George Adamski: Hoaxer or Something Else?

Greg Bishop has carefully studied the life and ufological claims of the infamous UFO Contactee George Adamski. Greg tells the story of what happened on a certain, controversy-filled day in 1952: “…Adamski left his Palomar mountain retreat at 1:00 a.m. on Thursday November 20, 1952 along with his lifetime secretary Lucy McGinnis and Alice Wells – the owner of the property where Adamski gave lectures on Universal Law and the café where he flipped burgers to pay the rent. At about 8:00 a.m. they met with Al Bailey and his wife Betty, and George Hunt Williamson [a fellow-Contactee] and his wife, Betty, in Blythe, [California] just west of the Arizona / California border.”

The group then suddenly turned back, on what was described as a “hunch.” They retraced their steps, taking a small highway eleven miles northeast towards the town of Parker, Arizona, where they stopped. After breakfast, the group scanned the skies for saucers. Passing motorists slowed down, wondering what was going on. When, around noon, an aircraft flew over the group, it provoked brief excitement. The main event was still to come, however. In fact, it was only moments away: a huge, silver-colored, cigar-shaped UFO suddenly loomed into view.

Greg continues: “Williamson asked: ‘Is that a space ship?’, as Betty Bailey tried to set up a movie camera, but couldn’t because ‘she was so excited.’ According to Adamski, they were anxious not to attract attention to the object, so they didn’t point at it and alert other passing cars to this event.”

“Someone take me down the road, quick! That ship has come looking for me and I don’t want to keep them waiting!” Adamski yelled, as he jumped into the car with McGinnis and Mr. Bailey. About a half-mile down the road, with the craft shadowing them, Adamski told McGinnis to turn off the road. He then instructed the two to “go back to the others as quickly as possible…and watch for anything that might take place” – from the safe viewing distance of half a mile or more away. After this first craft was chased away by interceptor jets, another “beautiful small craft” arrived and landed behind the crest of a mountain about half a mile away.

George Adamski

Adamski soon saw a figure waving to him and walked towards it. Adamski said of this experience: “I fully realized I was in the presence of a man from space – a human being from another world!” The entity identified himself as Orthon. After some warnings about atomic weapons and wars, and a refusal to be photographed, Orthon returned to his ship and sailed away. A controversy of massive proportions had just begun – one which still exists today (check out Greg’s book Wake Up Down There! for the complete, detailed article I have quoted from above). Also, see Greg’s latest book, It Defies Language! for more on his thoughts on the Contactee issue.

One of the more insightful people on the matter of Adamski – and his life and claims – is Colin Bennett, the author of the book, Looking for Orthon. I interviewed Bennett some years ago on the matter of Adamski. Bennett told me: “Adamski was not an educated man, and he used the better-educated Williamson as he used Desmond Leslie. That is, as an extra cerebral lung. As such George Hunt Williamson was the top of Adamski’s multi-media head. As they used to say in those days, the both tripped one another out. The Mojave was certainly rich in ancient Indian legends concerning flying vehicles. This was one of the reasons why George Hunt Williamson and the Baileys accompanied Adamski to the desert.”

Bennett expanded: “It is more than possible that the group wanted to conjure up something like the kind of presence that they thought they had contacted from their automatic writing, and at least Adamski got more than he bargained for. A combination of high intrigue, burgeoning technology combined with the ancient desert and its prehistoric features was not to be trifled with, and a genie came right out of the alchemical bottle. All the best books on occultism contain the warning that the attempted raising of images is not to be taken lightly.”

Orthon

There is the following from Bennett, too: “Adamski’s ‘core story’ began to run out of steam very quickly. His followers demanded to know more about Orthon ‘the spaceman,’ and they asked if Adamski had been on yet more journeys in Orthon’s flying saucer. Adamski, the all-American showman, anxious not to disappoint, then turned back to literature, as it were, in order to create new episodes for life. This got him into a terrible wrap-round tangle, and subsequently he pasted-up any and every kind of covered-wagon to try and keep the Orthon story going. This lost him almost all of his latter-day following, and he was finished. But history refused to erase him. The core story was archetypal; it had a kind of irresistible intellectual eroticism about it.”

