What is mutilating cows in the Midwest? FBI probed thousands of reports of cattle killed with 'surgical precision' since the early 1970s - with the deaths blamed on satanic cults, the government and ALIENS

• WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
• Since the early 1970s, thousands of cow murders and mutilations have reportedly taken place in the Midwest
• Reports include cattle having ears, lips, eyes, noses, anuses and genitalia removed with 'surgical precision' 
• Conflicting theories abound - some believe either aliens or the government are responsible for the mutilations, or 'mutes', which have also been reported across the US and abroad
• The FBI attempted to investigate the incidents but were largely unsuccessful due to 'lack of jurisdiction'

By ANNA HOPKINS FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

On a bright, sunny morning in the summer of 1973, Ron and Paula Watson, two farmers in Springfield, Missouri, witnessed something that changed their lives forever.

It was an alien abduction, they say. But not of a human – of cattle.

They said they saw a 'green, cone-shaped craft' – next to which two 'silver little beings' were standing over a large black cow.

'I told Ron, 'My god, they got a cow! What are they doing to it?' Paula said. 'It had its eyes open and its tongue was like, hanging out a little bit. But it just laid there and it didn't move.'

She described in detail how she saw the aliens running their hands over the cow and then inspecting their long fingers before they 'floated' it into their large ship in the distance.

Their neighbors never believed their story, though one did admit to having one black cow left unaccounted for.  The Watsons' story sounds like something out of an early science-fiction film – but it became one of many stories of alien and UFO sightings used to explain the thousands of cow mutilations reported across the United States in the 1970s. 

Since the 1970s, bizarre murders and mutilations of cattle have been reported across the nation, primarily in the Midwest. In this photo (left) of a cow in Saguache County, Colorado in 1975, a female cow's utters have been removed with surgical precision. In the image on the right, a cow was found with its tongue removed in July 2013 on a farm in Missouri

News reports make up the bulk of the FBI's 32 page report on the subject, which is prefaced by a brief explanation that their investigation was hindered by a lack of jurisdiction in most cases

Within the depths of the FBI's database of unsolved mysteries lies the graphic tale of these cattle murders, which outraged and petrified farmers for decades, and is still continuing today.

Speculation surrounding who – or what – might be responsible for the killing and mutilation of thousands of cows has ranged from satanic worshipers, government agents, and even aliens.

The most curious aspect is not that the cattle have died, but the way in which they did. Since the early 1970s farmers have discovered their treasured (and expensive) animals dead with various organs excised – including eyes, noses, tongues, hearts, livers, anuses, and genitalia removed with laser precision.

Though many theories have been offered it's a phenomenon that no one – not even the FBI – have ever been able to solve. 

In 1974, newspapers started to catch wind of these bizarre mutilations, which first took place primarily in extremely rural farmlands in the Midwest. Instances were reported across the nation but were mostly scattered among South Dakota, Colorado, Kansas, and Nevada.

The news reports make up the bulk of the FBI's 32 page report on the subject, which is prefaced by a brief explanation that their investigation was hindered by a lack of jurisdiction in most cases.

The FBI told DailyMail.com that this was due to the fact that at the time there was no federal law declaring animal mutilation a federal crime, which didn't allow the department to continue investigating.

Many residents reported seeing helicopters circling the areas where cattle later turned up dead and sliced up with seemingly surgical accuracy. This prompted concerns that the mutilations, nicknamed 'mutes' by those familiar with the subject, were being propagated and covered up by the government.

in this image on the left, the cow's heart was excised with expert care - and was the third of three cattle mutilated on the same farm in Missouri beginning in 2011. Theories of who, or what, might be responsible have ranged from satanic cults, aliens, and the government. In the image on the right, ranchers found an animal with its sex organs and anus removed

Linda Moulton Howe is a former Miss Idaho turned investigative journalist and regional Emmy-winning filmmaker who has been a primary proponent of the 'alien argument'

This was around the same time of the height of alien paranoia in the United States – when UFOs, or balls or discs of floating light, were being spotted in similarly rural areas, often preceding or following the cow mutilations.

Many who have dedicated their lives to the subject believe, in fact, that aliens are responsible for the mutilations and that the government has been attempting to cover up their crimes (and existence) for years.

One such person is Linda Moulton Howe, the regional Emmy-winning filmmaker who the Watsons shared their story with for her documentary Earth Mysteries: Alien Life Forms. She has been one of the most steadfast supporters of the alien argument.

Her research conjures the images of what we picture as the stereotypical alien abduction – flying saucers beaming animals up into space with light.

At least two people even reported being abducted by aliens at that time – including one woman named Judy Doraty and her daughter Cindy.

In a 1990 symposium proceeding Howe wrote: '…I found in so many eyewitness accounts of orange glowing objects the size of football fields hovering above pasturelands where mutilated animals were later found. Or beams of light observed shining down from 'silent helicopters' that lighted pastures 'brighter than daylight' and the next day mutilated animals were found. And eyewitness reports of strange craft and/or non-human creatures involved with animals.

'There was Judy Doraty who in 1973 watched a brown and white calf rise in a pale beam of yellow light. Inside the craft, she saw tissue cut from the eye, tongue and testicles by two small grey-skinned creatures. They had four fingers, instead of five, and those long, thin fingers tapered into dark nails. Their eyes had vertical pupils like a cat or a crocodile's.

'Judy's daughter, Cindy, also described in a 1990 hypnosis session seeing a calf rising in a beam of yellow light.'

In a rare winter mutilation, this calf was found in Hooper, Nebraska in 1975 with its jaw completely cut out all the way  up to its right eye socket. Eyewitnesses often reported seeing beaming lights or suspicious helicopters near where mutilated cows were later found 

US Senator Floyd Haskell from Colorado pleaded with the FBI to become involved with the mutilations in August 1975 after receiving more than 130 cases in the state alone, and farmers had taken to arming themselves out of fear 

Supernatural explanations were the only ones that made any sense at the time – given that the technology of the era was not advanced enough to have performed what appeared to be the use of localized lasers.

The areas surrounding the excisions, often around the anus of the murdered animals, had a blackened and burned appearance to them – suggesting the use of a high-powered laser. Other researchers, however, proposed different conclusions.

Christopher O'Brien, an author and investigative journalist on the subject, said that in his 200 cases of dealing with cattle death, about 40 of those were done by 'something with intelligence'.

Christopher O'Brien, an author and who has investigated the subject for decades, said that in his 200 cases of dealing with cattle death, about 40 of those were done by 'something with intelligence'. He is pictured researching left in 1993 and right in 2012

This Hooper, Nebraska calf also had its anus cut in a 10-inch wide diameter and 18-inch deep. O'Brien told DailyMail.com that he didn't believe aliens were responsible - because 'who would fly thousands of light years to collect cow butts?'

He is more skeptical of the alien explanation – saying that Howe's research doesn't incorporate many of the scientific findings that have been made.

He told the DailyMail.com that when a cow decomposes, the vegetable matter contained in one of its four stomachs makes the animal bloat. As the moisture leaves the body it then starts to deflate – causing the exposed edges of the animal to stay hard and darkened.

