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16-01-2025 om 22:14 geschreven door peter  

Posted by Evan Gough

The Gaia Mission’s Science Operations are Over

The ESA has announced that Gaia’s primary mission is coming to an end. The spacecraft’s fuel is running low, and the sky-scanning phase of its mission is over. The ground-breaking mission has taken more than three trillion observations of two billion objects, mostly stars.

The ESA launched Gaia in December 2013. It’s an astrometry mission that measures the positions, motions, and distances of stars with extreme accuracy. It created the largest and most accurate 3D map of space ever, including about one billion objects, mostly stars but also quasars, comets, asteroids, and planets.

Gaia’s mission lasted twice as long as expected, and its data has changed astronomy. It serves as the foundation for many new discoveries and insights into the Milky Way. Astronomy and astrophysics would be far behind where they are now if it weren’t for Gaia. Regular Universe Today readers have encountered its data frequently.

“Today marks the end of science observations and we are celebrating this incredible mission that has exceeded all our expectations, lasting for almost twice its originally foreseen lifetime,” says ESA Director of Science Carole Mundell. “The treasure trove of data collected by Gaia has given us unique insights into the origin and evolution of our Milky Way galaxy, and has also transformed astrophysics and Solar System science in ways that we are yet to fully appreciate. Gaia built on unique European excellence in astrometry and will leave a long-lasting legacy for future generations.”

Gaia hasn’t always had it easy at its position at the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point, about 1.5 million kilometres from Earth. In April 2024, a tiny micrometeorite smaller than a grain of sand struck, puncturing a tiny hole in the satellite’s protective cover. The hole allowed a tiny bit of sunlight into the spacecraft, disrupting its sensors. In May 2024, a solar storm struck, and it suffered an electronics malfunction that led to an inordinately high number of false detections. In both cases, Gaia recovered and continued normal operations.

Gaia has three instruments that allow it to be so accurate. Its astrometric instrument (ASTRO) determines the positions of stars in the sky. By measuring the same stars multiple times over different years, Gaia can measure a star’s position and proper motion.

Gaia’s radial velocity spectrometer (RVS) measures the Doppler shift of a star’s absorption lines. This reveals the star’s velocity along Gaia’s line of sight.

The photometric instrument (BP/RP) provides colour information on stars, allowing astronomers to measure critical stellar characteristics like mass, chemical composition, and temperature.

These instruments have worked together to create the largest and most accurate map of the Milky Way ever.

Among its other achievements, Gaia has captured pinpoint precision orbits of more than 150,000 asteroids, accurate enough to uncover possible moons. It also discovered a new type of black hole revealed only through its gravitational influence on nearby stars.

Though its science operations are at an end, it still has data to deliver.

“After 11 years in space and surviving micrometeorite impacts and solar storms along the way, Gaia has finished collecting science data. Now all eyes turn towards the preparation of the next data releases,” says Gaia Project Scientist Johannes Sahlmann.

“This is the Gaia release the community has been waiting for, and it’s exciting to think this only covers half of the collected data.”

Antonella Vallenari, Deputy Chair of DPAC, Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF), Padua, Italy.

Gaia’s Data Release 4 (DR4) is expected in 2026. The volume and quality of data have increased with each DR. DR 4 should contain 500 terabytes of data covering the mission’s first 5.5 years, corresponding to the length of the mission’s originally foreseen duration.

“This is the Gaia release the community has been waiting for, and it’s exciting to think this only covers half of the collected data,” says Antonella Vallenari, Deputy Chair of DPAC based at the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF), Astronomical Observatory of Padua, Italy. “Even though the mission has now stopped collecting data, it will be business as usual for us for many years to come as we make these incredible datasets ready for use.”

The data release will feature more binary stars and exoplanets, among other things.

Gaia’s final data release, DR5, is a few years away. “Over the next months we will continue to downlink every last drop of data from Gaia, and at the same time the processing teams will ramp up their preparations for the fifth and final major data release at the end of this decade, covering the full 10.5 years of mission data,” says Rocio Guerra, Gaia Science Operations Team Leader based at ESA’s European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC) near Madrid in Spain.

Though the fuel that allows it to point itself with such accuracy is almost gone, Gaia won’t meet its demise just yet. It still has enough fuel for about 15 days of operations. Instead of using its final 15 days to take more astrometric measurements, it’s going to do some technology testing.

“The Gaia spacecraft has been constructed using a wide range of technologies which have been combined to create a unique machine that operates in a very stable environment,” the ESA explains. “The spacecraft’s stability is essential for the science observations. These technology tests would have disrupted the spacecraft for an extended period and, therefore, could not be performed during the normal science observation campaign.”

These tests will teach engineers more about Gaia’s instruments and will allow engineers to study their behaviour and the behaviour of the spacecraft as a whole. The goal is to improve the calibrations for future Gaia data releases. They will also inform the design of the next mission.

“Some of the Gaia technologies have already been re-used, for example the mirror-drive electronics and cold-gas thrusters on EUCLID,” the ESA writes. Other future missions like LISA will require extreme accuracy, and the results of these tests can help them achieve that.

Once its testing is complete, Gaia will be placed in a heliocentric orbit far away from Earth’s influence. At the end of March 2025, it will be passivated to avoid any potential harm or disruption to other spacecraft.

Though the mission will end, Gaia’s data will be used for decades. So, in that sense, it will live on.

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16-01-2025 om 22:01 geschreven door peter  

First, Sgr A* is relatively weak in the mid-infrared range compared to other ranges, so it doesn’t stand out as much against the background noise of the universe. Second, much of the mid-infrared emissions get obscured by the dust cloud surrounding the SMBH at the galaxy’s center, blocking it from detectors at Earth 28,000 light years away. Third, there were technological limitations to infrared sensors themselves. There were ground-based telescopes that could have detected the signal, but the Earth’s atmosphere blocked even more of it.

That required scientists to wait for the long-delayed James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). When it finally launched in late 2021, it was only a matter of time before they would get observational time to watch Sgr A* and hopefully observe a flare with the most powerful infrared detector ever launched into orbit. 

JWST did indeed get observational time with Sgr A* and saw a flare, representing the first-ever recording of a flare in the mid-infrared range. But the research team didn’t stop there – they were also watching with several other telescopes for confirmation of the JWST signal.

They didn’t find any in the X-ray range with Chandra, though that was probably because the flare wasn’t strong enough to emit a significant amount of X-rays. But they did see a signal from the Sub-Millimeter Array (SMA) in Hawai’i, which detected radio waves following along about 10 minutes behind the detected mid-infrared signal.

That confirmation was necessary because it allowed the experimentalists to provide even more insight about the same flare to the theoreticians. Their job is then to confirm the models and simulations of what causes the flares in the first place. The current theory is that they occur when magnetic field lines in the SMBH’s accretion disk join up and emit massive amounts of radiation in a process known as synchrotron emission. In synchrotron emission, a bunch of charged particles – typically electrons – get pushed down the magnetic field lines like they were part of a massive particle accelerator.

The data from JWST fits nicely into that theory. However, there appear to be additional unanswered questions about whether that feature was specific to Sgr A* or whether it could be observed for other SMBHs such as M87*. For now, that remains to be seen, though given the interest in this particular black hole in this specific wavelength, while this might have been the first study published on the topic, it probably won’t be the last.

Learn More:

• CfA – Scientists Make First-Ever Detection of Mid-IR Flares in Sgr A*
• von Fellenberg et al – First mid-infrared detection and modeling of a flare from Sgr A*
  
• UT – Echoes of Flares from the Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole
  
• UT – A Black Hole Emitted a Flare Away From us, but its Intense Gravity Redirected the Blast Back in our Direction

Lead Image:

• This artist’s conception of the mid-IR flare in Sgr A* captures the variability, or changing intensity, of the flare as the black hole’s magnetic field lines approach each other. The byproduct of this magnetic reconnection is synchrotron emission. The emission seen in the flare intensifies as energized electrons travel along the SMBH’s magnetic field lines at close to the speed of light. The labels mark how the flare’s spectral index changes from the beginning to the end of the flare.
  Credit: CfA/Mel Weiss

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16-01-2025 om 21:44 geschreven door peter  

From what astronomers have learned about black holes, these gravitational behemoths are surrounded by infalling matter (gas, dust, and even light) that form swirling, bright disks. This material and energy is accelerated to near the speed of light, causing it to release heat and radiation (mostly in the ultraviolet) as it slowly accretes onto the black hole’s “face.” These UV rays interact with a cloud of electrically charged plasma (the corona) surrounding the black hole, which boosts the rays’ into the X-ray wavelength.

Since 2011, NASA’s XMM-Newton has been observing 1ES 1927+654, a galaxy located 236 million light-years away in the constellation Draco with a black hole of 1.4 million Solar masses Suns at its center. In 2018, the X-ray corona mysteriously disappeared, followed by a radio outburst and a rise in its X-ray output—what is known as Quasi-periodic oscillations (QPO). UMBC associate professor Eileen Meyer, a co-author of this latest study, also recently released a paper describing these radio outbursts.

“In 2018, the black hole began changing its properties right before our eyes, with a major optical, ultraviolet, and X-ray outburst,” she said in a NASA press release. “Many teams have been keeping a close eye on it ever since.” Meyer presented her team’s findings at the 245th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), which took place from January 12th to 16th, 2025, in National Harbor, Maryland. By 2021, the corona reappeared, and the black hole seemed to return to its normal state for about a year.

However, from February to May 2024, radio data revealed what appeared to be jets of ionized gas extending for about half a light-year from either side of the SMBH. “The launch of a black hole jet has never been observed before in real time,” Meyer noted. “We think the outflow began earlier, when the X-rays increased prior to the radio flare, and the jet was screened from our view by hot gas until it broke out early last year.” A related paper about the jet co-authored by Meyer and Masterson was also presented at the 245th AAS.

In addition, observations gathered in April 2023 showed a months-long increase in low-energy X-rays, which indicated a strong and unexpected radio flare was underway. Intense observations were mounted in response by the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) and other facilities, including XMM-Newton. Thanks to the XMM-Newton observations, Masterson found that the black hole exhibited extremely rapid X-ray variations of 10% between July 2022 and March 2024. These oscillations are typically very hard to detect around SMBHs, suggesting that a massive object was rapidly orbiting the SMBH and slowly being consumed.

“One way to produce these oscillations is with an object orbiting within the black hole’s accretion disk. In this scenario, each rise and fall of the X-rays represents one orbital cycle,” Masterson said. Additional calculations also showed that the object is probably a white dwarf of about 0.1 solar masses orbiting at a velocity of about 333 million km/h (207 million mph). Ordinarily, astronomers would expect the orbital period to shorten, producing gravitational waves (GWs) that drain the object’s orbital energy and bring it closer to the black hole’s outer boundary (the event horizon).

However, the same observations conducted between 2022 and 2024 showed the fluctuation period dropped from 18 minutes to 7, and the velocity increased to half the speed of light (540 million km/h; 360 million mph). Then, something truly odd and unexpected followed: the oscillations stabilized. As Masterson explained:

“We were shocked by this at first. But we realized that as the object moved closer to the black hole, its strong gravitational pull could begin to strip matter from the companion. This mass loss could offset the energy removed by gravitational waves, halting the companion’s inward motion.”

This theory is consistent with what astronomers have observed with white dwarf binaries spiraling toward each other and destined to merge. As they got closer to each other, instead of remaining intact, one would begin to pull matter off the other, which slowed down the approach of the two objects. While this could be the case here, there is no established theory for explaining what Masterson, Meyer, and their colleagues observed. However, their model makes a key prediction that could be tested when the ESA’s Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) launches in the 2030s.

“We predict that if there is a white dwarf in orbit around this supermassive black hole, LISA should see it,” says Megan. The preprint of Masterson and her team’s paper recently appeared online and will be published in Nature on February 15th, 2025.

Further Reading: 

• ESA, 
• NASA, 
• arXiv, 
• AJL

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16-01-2025 om 21:30 geschreven door peter  

The Black Knight Satellite: A Perplexing Alien Visitor in Orbit - Part 1

The Black Knight satellite, a peculiar object that has allegedly been orbiting Earth for thousands of years, has sparked great speculation, debate, and fascination among conspiracy theorists and astronomers alike for well over a century since it was first detected.

Is it a classified United States military project, a derelict Cold War-era Russian spy satellite lost in the vastness of space, or an extraterrestrial probe monitoring Earth?

The Black Knight Emerges

When Russian Cosmonaut, Sergei Krikalev, who was a part of the six-member crew of the NASA STS-88 Endeavour mission looked out of the shuttle window to take photographs of an unknown object following NASA’s protocol for UFO sightings, little could he have imagined the incredible excitement and controversy his actions would cause back on Earth.

Although Krikalev was not the first to capture the strange-looking object on camera, his effort arguably produced the clearest pictures of the purported Black Knight Satellite in a hundred years. Intriguingly, those sensational photographs were published by NASA on their official website.

Russian Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, who was a part of the six-member crew of the NASA STS-88 Endeavour mission in December 1998.

(NASA).

Ufologists relished the opportunity to scrutinize the pictures, declaring they proved the Black Knight Satellite was no figment of imagination; and, that as they had contended all along, it was an object of alien origin, sent to surveil Earth from afar for undetermined purposes

The “Dark Satellite” or “Black Knight Satellite” grabbed the attention of scientists in the early days of space exploration during the 1950s, when puzzling signals were detected in near-polar orbit of the Earth.

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It was a time of heightened tensions between the United States of America and the Soviet Union. Inexplicable occurrences, whose sequence appears to have been orchestrated by some unseen hand, happened on the back of a series of events involving the United States.

An aerial photograph of the Trinity crater shortly after the atomic bomb test in 1945. White Sands, New Mexico.

(Public Domain).

These unprecedented episodes broadly include: The Battle of Los Angeles during the Second World War in February 1942; the detonation of the first atomic bomb in White Sands Proving Ground, New Mexico, in July 1945; the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of the same year; sightings of odd, aerial objects by pilot Kenneth Arnold in Washington State in June 1947, which were termed “flying saucers” in the Press; the alleged crash of an extraterrestrial disc and the subsequent retrieval of alien bodies in Roswell, New Mexico in July 1947, and finally the UFO sightings over Washington, D.C. on two consecutive Saturday nights in July 1952 that caused widespread fear in the Nation’s Capital.

A noteworthy addition to this list is the considerable panic that ensued during an October 1938 Halloween radio broadcast. Directed and chillingly narrated by Orson Welles, a radio dramatization of ‘The War of the Worlds,’ the classic sci-fi novel penned by H. G. Wells, left terrified listeners thinking a Martian invasion was underway.

