deze niet altijd enkele jaren, maar soms pas enkele weken of enkele dagen voor inslag pas waargenomen kunnen worden. Of, zoals bij 2023 NT1 het geval was, soms zelfs helemaal niet (zie kader).
Over 2023 NT1 2023 NT1 scheerde in juli op een afstand van zo’n 100.000 kilometer langs de aarde. Daarmee kwam de ruimtesteen ongeveer drie keer dichter bij dan de maan! Maar wetenschappers hebben dat gemist; ze ontdekten de ruimtesteen pas twee dagen later. In deze studie leggen de onderzoekers ook uit hoe dat komt: de ruimtesteen kwam vanuit de richting van de zon en ging dan ook als het ware schuil in het felle zonlicht.
Catastrofe voorkomen In het beste geval wordt een planetoïde al decennia of eeuwen van tevoren waargenomen voordat deze inslaat. In dat geval zou deflectie wel eens beter kunnen werken, omdat er dan een kleinere koerswijziging nodig is. In het onderzoek wordt dan ook meermaals benadrukt dat PI vooral bedoeld is als een toevoeging aan de beschikbare mogelijkheden, in plaats van een vervanging van de deflectiemethode.
Echter wordt er ook gewezen op het feit dat om iets op te kunnen blazen, je het wel eerst moet kunnen observeren. De onderzoekers benadrukken dan ook meermaals het belang van goede detectiemethoden. Hierbij wordt vooral hoopvol uitgekeken naar toekomstige observatoria zoals het Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) en NASA’s aankomende Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor. Het is dus erg mooi dát er nu een manier is bedacht om kleinere planetoïden zoals 2023 NT1 onschadelijk te kunnen maken, maar tegelijkertijd voelt het vooralsnog ook een beetje als jagen in het donker zonder zaklamp.
"If they're out there, this analysis lets us figure out where they could be living."
(Image credit: ALLVISIONN/Getty Images)
Scientists usually search for life elsewhere in the universe by using Earth as a template — after all, it is the only planet we know where life thrives. (Life as we know it, at least.) But according to new research, a bygone era of Earth may be a better indicator of complex life than the Earth we know of today.
Telescopes that help assess whether exoplanets are habitable typically search for biosignatures in offworld atmospheres based on compounds, and compound levels, we see on Earth right now. However, scientists say these telescopes may be able to more easily detect those telltale signatures on worlds that don't look a lot like modern Earth. Instead, it may be a better bet to have our observatories look for worlds that resemble Earth as it was long ago, when dinosaurs ruled the surface. The reason for this is that, at that time, there were higher oxygen levels on our world. Simply put, it's easier to detect a lot of oxygen on an exoplanet than a little bit of oxygen.
"Modern Earth's light fingerprint has been our template for identifying potentially habitable planets, but there was a time when this fingerprint was even more pronounced — better at showing signs of life," study co-author Lisa Kaltenegger, who is the director of the Carl Sagan Institute, said in a statement. "This gives us hope that it might be just a little bit easier to find signs of life — even large, complex life — elsewhere in the cosmos."
Scientists generally agree the amount of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere has swung back and forth over the past 400 million years, going from 16 percent (just enough to spark a fire), to as high as 35 percent (beyond which that fire could never be extinguished.) Then, about 50 million years ago, oxygen levels stabilized to the 21 percent we see today.
Importantly, the new study's models show oxygen levels reached 30 percent about 300 million years ago, which would've been sufficient to enable growth of complex life forms. That includes the dinosaurs that ruled our planet roughly between 245 million and 66 million years ago.
An artist’s impression of the new titanosaur and its heart-shaped bones
Mark Witton
So, telescopes could spot exoplanets in their own versions of the Phanerozoic era, scientists say. The atmospheres of such planets would be rich in oxygen, like Earth's was then, and would likely have two pairs of biosignatures — oxygen and methane and ozone and methane, which are easily identifiable by a telescope, the new study finds.
"The Phanerozoic is just the most recent 12% or so of Earth's history, but it encompasses nearly all of the time in which life was more complex than microbes and sponges," Rebecca Payne , the study's lead author and a scientist at Cornell University, said in the statement. "These light fingerprints are what you'd search for elsewhere, if you were looking for something more advanced than a single-celled organism."
Scientists are also excited by the hypothesis that an exoplanet that has an atmosphere with 30 percent oxygen may indicate it hosts life beyond just microbes, perhaps "creatures as large and varied as the megalosauruses or microraptors that once roamed Earth."
"Hopefully we'll find some planets that happen to have more oxygen than Earth right now, because that will make the search for life just a little bit easier," said Kaltenegger. "And, who knows, maybe there are other dinosaurs waiting to be found."
This research is described in a paper published in October in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
A European Space Agency satellite has detected a mysterious glow coming from Mars. Measured in the visible spectrum with the NOMAD-UVIS instrument on board the European Space Agency (ESA) Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) satellite, the unexpected glow emanates from the night side of Mars and was observed in the planet’s upper atmosphere.
A similar glow was witnessed by the same research team using a satellite orbiting Venus. Like that visible light signal, the researchers believed the mysterious glow coming from Mars resulted from oxygen interacting with the planet’s upper atmosphere. That’s mainly because they also saw a similar mysterious glow coming from Mars, only in the daytime.
“Back in 2020, we were already able to detect the presence of a green emission between 40 and 150 km in altitude, present during the Martian day,” explained Jean-Claude Gérard, a planetologist at the Laboratory for Planetary and Atmospheric Physics (LPAP) at the University of Liège (BE), where the research team was headquartered. “This was due to the dissociation of the CO2 molecule, the main constituent of the atmosphere, by ultraviolet solar radiation”.
However, the researchers soon discovered that this unexpected mysterious glow coming from Mars was originating from the nighttime side. They also figured out it was caused by something else entirely.
“This emission is due to the recombination of oxygen atoms created in the summer atmosphere and carried by the winds towards the high winter latitudes,” explained Lauriane Soret, a researcher at LPAP.
Once at higher altitudes, the atoms recombine with CO2 molecules when they come in contact. This reaction, the researcher explains, produces an oxygen molecule “in an excited state” that relaxes, causing it to emit light “in the visible range.”
MYSTERIOUS GLOW COMING FROM MARS COULD PROVIDE CRITICAL EVIDENCE ABOUT THE PLANET’S SEASONS
The researchers say they discovered the glow by reorienting the UVIS-NOMAD instrument on the ESA’s Mars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) satellite so it could scan the atmosphere on its edge. They quickly detected the light emissions, which appeared to be concentrated over the polar regions of the red planet. According to the announcement of the discovery, “the oxygen atoms converge in the downward branch of the gigantic trajectory from the opposite hemisphere.”
Illustration of the dissociation of CO2 molecules in the summer atmosphere and the transport of oxygen atoms to the winter polar regions.
CREDIT: @ESA
Now that they know what to look for, Soret says their study will be continued during the TGO mission, hoping it “will provide us with valuable information about the dynamics of the Martian upper atmosphere and its variations over the course of the Martian year.”
ANOTHER MYSTERIOUS LIGHT EMISSION SPOTTED IN THE ULTRAVIOLET RANGE
In their published research, which appears in the journal Nature Astronomy, the team says that along with the mysterious glow coming from Mars in the visible light range, they have also spotted a glow in the ultraviolet range. That glow, they believe, is not caused by oxygen but something else entirely.
“We have noticed that another ultraviolet emission due to the nitric oxide (NO) molecule is also observed by UVIS in the same regions,” said Soret. “Comparing the two emissions will enable us to refine the diagnosis and identify the processes involved.”
Fellow researcher Jean-Claude Gérard adds that these “unexpected and interesting” observations will also likely help guide future missions to the red planet. The researcher even points out that future missions could carry cameras to capture images of the glow for all to see.
“The intensity of the night glow in the polar regions is such that simple and relatively inexpensive instruments in Martian orbit could map and monitor atmospheric flows,” he concludes, noting that the glow is bright enough “to be observable during the polar night by future astronauts in orbit or from the Martian ground.”
Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.
UFO hunter who has studied 'alien' mummy for over a decade claims remains are an ancient species of tiny, cave-dwelling human
UFO hunter who has studied 'alien' mummy for over a decade claims remains are an ancient species of tiny, cave-dwelling human
The businessman who bought the tiny 'alien' skeleton told Spanish TV his 'alien' mummy might be from a lost race, which lived alongside Chile's Aymara people
But experts in infant anatomy tell DailyMail.com that the 'Atacama skeleton' is likely a normal human fetus - preserved in the dry heat of the Atacama Desert
READ MORE: Mummified 'aliens' brought to Mexico's congress for second time
Chile's mysterious, oblong-headed 'Atacama skeleton' may have once been a small class of terrestrial humanoid living in the high caves of the South American Andes, at least according to the man who has spent a decade studying the being.
This Spanish businessman and researcher who now owns the eerie, but tiny, skeletal mummy dropped his new theory on Spain's Mitele TV network late last week.
Sensational origin stories have trailed Chile's 'Atacama skeleton' ever since the six-inch-long 'alien' mummy was first taken from an abandoned church in the ghost town of La Noria, 3,225-feet above sea level in the arid Atacama Desert.
But seven experts in infant anatomy and anthropology maintain that there is nothing at all unusual about the skeleton, nicknamed 'Ata' — even as other small mummies have been presented before Mexico's Congress as proof of extraterrestrial life.
One expert called the new theory 'absurd,' telling DailyMail.com it was 'not based on scientific evidence, or just knowledge of normal anatomical development of babies.'
Chile's mysterious, oblong-headed 'Atacama skeleton' (above), according the Spanish businessman who has spent a decade studying it, may have once been a small class of terrestrial humanoid: a human cousin he believes may have once lived in Chilean caves
Ramon Navia-Osorio Villar (left) who now owns the eerie, but tiny, skeletal mummy dropped his new theory on Spain 's Mitele TV network late last week. In 2013, the Barcelona-based entrepreneur also led a UFO research at the Institute for Exobiological Investigation and Study
Based on an assessment by biological anthropologist Siân Halcrow and her colleagues, which included the tiny Ata's 6-inch crown-of-the-head-to-heel-length measurement, the skeleton likely belonged to a fetus or premature infant that died less than four months into pregnancy
Professor Siân Halcrow, a biological anthropologist at New Zealand's University of Otago, told DailyMail.com that 'Ata' matches the profile of an ordinary, perfectly normal, human fetal skeleton.
Alongside archaeologists from Stockholm University in Sweden, anatomical experts from Stony Brook medical school in the US, and others, Halcrow published an analysis in 2018 criticizing both Ata's 'alien' believers and skeptics alike.
'We estimated the length of the femur, and we estimated that the fetus would have been about 15 weeks in-utero gestation,' Halcrow explained to DailyMail.com, 'so very premature.'
Based on Halcrow and her co-authors' assessment, which included tiny Ata's 6-inch crown-of-the-head-to-heel-length measurement, the skeleton likely belonged to a fetus or premature infant that died less than four months into pregnancy.
