Cryptozoology is the study of creatures that are rumored to exist, but whose existence has not been substantiated using the scientific method. These include new species and legendary beasts such as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster, as well as other lesser-known animals and entities around the world. A few of these creatures may have a basis in reality, while others seemingly do not.

Either way, the aim of cryptozoologists is to prove that these entities really exist in the wild, and some people dedicate years of their lives to these quests. In doing so, they find biologists and other established scientific types scoffing at them. While some cryptozoologists may apply critical thinking principles to their investigations, the field itself often draws skepticism from a vast majority of those in mainstream science.

2. 13 Famous Cryptids of Folklore

Mystery animals have captured the imagination and curiosity of people worldwide for centuries. The potential existence of such creatures in the modern world continues to inspire passionate debates as well as new tales and legends.

1. Marozi

With a maned lion's face fronting a jaguar-like body, the Marozi (also known as the spotted lion) was reported several times in the 1930s in Kenya's mountains but hasn't been mentioned much since.

The Natural History Museum in Great Britain is said to be in possession of the spotted skin of a marozi, but many experts think the specimen represents a jaguar that bred with common, spotless plains lions.

2. Kamchatka Giant Bear

Swedish zoologist Sten Bergman, working in Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula in the 1920s, discovered a paw print that measured a full square foot, suggesting a bear of remarkable size.

Similar sightings tell of an ursine almost twice the size of a typical North American grizzly bear, measuring 6 feet at the shoulder. Some Russian biologists believe there is a small group of Kamchatka Giant Bears that survived the most recent ice age.

3. Bigfoot

Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch, is a big, hairy, two-legged beast that arose in North America, and first received the "Bigfoot" nickname in California in the late 1950s. What started with a flurry of local stories turned into a full-fledged media sensation and ultimately a legend that's now known around the world.

Many people claim to have caught glimpses of Bigfoot, and the Patterson-Gimlin film, which supposedly shows one creature fleeing through the forest, is probably the most iconic bit of evidence in the entire library of 20th-century cryptozoology.

4. Yeti, aka Abominable Snowman

The Himalayan Mountains are reportedly home to the Yeti (or in Western culture, the Abominable Snowman), a bear-like or ape-like creature that's been part of Eastern lore for centuries. Covered with long hair and built for rugged, cold environments, the Yeti is as evasive and mysterious as Bigfoot.

5. Skunk Ape

Bigfoot's smelly Southern cousin has been reported a number of times in Florida's swamps, most convincingly in 2000 by a couple who took an excellent snapshot of what looked to be a 6-foot-6-inch (2-meter) orangutan. The picture didn't capture its scent, of course, but the couple attested to its atrocity.

6. Lizard Man

This scaly green hominid, the resident mysterious beast of Escape Ore Swamp in South Carolina, has long been at the center of local lore. While many consider the creature a hoax, others swear they've encountered it face to face.

Lizard Man has had several brushes with fame: A local radio station once offered $1 million for a live capture, and in 1988, a South Carolina Republican leader labeled Lizard Man a staunch Democrat.

7. Jersey Devil

According to most reports, New Jersey's cryptozoological curiosity has wings, a horse's face, a pig's hooves, and a kangaroo's body. The legend of the Jersey Devil was born in the 1700s — based on a tale of a cursed baby-turned-demon that flew off into the night — and boomed in the early 1900s, with people seeing it all over the state.

To this day, people report Jersey Devil sightings, mostly in the spooky Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey. While some locals think the creature is truly a supernatural beast, others say it's probably a misidentified sandhill crane.

8. El Chupacabra

Latin America's legendary "goat sucker" is a fanged and clawed beast that performs vampirism on livestock.

The first accounts of its victims — often goats, chickens, horses, cows and even domestic pets — were reported in the 1950s by farmers who found animals drained of blood, with several large puncture marks.

Some who have allegedly sighted the chupacabra describe it as a short, kangaroo-like monster with oversize teeth and an oval head, but others liken it to a large reptile or bat.

9. Kraken

The Kraken is a legendary monstrous creature in the deep ocean waters near Scandinavian regions. It's described as an enormous, octopus-like animal that's big enough to attack ships and frighten sailors.

This one might have basis in reality, thanks to the existence of giant squids (a former cryptid) that can grow up to 50 feet (15 meters) long.

10. Loch Ness Monster

Also known as Nessie, the Loch Ness monster is another world-famous creature that's appeared in countless headlines and movies. It's an ancient legend, too, appearing in historical records dating to 1,500 years ago. It's supposedly a large marine animal with a slender neck that lives in Loch Ness, a 23-mile (37-kilometer)- long lake in Scotland.

Nearly 800 feet (244 meters) deep in some places, the lake (the largest body of fresh water in the United Kingdom) would make a sufficient hiding place for a shy creature, but aside from a few famous (and blurry) photographs and unreliable eyewitness accounts, there's no proof that Nessie exists. A 2019 Washington Post article says scientists now think Nessie might have been a giant eel.

11. Tahoe Tessie

Deep in Lake Tahoe on the California-Nevada border lurks a storied sea creature that's the Sierra Nevada cousin of the Loch Ness Monster. It's alleged that after a submarine expedition, undersea explorer Jacques Cousteau said, "The world isn't ready for what's down there." (He could, of course, have been referring to anything odd.)

Popular descriptions portray Tessie as either a freshwater relative of a whale or a 20-foot (6-meter) sea serpent with a humped back.

12. Mogollon Monster

In eastern Arizona there's a long, rocky ridge, called the Mogollon Rim, that runs deep through a thick forest. That's the reported home of the Mogollon Monster, which is described as a tall, two-legged monster with thick hair and a rancid stench.

Although amateur hunters have produced various bits of so-called evidence over the past century, there's no reason to think this famous cryptid really exists.