All these events were still fresh in people’s minds and sightings of UFOs or unidentified flying objects became a regular feature, what with the paranoid citizenry having their eyes glued to the skies.

The 1950s were also an era when the possibility of life on other planets and alien visitations began to enter public consciousness more than it ever had over the past half-a-century. Newspaper reports and magazine articles, science fiction novels and Hollywood movies, and, of course, Ufology societies kept everyone informed and on the edge of their seats.

A reprint of ‘The War of the Worlds’ was featured on the cover of the July 1951 issue of Famous Fantastic Mysteries. 

(Public Domain).

Clear Signs in the 1950s

On May 14, 1954, bang in the middle of the Cold War, the Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine reported that the United States Air Force had detected “at least one and possibly two artificial satellites circling the Earth” and that they were being kept under close observation.

In the normal course, such news would have constituted run-of-the-mill reportage, hardly raising eyebrows among the public. Though it would doubtless have caused alarm in the defense department and echelons of political power, if these objects were assumed to be spy satellites.

But the Aviation Week article sent chills down everyone’s spines, because at the time it was published humans had still not achieved the capability to launch satellites in orbit.

Cover of the 1950 book 'The Flying Saucers Are Real' by Donald Keyhoe, one of the world’s first true ufologists.

(Public Domain).

The shocking information about the mysterious satellites was revealed by Donald Edward Keyhoe, a Marine Corps Major-turned-UFO researcher and founder of The National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena or NICAP, who claimed government scientists working at White Sands, New Mexico, had made the discovery.

The Air Force issued a vehement denial to Keyhoe’s statement, maintaining they were, “… not watching any satellites — artificial or otherwise.” Skeptics on the other hand accused Keyhoe of making outlandish statements to promote his latest book on UFOs.

Yet, behind the scenes, the Pentagon swiftly swung into action, even as a stunned U.S. citizenry grappled with the implications of the news.

Upon tracking two satellites emitting radio signals as they circled at 400 miles and 600 miles above our planet, Pentagon officials immediately suspected the Soviet Union. The Russians were not just blamed of espionage, but were presumed to have beaten the United States in the space race. The Russians categorically denied these charges, and in turn held the Americans responsible for the satellites.

If neither the U.S. nor Russia had secretly sent a satellite into space, whom did it belong to? Aliens, claim UFO hunters, convinced that it was the Black Knight Satellite. Nevertheless, the Air Force sought the help of Dr. Lincoln La Paz, the then head of the Extra-Terrestrial Bodies Institute at the University of New Mexico, to determine the nature of the anomalous objects.

Dr. La Paz was no ordinary scientist. He possessed vast experience in conducting UFO investigations for the U.S. Air Force — particularly the alleged Roswell non-terrestrial vehicle crash incident of 1947. La Paz teamed up with astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, the discoverer of Pluto in 1930, to confirm that the near-Earth orbiting objects were “natural”, meaning, they were no more than meteors.

However, another version of events states that it was La Paz and Tombaugh who had originally detected the two objects in the murky darkness of space while working on behalf of the Air Force, hinting they could be artificially-built satellites. And that the duo later stoutly denied ever having made such an erroneous identification, or even working together at White Sands Missile Range.

Since the earlier Aviation Week article received tremendous traction amongst the Press and public, the Pentagon once again rushed to allay growing fears about the unusual outer space objects. They stated in an August 23, 1954 Aviation Week report: “[the]… scare over the observance of two previously unobserved satellites orbiting the earth has dissipated with the identification of the objects as natural, not artificial satellites.”

Ufologists, though, assert this was the convenient, conventional explanation; one meant to distract and steer the public away from the truth. They point to the fact that the Soviet Union launched the beach ball-sized Sputnik 1, humankind’s first-ever artificial satellite, into space from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan only in October 1957 — a full three years after the detection of the so-called Black Knight Satellite. Yet, no one could have imagined that there was much more to come in this extraordinary saga.

Artist's impression of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, in orbit.

(Gregory R. Todd/CC BY-SA 3.0).

On February 11, 1960, a New York Times article reported that U.S. tracking stations had detected a mysterious “dark” and “silent” satellite wheeling overhead on a regular and roughly pole-to-pole or polar orbit. Such an orbit would endow the object with the exceptional capability to observe every part of the Earth’s surface.

The Navy had employed the latest component of the space watch program called Dark Fence, designed by the Naval Research Laboratory, to find and track this satellite. It was a kind of radar trip-wire that stretched across the width of the United States to help keep track of satellites whose radios had gone silent.

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When the object showed up during two passes of the Dark Fence, the news was communicated to President Eisenhower and marked top secret.

However, though initially classified as a Soviet spy satellite, it was later revealed that the object constituted “…the remains of an Air Force Discoverer 5 — one of the first photographic reconnaissance satellites built by the United States — that had gone astray.”

Scientists Vouch for Space Anomalies

UFO hunters were not the only ones to believe that the strange objects detected in outer space were other-worldly; men of science jumped on the bandwagon too.

In 1960, Ronald Bracewell, Professor of Electrical Engineering of the Space, Telecommunications, and Radioscience Laboratory at Stanford University, published an article in the authoritative scientific journal, Nature, in which he advanced the possibility of the presence of an alien probe that was trying to establish contact with Earth. As proof of his theory, Bracewell cited the phenomenon of delays in radio signals observed since the beginning of the 20th century.

Noted Ufologist, astronomer and author, Jacques Vallée.

(Christopher Michel, 2024).

In 1961 French astronomer, ufologist, and author Jacques Vallée divulged that while working on the staff of the French Space Committee, he had taken photos and filmed a bright oil tanker-sized satellite. While tracking its trajectory, Vallée realized it was in a retrograde orbit; meaning, in an East to West orbit, opposite to Earth’s rotation. However, when he showed the astounding scientific material he had gathered to his superiors, he claims it was not just confiscated, but destroyed.

Certain UFO researchers opine that amateur American astronomer, Steven Slayton, was the first to observe the mysterious object way back in 1958. While observing the Moon with a 20-inch telescope, Slayton is said to have witnessed a dark spherical object, moving at high speed on an unusual elliptical trajectory, before disappearing when it reached the edge of the lunar disk. Based on these characteristics, he concluded it was artificial.

But the U.S. military dismissed Slayton’s sighting as a meteorite flying near the Moon, as the object had not been recorded by any radar station.

The Black Knight Name

According to researchers, there are two possible origins of the name “Black Knight.”

The first one maintains that it was derived from a 1972 science fiction novel “The Destruction of Faena” by Soviet author Alexander Kazantsev. In the story a civilization from the planet Phaeton, that was destroyed in a nuclear disaster, had launched the Black Prince satellite into Earth’s orbit to communicate with us.

When Kazantsev’s novel was translated into English, the phrase “Black Prince” was changed to Black Knight. It is believed that this fictitious satellite lent its name to the space object discovered by Slayton.

The second option is connected to United Kingdom’s research ballistic missile, called the Black Knight, that was launched at Woomera, Australia, on September 7, 1958.

Whatever the origin of the mysterious satellite’s moniker, it has stuck like glue!

Black Knight Chronology

To gain a proper understanding of the subject, it is important to study key instances of signals received from the Black Knight satellite in chronological order.

In 1899, Serbian-American inventor and electrical engineer Nikola Tesla erected a large tower at his laboratory in Colorado Springs to study atmospheric electricity and wireless power. While conducting experiments, he intercepted repeating signals from outer space.

At first, Tesla speculated the transmission had originated from a planet communicating with Earth, noting in a February 9th, 1901 Collier’s Weekly article titled ‘Talking with the Planets’: “The feeling is constantly growing on me that I had been the first to hear the greeting of one planet to another … it dawned upon me that I had observed something possibly of incalculable consequences to mankind. I felt as though I were present at the birth of a new knowledge or the revelation of a great truth.”

Nikola Tesla sitting in front of a spiral coil used in his wireless power experiments at his East Houston St. laboratory. 

(Public Domain).

Upon further study, Tesla believed the radio waves emanated from a satellite orbiting Earth. Until, finally, he formed the opinion that the signals came from an intelligent alien civilization based on Mars.

In a February 25th, 1923, article titled ‘A Giant Eye to See Round the World’ that appeared in the Albany Telegram, the genius scientist wrote: “I believe the Martians used numbers for communication because numbers are universal.”

The Global Mars Fixation

Radio waves, a type of electromagnetic radiation, have the lowest frequencies and longest wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum, and can be larger than our planet. Given that the very first source of non-terrestrial radio waves were detected from the constellation of Sagittarius in the center of the Milky Way galaxy by an American physicist and radio engineer, Karl Jansky, only in April 1933, the scientific community has explained away Tesla’s signals as nothing more than radio wave pulses from a pulsar.

But this interpretation is hotly contested by Ufologists because Guglielmo Marconi, the Italian inventor and electrical engineer, known for his creation of a practical radio wave–based wireless telegraph system in 1896, also detected the same signals.

But what convinced Tesla that the transmission had come from Mars?

By the time H. G. Wells published ‘The War of the Worlds,’ the Red Planet had been observed through telescopes for nearly 300 years. Beginning with Galileo Galilei’s studies of the phases of Mars in 1610; Giovanni Cassini’s identification of the planet’s polar ice caps in 1666; and Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli’s observations of geological features which he called “canali” or channels in 1877.

The mistranslation of Schiaparelli’s “canali” into English as “canals” led to the popular belief that Mars was inhabited by an extraterrestrial race capable of engineering and agriculture.

Giovanni Schiaparelli's 1877 surface map of Mars. 

(Public Domain).

American mathematician and astronomer Percival Lowell was tremendously inspired by the research on Mars that had preceded him. From his observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, he examined the Red Planet extensively for 15 years. These included studies conducted during the 1907 opposition, or the period when it was closer to Earth.

A prolific writer, Lowell postulated in his books "Mars" in 1895, "Mars and its Canals" in 1906, and "Mars as the Abode of Life" in 1908, that an advanced alien race indigenous to the planet had built canals to convey water from the polar caps to irrigate the remaining arable land in their arid, dying landscape.

As he confidently informed the editors of the journal Nature in London: “After the melting of the south polar cap had got well under way, canals began to make their appearance about it.”

“The planet is at present the abode of intelligent constructive life [and] I may say in this connection that the theory of such life upon Mars was... deduced from the outcome of observation [and] my observations since have fully confirmed it.”

Martian canals as depicted by Percival Lowell. 

(Public Domain).

Lowell accompanied his hypothesis with illustrations of imaginary geological features on Mars, just as Schiaparelli had done earlier.

But Lowell's grand pronouncements about Martian canals and their alleged-creators had been discredited by the time of his death in 1916. The Times trod delicately in a valedictory editorial, stating, “The present judgment of the scientific world is that he was too largely governed in his researches by a vivid imagination.”

Nevertheless, the determined efforts of Percival Lowell to unravel the mysteries of the Red Planet, and the way his scientific writings played a role in shaping Tesla’s thoughts, cannot be overlooked.

Part two of this article can be read here.

• Top Image: The purported Black Knight Satellite, enhanced image produced by author.
• Source: Anand N. Balaji.
• Independent researcher Anand N. Balaji is an Ancient Origins guest writer and author of the glowingly reviewed book ‘Seeking Smenkhkare: Was Nefertiti the Ephermeral One of Amarna?’

By Anand N. Balaji

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/mysterious-phenomena }

16-01-2025 om 20:59 geschreven door peter  

The Black Knight Satellite: Enigmatic Object Plotting Our Doom? - Part 2

In the first part of this series, we learned about the detection of the mysterious Black Knight Satellite in the 1950s, the alarm it raised in the military and air force, and the panic and confusion it caused amongst the public at the height of the Cold War.

Among other things we analyzed denials of the strange satellite's existence by the powers-that-be; reports to the contrary in the Press and respected publications by leading scientists, informed whistleblowers, and amateur astronomers; sightings of UFOs above prominent U.S. buildings; and radar detections of the satellite that led to a vicious blame-game between arch rivals the United States and the Soviet Union in the early days of the space race.

We also briefly learned about photographs of the purported Black Knight Satellite snapped by NASA astronauts, no less; explored the origin of the satellite's name; reviewed its chronology and efforts of scientists, such as Nikola Tesla to communicate with the object.

Let's continue our journey by going back millennia, to the very beginning of the Black Knight Satellite saga.

True Age of the Black Knight

Historical records and anecdotal evidence add further layers to the mystery of the Black Knight legend. Although the moon is our only celestial satellite, alien theorists contend that texts from various ancient cultures make references to a dark object, also called a “Dark Ark,” orbiting the earth.

Babylonian, Egyptian, and Greek mythology dwell specifically on the stars of the Boötes constellation. Even Homer mentions Boötes as a celestial reference for navigation in his epic poem Odyssey. Unsurprisingly, the Boötes connection is at the heart of the Black Knight Satellite narrative too.

Star map showing the Boötes constellation. 

(International Astronomical Union (IAU) - IAU/Sky and Telescope/CC BY-SA 3.0).

One of the most shocking aspects of the Black Knight Satellite is its alleged age. According to one theorist, the alien probe has been orbiting Earth for approximately 13,000 years, long before the advent of human civilization.

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Scottish science fiction author and astronomer, Duncan Lunan, made this age-related proposal in a 1973 Spaceflight magazine article published by the British Interplanetary Society. He proposed the vast number of years after analyzing the long-delayed echoes or LDEs received by Norwegian engineer and HAM radio operator, Jørgen Hals, in 1927. “From where this echo comes I cannot say for the present, but I will only herewith confirm, that I really heard this echo,” Hals stated.

Boötes as depicted in Urania’s Mirror, a set of constellation cards published in London c.1825.

(Wikipedia Commons/Sidney Hall/Public Domain).

Lunan hypothesized that a 13,000-year-old object orbiting the Moon could have produced those LDEs. To arrive at this conclusion, he connected the satellite with the location of the North Pole star, Polaris; and then plotted a vertical axis of the transmitted pulse sequence with a horizontal axis of echo delay time.

In 1998, Lunan explained this process: “I tried plotting the delay times against the order in which the echoes were received... and at only the second attempt I found what looked like a star map.”

Lunan disclosed that the hidden radio message sent by the alien space probe announced:

“Start here. Our home is Epsilon Boötes, which is a double star. We live on the sixth planet of seven, coming from the sun, which is the larger of the two. Our sixth planet has one Moon. Our fourth planet has three. Our first and third planets each have one. This updates the position of Arcturus shown on our maps.”