Bennett also had this to say to me: “George Adamski played a significant part in establishing New Age thinking. It might be well to remember that the entire body of our moral philosophy and spiritual life is formed by visions and inspirations. It does not come from science or technology. Those who thoughtlessly dismiss mystical experience cut themselves off from all art, literature, and no small part of all thought and philosophy.

“As mystics and prophets know, when desert light strikes the retina, anything that can be imagined can happen. The greatest tribute that can be paid to Adamski is that through both foul means and fair, he helped to create one of the very few routes to the unconscious we have.”

 TAGS: contactee, George Adamski, ufo

Green UFOs Appear in South Africa and Spain

Multiple media outlets across South Africa reported the sighting of a green UFO on the night of December 12th by commercial pilots near Jeffreys Bay in the Eastern Cape province on the Indian Ocean coast. This sighting occurred just a day after a similar sighting of a green UFO off the coast of Spain and about a year after a green UFO was seen by many witnesses in Cape Town. What are they and are they related?

A Boeing 737 cargo aircraft Captain and Co-Pilot, flying from Cape Town International Airport to Port Elizabeth International Airport, reported seeing what appeared to be a green object increasing in altitude past the cockpit of their aeroplane reaching to about a thousand feet into clouds above them and then returning towards earth at high speed past the cockpit of the aeroplane.

That report came from Craig Lambinon, a spokesperson for the National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI). a voluntary maritime rescue organization in South Africa. He says the unnamed flight crew first reported the green UFO to the air traffic control center in Port Elizabeth which determined that the plane was at an altitude of 3,000 feet and flying over the ocean 10 nautical miles from Jeffreys Bay when the incident occurred. That’s about 90 km (55 miles) west of the Port Elizabeth International Airport, the plane’s destination.

The NSRI station at Jeffreys Bay which investigated the UFO

When air traffic controllers could not determine a cause (they dismissed the possibility of a military flare because they don’t reach that altitude), they contacted the NSRI station at Jeffrey’s Bay to search for what might be an undocumented aircraft in trouble. Lambinon reported to the media:

NSRI Jeffreys Bay were alerted and although the matter was monitored throughout the night the green object has not been seen since and there are no reports of anyone, or craft or aircraft overdue or missing. No further reports of sightings have been received and the incident remains a mystery.

Well, no further sightings in Jeffreys Bay. However, the night before the pilots saw their UFO, a bright green UFO was seen by witnesses in La Hita (Toledo), Sevilla, Calar Alto (Almería), Sierra Nevada and La Sagra (Granada) who also reported an explosion and tremors. While no photographs of the Jeffreys Bay UFO were taken, numerous witnesses got photos of the Spanish object. That UFO was determined by University of Huelva astrophysicist Jose María Madiedo to be an asteroid traveling at 72,000 km/h (44,000 mph).

Was the Jeffreys Bay UFO a similar meteorite – perhaps one from the same shower? The pilots say it rose as it passed them before crashing into the water. That doesn’t sound like a meteor.

UFO seen over Cape Town and Durban in November 2015

Was is something else? A little over a year ago on November 28, 2015, numerous witnesses in Cape Town, on the west side of South Africa, and Durban, on the east coast, reported a glowing green disc that some described as a “wormhole” because of its shape and the way light emanated downward from it. No explanation appears to have been given for it.

It sounds like South Africans need to keep their cell phones handy and their eyes on the sky.

 TAGS: asteroid, Astronomy, Cape Town, meteor, meteorite, natural world, Paranormal, portal, Science, South Africa, space, ufo, wormhole

A Modest Proposal: The New Ufology

The field of ufology as we know it is constantly changing and evolving. This, of course, isn’t anything peculiar or specific to the study of UFOs however, since virtually all branches of science can be found to exist in a similar state of flux. As we learn, some old ideas are thrown out, like the old Newtonian notion that light would behave like a wave of energy… only to be readopted with the unsteady accumulation of insights that point to both particle and wavelike behavior of that most mysterious of energetic illuminations dispersed throughout our galaxy.