'To someone who doesn't know what they're looking at – it looks like a burn,' he said.

O'Brien feels that the alien argument is one used to sensationalize the topic and are only looking at a small portion of the total data.

He can't deny, however, how disturbing the number of 'high strange' cases are that he's seen – the ones that involve otherworldly circumstances.

On one occasion which O'Brien calls his 'strangest case' – he was called to the scene of a mutilated calf in Del Norte, Colorado. 

'It was really freaky, it wouldn't rot,' he said. 'It was found in a complete pristine, five inch snow field without one drop of blood on the snow. All the blood had been taken from the animal. The heart and liver had been expertly excised and left in the body cavity.

'The chief medical veterinary pathologist said "it wasn't an animal that did this",' he continued.

In O'Brien's book, Stalking the Heard, he writes that the month-old calf was also missing its spine from the hips to the skull and the brain was gone. It's right front leg was also gone, and the vast majority of its ribs, both eyes, ears, intestines, reproductive tract, and lungs had been removed. Its rectum was also mutilated.

Two witnesses also reportedly saw a large beam of light near the house the previous evening before the calf was found.  

He hits on another popular argument for the cattle deaths – though arguably the least plausible explanation. Many believe that the excisions were being done simply by other animals – scavengers such as vultures or coyotes.

O'Brien is quick to discredit this based off of his own experience.

'The first thing I look for is cut hair follicles,' he said. 'When birds or coyotes rip they rip between the lines of hair they don't cut the hair. If I find a 2-3 inch section of cut hair follicles I know that someone or something with a sharp implement did that. It wasn't done by birds or scavengers.'

These 'high strange' cases are less likely to be reported by ranchers, according to O'Brien.

'The freakier the case the less likely the rancher is to report it – they're so freaked out they won't even tell their family or neighbors. He doesn't want people in the community to think he's been singled out and victimized by some supernatural thing. That's why they're very reluctant to come forward.

'It's only when they see the hundreds and hundreds of helicopters being reported around these sites – mostly military helicopters – it's only when they see that that they feel like they've been targeted or victimized by their government and that pisses them off.'

Though the occurrences in the United States have considerably slowed down since they were at their height in the early 1970s, they certainly haven't stopped. O'Brien notes that they have seen a consistently high number of cases in South America, especially Brazil and Argentina.

O'Brien says that throughout his decades of studying mutilations, he's noticed that there's been a shift to South America, where he believes they've had more than 4,000 cases since 2002. A news report included in an FBI briefing stated that more than 1500 cattle in 22 states were killed and mutilated from 1973 to 1976 in the United States 

He claims that since 2002, there have been more than 4,000 cases of cattle mutilation in South America - and are still reporting anywhere from three to a dozen cases a week.

Back in the United States, just before the New Year in 2016, and again a few days afterwards, two cows were mutilated in nearby rural towns in Kansas.

In McPherson County, Carla and John Shearer discovered one of their pregnant cows dead with one eye removed and both her top and bottom eyelids and eyelashes excised.

'We lose animals, but not like this,' Shearer told the Kansas Agland. The couple believes whoever killed their $4,000 cow used a tranquilizer or stun gun to immobilize it before killing it.

'She died in motion – she was walking and she just went straight down,' Shearer added.

Carla and John Shearer on McPherson County, Kansas discovered one of their pregnant cows dead with one eye removed and both her top and bottom eyelids and eyelashes excised in January 2017 

The bull found in nearby Harvey County was found dead with its genitals removed – also cut with surgical precision.

It is O'Brien's opinion that the mass mutilations – of which there were thousands reported in the 1970s alone – are a part of a secretive government effort to research animal plagues such as mad cow or prion disease.

'We've seen this many, many times throughout history – where one case will happen and then within a week there will be a dozen. I think they're looking for something – that's the best explanation I can give. And I think they're looking for something within the food chain.

'Bovine spongiform encephalopathy is the most horrendous affliction that you could possibly imagine. It's 100% fatal – it produces large holes in the brain tissue and creates holes like Swiss cheese in the neuron system and the brain synapses start to misfire. You forget to breathe and your autonomic system starts to break down.

'That I think is the basic underpinnings of it – we're dealing with a group that is interested in keeping an eye on the food chain. The beef industry is the largest, most powerful industry that you never hear about. I think we're dealing with something that's being protected by some quasi-governmental group,' he said.

Though tempting to indulge in the possibility of space creatures invading the planet to study our animals, O'Brien finds this explanation a bit too impractical.

'It sounds like bad science fiction,' he said. 'Who would fly hundreds of light years to come and gather cow butts?' 

Read more:

• Cow found killed, mutilated in McPherson County | State Ag News | kansasagland.com
  

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

Now and again I’m asked about the issue of “cattle mutilations”/”animal mutilations” in the U.K. Well, yes there are such things in the U.K. I should stress, though, that when I’m asked about these grisly and undeniably disturbing phenomena, people are usually talking about the theory that aliens are the culprits. The truth, though, is that most mutilations in the U.K. are undertaken by sick people who should be behind bars. That said, there are some genuinely weird cases. On April 11, 1977, no less than fifteen wild ponies were found dead at Cherry Brook Valley, Dartmoor, Devonshire, England, by a Tavistock storekeeper named Alan Hicks, who had been crossing the wild and desolate moors with his children. It was not until mid-July, however, that the media began reporting on the incident in-depth. Newspaper articles in my possession demonstrate that the story traveled as far as South Africa; however, consider the following story, extracted from the U.K.’s Western Morning News of July 13, 1977:

“Fears that the mystery deaths of fifteen ponies near a Dartmoor beauty spot were caused by visitors from space were being probed by a Torbay team yesterday. Armed with a Geiger counter, metal detectors and face masks, four men are investigating what leading animal authorities admit seems a ‘totally abnormal happening,’ and are hoping their equipment will throw a new light on the three month old mystery. While other investigators have looked for signs of malnutrition, disease or poisoning – or even gunshot wounds – the four men are seeking proof that extra-terrestrials were responsible for the deaths.”

The trail went icy cold until pretty much 1991 when a great mate of mine, Jonathan Downes, a prolific author, journalist, investigator, and the director of the Center for Fortean Zoology, began to probe the case. Jon – who was living in Devonshire at the time, and who still resides there to this very day – succeeded in tracking down a number of those people that had been quoted by the newspapers some fourteen years previously. Curiously, Jon detected a very distinct reluctance to talk, even after almost a decade and a half. Even more bizarre, one of those same individuals, who strictly adhered to a non-paranormal explanation for the pony deaths, complained to a research colleague of Jon’s acquaintance for constantly pestering her day and night by phone, when, in actuality, the only contact had been one, solitary telephone call. It was a mystery never solved.

On the afternoon of a spring day in 1992, Jon Downes was deep in conversation with a police officer from Middlemoor Police Station in the English city of Exeter. The subject of the conversation was the so-called “big cat” sightings (such as the notorious Beast of Bodmin, Beast of Dartmoor, and Beast of Exmoor) that have been reported throughout the British counties of Devon and Cornwall for decades. Was Jon aware, the officer inquired, that there had occurred at nearby Newquay Zoo in the late 1970s a series of grisly mutilations of animals under extremely strange circumstances? Jon replied that, no, he was not.