13. Champy

Like Tessie, Champy is named for the body of water in which it purportedly lurks — in this case, Lake Champlain, a body of water on the New York-Vermont border.

Several hundred recorded sightings typically describe the beast as a serpentlike black sea monster with scales, measuring about 50 feet (15 meters) in length. One investigative group believes the oft-sighted Champy is actually a surviving plesiosaur, a dinosaur that died off over 60 million years ago.

{ https://science.howstuffworks.com/ }

13-03-2026 om 17:40 geschreven door peter  

A famous UAP video shows an unexplained object as it soars high along the clouds, traveling against the wind. 

Department of Defense via AP

While the US government is investigating unidentified anomalous phenomena, academic researchers studying them face stigma

President Donald Trump directed the Pentagon and other federal agencies to begin releasing government files related to UFOs and unidentified anomalous phenomena – called UAP – in February 2026, following years of pressure from Congress, military whistleblowers and the public.

Congress formally mandated UAP investigations through the National Defense Authorization Act in December 2022. The Pentagon’s official UAP investigative body, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, AARO, now carries a caseload exceeding 2,000 reports dating back to 1945. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed this figure earlier this year.

The cases were submitted by military personnel, pilots and government employees describing aerial objects that could not be explained as known aircraft, drones or weather phenomena. Governments in Japan, France, Brazil and Canada also have their own formal UAP investigation programs.

Yet modern research universities remain almost entirely absent from this conversation. No major university has established a dedicated UAP research center. No federal science agency offers competitive grants for UAP inquiry. No doctoral programs train researchers in UAP methodology. The gap between what governments openly acknowledge and what universities are willing to study is, at this point, difficult to explain on purely intellectual grounds.

I have navigated this gap while conducting my own UAP research. My work developing the temporal aerospace correlation tool, a standardized framework for correlating civilian UAP sighting reports with documented rocket launch activity from Cape Canaveral, is currently under peer review at Limina: The Journal of UAP Studies.

Designing that framework meant making methodological decisions without community standards, without institutional funding and without the professional infrastructure many researchers in established fields take for granted. What is missing is not interest or data – it is the shared scaffolding that turns isolated curiosity into cumulative science.

Stigma is measurable

The most rigorous evidence for the gap between faculty interest in UAP and faculty willingness to study it UAP comes from peer-reviewed studies by Marissa Yingling, Charlton Yingling and Bethany Bell, published in the scholarly journal Humanities and Social Sciences Communications.

Across 14 disciplines at 144 major U.S. research universities, 1,460 faculty responded to their 2023 national survey. Most surveyed believed UAP research was important. Curiosity outweighed skepticism in every discipline that was part of the study. Nearly one-fifth had personally observed something aerial they could not identify. Yet fewer than 1% had ever conducted UAP-related research.

The gap was not explained by intellectual dismissal, but it was in part explained by fear. Researchers were not primarily deterred by intellectual skepticism because they doubted the topic’s merits. Instead, they feared they might lose funding, face ridicule from colleagues or find their careers quietly derailed. Faculty reported being told to “be careful.”

A 2024 follow-up study found that roughly 28% said they might vote against a colleague’s tenure case for conducting UAP research, even when they personally believed the topic warranted study.

Historian and philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn argued that scientific communities suppress anomalous questions not because those questions are unanswerable, but because they fall outside the boundaries the community has collectively decided are worth investigating.

Sociologist Thomas Gieryn called this suppression “boundary work,” referring to the active process by which scientists police what counts as legitimate science.

For UAP researchers, the data and tools to study the phenomenon exist. What may not exist is social permission to use them without professional consequence.

Creating an academic discipline

Academic disciplines do not emerge spontaneously. They require dedicated journals, agreed-upon methods, graduate programs and professional societies.

The history of cognitive neuroscience demonstrates how disciplines emerge. Before the 1980s, researchers at the intersection of neuroscience and cognitive psychology faced resistance from both parent disciplines.

These fields achieved mainstream acceptance only after targeted funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, new brain-imaging tools and the gradual formation of academic programs that created career pathways for researchers. Researchers at the nexus of these fields did not wait for central questions to be resolved. They built infrastructure, and the infrastructure made progress possible.

UAP studies as a discipline is developing some of these elements, but largely outside universities. The Society for UAP Studies, a nonprofit of scholars and researchers, operates Limina as a double-blind, peer-reviewed journal and has convened international symposia drawing researchers from physics, philosophy of science and the social sciences. But a nonprofit scholarly society without tenured faculty does not constitute a discipline.

To turn UAP studies into a recognized academic field would require three things.

First, funding. The Yingling studies found that competitive research grants would do more to unlock faculty participation than any other single factor. Without grants, researchers cannot hire students to assist them, maintain instruments or sustain the multiyear projects that produce meaningful results.

Second, shared methodological standards – these would entail agreed-upon procedures for collecting, recording and evaluating UAP reports – would mean findings from one research group can be compared and built upon by others.

Third, institutions could publicly affirm that they will evaluate appropriately rigorous UAP scholarship on its scientific merits during tenure reviews. Several universities have already done this for gun violence research and psychedelic-assisted therapy studies.

These are not isolated examples. Research into near-death experiences and adverse childhood experiences followed similar trajectories, moving from being a professional liability to mainstream legitimacy after the removal of institutional barriers.

The international comparison

This gap in UAP scholarship is unique to the United States. France’s GEIPAN, a dedicated investigation unit within its national space agency, has operated since 1977. It has publicly archived approximately 5,300 French UAP cases, of which about 2% to 3% remain unexplained after rigorous analysis.

In 2020, Japan formalized UAP reporting protocols for its Self-Defense Forces, the branch of the Japanese military responsible for national defense. By June 2024, more than 80 lawmakers had formed a parliamentary UAP investigation group that by May 2025 had formally proposed a dedicated UAP research office to the defense minister. Canada launched its own multiagency UAP investigation survey in 2023.

