Mysterious Structure Older Than the Pyramids Revealed in Wake of Devastating Australian Bushfires

by Svetlana Ekimenko

Raging bushfires in Australia have revealed extra sections of an ancient aquaculture system built by indigenous people in south-west Victoria, Australia thousands of years ago.

The fires, that started back in December and were brought under control only recently, ripped through the state, burning away the thick vegetation in the area to lay bare the remarkable discovery.

The Bent pyramid, listed on UNESCO's world heritage list as part of the Memphis necropolis. 

(AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

The Budj Bim Cultural Landscape, consisting of extensive water channels and dams built by indigenous Australians from volcanic rocks to trap and harvest eels for food, is one of the world's most extensive and oldest aquaculture systems.

Gunditjmara representative Denis Rose, project manager at the non-profit group Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation said the recent discovery revealed the system was significantly larger than previously recorded.

"When we returned to the area, we found a channel hidden in the grass and other vegetation. It was about 25 meters (82 feet) in length, which was a fairly substantial size," Rose told CNN.

According to the official, new structures were now distinctly seen in the burnt landscape, resembling channels and ponds.

Prof. Elizabeth Grant

@DrElizabethGran

The one good news story from the #BushFireCrisisAustralia is that new sites of ancient Indigenous occupation have been found at the Budj Bim Cultural Landscape on Gunditjmara Country #BudjBim #bushfireaustralia #UNESCO 

#Indigenousarchitecture

6:45 AM · Jan 20, 2020·Twitter Web App

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"It was a surprise continually finding new ones that the fires revealed," he said.

Initially, the fire in the vicinity of the national park was caused by a lightning strike in late December. Spreading rapidly, it engulfed an area of around 790 hectares (3 square miles), according to Mark Mellington, district manager for Forest Fire Management Victoria.

Firefighters and local groups, he said, had joined efforts to identify culturally important sites and use "low impact techniques" to replace heavy machinery when dousing the flames.

UVic Anthropology

@UVicAnthro
Fire reveals ancient structures for mass harvesting of eels by the Gunditjmara people in Budj Bim Cultural Landscape, an Australian
@UNESCO
World Heritage Site

https://rnz.co.nz/news/top/407660/victoria-fires-unveil-ancient-lava-channel-eel-farming-system…

Image =A channel and weir at Budj Bim, Victoria. Photo: Tyson Lovett-Murray, Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation
7:58 PM · Jan 20, 2020·Twitter Web App
2 Retweets

14Likes

​The bushfires in this area did not cause the same level of devastation as in other parts of Australia, and locals hope now they will make ample use of this opportunity to further explore the ancient aquaculture system.

"Over the next few weeks, we are hoping to conduct a comprehensive cultural heritage survey to check areas that were not previously recorded. It's important because it provided a rich, sustainable life for the traditional people, and has continued to be an important part of our cultural life," said the Gunditjmara representative.

The aquatic system at Budj Bim has long been known to archaeologists, and was added to UNESCO's World Heritage List last July.
Constructed by the Gunditjmara people more than 6,600 years ago, it is believed to be older than Egypt's pyramids

sophie

@sophieadamsmelb

Well worth the trip to Heywood- Gunditjmara land. World heritage eel traps, homes and the remains of Lake Condah mission. Braydon is a national treasure. #budjbim

9:41 AM · Jan 14, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

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• 6 Likes

​Budj Bim or Mount Eccles is an extinct volcano near Macarthur in southwestern Victoria, Australia.
The Gunditjmara name, Budj Bim, translates as “High Head”.

The peak is a scoria hill that was thrown up near a group of three overlapping volcanic craters that now contain Lake Surprise.

The Budj Bim lava flows provided the basis for the complex system of channels and dams developed by the Gunditjmara in order to trap, store and harvest kooyang (short-finned eel – Anguilla australis) from Lake Condah.

This aquaculture system provided an economic and social base for Gunditjmara society for six millennia, believe scientists.
Initially with a population believed to be in the thousands, the Gunditjmara was one of several indigenous groups of people that used to reside in the southern parts of the present-day Victoria state before the European settlement.

Budj Bim is believed to convincingly uproot the myth that all indigenous people were nomadic and not agriculturally inclined.

Budj Bim Cultural Landscape was added to UNESCO's World Heritage List last July, ending a 17-year campaign for recognition.

"The Budj Bim Cultural Landscape bears an exceptional testimony to the cultural traditions, knowledge, practices and ingenuity of the Gunditjmara," says the UNESCO World Heritage Centre site.

{ https://sputniknews.com/ }

“Anybody else see this tonight? The sky was flashing pink and purple – super bright. Thought it might be lightning, but it’s fairly cold (40 degrees), and there was no thunder.”

Well, that certainly sounds strange and the witness has a video from his doorbell camera – the 2020’s replacement for the dash cam, Google Maps and security cameras for capturing strange phenomena. (Watch it here.) One would think that giving it broad media coverage would quickly identify the source of these flashing lights in the sky over Bethel, Ohio. Weather anomaly? Fireworks? Transformer explosions? Meteor? Military? Aliens? Yet it’s been over a week and no one has solved the mystery of the flashing lights of Bethel.

“The first thing that came to mind was what just happened with Iran, and I thought it might be a nuclear explosion. It was that bright and that powerful. I was in the Army and it reminded me of phosphorescent flares we used that light up the whole sky.”

Tim Walker and his daughter Carolyn Walker saw the flashes on the evening of January 12. Walker got the video from Ring.com and posted it on Facebook, where it was picked up by multiple media sites. Over a week later, the comments on the video are still speculative with no confirmed cause. Another witness, Charles Rogers, sent his video to local station FOX19 NOW, which contacted all of the usual suspects and experts.

“We contacted Clermont County Emergency Management. They have no explanation but did hear from plenty of people reporting the flash. Bethel Police had the same response. We also reached out to Duke Energy. According to them, 584 customers lost power for two minutes just before 7 p.m. Sunday. Crews drove that line Monday and found no issues. We also asked an astronomer if this could be a meteor. He says no because a meteor would flash above the clouds rather than below. As for lightning, the nearest strike was hundreds of miles away.”

That was the latest from them as of January 14. On January 20, the Lexington Herald-Leader picked up a story by Mark Price of the Charlotte Observer, who asked Walker if the flashes had been identified. Walker said they hadn’t. Other witnesses have posted on his Facebook page, but no confirmed explanations. Price had no answers either.

“I’ve done a lot of reporting on UFOs and other strange phenomenon, and this is really the strangest light show I’ve ever seen caught on video.”

It’s too bad David Letterman is no longer doing his show with the popular segment, “Is this anything?” Bandleader Paul Schaefer always had interesting, speculative comments on the strange things Dave would show him. That seems to be better than asking government agencies or local authorities these days, as the fine folks in Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming are finding out with the mysterious drone formations they’ve received no answers on despite their presence in the night sky since before Christmas.

Which brings us back to Tim Walker’s first reaction when he saw the lights over Bethel, a small village east of Cincinnati near the Kentucky border.

“The first thing that came to mind was what just happened with Iran.”

There’s no doubt Walker was in the majority in having that first reaction … one that the people in Colorado have while watching their own mysterious things in the sky.

Perhaps it’s time to accept the obvious … getting no answer is now the new norm.

VIDEOS, selected by peter2011

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

The mysterious giant drones that have been flying in formation over parts of Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming just got a possible explanation … and it may create more mysteries than it solves … if it solves any. A member of a group of amateur UFO trackers claims they’ve been flying drones in formation over Colorado in an organized search for the “unidentified aerial phenomenon” that has become known as the Tic Tac UFOs. Yes, the ones seen by USS Nimitz pilots in 2004 on the east coast. What are they doing in Colorado, you ask? Let’s find out.

“If there was any interference with any other aircraft, that absolutely was not ours.”

In what appears to be an exclusive report by the Sterling Journal-Advocate (Sterling is in far northeastern Colorado where many of the drone sightings have occurred), Michael Spicer of Durango (a long way from Sterling in far southwest Colorado) takes an obviously defensive position as he talks the drone formations he and his group have been flying in and around Sterling. Spicer says the group is known as ArchAngleRECON and they’re headquartered in Wichita, Kansas – almost 500 miles from Sterling. He admits the group has been flying groups of 6 to 12 drones along longitude and latitude lines in northeast Colorado – the “grid pattern” many witnesses have described. Of course, he didn’t think they were doing anything wrong. Until …

“Spicer said the group was unaware of the stir caused by drones until he was contacted recently by the Federal Aviation Administration. He said he was interviewed by special Agent Michael Bumberger of the FAA’s Investigations and Law Enforcement Assistance Program. He said none of ArchAngelRECON’s drones were ever flown anywhere near any airport, and they did not encounter any other civilian aircraft.”

That was probably as part of the multi-government-agency investigation that ended recently with the “no harm, no foul” conclusion that they still don’t know whose drones they are, but they’re not illegal, so go back to what you were doing and forget about them. Despite that, Spicer seemed shaken by the contact and was probably questioned about reports that a drone may have interfered with a hospital helicopter and others were seen over Sterling Municipal Airport – an obvious FAA violation.

Before you ask, there’s not much info about ArchAngelRECON. There’s a 75th ArchAngel Recon “Multi game clan” with some videos on YouTube, but they’re related to gaming, not drones or UFOs. As usual these days, Spicer claims the group is tracking the new technology aircraft which is what the infamous Tic Tac UFOs from the 2004 incident are suspected by many of being. However, he’s quick to point out that not all of the drones seen recently belong to his group. He doesn’t say how many are and the report is pretty empty of any additional investigative evidence. Spicer also gives no information on whether they saw any of the drones/Tic Tacs.

It’s almost as if “looking for Tic Tac UFOs” is the new cover for any nefarious activities, and heading to Colorado to hunt the drones is becoming this year’s “Storm Area 51.” Will ‘Storm Sterling’ solve the mystery or end up in a failed rock concert too?

“That absolutely was not ours.”

OK, Michael Spicer, we’re not blaming you for that. In fact, you’re not the first to connect the drones to the Tic Tac. That honor belongs unofficially to Mike Turber, the investigative journalist and cybersecurity expert who made the link earlier this week.

So, despite the government’s plea to “move along, nothing to see here,” the Colorado/Nebraska/Wyoming/??? Drone mystery isn’t going away.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Have You Ever Seen Someone Showing Unidentified Flying Objects In Their Videos?

With the recent explosion of UFO footage in recent years, many people wonder if it is possible to identify a UFO in someone’s video. You may be able to tell the difference between your own UFO and the strange lights in someone’s video, but what do you think a “Truther” might do if they could find your video? Would they tell everyone on the internet that you are a professional con man?

We have all heard the stories of deception in the past and will continue to do so, especially when we hear information about things that are not real, and people getting fooled by these people. I guess you could say that a UFO is like the golden goose in the movie The Wizard of Oz, if you think about it; a hoax is just like a hoax, however, if you could disprove something that people claim is real you could convince the masses of its fakery.

Of course, the only way you can do this is to make a person think that you have proof that someone else has proven something to them. Now, if the skeptics like yourself had something, like videos of UFOs, then you could definitely convince some of the skeptics. But, you do not, so how do you proceed?

If you are the guy that says, “Look at my photos!” then I would recommend that you hold off on making any videos until you get someone to believe you. You see, I have to put the picture of this subject out there, in order for people to believe what I have to say, if they can prove something to me, then I will have no need for them.

If you can prove that people have been seen in the photos, then you will have convinced more people than you know that the UFO phenomenon is real, but, it is probably not, that’s why they all go to the movies to see alien aliens. Some have pointed out to me that since UFOs are just that; they could justbe pictures of old mountain ranges or clouds.

Then again, maybe these are not real, and a more reliable source of UFOs is a web site with videos. If you are sure that these UFO videos are real, then the last thing that I would want to do is to convince anyone of the reality of aliens.

So you see, you do not have to be so sure. If you cannot find any evidence, then simply say that they are in the same category as the pictures you see in your mind’s eye, no one needs to know!

Source: 

• http://footageofufos.com/2020/01/have-you-ever-seen-someone-showing-unidentified-flying-objects-in-their-videos/

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

AMAZING UFO video filmed from a plane over Utah

This really interesting UFO video was just uploaded to MUFON. It was recorded over Zion National Park in Utah on 19th August 2019!

Witness report: 

Video recording is taken from cockpit at 40000 ft of an object flying at a lower altitude over the terrain. Not sure what it is.

{ https://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }

Even though he passed away in 1566, Nostradamus correctly predicted many events that happened after his death, such as the rise of Hitler and Napoleon, in addition to the 9/11 attacks on America. And based on recent events, it seems as though another one of the French prophet’s predictions has come true.

In one of his passages, he wrote, “The great plague of the maritime city will not cease until there be avenged the death of the just blood, condemned for a price without crime, of the great lady outraged by pretense.” It seems as though he was predicting the SARS-like outbreak that’s happening right now in the world. An outbreak of a new coronavirus started in China and has spread to different countries around the world: Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States.

Nostradamus

As for the “maritime city” that was mentioned in the passage, a conspiracy theorist has an idea of what location Nostradamus was referring to. “The start of SARS and preponderance of cases are in China, many of which are in Hong Kong. Therefore it is reasonable to view Hong Kong as ‘the maritime city’.”

And the “great lady” could possibly be Wu Yi who was previously the Chinese Health Minister and who helped to control the SARS virus.

So far, the deadly Chinese coronavirus – which has flu-like symptoms that include coughing, fever, shortness of breath, and difficulty breathing – has affected approximately 500 people with 17 deaths. What’s even more frightening is that scientists have warned the public that as many as 10,000 people could have caught the SARS-like virus while visiting Wuhan, China.

There has so far been one diagnosed case in the United States (Washington State) as a man in his 30s caught the virus while visiting Wuhan.

So where did this virus come from? According to a new study (which can be read in full here), it is believed that the virus originated in snakes and spread to humans. There are two types of snakes that are commonly found around the area in which the outbreak originated: Bungarus multicinctus (or the many-banded krait) and Naja atra (or the Chinese cobra).

Nostradamus predicted many disturbing things in history, and this new SARS-like virus is one of the scariest predictions he has made, as more and more people are being affected by this deadly strain.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Something big recently happened in space, but astronomers have no idea what it was. Whatever happened, it was powerful enough to stretch the fabric of reality itself, sending a brief instance of gravitational waves rippling through space-time, and picked up here on Earth. The burst of gravitational waves was unusually brief and lacked other qualities astronomers usually see in gravitational waves.

On January 14, astronomers at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and the Virgo interferometer detected a burst of gravitational waves lasting 14 milliseconds. Scientists have attempted to locate the source of the waves, but so far they have no idea what caused them.

Gravitational waves tend to stick around a little longer than the recently observed burst. Most detected gravitational waves are the result of two massive objects colliding with each other. As the two bodies of mass get closer and closer on their collision course, the gravitational waves change in frequency. On January 6, researchers published their observations of a collision between two neutron stars that occurred in 2017.

Like this, but through all of space-time.

It’s possible this burst of gravitational waves resulted from a quicker, more immediate event like a collapsing star. However, researchers have never observed the gravitational waves from a collapsing star.  Andy Howell, a staff scientist at Los Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network told Live Science:

“[The burst] seems a little too short for what we expect from the collapse of a massive star. On the other hand, we’ve never seen a star blowing up in gravitational waves before, so we don’t really know what it would look like.”

What’s more, a supernova would produce neutrinos—subatomic particles with no charge—and researchers detected no neutrinos alongside the gravitational waves. Some speculated that the waves may have been a signal from the star Betelgeuse which has recently been acting strange and is nearing the end of its life. However, as Live Science points out, Betelgeuse is still there.

A supernova would likely release neutrinos alongside its gravitational wave burst.

esultedIt’s possible the burst of waves may have been the result of an immediate black hole collision, an event that LIGO was specifically looking for. However, it is believed that while an immediate black hole collision would be shorter than that of a neutron star collision, it would still be possible to see the changing frequencies of the gravitational waves as the collision happened.

Yet another possibility is that it was a supernova that immediately turned into a black hole without producing any neutrinos, but that is highly speculative and with the possibility-realm of “what-if-it’s-a-thing-we-know-that-doesn’t-do-what-we-know-it-should.”

Astronomers are now pointing telescopes at that region of the sky to try and ascertain what caused the burst of gravitational waves. They say it could be an entirely new type of astronomical event.

It seems the more telescopes and gadgets we have up in the sky, the more anomalous events seem to occur. It’s a good reminder that we don’t know all that much about what happens outside our pale blue dot.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Anyone who has been on a European river cruise or an organized bus tour through cities with ruins dating back thousands of years has no doubt felt that they were traveling back in time and probably wished it were possible to go back in time and see these cities when they were alive with our ancestors. If we feel that way, it’s not hard to imagine that our future descendants will have the same yearnings. What they may also have is the technology to pull off such a time-traveling tour package. A professor of biological anthropology believes UFOs are actually identified tour ‘buses’ from the future and lays out a case on how to prove it.