The message also supposedly said, “Our probe is in the orbit of your Moon.”

Remember the object Slayton claimed to have seen streak across the Moon in 1958? Or references to the Boötes constellation in ancient cultures? Why, even the LDEs heard by Tesla, Marconi and Hals? Was it the Black Knight Satellite all along?

In deciphering the code, Lunan pinpointed the origin of the probe to Epsilon Boötes, also known as Izar, a binary star system located in the constellation of Boötes. But he hit a roadblock when he plotted out the co-ordinates on the star map, as they did not line up with the position of the stars mentioned in the alien message — especially the position of Arcturus, the brightest star in that constellation.

But things dramatically fell into place when Lunan, considering axial precession, adjusted the star map to reflect the position of the Boötes constellation as it would have appeared a staggering 13,000 years ago. He found an exact match, which meant the Black Knight Satellite arrived here in 11,000 BC.

The path of the north celestial pole among the stars due to the precession. 

(Tau’olunga/CC BY-SA 2.5).

Despite gaining wide publicity in major news outlets, such as the New York Times, Time Magazine, and the CBS Evening News, Lunan retracted his conclusions in 1976. But that did not shake the conviction of the Ufology community, who swore that the Black Knight Satellite was real. However, Lunan re-interpreted a portion of his theory in 1998 on the grounds of positional astronomy.

Sightings of the Silent Space Sentinel

Alleged sightings of the Black Knight Satellite by NASA astronauts during space missions have added massive fuel to the speculation-fire.

In 1963 during his 15th orbit on the Faith 7 spacecraft, Gordon Cooper, one of NASA's original Mercury Seven astronauts, claimed to have spotted an object which was alleged to have been the Black Knight satellite. The craft, that Cooper described as emitting a greenish-glow with a distinct shape, was confirmed by tracking stations.

Astronaut Gordon Cooper sighted a strange object while orbiting Earth in the Faith 7 spacecraft in 1963.

(NASA).

This information not only went missing from NASA's mission transcripts, but Cooper's personal records too did not reveal any such report was made during the orbit. The truth was irrevocably buried when Cooper retracted his statement upon returning. In addition to this, the media blackout which ensued on the topic and the US space agency's bizarre explanation that their ace astronaut had suffered cosmic hallucinations put a lid on the matter forever.

Claims and counter-claims about the Black Knight came to a dramatic head when NASA released sensational photographs taken during the eleven-day STS-88 Endeavour mission in late-December 1998 — the first Space Shuttle mission to assemble vital components of the International Space Station, the first permanently-manned satellite in Earth’s orbit.

Among other payloads on board the STS-88 mission to the ISS was the first American-built module, the Unity node, which was designed to connect the Russian and United States segments of the station, where the crew shared meals.

View of the ISS Unity module photographed by the STS-88 mission in December 1998.

(NASA).

Dubbed as some of the weirdest-looking 70-mm photographs to ever emerge from the space shuttle program, the main controversial image showed a dark, oddly-shaped, elongated object with what appeared to be strange protrusions. An abnormal design for a spacecraft that indicated it could not have been conceived or built by humans.

Ecstatic ufologists instantly identified it as the Black Knight Satellite, and proclaimed the photograph in question was undeniable and compelling evidence that the craft originated from an alien world.

Detail of the controversial photo taken during Space Shuttle mission STS-88, described as showing a drifting thermal blanket or "space debris". Alien enthusiasts, however, claim it is the elusive Black Knight Satellite.

(NASA).

Unruffled by such conjecture NASA cataloged the image, under the number STS088-724-66, not as one that showed a spacecraft of extraterrestrial origin but with a more mundane explanation: space debris. Remnants, they explained, from a white thermal blanket that came loose from its tether and floated away during an extravehicular activity or EVA, commonly referred to as a spacewalk, performed by mission specialists Jerry Ross and Jim Newman.

When the astronauts embarked on this spacewalk to continue the installation of the Unity node, they began by connecting power and data cables to permit power generated from Zarya, which means sunrise in Russian. It was the Functional Cargo Block built by Boeing and the Russian Space Agency, to activate the systems on board Unity.

• Have Oumuamua Aliens Been Watching Us? One Harvard Scientist Thinks So
• Was Socrates in Space? A Question of Ancient Spaceflight

During the EVA outside Unity, Jim and Ross installed two antennas, removed launch restraint pins, and installed covers on data relay boxes to protect them from sunlight. It was during the last of these procedures that the crew spotted and photographed a thermal blanket floating away.

So, is there a rational explanation for the black object seen in the photos? The answer, according to NASA, is simple: the reflective surface of the thermal blanket is facing the darkness of space, away from the light of the Earth.

Though NASA reported that the debris fell from orbit a few days later and burned up in the atmosphere on re-entry, things were to take an even more peculiar turn. NASA rendered the original photo links inoperative during routine website maintenance. This purportedly innocuous move snowballed overnight, with UFO theorists claiming a cover-up.

Though events such as these played out amply in the public domain, they have not changed the minds of those who believe NASA is intentionally concealing information it has gathered over the years about the true nature and origin of the Black Knight Satellite. Ufologists even claim the space agency is in communication with the sneaky satellite.

Navigating Space Debris

Debunking the alien origin hypothesis, skeptics argue that the Black Knight Satellite is space junk from a lost piece of man-made technology. They point to the improbability and enormous challenges of maintaining such a satellite in orbit for extended periods, let alone 13,000 years, particularly without detection.

But who is to say what capabilities a technologically advanced alien civilization may command?

Illustration of a satellite breaking up into multiple pieces at higher altitudes.

(European Space Agency).

Lest we forget, in the form of the Voyager Golden Records aboard the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecrafts, we humans sent a kind of time capsule showcasing the sounds and images of planet Earth; indicating the origin of the spacecrafts and advertising our location for discovery by potential intelligent alien worlds. So why would another species not attempt to communicate in a similar manner, such as the Black Knight Satellite purportedly does?

Besides, if we can send orbital spacecraft, probes, and satellites to study nearby planets and other parts of the solar system, what would prevent an advanced extraterrestrial race from doing the same?

What is accurate though is that with the sheer amount of debris that clutters the space around our planet today, it would prove difficult to locate any prospective non-terrestrial technological artifacts that may be watching us.

While current European Space Agency data reveals there are 5,800 functioning satellites in orbit. The United States Space Surveillance Network estimates that there are over 170 million pieces of space debris, ranging from 1 millimeter to 10 centimeters, orbiting Earth.

NASA states that as of January 2022, they have calculated that this material collectively weighs more than 9,000 metric tons. But Space Surveillance Networks find it incredibly hard to log and continuously track space junk due to technological limitations.

Visitors from Stars Beyond

Is the Black Knight Satellite our first interstellar visitor? Probably not.

Using the Pan-STARRS telescope, in October 2017, astronomers detected Oumuamua, meaning ‘scout’ in Hawaiian. Speculated to use solar energy for propulsion, it was the first interstellar object to pass through our Solar System.

Artist's impression of 'Oumuamua', the mysterious interstellar object that entered our solar system in 2017.

(M. Kornmesser/European Space Agency).

As expected, the sighting of the rocky, cigar-shaped object with a somewhat reddish hue, sent the scientific world into a tizzy. Astronomer Avi Loeb, founder of The Galileo Project, that is aimed at detecting extraterrestrial technological signatures produced by Extraterrestrial Technological Civilizations or ETCs, suggested that Oumuamua could be a product of alien technology.

It boggles the mind to think about the many interstellar objects that may have gone unnoticed over the past 100 years, if not more, merely because we did not possess the means to identify them until about a decade ago.

Repeated Global Sightings

The Black Knight story is alive and well, precisely 125 years after Tesla first reported signals that apparently emanated from the object. Numerous sightings and photographs of this other-worldly satellite continue to be reported by sky gazers from all over the world.

In late-2020, a video that purportedly showed the Black Knight Satellite hovering over Santa Rosa, in the Philippine province of Laguna, circulated on YouTube. The fuzzy video showed a brownish-red tinted object, with what appeared to be spikes emerging from an opening on its top, moving silently through the sky.

But former NASA engineer James Oberg said that most UFO sightings were nothing more than "space dandruff" floating in front of cameras. He argued that the human brain is not wired to make sense of such tiny objects in our skies.

Be that as it may, the shape of the object witnessed over the Philippines bore a striking resemblance to the alleged Black Knight Satellite photographed by NASA astronauts in 1998.

But as always, NASA scientists remain unmoved. They say people who regularly mistake birds, planes, weather phenomena and optical illusions for UFOs, are taking it a bit too far with the Black Knight topic.

Moreover, they raise a moot point regarding the improbability of a satellite floating below the clouds in our atmosphere, as the satellites closest to Earth orbit around 200 miles in space.

Skeptics and NASA insiders have long-charged UFO hunters of making exaggerated claims and fabricating conspiracy theories out of thin air. They allege that despite the lack of concrete evidence, Black Knight devotees combine a collection of disconnected stories, some bordering on the downright preposterous, into one fanciful narrative.

But by all counts, it seems alien theorists cannot be simply wished away. Not just are their numbers increasing day by day; but with the aid of the Internet, they are a global community that digs deep into declassified government documents, sharing information and images about UFO sightings and related events, and registering personal experiences online in real-time. Above all, they do not hesitate to question the official version of events.

Purpose of the Black Knight Satellite

Under the cover of darkness, the Black Knight Satellite that is estimated to weigh a whopping 15 tons, has stealthily watched the rise and fall of civilizations and cultures throughout the world.

Though it ranks as one of the most seen, heard, and photographed objects in space history, we have no clue why it is here; who or what is monitoring us; and for what purpose? Are we akin to animals under observation, as posited in the Zoo hypothesis?

Noted planetary scientist, Carl Sagan, had this to say about the Voyager Golden Record: “The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in interstellar space.”

Renowned American astrophysicist and popular science writer, Carl Sagan, from an image of the Planetary Society.

(NASA/JPL).

But what if these superior extraterrestrial entities choose not to respond, probably because they have already learnt everything there is to know about the ‘Pale Blue Dot’ we inhabit – the one that Voyager 1 photographed from 3.7 billion miles away in 1990?

While optimistically-minded people say the Black Knight Satellite was sent to raise our level of consciousness and technology, or maybe even to prevent us from destroying ourselves; others fear it is a weapon that could annihilate us or instigate an invasion by harvesting information about us and relaying that data to its planet of origin.

With so many divergent views on the subject, it is impossible to reach a definitive conclusion.

Are We Racing to Disclosure?

Alien enthusiasts say the flurry of activity on the UFO subject over the past few years is welcome, as it was long overdue. Dubbed tinfoil hatters and nutcases for decades, experiencers of the UFO phenomenon from across the world are now being taken far more seriously.

Astonishing Pentagon videos and photos of alien craft making inconceivable maneuvers; whistleblowers from the Air Force and Navy spilling the beans about their personal encounters before the US Congress; the declassification of material pertaining to historic events involving unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP, as the US military has now rebranded them; and the heightened interest displayed by politicians and the media — all beg the question: is the public being prepared for imminent disclosure?

The stunning front-page article that sparked off the UFO craze worldwide. July 8, 1947. 

(Roswell Daily Record/Public Domain).

But wait: Is it that simple, or are we being readied for something else? The revelation that German-American aerospace engineer and space architect, Wernher von Braun, allegedly made on his deathbed is haunting: “And the last card they will play, will be the alien card.”

Is the Truth Out There?

In March 2017, a conspiracy theorist released a video claiming the Black Knight satellite had been shot down by a secret Illuminati war plane. Despite garnering hundreds of thousands of views opinion about the footage, available on YouTube, remains divided as its authenticity cannot be determined.

With superlative software technology, including AI, available to the public like never before, it is now easy to fake videos of alleged extraterrestrial craft and alien entities. Separating the wheat from the chaff has indeed become a Herculean task for researchers who earnestly pursue the UFO subject.

Denouncing such online gimmicks that spread disinformation, they lament that it not only enables naysayers to easily discredit their findings, but that it dents the hard work they invest to unravel the phenomenon.

In 2015, Pepsi released a short film titled ‘Black Knight Decoded’ with the claim that the Satellite’s “… origin can be traced back 13,000 years.” And then adding confidently, “This is not Science Fiction. This is real.”

Despite the Hollywood spin, the origin and purpose of the Black Knight Satellite has continued to perplex observers. Dismissing all talk of the Black Knight Satellite, NASA reiterates that photographs of the so-called object are wrongly interpreted.

Space scientists direct attention to the fact that if it was a spacecraft or satellite wheeling in polar orbit, it would have been travelling at 10 kilometers or 6.2 miles per second. At that remarkable speed, the STS-88 Endeavour crew couldn't have taken the number of images that they did.

Down to this day, the lack of official confirmation about the ominous satellite has fueled numerous conspiracy theories, making it one of the most debated enigmas in space exploration history.

No matter which side of the fence you are on, curiosity is an intrinsic human trait, more so when it concerns the many unknowns in the cosmos. The truth about the Black Knight Satellite, that clinching piece of evidence everyone is waiting for with bated breath, may elude us for now. But the quest for answers will continue forever.

Part One of this article can be read here.

• Independent researcher Anand N. Balaji is an Ancient Origins guest writer and author of ‘Seeking Smenkhare: Was Nefertiti the Ephermeral One of Amarna?’
• Top Image: Enhanced image of the Black Knight Satellite, made by author.
• Source: Anand N. Balaji.

By: Anand N. Balaji

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{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/mysterious-phenomena }

16-01-2025 om 20:58 geschreven door peter  

What Are UAPs and Why Are They Gaining Global Attention?

What Are UAPs?

The term UAP includes observations of objects or phenomena that exhibit characteristics beyond current human understanding or technology. These may involve:

• Aerial UAPs: Objects flying at extraordinary speeds, making sudden directional changes, or hovering without visible propulsion.
• Underwater UAPs: Fast-moving objects detected beneath the ocean’s surface, often described as Transmedium vehicles capable of operating in air and water.
• Space Phenomena: Unexplained movements or occurrences captured by satellites or astronauts.

The shift from UFO to UAP was formalized by organizations like the U.S. Department of Defense to encourage a more scientific and unbiased investigation. This change also aimed to remove stigma, enabling pilots, scientists, and military personnel to report sightings without fear of ridicule.