None of these actions has produced a corresponding response from American research universities. Universities provide independent, peer-reviewed analyses that government programs structurally cannot.

The University of Würzburg in Germany became the first Western university to officially recognize UAP as a legitimate object of academic research in 2022, when it formally added UAP investigation to its research canon. Researchers at Stockholm University and the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics in Sweden have been actively publishing peer-reviewed UAP research since 2017, most recently in Scientific Reports in October 2025.

Congress has passed legislation, the Pentagon is reporting on its investigations, and the president has directed federal agencies to begin releasing records. So the question no longer is whether governments take UAP seriously – it is whether universities will follow, and which ones will get there first.

{ https://theconversation.com/europe }

13-03-2026 om 16:28 geschreven door peter  

The new findings suggest that “space weather” surrounding distant stars could change or distort radio signals before they ever leave their home star systems. SETI researchers suggest that even if an advanced civilization were to send a perfectly narrow radio signal, turbulent conditions related to emissions from nearby stars could distort it in ways that make it difficult for Earth-based telescopes to detect.

The key factor is plasma, as stellar winds constantly carry plasma outward, and powerful stellar eruptions can inject more turbulence into the environment. When radio waves pass through these fluctuating plasma regions, their frequencies can spread slightly. Instead of being concentrated at a single narrow frequency, the signal becomes broadened, distributing its energy across a wider range of frequencies. As a result, the signal’s peak strength becomes weaker.

Traditional search algorithms used in many SETI experiments are designed to detect very sharp signals. If a signal is broadened even slightly, it may fall below the detection thresholds of these systems. Another way of looking at it is that a genuine ET transmission could still be detected, although it may appear too faint or too dispersed to be recognized by astronomers as an artificial signal.

“SETI searches are often optimized for extremely narrow signals. If a signal gets broadened by its own star’s environment, it can slip below our detection thresholds, even if it’s there, potentially helping explain some of the radio silence we’ve seen in technosignature searches,” said Dr. Vishal Gajjar, an astronomer at the SETI Institute and lead author of the recent paper.

To estimate the degree of signal distortion, the researchers analyzed radio transmissions from spacecraft within our solar system. Because these signals travel through the stormy plasma around our Sun, scientists can measure how the plasma affects radio waves. The team does this by calibrating their models using these measurements. 

{ https://thedebrief.org/category/space/ }

13-03-2026 om 16:07 geschreven door peter  

The Trump Administration has given the green light to reveal the secret UFO facilities to one of the leading voices in Congress calling for full disclosure of alien life.

US Congressman Eric Burlison of Missouri revealed that he has requested and been granted access to secure locations, such as Area 51, which have decades-old ties to UFOs and secret government projects. 

Speaking on the ALN Podcast, Burlison added that the request to President Trump and his staff included visiting US military bases and facilities where evidence suggests unidentified craft, materials, bodies, or archives allegedly exist.

Burlison is a member of the congressional oversight committee involved in the ongoing investigation into Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs), commonly known as UFOs.

Although the US government and the Pentagon have officially denied that there has been any physical evidence of UFOs or alien life ever recovered, Congress has heard from multiple whistleblowers claiming secret programs have covered up the truth.

In fact, Burlison has previously claimed President Trump has been 'fully briefed' on the existence of aliens, UFOs recovered by the military since the 1940s, and alien-human hybrids allegedly living on Earth today. 

Now, as Trump insiders have allegedly leaked that the White House is planning to reveal what America knows about extraterrestrials by July, the UAP committee may soon have the physical proof of non-human intelligence in their hands.

The congressman revealed: 'The White House has told the DoD to make it happen. The extent to which they've been involved is literally just saying to the Department of Defense that "we're backing his request. Do what you can to make it happen."'

Area 51 (Pictured) has been tied to UFO encounters and advanced military aircraft since the 1950s

US Congressman Eric Burlison (Pictured) has claimed that he has received approval from the White House to visit classified US facilities allegedly tied to evidence of alien life

Over the years, multiple US military sites have been linked to non-human craft, including facilities, anonymous sources have said, that were housing crashed spaceships and experimental aircraft constructed using reverse-engineered alien technology.

These include Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, the Atlantic Undersea Testing and Evaluation Center (AUTEC) in the Bahamas, and the Nevada Test and Training Range (NTTR), home to Area 51.

'There is reportedly an object that is not in this country that is so large it cannot be moved, that they've built an entire building around it,' Burlison said during the January 30 podcast.

The congressman noted that this facility outside the US was classified so he was unable to reveal its exact location, but it was on his list of places he had requested to visit as part of the committee's investigation. 

'It's going to involve a lot to make that happen, but that may be the final destination.'

Burlison said during the interview that he started as a UFO skeptic but was convinced these phenomena were real after listening to whistleblower David Grusch's public interview shortly after entering Congress in early 2023.

The Missouri Republican reached out to Grusch, connected him to the House Oversight Committee, and helped facilitate the string of public hearings that have revealed shocking evidence of alien encounters from respected military officials.

Most of the current evidence has taken the form of images and videos of alleged non-human craft captured by both civilians and military personnel. Many have been leaked to the public after being classified by the Pentagon for years.

President Trump (Pictured) expressed skepticism that reports of UFOs were real during a June 2024 interview but has allegedly granted access to secret bases tied to such claims

The November 2025 documentary 'The Age of Disclosure' alleged that there's been an 80-year cover-up on UFOs and alien technology

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/index.html }

13-03-2026 om 15:52 geschreven door peter  

A strange trio of objects flying over New York City appeared to have all the signs of a real UFO encounter. 

Charlie Correa, from New York's borough of Queens, spotted a single bright light in the sky on March 8 around 8.30pm ET.