Much the same, close friends and associates of mine know one of my favorite gripes about the existing state of research into the unexplained: there is so much emphasis on gathering case studies that, while interesting from an anecdotal or storytelling sense to curious readers, primarily only seek to accumulate random bits of data that have been gathered in the field. Despite the patterns and associations that might be drawn between such reports, it is difficult to establish causal relationships between similar phenomenon. This may be due to on of two reasons: the caution exerted by the most scientific researchers out there… or the simple fact that few too many are attempting to read between the lines in the first place.

In preparation for an upcoming interview I’ll be conducting with author Colin Bennett, I’ve been reading his new book Flying Saucers Over the Whitehouse, which takes an autobiographical look at the UFO research of Edward J. Ruppelt. Though it is an enlightening (and remarkably savvy) glimpse at the life of this early Ufologist, there are other things about the text that have struck me as being rather insightful. I must point out first that various bloggers have already compared my own work, along with that of Greg Bishop and Nick Redfern, to Bennett’s under the construct of a so-called emerging “New Ufology.” Thus, I was delighted to see why those sorts of parallels were being made, upon seeing the following sentiments expressed by the author:

There is a need to construct a New Ufology which gets away from the passive listing of countless case histories from the past. Ufological studies should be integrated with the latest developments in psychology and mathematics, along with up-to-date Postmodern views on Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing.

I’ve long held the notion that revised mathematical and scientific approaches to the study of UFOs should be a necessity if we are to progress with any degree of clarity in this field of research, along with something kin to a classical philosophical approach that might help us define clearly, in human terms, what we may be dealing with based on logical assumptions. Alas, the days of Jacques Vallee and perhaps a handful of others getting out there and calculating the energetic potential of a craft based on the cancellation of car headlights by the UFO’s own hyper-illumination seem to have drifted slowly behind the horizon (not to say that Vallee, a titan in the field, isn’t still writing and researching, of course). Still, I’ve noticed many new books on UFOs drifting back to those sorts of case studies of yesteryear, reporting witness testimonies, time and dates, descriptions of odd illuminations and etc ad nauseum… how I’ve wished there were more like Vallee who were (to put it admirably) dorky enough to apply mathematics and physics to those case studies. In my opinion, it’s the only way we’ll really ever discern anything noteworthy about ufology as a whole.

Seeing Mr. Bennett’s feelings articulated thusly gives me a little hope and inspiration… and for a guy like myself, whose reading list over the last 24 hours has included Physics for Dummies, The Roots of Coincidence: An Excursion into Parapsychology by Arthur Koestler, and The Varieties of Scientific Experience by Carl Sagan, maybe it’s proof there are kindred spirits out there after all!

 TAGS: Carl Sagan, Colin Bennett, storm, ufo

Margit Mustapa – A Little-Known Contactee

While I am still on a bit of a Contactee kick, I thought it would be a good time to share with you the story of one of the lesser-known so-called Contactees. It is a story which is no less interesting than those of the likes of George Van Tassel, Daniel Fry, Dana Howard, Orfeo Angelucci, and George Adamski. The woman in question was Margit Mustapa. She was born and raised in Finland and, in her youth, performed with the Helsinki National Opera. Margit reportedly viewed an immense, cigar-shaped UFO in the skies of Seattle, Washington, while visiting the city in 1950. As a result, she finally settled in what we might call definitive Contactee territory: California, specifically in Santa Barbara.

Mustapa was the author of two books (written in 1960 and 1963 respectively). They were Spaceship to the Unknown and Book of Brothers. With chapter titles like “Toward the Universal Brotherhood,” “Tall Venusian Brother Appears,” “Brother of Electricity Explains,” and “Cooperation with Brotherhood,” these are classic books that easily rival the written output of the aforementioned Contactees listed above.