A Decade of UAP Developments

The past ten years have brought a series of revelations and investigations into UAPs, transforming public and governmental attitudes. Key milestones include:

2017: The AATIP Revelation

In 2017, The New York Times exposed the existence of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), a Pentagon initiative investigating UAPs. The report revealed:

• Declassified Videos: U.S. Navy pilots recorded objects defying the laws of physics, including the now-famous “Tic Tac” UFO seen off the coast of California in 2004.
• Pilot Testimonies: Pilots described objects moving without visible propulsion systems, executing instantaneous changes in direction, and disappearing at speeds beyond human capability.

This disclosure marked a turning point, spurring global curiosity and demanding further investigation.

2020: UAP Task Force

The U.S. Department of Defense established the UAP Task Force (UAPTF) in 2020. Its mission was to evaluate UAPs as potential threats to national security, emphasizing military sightings near restricted airspace. This formal acknowledgment legitimized the study of UAPs.

2021: Preliminary UAP Report

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a report summarizing 144 UAP incidents reported by military personnel between 2004 and 2021. Key findings included:

• 80 Cases Supported by Sensor Data: These sightings were corroborated by radar or infrared systems.
• “No Single Explanation”: While some incidents were attributed to natural phenomena or human-made objects, most remained unexplained.
• Recommendations for Study: The report stressed the need for additional data and a systematic approach to understanding UAPs.

2023: NASA Enters the Arena

In September 2023, NASA released its findings from an independent study on UAPs, focusing on how data could be collected to analyze these phenomena scientifically. The report concluded that while no evidence points to extraterrestrial origins, the lack of comprehensive data hinders definitive conclusions. NASA also announced a director to oversee its UAP research.

Congressional Hearings and Whistleblower Testimonies

In 2023 and 2024, U.S. Congress held hearings on UAPs, where former defense officials and whistleblowers claimed the existence of secret government programs retrieving non-human technology. Allegations included:

• Reverse Engineering Efforts: Whistleblowers suggested attempts to study recovered materials from unidentified craft.
• Public Transparency: Lawmakers emphasized the importance of sharing findings with the public to build trust and knowledge.

Why Are UAPs Attracting Attention?

Several reasons explain the growing focus on UAPs:

1. National Security Implications

UAPs are often observed near sensitive military installations or restricted airspace, raising concerns about potential espionage or advanced foreign technology. The possibility of adversaries deploying hypersonic drones or surveillance systems has prompted governments to take UAPs seriously.

2. Scientific Intrigue

Some UAPs exhibit flight characteristics beyond known aeronautical capabilities. Studying these phenomena could:

• Challenge our understanding of physics.

• Lead to breakthroughs in propulsion technology and materials science.
• Provide insights into new forms of energy or transportation.

3. Growing Public Interest

Declassified videos and transparent discussions have captured the public imagination. Social media platforms amplify sightings, while documentaries and media coverage make UAPs a topic of global fascination.

4. Global Collaboration

Other nations, including Canada, Japan, and Brazil, have reported UAP sightings and begun their own investigations. Collaborative efforts could unify scientific and technological resources to better understand these occurrences.

What Does Science Say About UAPs?

While many theories exist, ranging from extraterrestrial visitation to advanced technology or atmospheric phenomena, the scientific consensus remains inconclusive due to a lack of consistent data. Some leading hypotheses include:

• Advanced Human Technology: Hypersonic drones or experimental aircraft.
• Natural Phenomena: Atmospheric anomalies, ball lightning, or meteors.
• Extraterrestrial Origins: While no concrete evidence supports this, the possibility continues to fuel curiosity.

NASA and other agencies stress the importance of collecting high-quality data through sensors, radar systems, and AI analysis.

The Role of Government Transparency

Governments worldwide are under increasing pressure to disclose UAP-related information. In the U.S., laws like the National Defense Authorization Act of 2024 mandate reports on UAP incidents, aiming to address public concerns about secrecy. Greater transparency is seen as essential to building trust and fostering collaboration between agencies and the scientific community.

Looking Ahead: The Future of UAP Research

As the study of UAPs moves from speculation to serious inquiry, key priorities include:

• Improved Data Collection: Developing systems to detect, track, and analyze UAPs in real-time.
• Scientific Partnerships: Collaborations between government agencies, universities, and private institutions.
• Global Monitoring: Creating international databases to pool resources and insights.

The next decade could redefine humanity’s understanding of unexplained phenomena and potentially open new frontiers in science and exploration.

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{ https://curiosmos.com/ }

16-01-2025 om 15:49 geschreven door peter  

What Ancient UFO Sightings Reveal About Humanity’s Obsession With the Unknown

The earliest recorded observations of strange phenomena in the sky come from ancient civilizations. Sumerian and Babylonian cuneiform tablets, such as those in the Šumma ālu series from the second millennium B.C., describe shifting shapes and black meteors appearing in the heavens.

Greg Eghigian, a historian and professor at Penn State, agrees, according to Live Science. He notes that ancient accounts must be viewed within their cultural context. “These stories are disconnected from the societies in which they were created,” he said. What appears puzzling or extraterrestrial today was often a symbol of divine intervention, religious significance, or natural phenomena like comets or meteors.

The Nuremberg “Sky Battle” of 1561

One of the most vivid historical accounts of an aerial phenomenon occurred on April 14, 1561, in Nuremberg, Germany. Witnesses described orbs, crosses, and other shapes battling in the sky, accompanied by a mysterious black arrow-like object. Hans Glaser, a local artist, even created a woodcut illustrating the event, depicting the objects as they “fell from the sky, burning as they hit the ground.”

Although dramatic, this event was interpreted at the time as a divine sign or apocalyptic warning. Modern researchers note that the imagery and interpretation reflect the religious worldview of the era rather than evidence of extraterrestrial visitors.

UFOs Enter the Modern Era

The narrative around UFOs shifted dramatically in 1947 when amateur pilot Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine fast-moving objects near Mount Rainier, Washington. He described their movement as resembling a saucer skipping across water, leading to the now-iconic term “flying saucer.”

Arnold’s account captured public imagination, sparking a surge in reported sightings and the birth of modern UFO culture. At the time, many people believed these objects were advanced military aircraft rather than extraterrestrial visitors, reflecting Cold War-era anxieties.

“This sighting is widely regarded as the event that kick-started modern UFO culture,” Aubeck stated.

While UFO sightings continue to fascinate, they often reveal more about human culture than the mysteries of the cosmos. “Studying UFO sightings is valuable because they represent the urban legends of our time,” Aubeck explained. These stories demonstrate how cultural narratives and imagination shape the way we interpret the unknown.

Throughout history, people have gazed upward and wondered about the mysterious lights, shapes, and movements that defied explanation, weaving them into the fabric of their culture and beliefs. For ancient civilizations, these celestial events were often interpreted as messages from gods, warnings of impending events, or signs of divine favor. In more recent times, they’ve evolved into symbols of scientific intrigue, Cold War paranoia, and even hopes for extraterrestrial contact.

I believe that UFOs, in this sense, are far more than just strange objects in the sky. They represent the stories we tell ourselves about our place in the universe. Are we alone? Are there forces beyond our comprehension shaping our destiny? Every sighting, whether dismissed as a natural phenomenon or celebrated as a groundbreaking discovery, invites us to confront these timeless questions.

This enduring curiosity and creativity reveal something deeply human: our ability to turn the unknown into stories, myths, and hypotheses.

{ https://curiosmos.com/category/ufo-or-not/ }

16-01-2025 om 15:02 geschreven door peter  

Quantum computing, a transformative field leveraging quantum mechanics, has the potential to solve complex problems far beyond the reach of classical computers. While it promises significant advancements, it also poses risks, such as breaking cryptographic codes, threatening global data security. 

For example: At NASA's Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (QuAIL), experiments revealed unprecedented computational power and successfully solved the unsolvable problem. However, the quantum computer began generating independent and unconventional outputs, leading to speculation that it could think for itself or even connect with extraterrestrial intelligence. Concerned about the implications, NASA halted its quantum computing project in 2023, though some believe the research continued in secret. 

Separately, researchers have hypothesized that advanced extraterrestrial civilizations might use black holes as quantum computers for computation and communication. highlighting the mysterious potential of these quantum systems to explore phenomena beyond Earthly understanding. 

A fictional scenario (watch video below) illustrates the dangers of quantum technology spiraling out of control: 

A mysterious data transfer lights up NSA monitors at 3 AM. Within hours, hospital records flash across Times Square billboards. Dating app messages spill onto every screen in the city. 

Bank accounts vanish. Traffic lights freeze. Autonomous vehicles crash through shopping malls. Intelligence agencies scramble as decades of encrypted messages suddenly unlock. Someone or something has broken the unbreakable - the mathematical foundations that protect everything from banking passwords to nuclear launch codes. 

The quantum apocalypse arrives years ahead of schedule. But as chaos spreads, patterns start to surface. The timing seems too perfect, the targets too precise. 

Deep beneath the Pentagon, analysts notice something strange: some messages were decrypted months ago. The chaos isn't random - it's cover for something bigger.

  

{ https://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/ }

16-01-2025 om 14:44 geschreven door peter  

FILER’S FILES - Jan. 1 2025 - Drone & UFO Sightings Over New Jersey - PART I

Major George A. Filer III ret. USAF

MUFON Eastern Region Director

President Air Force & Space Association NJ 310

Awarded Bronze Star in Air Force

 New Jersey State Director Emeritus

Special reports General Twining – Discs Are Something Real , Mystery of the Black Triangles, Photo of Moon Base, Alien Beings at Top-Secret Facility, Drone & UFO Sightings Over New Jersey, Ruins on Mars, RAND Corporation,  Selected by Extraterrestrials. Benjamin Rich ,Robert Shiepe Discovered Tiny UAP/UFOs, British Laser  in Use in Ukraine , and ASTEROID

The Filer Research Institute feels the scientific study of UFOs is for the benefit of humankind and is an important endeavor. The US Air Force and DOD investigated UFOs for more than forty years; and I continue this advanced research. I believe the God of the universe has spread life throughout the cosmos and UFOs are visiting us in ever-increasing numbers.

Special Reports

General Twining – Discs Are Something Real and Not Fictitious

In 1947, General Nathan Twining wrote this now famous memo dated 23 September 1947.

Air Material Command Opinion Concerning “Flying Discs”

O:   Commanding General Army Air Forces, Washington 25, D.C.

ATTENTION:     Brig. General George Schulgen  AC/AS-2

1. As requested by AC/AS-2 there is presented below the considered opinion of this command concerning the so-called “Flying Discs.” This opinion is based on interrogation report data furnished by AC/AS-2 and preliminary studied by personnel of T-2 and Aircraft Laboratory, Engineering Division T-3. This opinion was arrived at in a conference between personnel from the Air Institute of Technology, Intelligence T-2, Office, Chief of Engineering Division, and the Aircraft, Power Plant and Propeller Laboratories of Engineering Division T-3.
2. It is the opinion that:
3. The phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious.
4. There are objects probably approximately the shape of a disc, of such appreciable size as to appear to be as large as man-made aircraft.
5. There is the possibility that some of the incidents may be  caused by natural phenomena, such as meteors.
6. The reported operating characteristics such as extreme rates of       climb, maneuverability (particularly in roll), and action which   must be considered evasive when sighted or contacted by friendly  aircraft and radar, lend belief to the possibility that some of  her objects are controlled either manually, automatically, or remotely.
7. The apparent common description of the objects is as follows:

(1)  Metallic or light reflecting surface.

(2)  Absence of trail, except in a few instances when the object apparently was operating under high performance conditions.

(3)  Circular or elliptical in shape, flat on bottom and domed on top.

(4)  Several reports of well-kept formation flights varying from three to nine objects.

(5)  Normally no associated sound, except in three instances a substantial rumbling roar was noted.

(6)  Level flight speeds normally about 300 knots are estimated.

General Twining was promoted to Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force from 1953 until 1957. Became Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1957 to 1960, the first member of the Air Force to serve in that role.

Black Triangles

Black Triangles tare UFOs reality, then why has no one blown the whistle? Informants in the U.K. have been talking about UFO’s and Flying Triangles because they see them every day. I have been a faithful subscriber to UFO rags from the U.K. for a long time. These magazines try to use a more down to earth approach as to which UFO’s are extra-terrestrial and which aren’t. In the British UFO Magazines, there is no question as to whether or not UFO’s exist. In order to understand what I am trying to tell you, you need to understand why Ufology in the UK commonplace is, you need to realize Britain’s UFO history. Britain has always been the center of “paranormal” anomalies with strange structures,  ghosts, and intricate crop circles. You would think there would be unlimited investigations with all of these strange anomalies occurring. There are your amateurs and then there are some that are appointed.

One man in particular is Nick Pope, who joined the British Ministry in 1985 and involved in policy making during the Gulf War, and the Bosnian Serb conflict. Pope was then moved in the summer of 1991. He was appointed to a new post at Whitehall Secretariat Air Staff, Department 2A. I guess you could call it the equivalent of the “X-files.” As with any classic “I don’t belong here” story Pope did not believe in the UFO hysteria and was very skeptical about the Paranormal. After dealing with the reports from the “UFO” desk Pope was slowly changing his mind on the issue.

After 3 years at the British  UFO” desk Nick Pope declared that UFO’s were a reality. He concluded that there was plenty of evidence to prove their existence. Pope was officially supposed to investigate whether or not these strange aircraft posed a threat to the UK’s defense. Unofficially He was expected to dismiss their existence. Pope decided it was up to him to tell the truth

about UFO’s. Pope claims that his peers and the department labeled him a loose cannon and found him to be very suspicious.

They lost trust in him. But Pope stood by his story, analyzing all the data, and claiming that it all added it up to a case for the existence of UFOs. A lot of the M.O.D. workers began humming the Twilight Zone theme whenever he would walk into the room, and after the X-files made it to the UK they called him “Spooky.” After all of the ridicule, and after claiming that he felt

UFOs posed a major threat to our defense systems; Pope was moved in 1994 from the M.O.D. to the financial department. The thing that is most frustrating is despite Pope’s entire candor; he is still bound by Britain’s official secrecy act. So, is what Pope saying fact or fiction? Apparently it’s fact; UFO’s are being seen in Britain. Some say it can be explained, but Pope says that a technological threat of non-human origin exists. Some say it is Science fiction, Pope continues to investigate such claims, even though it really isn’t his job anymore.

Since 1990 there have been over 4000 sightings of what is known as the “Flying Triangle” or “Silent Vulcan” Over Britain. In the early 90’s there were a similar number over Belgium, France, Holland, and Germany, with fighters being sent up to intercept this unknown craft? With people seeing aircraft “as big as a football field and hovering silently” to “hovering craft that shoot off silently.” Another claim was the sighting of “a huge black triangle rising out of the water” it is one of Europe’s most enduring waves of sightings. Nick Pope authored a book about many of these sightings including one over several Army bases in one night.