Thinking it was a shooting star, they went outside to film it when two more small objects appeared and began chasing the first UFO.

'I have a drone and it either emits a green or red blinking light or no lights when recording. Government drones? UFOs,' Correa posted online.

The 18-second video clearly captured three white lights moving erratically through the sky, with one of the objects seeming to pull ahead of the other two before diving out of sight.

The unidentified objects appeared to stop and hover in mid-air before swerving in various directions as the two trailing craft tried to keep up with the lead UFO.

Many commenting on social media claimed they saw the same phenomenon earlier that night or on previous nights in other parts of the US.

Some suggested the object or objects may have been drones and not extraterrestrial craft, as New York's LaGuardia Airport is less than two miles from the witness's neighborhood. 

A resident of Queens, New York captured video of three strange lights in the sky on March 8 which moved like UFOs

'Could these be drones?' the Queens resident asked. 'I think they moved very weirdly and moved very fast when I first saw them. Also, do drones shine a light on themselves?'

The Daily Mail has reached out to the Federal Aviation Administration for comment regarding the video. 

According to public databases that track these sightings, such as the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) and Enigma Labs, the March 8 incident has not been officially reported by any witnesses yet.

Some viewers of the video theorized that the New Yorker had captured footage of one large, triangle-shaped craft rotating through the air. 

'I saw this exact UFO over my apartments last Thursday!!!!' A person in Texas replied in the post on Reddit.

'Walking my dog, and I look up to this MASSIVE triangle with 3 lights like this just slowly moving across the sky. Four other tenants were outside talking, and they couldn’t believe it either! This is crazy,' they added. 

'I'm in Ohio and noticed it was an oddly clear night, so I looked up and watched the sky for a while. I SWEAR I saw the same thing,' another person commented.

If the three lights were coming from separate UFOs or drones, some commented on how the objects followed a mysterious pattern that has been seen in multiple UFO incidents.

The objects were seen stopping and then accelerating again in mid-air, with some viewers claiming the objects were drone and other saying it was one large triangular craft

Read More

• Trump green lights UFO disclosure of secret bases hiding crashed ships and non-human bodies 

Both UFO researchers and witnesses have previously documented how swarms of three or four small objects were able to stay in formation and keep perfect distance from each other.

'If [you] watch carefully [you] can see how the distance between the objects is kind of consistent... very creepy,' one person wrote.

Jeremy Corbell, investigative journalist, documentary filmmaker, and co-host of the WEAPONIZED Podcast, recently revealed footage of a similar trio of bright orbs that flew in formation over the Persian Gulf in 2012.

Just like the lights seen over Queens on Sunday, those orbs in the Middle East were described as flying in an almost 'playful' manner. 

The orbs appeared to be intelligently coordinated, maintaining equal distances without any visible wings, tails, fins, or engine exhaust of any kind.

Meanwhile, the new objects displayed another trait of past UFO sightings that scientists could not explain - unusual flight movements that defy basic physics.

In this case, the lights seen chasing the lead object repeatedly appeared to stop in mid-air before instantly accelerating without any visible thrust, something human aircraft haven't publicly shown an ability to do.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/index.html }

13-03-2026 om 15:38 geschreven door peter  

Hagelbollen van meer dan 10 centimeter vielen deze week uit de hemel in de Verenigde Staten. 

© @SavannaBritoWX op social media platform X

 Martijn Peters - Wetenschaps- en gezondheidsexpert

{ https://www.hln.be/weer-en-wetenschap/  }

13-03-2026 om 15:24 geschreven door peter  

Asteroid once struck 80 miles off coast of Yorkshire causing 330ft tsunami

 Josh Milton

A nearly 540-foot-wide asteroid crashed into the North Sea, only 80 miles off the coast of East Yorkshire… 43 million years ago.

The immense space rock (or possibly a cosmic-sized snowball called a comet) caused a mammoth, 330-foot-high tsunami.

This impact created a two-mile-wide crater known as the Silverpit crater, named after a nearby seafloor channel.

The crater was discovered by British oil geologists in 2002, hidden beneath 700 metres of oceanic ooze and debris.

Its origin has long puzzled scientists, with experts suggesting it was caused by underground salt shifting, causing the seabed to collapse.

But scientists have found the ‘needle in the haystack’ proof that it was the result of an asteroid.

Dr Uisdean Nicholson, a sedimentologist at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, used seismic images to dive deep into the crater.

He found that around the crater, which stretches over 12 miles in a series of concentric rings, were ‘shocked’ quartz and feldspar crystals.

These minerals are formed only under the immense pressure of asteroid strikes, the findings published in Nature Communications indicate.

‘These prove the impact crater hypothesis beyond doubt, because they have a fabric that can only be created by extreme shock pressures,’ Dr Nicholson said.

Asteroid strike off Yorkshire sent mega-tsunami racing toward Britain, study confirm

‘Within minutes, it created a 1.5km high curtain of rock and water that then collapsed into the sea, creating a tsunami over 100 metres high.’

‘It is very rewarding to have finally found the silver bullet’

Professor Gareth Collins, of Imperial College London, who provided numerical models for the study, said a gigantic rock from outer space smashing into the Earth was the ‘simplest explanation’ for Silverpit.

‘It is very rewarding to have finally found the silver bullet,’ he said.

‘We can now get on with the exciting job of using the amazing new data to learn more about how impacts shape planets below the surface, which is really hard to do on other planets.’

Silverpit crater is one of 200 confirmed impact sites, most of which haven’t been fully dated.

While this sounds like a lot, the Earth has been struck by a fair few intruders over the millions of years the planet has been around.

Almost all evidence of these impacts, however, has been swept under the rug by earthquakes and erosion that constantly renew the seabed.