Although details are murky, a Barcelona-based entrepreneur named Ramón Navia-Osorio Villar is believed to have purchased the mummy from treasure hunter Oscar Muñoz, who had taken the 6-inch corpse from the Atacama ghost town in 2003.
A longtime UFO hunter and enthusiast, Navia-Osorio spearheaded the publication of a report on the 'Atacama skeleton' in 2013 via the UFO organization that he led: the Institute for Exobiological Investigation and Study (IIEE).
A longtime UFO hunter and enthusiast, Navia-Osorio spearheaded the publication of a report on the 'Atacama skeleton' in 2013 via the UFO organization that he led: the Institute for Exobiological Investigation and Study (IIEE)
That report, ' The Anthropomorphic Being From Atacama ,' was followed by a more thorough, peer-reviewed study conducted by a team at Stanford five years later
The Stanford team's 2018 research , however, was met with instant backlash as many questioned the findings and the ethics of the study itself, criticizing them for working with parties who arguably violated Chilean law by taking Ata's remains
That report, 'The Anthropomorphic Being From Atacama,' was followed by a more thorough, peer-reviewed study conducted by a team at Stanford five years later.
The Stanford team's 2018 research, however, was met with instant backlash as many questioned the findings and the ethics of the study itself, criticizing them for working with parties who arguably violated Chilean law by taking Ata's remains.
The Stanford study, published in the journal Genome Research, sparked such immediate debate that the authors issued a statement defending it just days later.
Ultimately, their analysis was skeptical of any extraterrestrial claims, however, making the argument that Ata's genes were quite Earth-bound and displayed signs of unusual mutations linked to dwarfism and scoliosis.
But Professor Halcrow noted that there is no visible indication that such genetic mutations were taking effect — or would have that early in fetal development.
Ata's large and slender skull, although it might resemble a classic 'alien grey' to the average person, is not particularly unusual to doctors familiar with infant development, like obstetricians, or scholars of human anatomy
Anatomy Professor Siân Halcrow compared the dramatic-seeming dimensions of Ata's skull to fetal medical replicas, called 'bone clones,' and found that even Ata's small facial features weren't unusual for her 15-week age
'With the skull in particular, obviously the skull is going to be larger in proportion to the body just because of the normal development of a baby,' Professor Halcrow said.
Ata's large and slender skull, although it might resemble a classic 'alien grey' to the average person, is not particularly unusual to doctors familiar with infant development, like obstetricians, or scholars of human anatomy.
Professor Halcrow compared the dramatic-seeming dimensions of Ata's skull to fetal medical replicas, called 'bone clones,' and found that even Ata's small facial features were not unusual for her age.
Professor Halcrow told DailyMail.com she knew for sure because she has 'a series of bone clones from in-utero period up to 38-40 weeks gestation: So, full term.'
'You can see that the very young one in the set does look very strange, that the cranium looks quite big compared to the mid-face — but that's just part of normal development.'
Because the skull of a fetus maintains many 'fontanelles,' or 'soft spots,' which allow the young brain to grow, Professor Halcrow hypothesizes that pressure during premature child birth — or even the dehydrating effects of the Atacama desert itself — may have further elongated Ata's skull into its seemingly unique shape.
But although it has been over five years since Professor Halcrow and her international colleagues published their critique, the man who acquired the 'Atacama skeleton' still insists that Ata is no ordinary human.
On the Spanish television program 'Cuarto Milenio' last Saturday, Navia-Osorio told the hosts Ata might have come from an extinct race of cave-dwelling tiny people.
'They were very small people who lived in caves and only came out at night,' Navia-Osorio said, 'hence its strange almond-shaped eyes.'
On Spanish TV program 'Cuarto Milenio' last Saturday, businessman Ramón Navia-Osorio Villar told the show's hosts that Ata might have come from an extinct race of cave-dwelling tiny people, who 'only came out at night,' he added, 'hence its strange almond-shaped eyes'
Navia-Osorio, who has written several books on UFOs and aliens, told Cuarto Milenio's viewers that he heard this theory via 'a native friend from the Aymara tribe,' who told him 'that these beings used to live with their ancestors before the Spanish settlers arrived'
The ex-Air Force security officer said he investigated two sightings of a 100-yard UFO witnessed by Boeing contractors and Air Force police on October 14, 2003. There's 'at least 80 people that know this happened,' the USAF vet., Jeff Nuccetelli, told the Merged podcast. As he recalled the eyewitnesses reactions, 'They're scared. Everyone's freaked out'
A native friend from the Aymara tribe told me that these beings used to live with their ancestors before the Spanish settlers arrived,' the businessman told the hosts of Cuarto Milenio ('Fourth Millennium').
For at least 800 years, and potentially millenia, the indigenous Aymara people have lived on the Altiplano plateau in the Andean highlands, in a region now divided between the South American nations of Bolivia, Peru and Chile.
It is Navia-Osorio's contention that these tiny human-like cave-dwellers lived alongside the Aymara people concurrent in time with Europe's Middle Ages.
Navia-Osorio takes issue with the claims made by UFO 'disclosure movement' activists in the United States who produced a documentary in 2013 purporting to have conclusive evidence that Ata was an extraterrestrial.
'We received it at the Spanish Royal Academy of Sciences and there we carried out the first X-ray, with low radiation so as not to damage the specimen,' he told Cuarto Milenio.
'This creature was not extraterrestrial, it was terrestrial,' Navia-Osorio said, although back during the preliminary analysis, he said he 'started to worry.'
'They already told us that they did not know what it was,' he recounted. 'The head was so voluminous; the hands were so elongated. It had no kneecaps. The clavicle was more triangular than that of humans.'
Today he has one rebuttal to scientists, like Professor Halcrow, who believe that Ata was once simple a 15-week old fetus.
'How could it be a fetus if it had calluses on its feet?' Navia-Osorio asked.
For now, only the desiccating heat of the Atacama Desert knows the answer.
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Pentagon UFO boss says strange sightings are either 'aliens' or a foreign power - and he hopes it's extraterrestrials
Pentagon UFO boss says strange sightings are either 'aliens' or a foreign power - and he hopes it's extraterrestrials
'If we don't prove it's aliens,' Pentagon UFO chief Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick said, 'then what we're finding is evidence of other people doing stuff in our backyard'
Kirkpatrick - formerly a laser physicist for the CIA - added, 'that's not good'
READ MORE: New analysis of 200ft 'saucer-shaped object' spotted over the Andes Mountains in 2010 finds it is 'a genuine UFO,' not 'a camera artifact'
According to the director of the Pentagon's UFO investigation office, 'the best thing that could come out of this job is to prove that there are aliens.'
The alternative to what would be a literally Earth-changing discovery of extraterrestrial life exploring our own planet would be that a rival foreign power could be 'doing stuff in our backyard,' he said.
Dr. Kirkpatrick's 18-month tenure as AARO's first ever director has been laced with controversy, as expected for a mandate once relegated to the scientific fringe.
According to the director of the Pentagon 's UFO investigation office, physicist Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, 'the best thing that could come out of this job is to prove that there are aliens.' Last July, Kirkpatrick described his national security mandate as helping avoid 'technical surprise'
'I'm ready to move on,' Kirkpatrick told Politico Tuesday, upon official confirmation of his retirement. 'I have accomplished everything I said I was going to do.'
Dr. Kirkpatrick added that there remains lingering tasks he hopes to have finished — including AARO's congressionally directed 'Historical Record Report' on UFOs, which is due to Congress in June 2024, over six months after Kirkpatrick's departure.
At a press conference this past Halloween, Kirkpatrick announced a new secure reporting mechanism designed to help AARO investigate claims of alleged highly secretive and potentially illegal US government UFO programs.
'The reporting mechanism is for current or former US government employees, service members, or contractors with direct knowledge of alleged US government programs or activities related to UAP [UFOs] dating back to 1945,' he said.
In its annual UAP (i.e. UFO) report, published this past October, the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office stated that, 'None of these UAP reports have been positively attributed to foreign activities'
Ever since UFOs exploded back into public consciousness with a series of New York Times exposes in December 2017, government officials, scientists and devotees have reframed the mysteries as unidentified aerial, or anomalous, phenomena: 'UAP.'
The new name hopes to add caution and reduce preconceived notions as to the true nature these airborne mysteries.
When asked at the Halloween press conference whether AARO has reached out to officials from adversarial foreign nations in an effort to pool UAP data, Dr. Kirkpatrick replied that the concept was a non-starter from a national security standpoint.
'We certainly have not reached out to any adversaries, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which they're adversaries,' Kirkpatrick said.
While AARO's annual UAP report released this October found that 'none' of its hundreds of military UFO cases 'have been positively attributed to foreign activities,' Kirkpatrick expressed concern over telling, but less concrete, evidence.
'I am worried from a national security perspective,' Kirkpatrick told CNN in advance of the report's release.
'There are some indicators that may be attributed to foreign activity, and we are investigating those very hard,' he said.
Last summer, the AARO chief, who once worked on optical and laser physics projects for America's intelligence gathering agencies, including the CIA, described AARO's national security mandate to ABC News as avoiding 'technical surprise.'
To judge from AARO's own presentations to Congress and NASA's UAP advisory panel, the office has zeroed-in on a series of troubling cases involving so-called 'metallic orb' UAP.
This time last year, a classified 22-page report, compiled by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), described hundreds of unresolved cases, some involving 'orbs' caught on drone cameras that were then seen 'suddenly bolting off the screen.'
Some non-government groups, including OSINT specialists Bellingcat, have offered prosaic explanations for one of these 'orbs' — but Kirkpatrick has openly speculated in a paper with Harvard physicist Dr. Avi Loeb that these UAP could be alien probes.
Despite serious concerns from AARO's soon-to-be-departing director that the solution the UAP mystery might prove to be advanced tech flown by a foreign power, evidence exists that these 'metallic orbs' predate even the Cold War era.
Then too, journalists and investigators suspected it was a wartime anti-radar device from one of America's then-adversarial nations, Nazi Germany.
'It could be that those floating silver balls encountered by American airmen over the Reich are another German attempt to create interference for radio communications,' the AP's wartime radio editor wrote.
'The most common misconception is that [the possible phenomena] are all the same thing and they're all extraterrestrial,' as Kirkpatrick told ABC News last July, 'and neither of those are true.'
Have YOU seen one? The Pentagon reveals what the most commonly reported UFO looks like
But that could finally change following the official release of information from the Pentagon about the mysterious aerial phenomena.
The new Department of Defense document reveals characteristics of the typical UFO, including the colour and the shape, velocity, and flight level
Based on clues from reported sightings, the typical UFO has a round shape, usually described as spherical or an orb, with a white or silver colour, often translucent.
It also has a size of between 3 and 13 feet (1 to 4 metres) and usually travels through the air at a height just below commercial passenger planes.
However, they declined to certify that the mummified remains were those of alien beings.
Journalist Jaime Maussan (second from left) drew global attention after testifying on extraterrestrial activity in the Chamber of Deputies and presenting what he alleged to be the corpses of aliens found in Peru.(Cuartoscuro)
The two tiny bodies with large heads, big eyes, long necks and three fingers on each hand — resembling the archetypal depiction of a gray alien — were allegedly found in Peru.