One of the more controversial cases is the Bentwaters -Woodbridge UFO case. The Bentwaters-Woodbridge bases are leased to the United States Air Force under NATO terms. The case is one of the creepiest ones I have ever heard. There were at least 30 witnesses who came forward to tell the story of what happened to USAF personnel and British Military in the Rendlesham Forest between the two bases, in December of 1980.

The incident began when two USAF security personnel spotted unusual lights hovering over Rendlesham forest. The security staff was worried that a small plane was crashing in the heavily wooded area. According to Sergeant Larry Warren, who was stationed at Bentwaters, It looked like the plane hit and a fire was smoldering in the forest. A group of men set out to find the strange red glowing area. What the men came a upon was a triangular UFO. Airmen Steve Roberts and James Archer said that the UFO had a red light on top of it and blue and white lights at the middle and bottom. Archer then claimed he saw occupants inside the strange craft. He claimed that they did not appear human.

here were also reports of Jeeps and several High-powered “Light all’s” abruptly died. Sgts. Larry Warren and Adrian Bustinza said that the energy just drained out. Animals were going crazy, and the men mentioned a yellow mist in the air. There was another strange anomaly in the area away from the clearing. It was transparent, elliptical like a see through an aspirin tablet. It then filled with a bright pulsating mist and it emitted a rainbow of colored lights. There was a film shot of the incident. And audio tapes made. However, it was later confiscated and flown to Ramstein Air Force Base in West Germany. NOTE: The above image is a rendering. Thanks to Ken Pfeifer MUFON NJ www.worldUFOphotos.org

Photo of Moon Base on NASA’ Persons Desk

NASA scientist employee leaves Top Secret Photos Won his desk when Press Takes Photo.

Astronaut  Edgar Dean “Ed” Mitchell (September 17, 1930 – February 4, 2016) was a United States Navy officer and aviator, test pilot, aeronautical engineer, ufologist, and NASA astronaut. As the Lunar Module Pilot of Apollo 14 in 1971 he spent nine hours working on the lunar surface in the Fra Mauro Highlands region  and was the sixth person to walk on .Moon. He revealed later he had seen structures on the Moon.. On Feb 9, 2016 · On Thursday, February 4, 2016the world lost the last of the Apollo 14 astronauts. Edgar Dean Mitchell, U.S. Navy test pilot and the sixth person to walk on the Moon, passed away in his sleep near his Florida home at the age of 85.

            Craft and Alien Beings at Top-Secret Facility

In a this interview, former S-4 Level 2 sentry Derek Hennesy, also known as Connor O’Ryan, revealed his experiences of witnessing grey extraterrestrial beings and disc-shaped craft at Area 51. Hennesy explained that there are four levels in S-4, with the top level being a hanger for the flying disc ships.

He stated that the first and second levels are all elevators where they keep the flying disc ships, and that while he was there, they were trying to operate the discs, which he witnessed unsuccessfully. He also mentioned that there were scientists and high-level White House officials present at the facility.

Hennesy described the layout of the facility, including four elevators and the fact that there are no centuries on levels three and four. He stated that he had no knowledge of what goes on in those levels, but he had heard rumors of a heavy or EB being present. He also described the bays on level two, which are separated by automatic doors and contain elevators that can bring the whole floor to the top.

The most striking revelation from Hennesy was his description of the storage of extraterrestrial bodies on level two. He stated that there were tubes present, about two feet in width and six feet in height, and that the creatures inside were completely identical, with no way of identifying them individually. He described the creatures as resembling the typical depiction of grey aliens, but with shriveled eyes that resembled prunes and no visible eyelids or hair.

He also stated that their bodies were very thin and frail looking. Hennesy also described the security measures in place at the facility, including a plastic card with magnetic information, a handprint scan, and a right eye retina scan for access to levels three and four.

He stated that if clearance was not granted, instructions were to arrest the individual immediately.

Hennesy’s testimony has been deemed credible by those who conducted the interview, as his voice analysis did not show any signs of stress, and the information he provided matched up with other information and rumors that have been circulating about the secretive Area 51 facility.  Thanks to https://www.latest-ufo-sightings.

Mysterious Drone & UFO Sightings Over New Jersey Baffles

Mere days after New Jersey’s governor told us to “calm down,” and shortly after experts suggested residents weren’t actually seeing drones in the first place, officials are now temporarily banning drone operations over portions of the state. Hmmm, I wonder why.

DRONE OR UFO

• the FAA Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) stated that they will be banning drones until mid-January and will respond to any threatening drones with “deadly force” if they present an “imminent security threat.”
• “At the request of federal security partners, the FAA published 22 Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFRs) prohibiting drone flights over critical New Jersey infrastructure,” the FAA said in a statement
• Mere days after New Jersey’s governor told us to “calm down,” and shortly after experts suggested residents weren’t actually seeing drones in the first place, officials are now temporarily banning drone operations over portions of the state. Hmmm, I wonder why.
• The FAA Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) stated that they will be banning drones until mid-January and will respond to any threatening drones with “deadly force” if they present an “imminent security threat.”
• “At the request of federal security partners, the FAA published 22 Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFRs) prohibiting drone flights over critical New Jersey infrastructure,” the FAA said in a statement
• ORLANDO, Fla. – A holiday drone show at Lake Eola Park in downtown Orlando took an unexpected turn over the weekend. What began as a festive display on Saturday, with red and green-lit drones illuminating the sky, quickly turned into chaos as several drones collided and plummeted into the crowd, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).The mishap resulted in one person, later identified as a child, being rushed to a local hospital for medical treatment. Two small drones crashed and fell to the ground hurting a 7 year old boy who was knocked out by impact on December 21, needing heart operation/

US bans drones in parts of New Jersey and New York

US aviation authorities have banned the use of drones at 22 infrastructure sites in New Jersey and another 29 in New York state for 30 days after a spike in drone sightings in the eastern US.

The measures allow the government to use “deadly force” against unmanned aircraft if they pose an “imminent security threat”.

Pilots operating in restricted zones risk being intercepted and detained by law enforcement, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said in a statement.

US aviation authorities have banned the use of drones at 22 infrastructure sites in New Jersey and another 29 in New York state for 30 days after a spike in drone sightings in the eastern US. Starting dec 21, 2024 The measures allow the government to use “deadly force” against unmanned aircraft if they pose an “imminent security threat”.

Pilots operating in restricted zones risk being intercepted and detained by law enforcement, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said in a statement. Residents and officials have also reported spotting unidentified aircraft, believed to be drones, flying above several British bases and U.S. states including Langley AFB, Virginia. It is my opinion that some of these drones are likely UFOs., since drone companies cannot control them with their equipment.

Ruins on Mars

This amazing NASA image has a vehicle in it. What appears to be a pickup truck, a car ramp, mechanical objects an enclosure or remnants of a circular structure and various other fascinating objects are seen.One of the mechanical objects looks like a water heater, and the other is very unusual to say the least. The vehicle appears to have a rounded carrier device possibly for carrying water or fluids. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5920t3zZUs 

NASA image PIA17766

RAND Corporation

The RAND Corporation is funded through government contracts and university collaborators. Over 30 Nobel Prize winners have been employed by RAND. From physics to economics, the 2000 person think tank provides high-level information and evaluation to the U.S. government.

RAND has conducted studies in UFO studies, weapons development, intelligence gathering and the design of sensitive underground installations for the USAF. Military personnel are also engaged in their studies.

Battelle Memorial Institute

“Like RAND- Battelle Memorial Institute was heavily engaged by government to study UFOs.” It now appears that Battelle metallurgists likely analyzed the Roswell memory metal retrieved from the 1947 crash. That conclusion was drawn from a “reverse engineering of information” of the literature on shape recovery metal; by the revealing statements of two U.S. Generals; through the confession of analysis by a senior Battelle scientist and by establishing other connections.

But perhaps the most interesting of these telling connections is this: The Director of Battelle at the time of the Roswell crash -Clyde E. Williams- simultaneously sat on the Board of Trustees of the RAND Corporation! Thanks to Deep Secrets of a UFO Think Tank Exposed! by Anthony Bragalia

 Keeping it all in the Family with Ben Rich

Benjamin Rich helped to lead aerospace giant Lockheed Martin as President of Lockheed Advanced Aeronautics. He oversaw the ultra-secret Lockheed “Skunk Works” division where he spearheaded the development of the Stealth bomber and universally acknowledged as “the father of Stealth technology. ‘Ben Rich stated some extremely revealing things about the reality and nature of UFOs before he passed on.

In a letter to his friend and associate John Andrews he replies to Andrew’s observations about the UFO phenomenon. Andrews had written a letter to Rich in which Andrews says, “I believe with certainty in manmade UFOs. I am tending to believe there are also extraterrestrial UFOs.”

 Rich -In handwritten letter- replies to Andrews, “Yes, I am a believer in both categories.” Andrews was a forensic illustrator and aviation model-maker. Before his own death, Andrews related that Rich went further in privately explaining that, “there are two types of UFOs, the ones we build and the ones ‘they’ build.”

Rich told Andrews of his concern that the public should not be told. But Rich told Andrews he had recently changed his mind on this and that, “those involved in dealing with the ‘subject’ could represent a bigger problem to citizens than knowledge of the  visitors themselves.”

Just before he died, Andrews says that Rich confirmed to him that “items” were recovered at the crash at Roswell in 1947. Rich also told associate John Goodall, “We have things at Area 51 that you and the best minds in the world won’t even be able to conceive for the next 30-40 years.” He stated, “We have the technology to take ET home.” In fact, Rich gave numerous clues and hints about the alien reality to several people before he passed.

Scientist William Tompkins

Selected by Extraterrestrials.

Scientist William Tompkins wrote three books and states, “That our planet has been a battleground for warring extraterrestrial cultures for thousands of years. The result has been wars, destruction and attempts to hinder our progress. Recently there has been a great spike in technical innovation due to help from friendly aliens. He believes that perhaps he and many other uniquely talented people have been gifted with skills that more closely reflect what human intelligence is capable of when not held back by outside forces. Regardless of your opinion of the UFO phenomenon, Mr. Tompkins has taken on this subject with energy and claims he designed  eight cylinder shaped craft 600 feet long carrying smaller fighting craft”. He has done extensive research into extraterrestrials and UFOs.  “Tomkins claims the Extraterrestrials also recently, helped develop a great spike in technical innovation in the US. Tomkins was taken into the Navy because of his ability to draw technical plans of ships in world war II. He transferred to . Naval Air Station San Diego , who was commanded by Admiral Abaca who had 29 Navy spies in Germany. They claimed Hitler had signed an agreement with Reptilians which gave Nazis UFOs and the ability to lengthen life

 Navy intelligence operatives would return to a small conference room in a tower at the US base. Data was put into packages and flown to these to top secret Naval Research Facilities , aviation companies, and universities. They were to develop parts of UFOs at Douglas, Lockheed, Northrop, Grumman, JPL, etc.

 After the war, some German scientists and their technology were brought to the US in Project Paperclip along with their advanced technology. Tomkins claims we were able to bring the Roswell alien craft down while using advanced technology.

• Selected by Extraterrestrials now 4 book series) Kindle Edition

The first volume of Selected by Extraterrestrials covered the life of Bill Tompkins to about 1970 and did not go deeply into the super-secret briefings he attended with Navy spies reporting the flying disks they had seen. Each book takes the reader into his work in aviation and secret UFO projects. Most of Mars life is underground in various caverns. Some human’s ancestors are from other star systems. “Tomkins worked on the fling wing which was an advanced design of the German Horton jet 229

YB-49 Flying Wing

The YB-49 featured a flying wing design was a jet-powered development of the earlier, piston-engine Northrop XB-35. The flying wing was passed over in favor of the more conventional Corvair B-36 piston-driven design. Design work performed in the development of lying wings proved to be valuable decades later in the development of the B-2 stealth bomber, which entered service in the early 1990s.

Technically they had won the competition against the B-36. The Northrop flying wings were more difficult to pick up on radar and could fly much faster and was an excellent bombing platform. Tompkins frequently visited China Lake Naval Station that has a large cavern underground and a network of rail systems underground. Bill Tompkins said he drove up to Lake Isabella on the highway to Walker Pass where his family of five were abducted. They lost time but Tompkins had no recollection of what happened.

William Tomkins joined along with Admiral Webster and developed a Navy League Council from 1982 to 2000 in Southern Oregon. Former Navy officers had been seeing UFOs coming in and out of Mt. Shasta in Northern California. They flew their private planes to attempt to locate the doors that opened to let the craft pass though. Children were being contacted and met with an alien lady who would use holograms to explain ET in Medford, Oregon. Many had taken ETs lessons and later joined the Navy.

 Robert Shiepe Discovered Tiny UAP/UFOs

Numerous Black Tiny 10 inch UFO/UAPs Around Heo8c90te helicopter

Robert Shiepe is the discovery and creator of a new subliminal photography that makes it possible to find and record unknown, fast small moving objects. Robert Shiepe (pictured with his cameras above) lives in Marina Del Rey, Los Angeles. In 2017, he noticed some new unusual flying activity by the Army, Coast Guard and LA Police (LAPD choppers).

Palmdale Orb April 14, 2021

He has recorded and documented over 4000 videos. The authorities are now and have been chasing an uncatchable drone approximately the size of a small group football. These drones are nearly invisible to the human eye (too fast) but not to the camera. For obvious reasons, this story is not yet in the news. He has personally given this information to the echelon of Aviation and the intelligence community and SETI and the Air Force.

Robert Shiepe, Pharmacist, is inventor and founder of the first mail order pharmacy in the United States in 1986.

Robert Shiepe writes, “These small drone-like objects here and now will be referred to as ”Dragons” because their silhouette resembles that of a ‘dragon fly’. These dragons have been chased by many agencies, over 3000 sorties. These dragons are also being recorded by at least three ocean vessels and have been recorded in Marina del Rey and north to Venice beach.”

 Craft photo over FAA building in Oklahoma city

It is a great honor to have earned your trust. Obviously, this is a new science and it will take about another year before people understand these dragons.

 It’s exciting that we are here to share this new advance information with others.

  Again, these UAP activities are happening every day in Marina del Rey, California and the tiny UFOs are following all aircraft into Los Angeles LAX. airport  These tiny UFOs that come out of the Pacific Ocean track every aircraft and helicopter that flies anywhere near Los Angeles. Why do they desire this kind of information?