And, take a look at the publisher’s blurb about Margit’s claimed experiences. It appears on the jacket of Spaceship to the Unknown, a book which echoed some of the claims of Contactee Truman Bethurum, namely that back in the 1950s the Space-Brothers and Space-Sisters were operating clandestinely in our cities: “Mrs. Mustapa’s men and women from other planets are not the queer, bug-eyed creatures usually pictured. Her first ‘contacts’ with space people were a gentle-appearing woman in an ordinary car, and a bronzed, black-haired motorist in sports garb (including a colorful Hawaiian shirt) – both encountered on a road near Los Angeles. No words were exchanged. None were necessary. Telepathic vibrations carried their message.”

The messages and data said to have been given to Margit Mustapa were certainly significant, if the Contactee issue is your thing, of course. In Book of Brothers, she notes: “The brothers of the book are Venusians. They have influenced thousands of minds to understand how to grow inwardly, spiritually, and mentally toward extraplanetary dimensions in thinking…In the universal concept, each individual, through meditation and study, must find his place. But first he must free himself from traditional thinking and open his mind to the implications of the Space Age which the whirling satellites of today symbolize. To this goal the Brothers offered the spiritual key…We can become as gods, living in a new era of harmony; we can penetrate to outer space and the promise of the future…a future of love, understanding and peace.”

And, at The Anomalist, there is this: “Margit Mustapa did some dictation for a Venusian Brother around 1958 that revealed the Earth was ‘destined to become a sacred planet.’ The process would take some decades and would involve elimination of the self-pride of mankind. Thought reading would have to become common as well. One prediction now testable was that the children of her time would become representatives of a ‘new race’ that would bring in a culture founded on fourth-dimensional thinking. To the extent this was connected with the inner man and his growth, it was arguably a correct prediction. To the extent these new age individuals should have felt increased spiritual speed and velocity in a vortex of radioactive love calling from the planet Venus, it appears certainly wrong. A later prediction that Mustapa relayed from Saint Germane also seems wrong: ‘An immediate release from the evil powers will be introduced during the Xmas time of 1959.'”

Whatever you may (or may not!) think about the Contactees of the 1950s and 1960s, Margit Mustapa’s books should be recognized as important aspects of Contactee history.

 TAGS: contactee, Margit Mustapa, ufo

The Strange Streaking “Projectile” of Long Island: Was it a “Ghost Rocket”?

Since 1947, UFOs have been reported in the skies above America, and throughout various vicinities elsewhere around the world. With all further discussion of famous cases placed aside for the moment, one trend that seems all-too apparent to many UFOlogists today is that the phenomenon seems to have changed, if not dwindled somewhat.

Case reports and detailed encounters are seldom reported to any degree similar to what the last few decades have afforded us. These UFOs have, in essence, become the proverbial old, gray mare that just “ain’t what she used to be.”

There are still reports of incidents today that are noteworthy, however, at least for the fact that they seem to warrant further questions due to their appearance as some kind of tangible, unexplained phenomenon.

Recently here at Mysterious Universe, Paul Seaburn reported on a UFO incident that occurred near Cape Town, South Africa, within the last few days. The incident in question involved the captain and co-pilot of a Boeing 737 Cargo Aircraft, who described seeing, “a green object increasing in altitude past the cockpit of their aeroplane, reaching to about a thousand feet into clouds above them, and then returning towards earth at high speed past the cockpit of the aeroplane.”

This report bears an almost peculiar similarity to an incident that took place more than two decades ago over Long Island Sound, involving the crews of two separate aircraft that described seeing an unusual, green-colored and brightly lit object passing close to their planes.

The principal witnesses were the crew aboard Lufthansa Flight 405, and the nearby British Airways Flight 226, who each observed the object on the night of November 17, 1995. The distance between the aircraft had been approximately 35 miles at the time of the observation, and the object was first seen at 10:20 PM EST by crew aboard the Lufthansa flight.