Fortunately, however, the officer was able to put Jon in touch with the one man in a position to discuss the facts: the head keeper at the zoo at the time in question. And here’s where things began to get distinctly odd. Jon wasted no time in tracking the man down. Elderly and in failing health, he confirmed to Jon the basics of the story: very strange deaths had occurred at the zoo, and wallabies, swans and geese had been beheaded. But more significantly, their corpses had been totally drained of blood. Another strange saga remained unsolved.

While I don’t personally adhere to the theory/belief-system that the U.K. mutes are the work of ETs, some do. One of those is Mike Freebury. I met Freebury for the first time a few years ago, when I was back in the U.K. for two weeks. He is the author of a 2011 book titled Killers on the Moor. It’s a 252-pages-long book that looks deeply in the matter of mutes in the U.K. If the animal mutilation issue interests you, then you really should get a copy of Killers on the Moor. Regardless of whether you are of the opinion that aliens, wild animals, government conspiracies, or cults are the culprits, Freebury’s book is important, as it’s the only one ever written on the subject of U.K.-based animal mutilations.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

‘I’m from a small town in northern Finland surrounded by a vast, sparsely populated wilderness. Most pass through the town without ever knowing it was a hotspot for UFO sightings in the 1960s,’ writes Maria Lax

‘It wasn’t until I read my grandfather’s book about the UFO sightings in the area that I learned of the incredible stories of supernatural events, bravery and struggle against hardship in what is largely a barren land. Already suffering from dementia, he was unable to answer any of the questions I had so I went looking for the answers. I turned to the people who had seen the mysterious lights, to newspaper archives and my family’s photo albums from the era’

‘All of the locations in the book are places I have been going to since my childhood. By doing the project, talking to people, reading my grandfather’s book, searching through family albums and walking around the familiar landscapes I got to know my past and my family history much better. This image was taken near my grandparents’ house on a New Year’s Day when there was a long power cut and an eerie fog came out of nowhere - the perfect weather for the type of photographs I wanted to shoot’

‘Over the few years I worked on this project I interviewed several people in the town, and all their accounts are remarkably similar. Colourful lights would follow cars, or people walking home alone. The lights would be silent, pulsating in different colours before disappearing into the sky. Sometimes bright lights would wake people up in their homes in the middle of the night - and would again vanish without a trace’

‘With the lack of sunlight northern Finland experiences for a considerable part of the year, it’s impossible to escape the darkness. I decided to embrace it and felt like the absence of natural light allowed me to experiment with my images. I wanted to fill the darkness with colours and use long exposures to draw out the unexpected from the locations I knew so well’

‘There is a larger story running alongside the UFO sightings. Rapid industrialisation in the 60s and early 70s meant that people couldn’t support their families by farming and were forced to move to cities in search of jobs. Some towns lost nearly half their populations. A whole lifestyle disappeared in a matter of a few years, and those who lived through it remember it as a painful, uncertain time. It’s little wonder the UFO sightings embodied a fear of the future and the unknown. I wanted to bring all of this in by photographing the abandoned houses and showing the isolation’

‘One of the people I interviewed told me: “I remember waking up one night and the room being awash with the most beautiful colours. I knew it was the aliens but I wasn’t afraid. I knew they didn’t wish me any harm.” Although some locals I spoke to were still visibly scared and cautious of sharing what they had experienced decades ago, others said the strange lights were a thing that gave them hope; a sign they hadn’t been forgotten’

‘The title Some Kind of Heavenly Fire comes from a quote in my grandfather’s book about the alien sightings. When an older woman saw what looked like the forest on fire on a cold winter’s night, she described the strange lights by saying it wasn’t anything from this world - but what she saw was “some kind of heavenly fire”. The town where I come from was, and still is, deeply religious in parts, and I thought that quote was the perfect summary for the different elements for the photo book’

‘This project is an artistic expression of something that is part of my hometown and my family history. I have kept the narrative ambiguous and hope that anyone who sees these images can form their own truth about this little town with a big secret’

{ https://www.theguardian.com/international }

The 5 States With the Largest (and Smallest) Number of UFO Sightings

{ https://www.mentalfloss.com/ }

THEIA IS ALIVE

{ https://futurism.com/ }

This Is What The U.S. Military Learned From Watching UFOs

Military pilots have reported mysterious sightings.

If that wasn’t strange enough, the article included declassified footage from a U.S. Navy F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter’s AN/ASQ-228 sensor display as it trailed a still-unidentified flying object over the Pacific near San Diego on Nov. 14, 2004.

In the footage, the Super Hornet pilot, while traveling at 252 knots at nearly 20,000 feet, switched between his display’s infrared and visual modes as the sensor tried to lock onto the blurry, oblong or pill-shaped object. The flying object appeared white in IR mode, and black in TV mode — indicating that whatever it was, the sensor had picked up on the object’s emission, temperature or reflection.

The video comes from the same incident when Cmdr. David Fravor, a veteran Navy pilot assigned to the USS Nimitz carrier fighter squadron VFA-41 Black Aces, was on a training mission off San Diego. “It was a real object, it exists and I saw it,” Fravor told the Washington Post. Telling the paper that he believes it was “not from the Earth.”

During an exercise, commanders ordered Fravor to intercept an object that was appearing at 80,000 feet — above the range of Ticonderoga-class cruiser USS Princeton’s SPY-1 air-search radar — before dropping suddenly to 20,000 feet. “Officials told they had been tracking a couple dozen of these objects for a few weeks,” the paper reported.

The story that followed has circulated in the military aviation world and fighter community for several years, including this write-up by former Navy F-14A Tomcat pilot Paco Chierici at Fighter Sweep. With orders to intercept the object, Fravor in his jet — callsign FASTEAGLE 01 — headed toward with aid from an E-2 Hawkeye early warning and control plane.

The Hawkeye’s sensors, however, couldn’t detect the object and vector him toward it, so Princeton directed FASTEAGLE 01 and Fravor’s wingman, FASETEAGLE 02 to the location, and even asked Fravor whether he was carrying weapons — he wasn’t. He just had two training missiles. Below the jets, Fravor saw whitewater sloshing in the blue ocean.

All four aircrew were eyes out from this point forward. The first unusual indication Dave picked up was the area of whitewater on the surface that Cheeks was looking at over his shoulder as he flew away. He remembers thinking it was about the size of a 737 and maybe the contact they had been vectored on had been an airliner that had just crashed. He maneuvered his F-18 lower to get a better look. As he was descending through about 20K he was startled by the sight of a white object that was moving about just over the frothing water. It was all white, featureless, oblong and making minor lateral movements while staying at a consistent low altitude over the disk of turbulent water.

[…]

In his debrief comments, Dave, his WSO and the two other crews stated the object had initially been hovering like a Harrier. They described it as uniformly white, about 46 feet long (roughly fighter-sized), having a discernible midline horizontal axis (like a fuselage) but having no visible windows, nacelles, wings or propulsion systems.