“Undoubtedly in the future, there are those that will pay a lot of money to have the opportunity to go back and observe their favorite period in history. Some of the most popular tourist sites are the pyramids of Giza and Machu Picchu in Peru … old and prehistoric sites.”

Michael Masters is a professor of biological anthropology at Montana Technological University in Butte and the author of “Identified Flying Objects: A Multidisciplinary Scientific Approach to the UFO Phenomenon.” In a presentation at the 2019 International UFO Congress and a more recent interview with Space.com, Masters lays out his reasons to believe that aliens are future human tourists. The ‘human’ part is certainly plausible – he points out that most “extratempestrials” are described as bipedal beings with human features who can communicate in our languages and travel in ships that seem to be based on current technology … like a Ferrari resembles a Model T.

“We know we’re here. We know humans exist. We know that we’ve had a long evolutionary history on this planet. And we know our technology is going to be more advanced in the future. I think the simplest explanation, innately, is that it is us. I’m just trying to offer what is likely the most parsimonious explanation.”

Masters sees the stories of alien abductees as indicators that many of the UFO time machines contain anthropologists doing what he wishes he could do if he had the technology – meeting ancient civilizations and perhaps picking up a few samples. Space.com adds credence to the connection to abductee stories by bringing in Larry Lemke, a retired NASA aerospace engineer and ufologist who points out that some abductee experiences coincide with what might happen if they were taken onboard a ship that was able to defy the usual laws of aerodynamics and Newtonian mechanics.

“There’s a group of thinkers in the field of UFOs that point out that phenomena reported around some UFOs do, in fact, look exactly like general relativity effects. Missing time is a very common one.”

Just like today, once the explorers and scientists are done analyzing (and looting) ancient sites, people with a lot of money start visiting them. Eventually, the costs go down and these tours become available to the masses. Have our future selves reached that point yet? Were those recent Tic Tac UFOs merely time-traveling tour buses filled with extratempestrials – noses pressed to the windows, future cell phones taking selfies as they try to see ten cities in ten … minutes?

“Our job as scientists is to be asking big questions and try to find answers to unknown questions. There’s something going on here, and we should be having a conversation about this. We should be at the forefront of trying to find out what it is.”

Not to mention selling souvenirs to these time-traveling tourists.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

UFO encounters run the range between those of a benevolent type, and others that are more sinister in nature. Throughout accounts of such encounters one kind find a wide range of experiences lying along this scale, to the point that it is often difficult to know what to make of it all. One very odd and frightening case supposedly played out over an expanse of the Australian Outback, and which has not been solved to this day. It is the tale of a mundane trip across the desert that would turn into a nightmare from possibly another world.

On January 20, 1988, Faye Knowles, her adult sons Patrick (24), Sean (21) and Wayne (18), and their two dogs were making their way towards Melbourne, Australia across a vast expanse of limestone bedrock called the Nullarbor Plain. The area is a remote desert moonscape of a place, with no one around for miles and other cars a rarity, so it was considered odd when in the very early morning hours a light was spotted some distance ahead, just outside of the tiny town of Mundrabilla. The light seemed to get steadily brighter as they watched it, and as they got closer they could see that it was semi-spherical or egg shaped and was most certainly not another vehicle as it was just a single bright light and seemed to be hovering in the air over that desolate expanse.

Nullarbor Plain

As the family struggled to comprehend what they were seeing, the strange object allegedly emitted a beam of light that swept towards their vehicle and caused the driver, Sean, to take evasive maneuvers. The beam missed the car, but this is when Sean would claim the object had begun to follow them down that lonely roadway, easily keeping pace with them no matter how fast they went. They apparently passed another car going the other direction, after which the mysterious object stopped pursuing them and followed the other vehicle. Sean the reportedly turned the car around to follow the other car and its UFO pursuer to figure out what was going on, but thought better of it and turned around yet again. The object then must have decided to go after them again, because it was soon ominously closing in on them once again.

It purportedly got brighter and closer, passing them a few times to circle around to approach again before positioning itself right above their car as the terrified family within screamed out in fright. There was then a thump on the roof, and the car slowed down as if something very heavy were sitting atop it, leading them to the horrible realization that it had actually lowered itself to make contact with the vehicle. According to the witnesses, it then issued a shrill, ear piercing sound, and Faye would say that they were overcome with the sense of something invading their minds, later saying, “It felt like something was going into our heads,” and Patrick would say “I felt like my brain was being sucked out.” They also claimed that their voices became distorted and that they moved sluggishly, as if underwater or experiencing a slowing of time itself. Things would intensify when they then felt the car physically lift off of the road, after which they were shaken violently from side to side as a grey mist filled the car and dropped back down with such force that it blew one of their tires and disabled the vehicle to leave to leave it lying in that unforgiving place like a wounded beast. Fay Knowles would say of the otherworldly encounter:

I wound down the window and I felt this thing on the roof… all of this smoke stuff started coming into the car, the car was covered in black stuff. It was a small light and all of a sudden it became big like this, like a big ball. We thought we were dying, then we got out the car and we hid behind a little tree and the bushes and it couldn’t find us.

When the cowering family were sure the object was gone, they warily went back to their car, changed the tire, and got out of there as fast as they could, eventually making their way to Mundrabilla, where they excitedly told of what had happened to them. Interestingly, a trucker at the gas station there would tell them that he had also seen the strange, eerie light out over the desert as well. When their car was examined, it was found to be banged up, and both the exterior and interior covered with a fine film of black material like soot or ash that had an unusual odor like “a blown fuse.” The Knowles were able to get some truckers to go with them out to where the incident had supposedly occurred, where they allegedly found odd skid marks on the road that seemed to show that the vehicle has been dragged sideways by some powerful force, making it all even stranger.

South Australian Police in Ceduna were notified, and analyses of the soot on the car would be carried out that later prove to be divisive, with some saying it was merely sand and dust particles from the desert, while others claimed that there were also traces of an explosive compound called Potassium Chlorate, as well as a radioactive chemical called Astatine. Yet another analysis found that the dust on the outside of the car and that of the interior were different. The surprising differences of these results seem like they would deserve more follow-up, but oddly the South Australia police were apparently very eager to distance themselves from it all, finish the investigation, and sweep it under the carpet, and the whole case was just sort of filed away even as it was hitting the news in a big way. This would cause Faye Knowles to lament:

We are all angry. Everybody knows that this happened to us but the people who should be concerned have just ignored it. There has been a cover-up. The government owes us and the public an explanation.

Theories on what might have happened to the Knowles family out on that lonely and forbidding stretch of road have swirled ever since, ranging from the mundane to the far-out. One idea is that they had been tired from a 13-hour car ride all night along an isolated road in the middle of nowhere, and had then perhaps misidentified some natural phenomenon in their fatigued state. This has been speculated as perhaps being a truck’s headlights in the distance or the planet Venus, that were distorted by a temperature inversion, which is basically a layer of warm air over cooler air that can cause mirages and tricks of light. However, this in no way explains their car being picked up off of the ground and dropped.

It has also been suggested that they might have experienced a meteor that just happened to disintegrate and cause a shockwave near their car, or even a rocket fired from a military base at nearby Woomera. Other theories include that they were caught in a dust storm or some sort of electromagnetic storm, but none of these really fits all of the details of the encounter. Of course there is the idea that this was an actual UFO abduction, and a possibly even weirder idea is that it was an attack by a secret government organization using a helicopter and a powerful, technologically advanced electromagnet to lift the vehicle up. Researcher William Buckley has said of this strange idea:

The attack on the Knowles family was orchestrated and carried out by a well-resourced paramilitary organization operating in Australia, using a sophisticated helicopter with specialized lifting equipment. The Knowles’ involvement was purely accidental. They were not the intended target and were attacked only because they resembled the real target group who were also travelling on the same road that night. The nature of this covert action by this paramilitary group and the importance of the assassination attempt on the real target group are now shrouded in secrecy and cover-up and nobody wants the truth to be revealed.

This is obviously a case of attempted murder of four people who were all extremely traumatised by this hour-long attack. There was plenty of forensic evidence and witnesses to prove that the family was attacked and a major police investigation should have been triggered to uncover the truth.

Not quite as interesting as any of these is the idea that the family was trying to pull an insurance scam or even that it was just a flat-out hoax. For their part, the Knowles family has always insisted that what they experienced was very real, and very frightening, and they have never sought to gain fame or large amounts of money from any of it, mostly lying low about the whole thing. What happened to this family out on that bleak stretch of road? What forces came calling for them to follow them around and terrorize them? Was this aliens, a weather phenomenon, or something else? No one really knows, and the case remains controversial and debated to this day.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

THE ASTEROID THAT KILLED THE DINOSAURS ALSO CREATED A MASSIVE VOLCANIC ERUPTION

New study reconsiders that one time the universe got a little too excited about catastrophes. 

About 65 million years ago, the dinosaurs went extinct. We know this. And scientists suspect the reason was an asteroid coming to an abrupt halt just off the Yucatan Peninsula. But new research suggests there was another layer to the cataclysm: The asteroid hit the earth so hard that it spurred a massive volcanic eruption on the Indian subcontinent that helped eradicate other dinosaurs who might have survived as well as killing 70 percent of the Earth’s entire species.

At least those are conclusions from a new study published Thursday in Science, authored by American and Indian researchers spread across the globe.

The consensus among scientists is that a huge asteroid crashed into the planet and spurred the mass extinction of life at the end of the Cretaceous period, and resulted in the Chicxulub crater at the edge of the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico.

At the same time, India was rife with volcanic activity in a place known as the Deccan Traps, a 200,000 square mile region that used to be basically covered in lava flow. More than 65 million years ago, the Deccan Traps began forming after a series of volcanic eruptions that are thought have lasted about 30,000 years.

The Deccan Traps, east of Mumbai

Nichalp, via Wikimedia Commons

The asteroid isn’t thought to have outright caused the initial volcanic eruptions, but rather augmented the intensity. The impact from the Chicxulub crash most likely caused earthquakes of about a magnitude 11, which would have shaken the planet’s crust up enough so molten rock could begin flowing out. The more magma was flowing up to the surface, the more unstable the things got. Cue explosions, fire, and dinopocalypse.

The research is an early stepping point to bridging the gap between the asteroid and the volcanic activity. Scientists will need to do a lot more work before we have a better picture about how all of this went down long ago. What’s for certain is that both of these events, individually, were capable of profoundly changing the world as it was. The odds of them happening together are extraordinarily rare — and the consequences were that much more transformative for the future of the Earth.

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

That's because worms like the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans can actually tell us a lot about the workings of the human body. Compared to mammals, these simple little fellas live for only two or three weeks, which makes them perfect for studying various genes and metabolic pathways also shared by humans.

In the past, for instance, scientists have shown that altering the insulin signalling pathway (IIS) in worms yields a 100 percent increase in their lifespan; meanwhile, changes in the so-called TOR pathway (target of rapamycin) result in a 30 percent increase.

This latest study has managed to genetically alter both pathways in just the right way to cause a result four or five times greater than the sum of their separate effects.

"The synergistic extension is really wild," says molecular biologist Jarod Rollins from the the MDI Biological Laboratory in Maine.

"The effect isn't one plus one equals two, it's one plus one equals five."

These findings show that ageing is not simply the result of one individual gene or pathway acting on its own, but rather a confluence of networks all working together in the long-term.

This could certainly explain why no one gene or cellular pathway has been found that can provide longer life for either worms, humans or any other animal for that matter.

When tweaks were made to both the IIS and the TOR pathways, the authors found their downstream activity worked synergistically, inducing a mitochondrial stress response that promoted longevity.

Whether or not something like this mechanism proves directly useful in humans remains to be seen, but knowledge of this relationship has certainly opened up new avenues for research.

Unfortunately, because of the long lives of humans, scientists find it quite hard to study our own ageing (it's also not ideal to play around with our genes just to see what happens), so we have to rely on animal proxies like mice, flies and worms instead. In fact, last year researchers were able to extend the lifespan of a mouse and decrease its chances of cancer by extending its telomeres.

But even with all the scientific limitations on human ageing research, we've had some progress. This year a human clinical trial is going to test the drug metformin, a widely-used treatment for type 2 diabetes that has the potential to delay the onset of age-related diseases like cancer, cardiovascular disease, and Alzheimer's disease.

Perhaps this new research on C. elegans will open similar doors for clinical trials in the future.

"Despite the discovery in C. elegans of cellular pathways that govern ageing, it hasn't been clear how these pathways interact," says nephrologist Hermann Haller, president of the MDI Biological Laboratory.

"By helping to characterise these interactions, our scientists are paving the way for much-needed therapies to increase healthy lifespan for a rapidly ageing population."

• The study was published in Cell Reports.

{ https://www.sciencealert.com/ }

Betelguese's bizarre dimming has astronomers scratching their heads

This artist's impression shows a vast amount of material being flung into space from Betelgeuse.

ESO/L. Calcada

Over the last few weeks, Betelgeuse, the bright reddish star in the constellation Orion, has dimmed to the faintest it's been in a century. Astronomers have been buzzing with excitement about the event, discussing the star over social media and speculating what might be going on. 

The big question on everyone’s mind is whether the star is about to go supernova and explode. That’s probably not what’s about to happen, astronomers say, but they’re still excited to be witnessing behavior they’ve never seen from Betelgeuse before. There’s a lot astronomers still don’t know about the variable behavior of supergiant stars like Betelgeuse, so any strange activity is a chance to learn more about the lives of stars. 

A Fading Supergiant

For over a century, astronomers have watched Betelgeuse brighten and dim again and again. Betelgeuse is a red supergiant, a star late in its life that has expanded to an enormous size. Bubbles of material rise from inside the star to its surface and sink back down, changing the mix of hotter and cooler stuff on the star’s surface. These changes make Betelgeuse appear brighter and fainter over time.

For about 25 years, Richard Wasatonic, an astronomer at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, has measured the brightness of Betelgeuse with a 10-inch diameter telescope in his backyard. He's worked with another Villanova astronomer named Edward Guinan, as well as an amateur astronomer named Thomas Calderwood. In October, they noticed that Betelgeuse was getting fainter again. By early December, they realized that Betelgeuse had gotten fainter than it had in the past 25 years and put out a post on a site known as The Astronomer’s Telegram to alert other astronomers.

“It kept getting fainter,” Guinan said. “Every night, it was fainter than the previous night, and I said, ‘Well, it has to stop soon.’ And it hasn’t.” 

On Dec. 23, they posted an update. Betelgeuse had gotten fainter still, and it was now the faintest it has been in the last century or so — for as long as astronomers have been able to measure its brightness with detectors rather than judging by eye. At its brightest, Betelgeuse is usually one of the six or seven brightest stars visible to humans in the night sky. By mid-December, it had dropped several places on that list, to 21st brightest. 

About to Blow?

The unusual dimming episode has made some astronomers wonder whether Betelgeuse is about to go supernova. Life on Earth would be fine if Betelgeuse did explode.

Based on its mass, astronomers estimate that the supergiant will go supernova when it’s roughly 9 million years old. According to Guinan, Betelgeuse is probably between 8 and 9 million years old now. Astronomers have recently estimated that Betelgeuse might be due for a supernova in about 100,000 years or so. When it blows, it'll be spectacular. The explosion will be about half as bright as the full Moon, Guinan said. Anyone lucky enough to be around would be able to see it shine during the day for months until it fades away.

Astronomers have carefully observed the behaviors of many stars after they exploded as supernovae. But no one has had a detailed look at how a star behaves leading up to a supernova. So astronomers don’t really know whether the current dimming event is leading up to a supernova. What they do know is that it’d be pretty unlikely for the explosion to go off now when there’s so much uncertainty in their understanding of Betelgeuse’s behavior and even its age. 

Guinan and his team will keep monitoring Betelgeuse, as they have been for decades. Based on Betelgeuse's past dimming and brightening patterns — the star seems to cycle in brightness both every 6 years or so and every 425 days — they expect that it'll get its faintest in January and then get brighter again. But they'll have to see if that's the case.

"It defies prediction," Guinan said. "It's hard to predict what it’s going to do in the future."

Strange night flashes, vibrations and ‘humming noise’ in Ohio town spark talk of UFO

A strange series of color flashes that turned the night sky reddish in Bethel, Ohio, has gotten international attention, as people scramble for a good explanation.

So far, nobody seems to have one, even after a week of debate.

A doorbell video, posted on Facebook by Tim Walker, shows a series of rapid flashes that changed in color and size over 20 seconds, from white to a red that filled the horizon.

It was recorded Jan. 12, just before 7 p.m., as Walker was rolling a trash bin outside his home about 30 miles southeast of Cincinnati.

“Anybody else see this tonight?” he wrote on Facebook. “The sky was flashing pink and purple - super bright. Thought it might be lightning, but it’s fairly cold (40 degrees), and there was no thunder. ...It was crazy — super bright.”