Described as “a greenish projectile flying 3000 feet above and to the left” of their aircraft, the object in question did not appear to be a meteor, and was said to have travelled along on a horizontal trajectory until it was no longer in sight. The possibility that the object had been some kind of military aircraft had been considered at the time of the observation, since the location of the sighting was just north of an airspace used for military operations, according to FAA records.

Peter Davenport, director of the National UFO Reporting Center, investigated the incident, and described it in a subsequent report as having resembled, “an object with a bright light on the front and a green trail.” The amount of time the object had been observed in the sky, seen by both crews aboard the two commercial planes involved, seemed to also rule out a meteor. Strangely, the object also managed to evade detection by radar at the Air Route Traffic Control Center at nearby Nashua, New Hampshire.

Below is a portion of the transcript of that communication from November 17, 1995, obtained by Davenport, where the object is described during communication between the two flights leaving JFK International Airport and Boston ATC:

LUFT: Uh, Boston, Lufthansa 405/Heavy.

FAA: Lufthansa 405, go ahead.

LUFT: Uh, we just passed traffic on the left wing, uh, about 2,000 to 3,000 feet above us. What traffic was it?

FAA: Is this Lufthansa 405?

LUFT: Affirmative, Lufthansa 405. We had opposite traffic on the left wing. Can you confirm this?

FAA: Lufthansa 405, negative. I show no traffic in your area within, uh, 20 or 30 miles.

LUFT: It should be now on our tail, about 10 miles… We passed it just one minute ago, and it was looking strange.

BRIT: Speed Bird 226 confirms that. It was just above us on our left-hand side about 3 minutes ago.

FAA: What altitude does it appear to be at, Lufthansa 405?

LUFT: It was only 2 or 3 thousand feet above us. We are now passing (Flight) Level 260. That’s confirmed, or not? Lufthansa.

FAA: Lufthansa 405, roger.

BRIT: Speed Bird 226, we confirm that. We had something go past us about two, well… about one to two thousand feet above on the left hand side. Uh, looked like a green trail on it, and a very bright light on the front of it. We assumed it was an opposite traffic.

FAA: Speed Bird 226, roger that.

LUFT: (Garbled)..Lufthansa 405/Heavy. We are right now about 26 miles east of “Hotel Tango Oscar (Hampton??).” And the Speed Bird is now ahead, or behind us (or where)?

FAA: Lufthansa 405, the Speed Bird is in your 12:00 o’clock, and about 30 miles, 40 miles.

LUFT: That was not our traffic. Lufthansa 405 Heavy.

FAA: Lufthansa 405, roger. And the heading of the traffic, was it the same direction, or opposite direction?

LUFT: Exactly opposite. Lufthansa 405/Heavy.

FAA: Roger. Did it pass off your right side?

LUFT: Uh, left side.

FAA: Roger.

BRIT: Yea, Speed Bird 226 confirms that. We saw the same thing. It certainly looked like an aircraft initially, but it may not have been one.

LUFT: (We can’t tell then??) It was looking very strange, with a long, uh, light, in the tail.

BRIT: Yea, a big bright white light on the front, and a greenish tail coming out the back.

LUFT: Can you confirm this, Lufthansa 405/Heavy.

FAA: OK, Lufthansa 405, Speed Bird 226. Thanks, we’ll look into it.

??? (Garbled transmissions)

FAA: Speed Bird 226, did it go over…did it go overhead. The traffic go overhead you, or was it below you?

BRIT: It was overhead and off to the left, much the same as ((garbled)). It actually looked about…opposite traffic, 2000 feet above. That’s what it initially looked like. But then it did have a very strong trail to it…a vapor trail, which looked more like smoke. And the light on the front was very, very bright, and as it went past us, it seemed to (just?) disappear and (went) 5 miles behind us.

FAA: Speed Bird, 226, roger. Were you level at 29 at that time?

BRIT: Yea, affirmative.

FAA: Roger. Lufthansa 405, how far off to your side did that pass, the traffic pass?