Maussan brought them to Congress on Sept. 13 for a first-of-its-kind hearing on UFOs, which these days are usually termed Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), or FANI in Spanish. He insisted the bodies were 1,000-year-old corpses of extraterrestrials.
At that time, experts dismissed his presentation as a stunt, pointing to studies on similar remains that concluded the specimens were modified using animal and human bones.
On Tuesday, over the course of three hours in a room of the Chamber of Deputies, Maussan presented a string of doctors and scientists, plus photographs and X-ray images of what he called a new “non-human being.”
Maussan is well known for his belief in extraterrestrial life, and hashosted a TV series on the topic for the last twenty years. (Daniel Augosto/Cuartoscuro)
“They’re real,” said anthropologist Roger Zúñiga of San Luis Gonzaga National University in Peru, noting that researchers had studied five similar specimens. “There was absolutely no human intervention in the physical and biological formation of these beings.”
Argentine surgeon Celestino Adolfo Piotto said he reviewed data and images, concluding that the bodies were an evolved version of today’s human beings. He called them “our descendants.”
Zúiñga presented a letter signed by 11 researchers from his university declaring the bodies to be non-human, but the letter made clear they were not implying the bodies were extraterrestrial.
“None of the scientists say [the study results] prove that they are extraterrestrials, but I go further,” Maussan said, suggesting that the bodies could be evidence of non-Earthly life forms, or a “new species” due to their lack of lungs or ribs.
He previously claimed the specimens had big brains and big eyes that “allowed for a wide stereoscopic vision,” and that they lacked teeth, so they likely only drank and did not chew.
“All ideas and all proposals will always be welcome,” Deputy Sergio Gutiérrez Luna stated, “to debate them, to listen to them and to agree — or not.”
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Astronomers Directly Detect Atomic Oxygen on Venus
Astronomers Directly Detect Atomic Oxygen on Venus
tomic oxygen is produced on the dayside of Venus by photolysis of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide.
Atomic oxygen is a key species in the mesosphere and thermosphere of Venus. It peaks in the transition region between the two dominant atmospheric circulation patterns, the retrograde super-rotating zonal flow below 70 km and the subsolar to antisolar flow above 120 km altitude. However, past and current detection methods are indirect and based on measurements of other molecules in combination with photochemical models. Hübers et al. show direct detection of atomic oxygen on the dayside as well as on the nightside of Venus by measuring its ground-state transition at 4.74 THz.
Image credit: Mattias Malmer / NASA.
Venus is known to rotate very slowly, with one day on Venus lasting the equivalent of 243 Earth days.
Atomic oxygen, a key species in the mesosphere and thermosphere of Venus, is produced on the dayside of the planet by the breakdown of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, and then transported to the nightside.
Atomic oxygen is important for the photochemistry and energy balance of Venus’s atmosphere, but it has not yet been directly observed on the dayside of Venus.
Nightside detections have previously been limited to observations of the night airglow of Venus, a faint emission of light by the planetary atmosphere.
In a new study, Dr. Heinz-Wilhelm Hübers, a researcher at the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt and the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and his colleagues analyzed a total of 17 points on both Venus’ dayside and nightside using the German Receiver for Astronomy at Terahertz Frequencies (upGREAT) array spectrometer on board NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) airplane.
“The observations were made in the early evenings of November 10, 11 and 13, 2021,” they said.
“In total, 17 positions on Venus have been measured: seven on the dayside, nine on the nightside and one at the terminator.”
The researchers detected atomic oxygen at all observed points and found it to be concentrated at altitudes of around 100 km.
The measurements were based on an atomic oxygen ground state fine structure at 4.74 Terahertz.
They also found variations in the column densities, with a maximum density recorded on the dayside.
“The observed average Venus continuum brightness temperature is approximately 246 K corresponding to an altitude of about 65-70 km right above the cloud layer,” they said.
“The temperature of the atomic oxygen is approximately 156 K on the dayside and approximately 115 K on the nightside, which corresponds to altitudes around 100 km.”
“Future observations, especially near the antisolar and subsolar points but also at all solar zenith angles, will provide a more detailed picture of this peculiar region and support future space missions to Venus such as NASA’s DAVINCI mission or ESA’s EnVision mission,” they added.
“Along with measurements of atomic oxygen in the atmospheres of Earth and Mars these data may help to improve our understanding of how and why Venus and Earth atmospheres are so different.”
The findings were published in the journal Nature Communications.
HW. Hübers et al. 2023. Direct detection of atomic oxygen on the dayside and nightside of Venus. Nat Commun 14, 6812; doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-42389-x
De bouw van Tenacity is voltooid. Dit ruimtevaartuig van Sierra Space gaat goederen van en naar het ISS vervoeren en kan bij terugkomst landen op een landingsbaan.
Het internationale ruimtestation (ISS) – en de toekomstige opvolger – moeten continu bevoorraad worden. Daarvoor zijn er momenteel meerdere ruimtevaartuigen beschikbaar, zoals Northrop Grummans Cygnus en de H-II Transfer Vehicle van de Japanse ruimtevaartorganisatie.
Soms moet er ook materiaal terug naar de aarde worden gestuurd, maar de meeste bevoorradingsvaartuigen zijn daartoe niet in staat. Space X’s Dragon is een van de weinige die dat wel kan, en landt bij terugkomst in zee. Het Amerikaanse bedrijf Sierra Space komt nu met Tenacity, een ruimteschip dat bij terugkomst als een soort vliegtuig kan landen op een landingsbaan.
Spaceshuttle
Vorige week maakte Sierra Space bekend dat de bouw van Tenacity is afgerond en dat het ruimtevliegtuig in de komende weken wordt verscheept naar NASA’s Neil A. Armstrong Test Facility in Ohio voor milieutests.
Hoewel Tenacity momenteel het enige ruimtevaartuig is dat zijn ruimtereis kan eindigen op een landingsbaan, konden NASA’s spaceshuttles die in 2011 met pensioen gingen dat ook al. Niet gek dus dat het uiterlijk van de Dream Chaser sterk lijkt op dat van de spaceshuttle
Een ruimteschip dat de atmosfeer binnenkomt, heeft naast extreme hitte (ruim 1600 graden) ook te maken met een enorme versnelling en dus hoge g-krachten. Toch kan Tenacity die krachten beperken tot anderhalf keer de zwaartekracht (1,5 g), wat schade aan kwetsbare lading kan voorkomen. De vleugels spelen hierbij een belangrijke rol; ze creëren lift.
Bij een vliegtuig zorgt liftkracht ervoor dat het toestel in de lucht blijft en bij Tenacity dat het toestel afremt.
Eerste missie is al snel
Sierra Space heeft een contract met NASA voor de lancering van bevoorradingsmissies van het ISS met Dream Chaser-toestellen. En de eerste missie zou al ergens april 2024 kunnen beginnen.
De lancering zal dan plaatsvinden vanaf NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida aan boord van United Launch Alliance’s nieuwe Vulcan Centaur-raket. Bij terugkomst zal Tenacity landen op NASA’s Shuttle Landing Facility, waar de spaceshuttles vroeger ook landde. Daarna kan het ruimteschip opnieuw worden gelanceerd, volgens Sierra Space heeft de Dream Chaser namelijk een levensduur van minstens vijftien missies.
Autonome bevoorradingsmissies zijn slechts het begin voor de Dream Chaser-toestellen. In de toekomst wil Sierra Space ook mensen vervoeren met het vaartuig.
Bekijk hieronder een animatie van een lancering en landing van het ruimtevliegtuig:
Have you ever gazed up at the night sky and wondered if we are truly alone in the universe? The concept of unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, has long intrigued and mystified humanity. From casual observers to dedicated ufologists, the surge in reported UFO sightings has captured imaginations worldwide. But what lies behind these mysterious sightings? Are they mere figments of our imagination, or do they hint at something more profound?
The Enigma of UFO Sightings
UFO sightings have been reported for decades, with accounts ranging from strange lights in the sky to close encounters with extraterrestrial beings. These sightings often come with a mix of skepticism and fascination. While some sightings can be explained as misidentified natural phenomena or man-made objects, others remain unexplained, fueling speculation and debate.
Historical Context and Notable Incidents
The history of UFO sightings is rich and varied. One of the most famous incidents is the 1947 Roswell UFO incident, where an unidentified object crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. This event sparked widespread interest and conspiracy theories about alien spacecraft and government cover-ups.
Another significant case is the 1952 Washington, D.C. UFO incident, where multiple UFOs were sighted over the Capitol. This event led to a frenzy of media coverage and public concern, further cementing UFOs in popular culture.
Government Investigations and Disclosure
Various governments have taken UFO sightings seriously enough to conduct investigations. Project Blue Book, a United States Air Force program, collected and analyzed UFO data from 1952 to 1969. Although the project concluded that most sightings were misidentifications, it acknowledged that some cases remained unexplained.
In recent years, there has been a call for greater transparency regarding UFOs. The release of classified documents and military footage of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) has rekindled interest and speculation. These disclosures suggest that even governments are grappling with the mysterious nature of these sightings.
The Role of Technology in Modern UFOlogy
Advancements in technology have played a significant role in the study and documentation of UFO sightings. With smartphones, people around the globe can quickly capture and share images and videos of unusual aerial phenomena. This democratization of information has led to a surge in reported sightings and has allowed for more rigorous analysis by both amateur and professional researchers.
The Skepticism and Science Perspective
While the fascination with UFOs is undeniable, it’s crucial to approach these sightings with a healthy dose of skepticism. Scientists and skeptics argue that most UFO sightings can be attributed to natural phenomena, like atmospheric conditions, astronomical objects, or human-made crafts like drones or aircraft.
The Cultural Impact of UFO Sightings
UFO sightings have had a profound impact on our culture, influencing everything from movies and television shows to literature and music. The idea of intelligent life beyond Earth challenges our understanding of our place in the universe and continues to inspire both fear and wonder.
VIDEO:
UFOs: Secret Missions Exposed | Special | Full Episode
The mystery surrounding UFO sightings remains unsolved. Whether these sightings are evidence of extraterrestrial visitors, secret military technology, or natural phenomena, they continue to captivate and intrigue. As we continue to explore the cosmos, both through scientific endeavors and the human imagination, the quest for answers about UFO sightings remains an enduring and fascinating journey.
De B-21 is de volgende evolutie van de vloot strategische bommenwerpers van de Amerikaanse luchtmacht en het eerste zesde-generatie vliegtuig ter wereld dat de lucht in gaat.
Wat betreft het leveren van de vastberadenheid van de Verenigde Staten, zal de Raider de luchtmacht voorzien van een lange afstand, hoge overlevingscapaciteit en flexibiliteit in de missielading. De B-21 zal de moeilijkste verdediging doorbreken om precisieaanvallen overal ter wereld uit te voeren. Hier is wat u moet weten over de B-21 Raider van Northrop Grumman terwijl het de vliegtesten voortzet.