There was no apparent exhaust or rotor wash, either. The pill-shaped object then “oriented one of its skinny ends towards him,” and rose in a “right 2-circle flow” — fighter speak for when each aircraft have their noses pointed at each other’s tails. The object then accelerated away at “multi-Mach” speed.

The video of the AN/ASQ-228 sensor display occurred later in the day with a different set of fighters. The object at this point appeared stationary before taking off.

This is consistent with a U.S. Navy report obtained by To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science, a UFO research company which published the footage. The Navy pilots, apparently, first believed the object could have been a classified missile test from a submarine. The Navy report cited a source who indicated the object maneuvered in a manner “that seemed to defy the laws of physics” and “‘tumbled’ into nonsensical angles that made any engagement by the F-18 impossible.”

So what was it? A secret U.S. test project? A classified drone or hypersonic weapon? A maneuverable reentry vehicle or something like DARPA’s Falcon Project? Naval Air Systems Command, which tests airborne weapons, has 36,000 square miles of controlled sea and airspace off the Southern Californian coast. And the Falcon Project’s Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 has reached Mach 22 — albeit six years after the 2004 object sighting in the Pacific.

Or perhaps it was an elaborate hoax, or a software or sensor error. Maybe an atmospheric disturbance? Or let’s say it was an alien spacecraft powered by technology impossible for our tiny primate brains to understand. I hope it’s the last one, but I’m not counting on it. Your guess is as good as mine.

Eyewitnesses, even fighter pilots, are prone to human error. Pilots also know how aircraft operate, and the belief that there is something unusual in the skies is more common in that community than you might assume. Fravor certainly believes what he saw, and many fighter pilots believe him.

The Pentagon UFO-hunting mission, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, is still partially classified. In any case, even if the explanation is as mundane as a weapons test, the eyewitness accounts and FLIR footage make this an interesting mystery worth further study. Whether Fravor saw an object of extraterrestrial origin is beside the point.

It’s also worth reading the comments section at Fighter Sweep:

I was on board the USS Princeton (2001-2005) when this all went down. We actually went to GQ (General Quarters) for about 4 hours as all if this was going down. I’ve been telling everyone about this even, but have gotten the usual “yeah right” look when I tell them about it. I saw the video after it happened, but didn’t think that it would somehow make it’s way to the public, considering all of the “security” that surrounded the issue.

Crazy how the world turns, isn’t it?!

Thank you for giving this event life! I no longer look like a tin foil hat wearing idiot!

This article first appeared several years ago.

• Image: Reuters.

{ https://nationalinterest.org/ }

Are UFO’s Real???

Are aliens real? Learn about sightings, abductions, and crashes around the world. Hear about unbelievable stories, dating back to ancient Egypt, including the famous crash in Roswell, New Mexico that eventually led to the government cover-up in Area 51. UFO’s in the universe confirmed!

Transcript Provided by YouTube:

00:00
Ancient Egypt, Roswell, New Mexico, and David Grohl. Here are some of the biggest
00:05
UFO sightings in history. Stay tuned to number one to see how the famous rock
00:10
band the Foo Fighters are involved.
00:22
Number 10: The Tulli Papyrus.
00:25
in approximately 1440 BC scribes of the
00:29
Pharaoh Thutmose III claimed to have seen fiery discs in the sky.
00:33
What’s amazing about this story is that it’s the first written account of humans
00:38
seeing UFOs in history the translation of the ancient tule papyrus asserts that
00:42
strange fiery objects were seen in the sky
00:45
for at least four days, and continued to grow in number. Here’s what current
00:49
historians believe the papyrus to have read, “Now, after some days had passed over
00:55
these things lo, they were more numerous than anything they were shining in the
00:59
sky. More than the Sun to the limits of the four supports of heaven powerful was
01:04
the position of the fire circles the army of the King looked on and His
01:08
Majesty was in the midst of it it was after supper thereupon they went up
01:13
higher directed to south fishes and volatile fell down from the sky he was a
01:18
marvel never occurred since the foundation of this land. Caused his
01:22
Majesty to be brought incense to pacify the earth. What happened in the book of
01:27
the house of life to be remembered for the eternity.” Some claim the ancient
01:32
Egyptians merely saw strange astrological or weather phenomena. But
01:37
opposing arguments remind us that the Egyptians were one of the most advanced
01:41
astrologers of any ancient culture. For them to mistake a weather phenomenon for
01:46
an unnatural object is highly unlikely.
01:50
Number 9: Roswell, New Mexico.
01:52
Probably the most famous of all UFO sightings occurred in Roswell, New Mexico
01:57
in 1947. The deep conspiracies and cover-ups that have spawned from these
02:02
events have influenced art, movies, and music, as that event is thought to be the
02:07
catalyst of all area 51 secrets. We’ll have to talk more about area 51 at a
02:11
later time, but for now, more about this famous UFO . William Brazil, better known
02:16
as Mac, was a ranch foreman on the Foster homestead about 30 miles north of
02:21
Roswell. On June 14, 1947, while out on the ranch, Mac noticed some metallic debris
02:28
in the desert and went to investigate. What he found, though, was indescribable. Tough,
02:33
pliable metal that would Bend, but would bounce back to its original
02:37
shape without even a crease. Mac mentioned what he’d found to the local
02:41
sheriff on July 7th and the rest, as they say, is history.
02:46
Immediately after being reported, the US government agencies swooped in to recover
02:50
the strange craft and its occupants. Initially they were moved to Wright
02:54
Field, in Ohio, where they were kept until 1951. But secrecy and security demanded
03:01
that the strange findings were moved to a remote location in the Nevada desert…
03:04
Area 51. Nobody knows for certain what was discovered in Roswell, or what
03:10
secrets the government is hiding from us in Area 51, but whether alien or
03:14
domestic, the truth is that something was discovered in Roswell in 1947. The
03:19
government collected it, and has managed to keep the truth a secret for over 70
03:24
years. That’s not suspicious!
03:27
Number 8: The second…first(?) Recorded Sighting?
03:32
June 19th, 1801, The streets of Hull, England were quiet…nothing out of the ordinary.
03:37
That is, until a strange blue glow began to light up the city. The people of the
03:43
town later said that a huge moon like orb was seen floating over the city,
03:47
casting a strange light upon the town. The moon was aid to form itself into
03:53
seven small distinct moons, or globes of fire, which disappeared for the space of
03:58
a few seconds. Its reappearance was equally brilliant. At first showing
04:02
itself like the face of the Moon, afterwards in five circular balls, and
04:07
lastly like several small stars which gradually faded away, leaving the whole
04:11
atmosphere brilliantly illuminated. Sounds amazing, right? After this sighting,
04:16
which was the first recorded sighting of modern times, more newspaper reports of
04:21
UFO sightings appeared all over Scotland.
04:24
Number 7: Tierport, South Africa.
04:26
South Africa has been a hotbed of UFO sightings, including a 1965 UFO landing
04:33
that was confirmed in a press release by Lieutenant Colonel JB Brits, the district
04:38
commandant of Pretoria North. Some folks in South Africa have even told stories
04:43
of abductions occurring as early as 1956. One such occasion, on July 24th, 1956, a
04:51
photographer capturing photos of an inexplicable object in the sky claimed
04:56
she was abducted by the craft and impregnated by one of the crew members…
05:00
Akon! Now, I don’t think this is the hip-hop artist Akon,
05:03
but it’s definitely a possibility. Sightings have continued through the
05:07
years, but in June of 2011 20 of these crafts were spotted as they crossed the
05:12
skies of Teirport. Some witnesses were even able to capture photos of seven of
05:17
the craft. These objects were described as silent orange lights traveling across
05:21
the sky. Witnesses stated that the orange lights moved much faster than the speed
05:26
of a commercial aircraft. What do you think? Let us know in the comments below!
05:31
05:31
Number 6: The Ghost Rockets.
05:33
It’s not very often than multiple countries
05:37
report seeing the same unidentified objects in the sky, but that’s exactly
05:41
what occurred with the ghost rocket incident. 1946 was an active year for UFO
05:46
sightings over the skies of Europe. Over 2,000 reported sightings were logged by
05:51
the Swedish government, alone, however these same unexplained objects were also
05:56
reported in Greece, Portugal, Belgium, and Italy. And more than 200 sightings were
06:02
corroborated by government radar systems. Most of these reports described
06:06
fast-flying ,missile shaped objects. While they typically flew horizontally across
06:11
the sky, the concerning item for those who saw the phenomenon is the fact that
06:16
the objects maintained maneuverability in the sky – a feat that was unheard of
06:21
for rockets at the time. In a declassified US Air Force document, it is
06:25
clear that Swedish and US governments both believe that the objects had
06:29
extraterrestrial origins. “For some time, we’ve been concerned by the recurring
06:33
reports on flying saucers. They periodically continue to pop up.
06:37
During the last week one was observed hovering over Neubiberg Air Base for
06:42
about 30 minutes. They’ve been reported by so many sources,
06:45
and from such a variety of places, that we are convinced that they cannot be
06:50
disregarded and must be explained on some basis which is perhaps slightly
06:54
beyond the scope of our present intelligence thinking. When officers of
06:58
this Directorate recently visited the Swedish air intelligence service this
07:02
question was put to the Swedes. Their answer was at some reliable and fully
07:06
technically qualified people have reached the conclusion that these
07:10
phenomena are obviously the result of a high technical skill which cannot be
07:15
credited to any presently known culture on Earth. They are therefore assuming
07:22
that these objects originated from some previously unknown or unidentified
07:26
technology, possibly outside the earth.” The Ghost Rocket sightings ended as
07:30
quickly as they began in 1946, however, in both 2012 and 2014 recent sightings have
07:37
prompted both government and civilian investigations into potential landings
07:41
and crashes that seem to be occurring in a Swedish Lake. Maybe ET is just after the
07:47
Swedish Fish!
07:48
Number 5: Ängelholm Memorial.
07:50
During the same
07:52
period as the ghost rocket sightings, Swedish entrepreneur Gösta Carlsson
07:56
supposedly stumbled across a landed UFO and even got to meet a passenger of the
08:01
spacecraft, who had exited the saucer. Carlsson must have made quick friends
08:06
with the alien race, as it is told that they exchanged recipes for natural,
08:10
holistic medicines that Carlsson later shared with the world through his
08:13
pharmaceutical company. Alien pharmaceuticals, huh? Not sure if I trust
08:18
the source! Anyway, to memorialize the meeting, a concrete statue of the UFO was
08:23
constructed in 1972 and remains a tourist attraction to this day…
08:27
especially by UFO enthusiasts around the world.
08:30
Number 4: Abduction!
08:31
Speaking of memorials, if you were to travel the back
08:36
roads of New Hampshire on US Route 3, you might stumble across a strange
08:39
plaque near the town of Lincoln. It’s dedicated to Betty and Barney Hill and
08:44
the fateful events of September 19th, 1961. Betty and Barney were traveling home in
08:49
their car following a vacation in Montreal. At some point during their
08:53
drive, the Hills noticed a strange light up in the night sky. Betty had thought
08:57
that it was a falling star, other than the fact that was falling up, and
09:02
continued to be visible for a long period of time. Betty found a pair of
09:06
binoculars in the car and was able to track the movements of the object as it
09:10
passed in front of the moon. She described it as an odd shaped craft that
09:14
was surrounded by flashing, multicolored lights. Concerned, the Hills climbed back
09:19
into their 1957 Chevy Belair and continued to drive home. Out of nowhere,
09:24
the craft descended upon them and Barney came to a screeching halt as the UFO
09:27
hovered above the road right in their path.
09:30
Fearing they were going to be captured, Barney began to speed away. Their car was
09:34
no match for the extra-terrestrial horsepower, though, and the saucer was
09:37
quickly hovering above their car. According to the Hills, the car began to
09:41
vibrate and their bodies begin to tingle.
09:44
And that’s it!
09:45
The couple of woke some 35 miles away. They had no idea how they got there.
09:50
They did remember seeing the UFO moments before, but they had no recollection of the
09:55
time in between. In the weeks following this incident, Betty Hill began to have
09:58
vivid dreams that seemed more like a recollection of actual events. She was in
10:03
the medical ward of the UFO while being examined by an alien figure. During her
10:08
conversations with the leader of the aliens, he showed her a star map of where
10:12
they hailed from. From Betty’s memory of the dream, she was able to recreate the
10:16
star map, which astronomers have identified as the system of Zeta Reticuli.
10:21
Many books and movies have been written concerning the first documented alien
10:25
abduction, and it’s most certain that Betty and Barney Hills lives were never
10:29
the same after this event. But what really happened that night? Honestly,
10:33
we’ll probably never know.
10:35
Number 3: Cape Girardeau Crash.
10:38
10:39
Cape Girardeau is a small Missouri town, a mere 118 miles south of St. Louis. One
10:45
fateful night in 1941, though, led to a government cover-up and members of the
10:49
town being sworn to secrecy. More than 75 years ago, on the night of April 12th,
10:54
1941 a reverend was asked to leave the comforts of his home in the middle of
10:58
the night so that he could administer last rites
11:01
to victims of what was thought to be a plane crash, just outside of town. As a
11:05
town sheriff and the Reverend arrived at the scene
11:07
they found firefighters working hard to put out a fire that resulted from the
11:10
crash. Through the smoke and fire, it was obvious that this was no plane. As later
11:15
transcribed by UFO researcher Michael Huntington, “The Reverend arrived and saw
11:20
a classic flying disc with part of the side ripped open and two alien bodies
11:24
that were, at least dead, and one that may have been dying, may have been alive,
11:29
couldn’t breathe. The Reverend looked inside of the flying
11:33
saucer and saw wires and components of some sort of alien design. There were
11:37
strange hieroglyphics and bizarre knobs and dials. The Reverend knew that he
11:41
couldn’t really give last rites. About that time the Army Air Corps arrived
11:45
from Sikeston Field and cordoned off the area and swore everybody to secrecy
11:50
and confiscated any pictures. There were pictures allegedly taken that night of
11:55
men holding one of the alien bodies and somewhere out there are those pictures.”
11:58
The story was kept quiet until the 1970s when the witnesses were aging. On his
12:03
death bed, the Reverend finally broke down and told his granddaughter,
12:06
Charlotte Mann what he had seen. Unsure how to take his news, Charlotte was able
12:11
to get corroborating stories from the other aging witnesses, who all claim to
12:14
have seen the craft firsthand. Since the 1970s, Cape Girardeau has become a hotbed
12:19
for UFO research
12:21
Number 2: The Battle of Los Angeles.
12:24
Okay number two sounds
12:27
like something directly out of a Hollywood action movie, the Battle of Los
12:31
Angeles. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the recent decision to enter
12:35
World War II, Americans were on high alert for anything suspicious that might
12:39
indicate an enemy attack. On February 25th, 1942 one such incident occurred and
12:45
has subsequently become known as the Battle of Los Angeles. In the early hours
12:49
of the morning, just after 2:00 a.m. military radar units sent word of what
12:54
appeared to be enemy aircraft approaching the mainland United States.
12:57
As not to give the enemy an easy target, a citywide blackout was ordered and the
13:01
air-raid siren sounded. Reports of an unidentified object in the
13:05
sky began circulating just after 3:00 a.m. and eventually the troops begin
13:09
firing anti-aircraft guns at whatever objects were in the night sky. As
13:13
reported by the Los Angeles Times, “Powerful searchlights from countless
13:17
stations stabbed the sky with brilliant probing fingers while anti-aircraft
13:22
batteries dotted the heavens with beautiful,
13:24
if sinister, orange bursts of shrapnel.” But what was strange was the objects
13:29
never fired back. In fact, after one full hour of firing 1,433 rounds of
13:37
anti-aircraft artillery into the sky…not a single enemy plane was taken down. Not
13:42
a single bomb was dropped from an enemy plane. And no evidence of an enemy
13:46
attack was ever found. There was plenty of damage due to friendly fire, though.
13:50
Beyond the scattered shrapnel of anti-aircraft ammo that had exploded all
13:55
over the town, windows were shattered in homes and businesses all over LA. Several
14:00
homes were completely destroyed by the friendly artillery shells falling from
14:03
the night sky. At least five people died from the events surrounding this attack,
14:07
from incidents ranging from car accidents to stress induced heart
14:10
attacks. While no one knows for certain what was seen over the night sky in Los
14:14
Angeles, many UFO theorists have gone on record to state that the glowing, moving
14:18
targets that the air raid troops were firing at with our rudimentary
14:21
earthbound weapon systems were actually groups of UFOs flying over the Los
14:26
Angeles night sky. Before we get to number one take a moment to subscribe!
14:30
Also don’t forget to leave a comment and let us know what you think about UFOs
14:35
and extraterrestrial beings.
14:39
Number 1: David Grohl and the Foo Fighters.
14:42
Any music lover that’s listened
14:45
to rock in the 90s or the 2000s should be familiar with rock legend David Grohl.
14:50
Beginning his rock stardom as the drummer for the legendary grunge band
14:53
Nirvana, David Grohl went on to found the also well-known fighters of foo or…
14:59
something like that. Anyway, what does this have to do with UFOs you ask?
15:04
Well, Mr. Grohl himself has gone on record to state that he was reading a
15:08
lot of UFO books at the time of the band’s inception. The term Foo Fighters
15:12
dates back to World War II where it was actually used to refer to the
15:16
unidentified objects that were regularly spotted by Air Force pilots as they flew
15:20
missions critical to war efforts. These reports talk in depth about bright
15:25
lights following Allied airplanes. Traveling in speeds of over 200 miles
15:29
per hour, these lights would complete amazing maneuvers and formations all
15:33
around the Allied Force planes, while others would simply follow the pilots
15:37
through the European and Pacific skies. Reports originating as early as 1941
15:42
have described these objects with many different characteristics ranging from
15:46
fiery and glowing red, to orange white, or even green. Some were reported as disk
15:52
shaped, while others were reported as cylindrical objects or even wedge-shaped.
15:56
One of the fiery objects was actually hit with gunfire which caused the larger
16:01
ball of fire to break up into several small pieces and fall to the ground.
16:05
While the buildings below caught on fire, nothing was found from this fireball
16:09
that would have identified its origin or makeup. To this day no known cause for
16:14
these strange appearances exist. Some say it was a secret Nazi unmanned weapon. So
16:19
secretive, in fact, that the Nazis still aren’t even talking about it today!
16:23
Others feel it is related to electrostatic discharge from the planes.