LUFT: It was pretty close, and like Speed Bird said, it looked like (four??) or three thousand feet above on the left wing, just one mile and, uh, on opposite track… It doesn’t have, …it didn’t have any uh, lights…(normal) lights, beacon lights, or red or green lights. Only a white light in the front, and with a long green light. It looked like a U-F-O.

FAA: Lufthansa 405, roger that. Like I said, we had nothing flying in the area. You are just north of a military operating area, but the traffic shouldn’t have varied out that far out,…out of the area.

LUFT: Must have been a military. Lufthansa 405/Heavy.

FAA: Roger. Giant Killer, (garbled) 59.

GK: Giant Killer.

FAA: Hey, you got anything flying out in the area?

GK: Negative, (105 is??) turned over. 0300.

FAA: Well, I just received a couple of UFO reports.

GK: Oh, is that right?

FAA? Yea, I had a couple of guys that reported lights, just moved all over their heads. I have no traffic whatsoever in the area. They said it passed within a mile of them, like at 2-3 thousand feet above them, opposite direction. (Garbled) green trail out the back.

GK: It could have been a meteor, or something.

FAA: (Garbled–Yea, it could have been that… it passed within a mile of them.)

GK: Who reported that?

FAA: Well, I got Speed Bird and Lufthansa.

GK: No, we don’t have any aircraft out there.

FAA: OK. 13

It is worth further noting that the mystery object appeared in the close proximity to the eventual location of the TWA Flight 800 crash, which occurred on July 17 of the following year. A number of additional reports of objects, described as flares, projectiles, and missiles were logged over Long Island Sound in the months that followed, further complicating the ensuing investigation into the cause of the Flight 800 crash. The ultimate cause, however, was determined to be an electrical spark that ignited the center wing fuel tank.

What was the object the Lufthansa and British Airlines crews observed that night, and is its similarity to the object seen over Cape Town, South Africa within the last few days of any further significance?

 TAGS: ghost rocket, meteor, ufo

The Strange Streaking “Projectile” of Long Island: Was it a “Ghost Rocket”?

Since 1947, UFOs have been reported in the skies above America, and throughout various vicinities elsewhere around the world. With all further discussion of famous cases placed aside for the moment, one trend that seems all-too apparent to many UFOlogists today is that the phenomenon seems to have changed, if not dwindled somewhat.

Case reports and detailed encounters are seldom reported to any degree similar to what the last few decades have afforded us. These UFOs have, in essence, become the proverbial old, gray mare that just “ain’t what she used to be.”

There are still reports of incidents today that are noteworthy, however, at least for the fact that they seem to warrant further questions due to their appearance as some kind of tangible, unexplained phenomenon.

Recently here at Mysterious Universe, Paul Seaburn reported on a UFO incident that occurred near Cape Town, South Africa, within the last few days. The incident in question involved the captain and co-pilot of a Boeing 737 Cargo Aircraft, who described seeing, “a green object increasing in altitude past the cockpit of their aeroplane, reaching to about a thousand feet into clouds above them, and then returning towards earth at high speed past the cockpit of the aeroplane.”

This report bears an almost peculiar similarity to an incident that took place more than two decades ago over Long Island Sound, involving the crews of two separate aircraft that described seeing an unusual, green-colored and brightly lit object passing close to their planes.

The principal witnesses were the crew aboard Lufthansa Flight 405, and the nearby British Airways Flight 226, who each observed the object on the night of November 17, 1995. The distance between the aircraft had been approximately 35 miles at the time of the observation, and the object was first seen at 10:20 PM EST by crew aboard the Lufthansa flight.

Described as “a greenish projectile flying 3000 feet above and to the left” of their aircraft, the object in question did not appear to be a meteor, and was said to have travelled along on a horizontal trajectory until it was no longer in sight. The possibility that the object had been some kind of military aircraft had been considered at the time of the observation, since the location of the sighting was just north of an airspace used for military operations, according to FAA records.