De B-21 Raider stelt normen voor technologie van de zesde generatie. Aan de buitenkant zal de nieuwste stealth-technologie en vooruitgang in laag-detecteerbare processen het vliegtuig makkelijker en goedkoper te onderhouden maken dan voorgaande systemen. Aan de binnenkant zal de open architectuur van de B-21 snelle upgrades mogelijk maken, van de integratie van nieuwe wapens tot software-updates, dankzij geavanceerde netwerkcapaciteiten en een succesvolle migratie naar de cloud-omgeving. Met deze innovaties is de B-21 ontworpen om de evoluerende dreigingen van de komende decennia het hoofd te bieden.
De B-21 Raider is van cruciaal belang voor het ondersteunen van de strategische afschrikkingsstrategie van ons land. Naast de geavanceerde mogelijkheden voor langeafstandsaanvallen met precisie die commandanten de mogelijkheid geven om elk doelwit, overal ter wereld, in gevaar te brengen, is het ontworpen als het belangrijkste onderdeel van een grotere familie van systemen die inlichtingen, bewaking en verkenning, elektronische aanval en multi-domein netwerkcapaciteiten zullen bieden. In een dynamische wereldwijde veiligheidsomgeving zal de B-21 de flexibiliteit en afschrikking bieden die cruciaal zijn voor de veiligheid van de VS en onze bondgenoten.
De B-21 Raider is vernoemd naar de Doolittle Raid vande Tweede Wereldoorlog, toen 80 luchtmachtpersoneel onder leiding van luitenant-kolonel James “Jimmy” Doolittle en 16 B-25 Mitchell middelgrote bommenwerpers een missie ondernamen die de loop van de oorlog veranderde.
De aanval was een katalysator voor een veelheid aan toekomstige vooruitgang in de luchtoverwicht van de VS en dient als inspiratie achter de naam Raider en de baanbrekende en innovatieve geest ingeënt in het gehele personeel dat de B-21 tot leven brengt.
Bron:Northrop Grumman
Foto en video: reproductie Twitter @ShorealoneFilms
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The Webb Telescope Reveals a Spooky, Skeletal View of a Nearby Galaxy This image of the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy is the ultimate galactic Halloween skeleton. BY KIONA SMITH NOVEMBER 8, 2023
This image of the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy is the ultimate galactic Halloween skeleton.
The Webb Telescope Reveals a Spooky, Skeletal View of a Nearby Galaxy
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) captured two views of the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy, revealing that galaxies — like ogres and onions — have layers.
So much is invisible to us because our eyes can only see light in a narrow band of wavelengths, between 0.38 and 0.75 micrometers (a micrometer is one-thousandth of a millimeter). But JWST’s instruments perceive the universe in much longer wavelengths called infrared. In infrared, we can see into (and through, depending on the specific wavelengths of light involved) the clouds of gas and dust that block shorter light waves, like visible light. That helps astronomers peel back the layers of a galaxy like the Southern Pinwheel, 15 million light-years away, and see the galaxy’s structure in a whole new light.
WHAT DO GALAXIES LOOK LIKE ON THE INSIDE?
By matching visible colors to each wavelength of infrared light, image processors turned NIRCam data into this stunning image.
ESA
JWST’s Near InfraRed Camera (NIRCam) shows M83 in light wavelengths between 0.6 and 5 micrometers long. The image looks staticky and pixellated, but all those tiny specks of static radiating out from the blue-white center of the galaxy to fill the image are actually billions of stars. Those densely-packed stars are mostly older; their younger neighbors show up as patches of bright blue nestled in the reddish threads of gas that trace the galaxy’s spiral shape.
Powerful stellar winds and radiation from those young, temperamental stars have blasted the nearby gas clouds, stripping electrons away from hydrogen atoms and leaving the ionized gas glowing in bright pink.
If you’re located near or south of the Equator, you can spot the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy in the night sky with a good pair of binoculars, but it won’t look anything like this MIRI image.
ESA
In even longer wavelengths of light, from 6.6 to 8.7 micrometers long, JWST’s Mid InfraRed Instrument (MIRI) sees the dusty scaffolding of the galaxy in shades of yellow, orange, and red — and this is where it gets weird. The darker reds and oranges are organic molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. These molecules form when carbon and other elements bond with the ionized hydrogen in the pink clouds NIRCam revealed.
Yellow tendrils in the dust clouds, where new stars are in the process of forming, trace the galaxy’s familiar spiral shape. The core of the galaxy blazes brightly with its dense population of stars.
To compare these two views of the same galaxy, visit ESA’s website and move the slider and back and forth. Can you spot any of the same features?
On the European Space Agency’s website, you can move a slider back and forth to compare the images; make sure to notice how the bright pink areas of ionized hydrogen in the NIRCam image line up with the bright yellow stellar nurseries in the MIRI version. It’s also worth taking a moment to compare what the galaxy’s bright core looks like in the different infrared wavelengths.
Some of the Moon's Craters are From Interstellar Impacts. Can We Tell Which?
Far Side of Moon Imaged by MoonKAM. This image of the lunar surface was taken by the MoonKAM system onboard NASA’s Ebb spacecraft on March 15, 2012. Credit: NASA/Caltech-JPL/MIT/SRS
Some of the Moon's Craters are From Interstellar Impacts. Can We Tell Which?
By discovering two interstellar objects (ISOs), we know that asteroids and comets from other star systems pass through the Solar System from time to time. By inference, some of these must have crashed into the Moon, creating impact craters. If we could study the impact sites, we might be able to learn about the star systems that they came from.
A new paper suggests there could be a way to determine which lunar craters came from interstellar object impacts. The authors say that young, small craters with high-melt volume near the Moon’s equator are likely the best candidates for ISO-generated craters on the lunar surface.
The two landmark discoveries of ISOs have changed our thinking on what’s possible for the origins of objects in our Solar System. Detecting the cigar-shaped body named ‘Oumuamua (2017) and the speedy rogue Comet 2I/Borisov (2019) suggest that these objects — which have somehow been ejected from other solar systems — can wander through the Milky Way, unattached to any star system, for hundreds of millions of years. Astronomers say their detections – made possible by improved telescopes and observing techniques — implies a large population of such objects exist and that ISOs enter our Solar System on a fairly regular basis. Estimates have ranged from one, to seven, to twenty-one and even seventy objects every year.
“We find that selecting young, small craters with a high volume of melt located away from the lunar poles increases the likelihood of association with a high-speed ISO by 100-fold as compared to selecting randomly, assuming high-speed ISO impacts generate melt,” the authors wrote.
Figure 1. (a) shows the difference between the cumulative distribution functions of craters generated from solar system objects and ISOs. Most craters generated from solar system objects were formed in the first billion years, so that the ratio of the CDFs for craters with ages less than 3?Gyr is ?20. (b) shows the cumulative probabilities of impact angles at various latitudes on the Moon for Near Earth Objects, calculated from the probability found in (Robertson et al. 2021). For latitudes 0° through 70°, there is a <10% probability that the crater is generated from vertical impact, while the probability is much higher at around 40% for latitudes 70°–90°. Credit: Daniel Chang, Cheng-Han Hsieh, and Gregory Laughlin.
Most craters on the surface of planetary bodies in our Solar System were formed during the first heavy bombardment period about 4 billion years ago. Therefore, since about 95% of lunar craters were formed during the first billion years of the Moon’s existence, and assuming a constant ISO flux, the scientists write that selecting young craters (<3?Gyr) “increases the probability of ISO association by a factor of 20 as compared to selecting randomly.”
Among that selection, the next criteria would be to search for craters formed from high-velocity impactors. This would be craters with diameter less than 300?m with visible high-impact melt pond. Impact melt is exactly what its name implies: surface rocks that were instantly melted due to a high-velocity impact from an asteroid or comet. Large volumes of impact melt can pool to form what’s known as crater-fill deposits, which over time hardens to form an entirely new rock.
Craters with impact melt ponds accounts for 15% of the crater population. Then, the authors say, discard all the craters that appear to be created by vertical impact and choose craters that nearer to the equator.
“In total, selecting craters that fit these constraints [crater age, size, melt, and latitude] results in a 100 times higher probability of association with a high-speed ISO as compared to selecting randomly,” the authors write.
But, they note, no one should expect that a large number of lunar craters are the result of ISO impacts, since “craters from other sources, however, still massively outnumber ISO-generated craters.”
Just about everyone has heard of the creature called Mothman. But, did you know the monster was (and still is) among us? Well, let's dig deep into some of this high-strangeness. But, first, let's tackle the beginning. Back in 1975, when I was just ten-years-old, a book was published that became an absolute classic. In fact, it was an epic production of the occult, the paranormal, the cryptoterrestrial and the supernatural. And altogether combined. As for the “leading character” in the book, he had a pair of burning eyes and gargoyle-style wings. You know who we’re talking about. The title remains unforgettable when you’ve read the book and seen the various, spectacular artwork to back it up. The name: The Mothman Prophecies. The author of this production was the late John Alva Keel, the author of a great, adventurous book called Jadoo. The book company said of Keel’s Jadoo that “…From the Upper Nile to the to the lower Ganges and the Roof of the World in Tibet, John Keel traveled in search of Jadoo – the black magic of the Orient – and had some of the most fantastic experiences ever to appear on the printed page.” Even at my early time, I knew I was set for a life like that. There simply was nothing else I could do: it was adventure or zero. Now, back to The Mothman Prophecies.
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(Nick Redfern) The Flying, Red-Eyed Terror
The book told of the wild, sinister 1966-1967 story of a menacing red-eyed, winged monster that plagued the little city of Point Pleasant, West Virginia. And the word “prophecies” became very apt. It wasn’t long before people around the town were having nightmarish dreams of disaster, chaos and even death. And, no less, some of those grim prophecies came to absolute realities. The flying monster had carefully placed itself in the city – and by both day and night. There’s something else very important, too: it has been wrongly assumed that the first encounter with Mothman took place in Point Pleasant. Not at all. The first confrontation – we’re told - was on the night of November 12, 1966. The location was a cemetery in Clendenin, which is close to eighty-miles from Point Pleasant. The grave-diggers, who were on-site at the time, were shocked and awed when they saw what was described as “a brown shape with wings.” The creature vanished into the blackness leaving the men shaking. Three days later a group of amazed kids – Roger Scarberry, Linda Scarberry and Steve and Mary Mallette – had their night-time encounter; an encounter that just about defined the legend of Mothman. Deputy Millard Halstead said: “I’ve known these kids all their lives. They’d never been in any trouble and they were really scared that night. I took them seriously.” So did many others, too.
In that period of 1966 and 1967, there was a huge amount of strange activity in the area: Mothman; the pale-faced, Men in Black; poltergeist activity; UFOs; and weird and sinister characters that just might not have been quite human. One of them was a “man” who went by the name of Indrid Cold. A man who was known for his terrible, wild grin. In fact, the Grinning Man of today was clearly born out of Indrid Cold. We’ll hear much more about this half-human thing later on. There used to be an old TNT plant in the area. But, no more. It has pretty much been razed to the ground. Much of the area is empty, abandoned and covered in overgrown bushes, vines and moss, and hidden by the trees. Graffiti adorns the old structures – some with imagery of Mothman himself. The setting – and particularly so at night – is apocalyptic, to say the very least. Indeed, the ruined, run-down area looks like the kind of locale one might expect to see in the likes of The Walking Dead on television. And, decades later, the area still oozes a sense of hard-to-describe menace.