{ https://goodmenproject.com/ }

Merciless Ancient Flood Carried 300,000 Lives Away

A new paper provides evidence that a historic Yellow River flood in China killed an estimated 300,000 people, suggesting the city of Kaifeng was to killer floods, what Pompeii was to mega-volcanoes.

The Chinese city of Kaifeng was a former imperial capital and a new study published in the journal  Scientific Reports provides geological and archaeological evidence supporting old literary accounts found in historical documents, that a catastrophic flood in 1642 AD destroyed the inner city and “entombed its inhabitants” within several meters of silt and clay.

Dr. Michael Storozum is a Doctor of Philosophy at Shanghai’s Fudan University Institute of Archaeological Science and, as lead author of the new research paper, he said this flood was particularly “catastrophic” because the city’s defensive walls had partially collapsed during a military siege which caused the floodwaters to become trapped inside.

China Vs Nature’s Wrath: The Flood of 1642 AD

Kaifeng is located on the southern bank of China’s Yellow River’s in the modern central Henan province and in antiquity it was one of the world’s largest cities serving as an imperial capital for several Chinese dynasties . The Yellow River is known to have flooded more than a thousand times in the past 2,000 years causing some of the deadliest flood disasters in recorded history, having claimed an estimated million lives. And over the past 3,000 years, while the Yellow River has flooded Kaifeng city around 40 times, according to the new paper, the 1642 AD event was “perhaps the most devastating of them all”.

Kaifeng and the Yellow River. (a) Topography of the North China Plain. (b) Area around Kaifeng, showing the elevation of the Yellow River compared to Kaifeng. (c) City walls of Kaifeng (solid line - Song dynasty wall, dashed line - Ming/Qing dynasty) (d) The super elevated channel of the Yellow River hanging above Kaifeng, with the tallest building in medieval Kaifeng, the Iron Pagoda, for scale.

(Storozum / Scientific Reports )

In a Newsweek article about the new study, Xin Xu and Rivka Gonen, authors of the book  The Jews of Kaifeng, China: History, Culture, and Religion , said that for six months Kaifeng had been resisting a rebel siege on its outer defensive walls and the governor fatefully ordered that the waters of the Yellow River be “unleashed in hopes of destroying the rebel army”. The walls were subsequently broken apart but rather than washing away the rebels the raging dirty waters penetrated the low-lying city taking the number of inhabitants from 378,000, to only “a few score thousand” (60,000) survivors.