‘We can use these findings to understand how asteroid impacts shaped our planet throughout history, as well as predict what could happen should we have an asteroid collision in future,’ added Dr Nicholson.

Others include Chicxulub, a 110-mile-wide crater buried under the tip of the Yucatán Peninsula, thought to have been caused by an asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs some 66 million years ago.

Its explosive force, akin to a hundred million hydrogen bombs, would have ignited firestorms and choked the Earth with dust. Causing the global extinction of not only dinosaurs but plants, fish and plankton.

Or, rather, it was one of a swarm of asteroids that set this extinction in motion.

Other craters, such as Boltysh in Ukraine, have been dated to around the same time as Chicxulub, may also have caused fiery cataclysms and bad news for any living thing nearby.

Together, this may have been a one-two punch that made the dinosaurs’ luck finally run out.

Humanity has yet to face such an event, but came close-ish in 2024 when a ‘city-killer’ asteroid was seemingly hurtling towards us.

The rock, called 2024 YR4, had a 3.1% chance of colliding with the Earth on December 22, 2032, Nasa briefly suspected last year.

Early estimates of the asteroid’s path show it would have slammed into or exploded over highly-populated areas like Mumbai, India or Bogotá, Lagos.

These days, though, space officials say it’s just 0.00081%, or roughly one in 123,000 chance. 

{ https://metro.co.uk/news/ }

13-03-2026 om 14:45 geschreven door peter  

Duizenden mensen in Nederland, België, Duitsland en Frankrijk zagen gisteren aan de schemerende hemel een geelachtige vuurbal die door de lucht schoot. Dat leverde leuke beelden op. Maar voor een aantal mensen in het westen van Duitsland was het meer dan dat. Daar beschadigden stukjes meteoriet huizen. Hoe groot is de kans dat zoiets gebeurt?

Het rotsblok vloog gisterenavond met een geschatte snelheid van zo’n 100.000 kilometer per uur de aardatmosfeer in. Dat gebeurde op een hoogte van 70 kilometer. Door de enorme wrijving met de lucht verhitte het object en begon het te gloeien; dat is het spectaculaire lichtverschijnsel dat we een meteoor noemen.

Bij de Werkgroep Meteoren kwamen meteen talloze waarnemingen binnen. Uit de analyse van al die meldingen bleek dat het object van boven Frankrijk richting Duitsland vloog.

In de westelijke deelstaat Rijnland-Palts kwamen zelfs fragmenten neer. De Duitse politie ontving schademeldingen uit de regio Hunsrück, het Eifelgebergte en bij Koblenz. Er is sprake van beschadigde daken en kapotte dakpannen. Vanuit Nederland en België zijn er geen meldingen van schade.

Hoe groot is de kans dat zo’n meteoriet je raakt?

Vooral die schadegevallen zijn nieuwswaardig. De kans dat jij of je huis ooit geraakt wordt door zo’n stuk meteoriet is namelijk verwaarloosbaar klein. Onderzoekers schatten in de jaren ‘80 dat wereldwijd zo’n zestien gebouwen per jaar geraakt worden door een meteoriet en dat statistisch gezien eens per decennium een persoon ergens op aarde getroffen zou moeten worden.

Stephen A. Nelson, een wetenschapper aan de Amerikaanse Tulane University, heeft in het verleden berekend dat de kans op overlijden door een meteorietinslag gedurende een mensenleven ongeveer 1 op 1.600.000 is. Astronoom Alan Harris houdt het op 1 op 700.000. Het grootste deel van dat risico komt niet eens van een steen die op je hoofd valt, maar van een grootschalige inslag die het klimaat verstoort.

De kans om in je leven door bliksem geraakt te worden is groter, ruwweg 1 op 50.000, en de kans om te overlijden aan een auto-ongeluk is ongeveer 1 op 100. Een meteoriet hoort statistisch gezien dus niet tot je grootste zorgen. Wel een leuk feitje: de kans dat je door een meteoriet overlijdt, is minstens zes keer zo groot als dat je de Staatsloterij zou winnen.

Historische gevallen

De geschiedenis laat zien dat het niet onmogelijk is. Het beroemdste voorval vond plaats op 30 november 1954 in Sylacauga, Alabama. Ann Hodges, 34 jaar oud, lag op de bank te slapen toen een steen van bijna vier kilo door haar plafond crashte, via haar radio afketste en haar op de heup trof. Ze overleefde het met niet meer dan een flinke kneuzing.

Dichter bij huis: op 7 april 1990 sloeg een meteoriet van zo’n 855 gram dwars door de dakpannen en het dak van een woonhuis in Glanerbrug, Overijssel. De zoon van de bewoners vond de steen op zolder, uiteengevallen in tientallen fragmenten.

Op 11 januari 2017 werd door tientallen ooggetuigen in Nederland en België eveneens een vuurbal waargenomen. Kort daarna vonden bewoners in Broek in Waterland een steen van zo’n 500 gram op het dak van een schuurtje. Experts bevestigden later dat het een echte meteoriet was.

Grotere inslagen zijn zeldzaam

In de recente geschiedenis zijn er ook grotere inslagen geweest. De meest beruchte vond plaats op 15 februari 2013. Toen vloog een asteroïde met een doorsnede van zo’n 18 meter de atmosfeer in boven de Russische stad Tsjeljabinsk. Het object explodeerde op een hoogte van ongeveer 30 kilometer. Dat werd vastgelegd op talloze dashcams en camera’s.

De explosie had een kracht van naar schatting 440 tot 500 kiloton TNT, tientallen keren de atoombom van Hiroshima. De schokgolf brak duizenden ramen, beschadigde zo’n 7.200 gebouwen en verwondde bijna 1.500 mensen, voornamelijk door rondvliegend glas. Niemand werd direct door meteorietfragmenten geraakt, en wonder boven wonder viel er geen enkel dodelijk slachtoffer.