It’s been a week and Walker told McClatchy News Monday that “we have not gotten any explanation yet on what this was.”

He and his daughter, Carolyn, were both frightened by the flashes, which he says “got brighter and brighter.” The family lives next to a 4,800-acre state park, where quiet is the norm after sunset.

“The first thing that came to mind was what just happened with Iran, and I thought it might be a nuclear explosion. It was that bright and that powerful,” Walker told McClatchy. “I was in the Army and it reminded me of phosphorescent flares we used that light up the whole sky.”

His daughter was the first to see it, he said.

“I was scared,” she told Fox 19 News. “I thought it was an explosion when I first saw it, so it made me really nervous.”

Commenters on Walker’s video have also shared concerns, with Kendra Fox pointing out: “This is how every alien world domination movie starts!!”

Walker wasn’t the only one to see it, April Pierce said on Facebook.

“So many people are posting about it in Bethel and Amelia,” she wrote. “Some people said their power even flickered on and off.”

Walker didn’t report hearing an explosion of any kind accompanying the flashes, but Kat Carmosino said she heard a noise that added to the unnerving experience.

“We were in between Amelia and New Richmond, when the power went out there was the light show. The floor was vibrating and there was a humming noise. It was really odd,” she wrote.

The phenomenon has been covered by news outlets in Europe such as The Daily Mail, which said “there has been no logical explanation.”

While a UFO and aliens have come up as ideas, more down-to-earth speculation has included fireworks, a meteor and a transformer explosion. And the UK Express had a headline that asked: “Mystery US Military test exposed?”

Duke Energy told Fox19 that “584 customers lost power for two minutes just before 7 p.m. Sunday,” but a crew sent to inspect the line “found no issues.”

RELATED STORIES FROM LEXINGTON HERALD LEADER

Tim Walker of Bethel, Ohio, posted this video on Jan. 12, asking if others saw it. The lights have yet to be explained. 

FACEBOOK VIDEO SCREENSHOT/TIM WALKER

{ https://www.kentucky.com/ }

Hollywood's UFO Stories Are Becoming Way More Realistic

The Pentagon admits UFOs are real. So Hollywood is making a flurry of movies and TV shows about how we should look for them.

By MJ Banias

UFOs are everywhere, and Hollywood has noticed. Talking about UFOs is no longer fringe, with former Blink-182 singer Tom DeLonge getting the U.S. military to admit that it has videos of UFOs.

Small and big screens alike have always carried alien and UFOs. From films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind to Contact to Arrival and even The Avengers franchise, bizarre aliens and their vehicles have come to Earth and have had audiences the world over question the existence of extraterrestrials. But there is an increased focus on UFO hunters in Hollywood.

“I think it’s fair to say that it is, and that this resurgence in popularity is a direct result of the Pentagon UFO revelations of 2017, which captured the attention of the establishment press like no UFO story has in decades,” Robbie Graham, media critic and author of Silver Screen Saucers: Sorting Fact from Fantasy in Hollywood's UFO Movies, said. “This helped to legitimize UFOs as a topic of mainstream debate and has opened up new scientific and political lines of inquiry for TV producers who are always looking for fresh approaches to this enduringly popular subject.”

Recent polls indicate a little over half of Americans believe UFOs exist and one third buy into the belief that they are alien spacecraft, Graham isn’t totally convinced that UFOs will be the next big thing. He does point out that young people are being drawn into the subject matter like never before.

“It does seem that UFOlogy is not quite as dorky as it once was, thanks to an influx over the past several years of relatively young and trendy researchers who have been drawn to the subject through its newfound legitimacy. UFOlogy was once an old person’s game; now it’s a young person’s game,” stated Graham.

In 2017, former lead singer for Blink 182, Tom DeLonge, publicly announced his UFO/technology/media company, To the Stars Academy, alongside the New York Times article announcing a secret Pentagon program designed to study anomalous phenomena. Young gun UFO enthusiasts turned to social media, #UFOTwitter became an actual hashtag and the once invisible UFO discourse became incredibly public.

“I think people are more open to considering it as a real phenomenon as opposed to just psychology,” Aiden Gillen told Motherboard in an interview. Gillen, known best for playing the role of Littlefinger in HBO’s Game of Thrones, plays Dr. J. Allen Hynek in History Channel’s Project Blue Book, which returns next week. “I suppose you could have said that in the 50s and 60s as well, in the age of science, that people would be more open to the idea that we're not alone in the universe. I'm also fully aware of how unlikely it is that we will find each other.”

Project Blue Book is a fictional TV series about the infamous 1950’s and 60’s Air Force UFO investigation program of the same name.

Gillen said that humans are naturally curious about UFOs.

“It's inevitable that you are going to wonder. This is something that people have done since we began standing on our own two feet as a species. ‘What's up there?’ It's always been, ‘What's up there?’” he said. While Gillen doesn’t think the government should be spending vast sums of money chasing UFOs, as we have more direct problems to deal with, he does think that talking about UFOs is no longer taboo.

“I think there is something that is becoming cool about UFOs. It’s easier to talk about or reference,” Gillen explained. “I feel like Close Encounters of the Third Kind is one of the coolest films of the 70s, and when this role came my way, I actually thought, ‘This is fucking cool.’”

While TV dramas like Project Blue Book are fictional, reality UFO themed programs still have a long way to go.

They “depict presenters chasing lights in the sky in Jeeps while wearing night-vision goggles and brandishing walkie-talkies. It’s nonsensical and devoid of educational value. It doesn’t have to be this way though, and this coming wave of factual UFO TV shows will likely reflect the more serious tone that the mainstream news media have begun to adopt with this topic,” Graham said. “Certainly, UFOs are ‘selling’ like never before. They’re hot property in TV land right now, and everybody wants to stake a claim.”

{ https://www.vice.com/en_in }

EARTH’S OLDEST ASTEROID IMPACT ‘MAY HAVE ENDED ICE AGE’

Scientists have identified the world's oldest asteroid crater in Australia, adding it may explain how the planet was lifted from an ice age.

The asteroid hit Yarrabubba in Western Australia about 2.2 billion years ago - making the crater about half the age of Earth, researchers say.

Their conclusion was reached by testing minerals found in rocks at the site.

The scientists say the find is exciting because it could account for a warming event during that era.

• The Curtin University research was published in the journal Nature Communications on Wednesday.

How did they date it?

The crater was discovered in the dry outback in 1979, but geologists had not previously tested how old it was.

• Dinosaur extinction: 'Asteroid strike was culprit'
• Splosh! How to make a giant impact crater

Due to billions of years of erosion, the crater is not visible to the eye. Scientists mapped scars in the area's magnetic field to determine its 70km (43 miles) diameter.

"The landscape is actually very flat because it's so old, but the rocks there are distinctive," researcher Prof Chris Kirkland told the BBC.

To determine when the asteroid hit Earth, the team examined tiny zircon and monazite crystals in the rocks. They were "shocked" in the strike and now can be read like "tree rings", Prof Kirkland said.

These crystals hold tiny amounts of uranium. Because uranium decays into lead at a consistent pace, the researchers were able to calculate how much time had passed.

It is at least 200 million years older than the next most ancient impact structure - the Vredefort Dome in South Africa.

"We were interested in the area because the Western Australian landscape is very old but we didn't expected [the crater] to be as old as this," Prof Kirkland said.

"It's absolutely possible that there's an older crater out there just waiting to be discovered, but the difficulty is in finding the crust before it erodes and you lose that early Earth history".

Could it have ended an ice age?

The timing of the impact could also explain why the world warmed around this time, according to the researchers.

Scientists believe the planet was previously in one of its "Snowball Earth" periods, when it was largely covered in ice. At some point, the ice sheets melted and the planet began to rapidly warm.

• The ancient memories trapped in the world's glaciers

"The age of the [crater] corresponds pretty precisely with the end of a potential global glacial period," Prof Kirkland said.

"So the impact may have had significant changes to our planetary climate."

Using computer modelling, the team calculated that the asteroid struck a kilometres-thick ice sheet covering the Earth. The event would have released huge volumes of water vapour, a greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.

This could have helped the planet's warming during the Proterozoic era - a stage when oxygen had just appeared in the atmosphere and complex life had not yet formed.

"Obviously we were very excited just with the age itself," Prof Kirkland said. "But placing that right with the context of Earth's other events makes it become really very interesting."

There is not enough modelling from the time to comprehensively test the theory, but "the rocks tell a story about the massive impact into the planet".

Another theory for the warming event is that volcanic eruptions may have pushed carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

{ https://newsfortomorrow.com/ }

Astrophysicists find massive black holes wandering around dwarf galaxies

New research has uncovered the presence of at least thirteen ‘wandering’ black holes in dwarf galaxies. Something, that until recently was not believed possible.

A new search led by Montana State University has revealed more than a dozen massive black holes in dwarf galaxies that were previously considered too small to host them, and surprised scientists with their location within the galaxies.

The study, headed by MSU astrophysicist Amy Reines, searched 111 dwarf galaxies within a billion light years of Earth using the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, two hours outside Albuquerque in the plains of New Mexico. Reines identified 13 galaxies that “almost certainly” host massive black holes and found something unexpected: The majority of the black holes were not in the location she anticipated.

“All of the black holes I had found before were in the centers of galaxies,” said Reines, an assistant professor in the Department of Physics in the College of Letters and Science and a researcher in MSU’s eXtreme Gravity Institute. “These were roaming around the outskirts. I was blown away when I saw this.”

The eXtreme Gravity Institute brings together physicists and astronomers to study phenomena where the forces of gravity are so strong they blur the separation between space and time, such as the big bang, neutron stars and black holes.

There are two main types of black holes, incredibly dense areas of space with gravitational pulls strong enough to capture light. Smaller, stellar black holes form as large stars die and are roughly 10 times the mass of our sun, according to Reines. The other type, known as supermassive or massive black holes, tend to be found at the center of galaxies and can have masses millions or even billions that of our sun. Scientists don’t know how they are created.

The Milky Way, a spiral galaxy consisting of somewhere between 100 and 400 billion stars, has a massive black hole at its center, Sagittarius A*. Dwarf galaxies can be of any shape, but are much smaller than the Milky Way, with up to a few billion stars.

Reines’ results confirm predictions from recent computer simulations by Jillian Bellovary, an assistant professor at Queensborough Community College in New York and Research Associate at the American Museum of Natural History, which postulated that black holes may often be off-center in dwarf galaxies due to the way galaxies interact as they move through space. The findings may change how scientists look for black holes in dwarf galaxies in the future.

“We need to expand searches to target the whole galaxy, not just the nuclei where we previously expected black holes to be,” Reines said.

Reines’ paper, “A New Sample of (Wandering) Massive Black Holes in Dwarf Galaxies from High Resolution Radio Observations,” was published Jan. 3 in The Astrophysical Journal, and Reines reported the findings at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii, on Jan. 5.

Reines has been searching the skies for black holes for a decade. As a graduate student at the University of Virginia, she focused on star formation in dwarf galaxies, but in her research she found something else that captured her interest: a massive black hole “in a little dwarf galaxy where it wasn’t supposed to be.”

Thirty million light years from Earth, the dwarf galaxy Henize 2-10 was previously believed to be too small to host a massive black hole. Conventional wisdom told us that all massive galaxies with a spheroidal component have a massive black hole, Reines explained, and little dwarf galaxies didn’t. Yet Reines found one in the center of the dwarf galaxy. It was a “eureka” moment, she said. Her findings were published in the journal Nature in 2011 and Reines turned her research to searching for other black holes in dwarf galaxies.

“Once I started looking for these things on purpose, I started finding a whole bunch,” Reines said.

Her next search of the universe shifted to visual data rather than radio signals. It uncovered over 100 possible black holes in the first systematic search of a parent sample of more than 40,000 dwarf galaxies. For her latest search, described in the paper released this month, Reines wanted to go back and look for radio signatures in that sample, which she said would allow her to find massive black holes in star-forming dwarf galaxies. Only one galaxy was identified using both methods.

“There are lots of opportunities to make new discoveries because studying black holes in dwarf galaxies is a new field,” she said. “People are definitely captivated by black holes. They’re mysterious and fascinating objects.”

Reines’ discoveries have poured new energy into the search for black holes in dwarf galaxies, opening up new areas of astrophysics as she and other scientists attempt to discover how these massive black holes form.

“When new discoveries break our current understanding of the way things work, we find even more questions than we had before,” said Yves Idzerda, head of the Department of Physics at MSU.

• Provided by: Montana State University

{ https://sciencebulletin.org/ }

Mythical Benben Stone: The Landing Site of Egyptian God Atum

The Benben stone is an object that is found in the mythology of ancient Egypt. This mythical stone is said to have once been housed in a shrine within the compounds of the temple dedicated to the deity Atum in Heliopolis. The Benben stone is also an architectural term, and is the name given to the tip of an obelisk or the capstone placed on top of a pyramid. This architectural feature is known also as a pyramidion (or pyramidia in its plural form).

In the mythology of ancient Egypt, there are several accounts of the creation of the world. One of these is centred on the god Atum, and had its origins in the city of Heliopolis. According to this version of the creation story, the universe was brought into being by Atum. In the beginning, there was nothing but darkness and chaos. It was out of the dark waters that the primordial hill, known as the Benben stone arose, on top of which stood Atum. As the Benben stone rose from the primeval waters, it has been suggested that this word is associated with the verb ‘weben’, which is the Egyptian hieroglyph for ‘to rise’.

The god Atum, First book of respirations of Usirur

( public domain )

According to another interpretation, the Benben stone was the primeval hill on which Atum first landed. The god looked around, and realised that there was nothing around him but darkness and chaos, and that he was all alone. Desiring companionship, Atum began the work of creation. In some versions of the myth, Atum masturbated, and through this act, created Shu (the god of air) and Tefnut (the goddess of moisture). In other versions of the story, these deities were created by Atum’s copulation with his own shadow. Shu and Tefnut left Atum on the Benben stone, and went away to create the rest of the world. After some time, Atum is said to have grown worried about his children. Removing his eye, he sent it in search of them. Shu and Tefnut returned with their father’s eye, and the deity, seeing his children return, shed tears of joy. These teardrops, which fell on the Benben stone that Atum was standing on, transformed into human beings.

Pyramidion of Hori, New Kingdom 18th Dynasty 1350 BC, Limestone

( Mary Harrsch / Flickr )

The Benben stone is also recorded to have been a sacred object that was once kept in the special shrine known as the ‘hwt benben’, which translates as ‘House of the Benben’. This sacred relic was the innermost sanctuary of the temple in Heliopolis, where Atum once served as its chief deity. The original cult object is said to have been lost at some point of time in history. Nevertheless, based on pictorial evidence, it has been suggested that this was an upright stone with a rounded top. It has also been pointed out that later on, other solar temples would also have their own Benben stones. For example, the temple of Aten in El-Amarna / Akhetaten, that was built by the 18 ^th Dynasty pharaoh, Akhenaten, during the 14 ^th century B.C., is recorded to have possessed a Benben stone of its own.

Pyramidion of king's writer Pauty, Saqqara

( Rob Koopman / Flickr )

Apart from being the name of a cult object, the Benben stone is also used to describe a type of ancient Egyptian architectural element. To the ancient Egyptians, this was known as a ‘benbenet’ (the feminine form of ‘benben’), whereas for people today, the stone is known also as a pyramidion. This term is used to describe the capstone that was placed either on the top of a pyramid or on the top of an obelisk. It has been said that in the case of the former, the pyramidion is often covered with electrum or gold. Examples of pyramidions have survived, and may be found in museums. One, for instance, is the pyramidion that once topped the 12 ^th Dynasty Pyramid of Amenemhat III, which is today displayed in the Egyptian museum in Cairo.

The golden capstone of an obelisk in Luxor

( public domain )

• Featured image: The Benben stone (pyramidion) from the Pyramid of Amenemhat III, Egyptian museum, Cairo. Photo source: Wikimedia.

By Wu Mingren

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/ }

Gigantische massa onbekend materiaal op de maan ontdekt - HLN.be

Bron: CNN, Inverse

De onverwachte massa bevindt zich onder het Zuidpool-Aitken-bekken, een enorme inslagkrater op de maan van 13 km diep en ongeveer 2.000 km breed. De ovale krater - een van de grootste in het zonnestelsel - is niet zichtbaar vanop de aarde, omdat hij zich aan de achterkant van de maan bevindt.

De ontdekte massa is er een van minstens twee triljoen kilogram - 350 miljoen keer zwaarder dan de Piramide van Cheops - en zou tot meer dan 300 km diepte onder de oppervlakte van de maan begraven liggen. De massa werd ontdekt op basis van gegevens verzameld tijdens de Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory-missie van NASA in 2011. Die data werden gekoppeld aan de topografie van de maan zoals de Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter die in kaart bracht. Bleek dat de instrumenten onder het Zuidpool-Aitken-bekken iets erg abnormaals hadden opgepikt. Waarschijnlijk is de mysterieuze massa afkomstig van een inslag op de maan meer dan vier miljard jaar geleden, zo stelt het team van professor Peter B. James.