Peter Davenport, director of the National UFO Reporting Center, investigated the incident, and described it in a subsequent report as having resembled, “an object with a bright light on the front and a green trail.” The amount of time the object had been observed in the sky, seen by both crews aboard the two commercial planes involved, seemed to also rule out a meteor. Strangely, the object also managed to evade detection by radar at the Air Route Traffic Control Center at nearby Nashua, New Hampshire.

Below is a portion of the transcript of that communication from November 17, 1995, obtained by Davenport, where the object is described during communication between the two flights leaving JFK International Airport and Boston ATC:

LUFT: Uh, Boston, Lufthansa 405/Heavy.

FAA: Lufthansa 405, go ahead.

LUFT: Uh, we just passed traffic on the left wing, uh, about 2,000 to 3,000 feet above us. What traffic was it?

FAA: Is this Lufthansa 405?

LUFT: Affirmative, Lufthansa 405. We had opposite traffic on the left wing. Can you confirm this?

FAA: Lufthansa 405, negative. I show no traffic in your area within, uh, 20 or 30 miles.

LUFT: It should be now on our tail, about 10 miles… We passed it just one minute ago, and it was looking strange.

BRIT: Speed Bird 226 confirms that. It was just above us on our left-hand side about 3 minutes ago.

FAA: What altitude does it appear to be at, Lufthansa 405?

LUFT: It was only 2 or 3 thousand feet above us. We are now passing (Flight) Level 260. That’s confirmed, or not? Lufthansa.

FAA: Lufthansa 405, roger.

BRIT: Speed Bird 226, we confirm that. We had something go past us about two, well… about one to two thousand feet above on the left hand side. Uh, looked like a green trail on it, and a very bright light on the front of it. We assumed it was an opposite traffic.

FAA: Speed Bird 226, roger that.

LUFT: (Garbled)..Lufthansa 405/Heavy. We are right now about 26 miles east of “Hotel Tango Oscar (Hampton??).” And the Speed Bird is now ahead, or behind us (or where)?

FAA: Lufthansa 405, the Speed Bird is in your 12:00 o’clock, and about 30 miles, 40 miles.

LUFT: That was not our traffic. Lufthansa 405 Heavy.

FAA: Lufthansa 405, roger. And the heading of the traffic, was it the same direction, or opposite direction?

LUFT: Exactly opposite. Lufthansa 405/Heavy.

FAA: Roger. Did it pass off your right side?

LUFT: Uh, left side.

FAA: Roger.

BRIT: Yea, Speed Bird 226 confirms that. We saw the same thing. It certainly looked like an aircraft initially, but it may not have been one.

LUFT: (We can’t tell then??) It was looking very strange, with a long, uh, light, in the tail.

BRIT: Yea, a big bright white light on the front, and a greenish tail coming out the back.

LUFT: Can you confirm this, Lufthansa 405/Heavy.

FAA: OK, Lufthansa 405, Speed Bird 226. Thanks, we’ll look into it.

??? (Garbled transmissions)

FAA: Speed Bird 226, did it go over…did it go overhead. The traffic go overhead you, or was it below you?

BRIT: It was overhead and off to the left, much the same as ((garbled)). It actually looked about…opposite traffic, 2000 feet above. That’s what it initially looked like. But then it did have a very strong trail to it…a vapor trail, which looked more like smoke. And the light on the front was very, very bright, and as it went past us, it seemed to (just?) disappear and (went) 5 miles behind us.

FAA: Speed Bird, 226, roger. Were you level at 29 at that time?

BRIT: Yea, affirmative.

FAA: Roger. Lufthansa 405, how far off to your side did that pass, the traffic pass?

LUFT: It was pretty close, and like Speed Bird said, it looked like (four??) or three thousand feet above on the left wing, just one mile and, uh, on opposite track… It doesn’t have, …it didn’t have any uh, lights…(normal) lights, beacon lights, or red or green lights. Only a white light in the front, and with a long green light. It looked like a U-F-O.

FAA: Lufthansa 405, roger that. Like I said, we had nothing flying in the area. You are just north of a military operating area, but the traffic shouldn’t have varied out that far out,…out of the area.

LUFT: Must have been a military. Lufthansa 405/Heavy.