Wetenschappers schatten dat impacten van deze omvang om de 30 tot 60 jaar plaatsvinden. De meeste vinden plaats boven onbemenste gebieden. Ruimtestenen die groot genoeg zijn om een hele stad te verwoesten zijn nog zeldzamer en treffen de aarde eens per 10.000 tot 20.000 jaar. Om de 500.000 jaar worden we geraakt door een object dat wereldwijde klimaateffecten zou veroorzaken. En asteroïden zoals het exemplaar dat de dino’s uitroeide? Die raken de aarde slechts om de 100 miljoen jaar.

We schreven vaker over dit onderwerp, lees bijvoorbeeld ook Meteorieten van Mars leveren schat aan informatie over de rode planeet (en de begintijd van de Aarde) en Meeste meteorieten die op aarde crashen zijn afkomstig van dezelfde bron. Of lees dit artikel: De bekendste komeet zet sinds dit weekend weer koers richting de aarde.

Uitgelezen? Luister ook eens naar de Scientias Podcast:

{ https://scientias.nl/nieuws/natuur-klimaat/ }

13-03-2026 om 14:29 geschreven door peter  

Strange Encounters with UFOs and Underwater Aliens: Huge Humanoids and Advanced Spacecraft

Now, based on several underwater UFO encounters, it appears that their vicinity is not just limited to space, but they also appear to have a secret base on Earth, more specifically underwate

Unidentified submersible objects (NOSIs) have gained popularity over the years, despite being much less common than typical UFO sightings. Underwater UFO encounters have been reported all over the world. In this article, we will look at some encounters of people from Russia with UFOs and aliens underwater.

Russian ship Maria encounters underwater UFOs

First on the list is a 1936 encounter between the Russian civilian transport ship Maria and a strange anomalous object while crossing the Pacific Ocean from Leningrad. Crew members saw a mysterious object rise straight out of the water at some point during their journey. It hovered in the sky for a moment before landing on the surface of the nearby Earth. The ship’s captain, intrigued, tried to contact the missing object, but to no avail. So he sent a small boat to investigate the whole affair. But as soon as the boat approached the object, it abruptly accelerated in the opposite direction, making pursuit impossible.

Along with him, the five members of the ship disappeared into a mist that appeared out of nowhere. The captain tried to locate the five occupants but they were not found, so he proceeded to complete their delivery. Once the task was completed, the Maria Ship returned to the same route where it had found the anomalous object.

On the way back, however, when they followed the same path, the strangeness persisted. In the distance, close to where they had first seen the strange object, they saw what they described as a “boat made of a transparent material” and inside they saw what appeared to be three of the missing sailors who had set out in their small boat to investigate.

Upon being rescued, one of them cried and threw himself into the sea to drown, while the other two began to invent crazy stories. The two sailors told the captain and the other crew members that they had been abducted by the mysterious object. During the entire time they were aboard the UFO, they were surrounded by “strange entities with webbed fingers, dressed in dark, shiny suits.” In addition, the entities had frog-like faces and communicated telepathically. Two of the sailors telepathically agreed to stay with the aliens and disappeared without a trace. The other sailors were presumably held captive in a chamber for two days.

Then suddenly they were floating in this peculiar transparent vessel, eating unusual food that looked like tablets stored in transparent pockets, with presumably enough food in each tablet to keep a man alive for a day. When the three men were rescued, suddenly the mysterious transparent boat sank underwater. It was an inexplicable event for those sailors and no one knew what had happened. These two sailors and the anomalous object were never found again. It remained a mystery until now.

Soviet Navy Officer’s Encounter with Underwater UFOs

Another such encounter dates back to the early 1950s, when interest in flying saucers was at its peak. This encounter took place in the Black Sea, bordered by Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine. It has a maximum depth of 7,257 feet and a total area of ​​168,500 square miles. The account was given by an unidentified Soviet Navy officer who served at the Sevastopol naval base. He said that while doing exercises aboard a ship, he witnessed something unthinkable.

He saw a metallic sphere rise from the water, hover over a battlecruiser, and then sink into the depths of the water behind the ship. This incident was witnessed by the crew on board, and they also reported that the strange object was completely smooth, with no windows or propulsion system. It also made no noise whatsoever. Even though a photo of the strange object was taken, no one knows where it is because the Soviet military kept everything secret.

Moving on, in 1965, a UFO was spotted in the Red Sea, which lies between Africa and Asia. It occurred when the crew of the ship Raduga was crossing the Red Sea. The crew claims to have witnessed “a sphere of fire” rising from the sea, pulling a column of water with it. They saw the object from two miles away and were told that the enigmatic object was about 200 feet in diameter. After hovering for some time at a height of about 150 feet, it illuminated the sea below and the mysterious object descended into the waves with a deafening roar.

The crew reported the entire incident to their superiors, but were warned not to reveal it to the public. The incident was kept secret for many years until ufologist and head of the Russian Ufology Research Center, Paul Stonehill, made it public. During the Cold War, he claims that Soviet submarines made several reports, including one of a nuclear submarine being followed by six unknown underwater objects traveling at great speeds before shooting into the air and disappearing.

Mr. Krapiva attended lectures given by senior Soviet nuclear-powered submarine officers. They served in the Soviet North at secret naval installations and bases.

The lectures sometimes deviated from the planned presentations and many fascinating stories were told. For example, episodes where Soviet sonar operators (military hydroacoustic technicians) “heard” strange “targets” at great depths. Their submarines were being chased by other “submarines”. The pursuers changed their speed at will – speeds that were far faster than any other similar craft in the world at that time. Lieutenant-Commander Oleg Sokolov confidentially informed the students that during the service while sailing his submarine he had observed through a periscope the rise of some strange object in the water. He could not identify it because he saw it through the periscope’s optical system. This underwater “takeoff” occurred in the early 1960s.