De maan zelf zou 4,5 miljard jaar geleden gevormd zijn na een botsing tussen de aarde en een planeet met de omvang van Mars. De meest plausibele verklaring is, volgens de wetenschappers, dat de maan zich kort na haar vorming stabiliseerde en dat daarna een grote asteroïde aan relatief lage snelheid is ingeslagen op de maan. Met vervolgens de kolossale metaalmassa als restant.

Maar professor James heeft nog een andere verklaring: de massa zou ook een concentratie van dichte oxiden kunnen zijn die kristalliseerden in de maankorst tijdens de latere stadia van het stollen van het magma van de maan. Verder onderzoek dringt zich dus nog op. De huidige studie werd gepubliceerd in Geophysical Research Letters.

Selectie video's door peter2011

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

’s Werelds oudste krater ligt in West-Australië en maakte volgens onderzoekers “een einde aan de superijstijd” - HLN.be

De naam Yarabubba doet misschien denken aan een of andere planeet uit Star Wars, in werkelijkheid gaat het om ’s werelds oudste krater. Kenners wisten al langer dat de grandioze inslagkrater bestond, maar dat Yarrabubba wel 2,229 miljard jaar oud is, hadden ze nooit durven denken. 

Nu, dankzij een nieuwe ouderdomsbepaling, is de krater plotsklaps ’s werelds oudste exemplaar. Daarmee stoot hij de Vredefort-krater in Zuid-Afrika – die ‘slechts’ 2 miljard jaar oud is – van de troon.

Lees ook

Gigantische massa onbekend materiaal op de maan ontdekt

Einde van de superijstijd

Bovendien kan de nieuwe, oudere leeftijd van Yarrabubba betekenen dat hij een rol speelde bij het einde van de superijstijd, opperen de onderzoekers. Op het moment van de inslag was het immers ontzettend koud maar de daaropvolgende 400 miljoen jaar niet meer. De onderzoekers suggereren dat er door de inslag immense hoeveelheden ijs verdampt zijn. De waterdamp, was een broeikasgas is, zou tot een stijging van de temperatuur hebben geleid. Wil men dat bevestigd zien, dient een vervolgonderzoek op poten gezet te worden.

De leeftijd van een asteroïde bepalen

Een asteroïde die inslaat, is een van de meest gewelddadige geologische gebeurtenissen. In een oogwenk staat de aardkorst onder zodanig veel druk dat die als het ware explodeert. Grote inslagen kunnen littekens achterlaten ter grootte van een kleine stad.

Miljarden jaren later merk je echter weinig van die littekens. Alleen specialisten kunnen de vlaktes met in het midden een verdikking, herkennen. Vervolgens worden de microscopische korrels zirkoon en monaziet – het gesteente dat ontstaat bij een inslag – bestudeerd. Die bestaan uit hoge concentraties radioactief uranium en thorium waarmee men de absolute ouderdom van de gesteentes kan bepalen.

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

Tube-Shaped UFO Sighting Above Massachusetts

A video of a puzzling, glittering object seen above Massachusetts has sparked conspiracy claims, just like the weird snake-like UFO sightings that made the rounds online last year.

John Baglio uploaded the video on Facebook. He shot the footage while driving on the highway between Boston and Malden with his son. According to John, he had caught a glimpse of a spinning bright, white object over his head. The UFO is shown moving from one chemtrail to the other, slowly diminishing in size.

One commenter suggested that this type of object was frequently observed elsewhere across the US, Mexico, and England. They said the craft was cylinder-shaped and approximately 200 feet long.

John said the object was around the same size as a bus and it was hovering low over the highway around 200 feet. He explained that the UFO was right above them, they drove directly under it and it had two big lights that were facing forwards while the object in question was moving.

John said that they could not hear anything from the object, unlike a plane that would have been incredibly loud even from the inside of a car.

{ https://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }

Meet the Chinese robot worm that could crawl into your brain

Stephen Chen in Beijing

The device could be sent into the brain and transmit electric pulses to the neurons.

Photo: Shutterstock

According to an ancient southern Chinese form of black magic known as Gu a small poisonous creature similar to a worm could be grown in a pot and used to control a person’s mind.

Now a team of researchers in Shenzhen have created a robot worm that could enter the human body, move along blood vessels and hook up to the neurons.

“In a way it is similar to Gu,” said Xu Tiantian, a lead scientist for the project at the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

“But our purpose is not developing a biological weapon. It’s the opposite,” she added.

In recent years, science labs around the world have produced many micro-bots but mostly they were only capable of performing some simple tasks.

But a series of videos released by the team alongside a study in Advanced Functional Materials earlier this month show that the tiny intelligent robots – which they dubbed iRobots – can hop over a hurdle, swim through a tube or squeeze through a gap half its body width.

The 1mm by 3mm robotic worms are not powered by computer chips or batteries, but by an external magnetic field generator.

A video from the team showed the robots performing a range of manoeuvres.

Photo: Handout

Changing the magnetic fields allows the researchers to twist the robot’s body in many different ways and achieve a wide range of movements such as crawling, swinging and rolling, according to their paper.

They can also squeeze through gaps by using infrared radiation to contract their bodies by more than a third.

The worm’s body is also capable of changing colour in different environments because it is made from a transparent, temperature-responsive hydrogel and the video shows that when added to a cup of water at room temperature they become almost invisible.

It also has a “head” made from a neodymium iron-boron magnet and a “tail” constructed from a special composite material.

Xu believes they will prove particularly useful for doctors in the future, for example by being injected into the body and delivering a package of drugs to a targeted area, for example a tumour.

This would limit the effect of the drug to the areas where it is needed and reduce the risk of side effects and the robot worm could exit the body once its task is complete.

The patient would need to lie in an MRI style machine that generates the magnetic field needed to control the robots during the procedure.

The robot worms are controlled by electromagnetic signals.

Photo: Handout

It could also be implanted into the brain because its high mobility and ability to transform means it can survive in this harsh environment where there are rapid blood flows and tiny blood vessels.

Currently, brain implants can only be inserted via a surgical procedure and have a limited capability to integrate with the neurons, which means they can only perform a few simple tasks.

But Xu said the new robots could “work as an implant for brain-computer interface” that would make it possible to communicate directly with a computer without needing a keyboard or even a screen.

She believes this would work by carrying a transmitter that converts external signals into an electric pulse and connect with brain cells to stimulate activities that are not possible using current technology.

Xu admitted that it may be possible to misuse the technology by turning it into a weapon, but said there were still some major barriers to making this effective.

For instance, the controller would need to build a powerful electric field generator with a long effective range to operate the robot worms.

It would also be very difficult to send the microbots to their designated locations without the cooperation of the person they are implanted into because they have to sit or lie down and stay perfectly still while they are moving through the body.

But improving the hardware may overcome these obstacles so Xu could not rule out the possibility the technology could be weaponised one day, but added: “We just hope that day will never come.”

{ https://www.scmp.com/ }

“You see, their young enter through the ears and wrap themselves around the cerebral cortex. This has the effect of rendering the victim extremely susceptible to suggestion… Later, as they grow, follows madness and death…”
– Khan Noonien Singh

Anyone who has ever seen Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan, the second movie in the series, can still remember the horror of Khan releasing larvae of Ceti eels into the ears of Reliant officers Commander Pavel Chekov and Captain Clark Terrell, where they wormed their way into their brains, wrapping themselves around the cerebral cortex to cause brain control, pain, madness and eventual death. It’s nice to know that’s pure fiction, right? RIGHT?

“Once you consume them, they can move throughout your body — your eyes, your tissues and most commonly your brain. They leave doctors puzzled in their wake as they migrate and settle to feed on the body they’re invading; a classic parasite, but this one can get into your head.”

According to CNN, in 2013 a British man of Chinese was found to have a tapeworm moving inside his brain in 2013 – a parasite known as Spirometra erinaceieuropaei. It’s extremely rare and found mostly in Asia – the adult parasite lives in dog and cat intestines, but the eggs can be spread via fecal matter, particularly in water, which appears to be how the man contracted it. In 2018, a man in India died after his brain, brain stem, and cerebellum were infected by the tapeworm Taenia solium. It’s a good thing these worms are rare and no one is trying to make robotic versions of them, right? RIGHT?

“It could also be implanted into the brain because its high mobility and ability to transform means it can survive in this harsh environment where there are rapid blood flows and tiny blood vessels.”

The South China Morning Post reports that scientists in Shenzhen have developed a tiny robot worm that can enter the human body, swim through along blood vessels and hook up to neurons in the brain. The 1mm-by-3mm (.04 in by .12 in) robots are powered externally by a magnetic field generator and use infrared radiation to contract their size by up to a third to squeeze through tight spots. On the noble cause side, Xu Tiantian — lead scientist for the project at the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences – says the robot worms will allow doctors to deliver drugs directly to a specific tumor and then exit the body when done.

“But our purpose is not developing a biological weapon. It’s the opposite.”

Needless to say, using the robot worm as a weapon is entirely possible as soon as a more powerful electric field generator with a longer effective range is available and the robot worms obtain the ability to move while the host human is in motion – they currently have to be lying perfectly still. If he were around today, robot designer Khan Noonien Singh might say: “Piece of cake.”

Xu agrees.

“We just hope that day will never come.”

Or is it already here? Mr. Chekov, care to comment?

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Tales of birds and the world of the paranormal are easy to find. Some accounts, however, are far more intriguing than others. Here are a few examples that, for me, stand out. We’ll begin with a man named Elliott O’Donnell, an acclaimed authority ghosts and life after death, and who penned dozens of books on supernatural phenomena. Born in 1872, he continued writing until his death in 1965, at the age of ninety-three. O’Donnell also had a deep interest in reports of strange creatures, as the following 19^th century account demonstrates: “Henry Spicer, in his Strange Things Among Us, tells the story of a Captain Morgan, an honorable and vivacious gentleman, who, arriving in London in 1841, puts up for the night in a large, old-fashioned hotel. The room in which he slept was full of heavy, antique furniture, reminiscent of the days of King George I, one of the worst periods in modern English history for crime. Despite, however, his grimly suggestive surroundings, Captain Morgan quickly got into bed and was soon asleep. He was abruptly awakened by the sound of flapping, and, on looking up, he saw a huge black bird with outstretched wings and fiery red eyes perched on the rail at the foot of the four-poster bed.”

The tale continues: “The creature flew at him and endeavored to peck his eyes. Captain Morgan resisted, and after a desperate struggle succeeded in driving it to a sofa in the corner of the room, where it settled down and regarded him with great fear in its eyes. Determined to destroy it, he flung himself on the top of it, when, to his surprise and terror, it immediately crumbled into nothingness. He left the house early next morning, convinced that what he had seen was a ghost, but Mr. Spicer offers no explanation as to how one should classify the phenomenon. It may have been the earth-bound spirit of the criminal or viciously inclined person who had once lived there, or it may have been the phantom of an actual bird. Either alternative is feasible.

O’Donnell concluded: “I have heard there is an old house near Poole, in Dorset, and another in Essex, which were formerly haunted by spectral birds, and that as late as 1860 the phantasm of a bird, many times the size of a raven, was so frequently seen by the inmates of a house in Dean Street, Soho, that they eventually grew quite accustomed to it. “But bird hauntings are not confined to houses, and are far more often to be met with out of doors; indeed there are very few woods, and moors, and commons that are not subjected to them. I have constantly seen the spirits of all manner of birds in the parks in Dublin and London. Greenwich Park, in particular, is full of them.” Now, moving on…

The Reverend F.G. Lee was the author of a still-acclaimed 19^th century book titled Glimpses in the Twilight. Published in 1888, it is filled with all manner of amazing and chilling tales, including one of a terrible, monster-bird. Lee, who extensively researched the strange story, said: “In the middle of the last century, circa 1749, owing to several remarkable circumstances which had then recently occurred, a conviction became almost universal among the inhabitants of the village, that the vaults under the church of West Drayton, near Uxbridge, were haunted.”

He continued: “Strange noises were heard in and about the sacred building, and the sexton of that day, a person utterly devoid of superstition, was on inquiry and examination compelled to admit that certain unaccountable occurrences in regard to the vault had taken place. Others maintained that three persons from an adjacent manor-house in company had gone to look through a grating in the side of the foundation of the church – for the ventilation of the vault, and from which screams and noises were heard constantly, and there had seen a very large black raven perched on one of the coffins.”

According to the Reverend Lee: “This strange bird was seen more than once by the then parish clerk pecking from within at the grating, and furiously fluttering about within the enclosed vault. On another occasion it was seen by other people in the body of the church itself. The wife of the parish clerk and her daughter often saw it.” Eventually, however, the beastly bird’s reign of terror was brought to an end, as the reverend noted:

“The local bell-ringers, who all professed to deny its existence and appearance, one evening, however, came together to ring a peal, when they were told by a youth that the big raven was flying about inside the chancel. Coming together into the church with sticks and stones and a lantern, four men and two boys found it fluttering about amongst the rafters. They gave chase to it, flinging at it, shouting at and endeavoring to catch it. Driven from hither and thither for some time, and twice or thrice beaten with a stick, so that one of its wings seemed to have thus been broken and made to droop, the bird fell down wounded with expanded wings, screaming and fluttering into the eastern part of the chancel, when two of the men on rushing towards it to secure it, and driving it into a corner, vaulted over the communion-rails, and violently proceeded to seize it. As the account stands, it at once sank wounded and exhausted on to the floor, as they believed in their certain grasp, but all of a moment – vanished!”

In relation to this particularly weird saga, the wife of Reverend R. L. Burgh, who served at the church of West Drayton in the 1800s, wrote the following to Reverend Lee: “It was many years ago; and I had quite forgotten it until I got your note. I can remember feeling persuaded that a bird must have got into the family vault, and in going outside to look into it through the iron bars to try if anything could be seen there, the sounds were then always in the chancel in the same place.”

Now, it’s time to share with you a story that involves me. Just like almost everyone who has lost someone, my family and I mourned a passing and celebrated a life. For me, it was when my mom died of the effects of Alzheimer’s in 2010. There was, however, something very odd which occurred at the time of my mother’s death. It’s something I have never forgotten. On one particular morning, at my dad’s place in England, we were sitting in the living-room when our conversation was briefly brought to a sudden end. By a loud, single thump. It clearly came from somewhere outside. Puzzled, we took a look out back and found that a blackbird had slammed into the kitchen window and was lying on the ground. It had clearly been killed on impact. Then, the very next day, we drove to the nearby nursing-home which my mom had permanently lived in since 2002. The purpose: to thank all of the staff for their help and care over the years. Right outside the main door to the facility was a dead, brightly-feathered, small bird. We literally had to lift our feet above it to get into the building.

About a week later we had my mom’s funeral, and a few days after that it was time to fly back to the United States. Well, on getting home, what was practically on the doorstep? Yep, another dead bird. And again, it was a brightly colored one. Of course, at some point in their lives pretty much everyone stumbles on a dead bird. But, three of them, across less than two weeks? And one at my dad’s place in the U.K., one in Arlington, Texas where I live, and one at my mother’s care-home, all in the aftermath of her death? Could it have been an odd coincidence? Of course it could. I can’t say I’m a full-on believer in the afterlife. I guess like a lot of us, I just don’t know. I sometimes think there’s something on the “other side.” On other occasions, and also like others, though, I think it might be lights-out forever. But, I still occasionally think of those three dead birds after my mom’s funeral.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Scientists have determined that the Earth’s oldest asteroid crater – named the Yarrabubba crater – happened 2.229 billion years ago. The crater, which is located between Sandstone and Meekatharra in Western Australia’s outback, measures 43 miles wide.

A team of experts from Curtin University in Perth were able to determine the exact age of the crater by using isotopic analysis of the minerals found at the impact zone. They studied zircon and monazite minerals that were found at the bottom of the Yarrabubba crater and were “shock recrystallized” because of the impact. Their study was published in Nature Communications and can be read in full here.

Australian outback

It was always agreed upon that the Yarrabubba crater was one of the oldest on Earth but scientists weren’t able to determine its exact age until recently. In fact, it’s so old that it happened 200 million years before the next oldest impact zone that’s located in South Africa and called the Vredefort crater.

What’s even more interesting is that this impact may have helped lift our planet out of an ancient ice age called “Snowball Earth”. Curtin University Professor Chris Kirkland explained, “Now we know the Yarrabubba crater was made right at the end of what’s commonly referred to as the early Snowball Earth – a time when the atmosphere and oceans were evolving and becoming more oxygenated and when rocks deposited on many continents recorded glacial conditions.” “This twist of fate suggests that the large meteorite impact may have influenced global climate,” added Associate Professor Nicholas Timms.