Notably, at the same time the events in Point Pleasant, West Virginia were afoot, very similar things were going down in New York – in Huntington, specifically in an area known to the locals as Mount Misery. Like Point Pleasant, the area was, and still is, steeped in weirdness. Strange creatures – such as “black panthers,” and ghostly black dogs with eyes like burning coals – roam the heart of the old woods. Ghostly children have been seen wandering the old lanes after the sun has set. Not the kind of love you would want. creepy Men in Black have knocked on the doors of locals late at night, warning them not to discuss the supernatural activity that dominates the area. And, for years, Mount Misery – with its thick, dense canopies of trees – has been a beacon for lovers. We’ll come back to the “Lovers Lane” aspect of all this later on, as it played a very important picture in the 1960s…and still does.
John Keel reported in his 1975 book, The Mothman Prophecies, that a young couple – Richard and Jane – after an evening of hanging out, and making out, were driving to Richard’s home when he suddenly fell sick. He was overcome by weakness and nausea and even briefly passed out at the wheel. Not too good. Fortunately, because of the tight corners on the small, winding roads, Richard was barely driving at fifteen miles per hour, something which allowed Jane to quickly grab the wheel and bring the car to a screeching halt. The next thing Jane remembered was seeing a bright flash, followed by a groggy sense of missing time and a feeling of memories of…well, something.
There is, however, another angle to the history of the area: Point Pleasant, West Virginia is a city of around four-and-a-half-thousand people. In 1774, the city became the site of a now-historic battle between the forces of Colonel Andrew Lewis and Native Americans from the Shawnee and Mingo groups, and overseen by Shawnee Chief Cornstalk. It was a bloody and violent battle that Cornstalk’s people lost. Despite the historic nature of the battle, there is no doubt that it has been eclipsed by a series of events which occurred between November 1966 and December 1967: it can only be the reign of Mothman. Just before Christmas of 1967, there was death on the Ohio River. Or, rather, I should say there was death under the waters. On the evening of December 15, forty-six people drowned when the Silver Bridge – that spanned the Ohio River – collapsed. After the awful disaster, the sightings of Mothman dropped hugely. Since then, there have only been sporadic sightings of Mothman in and around – and in other parts of West Virginia. To this day, there are many who believe the cause of the death and the mayhem was due to Mothman. A real-life grim-reaper gone insane? Perhaps. There’s another thing, too: some of those prophecies proved to be true. Now, let's get to the weirdness. The really weird weirdness.
There was, however, something else, too; it was something that was both terrifying and paranormal: as the threats of nuclear war grew and grew, more and more people were having nightmares and prophecies in the dead of the night. Most of those dreams revolved around Mothman and gigantic, radioactive mushroom clouds. Many people generously shared their dreams with me. The anniversary prompted something else, too: a pair of new books about the subject of Mothman. One of the books was Lon Strickler’s Mothman Dynasty: Chicago’s Winged Humanoids. Lon said of his book: It seemed like the nukes were ready to hit the red button and launch: “In the late summer of 2011, three reports of Mothman-like flying humanoids surfaced in the city of Chicago, then nothing. Whatever it was disappeared. Then unexpectedly in early 2017, a smattering of encounters emerged from different locations throughout the Chicago metro area. These reports quickly grew to nearly fifty before stopping suddenly at the end of the summer. Why Chicago? Why now? This book will examine the witness accounts as well as the investigators thought processes in real time as these incidents were brought to our attention. The sightings continue… but we are determined to find the truth.”
(Nick Redfern) One of Point Pleasant's huge bridges
The other book was The Lake Michigan Mothman: High Strangeness in the Midwest. The author was Tobias Wayland, who said of his book: “This book represents over two years of research by a dedicated team of investigators who have taken dozens of reports of a weird, winged humanoid seen around Lake Michigan. Author and investigator Tobias Wayland has collected these reports for the first time in one volume, along with his analysis and insider perspective as a member of the investigative team. The phenomena described the continuation of a decades-long series of events first recorded in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, in the late '60s, but that has likely been with humanity since our advent, and seems just as likely to be with us until our end.” Things were, indeed, expanding – and most definitely not in a good way. That red-eyed thing was soaring around the skies and those nightmares were growing. Now, there are these words from my journals:
"In the first week of the month of all these nightmares, a trio of people – all unconnected – messaged and emailed me with the details of their experiences. One of those was an alien abductee named Kenny. A resident of San Bernardino, California, Kenny had a trauma-filled dream of a nuclear attack on the United States on the night of August 7. In the nightmare, Kenny was relaxing, watching television, in a house in a small town near Lubbock, Texas – a city he has not visited; at least, not yet. Relaxation soon turned to absolute terror. A deep, thunderous rumbling noise suddenly filled the air. He raced to the front-door, only to see a huge radioactive cloud hanging in the distance – perhaps five or six miles away; maybe more.
"Kenny was frozen to the spot, unable to move as the shock enveloped him that America had been hit by a devastating nuclear weapon. Then, as the blast from the detonation raced across the flat plains of West Texas, the sky turned dark and a massive wall of flame – perhaps two hundred feet high – destroyed everything in its wake. The last thing Kenny remembered before waking up in a frantic state, was the sight of another explosion, this one right on Lubbock itself. The war to outdo all wars had begun. Civilization, Kenny knew, would soon be over. Not only that: Kenny, in one of his nightmares, had seen a “huge black bird.”
"There was also the story of Kimberly J. Her experience reached me just a couple of days after Kenny contacted me. Living in the heart of Chicago, Kimberly had heard of the growing sightings of the Mothman and, as an alien abductee herself, viewed the whole situation as scary and ominous. In her very own nightmare, Kimberly saw the destruction of Chicago by a nuclear weapon, with millions of people killed in seconds and the whole city destroyed. Most intriguing is the fact that Kimberly saw what she described as an approximately nine-foot-tall “bird-man” hovering over the radioactive remains and the terribly injured survivors of the initial blast. She got a feeling that the bird-man was “watching the end of us.” It may well have been planning on doing just that."
There is another aspect to all of this matter of Mothman and nuclear war. Over a time of eight weeks, no less than nine people contacted me after they had terrifying experiences in their sleep. In every one of the nightmares, the United States was destroyed by gigantic explosions, and across the whole U.S.: “Mushroom” blasts, of course. But, who initiated it all? In the dreams, no-one knew because all of the United States’ military arsenal was flattened and unable to respond. None of the United States’ nukes could be launched. Planes couldn’t take to the sky. Cars and trucks were frozen. Laptops were dead. U.S. Military submarines sunk to the beds of the oceans, unable to help. All the electricity was lost just before the attacks. And there never would be any electric again. Three of those eight people saw in their nightmares huge, black birds circling in a dust-filled atmosphere. There is, however, a very important question that has to be addressed: How could the United States have been flattened by Russia? Or, were the Chinese the culprits? North Korea? Maybe, they had all joined together to destroy the United States.
I realized immediately what had happened. There was only one answer for all this. It was the science of electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) technology. EMP has the ability to totally paralyze technology of all kinds and across miles. Thankfully, those dreams were just that: dreams. But, in the real world, EMP weaponry can, indeed, bring down the most powerful technology to the ground. Were those EMP dreams really just dreams? I hope so.
(Nick Redfern) Every year there is a festival at Point Pleasant. Thousands arrive!
One of the strangest, and undoubtedly, creepiest of all encounters with a winged creature occurred at the height of the Vietnam War, and specifically in Da Nang, Vietnam – but, it has a modern day aspect, as you will see. It was in August 1969 that a man named Earl Morrison, along with several comrades, had the shock of his life. It was, very appropriately, in the dead of night when the menacing event occurred – and as the men were on guard-duty, keeping a careful look out for the Vietcong. Everything was quiet and normal until around 1:30 a.m. That’s when the atmosphere changed, and an eerie form made its presence known to the shocked men of the US 1st Division Marine Corps. Despite being somewhat reluctant to speak out publicly, Morrison eventually changed his mind and, by 1972, was comfortable about discussing the incident, even if he wasn’t comfortable with what he encountered. His story makes for incredible reading: “We saw what looked like wings, like a bat’s, only it was gigantic compared to what a regular bat would be. After it got close enough so we could see what it was, it looked like a woman. A naked woman. She was black. Her skin was black, her body was black, the wings were back; everything was black. But it glowed. It glowed in the night, kind of greenish cast to it. She started going over us, and we still didn’t hear anything. She was right above us, and when she got over the top of our heads she was maybe 6 or 7 feet up. We watched her go straight over the top of us, and she still didn’t make any noise flapping her wings.
She blotted out the moon once – that’s how close she was to us. And dark – looked like pitch black then, but we could still define her because she just glowed. Real bright like. And she started going past us straight towards our encampment. As we watched her – she had got about 10 feet or so away from us – we started hearing her wings flap. And it sounded, you know, like regular wings flapping. And she just started flying off and we watched her for quite a while.” One of those who took a great deal of interest in the story of the flying woman of Da Nang was a UFO researcher named Don Worley. His personal interview with Morrison revealed additional data, such as the fact that the woman’s hair was black and straight, that the wings may have had a slight furry quality to them, that she “rippled” as she flew by, that she appeared to lack bones in her body, and that her wings seemed to be directly “molded” to her hands and arms. The investigators, Janet and Colin Bord, say of this particularly odd case: “Usually our reports of winged figures describe them as ‘men,’ but without any indication whether features are seen which tell the witness definitely that it is a man. In view of this we suspect that so-called ‘birdmen’ should strictly be termed ‘bird people’ or ‘bird persons,’ and that no sex attribution can honestly be made.”
Now, to something that’s absolutely wild and that just might be tied to the story directly above. That is, if you have a really crazy imagination. On January 9, 2014, the John Keel website stated the following: “Mark Pilkington [a journalist and author who specializes in weird things] has alerted me to the fact that the current issue of Soldier of Fortune magazine (Feb. ’14) contains an article entitled ‘UFO Mystery Solved: “Mothmen’ Were Actually Green Berets.’” The writer, Harold Hutchison, claims that special operations forces near Point Pleasant were testing high-altitude, low-opening (HALO) parachuting for use in Vietnam; and that the jumpers used luminous paint to be seen during the tests. And this, he says, explains the Mothman sightings.” The people at the Haunted Librarian website weren’t impressed: “While Hutchison’s theory is interesting and places a patriotic spin on Mothman, a truly Americana urban legend, it doesn’t make sense. So, no, Mothman was not a wayward Green Beret.”