The Flood Was Like A Washing Machine Loaded With Razor Blades

Storozum and colleagues explain in their paper that the constant influx of floodwater entering the city created a “deadly mix of mud and urban debris” that they say significantly amplified the destructive power of the flooding Yellow River, causing it to cut through and tear apart everything caught up in its wrath. What this 17th century flood event at Kaifeng tells the scientists is that “urban resilience is not static” but varies in accordance with the magnitude and type of natural hazard, the built landscape, as well as the city's social institutions, said the authors.

Victims of the 1642 AD flood were discovered along with a deadly mix of mud and urban debris.

(Storozum / Scientific Reports )

It’s not only historic floods that the researcher’s new investigations shine light on, for similar events are predicted to occur in our modern world in which “ climate change is expected to cause an increase in extreme weather around the globe,” wrote the scientists. And they also pointed out that as global temperatures continue to rise, which increases the frequency of extremities of floods, studying this one historic event provided an important reminder that unexpected events have happened in the past “and will likely happen again”.

The Facts As They Stand, Are Soaked To The Bone

According to a recent report on the science platform First Street , flooding is a natural process that greatly benefits the environment by, “abating erosion, protecting habitat, cultivating biological productivity” which leads to groundwater recharge. However, high frequency and excessive flooding conversely damage ecosystems, natural habitats, and entire communities, as was experienced over the last month in the UK and other places around the globe. According to a BBC report published today, Copernicus, the EU's climate change service, last winter was “the warmest winter on record for Europe, by a long margin,” being 3.4C above the 1981-2010 average and 1.4C higher than the previous warmest winter of 2015-16.

The site showing deposits from floods.

(Storozum / Scientific Reports )

In North America, according to First Street , between 2000 and 2017 tidal flooding increased “an average of 233% nationally” and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicted that in 2019, “200 million people in 25 North American states were at risk from flooding”. Trying to explain this sharp increase in heavy downpours and flooding across most of the United States over the last 20 years, it is believed to be largely caused due to changes in “sea levels, surface temperature, and sea surface temperature,” and these fluctuating environmental factors bring about inconsistent, unpredictable, and increasing flood patterns.

• The Ancient Chinese Merchant Town Qikou: A Forgotten Jewel on the Banks of the Yellow River
• First Evidence of Legendary Great Flood in China May Rewrite History
• Shui-mu Niang-niang: The Old Mother of the Waters Who Submerged an Ancient City

Two victims of the flood found prone on a wooden bed.

(Storozum / Scientific Reports )

And so far as costs are concerned, according to NOAA, flood damage in America alone has cost the American tax payers, “$1 trillion in inflation adjusted dollars since 1980” representing over 63% of the costs of all disasters totaling a billion dollars or more.

• Top image: The Yellow River Breaches its Course by Ma Yuan  Source: Beijing Palace Museum / Public Domain

By Ashley Cowie

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/ }

Two Faces of a Denisovan Revealed and Explained

Andrew Collins exclusively reveals the true face of a Siberian Denisovan.

What the Denisovans might have looked like has been one of the hottest debates in paleoanthropology since the discovery of this extinct human lineage back in 2010. Were they big or small? Did they look like their cousins, the Neanderthals, or were they more like anatomically modern humans in appearance? Lastly, were they the giants of legend as some are now speculating ?

Resolving these issues is difficult as just a handful of Denisovan fossil remains have been found. They include two enormous molars, two fragments of a parietal bone from a Denisovan skull, and a finger bone from a young female who lived 75,000 years ago - all found during excavations at the famous Denisova Cave in Siberia. There is also a 160,000-year-old mandible that was found in a cave on the edge of the Tibetan plateau in northwestern China and recently identified as being that of a Denisovan.

Despite this frustrating situation, in September 2019, it was announced that Professor Liran Carmel and Dr. David Gokhman of Hebrew University, Jerusalem, had used  epigenetics to analyze gene regulation and cytosine degradation in order to determine the suspected physical make up of the Denisovan face. Their finished reconstruction shows the head and neck of a young female with a rounded head, wide mouth and jaw, minimal chin, brown skin, and striking brown eyes. So well received was their reconstruction that in December 2019 the team won the 2019 Science magazine’s People’s Choice for Breakthrough of the Year .

The Hebrew University team’s award-winning reconstruction of the Denisovan face.

(Image: © Maayan-Harel)

Genetic Reconstruction

Crucial in Carmel and Gokhman’s reconstruction of the Denisovan face was data gained from the lineage’s genome first sequenced in 2010 by the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany. This showed that a significant number of Denisovan genes have been inherited by modern human groups through interbreeding in the distant past. It is perhaps for this reason that Carmel and Gokhman’s Denisovan bears similarities to Papua New Guineans and also to certain Australian Originals, both of whom display anything up to 5 percent Denisovan DNA ancestry, the highest rate in any human groups. (See, for comparison, figure below which shows Koori Originals photographed around 1847 in Victoria, Australia. Their features, particularly the man in the middle, can easily be compared with Carmel and Gokhman’s Denisovan reconstruction).

Koori Originals photographed by Douglas T. Kilburn around 1847 in Victoria, Australia. Their features are comparable with those of Carmel and Gokhman’s Denisovan reconstruction.

(Image: National Gallery of Victiria / Public Domain )

Denisovan Sub-species

So did all Denisovans look like Australian Originals, or indigenous Melanesians? The answer is almost certainly no. For example, studies of Denisovan genes inherited by modern populations in East Asia, Island Southeast Asia, and Papua New Guinea have revealed new information about the evolution of the Denisovan genome. This shows that soon after the Denisovans split from a common ancestor they shared with their cousins the Neanderthals (as much as 475,000-450,000 years ago) the population diverged into two separate types.

One Denisovan population came to inhabit a vast territory possibly extending from Central Asia, Siberia, and northern China in the north to Mongolia and Tibet in the south. Their descendants most likely moved through the Russian Far East before finally crossing the Beringia land bridge into North America; this occurring perhaps as early as 20,000 years ago. From the many discoveries being made in the Denisovan layer at the Denisova Cave it would seem that these Siberian Denisovans as they are known displayed a high level of advanced human behavior.

This included the creation of beautiful jewelry (see, for instance, the Denisovan bracelet below), the making of the earliest known musical instrument in the form of a whistle or flute, the earliest manufacture of bone needles, used most probably to create warm winter clothing, and the production of the earliest symbolic art. This takes the form of an exquisite carving of a mountain lion, possibly a child’s comfort toy, which has incised markings suggestive of a basic knowledge of cyclic time.

Denisovan bracelet found in the Denisova Cave, Siberia, and thought to be at least 50,000 years old.

(Siberian Times)

It is also thought possible that the Siberian Denisovans developed a sophisticated blade tool technology that was afterwards adopted by the first modern humans to settle in Mongolia some 30,000-40,000 years ago.

Sunda Denisovans

The other population of Denisovans lived in southern and southeastern Eurasia, as well as in Island Southeast Asia, Melanesia and possibly even Australia. They displayed a more basic genome, suggesting that they were a more archaic lineage than their northern neighbors.

This second branch of Denisovans are known as Sunda Denisovans (occasionally Australo-Denisovans) after the former Sunda landmass that once linked the Malaysian Peninsula with Indonesia. They themselves would appear to have split into two distinct groups, the youngest of them, according to genetic evidence, perhaps lingering on in places like the Philippines and Papua New Guinea until around 15,000 years ago.