The Yarrabubba impact may have helped lift our planet out of an ancient ice age.

Half a trillion tons of water vapour would have been sent into Earth’s atmosphere with such a large asteroid hitting a continent covered in ice, therefore, possibly causing changes to our climate. “This finding raises the question whether this impact may have tipped the scales enough to end glacial conditions,” said Timms.

Their study is very important in properly dating ancient craters, some of which may even be older than Yarrabubba. “Yarrabubba is about half the age of the Earth and it raises the question of whether all older impact craters have been eroded or if they are still out there waiting to be discovered,” stated Dr. Aaron Cavosie from Curtin University. As a matter of fact, materials that came from an ancient impact crater have been found in Africa and Australia and they date back to over 2 billion years old, however, the craters in which they came from are still unidentified.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

For as long as the UFO phenomenon has been around there have been those cases of people who claim to have actually been physically whisked away by these entities. What happens after they have been captured varies from report to report, with some speaking of gaining amazing new knowledge, to more cryptic encounters, to truly terrifying ordeals. The case we are looking at here is of the latter variety, and revolves around a group of men who just wanted to have a peaceful vacation in the wilderness, but who would experience what is considered to be one of the most intense and scariest alien abductions on record.

It all started as just a camping and canoeing trip with a group of buddies up in the remote wilderness of Allagash, Maine, in the United States back in the summer of 1976. The plan was for the group, composed of brothers Jim Weiner and Jack Weiner and their friends Charles Foltz and Charles Rak, who had all met at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, to go canoeing down the Allagash Wilderness Waterway, camping out and fishing along the way, and it was supposed to be a great week-long adventure for them. The first day and night went as well as they could hope for, but things would start to get strange from the second evening of their brave excursion, when Weiner noticed a very strange light in the sky, of which he would say:

It was just floating above the treetops, didn’t seem to be moving in any direction. And I looked at it through the binoculars for maybe 15 seconds, 30 seconds, and it suddenly just winked out from the outside edges inward. I mean, it literally just went whooht, like that, and it was gone. There was something about this thing that left me with an odd feeling that wasn’t quite right, but I really didn’t dwell on it.

He tried to just write the strange incident off as an aircraft and get on with his trip, but it would not be long before weird phenomena started up again, this time witnessed by the entire group. On the fourth day of the trip, the group was out night fishing on their canoe at a place called Big Eagle Lake. On the shore they had lit a large bonfire, which flickered eerily out over the black water below them and was meant to give them a sense of direction in the darkness, but even as that beacon sat there on the shore, another light entirely caught their attention, this one in the star flecked sky above them. Rak would explain of it:

I had a feeling there was someone staring at me from behind me. I turned over my right shoulder like that, and I saw this large, round globe of light that looked exactly like what we had seen two nights previously. It had this roiling effect to it, like a miniature sun, very, very bright. It lit the treetops up like daylight, and it was absolutely silent. After looking at it for what seemed like several moments, we decided to signal this thing. That’s when Charlie picked up the flashlight and squeezed off a message–s.o.s.

The plan to signal the object was in retrospect probably not such a good idea, as it then reportedly changed course to head directly towards them. Alone in the wilderness, with no civilization for miles around and bobbing about in the middle of this darkened frigid lake, the sight of this intimidating otherworldly bright object, estimated as being around 80 feet in diameter, caused them to panic and start rowing for shore as fast as they could even as the object drew up upon them. Jim Weiner could not help but look behind him at the inexorable approach of this odd light, and could see that it would soon be right on top of them. He recalls:

I remember looking over my shoulder, trying to keep an eye on this object as it was coming up behind us. It was getting very close. It was almost on top of us at this point.  I remember thinking that we’re not going to outrun this thing. I remember thinking, ‘I could pick up a stone and bounce it off this thing’s side.’ That’s how close it was. And then, all of a sudden, it just streaked away very, very fast, and within a few seconds, it was like a star, just another light in the sky.

Reaching the shore, the group of men was surprised to see that the robust bonfire, which should have been blazing strong after so little time had passed, had been reduced to mere smoldering embers. This suggested that several hours must have passed, yet each of the men agreed that they had only been on the water for less than half an hour, making the dying fire a puzzling conundrum. Even so, they found that they were all extremely exhausted and tired out for some reason, and so just wanted to get back to camp to get a good night’s sleep and continue on with their trip. In fact, at the time they didn’t even really talk about the strangeness that they had just seen, the overwhelming fatigue taking over. This might have been the end of it, and for several years it was, until Weiner began having very vivid, horrific nightmares that would invade his sleep nearly every night and leave him waking up in a cold sweat and state of absolute terror. The content of the dreams was always the same and very specific, with Weiner stating:

I was starting to have nightmares, really terrible nightmares that I could not explain. I found myself in a very brightly lit room. I had no idea where I was or why I was there.  To my left, I could see my brother Jim, Chuck Rak, and Charlie Foltz sitting on some type of bench, and they were all naked. I was wondering why they weren’t helping me, because I felt like I was in danger, and while I’m trying to figure this out, I notice this figure or a dark, shadowy-type figure emerging from this light– this bright light in front of me. I would wake up, uh, uh, sweating and breathing heavily and just in a– in a state of terror and shock.

These bizarre nightmares got so bad that they started to affect his waking life, and it would get stranger when he discovered that the other men who had been with him on that trip were having similar nightmares as well, all of which had shared elements of a feeling of helplessness and of an unknown entity present in the shadows. It did not take long for them to connect these strange nightmares to the incident they’d had out at that remote lake with the mysterious light, and this caused them to contact a UFO researcher by the name of Ray Fowler, of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), who speculated that they might have been abducted by unknown entities and were having suppressed memories bubbling up to the surface in their dreams. He arranged to have the men hypnotically regressed in order to see if their memories could be dug up, and this is where the story would get even weirder than it already was.

The hypnotic sessions were conducted by an Anthony Constantino, and each man was hypnotized separately, with no interaction between them in the meantime, and the stories they had to tell are terrifying to say the least. In every instance, the men described being taken aboard a strange craft at the time of the lake incident, where they were put into a diffusely lit room that looked, according to one of the witnesses, “like a vet’s office.” Here they were approached by grey, long-necked entities with large bald heads, metallic, lidless eyes, and four skeletal fingers, which approached them and proceeded to carry out a series of humiliating medical experiments on them, including taking bodily fluid and tissue samples, as well as performing painful procedures with silvery machines. Foltz in particular was described as being especially subjected to various strange probes and painful scans with a metallic, curved machine, which apparently caused him to scream out in agony. Weiner would say during his session:

They’re–they’re– they don’t know what to do. I think they think I’m going to come after them. I feel like I want to. I feel like I want to– the first one that comes near me, I’m going to throttle him. I don’t like these things. I don’t care where they come from. They shouldn’t be doing this to people. They’re right there. Their face is right in my face. I don’t know why. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know what they want. They’re saying things. In my head they’re saying, ‘Don’t be afraid. They say, ‘Do what we say. Just do what we say.

Interestingly, although the accounts were independent, all of the men involved described the exact same thing, right up to Foltz’ bizarre body scans. Being artists, they were able to draw detailed sketched of the entities and the room they had been in, all of which looked the same, and additionally they all passed psychiatric evaluations and polygraph tests with flying colors. It was all very harrowing and frightening, with Constantino himself saying of it all:

It was the most intense experience I’ve had as a hypnotist. After working with those guys, I was scared. I still am. I think it’s true. I think they were being tagged — the way we tag and study sharks and bears and then release them.

For all appearances it seemed as if they were telling the truth, or at least strongly believed they were. Fowler was so excited about the case that he would go on to write a whole book on it, called The Allagash Abductions, but over the years there would appear some cracks in the story. It all started when Charles Rak began to fall unusually silent on the matter of the abduction, even as the other men freely discussed it with researchers. He would finally come forward to make the claim that, although the lights in the sky had been real, the abductions had been entirely fabricated by the group for the purpose of making some money. Pretty much the only thing he agreed really happened was that they all saw anomalous lights in the sky, but according to him the missing time and the eerie alien encounters they all described were a load of bunk and had never happened, and that on top of this they were all stoned at the time. Yet, the other three men adamantly stuck by their story, with Weiner saying:

Jack, Charlie, and I, after all these years, are still in agreement with the Eagle Lake event as we (three) remember it. We also accept the results of the hypnotic regression sessions and subsequent polygraph tests as supportive of an abduction scenario.

To make matters more complicated still, they and Fowler believe that Rak was intentionally trying to destroy their credibility after a falling out, interestingly because they say that he was the one trying to make money off of it and the rest of the group did not agree with that. They are also quick to point out that Rak was always a bit of a wild card and had long had temper issues, essentially painting him as someone who had lost control and then flown off the rails. Weiner would tell Fowler of Rak:

We definitely steer clear of him because the guy is a loose cannon and a mental disaster area. I personally believe that Mr. Rak’s self-aggrandizing rationalizations and disparaging accusations are simply the rantings of an angry and resentful individual, on whom his former friends have turned their backs.

So what is going on here? Was Rak just fed up with his friends and wanted to spoil the party? Are the other three correct in their assessment of what went on? The case of the Allagash abductions has gone on to become quite the classic case, and has been debated and discussed to this day. What happened to these men out there in that remote land? Was this a genuine UFO abduction or is there something else going on behind the scenes? The three witnesses other than Rak have continued to stand by their story, and the truth of the matter is that we will probably never know, and this just serves to be one more weird case to add to the many.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

“The center of the galaxy is where extreme astrophysics occurs — the X-sports of astrophysics.”

If that description of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way doesn’t get more young students interested in astrophysics, nothing will. Andrea Ghez, UCLA’s Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine Professor of Astrophysics and director of the UCLA Galactic Center Group, used those words in a press release to describe a new discovery concerning Sagittarius A* — the supermassive black hole that the rest of the Milky Way revolves around and tries to avoid being sucked into. Unfortunately (well, not for the black hole), Ghez and her team have discovered four mysterious objects that may belong to a new class that will soon (in space terms) be a lost class.

“One of the things that has gotten everyone excited about the G objects is that the stuff that gets pulled off of them by tidal forces as they sweep by the central black hole must inevitably fall into the black hole. When that happens, it might be able to produce an impressive fireworks show since the material eaten by the black hole will heat up and emit copious radiation before it disappears across the event horizon.”

Mark Morris, UCLA professor of physics and astronomy and co-author with Ghez of the new study published in the journal Nature, sounds equally excited as he describes the discovery of G3, G4, G5 and G6 – strange objects joining G1 and G2 in orbit around Sagittarius A*. Ghez also discovered G1 and both were puzzling because they “look like gas and behave like stars.” The new four also appear to be the same but have very different orbits. Ghez now believes that all of this strange behavior and appearance is due to these G-objects once being binary stars that have been forcefully merged together as they approach the supermassive black hole.

“Mergers of stars may be happening in the universe more often than we thought, and likely are quite common. Black holes may be driving binary stars to merge. It’s possible that many of the stars we’ve been watching and not understanding may be the end product of mergers that are calm now.”

“Blame the black hole” could become the new catch-all excuse for strange occurrences around the universe, but in this case it sounds plausible. Of course, everything is ultimately about us, so Ghez addresses the inevitable question of how this discovery will affect Earth – even though our Sun isn’t a binary.

“The Earth is in the suburbs compared to the center of the galaxy, which is some 26,000 light-years away.”

That sounds somewhat comforting … except discoveries like these keep making the universe seem smaller and supermassive black holes, wandering black holes, supernovas and other destructive space objects and events seem so much closer. Perhaps it’s inescapable (just like the gravity of Sagittarius A*) that young astrophysicists will continue to make these kinds of discoveries and scare us with more stories of the extreme sports X-sports going on int the not-so-distant supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

A couple of nights ago I was asked for my thoughts on the hugely controversial Project Blue Beam. If you don’t know about it, read on. Within the field of conspiracy theorizing, there are few greater controversies than Project Blue Beam. Allegedly, it is the brainchild of a secret group of powerful figures in, among many others, NASA, the United Nations, the Bilderbergers, the Trilateral Commission, and the Vatican. Project Blue Beam, so the story goes, will be at the forefront of a program to create a new society dominated by martial law and a ruthless world government. And how might such a government come about? By faking the second coming of Jesus Christ, specifically by using sophisticated hologram-type technology to project huge images of the Son of God across the skies of the United States, Canada, Australia, and much of Europe. Other parts of the world will see massive images of Buddha, of Allah, of Krishna, of Mohammed, and of multiple other gods, depending on the regions, the people and their cultures, and the beliefs of the relevant nations.

In mere days, however, each and every one of those images will merge into one far more sinister and terrifying image: that of the Anti-Christ, who will inform the people of Earth that not a single one of the world’s religions has the correct version of events. Only that of this nightmarish entity is the accurate version. As a result, the entire human race will be expected to bow down and worship the Anti-Christ. Such a thing will result in worldwide chaos, disorder, and anarchy – which the people behind Project Blue Beam shrewdly know only all too well. With the world plunged into states of fear and mayhem, this terrible ruse will then allow the United Nations to coordinate a planet-wide program to enslave the Earth’s entire population. The story is as fantastic as it is terrifying. But is it true?

The source of the Project Blue Beam story was Serge Monast, a journalist from Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Although Monast began in his career in regular journalism, by 1994, he was focused almost exclusively on conspiracy theories, including matters relative to Masonic-based conspiracy theories and matters relative to the one world government scenario. It was at this time that Monast claimed to have uncovered massive amounts of secret information on Project Blue Beam, and how it would be utilized to enslave all but that aforementioned elite. That Monast died in December 1996, of a heart attack, and at the age of just fifty-one, has led to suspicions within conspiracy-driven realms that he was murdered by agents of this dangerous program. The reason: to prevent Monast from blowing the whistle, big-time, on the project.

The story has provoked numerous questions: Are our gods about to be brought before us, but in a fashion few could scarcely imagine? Does such sophisticated holographic technology really exist? Could such an incredible ruse fool the entire Human Race? What are the long-term goals of Project Blue Beam? Who was Serge Monast? Who were his sources of information? Was he murdered for what he knew? Is Project Blue Beam looming just around the corner? Or, is the Project Blue Beam saga nothing more than one of the most outrageous hoaxes of the modern era?

There’s no doubt that government and military agencies have worked hard to perfect the ultimate holograms – chiefly to use them on battlefields. When it comes to the matter of Project Blue Beam, I can sum up my views in four, concise words: “Give me a break!!!” It’s one thing to develop advanced holograms for military purposes. It’s quite another, however, to have the entire planet and everyone on it controlled by secret societies and government agencies – and all in a matter of just weeks, which is what Monast suggested. As our technologies develop, so will our holograms; that is all but inevitable. But, a holographic Anti-Christ and a one-world government, one that we all accept and don’t stand up against in our billions? Don’t worry: it’s garbage. Entertaining garbage. But, still garbage.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

The question of whether we are alone in the universe has swirled around our consciousness since as long as we were able to even comprehend the concept of a universe at all. We have long reached out to the stars, looked out over that vast sea of cosmic mysteries, and wondered if there might be anyone else out there doing the same, looking right back at us. Is there other intelligent life in the universe, or are we truly alone in this cold expanse? There has never been an answer to this, and we continue to try and find one, yet as time goes by it sometimes seems that for all we know there is no one looking out, and that we are the sole consciousness of this universe of ours. We throw out our radio signals, announce our presence, and scour every corner that our technology will allow, but there is nothing, only silence. There have been many ideas on why this should be, and some are far more ominous and sinister than others.

The main problem we face in the end with regards to other intelligent lifeforms is that, although the universe is vast, with the Milky Way alone composed of around 200 billion stars and billions of planets, if even a tiny faction of those have produced intelligent, spacefaring civilizations, then it has been reasoned that we should have definitely heard from them or at least detected them by now. This conundrum was perhaps best illustrated in what has come to be called the Fermi Paradox, which I have covered before but which probably deserves a refresher here. In 1950, influential and notable physicist Enrico Fermi was working for Los Alamos National Laboratory, and one day while having lunch with colleagues Emil Konopinski, Edward Teller and Herbert York, the conversation came around to UFOs and alien life. The group began discussing the possibility of other alien civilizations out there scattered across the galaxy, and that was when Fermi simply and bluntly asked “Where are they?” This generated a bit of laughter around the table, but he was perfectly serious. When the others asked exactly what he had meant, Fermi explained that if there was another civilization or civilizations that had developed out there with the technological ability to traverse space, then eventually they should have already spread out all over the galaxy, and we should have had some brush with them by now in some form.