Moving on: how about a look at the place where Mothman was seen back in the 1960s? That was filled with weirdness, too. Although I’ve been to Point Pleasant on many occasions – usually to give lectures at the yearly festival in town - my trip to the city in 2017 was more like a road-trip, something I love. There was several of us: me, Lyle Blackburn, Ken Gerhard and several friends. They are devotees of road-trips, too. The drive there (and back) is beyond long; but it’s always worth it. So, we filled our vehicle with all the things we needed and hit the road. We rolled into town – slightly blearily-eyed and frazzled from a lack of sleep – around 5:00 p.m., checked into our motel, and then, as darkness fell, headed out to a local pizza eatery. There were about twenty of us there, including John and Tim Frick, who I first met at the September 2014 Mothman gig. If you don’t know the Frick brothers, you should. Not only do the brothers know just about everything when it comes to Mothman history, they also know the town itself very well. And, particularly, the many and varied landmarks which are linked to the story of Mothman. Around 8:00 p.m., they took us –with other friends – to the old, so-called TNT area, which has played such an integral role in the Mothman saga. As we left the pizza place, a full-blown convoy of vehicles followed Tim and John, as we traveled along small, winding, tree-shrouded, roads to the scene of the old action. No surprise, there was an atmosphere of excitement and anticipation in the increasingly chilly air.
For those who may not know, the TNT area’s official title is the McClintic Wildlife Management Area. It’s situated around five miles north of the town of Point Pleasant and runs to more than 3,500 acres. At the height of the Second World War, a TNT processing plant was established in the area, with the volatile chemicals used to create it stored in a series of concrete, igloo-like buildings. It was the work of around 3,500 U.S. Army personnel and, at the time, was known as the West Virginia Ordnance Works. Today, the plant is no more. The only things left now are the crumbling foundations and a couple of sturdy, metal, perimeter-gates and a rusted metal fence. During daylight, it’s an inviting and picturesque area, filled with densely-packed trees, a plethora of wildlife – such as deer, raccoons and beavers – and numerous ponds, pools and small lakes. After dark, however, things are very different. The atmosphere of menace, which was so present back in the sixties, is still there – utterly refusing to relinquish its icy grip on the people of Point Pleasant. And, the TNT locale is gone.
Having checked out what was left of the old plant, we all followed John and Tim to a specific stretch of heavily wooded ground, parked our vehicles, and were given an excellent and atmospheric tour of the igloos and their surroundings. I have to say the whole thing reminded me of something straight out of The Walking Dead: a ruined, overgrown environment, a once bustling area now utterly dead and abandoned, and an almost apocalyptic air that one could practically cut with a knife. The military was nowhere in sight, and the igloos were decaying, covered in foliage, and splattered with graffiti, both old and new. Me and a good friend, Denise, broke off from the main group and checked out some of the igloos, which was a profoundly memorable experience: the size and shape of the igloos cause a person’s voice to echo loudly and very oddly within their dark confines. Plus, we felt a deep sense of malignancy in the old buildings – a sense which was as immediate as it was long-lasting. You could almost taste the menace, if such a thing were possible.
Notably, there was some evidence that supernatural rites and rituals had been undertaken in some of the igloos, which I found most intriguing. It was near these very same igloos that so many of the Mothman sightings occurred in 1966 and 1967 – involving, it should be noted, witnesses who soon found themselves in the cold clutches of the Men in Black. Denise and I walked around, in near-darkness, for a couple of hours, with little more than the bright Moon for illumination, taking in the atmosphere and imagining what it must have been like decades ago earlier. A few scurrying animals and the cries of a handful of geese flying overhead were pretty much the only things that convinced us we hadn’t entered some strange portal – a doorway to an unsettling, dead world. After a while, we caught up with the rest of the gang. We hit the darkness-filled roads and headed back to our motels. It had been a cool night of high-strangeness.
There’s no doubt that the “flying humanoid” phenomenon is a real one. It might have been here, on Earth, for centuries. Millennia, possibly.” Maybe, forever. Who can say for sure? As we’ve seen, their names include Mothman, the Vietnam winged woman, the Houston Batman, the Batsquatch, the Owlman, the Yorkshire, U.K., Pterodactyl and numerous more. Not only that, those creatures of the skies are tied to disaster and death – and not just to Point Pleasant. Monster-seeker Jonathan Downes had to leave – and quickly leave - his interest in the matter of the Owlman of England for the sake of his health and his life. And, John did stay away, such were his fears of those sky-creatures. Remember that: these monsters are experts when it comes to paranormal backlash, as Jon called it. And, they won’t fail to use it when they need it. There’s also the matter of these entities being able to alter their forms, as we’ve seen. We’re talking about creatures that can morph their forms. For example, the good folk of Point Pleasant have seen giant-sized, bird-like animals over their homes. Others have encountered bat-type things. Then, there are those who - over Point Pleasant - suggest these creatures are Native American Thunderbirds. Think of the Houston Batman that was seen back in the 1950s: that was a definitive humanoid with wings. But, nothing like a Thunderbird. The creatures might look somewhat different, but the wings are always there. As are those red eyes. They will always be here. Everywhere.
Should you see a red-eyed thing late at night, and in or around Point Pleasant, West Virginia be careful. Be very careful. This monster is not just dangerous, but possibly deadly. But, I still recommend people to visit Point Pleasant: the site of West Virginia's legendary winged monster. And, I should stress that it isn't all about fear. In fact, the festival is absolutely great. Whether the Mothman agrees, I have no idea.
On the surface of it all, it wouldn't seem that the job of UFO researcher should be too dangerous. They read up on the lore and cases, perhaps go check things out, and they are investigating a phenomenon that many people don't believe in to begin with in the first place. However, judging by some cases, it seems that there can sometimes be a very big risk to be had indeed, as many researchers seem to have the habit of turning up dead. From conspiracies and strange "suicides," to mysterious illnesses and more, UFO researchers seem to have more occupational hazards that one might initially suspect. Here we get into a dark, gloomy, and dangerous world of conspiracies, aliens, UFOs, and sinister nefarious parties that will allegedly stop at nothing to keep this information from the rest of the world, sometimes with fatal consequences.
Strange and suspicious deaths in the UFO field are nothing really all that new, and it seems they have been an unfortunate and ominous feature of the landscape here since pretty much the very beginning of the modern flying saucer craze that kicked off with pilot Kenneth Arnold’s sighting of nine, shiny unidentified flying objects flying past Mount Rainier, Washington on June 24, 1947. Although UFOs had been sighted since long before this, Arnold’s sighting was the one that really made an impact, making it all mainstream and hitting the worldwide media in a major way, ushering in the modern UFO era and catapulting the phenomenon into the stratosphere. It was Arnold’s amazing sighting that practically single-handedly birthed the field of ufology, and one early player who helped to carry this forward was a man by the name of Frank Edwards.
Edwards was a prolific American writer and broadcaster, considered to be one of the pioneers in radio, and hosted a popular radio show broadcast across the United States in the 1940s and 1950s, at one point being considered one of the top three broadcasters in the nation. On his show he routinely talked about mysterious phenomena and the paranormal, and after the Arnold sightings became news he couldn’t resist frequently talking about UFOs on his show, eventually starting a new show called Stranger Than Science, that he could devote solely to UFOs and the paranormal. The show was a major hit, and he was soon by far the most outspoken radio broadcaster on the topic of UFOs, the show beaming out on the radio waves nationwide.
Frank Edwards
All of this eventually caught the attention of retired U.S. Marine Corps Major and early UFO whistleblower Donald E. Keyhoe, who sent Edwards an advance copy of Flying Saucers Are Real, in which he claims that UFOs are spacecraft piloted by alien entities from outer space, and that the U.S. government knew this and were working hard to keep it all a secret from the American public. Edwards was fascinated by all of this, and Keyhoe started making regular appearances on his show to talk about secretive government conspiracies involving UFOs and aliens, bringing these at the time strange new ideas to the masses in a way they never really had been before. Fueled by these revelations by Keyhoe, Edwards became more obsessed and outspoken with the topic of extraterrestrials and UFOs than ever before. He would write prolifically on the topic, publishing numerous books and articles on the UFO phenomena and other strange unsolved mysteries, and he would go on to write several groundbreaking books in the emerging field of ufology, including Flying Saucers: Serious Business in 1966 and Flying Saucers: Here and Now in 1967, both of which are considered to be classics in the field to this day. He even appeared on various TV shows talking about this stuff, including the Johnny Carson-era Tonight Show. Considering his high profile and far reaching audience for his seemingly never-ending talk of UFOs, it is perhaps easy to see how he might make some enemies in high places, and if some of the conspiracy theories surrounding him are to be believed then this is exactly what happened.
On June 24 of 1967, Edwards was scheduled to attend an important conference on UFOs called “The Conference of Scientific Ufologists” as a member of the Board of Governors for the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP). It was a conference that he never would attend, as he would tragically die of a sudden heart attack in his home at the age of 59, just before midnight on the night before it was to begin. For the conspiracy minded the death was immediately suspicious for a few reasons. First was that Edwards had been in good health and had never had any health issues, so a heart attack seemed pretty strange. Then there was the unfortunate timing of the death, just a few minutes before June 24, which was the anniversary of the Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting and the reason the conference was held on that day. Making it all even more suspicious was that his official obituary stated rather cryptically that he had only “appeared” to have died from a heart attack. What does this mean, if anything? Then there were the other ominous clues that began to come in.
In the wake of the death, the popular radio host Long John Nebel would take to the airwaves to spectacularly claim that he had been shown two unsigned letters prior to the conference that both stated that Edwards would not live to see the end of the conference. In addition, Nebel claimed to have received a cryptic phone call from UFO author Gray Barker just days before the conference, during which Barker had claimed that a mysterious stranger had called him to flatly tell him that Edwards would not live to attend the conference, before simply hanging up with no further explanation. At the time, Nebel was known as being a reliable and solid broadcaster not prone to telling tall tales, so the fact that he would mention this on his show suggests that he really believed it to be true. There was hardly a person who knew Edwards that believed he had died of natural causes, but there was never any official investigation into foul play, the authorities wrote it off as nothing but a heart attack, and that was that.
Gray Barker
Interestingly, Nebel was front and center for another suspicious death within ufology, this time concerning the author, mathematician, archeologist, and astrophysicist Morris K. Jessup. He was known in the UFO community mostly for his often unorthodox theories, early postulation on the ancient astronaut theory and alternative history, and for his books The Case for the UFO (1955), UFOs and the Bible, The UFO Annual (both 1956), and The Expanding Case for the UFO. (1957). Jessup is known for having influenced the growing field of ancient astronauts, with his work forming the basis of other books that would follow in this vein, including the classic Chariots of the Gods, by Erich von Däniken, and others. He is also well-known for his involvement with the notorious Philadelphia Experiment, which purportedly sought to render a US Navy vessel invisible, and also for his mysterious death.
The scientist had long become increasingly interested in the UFO phenomenon, finally publishing his first book in 1955 titled The Case for the UFO, an extremely comprehensive case study on the topic that became a national smash-hit bestseller. It was all a double edge sword for Jessup, as although he was now a celebrated author and rising force in ufology, it also caused him some turmoil in his more academic pursuits, with funding being pulled for several projects because the university did not want to be associated with spaceships and aliens from outer space. This was a dark time for Jessup, causing the disintegration of his marriage and ostracism within academia, and he was also involved in a car accident in Florida that left him seriously injured, all of which sent him spiraling into a chasm of deep depression from which he would never emerge. On April 19, 1959, Jessup made arrangements to meet with a researcher named Manson Valentine, allegedly because he wanted to give some classified information on the Philadelphia Experiment, but this would never come to pass.