Head of Russian UFO Research Center Paul Stonehill

The Secrets of Russia’s USO

Reports of Soviet submarine encounters with underwater UFOs do not end there; they go further than that. In his book Russia’s USO Secrets, based on evidence from declassified records and testimonies of Russian military veterans, British UFO investigator Philip Mantle mentions a number of such occurrences involving Soviet submarines. One such report of a UFO encounter comes from Yury Beketov, a former commander of a nuclear submarine who claims that while maneuvering near the Bermuda Triangle, his submarine encountered an anomalous object.

We have repeatedly observed that instruments detect the movements of material objects at an unimaginable speed of about 230 knots (400 km per hour). It is difficult to reach such a speed on the surface – it is only possible in the air. The beings who created these material objects significantly exceed us in development.

Yuri Beketov

One bizarre case mentioned in the book claims that in 1951, a Soviet submarine spotted a large underwater object, measuring between 200 and 250 meters in length, emerging from the depths and heading towards the coast. The captain reportedly ordered depth charges to be dropped on the object, which initially had no impact, but eventually forced it to halt its upward trajectory, change course, and accelerate towards deeper waters. Certainly, in all of these cases, something seems strange and suspicious, as these anomalous objects are extremely active underwater and even in the air or on land.

In December 1977, during maneuvers near Novy Georgy Island, the crew of the fishing trawler Vasily Kiselev allegedly encountered a large donut-shaped object about 300 to 500 meters in diameter that rose from the surface of the water and hovered there. As soon as the object hovered, all of the trawler’s electrical systems and radar failed.

Surprisingly, the UFO hovered there for three hours until it again descended into deep water. After the UFO left, all electrical equipment returned to normal operation. However, despite the fact that the UFO hovered there for three hours, no photographs were taken.

Underwater UFO Encounter in Lake Baikal

During the summer of 1982, Major General V. Demyanko, Major of the Military Diving Service of the Engineering Forces of the Ministry of Defense, conducted training exercises for reconnaissance divers on Lake Baikal, located in the Trans-Baikal and Baikal Armed Forces of Western Siberia.

The divers were in the middle of their training when they saw three humanoid entities emerge from the icy, murky waters above them, dressed in tight-fitting silver suits and standing a whopping 10 feet tall. These entities were so enigmatic that they had no diving equipment, and intrigued by them, the commander sent a team of seven highly trained divers to capture one of the entities.

The divers went out with nets to capture the creatures, but as soon as they tried to throw the net at one of the creatures, they were thrown out of the water from a depth of 50 meters by an invisible force.

Decompression sickness caused by the rapid force eventually killed three of the divers. It was reported that the Soviet Ministry of Defense admitted that similar underwater beings had been seen in several deep-sea lakes across the country.

These sightings often coincided with the descent and emergence of giant disks and spheres, powerful luminescence emanating from the depths, and other unexplained phenomena. In addition, many extraterrestrial encounters have been reported near Lake Baikal.

There is another account reported by Oleg Chichulin who was on Lake Baikal in a boat instructing students and claims to have seen something really unusual.

There was a ball that was glowing. And then this ball began to fade, fade and blush. And it turned into a red ball. This red ball stayed in the water for a while and then it began to sink. And all this gradually, gradually went under the water. And it got dark.

Oleg Chichulin

The sequel is a 1977 report in which V. Alexandrov and G. Seliverstov turned off their searchlights while exploring a depth of 1,200 meters in a submersible to determine how far sunlight could travel. Out of nowhere, they were bathed in a strange light.

“It was as if our apparatus was illuminated from above and from the side by two strong searchlights. Just a minute later, the unknown searchlights went out and we found ourselves in total darkness.”

V. Alexandrov

There are many such encounters and the next account comes from Vyacheslav Lavretevich, who was sailing on Lake Baikal on his yacht.

We were on a yacht on Lake Baikal and a huge glowing disk flew under us. It blinded us and for a second it flew into the sky. We didn’t even have time to take any cameras or record a video, although many of us saw it. It was huge and illuminated our entire yacht. It was probably 500-700 meters in diameter, a huge disk. For three minutes it shone from below (the surface), and then abruptly left in a second. The show was huge, incredible. Beautiful and shocking.

Vyacheslav Lavretevich

Extraterrestrial Encounter in the Mediterranean Sea

Another report on the list dates from June 1984, when the Soviet tanker Gori, which was in the Mediterranean Sea at the time of the incident, was twenty nautical miles from the Strait of Gibraltar. While on deck, Alexander G. Globa and his second-in-command, S. Bolotov, witnessed a “strange polychromatic object” resembling “an upside-down frying pan” emerging from the water. Approximately 20 meters in diameter, it was described as being gray, metallic, and shiny with “many bright, sparkling lights” on its underside and with “waves” of protuberances on its outer shell.

The bottom of the strange object had a pipe sticking out of it. That pipe was so red it looked like it was on fire. The object rolled up and down “as if propelled by an invisible wave” for some time. When the object saw the Arab freighter approaching from the port side, it went and hovered over the freighter, according to the Arab Crew. Then the object shot up into the sky, emitting sparks and flames.

Mediterranean Sea

In the same year, Alexei Korzhev, commander of a Soviet submarine, reported an encounter in which his crew spotted two mysterious objects during routine training exercises at a secret location. This seemed suspicious, since no other submarines were supposed to be present in that area. Furthermore, the object they spotted was moving at an astonishing speed of about 200 mph (320 km/h) and making sudden adjustments in direction that defied the laws of physics. At that point, one of the objects was thrown straight out of the water and flew past them at high speed.