•   The gunner did not have a machine gun but a Gatling gun. The gunner did not have a machine gun but a Gatling gun.

January  12 2023, we had a powerful video day. The Government Dept of Homeland Security / DHS , sent in a lot of helicopters , like the coast guard , police,  CBS news chopper an the navy Seahawk mh60 Romeo. It was crazy over here. The Seahawk came in ready for bear. the pilot and the gunner had their doors open.

 The gunner did not have a machine gun but a Gatling gun.

 I was lucky enough to get the video. check it out and tell me what you think. Also is it normal for a Seahawk to fly over Los Angeles with a gunner with a Gatling gun ?  seems a bit t too much..

• https://spaces.hightail.com/receive/VKuOXhA2tR/fi-73bd966d-ddc8-4316-88c3-25aee6786c4d/fv-76e9a56c-ec4e-4341-a1a3-301737338fe4/1-12-23%20NAVY%20MH%2060%20COMPILATION%20%20125v.mp4

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a new  Jan 14, 2023,  report about UFO sightings in the United States. The US government has received over 350 UFO sighting reports since March 2021, half of which remain unexplained.

Many years ago, that  then-vice president of engineering at Seagate Technology told me of his earlier US Air Force experience with UFOs when he was assigned to a Strategic Air Command unit. He told me that SAC and USAF pilots would often detect and track UFOs but were ordered not to submit written reports of sightings.

 For SAC, the “unusual flight pattern” of interest occasionally included UFOs’ accelerating to great speed in one direction and suddenly making sharp (e.g., 90-degree) turns at undiminished speed — seemingly in non-adherence to fundamental laws of physics. He said that the UFOs’ flight speeds sometimes substantially exceeded the capabilities of any   human-built flying craft or device then (and now) in existence. Radar operators were instructed to deny they had UFOs on their screens and to divert the aircraft away from the UFOs.

British Laser  in Use in Ukraine

 UKRAINE has unveiled a laser weapon dubbed ‘Trident’ that blasts aerial threats at the speed of light. The Star Wars-style weapon can shoot down drones and planes from over a mile away and could give Ukraine an advantage as the Russian offensive slowly creeps forward.

Britain’s Dragon Fire laser could have been used to help with Ukraine’s designs

Credit: MOD/DSTL

 Ukrainian troops will use the laser to shoot drones and planes out of the sky Credit: Reuters   A Ukrainian commander revealed the existence of the weapon, called “Tryzub”, during a defense conference on Monday.

Colonel Vadym Sukharevskyi, who commands Ukraine’s unmanned forces, said Ukraine was only the fifth country to have an operational laser. He said: “Ukraine has laser weaponry called ‘Trident.’ “It really works; it really exists. “As of now, we can use this laser to shoot down aircraft at altitudes of over 2 kilometers.”Tryzub is the name of the golden trident on Ukraine’s coat of arms and is the symbol of the country.It is not yet clear how Ukraine developed the weapon – but they could have had help from a similar UK design.Former Defence Secretary Grant Shapps suggested back in April the UK’s own laser weapon Dragon Fire could be sent to Ukraine.

New Jersey Orb

Orb photographed near Princeton, NJ after December 21, snow by George F ox

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16-01-2025 om 14:21 geschreven door peter  

FILER’S FILES - Jan. 1 2025 - Drone & UFO Sightings Over New Jersey - PART II

Major George A. Filer III ret. USAF

MUFON Eastern Region Director

President Air Force & Space Association NJ 310

Awarded Bronze Star in Air Force

 New Jersey State Director Emeritus

Special reports General Twining – Discs Are Something Real , Mystery of the Black Triangles, Photo of Moon Base, Alien Beings at Top-Secret Facility, Drone & UFO Sightings Over New Jersey, Ruins on Mars, RAND Corporation,  Selected by Extraterrestrials. Benjamin Rich ,Robert Shiepe Discovered Tiny UAP/UFOs, British Laser  in Use in Ukraine , and ASTEROID

The Filer Research Institute feels the scientific study of UFOs is for the benefit of humankind and is an important endeavor. The US Air Force and DOD investigated UFOs for more than forty years; and I continue this advanced research. I believe the God of the universe has spread life throughout the cosmos and UFOs are visiting us in ever-increasing numbers.

Special Reports

ASTEROIDS

NASA is on high alert as several massive asteroids are expected to make close passes by Earth¹²³⁴⁵. These asteroids are being tracked by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)¹²⁵.;NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is on high alert as two significant asteroids, designated 2024 QG and 2021 RA10, are expected to make close passes by Earth on August 28, 2024.
Read more at: https://www.oneindia.com/international/nasa-on-high-alert-two-massive-asteroids-racing-towards-earth-today-3919147.html   hanks to Dr. Bruce Cornet

Strange Craft

The True Story of an Air Force Intelligence Officer’s Life with UFOs U.S. Air Force Major George Filer belongs to the generation of pilots and aviators who first became aware of the strange aircraft showing up in the Earth’s atmosphere after World War II.  These men – military professionals who flew planes, served as radar operators and air traffic controllers at airfields around the world – began to whisper amongst themselves about encounters with suspected extraterrestrial aircraft.

 During secret debriefings at U.S. bases, pilots and air crew told their commanders of seeing UFOs off their plane’s wings. Award-winning investigative author John Guerra spent four years interviewing Filer, a decorated intelligence officer.

 From objects in the skies over Cold War Europe to a UFOs over during the Cuban Missile Crisis to lights over the DMZ in Vietnam Filer leaves nothing out about his Air Force UFO encounters,

 Filer’s most memorable case – the shooting of an alien at Fort Dix Army Base in 1978 – is fully recounted for the first time in this book. As a member of the Disclosure Project, military experts, astronauts, and scientists urge the U.S. government to release all it knows about UFOs to the public. Filer describes his UFO encounters in this incredible book, by John L. Guerra. https://amzn.to/2SK3SIQ

Support Earth Changing Research

I have put together a flash drive of the last twenty-two years of Filer’s Files for you with hundreds of great photographs and UFO sightings that will explain the phenomena and the importance to your life and your family. Additionally, I have included my book that includes George Ritter’s exciting abduction story told by Linda Moulton Howe. Broadcaster David E. Twichell joined me in authoring the book. We are asking for a donation of $50 that includes next year’s subscription and our book. Please include your e-mail address and mailing address.

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16-01-2025 om 14:21 geschreven door peter  

Filer’s Files Dec - 15th 2024 - Merry Christmas - PART I

George Filer

16-01-2025 om 14:20 geschreven door peter  

Filer’s Files Dec - 15th 2024 - Merry Christmas - PART II

George Filer

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16-01-2025 om 14:07 geschreven door peter  

• READ MORE:  Scientists reveal what Neanderthal penises looked like 

By ELLYN LAPOINTE FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

Scientists have reconstructed the face of a long-lost human ancestor that may have played a critical role in our evolution.

They used the Harbin skull, also known as 'Dragon Man,' which is a 150,000-year-old nearly complete human skull discovered in China in 1933.

Paleoartist John Gurche utilized fossils and genetic data from the extinct species to recreate plastic replicas of remains.

He estimated the facial features of the ancient hominid using the eye-to-socket size ratio that is shared between African Apes and modern humans, and by measuring aspects of the skull's bone structure to determine the shape and size of the nose. 

Gurche then overlaid muscle on to the face by following markings on the skull left behind from chewing, revealing the first true look at an 'unknown human.'

The species, named 'Denisovans' after a cave some of their remains were found in, lived between 200,000 and 25,000 years ago.

Their fossil and DNA records show that they lived on the Tibetan plateau, but traveled far and wide, with traces of their presence found in Southeast Asia, Siberia and Oceania.

Scientists first sequenced their genetic code in 2010 using a 60,000-year-old finger bone recovered from Denisova Cave in Siberia, finding Denisovan DNA in modern-day humans all over the world and particularly in Papua New Guinea populations.

Scientists have reconstructed the face of a long-lost human ancestor that may have played a critical role in our evolution

This is strong evidence to suggest that Denisovans interbred with Homo sapiens before they disappeared. Alongside Neanderthals, these ancient humans are our closest extinct relatives. 

Researchers believe that this crossbreeding helped Homo sapiens adapt to new environments as they expanded their range across the world, and thus played an important part in our evolutionary history. 

Despite a wave of research over the last two decades, much remains unknown about these early humans, as their fossil record is incredibly sparse compared to that of Neanderthals. 

But thanks to a skull that was hidden in northeastern China for over 80 years, we can now see what our Denisovan ancestors really looked like. 

The skull was found by a worker in Harbin, China in 1933. While it is similar in size to a modern human cranium, it has a wider mouth and a more prominent brow.

Upon discovering the remarkably complete 150,000-year-old fossil, he hid it inside a well where it remained for the rest of the 20th century. 

In 2018, the skull resurfaced when the Chinese worker told his grandson about it shortly before he died. 

Today, this fossil is known as the Harbin skull. 

But there is a strong possibility that the Harbin skull is Denisovan, researchers say. A paleoartist used a plastic replica of this skull to begin reconstructing the Denisovan's face

The primary evidence to support the Harbin's skull's Denisovan lineage is the morphological similarity between it and a jawbone found in Xiahe Cave on the Tibetan Plateau in 1980

Gurche used this skull to create a lifelike reconstruction of the Denisovan face. 

Paleoartists use fossils and genetic data to determine what ancient species looked like when they were alive, then create models or illustrations of their appearance.

Gurche is famous for his hyperrealistic sculptures. His goal is always to get as close as he can to 'looking into the eyes of these extinct species,' he told National Geographic. 

He used a plastic replica of the Harbin skull, commissioned by National Geographic, to begin making his Denisovan model. 

Then, Gurche estimated the size of the Denisovan's eyes using comparative anatomy, which is the process of comparing and contrasting the anatomy of different species. 

He knew African apes and humans share a similar ratio of eyeball diameter to eye socket size, so he used this ratio to sculpt the eyes.

As for the nose, Gurche studied and carefully measured the bone structure of the Harbin skull to infer how wide the nasal cartilage might have been, and how far the nose protruded out from the face.

Many other fossils of Denisovan lineage have been recovered across the world, including this molar found in in Laos. But compared to Neanderthals, the Denisovan fossil record is sparse

All human skulls bear markings that indicate the position of the chewing muscles on the sides of the head, so he used these in addition to other measurements that indicate their thickness in order to build out the Denisovan's face shape. 

• 

The Denisovan facial reconstruction is featured on February 2025 cover of National Geographic 

The end result is a lifelike, science-backed rendering of this ancient human's appearance, offering the most realistic look at our Denisovan's ancestors to-date.

For more on this story, visit Natgeo.com. 

Today, the Harbin skull's lineage is still debated as there is no definitive genetic evidence to confirm what species it belongs to. 

But experts believe there is a strong possibility that the skull is Denisovan. 

The primary evidence to support this is the morphological similarity between the Harbin skull and a jawbone found in Xiahe Cave on the Tibetan Plateau in 1980. 

Although the 160,000-year-old jawbone found 45 years ago contained no viable traces of genetic material, scientists were able to identify its lineage in 2016 using a new technique that indirectly analyzes a fossil's DNA through its longer-lasting proteins. 

Unraveling exactly how the Denisovans were able to travel thousands of miles across the world, and why they disappeared, will require more fossils

Read More

• Scientists reveal the type of TEETH that means you have a gene inherited from Neanderthals 

That analysis revealed that the jawbone was Denisovan, and its similarity to the Harbin skull suggests that fossil likely is  too. 

What's more, the skull was found within the known geographic range of Denisovans, and was dated to a similar age. 

Based on this evidence, some experts believe the Harbin skull is the most complete Denisovan fossil ever found. 

Though this new look at the Denisovan face marks a major leap forward in scientists' understanding of this extinct human species, unraveling exactly how they were able to travel thousands of miles across the world, and why they disappeared, will require more fossils.  

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

15-01-2025 om 17:55 geschreven door peter  

Army Green Beret claims alien technology recovered from UFO crash is stored at underground Naval base

• READ MORE:  NASA astronaut spots 'two metallic spherical orbs'

By STACY LIBERATORE FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

An Army Green Beret has made startling claims about encountering alien technology inside a secret underground US Navy base in 2014.

Randy Anderson, who served eight years in the Army Special Forces, was conducting weapons training at the Naval Support Activity Crane in Indiana when he and another Green Beret were escorted into an elevator and taken below ground.

'We moved down a hallway and entered an area with a marking on the wall that said 'Off-world technology,'' Anderson recalled. 'Immediately, alarm bells went off in my head. That's when the strange sh** started happening.'

Anderson described a room containing a 'metallic, basketball-sized sphere' that was 'levitating above a podium' and appeared 'unnatural.'

'[The researchers] began explaining that it had been recovered from a craft that had crashed,' he said. 'I remember them saying it was a control mechanism for the craft... and that it interacted with consciousness.'

He also described being shown a rectangular metallic object with a crystal-like screen that could wrap around a person's forearm.

'It almost looked like a mirage effect,' Anderson said. 'Above the screen, hieroglyphic symbols began to appear. It seemed to be some kind of communication tool.'

Anderson explained that he decided to come forward after a decade of silence, inspired by other whistleblowers who have spoken out.

An Army Green Beret has made startling claims about encountering alien technology inside a secret underground US Navy base in 2014

Randy Anderson, who served eight years in the Army Special Forces, was conducting weapons training at the Naval Support Activity Crane in Indiana when he and another Green Beret were escorted into an elevator and taken below ground

He mentioned his friend Mike Herrera, a US Marine who went public in 2023, really inspired him.

Herrera claimed that he and his six-man unit witnessed a flying saucer being loaded with weapons while serving in Indonesia in 2009.

'I saw David Grusch was brave enough to come out [and] that guy had some really high level information,' Anderson said while speaking with Jesse Michels, the host of American Alchemy.

'That took a lot of risk doing that and who am I to protect my little story? I think it's important to tell it because it adds to the credibility and of all these guys that are doing it.'

Grusch - a former high-ranking intelligence official - was one of three military whistleblowers who testified under oath that they had firsthand encounters or knowledge about secret government programs involving technology that is 'non-human.'

He claimed that the US has had UFOs since 'the 1930s’ and has been secretly back-engineering them and carrying out a public disinformation campaign to prevent the details from leaking publicly.

Naval Support Activity Crane is a US Navy facility that provides technical support and engineering services for the military.