In April of 1959, he contacted Nebel, who was his longtime friend, and send him a suicide note. At the time Nebel tried to convince him not to go through with it, and for a time it seemed that Jessup had given up his plans to take his own life, but then on April 20th, 1959 there was tragic news. Jessup was found at his Florida home, dead in his car and with an exhaust hose shoved in through the window. It seemed on the surface to be an obvious suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning, but there were some odd details. For one, the hose had been put into place with wet towels seemingly from outside of the vehicle and with no way for Jesus to have wet them where he was. Jessup could have wet the towels before getting in, but why would he put them into the window from outside and then go around to the other side to get into the car? Was this really a suicide or had Jessup made a nefarious enemy with his rampant talk of UFOs? It seems the police were not too keen to find out, because they did no autopsy on the body, in spite of the fact that it was Florida law to do so, and authorities basically swept it all under the carpet. Why should this be?
From 1965 we have the curious case of the American columnist, journalist, and television game show panelist Dorothy Mae Kilgallen, who had an illustrious journalism career and was one of the most highly sought after and respected female journalists of her day. She started out mostly as a columnist for show business articles, rubbing elbows with the likes of Marilyn Monroe and numerous other famous people of the time. Her newspaper column The Voice of Broadway was eventually syndicated to more than 140 papers and she also became a regular panelist on the television game show What's My Line?, as well as launching radio shows and other endeavors. She is perhaps most famous for covering the 1954 murder trial of Sam Sheppard, who was a doctor convicted of killing his wife at their home in the Cleveland suburb of Bay Village, as well as for her public and outspoken skeptical of the conclusions of the Warren Commission's report about the assassination of President Kennedy and Jack Ruby's shooting of Lee Oswald. She was also very deep into the UFO phenomenon, even once saying in a press release:
Flying Saucers are regarded as of such vital importance that they will be the subject of a special hush-hush meeting of the world military heads next summer.
She also dug into secret insider information, plying her various political and celebrity contacts for information into the world of UFOs, a realm which she found herself being more and more swept up in. She would eventually publish a spectacular news report in which she declared:
I can report today on a story which is positively spooky, not to mention chilling. British scientists and airmen, after examining the wreckage of one mysterious flying ship, are convinced these strange aerial objects are not optical illusions or Soviet inventions, but are flying saucers which originate on another planet. The source of my information is a British official of cabinet rank who prefers to remain unidentified. We believe, on the basis of our inquiry thus far, that the saucers were staffed by small men – probably under four feet tall. It’s frightening, but there’s no denying the flying saucers come from another planet. This official quoted scientists as saying a flying ship of this type could not have possibly been constructed on Earth. The British Government, I learned, is withholding an official report on the ‘flying saucer’ examination at this time, possibly because it does not wish to frighten the public. When my husband and I arrived here from a brief vacation, I had no premonition that I would be catapulting myself into the controversy over whether flying saucers are real or imaginary.
It was unknown exactly who this supposed informant was, but the revelation really stirred the pot and got people talking. It is also unknown if any of this would have an impact on what was to come, but on November 8, 1965, Kilgallen was tragically found dead in her Manhattan townhouse. The famed reporter was discovered sitting in bed, wearing nothing but a blue bathrobe, false eyelashes, and a floral hair accessory, and authorities would quickly come to the conclusion that she had died of a drug overdose. However, there were mysterious clues orbiting about it all, such as that she’d been found dead in a bed she had never slept in, in sleeping clothes she didn’t usually wear, next to a book that she’d told people she’d finished reading. What was going on here? There have been plenty of theories that she had met her fate at the hand of one of the many potential enemies she had made covering topics like the mob and the Kennedy assassination, but there have also been fingers pointing to her involvement in releasing information on UFOs. Whatever the case may be, it is a case that has firm connections to the phenomenon of mysterious deaths of those who go too far into the UFO phenomenon, and it certainly makes one think.
Moving into the 70s we have a few high-profile deaths of UFO researchers. In 1971, a physicist at the University of Arizona and advocate of more serious studies into UFOs by the name of Dr. James McDonald was in the process of trying to convince U.S. Congress that UFOs were a phenomenon that deserved a closer look and more investigation. He was never successful, because he came down with a bad case of a gunshot to the head in an apparent suicide. Two years later, in 1973, beloved cryptozoologist and UFO aficionado Ivan T. Sanderson was taken out by an unusually fast-spreading cancer. This is curious, because strangely aggressive cancers and tumors are a common theme in the deaths of these doomed researchers, which we can see from a string of mysterious deaths in the 80s.
The astronomer Dr. Allen J. Hynek is a famous fixture of UFO history, having once been a major consultant and investigator for Project Blue Book, the U.S. Air Force’s official investigation into the UFO phenomenon. In 1986, Hynek was admitted to the hospital for prostrate surgery, but would never leave, as he was soon found to have an incredibly vicious brain tumor that ended him. According to those who knew him, in the days leading up to his death he had allegedly spoken of and seemed unsettled by some newly acquired information he had received on UFOs. Could this have had something to do with his death? Two years later, in 1988 notable investigative radio host Mae Brussell died of a fast-acting cancer in California. She was known as a major conspiracy theorist and for her no holds barred radio program on these topics called Dialogue: Conspiracy, later renamed World Watchers International.
The 1990s continued these shady deaths, with 1993 seeing astronaut Deke Slayton die of an aggressive cancer conveniently right before he was expected to come forward with his inside knowledge and experiences on UFOs. In 1994, an investigator for the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), Ann Livingston, died of an extremely aggressive and ferocious form of ovarian cancer. Rather spookily, this happened just a mere 2 years after she had claimed to have been harassed by ghoulish faceless, pale, and sinister Men in Black. Also in 1994 was the death of another MUFON investigator, Ron Johnson, who was actually the deputy director of investigations for the organization. He would die under very strange circumstances when after a slide presentation at a conference in Austin Texas, the lights came on and he was found unresponsive in his seat, with blood coming out of his nose and a weird purple coloration to his face. A few years later, 1996 saw the death of UFO author Karla Turner, who died of breast cancer. Turner was known for constantly attributing her cancer to actions taken by aliens due to some of the things she had written of in her UFO-themed books Masquerade of Angels, Taken, and Into the Fringe. In 1999, author of numerous UFO and conspiracy books, Jim Keith, also died when a blood clot stopped his heart as he was receiving routine surgery for a broken leg.
Perhaps one of the most bizarre individuals to have died a suspicious death for their whistleblowing of alleged information on aliens and UFOs is the American engineer Phil Schneider. An engineer-geologist, demolition specialist, and civil engineer, Schneider worked for the military and aerospace industries, and was allegedly heavily involved with the construction of underground military bases, eventually being assigned to work at the Dulce base in New Mexico. It is here where he would allege that he had come into contact with all manner of information and experiences dealing with aliens, UFOs, and government cover-ups, and he would have quite the bizarre tale to tell, indeed.
In the 1990s, Schneider began coming forth with what he claimed to be information that he had gleaned from his alleged top secret security clearance at Dulce. He claimed that aliens had already had a base beneath Dulce, and that his team had accidentally stumbled across it as they drilled in order to expand the base. It apparently wasn’t a warm welcome, devolving into what he calls a “massacre” and of which he would say:
I was involved in the expansion of the deep underground military base at Dulce, which is possibly the deepest base. It descends seven levels and is over 2.5 miles deep. At this time we were drilling four different wells in the desert, intending to tie them together, but this required blasting. My job was to go deep into the wells, research the characteristics of the black rocks, and recommend the explosives that would be suitable in each case. However, as we made our way down, we found ourselves in a large cavern that was full of extraterrestrial aliens known as the "big Greys". I killed two of them. At that time there were about 30 people there, and 40 more came there later, when it all started - they were all killed. We were surprised by the existence of an entire underground base filled with aliens. Later we learned that they have been living on our planet for a long time. In my opinion, this can explain a lot of what is behind the theory of ancient astronauts.
The incident would apparently leave Schneider with severe burns from the aliens’ alleged energy weapons, as well as later giving him cancer from the radiation emitted by them. After this rough start and “unfortunate misunderstanding,” the U.S. government supposedly reached a truce with what Schneider calls the “Zeta Reticuli,” also known as the “Greys,” signing a treaty he called the “Greada Agreement.” After this, Dulce served the secret function of serving as a place to house aliens and their technology, as well as to conduct both genetic and mind control experiments using alien technology. He was very specific in detailing the specifics of the base, explaining that it was divided into seven levels, each one housing things such as living quarters, storage facilities for alien craft, alien bodies, and “alien embryos,” laboratories, housing for such varieties of aliens as "Greys" and "Reptoids,” and meeting halls for conferences with representatives of the alien civilization. Schneider would claim that many of the technologies we take for granted every day, as well as military technologies such as stealth technology, were developed with the help of these aliens, and in exchange the U.S. government had established numerous secret underground bases for them to carry out experiments on humans, indeed there were supposedly 1477 underground bases built around the world, all as part of their agreement. This isn’t even the weirdest part yet.
Schneider would claim that the aliens had broken this treaty, and that this would boil over into a disagreement that often ended in violence. According to Schneider, the Greys were secretly plotting to overthrow the government and install a New World Order, all controlled by the UN, which they have infiltrated and secretly control. He also claimed that there are seven benevolent alien species and four evil species on Earth. As a result, a resistance movement against some of them has developed and there are some incidents Schneider says are tied to this. For instance, he would claim that the Bikini Atoll was the site of a nuclear explosion not to test the bomb, but to wipe out an underground alien base that had gone rogue, that the World Trade Center bombing and the Oklahoma City bombings were carried out using miniature nuclear devices. and that the Strategic Defense Initiative ("SDI" or Star Wars”) was actually intended as a defense against alien invasions. In addition to all of this, Schneider would make all sorts of off-the-wall claims about what the government was developing with alien tech, including that the U.S. had an earthquake machine and that AIDS was created in a lab. He would explain of some of this in one of his lectures:
The federal government currently has an earthquake-causing device. I'm a geologist and I know what I'm talking about. During the earthquake in Kobe (Japan) there was no pulse wave, as is usually the case in normal earthquakes. She wasn't there. In 1989 there was an earthquake in San Francisco, and there was no pulse wave or anything like that either. This is a Tesla device that is being used for evil purposes. Shadow budget programs distort the essence of science as we know it. Look at AIDS - it was created by government order in a laboratory in Chicago, Illinois, in 1972. It was a biological weapon that was used against the people of the United States. I know this because I have seen the documentation of the Office of Strategic Services, which, by the way, is still working to this day through the CDC in Atlanta. They used the glandular secretions of animals, humans and humanoids to create a virus. These humanoids have friendly relations with the government. There is absolutely no defense against what they create. It is a biological weapon with potentially dire consequences. Every alien on our planet must be isolated.
Schneider became very outspoken about these “facts” and the government’s attempts to blind the public to the truth, publicly speaking at lectures and seminars in the USA, Canada, England, and Japan, often showing samples of some materials allegedly obtained using extraterrestrial technologies. Listening to how outlandish his claims are, it would be easy to write him off as a kook, but things took a sinister turn when he turned up dead under mysterious circumstances.