Fermi reasoned that there had been plenty of time for them to do so, and utilized complicated equations to illustrate that over millions and millions of years, just a drop in the bucket compared to the age of the universe, these hypothetical alien civilizations should have at least found us by now. Fermi explained that with so many stars and potential planets in the observable universe, then if even a fraction of those had produced intelligent, spacefaring life then they would have exponentially broken their barriers and moved out into the galaxy, colonizing new worlds, and we would have surely known about them by now. By Fermi’s various calculations, the probability for intelligent life somewhere in the universe was high considering the sheer scale of it all, and if such advanced societies had developed, then after so much time aliens should be everywhere by now, or at the very least given us some sort of sign of their existence, even if such societies are rare. Yet there is no one, no evidence of such a thing, not a single sign that there is anyone else out there at all. Essentially, like Fermi asked, where is everybody?

This is the main gist of what has gone on to become known as the “Fermi Paradox,” and although it has been criticized by many as being perhaps too simplistic and making too many assumptions based on our own ideas of life, it has nevertheless gone on to become a major cornerstone for debate on the topic of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, and has inevitably hung over most discussions on the matter. This offhand lunchtime remark has propelled the imagination and driven the efforts of organizations like SETI. No matter what one thinks of the veracity of Fermi’s question, it is a compelling one to say the least, and there have been many numerous and varied theories that have come forth to try and explain just why we have not found anyone else out there in this cold universe of ours.

This is all backed up by what is known as the Drake Equation, which was conceived of in 1961 by a Dr. Frank Drake, of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia. Drake wished to come up with a mathematical formula for calculating the number of possible technologically advanced civilizations in our galaxy and takes into consideration various factors such as the number of stars and their rate of formation, the number of possible planets around these stars, the number which might be inhabitable, and many others. When all of this is plugged into the formula, the result is that there should be around two dozen spacefaring civilizations in our galaxy, yet we have not heard a peep. There have been many reasons for why this might be, some of which I have covered here before, but one of the more sinister and grim of these is what is rather ominously known as the “Dark Forest Theory.”

The depressing idea more or less boils down to that every alien race would naturally put its survival above that of another species, and that considering the chaotic nature of the universe and innate problems with trying to communicate with a completely alien civilization, compounded by the fact that we can never know what the intentions of such a race would be, the best bet is to stay quiet and hope no one finds you, or conversely wipe them out before they do the same to you. The theory was best laid out in the 2008 science fiction novel The Dark Forest, part of the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy by author Lui Cixin, in which the argument is presented that A) All life seeks to ensure its own survival, B) There is no way to know if another lifeform will try to destroy you, and C) Without an assurance that this won’t happen, the safest logical way to avoid termination is to stay hidden or destroy them before they can do the same to you, a sort of preemptive attack. In essence, any alien races that haven’t annihilated each other already are maintaining “radio silence” so to speak, hiding away in a state of paranoia and fear, and so are loathe to make their presence known. Lui would write of this:

The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds other life — another hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or a tottering old man, a fairy or a demigod — there’s only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them. In this forest, hell is other people. An eternal threat that any life that exposes its own existence will be swiftly wiped out. This is the picture of cosmic civilization. It’s the explanation for the Fermi Paradox.

Lui also mentions that resources in the universe would be finite and limited, and so for a civilization to expand across stars they would necessarily have to consume as much as they could and eliminate any competitors. In other words, any other alien race other than one’s own is an unknown competitor at best, and a catastrophic threat at worst. Between members of one species, such as between humans, this might be resolved through diplomatic solutions, although even that doesn’t work out a lot of the time, yet with a completely alien race all bets would be off, so the best solution to ensure survival is to hide or destroy the other before they have a chance to pose a threat. This theory was touched on and supported by science fiction writer David Brin as well, of which he rather darkly writes:

It is consistent with all of the facts and philosophical principles described in the first part of this article. There is no need to struggle to suppress the elements of the Drake equation in order to explain the Great Silence, nor need we suggest that no ETIS anywhere would bear the cost of interstellar travel. It need only happen once for the results of this scenario to become the equilibrium condition in the Galaxy. We would not have detected extraterrestrial radio traffic- nor would any ETIS have ever settled on Earth- because all were killed shortly after discovering radio.

If this theory has any merit at all, then it is probably not a good idea that we have been relentlessly announcing our position and existence into the frigid void of space through decades of radio transmissions and space probes, something that has alarmed the more negative of the scientific community. The late physicist Stephen Hawing notoriously opposed contact with extraterrestrials, often lamenting that to make contact would be a death sentence for us, and he once said:

If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans. We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.

Many other scientists have shared this sentiment. This fits in very well with the Dark Forest Theory, and if it is an accurate solution to the Fermi Paradox, then we are very lucky that no one has been listening, or perhaps there are alien races cowering in the shadows who are indeed listening, and just wishing that we would shut up. Even if the other civilization knows that we are technologically inferior and not a threat now, the distances and time frames involved make sure that there are no guarantees. As one commenter on the site Quora puts it:

You might be thinking that if an advanced civilization detects the radio signals from Earth then they would know that we are less advanced and therefore not a threat. But again you have to consider the vast distance and time it takes for those signals to travel. Even if a nearby civilization (only 10 or 20 light years away) detects us, it would take hundreds or even thousands of years for them to reach us and that is plenty of time for a technological explosion. If they don’t attack us at once, then we might develop technology fast enough to catch up and threaten them.

It won’t be like Star Trek. Without faster than light travel, there won’t be any communication, diplomacy or trade with alien races. It’s kill or be killed. So that’s why we haven’t heard a peep from other civilizations. The universe is a dark forest where every civilization is a silent hunter. They desperately try to stay undetectable while hunting for other planets to colonize and threats to destroy.

It is all about the best interest of one’s own race, every man for himself, and in this theory this is the only way to guarantee that we survive this morass of bleakness. The Dark Forest Theory has drawn comparisons to a thought experiment known as “The Prisoners’ Dilemma,” a paradox in which two individuals acting in their own self-interests do not always produce the optimal outcome that is most beneficial to both. Basically imagine you have two criminal accomplices to a crime being interrogated in two separate rooms, with no way of knowing what the other is up to. Each one is told that if neither of them rats the other out, and they both remain silent, then they will both go to jail for one year on a lesser charge. However, if one of them is to implicate the other, he will walk free while the other does a 3-year sentence, longer than they would have done otherwise. If both of them point the finger, they will both get 2 years. The best outcome for both is obviously to keep quiet, but not knowing what the other will do and without faith that the other will also stay silent, the safe bet is to incriminate the other as soon as possible and avoid jail time altogether just to be safe. This is the general gist of the Dark Forest Theory in essence.

It is all rather pessimistic and morbid for sure, and paints the universe as an innately unfriendly place and all intelligent species as ruthless predators looking to exploit, hide, or kill. It all seems actually pretty possible just from looking at life on earth. Humans have long subjugated and wiped out other tribes and species in an attempt to expand, so mightn’t an alien race be prone to the same sort of behavior, as Hawking pointed out? There seems to be no universal moral code that other cultures must abide by, so in this way of thinking, if we can’t even follow our own moral rules on this planet, then how could we ever expect a positive outcome from an alien race?

In some ways it makes sense, but never fear, because there have been a criticisms aimed at the idea of the Dark Forest as well. The main problem with it is that it takes a very narrow and human-centric view of what an advanced civilization should be like. Who is to say they would have to be aggressive and looking to destroy, or that they would think in any way like us at all? Indeed, there have been a lot of scientists who support the idea that any spacefaring civilization would be hundreds or thousands of years more advanced than us, and so would by definition have by necessity learned to overcome such self-destructive behaviors such as war and murder, and to have mastered universal empathy. One scientist who believes this is Seti’s former director, Jill Tarter, who thinks that such a civilization would have risen above such things and that the very fact that they are advanced enough to come to us means that they would be sophisticated, peaceful, and benevolent. Tarter said of this to Business Insider:

The idea of a civilization which has managed to survive far longer than we have…and the fact that that technology remains an aggressive one, to me, doesn’t make sense. The pressure of long-term survival — of limiting population…I think requires that the evolutionary trends that ratcheted up our intelligence…continues to evolve into something that’s cooperative and take on global scale problems.

With regards to a species hiding out and lying low in the hopes that others don’t come for them, there is the criticism that it would be very hard to advance to this stage of development by remaining completely silent and meek. To reach a state of advanced technology and the ability to cross the sea of stars would be very difficult to do while remaining completely invisible to other such races, so there would be no guaranteed way for them to totally cower in the shadows while simultaneously reaching such a pinnacle of civilization. There is also the fact that for as much as other powers might be a threat, there has always been value in trade, cooperation, and forging alliances as well, which would not be possible in this climate of extreme paranoia. Yet another fact is simply that we cannot possibly know how an alien species would perceive threats or risks, so assuming what they should do is over anthropomorphizing them.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, depending on how you look at it, we have not yet made alien contact as far as we know, and so the question remains: where are all of the aliens? One would like to think that they are out there and we simply, for some reason haven’t found them yet, and one would also hope that if we ever get the opportunity to make their acquaintance that they will be benevolent and friendly. The Dark Forest Theory is in the end just one idea, and one that was originally posited as fiction, so perhaps we can look forward to a more positive outcome, and have hope that the universe is not an inhospitable enemy. Only time will tell, and perhaps one day we will know the answer to the question of whether it was a good idea to shout out our presence, or if we should have hidden in the shadows like everyone else.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

On January 20, 2020 while watching NASA's live feed, a resident of Brighton, UK noticed a chevron UFO in the background of the International Space Station. The chevron UFO is surrounded by mystery and often compared to the black knight UFO. Besides you may wonder why NASA and other space agencies use the chevron logo.

Witness report:

I was on my phone watching the NASA’s spacewalk 63 aboard the ISS aired in real time yesterday on the 20th of January 2020, around 6 hours and 30 mins into the space walk the last astronaut was preparing to enter back into the air lock for depressurization and re-entry into the interior of the ISS.

The two female astronauts involved in the spacewalk included Christina Koch and Jessica (can’t remember the surname).

I was watching Jessica on her way to the air lock impressed with the quality of the camera being used filming the final moments of the spacewalk on the exterior of the ISS, and then I noticed something strange in the bottom right corner of the screen.

In total for the time I viewed the UFO on screen it stood perfectly still for about three seconds before shooting off which took about 0.5 seconds.

Honestly I briefly thought it was an insect given it’s appearance as a tilted letter T, assuming that the shaft of the T was the body and the extremities either side (longer than the shaft of the t like shape) were perhaps it’s wings.

I then looked to see if it was attached to the ISS in any way hoping that perhaps a beam of light might reflect of a wire demonstrating that this T shaped object was connected to the exterior of the ISS.

Whilst doing so I had a sudden realization that it wasn’t attached at all and that it was perhaps a UFO. I decided to quickly screenshot it and upon doing so it zoomed of SO fast it was like, god I don’t know it was gone and shrunk to a point of infinity in less than the space of a second.

It did not gradually accelerate it just instantaneously shot off into the distance exactly following the direction the camera was facing until it could no longer be seen.

The video feed in use soon after changed to a different camera aboard the station.

NASA and other space agencies use the chevron logo.

The photo of the UFO, submitted to Mufon, was about 80% during its shooting off phase, it was originally about 5 times closer and larger looking due to its close proximity. You can see that isn’t just some glitch in the camera lens as the sun light hitting the object is on the same side as the sun light hitting the ISS.

Other videos of objects seen by ISS, selected by peter2011

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

Here’s Why Scientists Are So Dismissive Of UFOs

Our new alien overlords aren’t likely to be landing anytime soon, sad to say, despite news reports of the Pentagon’s secret UFO program.

A Department of Defense “Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program,” which investigated sightings of mystery aircraft moving in impossible ways, thrilled UFO fans in reports this week in both the New York Times and Politico Magazine. Accompanied by released videos of military pilots expressing bafflement at artifacts on cockpit screens, the news seemed a respite from earthly concerns about death and taxes.

But experts in real-life optical illusions expressed more caution, perhaps best summed up by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson telling CNN, “Call me when you have a dinner invite from an alien.”

“Green flashes,” “inversion,” and “ghost” mirages have bedeviled fliers for decades. These illusions are created by different layers of the air acting like lenses. An optical effects archive maintained by astronomer Andrew Young of San Diego State University details the physics of such observations as seen by the eye, cameras, and video recordings. A “subsun,” for example, is a remarkably bright solar reflection from ice crystals floating in the air. The reflection’s circular or flattened shape could resemble a UFO.

Not all of the effects reported by news stories can be explained by mirages, optics expert Joseph Shaw of Montana State University told BuzzFeed News. “Reports of objects accelerating in different directions seen by pilots sounds different,” as well as claims of fallen “alloys” collected by the Pentagon. But that doesn’t mean the objects come from outside of our atmosphere.

“Certainly the Air Force should be trying to figure out phenomena reported by pilots,” investigative writer Joe Nickell of the Center for Inquiry, who has investigated UFO reports for two decades, told BuzzFeed News. “But to immediately decide something unexplained is ‘extraterrestrial’ is just really unlikely.”

Defense Department investigations into unexplained aerial phenomena date at least to the start of the Cold War, since the 1947 “Roswell Incident” crash of a secret spy balloon, Project Mogul, in the New Mexico desert.

Around the end of the Cold War, in the “X Files” era, reports of mystery aircraft picked up, security analyst John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org told BuzzFeed News, tied to early development of US stealth fighter and bomber planes. A long history of dubious reports since the 1960s lead him to conclude, “anyone who was paying attention to UFOs had too much time on their hands.”One other source of skepticism about the Pentagon’s UFO program is that it originated in the patronage of former Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, and was contracted to Bigelow Aerospace, owned by an avowed believer in UFOs, Robert Bigelow. It reappeared in the news reports as a private effort headed by its former program director, Luis Elizondo, and supported by Blink 182 guitarist Tom DeLonge. Elizondo identified himself as a believer in extraterrestrials in the reports.

“I think it is telling that the program was initiated at the behest of Senator Reid and on behalf of a friend and constituent of his,” Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists told BuzzFeed News. “If DoD had been genuinely concerned about the subject, I believe it would have undertaken the program on its own volition.”

A Defense Department spokesperson, Laura Ochoa, confirmed to BuzzFeed News that it cancelled the $22 million program in 2012. “It was determined that there were other, higher priority issues that merited funding and it was in the best interest of the DoD to make a change,” she said.

But that doesn’t mean the government’s search for aliens has stopped forever, she added: “The DoD takes seriously all threats and potential threats to our people, our assets, and our mission and takes action whenever credible information is developed.”

Source 

• www.buzzfeednews.com

{ https://www.soulask.com/ }

Asteroid 2020 AV2 (arrow), found orbiting closer to the sun than Venus, appears as a white dot in this image from a telescope in Italy that is part of the Virtual Telescope Project.

GIANLUCA MASI/THE VIRTUAL TELESCOPE PROJECT

President Eisenhower and Extraterrestrials? Film Explores This Urban Legend

Article by Greg Archer  -  (desertsun.com)

• Earlier this month, Christopher Munch screened his new movie, “The 11th Green” at the 31st annual Palm Springs International Film Festival in Palm Springs, California. The movie portrays President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s alleged secret meetings with extraterrestrial emissaries during the 1950s.

• “There was an urban legend out there …in the 1950s that Dwight Eisenhower had one or more face-to-face interactions with visitors from other worlds,” says Munch. “What interested me about the story was not so much the specifics of it or whether it was true or not, but more so … how (Eisenhower) would have potentially reflected back on those experiences late in his life. Would he have regrets or done things differently?”

• The storyline involves a Washington DC journalist named Jeremy who moves into his late father’s house, which by coincidence was formerly owned by President Eisenhower before the President’s death in 1969. Jeremy’s father served on the National Security Council staff for President Eisenhower back in the day. His father’s former protégé gives him reels of film that suggest America had interaction with off-world visitors 50 years ago, but the “extraterrestrial question” was left in the wrong hands. The film portrays Eisenhower in 1967 contemplating the extraterrestrial presence kept hidden by a shadow government. The story switches time-periods from Jeremy’s father as a young counselor to the President in the 1950s, to modern day as Jeremy is piecing together the history.

• Munch notes that, “In the course of the last year, the film has become timelier … as “major publications have documented … incidents involving the U.S. Military engaging with UFOs over the past 15 years or so.” The military’s revelations of UFOs “cannot be easily dismissed, as it was from the 1950s onward, where UFOs and ETs were only considered in the context of the ‘giggle factor.’”

• Regarding Eisenhower’s encounters with alien beings, Munch believes that such encounters would have been “routine” for the former President. “I don’t think anything really phased Eisenhower,” says Munch. As a mainstream journalist, Jeremy’s character “certainly has a predisposition”. “[B]ut it’s balanced out by his concern for the validity of what he’s reporting. I think that’s the quandary for any journalist who is having to report on the subject of UFOs or extraterrestrials.”

• [Editor’s Note]   I doubt that Eisenhower considered his meetings with extraterrestrial beings to be “routine”. I doubt that anyone would find interactions with aliens routine, except maybe Corey Goode. Eisenhower was famously under a great deal of stress, causing multiple heart attacks during his presidency. After he had completed his second term in office, his farewell address in January 1961 alluded to a shadow government hiding the fact that they were working with extraterrestrial beings, and creating a massive ‘military industrial complex’ that owed no allegiance to the elected government of the United States nor its citizens.