Anderson said he was at the facility to do a course in advanced weapon training, along with units of armorers, special operations and other Green Berets.

'There was only me and one other guy who was exposed to what we were exposed to,' he said.

Anderson then pulled a document that shows he was certified at Naval Support Activity Crane for completing the 'USAOCSOF-p Weapons Repair Course, but the certificate does not feature a date for when it was given.

Anderson then pulled a document that shows he was certified at Naval Support Activity Crane for completing the 'USAOCSOF-p Weapons Repair Course, but the certificate does not feature a date for when it was given

Anderson described seeing a room containing a 'metallic, basketball-sized sphere' that was 'levitating above a podium' and appeared 'unnatural' (stock)

'The [elevator] door opens, we go through a security-type checkpoint,' he said.

'The first thing that stood out to me was that it was significantly more modern than everything up top and that that was odd.'

The soldiers said there were foreign weapons in the secret facility from Russia and China that America had captured. 'It was pretty advanced stuff,' he said.

A few moments later, Anderson spied a plaque on a door that read 'Off-world technologies' that led to the metallic orb.

He told Michels he had an uncomfortable, ominous feeling looking at the strange object.

'It could have been something that triggered an evaluation for me and this guy, and they brought us out there to see if we would react to the technology,' said Anderson.

He gave a similar interview five months prior to YouTuber UAP Gerb, where he discussed the technology in more detail.

During that discussion, Anderson described the orb 'almost looking like liquid, but it was metallic.'

'Both the items they had under there, they said somehow interacted with consciousness,' Anderson said. 'Certain people will go up to the object and it will respond.'

He suggested the response could have been related to the person's DNA or consciousness.

However, Anderson claimed something may have been done to his memories following the secret meeting below the Indiana base.

'There's a really weird component to this, and I don't know what this means, but when I think back to this particular memory and, and this never happens to me in any other thing, I get real fuzzy,' he said.

'It gets real fuzzy like almost something was purposely done to make it that way.'

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{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

15-01-2025 om 17:39 geschreven door peter  

Fact or Fiction: What Is The Truth Behind Alien Conspiracy Theories?

Are aliens real? Is the government trying to cover them up? Learn how these popular alien conspiracy theories have become so fascinating.

(Credit:lassedesignen/Shutterstock)

Every few years, an eerie cycle plays out in the news. Headlines report the sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs/UAPs). Then, a government agency issues a denial.  

In 2006, employees at Chicago O’Hare International Airport described seeing an unidentified object hovering quietly near a terminal. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) dismissed it as a weather event.

Then in 2014, Navy pilots reported seeing a series of spinning saucers. The Pentagon did not comment at the time. Later in 2021, an American Airlines pilot said a long, cylinder-shaped object flew over his aircraft and resembled a missile. In response, the FAA said that no such object appeared on official radars.

This cycle of UFO sightings and official denial has fueled conspiracy theories that the U.S. government is hiding alien information from the public. And in recent months, revelations from former government workers have prompted more people to believe these conspiracy theories might be legitimate. 

A conspiracy theory is the belief that a small group of people are acting secretly, and their actions are meant to benefit their exclusive group. The idea that aliens exist is not a conspiracy theory. It becomes a conspiracy theory only when people believe that a small group — typically government insiders — are hiding information about aliens from the rest of us.

When it comes to UFO conspiracy theories, the U.S. government tends to take the blame. More so, conspiracy theorists tend to merge the U.S. government into a singular identity, even though scholars argue there are millions of people who work for “the government.”

Read More: 

• Our Fascination With Aliens and When It All Started

Conspiracy theories become more palatable to nonbelievers when trustworthy (or seemingly trustworthy) informants come forward with information. The last decade has seen an increase in credible-seeming people stating they have either witnessed UFOs or have evidence the government knows about aliens and is hiding them from the rest of the public.

In 2023, a former official at the Pentagon, David Grusch, came forward as a self-described whistle-blower who once served on the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force. He claimed the U.S. had debris from a spacecraft of “nonhuman origin.”

Grusch also said the U.S. has known about alien aircraft for decades, and his statements were helped by other government reports, including a 2021 report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that didn’t deny UFO sightings and instead admitted there were a lot of unanswered questions. 

Read More: 

• What Are UAPs And What Do We Know About Them So Far?

One common UFO conspiracy theory, including the one proposed by Grusch, is that the government is hiding remnants of a UFO that crashed into the Earth. One of the first crash coverup conspiracies began in 1947 in Roswell, New Mexico, when reports of debris from a flying saucer were discovered near a military base.

The U.S. military dismissed the debris as a weather balloon, not a flying saucer. As the decades passed, conspiracy theorists believed the government knew it was actually a UFO and intentionally hid the truth.

It turns out the government was indeed hiding something — it just wasn’t a spaceship filled with little green Martians. In 1994, the General Accounting Office (GAO) audited the records related to the Roswell incident and released a report of their findings.

In 1947, the U.S. worried about Russian nuclear capabilities. They were trying to monitor the upper atmosphere for evidence of Russian nuclear testing using a balloon device. When the balloon crashed, the U.S. military didn’t want the world to know what they were really doing. The UFO conspiracy theory was a helpful distraction. 

Read More: 

• Life Elsewhere in the Universe: When Did We First Consider the Possibility?

(Credit:Dean Clarke/Shutterstock)

Another common UFO conspiracy theory is that the government not only has the remnants of an alien spaceship, but they also have the occupants in custody.

Area 51, located in Nevada, has long been suspected of harboring crashed UFOS and extraterrestrial beings. One scholar described Area 51 as an “open secret” in which people understand the government is doing something but don’t know exactly what. 

Area 51 is closed to the public, and the nearest public viewpoint is 12 miles away. In the 1980s, conspiracy theorists began promoting the idea that the government had aliens tucked away at Area 51.

Read More: 

• What Would Earth Look Like to Alien Astronomers?

The theory was heightened in the late 1980s by an ex-employee who claimed he saw alien spacecraft with “gravity generators” when he worked at Area 51. He argued the U.S. government was hiding what they knew about extraterrestrial life from the American people.

The ex-employee also boasted he held degrees from prestigious institutions like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). When reporters researched his background and found no evidence he attended these schools, the ex-employee said the government erased his background so he would not exist on record because he was working with such highly-classified information.

The ex-employee was eventually discredited, and the government seemed to ignore him. However, the Air Force’s tolerance for alien accusations has its limits. In 2019, a Facebook group developed the idea to “Storm Area 51” because they “can’t stop all of us.”

More than a million people signed the pledge to show up at Area 51 and “see them aliens.” The Air Force issued firm warnings not to come, and the event was over before it began. 

Read More: 

• Here's How the Latest U.S. Intelligence Report on UFOs Might Bring Science to the UFO World

{ https://www.discovermagazine.com/ }

15-01-2025 om 16:07 geschreven door peter  

How Did Our Fascination With Alien Abductions and Flying Saucers Transpire?

About 75 percent of Americans believe in extraterrestrials. Find out why flying saucers and alien abduction stories are scattered throughout history, and where they came from.

(Credit: ktsdesign/Shutterstock)

In September 1961, Barney and Betty Hill were driving late at night in the mountains of New Hampshire when they saw a flying object whizzing in the sky. Barney thought it was a plane until he saw it swiftly switch directions.

According to The Interrupted Journey, the couple nervously continued driving until a spacecraft confronted them. They remembered seeing “humanoid-like” creatures and hearing pinging sounds reverberate off their car trunk. And then, they found themselves 35 miles further along on the highway with almost no memory of what had just transpired. They believed they had been abducted.

The Hills reported their experience to the nearby Air Force base and it later became the subject of a book and then a movie. Their experience was widely considered the start of a collective fascination with extraterrestrials.

It’s a captivation that persists, and 75 percent of Americans believe there are intelligent lifeforms elsewhere in the universe. But attitudes have changed, and most Americans no longer think aliens are hostile or a national security threat. Social scientists say our attitudes towards Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) have evolved with our acceptance of technology.

(Credit: ktsdesign/Shutterstock)

Scholars mark 1947 as the start of the UFO fascination. A pilot flying in the Cascade Mountains in Washington state reported seeing disc-shaped objects. In the next decade, aliens were primarily seen as benevolent, intelligent beings who came to Earth to offer advice or warnings.

In 1961, the Hills reported their abduction and stories about aliens became more sinister. Social scientists, like famed psychologist Carl Jung, analyzed the UFO obsession and found it fit neatly with humans’ long fascination with heavenly ascents. Whereas past societies looked for angels, saints or Gods to descend from the heavens, modern Americans were looking for “technological angels.”

Starting in the 1960s, aliens were both benign angels and menacing demons, which prompted some religious scholars to see UFO fixation as a modern religious movement.

Other scholars saw the popular fascination as a response to society dealing with rapidly changing technology. At the start of the 1950s, for example, most households didn’t have a television. That changed within the decade, and Americans were also aware that technological advancements would soon bring computers into our workplaces, households and even our bodies through devices like cardiac pacemakers.

Most Americans now rely on technology for work and entertainment. People who call out to Alexa to add an item to the grocery list aren’t as technologically anxious as people were in the past. And for decades, that anxiety fueled books, TV and film about extraterrestrials.

Read More: 

• Life Elsewhere in the Universe: When Did We First Consider the Possibility?

(Credit: Shutterstock/ Anton_Ivanov)

The 1982 film, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial dominated box office sales and was one of the few storylines to depict a kind alien. Most popular narratives featured frightening aliens. The long-running TV series X Files, involved a government coverup about alien life forms. Similarly, the 1997 film Men in Black, based on the comic book series, involved government agents protecting both alien allies and Earthlings from a variety of cosmic criminals.

Stories about abduction were also common, which scholars have analyzed and identified consistent patterns and rhetorical devices.

One scholar suggested that aliens were a stand-in for technological fears. Abductees described how the aliens controlled their bodies and minds. The aliens used high-tech, futuristic gadgets to conduct tests, many of which were described as stressful and painful. In the end, the person had lost time they could not account for.

Another study looked at 130 accounts of alien abductions. The author found that the standard abduction story about aliens waking you from bed, transporting you into a spaceship and then subjecting you to medical tests was a modern myth in which the storyteller placed themselves as the hero. One abductee, for example, made himself a hero saying his “superior genetics” was the reason that aliens had abducted him multiple times.

Abductee stories about humanoids communicating telepathically are outlandish, but compelling. And social scientists think they persuade people to listen.

(Credit: Shutterstock/MyImages - Micha)

In 2007, a psychologist interviewed and analyzed people who felt aliens once abducted them. The psychologist concluded these people were sane but created false memories that fictional accounts partly fueled.

So why would anyone else believe their stories of aliens sucking them into a spaceship and then probing them in all the wrong places? The author found that the stories were compelling because the emotions expressed were both real and relatable. The stories followed a consistent pattern, which made them feel more valid. And, there were also many people willing to tell these tales.

The large number of people who have described UFO encounters or abductions has prompted scholars to consider the belief a type of myth-making.

And myths, one scholar notes, endure because they have both the appearance of truth and societal approval. Thus, UFO fascination flourished because the accounts seemed truthful and many people were willing to trust in a repetitive, but incomplete narrative and to believe there was much more to be learned. Just as they said in the X-Files, “the truth is out there.”

Read More: 

• Fact or Fiction: What Is The Truth Behind Alien Conspiracy Theories?

{ https://www.discovermagazine.com/ }

15-01-2025 om 15:49 geschreven door peter  

Historian Greg Eghigian looked at the history of reported UFO sightings. This is what he found.

Iain Todd

The history of reports of 'flying saucers' and 'UFOs' is fraught with alleged conspiracy theories and cover-ups, claims by believers and de-bunks from non-believers.

Are people really seeing things in the sky that can't be explained? And if that is the case, does that necessarily mean they must be of extra-terrestrial origin?

Whether we believe in the idea that alien craft are visiting Earth or not, it's a fact that there are numerous eye-witness accounts from across the world in which people claim to have seen something beyond belief in the sky.

• Find out why people believe in UFOs and the objects commonly reported as UFOs.

So what happens when you take a scientific, empirical look at reports of UFOs and flying saucers?

What patterns emerge, and do they tell us anything about the cultural or geopolitical trends at the time the reports were made?

Greg Eghigian is Professor of History and Bioethics at Penn State University in the United States and has written a book called After The Flying Saucers Came.

It's just that: a history of UFO reports and what they can tell us about belief in the extra-terrestrial.

We spoke to Greg to find out more about the flying saucer craze.

What made you decide to look into the history of flying saucers?

I’m an historian of science and medicine by speciality, and over the years have looked primarily at the history of how scientific and medical establishments and governments have understood ideas, feelings, people and thoughts that were marginal, or deemed to be outside the mainstream.

I was led to the topic of flying saucers and UFOs in part by those interests, though it does deviate from what I normally work on.

I was always fascinated with this stuff when I was growing up.

I was a really voracious reader and consumer of anything about aliens and outer space visitors and things like that, though that interest waned as I got older and I grew interested in lots of other things unrelated to this.

But I was talking with a colleague of mine, an historian who was working on a book project that involved looking at the renaissance of the occult right after World War II in Europe.

I asked her: “was that whole flying saucer thing a craze in Europe at the time?”

She said “I don't know, you ought to look into it and write something about it.”

And I just dismissed it out of hand.

But one summer I was ill, so I couldn't do traveling as I normally do, and I started going through digital databases of newspapers in Germany in the late 1940s and 50s.

And bam: all these headlines about flying saucers.

I wrote an article on it and I thought there must be so many historians who have done work on this.

I found one. One sole book on the history of the subject in 1975 by a historian who, by the way, later becomes a subject in my own book because he becomes a true believer and a major figure in the alien abduction phenomenon.

And that's how I got hooked. I thought, okay, I'm diving in.

You don't have to believe the reports are true in order to  factually catalogue the history of it, do you?

No, I come at this from that very perspective.

I make it very clear from the start, I'm not here to try to present evidence that aliens have been visiting us.

But I also don't come from the perspective of the debunker who's here to tear down every opinion.

I wanted to take the general ethos of most historians and say, I'm here to chronicle the way we've come to think about and talk about and debate this subject.

Especially in this day and age with a lot going on when it comes to discussions about exoplanets and SETI and things like that.

It seems to me it's the time to revisit that history and think about how we got to the point where we are now.

Does it all begin with Roswell?

No, it doesn't begin with Roswell! In fact, Roswell is a blip, a really minor blip. It's a very tiny footnote.

When you look at it in the wider perspective, it actually starts a little earlier than that with a private pilot by the name of Kenneth Arnold, who's flying around Washington State, around Mount Rainier, looking for a crashed plane.