On January 17, 1996, Phil Schneider was found dead at his home in Wilsonville, Oregon, with his neck wrapped with piano wire and his own catheter tube, and there were signs of what looked like torture. At the time, there was the persistent idea among Schneider’s believers that he had been killed for divulging too much top-secret secret information, assassinated for knowing too much or at least by someone who truly believed he did. The official stance was that it was a suicide. Forgetting for a moment that torturing oneself and then strangling oneself with piano wire isn’t a very traditional method of suicide, there are several other details that make it all the more ominous. Schneider had claimed that his life had been threatened on numerous occasions by the government and that 11 people he knew with similar information had been fatally silenced, often explained away as suicides. One of these was a Ron Rummel, a former Air Force intelligence officer and publisher of the publication “Alien Digest,” who was found dead on August 6, 1993 of a gunshot wound to the head. Although it was also deemed a suicide, there had been no blood on the gun, no fingerprints on the barrel and handle of the weapon, and there had been left a suicide not written by a left-handed person when Rummel was right-handed. Interestingly, no autopsy had been performed and Rummel’s body was cremated less than 24 hours later. Does this have any connection to Schneider’s strange death? Was he killed for something he divulged? Or was this just a delusional individual who killed himself in such a way as to make it look like that? Unfortunately, we may never know for sure.
Moving into the 2000s we have several more strange cases along these lines. In April of 2001, prolific author of unexplained phenomena, Ron Bonds, mysteriously died of a common food poisoning bacterium that rarely leads to death, but for some reason turned deadly for him. More sinister still was the death of prominent UFO researcher Paul Vigay in 2009. In February of that year, the 44-year-old was found bobbing about in the churning sea off the coast of Portsmouth, Hants, leaving a series of strange cryptic passwords behind on his phone that no one could figure out. Although authorities were quick to label it as a suicide, Vigay’s friends and family are adamant that he was not suicidal, and the coroner was also not able to verify whether it was suicide or not, saying, “I cannot say beyond reasonable doubt that yes Paul has taken his own life. The only person who could tell us what was going on in his mind and what happened that night is sadly not here to tell us."
Perhaps one of the weirdest cases of all is also the most recent. Conspiracy theorist and UFO expert Max Spiers was well-known for delving into government cover-ups, and in July of 2016 he was in Warsaw, Poland, visiting a friend and also planning on attending a conference on conspiracy theories and UFOs. On July 16, Spiers' friend found him on the sofa, unresponsive and apparently having vomited up a viscous “black liquid.” It would turn out that there were some pretty suspicious details surrounding the death, one being a text message he had written to his mother just before his death, which reads, “Your boy's in trouble. If anything happens to me, investigate." Also odd is that there was never any actual official autopsy done on the body, and adding to this was that Spiers was a healthy young man with no history of physical issues, making it odd that he should just drop dead on that sofa. There would be very little word on the state of the investigation until 2019, when authorities would rule the death as being caused by drug use and pneumonia. Max’s mother would say of it all:
Max was a very fit man who was in good health and yet he apparently just died suddenly on a sofa. All I have is a death certificate from the Polish authorities that it was from natural causes, but no post-mortem was done so how can they tell that? They are also refusing to release any paperwork about it to me because, absurdly, I don’t have his written permission. Apparently, he had not suffered any obvious physical injuries but he could have been slowly poisoned, which is why the results of toxicology tests from his post-mortem are so important. Again, we are left to wonder, if this really was an accident, or did some nefarious agency deem him to be a threat and have him erased? It really is quite the conundrum, and the case seems to be in a limbo of strangeness and pure speculation.
The main conspiracy idea behind all of these deaths is that these people were removed from the equation by nefarious parties, with government agencies and even the Men in Black coming into play. Skeptics would point out that people die, it is a fact of life, and that of course UFO researchers are going to fall victim to this as well. Yet, with the strange circumstances and details surrounding some of these cases it really makes one wonder what is really going on. Is this all just coincidence and reading things into it all, or is there something more sinister going on? The question remains, and if you are one of those who delves into UFOs it might be best to keep a set of eyes on the back of your head. You just never know.
Unraveling the Mystery: An In-Depth Analysis of UFO Sightings in Southern California
Unraveling the Mystery: An In-Depth Analysis of UFO Sightings in Southern California
In the realm of unexplained phenomena, UFO sightings hold a particularly captivating spot in both the imagination and curiosity of the public. Among the numerous accounts, a remarkable event from July 2020 in Big Bear, California, stands out, promising to add a significant chapter to the ever-evolving narrative of UFO encounters.
The Big Bear UFO Encounter
The Southern California skies became the canvas for an extraordinary event when Eddie Garcia, an ardent UFO enthusiast and member of the Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind (CE-5) movement, purportedly summoned what he believed to be an extraterrestrial craft. This incident wasn’t just another entry in the annals of UFO sightings; it was accompanied by a unique blend of technological assistance and human belief.
CE-5 Movement: A Blend of Technology and Meditation
CE-5, or Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind, represents a proactive approach to UFO spotting. Advocates like Garcia believe in initiating contact with extraterrestrial beings through specialized meditation techniques, often supported by smartphone apps. This method contrasts sharply with the passive observation that characterizes most UFO sightings.
Forensic Analysis: Unveiling the Truth
The footage from this incident underwent meticulous examination. Forensic video analysts used advanced tools to authenticate the video, ensuring it was free from digital tampering. While the video’s authenticity was established, the nature of the observed object sparked debates among experts.
Expert Opinions: UFO or Natural Phenomenon?
Astronomer and video effects designer Marc D’Antonio and aviation expert Lieutenant Tim McMillan delved into the footage. They ruled out conventional aircraft and drones based on the object’s erratic movements and lack of typical aviation characteristics. Yet, the possibility of it being a bat, attracted or repelled by Garcia’s laser, remained a plausible explanation.
The UFO Phenomenon: A Global Intrigue
This incident is a microcosm of the global fascination with UFO sightings. From enthusiasts to skeptics, the allure of unidentified flying objects spans across cultures and continents. It feeds into a larger narrative of our quest to understand the unknown and the role technology plays in this exploration.
VIDEO:
REAL ALIEN ENCOUNTER in Southern California (S2) | The Proof Is Out There | The UnXplained Zone
While the Big Bear sighting adds to the tapestry of UFO lore, it leaves us with more questions than answers. What did Garcia truly witness that night? Is there a scientific explanation, or does it edge closer to the extraterrestrial? The quest for understanding continues, as does the global captivation with UFO sightings.
What? Wow! That New Asteroid Image from Lucy Just Got Even More Interesting
Lucy’s images of asteroid Dinkinesh are the gift that keeps on giving. First, it was the discovery of a smaller companion. Now, it turns out that the companion itself is a contact binary. That’s two smaller objects touching each other as they orbit with Dinkinesh. So, how did they get that way?
NASA describes the companion as “unanticipated”, although according to Lucy project scientist John Spencer, they’re actually pretty common in the solar system. “We just haven’t seen many up close, and we’ve never seen one orbiting another asteroid,” he said.
Spencer and the team thought there might be something odd about Dinkinesh, given that it was showing some pretty strange brightness variations as the spacecraft got closer. “It gave us a hint that Dinkinesh might have a moon of some sort, but we never suspected anything so bizarre!”
Dinkinesh itself is an interesting target and part of Lucy’s target population of Jupiter Trojan asteroids. It orbits in the Main Asteroid Belt at an average distance of 2.1 AU. Jupiter Trojans make up a distinct population of asteroids trapped in Jupiter’s orbit. They date back to the origins of the Solar System and can provide insight into conditions that existed some 4.5 billion years ago.
Hints About Asteroid Moons
As news of the images spread across the Internet, people began commenting about “moon-moons” to describe Dinkinesh’s companions. One comment on X, by Michigan State University planetary scientist Seth Jacobson, referenced his 2011 thesis work. It focused on modeling similar systems, and even before that, interest in these systems was not new. Understanding what causes such “kissing asteroids” as the Dinkinesh moons, requires a great deal of observation. That’s what Lucy’s doing now.
Jacobson looked at “rotationally fissioned” asteroids, which form when two bodies “fission” as they reach a certain limiting rotational speed. That is, they slowly move apart, but appear tidally locked together. His 2011 paper looked at ideal cases of these objects as sources of then-current observations of small systems.
The work focused on so-called “rubble pile” asteroids and their physical characteristics and gravitational interactions. It involves looking at near-Earth asteroid evolution via something called the YORP (Yarkovsky–O’Keefe–Radzievskii–Paddack) effect. The Yarkovsky part of the effect basically describes how orbits of small asteroids are changed by a tiny amount of thrust created as sunlight re-radiates off their uneven surfaces. Since the amount of thrust is so small, it takes a long time to make big changes in the orbit. The effect also changes an asteroid’s spin rate, albeit slowly. The additional factors (added by other researchers looking into the effect) include any possible effects on asteroid orbits and obliquities. This happens to individual asteroids as well as floating rubble piles, with each piece being affected as well as the aggregate.
So, in addition to collisions that shape asteroids, sunlight, and gravitational effects contribute to their evolution. And, in the case of the recent Lucy images, we see direct evidence of that.
Kissing Asteroid Moons
So, how does this relate to Dinkinesh’s moon-moons? They definitely look like a contact binary. Over time, they rotated into place together, at least partly driven by the YORP effect. The end result is two moons looking as if they’re “kissing” each other after incident solar radiation and re-radiation drove them together in a long dance. Are they actually touching? Or simply moving together very closely in a rubble pile? If they are simply very close to each other in a mutual gravitational headlock, then perhaps rotational fission played a role.
This composite image of the primordial contact binary Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69 (officially named Arrokoth) was compiled from data obtained by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft as it flew by the object on Jan. 1, 2019. The image combines enhanced color data (close to what the human eye would see) with detailed high-resolution panchromatic pictures. Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute//Roman Tkachenko
We’ve seen similar bodies in the solar system, including the strangely shaped Arrokoth in the Kuiper Belt. It’s a contact binary that appears to be doing more than kissing. The two lobes look almost welded together around a narrow “neck”. They probably merged together after getting locked together in a gravitational (tidal) dance. Unlike Dinkinesh’s companions, Arrokoth’s two lobes are not the same size.
Why Dinkinesh?
Dinkinesh is about 790 meters across, and its moon-moons are much smaller and don’t yet have names. This asteroid is part of Lucy’s larger mission to survey Jupiter Trojan asteroids. Interestingly, Dinkinesh was added into the mission timeline as a targeting and tracking test. The spacecraft’s systems not only did that, but also provided excellent imaging over time to give multiple views of this asteroid and its moons from different perspectives.
The results look intriguing for now, giving planetary scientists a lot to chew on. “It is puzzling, to say the least,” said Hal Levison, principal investigator for Lucy. “I would have never expected a system that looks like this. In particular, I don’t understand why the two components of the satellite have similar sizes. This is going to be fun for the scientific community to figure out.”
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