Christopher Munch

Written and directed by Christopher Munch, “The 11th Green” begins on slow simmer and eventually arrives at an emotional boil as it floats back and forth through time to explore a curious proposition: that former President Dwight D. Eisenhower was not only interested in but also had contact with extraterrestrials.

The film, which was partially shot in Palm Desert and other Coachella Valley locations, screens in the Locals Spotlight program at the 31st annual Palm Springs International Film Festival.

that Dwight Eisenhower had one or more face-to-face interactions with visitors from other worlds,” Munch says. “What interested me about the story was not so much the specifics of it or whether it was true or not, but more so the emotional ‘what if?’ involving Eisenhower. How this man would have potentially reflected back on those experiences late in his life. Would he have regrets or done things differently?”

How did Munch craft a story with a potentially contentious subject matter that today’s audiences could embrace? With an inventive storyline.

The plot: After his 85-year-old father dies from a sudden heart attack, slick Washington D.C. journalist Jeremy Rudd (played by Campbell Scott) returns to his golf resort home. Fighting memories of his beleaguered father-and-son relationship, Jeremy suddenly becomes much more acquainted with his father’s mysterious legacy.

Toss in a romantic interest via his father’s former assistant, Laurie (played by Agnes Bruckner), and a visit from his father’s protégé, Jacobsen (played by Currie Graham), who hands Jeremy reels of film that suggest America had interaction with off-world visitors 50 years ago, and our protagonist suddenly finds himself in a personal and professional conundrum.

Is his newfound potential love interest clouding his interest? Should he believe in the film footage presented to him?

A scene from "The 11th Green" directed by Christopher Munch.

Provided

Running parallel to the present-day storyline, the story reveals Jeremy’s father served on the National Security Council staff of the former president (played by George Gerdes) and that the country’s collective fear pretty much left the “extraterrestrial question” in the wrong hands. Then, in 1967, two years before his death, the president finds himself revisiting the ghosts of his past in the same house that Jeremy would later inherit from his father, who, in this creative iteration, happened to own it after Ike.

“Originally the storyline was to focus just on Eisenhower in his home in Palm Desert,” Munch says. “But ultimately it would take place in several different time periods. I adopted the framing device of a contemporary journalist whose father was a young man in Eisenhower’s council and very trusted and I took the liberty of having him purchase the house Eisenhower once lived in, which, of course, didn’t happen in real life, but it seemed like a way that the protagonist could get immersed into what happened.”

Munch, a Los Angeles resident who frequents the valley, filmed the project on a low budget and with minimal crew. He says he found the Greater Palm Springs Film Alliance & Film Office to be very helpful, noting, “it’s exactly the opposite of when you’re filming a major production in places like Los Angeles where there’s a lot of red tape.”

Local landmarks such as Shields Date Garden in Indio, which Munch had visited many times, are also featured in the film. 

“I wrote a scene that would take place there in the Shields’ theater, where our intelligence operative shows our protagonist the alleged footage from Eisenhower’s meeting with the extraterrestrial,” he says. “It was nice way to photograph these historic local places.”

As for the subject matter of the film, there could be a bit of kismet involved.

A 2017 Washington Post article noted that The Pentagon officially confirmed there was a $22 million government program “to collect and analyze ‘anomalous aerospace threats’ — government-speak for UFOs.” In 2019, the New York Times featured interviews with several Navy pilots who said they witnessed, and in several instances recorded, unexplained flying objects off of the East Coast. 

“In the course of the last year, the film has become timelier,” Munch says. “Major publications have documented, in a very dry and matter-of-fact way, incidents involving the U.S. Military engaging with UFOs over the past 15 years or so. This has all been presented in a way which cannot be easily dismissed, as it was from the 1950s onward, where UFOs and ETs were only considered in the context of the ‘giggle factor.’ The subject is timelier even though these current articles have no direct relation to those Eisenhower years.” 

And what of Eisenhower’s alleged encounters with a higher intelligence?

“I find that it would have been very routine for him; I don’t think anything really phased Eisenhower,” Munch muses. “As far as my protagonist in the film, I certainly arrived at the scenes with his incredulity. He’s a journalist who’s reported on mainstream and fringe science. He certainly has a predisposition, but it’s balanced out by his concern for the validity of what he’s reporting. I think that’s the quandary for any journalist who is having to report on the subject of UFOs or extraterrestrials.”

16:14 minute Eisenhower farewell speech, January 17, 1961 (‘Ewafa’ YouTube)

{ https://exonews.org/ }

After an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs, volcanic eruption may have helped life flourish on Earth

(Image: © NASA/Don Davis)

{ https://www.space.com/ }

Alien life is out there. But our theories are steering us away from it.

By Peter Vickers 

Expect the unexpected.

(Image: © Shutterstock)

If we discovered evidence of alien life, would we even realize it? Life on other planets could be so different from what we're used to that we might not recognize any biological signatures that it produces.

Recent years have seen changes to our theories about what counts as a biosignature and which planets might be habitable, and further turnarounds are inevitable. But the best we can really do is interpret the data we have with our current best theory, not with some future idea we haven't had yet.

This is a big issue for those involved in the search for extraterrestrial life. As Scott Gaudi of Nasa's Advisory Council has said: "One thing I am quite sure of, now having spent more than 20 years in this field of exoplanets … expect the unexpected."

But is it really possible to "expect the unexpected"? Plenty of breakthroughs happen by accident, from the discovery of penicillin to the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation left over from the Big Bang. These often reflect a degree of luck on behalf of the researchers involved. When it comes to alien life, is it enough for scientists to assume "we'll know it when we see it"?

Many results seem to tell us that expecting the unexpected is extraordinarily difficult. "We often miss what we don't expect to see," according to cognitive psychologist Daniel Simons, famous for his work on inattentional blindness. His experiments have shown how people can miss a gorilla banging its chest in front of their eyes. Similar experiments also show how blind we are to non-standard playing cards such as a black four of hearts. In the former case, we miss the gorilla if our attention is sufficiently occupied. In the latter, we miss the anomaly because we have strong prior expectations.

There are also plenty of relevant examples in the history of science. Philosophers describe this sort of phenomenon as "theory-ladenness of observation". What we notice depends, quite heavily sometimes, on our theories, concepts, background beliefs and prior expectations. Even more commonly, what we take to be significant can be biased in this way.

For example, when scientists first found evidence of low amounts of ozone in the atmosphere above Antarctica, they initially dismissed it as bad data. With no prior theoretical reason to expect a hole, the scientists ruled it out in advance. Thankfully, they were minded to double check, and the discovery was made.

More than 200,000 stars captured in one small section of the sky by NASA's TESS mission.  (Image credit: NASA)

Could a similar thing happen in the search for extraterrestrial life? Scientists studying planets in other solar systems (exoplanets) are overwhelmed by the abundance of possible observation targets competing for their attention. In the last 10 years scientists have identified more than 3,650 planets - more than one a day. And with missions such as NASA's TESS exoplanet hunter this trend will continue.

Each and every new exoplanet is rich in physical and chemical complexity. It is all too easy to imagine a case where scientists do not double check a target that is flagged as "lacking significance", but whose great significance would be recognized on closer analysis or with a non-standard theoretical approach.

However, we shouldn't exaggerate the theory-ladenness of observation. In the Müller-Lyer illusion, a line ending in arrowheads pointing outwards appears shorter than an equally long line with arrowheads pointing inwards. Yet even when we know for sure that the two lines are the same length, our perception is unaffected and the illusion remains. Similarly, a sharp-eyed scientist might notice something in her data that her theory tells her she should not be seeing. And if just one scientist sees something important, pretty soon every scientist in the field will know about it.

History also shows that scientists are able to notice surprising phenomena, even biased scientists who have a pet theory that doesn't fit the phenomena. The 19th-century physicist David Brewster incorrectly believed that light is made up of particles traveling in a straight line. But this didn't affect his observations of numerous phenomena related to light, such as what's known as birefringence in bodies under stress. Sometimes observation is definitely not theory-laden, at least not in a way that seriously affects scientific discovery.

We need to be open-minded

Certainly, scientists can't proceed by just observing. Scientific observation needs to be directed somehow. But at the same time, if we are to "expect the unexpected", we can't allow theory to heavily influence what we observe, and what counts as significant. We need to remain open-minded, encouraging exploration of the phenomena in the style of Brewster and similar scholars of the past.

Studying the universe largely unshackled from theory is not only a legitimate scientific endeavor — it's a crucial one. The tendency to describe exploratory science disparagingly as "fishing expeditions" is likely to harm scientific progress. Under-explored areas need exploring, and we can't know in advance what we will find.

In the search for extraterrestrial life, scientists must be thoroughly open-minded. And this means a certain amount of encouragement for non-mainstream ideas and techniques. Examples from past science (including very recent ones) show that non-mainstream ideas can sometimes be strongly held back. Space agencies such as NASA must learn from such cases if they truly believe that, in the search for alien life, we should "expect the unexpected."

Peter Vickers, Associate Professor in Philosophy of Science, Durham University

• Where Does the Concept of Time Travel Come From?
• 10 Exoplanets That Could Host Alien Life
• 13 Ways to Hunt Intelligent Aliens

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

{ https://www.space.com/ }

CHILLING 1200-YEAR-OLD VIKING STONE WARNS OF FUTURE LITTLE ICE AGES

According to new archaeological research, roughly 300 years before Rökstenen was erected, the world was struck by a climate catastrophe which saw global average temperatures plunge significantly. Scandinavia was one of the regions worst impacted by this shift, with crop failure, starvation, and mass death ripping through Northern Europe–more than 50% of the population was lost, along with many species.

Furthermore, a string of violent volcanic eruptions darkened the skies with ash at this time, adding to the cooling, and further amplifying the crop failure, famine, and wars.

“Before the Rök stone was erected, several ominous events occurred,” explained Bo Gräslund, a professor of archeology at Uppsala University. “A strong solar storm painted the sky in dramatic red colors, the harvests were hit by an extremely cold summer, and later a solar eclipse occurred just after the sunrise. It could have been enough of one of these events to trigger concerns about a new Fimbulwinter.”

Why the runes were so deeply encrypted is anyone’s guess.

Perhaps whoever had the Rökstenen engraved didn’t want just anyone to read it.

It was a message of terror, after all.

It was a reminder of a cataclysmic past.

It was a warning of the terrible power of the Sun.

Per Holmberg and his team claim to have uncovered an ominous prophecy. The stone speaks of a “battle enduring for centuries,” but not a fight with man, but one with nature. For a full read of the researchers’ recently published study, click here.

We at Electroverse are also forewarning of the terrible power of the Sun, and that these prophesied cold times are returning in earnest, in line with the historically low solar activity currently being experienced.

Even NASA agrees, in part at least, with their recent forecast revealing this next solar cycle (25) will be “the weakest of the past 200 years,” with the agency correlating previous solar shutdowns to prolonged periods of global cooling here.

With SC25 likely a just stop-off on the Sun’s descent into its next full-blown Grand Solar Minimum:

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So any way you can, help us spread the message so others can survive and thrive in the coming times.

Grand Solar Minimum + Pole Shift

NASA Predicts Next Solar Cycle will be Lowest in 200 Years (Dalton Minimum Levels) + the Implications

Electroverse

{ https://electroverse.net/ }

DE AARDE KREUNT EN STEUNT ALS NOOIT TEVOREN

Nog nooit in de ons bekende geschiedenis hebben er zoveel heftige aardveranderingen plaatsgevonden als op dit moment.

Zelfs in sommige mainstream kringen begint dit nu wel heel erg op te vallen en vraagt men zich af of dit alles misschien tot een soort crescendo zal leiden?

De wereld wordt permanent in een staat van afleiding gehouden, waardoor de gebeurtenissen die werkelijk belangrijk zijn niet of nauwelijks tot de grote massa weten door te dringen.

Als je bij ons de afgelopen weken de “headlines” een beetje hebt gevolgd dan zal je zijn opgevallen dat er iedere dag grote koppen staan over welk programma nu weer de meeste kijkers heeft getrokken in wat men noemt een soort talkshow oorlog.

Een aantal zorgvuldig geselecteerde “talking heads” die gezeten aan een tafel een gebalanceerde menig (aangestuurde mindcontrol) geven over van alles en nog wat en waar miljoenen mensen zich iedere dag door laten programmeren.

Ondertussen schijnt de wereld letterlijk naar de Filistijnen te gaan en wordt daar niet of nauwelijks aandacht aan besteed. Er wordt wel aandacht besteed aan individuele zaken zoals de bosbranden in Australië, maar nooit worden er bepaalde verbanden gelegd, waardoor je nogal een angstaanjagend beeld krijgt als je dit wel doet.

Iemand die dit nu heeft gedaan is de Amerikaanse advocaat Michael Snyder. Michael is een conservatieve, zeer mainstream christen die onlangs nog een mislukte poging heeft gedaan om als Republikein gekozen te worden in het Amerikaanse Congres.

Deze man schrijft nu onder ander het volgende:

Er is nooit eerder een tijd geweest in onze moderne geschiedenis dat onze planeet zo onderhavig is geweest aan allerlei snelle veranderingen als nu op dit moment. De zon gedraagt zich heel erg vreemd, op veel plaatsen ter wereld hebben we opeens heel erg koud weer, de temperaturen in de oceanen gaan omhoog, overal ter wereld barsten vulkanen uit, Australië heeft te maken met de ergste bosbranden ooit en de magnetische noordpool beweegt zich met een voor wetenschappers alarmerende snelheid. Is het mogelijk dat al deze bizarre activiteiten leiden naar een soort crescendo?

En daarna komt ook Michael tot de conclusie dat dit alles nauwelijks de aandacht krijgt die het verdient omdat de mainstreammedia druk bezig zijn met allerlei andere programma’s die zij klaarblijkelijk belangrijk(er) vinden.

Hij komt tot een lijst van 7 punten die hij ziet als tekenen dat er toch wel degelijk iets aan de hand is met de aarde en dat hier echt meer aandacht aan besteed zou moeten worden.

De zon

Dit is het eerste punt waar hij mee begint en dat er in 200 jaar niet zo’n lage activiteit van de zon waargenomen is.

We hebben hier uiteraard ook uitgebreid over geschreven en de verwachting van echte wetenschappers is dan ook dat we een periode tegemoet gaan met langdurig weinig of geen activiteit van de zon, met als mogelijk gevolg dat we condities tegemoet gaan die zijn te vergelijken met de mini ijstijd.

We hebben onlangs ook kunnen zien dat NASA nogal is geschrokken van al die berichtgeving en nu ineens met een boodschap komt dat alles helemaal goed zal komen en dat het niet zo erg zal worden als zij eerst hadden gedacht. Dat is het punt waarop je dan ook echt wantrouwig moet worden.

Heel erg koud in gebieden waar dit nooit voor komt

Dit is iets dat direct gerelateerd kan worden aan de lage zonneactiviteit en de verandering in de hoge luchtstromen zoals de Jetstream. Hierdoor krijgt je de bizarre situatie zoals sneeuw in Caïro, iets dat in 112 jaar niet is voorgekomen. Eveneens sneeuw in landen zoals Griekenland en Saoedi Arabië, iets dat ook sinds mensenheugenis niet is voor gekomen.

Oceanen worden warmer

Dit is iets dat ook wij niet wisten, maar klaarblijkelijk worden de oceanen van deze wereld steeds warmer. De temperaturen voor de kust van Californië van het zeewater zijn tot een recordhoogte gestegen.

Volgens Michael is dit bekend geworden door een onlangs gepubliceerd onderzoek dat aan zou tonen dat 2019 het warmste jaar ooit is geweest voor het water in de oceanen.

Uiteraard wordt dit, ook door Michael, toegeschreven aan de door de mens veroorzaakte opwarming van de aarde en hij vindt dit dan ook heel vreemd, gezien het gebrek aan totale zonneactiviteit en de daarbij behorende juist lagere temperaturen.

Uiteraard weten we niet hoe betrouwbaar dit onderzoek is, maar als het wel waar is, dan vertoont dit overeenkomsten met de ijslaag op de noordpool die in zijn totaliteit groeit, maar toch van onderen schijnt te smelten, alsof er iets is dat de aarde van binnenuit extreem opwarmt.

Bosbranden

Als vierde punt noemt Michael de bosbranden en hij vraagt zich af hoe het mogelijk is dat we nu bosbranden meemaken zoals we die nog nooit eerder hebben gezien. De branden in Australië waren dit jaar 46 procent omvangrijker dan die we eerder hebben gezien in het Amazonegebied.

Volgens NASA is de rookontwikkeling van al deze branden zo erg dat die rookwolken zich over de gehele aarde zullen verspreiden.