And he sees these strange pan-shaped objects flying at high speeds.

He comes back, lands on the ground and tells people he’s seen some weird stuff, and reports it to the authorities and also the media.

And the media starts asking him questions about it. They ask him, how did these things fly? How would you describe it?

He said they flew like a saucer might if you skipped it over water.

And a very enterprising journalist knew a headline when they saw one and called them flying saucers.

Within 6 weeks, a survey said 9 out of 10 Americans had heard the term flying saucer.

Roswell pops up as a story for about 2 days and then disappears and is never heard of again, until you get into the late 1970s and early 80s.

When you hear a report like that from a pilot, someone who’s an expert in aviation, do you find yourself struggling to remain neutral?

Yeah, reports like that pop up all the time and there are lots of head scratchers.

And there are times you read something and you say, this doesn't pass the sniff test.

When you're talking about historical cases where you can't talk to anybody anymore, you're left saying, geez, I wish there was a little more information about this, or I wish somebody had a camera at the time.

But when you hear seasoned pilots, for instance, who are very knowledgeable, talk and describe things that they see, that is really arresting and it makes you pause.

The great Swiss psychologist Carl Jung put it really, really well. He said "things are seen in the sky, but we don't know what".

And even the authorities, whether it's the UK Ministry of Defence or the United States Air Force, all have historically fully admitted there are cases we can never explain.

They make us scratch our heads; we're sort of left with a big question mark.

How do you approach a topic like this as an historian?

There are a couple of things that it's important to keep in mind.

One is that the language that's often used in the UFO world, if you will, is often very sloppy.

Just think of something like the term ‘UFO’: Unidentified Flying Object.

Even though it sounds precise, it was meant to replace ‘flying saucer’, because ‘flying saucer’ was seen as a kind of biased term.

‘UFO’ is biased in its own ways.

Is that really an object? Flying implies piloting and it implies design.

It's fair to say the same thing holds true with the distinction between sightings and reports.

A sighting is an experience that someone has, but we know that the vast majority of people who see something odd never say anything, not to officials, to the media, the police or the Air Force.

Something has to lead somebody to actually report it to some institution – it might be a UFO group, it might be authorities – and they then write it down in some form.

It could be in a messy form, it could be a police officer who's ho-humming it all the time.

So what I'm interested in is reports, these documents that we have.

They oftentimes aren't very detailed. So as an historian we are ultimately left with trying to work with records and documentation.

That can be a recording, that can be an interview, but it oftentimes it’s self reports and also reports by others.

How do we discuss reports of flying saucers? How have different institutions and different groups grappled with it?

And how have they made that into something that they see as worthy of a conversation, and sometimes worthy of some sort of action on the part of people who can take action?

Do you find any narrative consistency throughout reports of UFOs?

What's interesting is that's one of the things that changes.

When you look particularly in, say, the first decade or decade and a half of the phenomenon, there is a lot of diversity, in terms of what's reported.

The most common thing that people see are lights. Maybe it's different colors. Maybe they flash off and on, but lights: very vague, very blurry.

Not much more detail than that.

You hear people talking about cigar-shaped things, saucer-shaped things, globes, hexagonal objects.

But you really see the diversity when people say they actually saw the occupants of these vehicles.

In the 1940s and 50s into the early 60s, it's a very wide range, very diverse group of beings that are talked about.

Everything from little men under four feet tall, sometimes as small as under 12 inches.

Other times they're large, hairy monsters that sort of look like Sasquatch.

There are robots, there are males, there are females, there are androgynous beings, there are bulbous heads.

Some are absolutely gorgeous and look like fashion models, all sorts of things.

What happens over time, and this is what's interesting to me, is that those images start to winnow down, and there becomes a kind of a homogeneity to it all, kind of a standardisation, if you will, in descriptions.

And that to me, in part, is something that signals a role that culture is increasingly playing in terms of helping to shape those images into images that are familiar to everyone.

Did you find correlation between the language that's used at the time of a report and current movies, songs, popular culture?

Well, again, what I love about this history is it confounds every preconception I had.

I, like most everybody else, was ready to think there must be so much influence of pop culture on UFO sightings and reports and the way people describe things.

And in part there is. There's no question that the pulp science fiction of the first half of the 20th century had a direct impact on the early alien visitor story, the way people engaged with it.

It's not a surprise that most all of those first few years of people pushing the UFO narrative, there seems to be inspiration from the pulp science fiction world.

But where you see something that doesn't quite connect that way is with film.

The idea has been always that films must have a real profound influence on, say, upticks in the number of sightings.

And that doesn't really bear out. You have a very big wave of sightings and reports in the United States, for instance, in 1952.

But there's no major big UFO film from that time period that takes place.

Or you could take something like Steven Spielberg's 1977 film Close Encounters.

I talked to one of the folks who leads one of the big organizations that were looking into UFOs at the time, and I asked him about it.

And he said, what we saw at the time was not an uptick in new sightings.

People weren't seeing UFOs right after the film, but what they did see an uptick in was the number of people coming forward saying "five years ago, or three years ago, I saw something that seemed like that".

So it triggered that.

And we know from the UK, for instance, that following Spielberg's film E.T., there was actually a downward movement in the number of UFO sightings.

So it doesn't neatly map on to popular culture as much as we like to think at times.

You hear people say it's not a coincidence it all kicked off during the Cold War and Space Age.

I definitely would argue that the Cold War plays a critical role in this.

The UFO as we know it is unimaginable without the Cold War, and it's a spectre that haunts the entire history.

People are constantly making references to UFOs.

For instance, in those early years, one of the questions that comes up is, okay, the flying saucers are here, they're aliens.

Why are they here in 1947, 1948? Why now and not five years earlier, 500 years earlier?

And the argument that starts being put forward is, well, the aliens have seen the atomic bomb explosions.

They've seen that we have unlocked the key to atomic energy and they are scared.

They're either scared for us or they're scared of us, but they realise we have reached this level of civilisation that makes us a qualitatively different species.

What I don't see is a lot of what some people have argued is the case, that bad times promote more flying saucer panics or flying saucer reports.

That seems to me a bit of a problematic argument because it seems to me prone to cognitive bias.

Pick up a newspaper from any time period you like, and outside of maybe when the Berlin Wall fell, you will see mostly bad news.

Journalists are very good at reporting bad news and sometimes have a hard time knowing how to make good news interesting!

Do you find a large majority of sightings and reports are from the US? And does that suggest it's to do with the culture of the society?

I would say the evidence shows that the United States plays a very critical role. It's a hub.

It's a hub in that the news emanating out of the United States is what triggers the UFO phenomenon.

Throughout the history of flying saucers and UFOs, whenever there's a new development, like the events occurring since 2017, it is something that gets reported everywhere else.

That said, it's very clear within a few years that there are hubs popping up throughout the world and other places, and the influence actually goes in the other direction at times.

There are places in Europe, in South America, where you see a really pronounced concentration, not only of sightings and reports, but also activities by UFO organisations.

So I would say in Europe, Great Britain, France, Italy, Spain all played a very, very big role.

Whereas in Germany, for instance, it was a much more muted phenomenon.

In South America, Brazil and Chile, Argentina play major roles.

And my argument would be, it has to do with whether or not you have a civilian UFO organization infrastructure.

In places where that gets built up and is sustainable, that's where you see this ability to articulate these narratives and lay out these programs to study the phenomenon, but also to have an impact worldwide on how these things are understood and viewed.

Did you come across attempts to  explain the strangest cases away?

Oh, I see that all the time.

Over the years I've been working on this, I've gotten to know lots and lots of 'ufologists', as they're called, UFO researchers of various kinds, and talked with people who say they've had experiences having contact with aliens or other kinds of beings.

It's a pretty diverse group of people.

I think there's a lack of appreciation just how many diverse perspectives there are when it comes to the flying saucer and UFO phenomenon in terms of how people approach it.

A lot of folks I know are not really altogether different from the people, say, over in the UK defence ministry who were very sceptical about this.

They themselves will tell you 95% of sightings, if not more, are easily explained.

And in fact, many UFO investigators I talk with, this is one of the things they do all the time.

They get a phone call or they get an email, they look into the case and they find out it's a rather mundane explanation.

Somebody was floating Chinese lanterns or somebody saw Starlink satellites which, if you see those things in the sky and don't know what that is, I would call that a UFO sighting.

One of the things I talk about in the book is the motivation for why people get involved in this stuff.

It’s that ability to be a detective, to crack a case.

It's really not altogether different from your favourite true crime podcast where everybody's invited to chime in and crack the case.

It keeps you going in the hope that maybe one day, a case is going to come along that makes you think “this is not going to go away”.

After you finished the book, was it hard to leave the subject alone?

Yeah, it is hard to leave it alone. I won't be leaving it alone because now I get a lot of people wanting to talk with me and contact me about discussing it.

And I'm going to be working on a new project, writing a book about the controversy surrounding the alien abduction phenomenon that was particularly lively in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.

So no, once you've met the UFOs, they don't leave you alone!

What do you think about the argument that smartphones mean we should have irrefutable proof by now?

The ‘everyone carries a camera now’ argument is one I've heard a lot, and it's actually convinced some old-time UFO investigators that maybe there is not much to this anymore.

I've gotten a response from other UFO researchers who say, we know our smartphones are good at taking a picture of nice food at a restaurant or your friends at a party.

It's not a very refined or precise instrument for tracking something as complicated as a UFO.

How do you feel about more recent reports like those that have occurred since 2017 with the US Navy footage and Pentagon briefings in the US?

First of all, the fact that intelligence officials in the United States have come forward to say unequivocally, these pilots saw real objects, these are not computer glitches, these are not optical illusions, something is there.

That's unusual. That you didn't tend to get over the decades, that kind of admission.

And also their admission that they have maybe been derelict in taking seriously the reports of pilots, that they've ridiculed them, that a certain amount of peer and hierarchical pressure has really influenced people not to report things.

From my position as an academic, what I really find exciting and interesting is NASA's intervention.

NASA getting this independent UFO panel and saying okay, we think this deserves and warrants investigation, let's go about this in a serious fashion.

Because, you know, NASA is about civilian science, it's not about classified projects.

So adding that legitimacy to me seems to be the really unprecedented step.

That's the thing that I think opens the pathway for people from all sorts of disciplines to begin having conversations about what research projects might look like.

I think we'll see over the next, say five to 10 years, where this takes us.

{ https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/ }

15-01-2025 om 15:33 geschreven door peter  

Archaeologists Discover What May Be World’s Oldest Three-Dimensional Map

The Paleolithic rock shelter of Ségognole 3 in the Paris Basin contains a miniature representation of the surrounding landscape, says a team of archaeologists from the University of Adelaide and the MINES Paris – PSL.

View of the three-dimensional map on the floor of Ségognole 3 rock shelter.

Image credit: Médard Thiry.

The Ségognole 3 rock shelter has been known since the 1980s for its artistic engravings of two horses in a Late Paleolithic style on either side of a female pubic figuration.

In 2017, archaeologists found that Paleolithic people had worked the sandstone in a way that mirrored the female form, and opened fractures for infiltrating water into the sandstone that nourished an outflow at the base of the pelvic triangle.

New research suggests that part of the floor of the sandstone shelter which was shaped and adapted by Paleolithic people around 13,000 years ago was modeled to reflect the region’s natural water flows and geomorphological features.

“What we’ve described is not a map as we understand it today — with distances, directions, and travel times — but rather a three-dimensional miniature depicting the functioning of a landscape, with runoff from highlands into streams and rivers, the convergence of valleys, and the downstream formation of lakes and swamps,” said Dr. Anthony Milnes, an archaeologist at the University of Adelaide.

“For Paleolithic peoples, the direction of water flows and the recognition of landscape features were likely more important than modern concepts like distance and time.”

“Our study demonstrates that human modifications to the hydraulic behavior in and around the shelter extended to modeling natural water flows in the landscape in the region around the rock shelter.”

“These are exceptional findings and clearly show the mental capacity, imagination and engineering capability of our distant ancestors.”

Thanks to his extensive research on the origins of Fontainebleau sandstone, the authors recognized several fine-scale morphological features that could not have formed naturally, suggesting they were modified by early humans.

“Our research showed that Paleolithic humans sculpted the sandstone to promote specific flow paths for infiltrating and directing rainwater which is something that had never been recognized by archaeologists,” said Dr. Médard Thiry from the Mines Paris – PSL.

“The fittings probably have a much deeper, mythical meaning, related to water.”

“The two hydraulic installations — that of the sexual figuration and that of the miniature landscape — are 2-3 m from each other and are sure to relay a profound meaning of conception of life and nature, which will never be accessible to us.”

The researchers discovered the presence of three-dimensional modeling by closely examining fine-scale geomorphological features.

“This completely new discovery offers a better understanding and insight into the capacity of these early humans,” Dr. Thiry said.

Mapping of the cave floor with École River valley.

Credit: Dr. Médard Thiry

A) The carvings on the cave floor. B) A map of the local valley showing comparable patterns and features.

(Thiry and Milnes, Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 2024)

Before this discovery, the oldest known three-dimensional map was understood to be a large portable rock slab engraved by people of the Bronze Age around 3,000 years ago.

That map depicted a local river network and earth mounds, reflecting a more modern map concept used for navigation.

“Collaborating across disciplines — such as archaeology, geology and geomorphology — is vital in science,” Dr. Milnes said.

“We believe the most productive research outcomes are found at the boundaries between disciplines.”

View of the three-dimensional map on the Ségognole 3 cave floor.

Credit: Dr Médard Thiry

Entrance to Ségognole 3 cave south of Paris.

Credit: SYGREF, CC BY-SA 4.0

Natural basin formed into a rocky outcrop in the Noisy-sur-École region near Paris.

Credit: SYGREF, CC BY-SA 4.0

The part of the cave carved with grooves that resemble a female figure.

(Thiry and Milnes, Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 2024)

A mound on the cave floor encircled with deep grooves that may have represented a hill.

(Thiry and Milnes, Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 2024)

“Re-evaluating field studies and conducting frequent site visits are important,” Dr. Thiry said.

“It’s clear from our ongoing project that insights and interpretations do not appear immediately but emerge through new observations and interdisciplinary discussions.”

• The discovery is reported in a paper in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology.
• Médard Thiry & Anthony Milnes. 2025. Palaeolithic Map Engraved for Staging Water Flows in a Paris Basin Shelter. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 44 (1): 2-26; doi: 10.1111/ojoa.12316

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