The submarine dove into the water and followed the object into the water and fired a beam that knocked out the submarine’s communications equipment. It then fired another beam, this time making a noise “like a cutter being used,” according to the crew. They thought the object was now attacking them, but it suddenly reversed course and sank into the ocean below, leaving the submarine unharmed.

Huge alien humanoids underwater

Strange reports of huge humanoid beings date back to the 1990s as well. In 1996, while hunting sharks in the Black Sea, a guy named B. Borovikov was surprised to observe three huge humanoid figures floating on the surface. The humanoids had bulging eyes, a humanoid face, and a milky white body. They also had some kind of fish tail. One of the creatures seemed to wave a webbed hand at him as he approached and then they all swam away into the darkness of the ocean again.

A similar account comes from the 1990s, when D. Povaliyayev was flying a hang glider over Kav Golov in the Leningrad area. His attention was drawn to huge humanoid “swimmers” in silvery suits in a lake below him, then the figures disappeared beneath the waves. The narratives we read here leave us wondering what we are to make of them. Does extraterrestrial life rule our oceans as it does our skies? It was certain that we had not yet discovered the origin of these extraterrestrial entities. Whatever happened, the reasons for this enigma are lost to history and the misplaced archives of UFO lore and will probably remain so for some time.

{ https://ufosecret.net/ }

12-03-2026 om 22:03 geschreven door peter  

NASA spacecraft lands in the Pacific Ocean near the Galapagos Islands as it crashes back to Earth after 14 years in orbit

• READ MORE: NASA successfully changed an asteroid's orbit around the SUN

By WILIAM HUNTER, SENIOR SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY REPORTER

An out-of-control NASA satellite has plunged back to Earth after more than 14 years in orbit.

The 590-kilogram (1,300 lbs) Van Allen Probe A crashed down in the East Pacific Ocean near the Galapagos Islands at 10:37 GMT (06:37 EDT) yesterday morning.

NASA says it expected most of the spacecraft to burn up in the atmosphere, but some parts may have survived re-entry and reached the surface.

Due to the remote location, around 680 miles (1,100 km) due south of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, it is extremely unlikely that the satellite would have harmed anyone.

The space agency had previously estimated that the chances of Van Allen Probe A harming anyone at all were around one in 4,200.

Dr Marco Langbroek, an expert satellite tracker, says the re-entry fireball was detected by the US Space Force, likely with a military infrared early warning system.

Dr Langbroek adds that the re-entry side had been particularly difficult for space agencies to predict due to the satellite's highly elliptical orbit.

This means that the probe only slowed down as it briefly dipped into the atmosphere at the closest point of its oval-shaped orbit.

The 590-kilogram (1,300 lbs) Van Allen Probe A (artist's impression) crashed down in the East Pacific Ocean near the Galapagos Islands at 10:37 GMT (06:37 EDT) yesterday morning

Originally launched for a two-year mission, the Van Allen Probe A and its twin Van Allen Probe B were launched into orbit in August 2012.

For over six years, the twin spacecraft travelled through the Van Allen Belts, the invisible, doughnut-shaped rings of highly charged radioactive particles that surround Earth.

The Van Allen Probes were designed to orbit within this dangerous region, gathering data on how the rings gain and lose particles.

No one had expected that the probes would be able to survive and keep gathering data for more than two years, but both were still delivering scientific insights until 2019.

NASA requires that its spacecraft be safely 'de-orbited' at the end of their lifespans so that they don't orbit Earth as space junk for thousands of years.

That meant the space agency had to use the last of the remaining fuel to push them out of orbit.

Over two weeks, scientists fired the probes' engines five times, with each two-hour burst burning more than two kilograms (4.5 lbs) of propellant.

This brought the closest point of the orbit from 370 miles (595 km) above Earth down to just 190 miles (305 km), where the friction from Earth's atmosphere would slowly drag them down.

NASA had originally expected that Van Allen Probe A would re-enter the atmosphere in 2034.

However, these predictions were made before scientists learned how active the current solar cycle would be.

In 2024, studies confirmed that the sun had reached its 'solar maximum', a period of unusually intense space weather events such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections.

These events caused Earth's atmosphere to swell slightly, increasing the atmospheric drag on the craft and pulling it out of orbit much faster than expected.

The probe's twin, Van Allen Probe B, is not expected to re-enter until after 2030.

The Van Allen Belts help to shield Earth from powerful solar winds and dangerous cosmic rays that could have prevented life from ever forming on the planet's surface.

However, they also pose a problem for satellites in high orbits and for astronauts, who must pass through these dangerous regions to reach the moon.

While travelling through the Van Allen Belts, astronauts are exposed to high doses of 'high-energy radiation', which is far more damaging than the radiation from X-rays.

The probes spent seven years gathering data on the Van Allen Belts (pictured), doughnut-shaped rings of charged particles that surround the planet, before running out of fuel

With the Artemis program now targeting its first crewed lunar mission for April this year, it is critical for NASA to understand the exact shape and structure of these regions.  

NASA says: 'Data from NASA’s Van Allen Probes mission still plays an important role in understanding space weather and its effects.'

'By reviewing archived data from the mission, scientists study the radiation belts surrounding Earth, which are key to predicting how solar activity impacts satellites, astronauts, and even systems on Earth, such as communications, navigation, and power grids.

'By observing these dynamic regions, the Van Allen Probes contributed to improving forecasts of space weather events and their potential consequences.'

WHAT ARE THE VAN ALLEN PROBES?

NASA launched the twin Van Allen Probes in 2012 to understand the fundamental physical processes that create this harsh environment so that scientists can develop better models of the radiation belts. 

These spacecraft were specifically designed to withstand the constant bombardment of radiation in this area and to continue to collect data even under the most intense conditions. 

A set of observations on how the radiation belts respond to a significant space weather storm, from this harsh space environment, is a goldmine. 

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/index.html }

12-03-2026 om 21:32 geschreven door peter