Uiteraard gaat Michael er niet van uit dat bosbranden ook bewust kunnen worden aangestoken en ziet hij ook dit als een onderdeel van de klimaatopwarming.

Vulkanen

Dan besteedt hij vervolgens aandacht aan de enorme toename van vulkaanuitbarstingen zoals wij dat ook onlangs hebben gedaan in een uitgebreid artikel.

Zoals ook vermeld in dat artikel, kan een zogenaamd Grand Solar Minimum ook zorgen voor een toename van het aantal vulkaanuitbarstingen, maar in het tempo waarin dit nu gebeurt, is het wel heel erg veel.

Magnetisch veld

Als laatste punt voert Michael aan de sterke vermindering van het aardmagnetisch veld en dat dit een aantal wetenschappers zorgen baart. Gemiddeld vermindert dit veld met ongeveer 5 procent per eeuw, maar ook in bepaalde gebieden gaat dit veel sneller. Zo is het magnetisch veld boven Noord-Amerika de afgelopen drie jaar met 3,5 procent afgenomen.

Daarnaast beweegt ook de magnetische noordpool zich sinds 1980 opeens veel sneller dan voorheen, zoals je op het volgende plaatje kunt zien.

Michael signaleert al deze gebeurtenissen en zegt het sterke gevoel te hebben dat dit alles zich opbouwt tot een bepaalde climax en zou graag zien dat hier veel meer aandacht aan wordt besteed.

Naast bovengenoemde zijn er nog meer heftige zaken die op geen enkele manier verklaard kunnen worden door de klimaatonzin zoals de door de mens veroorzaakte opwarming van de aarde.

Denk hierbij bijvoorbeeld aan de spectaculaire toename van het aantal aardbevingen sinds eind 2012.

Is het niet bizar dat veel van bovengenoemde punten totaal worden genegeerd en is het niet onvoorstelbaar dat niemand al die dingen met elkaar in verband brengt?

Daarmee kan je eigenlijk alleen maar concluderen dat de mensheid het niet mag weten, nog niet.

Ze mogen het pas weten als het te laat is en de elite genoeg tijd heeft gehad om haar voorbereidingen af te ronden.

Terwijl de wereld wordt afgeleid door talk shows en misdadige hoopporno ("de top van de cabal is nu echt in paniek en morgen wordt alles beter") steunt en kraakt de aarde in haar voegen en blijft het orkest op de Titanic tot op het laatste moment doorspelen.

{ https://niburu.co/ }

Part 2: Secret operational bases in Antarctica.

Crashed UFOs and secret operational bases in Antarctica is an ongoing project, which started several years ago, carried out by UFO researcher Frederick living in South Africa in collaboration with UFO Sightings Hotspot.

Many secret operational bases in Antarctica are camouflaged by snow and on Google Earth camouflaged by fake clouds, fake cloud vapor, fake snow, blurred and blacked-out images.

There are huge secret (extraterrestrial) bases under the ice or partly under the ice, but the structures are disguised as research stations.

To avoid a cover-up of the discoveries, we do not yet release the coordinates. More discoveries will follow soon in part 3.

See part 1: 

• Introduction and Part 1: Crashed UFOs, crashed ancient UFOs in Antarctica

Click images to enlarge.

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

Bright UFO recorded over Scotland 20-Jan-2020

This 2020 UFO sighting was just submitted to me through Latest UFO Sightings Facebook page. It was filmed over Inverurie, a town in Aberdeenshire, Scotland on 20th January 2020.

Witness report: 

Yesterday at 6pm Inverurie Aberdeenshire Scotland. I have seen satalites before and you can see them move. This didnt look like it moved. I watched for over half hour. Then left it for half an hour went to show my husband and it had completely vanished

{ https://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }

Underground Wars: Something Strange Is Going On Under The Earth

High strangeness, deep underground military bases and the end times. I sat down with Darrin Geisinger, Author of Zero-G’s for this very special interview, find more about Darrin and his work at this link, https://darringeisinger.com/

Following a devastating global economic collapse, civilization struggles on. Christians everywhere proclaimed the Meltdown to be the Great Tribulation, but instead of a rescuing rapture, “they” came on the scene to save us. The Messengers turned the lights back on, cleaned up the radiation, stopped the pandemics.

But a handful of doubters suspect that these extraterrestrials might not be the benevolent benefactors they claim to be. Some even believe that they are a Great Deception: “And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie” (2nd Thess 2:11). Those who spoke out against the Messengers have mysteriously vanished. Earth’s foremost robotics scientist was one such believer and now he’s gone too.

To his only son, he leaves behind two things. The first is a way to fight back, in the form of an armored exo-suit—possibly humanity’s last and only hope. The second is a hastily scrawled message…

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

Something Has Escaped Antarctica Secret Underground Base?

Google Earth images show a possible entrance leading to an underground secret base located at King George Island in Antarctica.

The following stands out when checking the timeline at that specific location:

• Year 2005 – Something seems to break out of the snow/ice wall.
• Year 2007 – A large cave or entrance of 75 x 75 meters has emerged and something seems to have moved into the ocean.
• Year 2019 – The cave or entrance is again completely covered by snow and ice.

The image of 2005 clearly shows that something from inside the cave has pushed with an enormous force resulting in the huge opening of 75 x 75 meters.

The image of 2007 not only shows some sort of trail coming from the cave leading to the ocean but it also shows a weird anomaly of about 14 meters width floating in the ocean just in front of the cave.

The image of 2019 shows that everything is covered with snow and ice again.

We know that Antarctica has many secrets related to the UFO and aliens phenomena, could it be that the massive hole leads to a secret base built into a giant ice-cave and something broke out?

Coordinates: 62° 0’29.99″S 57°45’14.86″W

https://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/

other videos ( peter2011 )

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

Shock: NASA Interrupted by Red Object During Live Stream Feed

live feed shock NASA interrupted by Red Object during stream

live feed shock NASA interrupted by Red Object during stream. It was captured from the ISS Space Station and my first thought was some kind of reflection from the optics, a sun flare, or something.

other videos ( peter2011)

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

Photos of a UFO Buzzing a Commercial Jet Over the United Kingdom

JANUARY 19, 2020 …..NEWTON ABBOT DEVON ENGLAND

Hi Ken : The sky was clear and blue and I was watching a passenger plane pass over the area when I decided to take some photographs of it with my Nikon P900 camera. I was in the process of taking photographs when a white sphere of light just appeared out of no where and flew around the sky right in front of the passenger plane. I captured the white sphere of light in four of the photographs before I lost sight of it. I couldn’t believe it I wasn’t even trying to capture a UFO… It was just sheer luck that I just happened to be photographing the passenger plane at that precise moment. I often like to take photographs of passing passenger planes as they fly over the area and I would highly recommend it to anyone who is out there trying to spot UFOs as they are clearly drawn to commercial aircraft.

The question is where are these strange objects coming from and how do they just seem to appear out of thin air like that? I really would like to know. I believe that the government knows what these strange object really are and is purposely withholding this information from the public. There’s still time left for the government to come out and save face and tell the general public the truth. Why are they allowing these unidentified objects to freely fly around in the sky with complete impunity. I am calling the government out on their cowedly cover up of the whole situation. This cowedly cover up as gone on for far to long. Enough is enough It just isn’t right. The general public have the right to know the truth and need to be informed as to what is really going on in the skies above them! This truth embargo won’t last forever. The photographs where taken ‏‎at 11:58 AM on the ‎19th of ‎January ‎2020, at Newton Abbot Devon England. All the best John.

KEN PFEIFER WORLD UFO PHOTOS AND NEWS 

HTTP://WWW.WORLDUFOPHOTOS.ORG

HTTP://WWW.WORLDUFOPHOTOSANDNEWS.ORG

HTTP://WWW.KENPFEIFERDISCOVERIES.COM

THANKS TO JOHN MOONER, CHIEF INVESTIGATOR FOR WORLD UFO PHOTOS. https://ufologist.yolasite.com

Source: 

• http://worldufophotosandnews.org/?p=24939

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/}

Top 10 UFO Sightings: Best Cases

Aliens are visiting us

I’ve asked a friend of mine to review this new book about UFOs that’s available on Amazon:

If you want to be sure of unusual things such as aliens or UFOs, then you must think about it from an unusual way of thinking.

This book not only gives you a proof of the sightings of UFO, but it changes the way of thinking and perception about them. UFO sightings are becoming more and more popular and no one can deny it.
Even the Pentagon has admitted that the aerial objects in the videos are simply unidentified, and for now, unexplained.

I never believed in aliens or UFOs. I always thought that this is something created by man himself to become popular or something but after reading the book ”top 10 UFO Sightings by Sebastian Privett’’ my whole perception has changed. This book gives me all the answers to my questions. And now I have started believing in these things.

After reading this book I ask myself how people can close their minds off to the size of the

After reading this book I ask myself how people can close their minds off to the size of the  Universe. With billions of stars, millions of galaxies, and possibly a googol of planets, how can it be that human beings are the only thinking animal in creation?

This book unfolds a thrilling journey with a lot of information with proof, so I suggest everyone to read this book. Even if the aliens are short, dour, and sexually obsessed—if they’re here, I want to know about them.

It changes my perception maybe it changed yours.

• Get your own copy of the book at this link: https://amzn.to/2R582th

Videos, selected by peter2011

{ https://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }

Disc-shaped UFO over Volcano Colima, Mexico 19-Jan-2020

Some kind of bright flying saucer was caught on tape over Volcano Colima, also known as Volcán de Fuego, part of the Colima Volcanic Complex. This happened on 19th January 2020.

{ https://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }

George Adamski Got Famous Sharing UFO Photos and Alien ‘Encounters’

To some, he was a prophet. To others, a laughing stock. Even today, more than half a century after his death, George Adamski remains one of the most curious and controversial characters in UFO history.

Adamski had multiple claims to UFO fame. Starting in the late 1940s, he took countless photos of what he insisted were flying saucers. But experts, including J. Allen Hynek, scientific consultant to the Air Force’s Cold War-era UFO investigation team Project Blue Book, dismissed them as crude fakes.

Then, in 1952, Adamski reported that he had met and conversed with a visitor from Venus in a California desert, using a combination of hand gestures and mental telepathy.

His story would only get stranger from there.

READ MORE: UFO Stories

A star gazer is born

Adamski chronicled his alleged adventures in several books. The first, Flying Saucers Have Landed (1953), coauthored with Desmond Leslie, recounted his chat with the Venusian. Widely read at the time, it later gained a new generation of fans in the trippy 1960s.

Adamski’s 1955 sequel, Inside the Space Ships, described further meetings, not only with the Venusian but also with emissaries from Mars and Saturn. In Adamski’s telling, every planet in our solar system was populated with human-like inhabitants, as was the dark side of the earth’s moon.

In the 1955 book, Adamski claimed that his new friends took him aboard one of their scout ships, flew him to an immense mother ship hovering over the earth, gave him a ride around the moon and treated him to a colorful travelogue about life on Venus.

Along the way, he was also tutored by a space man he called “the master.” The master, who was said to be nearly 1,000 years old, shared the secrets of the universe with Adamski, only some of which he was allowed to divulge back on earth.

Preposterous as his stories seemed, Adamski became an international celebrity and lectured widely. Queen Juliana of the Netherlands raised a public stir after inviting him to her palace in 1959 to discuss extraterrestrial doings. Adamski supposedly claimed a secret 1963 meeting with the pope, as well.

Adamski soon had followers all over the planet. But not everybody was on board. Arthur C. Clarke, the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, not only denounced Adamski’s work but characterized his believers as “nitwits.”

• READ MORE: How Betty and Barney Hill's Abduction Story Defined a Genre

Who was George Adamski?

George Adamski was reportedly born in Poland in 1891, came to the U.S. with his parents at as a young boy and grew up in far-northern New York state.

He seems to have had little formal education, though the press would later refer to him as “Professor Adamski”—a habit he appears to have encouraged.

Adamski enjoyed his first glimpse of glory in 1934 as the leader of a group calling itself the Royal Order of Tibet. The Los Angeles Times reported they had bought an old estate in Laguna Beach, California, and planned to establish the first Tibetan monastery in America on the site. The Times described “Prof. George Adamski” as being “as strange as the cult he sponsors.”

Somehow, Adamski convinced the reporter he had lived in the “ancient monasteries” of Tibet as a child. “I learned great truths up there on ‘the roof of the world,’” he was quoted as saying.

In 1936, he was back in the papers again, this time as the leader of a group called Universal Progressive Christianity, whose international headquarters, he said, would soon be established in Laguna Beach.

Aside from offering a tax plan to end the Great Depression in 1938, the “professor” stayed out of the news until after World War II. But when the postwar UFO craze took off, Adamski hopped right on.

• READ MORE: Interactive Map: UFO Sightings Taken Seriously by the U.S. Government

Eyes on the skies

In October 1946, he said, he spotted his first UFO—“a large black object, similar in shape to a gigantic dirigible, and apparently motionless.”

His next sighting came in August 1947. This time, it wasn’t just a single object but a procession of them—at least 184 by his count. Then, in late 1949, at what he said was the urging of the U.S. military, he attached a camera to his six-inch telescope and began scanning the skies at every opportunity. Soon he had what he considered two good UFO pictures.

“Since then, winter and summer, day and night, through heat and cold, wind, rains and fog, I have spent every moment possible outdoors, watching the skies,” he wrote.

By the end of 1952, the skies over his California home had become a sort of UFO shooting gallery. Adamski estimated he took another 500 flying saucer photos, from which he got a dozen good ones. He claimed to have provided prints to the Air Force, but he kept the negatives.

By now, newspapers and magazines were publishing Adamski’s photos, and he was giving lectures as an authority on UFOs. Because he happened to live near Mount Palomar, home of the famous observatory, he was often misidentified as a professional astronomer. But as the genuine astronomer Carl Sagan later noted, the truth was a little more mundane: Adamski “operated a tiny restaurant” in the vicinity and had “set up a small telescope out back.”

A close encounter of the Venusian kind

It was in November 1952, in a remote patch of California desert, that Adamski came face to face with his supposed visitor from Venus. “The beauty of his form surpassed anything I had ever seen,” Adamski wrote. “And the pleasantness of his face freed me of all thought of my personal self. I felt like a little child in the presence of one with great wisdom and much love…”

The Venusian’s flesh was as soft as a baby’s, Adamski reported after they touched palms, while his “hair was sandy in color and hung in beautiful waves to his shoulders, glistening more beautifully than any woman’s I have ever seen.”

When the two finally got around to communicating, it became clear that the Venusian had come to deliver a message. Earthlings should stop messing around with atomic bombs, he told Adamski, before they destroyed their entire planet. To punctuate his point, and to show that he had picked up at least one word of English, the alien added, “Boom! Boom!”

Adamski wasn’t the first American to claim he’d met an alien, but he was the first to go public, and he quickly became the most famous “contactee.” Countless others would follow in the decades to come, telling their own tales of what Project Blue Book’s Hynek famously labeled “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

• READ MORE: Meet J. Allen Hynek, The Astronomer Who First Classified UFO 'Close Encounters' 

His new notoriety turned the humble restaurant where he worked into a tourist attraction. One visitor was Edward J. Ruppelt, then head of Project Blue Book, who dropped by, incognito, in 1953 to find Adamski holding court and hawking copies of his UFO pix. “To look at the man and to listen to his story, you had an immediate urge to believe him,” Ruppelt wrote in his 1956 book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, adding that he had “the most honest pair of eyes I’ve ever seen.”

While Ruppelt clearly didn’t believe him, he was impressed all the same. “As I left, he was graciously filling people in on more details and the cash register was merrily ringing up saucer picture sales.”

Hynek also paid a visit to Adamski’s eatery, along with some fellow astronomers. Although he tried to engage Adamski on more scientific matters, Hynek later recalled, “All he wanted to do was sell me photos.”

Con man, crackpot or cosmic messenger?

Adamski published at least one more book, Flying Saucers Farewell (1961) and continued to lecture widely.

At a press conference in March 1965, he predicted that a large fleet of flying saucers would soon descend on Washington, D.C. Unfortunately, Adamski wouldn’t be there to greet them—had they actually arrived. He died that April at age 74.

Since his death, Adamski’s critics have tended to portray him as a harmless crackpot, small-time con artist or perhaps a bit of both.

Others, like J. Allen Hynek, took a somewhat dimmer view, accusing Adamski and others like him, of discrediting the entire field of UFO research.

Author Arthur C. Clarke had made the same point years earlier, saying that Adamski and coauthor Leslie did “a real disservice by obscuring the truth and scaring away serious researchers from a field that may be of great importance.”

But Adamski stuck to his story to the end—including the upbeat but somehow ominous message he’d delivered in Flying Saucers Have Landed:

“My most urgent message and plea to every person who reads it is: Let us be friendly. Let us recognize and welcome the men from other worlds! THEY ARE HERE AMONG US.” 

{ https://www.history.com/ }