FAA: Roger. Giant Killer, (garbled) 59.

GK: Giant Killer.

FAA: Hey, you got anything flying out in the area?

GK: Negative, (105 is??) turned over. 0300.

FAA: Well, I just received a couple of UFO reports.

GK: Oh, is that right?

FAA? Yea, I had a couple of guys that reported lights, just moved all over their heads. I have no traffic whatsoever in the area. They said it passed within a mile of them, like at 2-3 thousand feet above them, opposite direction. (Garbled) green trail out the back.

GK: It could have been a meteor, or something.

FAA: (Garbled–Yea, it could have been that… it passed within a mile of them.)

GK: Who reported that?

FAA: Well, I got Speed Bird and Lufthansa.

GK: No, we don’t have any aircraft out there.

FAA: OK. 13

It is worth further noting that the mystery object appeared in the close proximity to the eventual location of the TWA Flight 800 crash, which occurred on July 17 of the following year. A number of additional reports of objects, described as flares, projectiles, and missiles were logged over Long Island Sound in the months that followed, further complicating the ensuing investigation into the cause of the Flight 800 crash. The ultimate cause, however, was determined to be an electrical spark that ignited the center wing fuel tank.

What was the object the Lufthansa and British Airlines crews observed that night, and is its similarity to the object seen over Cape Town, South Africa within the last few days of any further significance?

 TAGS: ghost rocket, meteor, ufo

Scientists Say It Might Be Impossible To Get Stoned In Space

Geez, is it me or is space travel becoming more and more of a bummer every day? Scientists have recently discovered that time in space poses many mysterious health risks to human beings. The constant bombardment of cosmic radiation astronauts face in the vacuum of space has been found to increase the risk of developing unexplained cardiovascular diseases. More worryingly, researchers recently discovered that astronauts’ genes can be permanently altered as a result of spending time in space. Now, would-be astronauts have another disappointing space discovery to harsh their collective buzz: scientists have found that it is likely impossible to get stoned in space.

“Dude…I finally get why they call it ‘space.’ Woah…”

What a bummer. Even though toking up, putting on Dark Side of the Moon, and staring down at the Earth for hours sounds like a perfect way to spend one’s first time in outer space, a new study published in the journal Brain Structure and Function has found that background radiation levels in space can affect the hippocampal regions of the brain responsible for, among other things, cannabinoid reception:

These results demonstrate that energetic charged particles at space-relevant low doses elicit surprisingly selective long-term plasticity of synaptic microcircuits in the hippocampus. The magnitude and persistent nature of these alterations in synaptic function are consistent with the observed perturbations in cognitive performance after irradiation.

Researchers bombarded poor, innocent laboratory mice with radiation similar to that found throughout the solar system. After irradiation, the activity of cannabinoids (CB1) and cannabinoid receptor basket cells (CB1BCs) in the mouse brains was found to be significantly decreased due to the fact that the radiation triggered the release and uptake of another neurotransmitter, GABA:

In irradiated mice, GABA release from CB1BCs onto PCs [(hippocampal neurons)] was dramatically increased. This effect was abolished by CB1 blockade, indicating that irradiation decreased CB1-dependent tonic inhibition of GABA release.

Ok, you’re probably wondering why scientists would study this particular aspect of radiation-induced cognitive impairment. Given the facts that recreational and/or medical marijuana is now legal in 28 states and a trip to Mars could last over 300 days, it’s not a stretch to assume that many marijuana users might not want to go without their preferred therapy of choice on a long flight to their new home on the red planet or an off-world asteroid mining colony.

“It’s for my space glaucoma.”

If these discoveries don’t discourage you from taking a commercial spaceflight in the near future, there’s always a chance you could, you know, blow up on the launch pad or be incinerated upon reentry into the atmosphere. Still totally worth it, though.

 TAGS: astronaut, astronauts, commercial space travel, commercial spaceflight, Marijuana, medical marijuana, neurochemistry, neuroscience, radiation, Science, solar radiation, space, Space travel

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