So far there is no hard evidence that the Sunda Denisovans developed the same advanced human behavior achieved by their northerly neighbors. Stone tools as much as 50,000 years old found on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi may have been made by Denisovans. If they were created by Denisovans then it would imply that their ancestors had not only crossed the Wallace Line, the deep water channel dividing most of the Indonesian archipelago from Sulawesi, but also that they had sea-going capabilities.

This said, the Sunda Denisovans are unlikely to have developed a sophisticated blade tool technology like their northerly counterparts, since only so-called flake tools existed in Island Southeast Asia during the prehistoric age.

If the portrait of the young female created by Carmel and Gokhman’s Hebrew University team is truly representative of a Denisovan, then it is the likeness of a Sunda Denisovan, not a Siberian Denisovan, whose evolutionary development was quite different to that of its southerly counterparts.

• Face of the Denisovans? Portrait of a Teen Revealed by Her DNA
• A Trove of New Denisovan Discoveries Revealed At A Recent Anthropological Conference

Extreme Environments

So the question remains: what did the Siberian Denisovans look like? How different would they have been to Carmel and Gokhman’s reconstruction? To answer this question the present writer asked independent researcher and writer Debbie Cartwright to help in the collation of everything available on the physical appearance of a Siberian Denisovan.

This included all obvious information obtained from the Denisovan genome, such as the fact that Denisovans had brown hair, brown eyes, and brown skin, along with any further information to be gleaned from the few fossil remains found to date. We also looked at the suspected effects on the lineage’s evolutionary development derived from knowledge that the Siberian Denisovans would appear to have thrived at very high altitudes and also in extremely cold conditions. This probably included the Altai Mountains of Siberia and Mongolia and the Tibetan plateau, one of the highest places on earth.

Such extreme environments might well have necessitated the development of specialized respiratory systems including highly adapted noses that were able both to absorb all available oxygen at altitudes where the air was particularly thin, while at the same time warming up the air sufficiently before it passed into the lungs. For instance, a study by Mark Shriver, a geneticist and anthropologist at Pennsylvania State University, found that the effects of climate upon the evolution of nose size and shape suggested that larger, narrower noses are more suited to higher and colder climates, while wider flatter noses are more suited to hot tropical climates.

The Neanderthal Connection

It is important also not to forget that Denisovans were related genetically to Neanderthals, meaning that they would have borne at least some physical characteristics in common with them. This probably included a heavy brow bridge, thickset features, and a receding chin - a fact confirmed with the discovery of the 160,000-year-old Denisovan mandible found in a cave on the Tibetan plateau in northwestern China. This is extremely wide and robust and lacks a well-defined chin.

The Xiahe mandible, only represented by its right half, was found in 1980 in Baishiya Karst Cave.

(  Dongju Zhang, Lanzhou University  )

Also, like the Neanderthals, the Denisovans probably had receding foreheads and extended occipital buns, meaning they perhaps had long heads, as opposed to the more rounded craniums displayed by some early modern human populations such as Australian Originals.

Modern Human Introgression

Having made the connection between Denisovans and Neanderthal physiology it is also likely that Denisovans had at least some traits in common with anatomically modern humans ( Homo sapiens ). When a previously misplaced fragment of the finger bone found in the Denisova Cave in 2008 was reunited with the second, more famous, fragment used by the Max Planck Institute to sequence the Denisovan genome, it was realized that the finger did not resemble that of a Neanderthal as had been widely expected. Although the finger bones of archaic humans such as Neanderthals and Homo erectus are extremely thick and quite stubby, the Denisovan finger bone is a lot slimmer, like that of an anatomically modern human.

This connection between anatomically modern humans and Denisovans is perhaps far deeper than anyone has so far suspected for, as the current writer has speculated elsewhere, there is a strong likelihood that the ancestors of the Siberian Denisovans, after leaving Africa, encountered pre-dispersal modern humans already occupying the Levant. Evidence for the existence of these early modern humans has come from the discovery at the Qesem Cave in Israel of eight teeth belonging to members of the Acheulo-Yabrudian Cultural Complex (AYCC), which thrived in the Levant corridor circa 420,000-250,000 years ago. These were found to be almost identical to those of anatomically modern humans.

Having interbred with these early modern humans, the Siberian Denisovans would then have continued their migration eastwards, entering Central Asia, Siberia, and finally, Mongolia and China. If correct, they would have been carrying physiological traits picked up from early modern humans living in the Levant. This is something that the Sunda Denisovans would seem to have missed out on since they most likely took a different route out of Africa, crossing the Arabian peninsula before entering southern Asia, southeastern Asia, and, finally, Island Southeast Asia.

The possibility that the Siberian Denisovans were carrying at least some early modern human genes might also help explain why the Siberian Denisovan genome is slightly different to that of the Sunda Denisovans, and why they would appear to have displayed advanced human behavior before their final disappearance around 45,000 years ago.

And so this brings us to an impression of the Siberian Densovan that appears as follows…

The face of a Siberian Denisovan by artist George Hernandez working in concert with writer-researcher Debbie Cartwright and the present author. Genetic information, Denisovan and Neanderthal fossils, and unique traits in anatomically modern humans were used to reconstruct this likeness.

(Picture credit: © Hernandez/Cartwright/Collins)

Human Elements

For our reconstruction of the Siberian Denisovan we have included some physical traits seen in modern human populations that perhaps benefitted from introgression with this archaic human population. They include modern populations in North Asia, East Asia, and even North America - where First Peoples of the Great Lakes-St Lawrence River region such as the Ojibwa and Cree have been found to possess some Denisovan DNA. They, more than any other population, might well have retained Siberian Denisovan traits through the isolation of their ancestors prior to first contact with Europeans at the start of the historical period.

Debbie Cartwright and I then worked with talented Californian artist George Hernandez to achieve the best likeness of an archaic Siberian Denisovan, here revealed for the first time. It is shown also for comparison alongside Carmel and Gokhman’s own reconstruction.

The reconstructed face of a Siberian Denisovan (left) alongside the Hebrew University’s own representation of a Sunda Denisovan (right).

(Picture credits: Left, © Hernandez/Cartwright/Collins; Right, © Maayan-Harel)

Many similarities can be noted between the two versions, including wide mouths, receding chins, heavy brow ridges, brown eyes, skin and hair, and also large noses, but there are also some differences as well. The face of the Siberian Denisovan is much longer, the brow ridge more prominent (like that of a Neanderthal), the forehead recedes more, while the cheekbone is much higher.

Aquiline Noses

We have also chosen to give the Denisovan a narrow, aquiline nose with a prominent bridge, as opposed to the large, but much flatter nose, of the Carmel and Gokhman reconstruction. As we have seen, such distinctive noses helped in the absorption of oxygen in elevated environments where the air is particularly thin. Yet curiously, an aquiline nose (also known as the Roman or hooked nose) combined with a prominent bridge has often been compared with the head shape of a large bird, most obviously that of an eagle (the Latin word aquiline means “eagle-like).”

Bird shamanism would appear to have played a significant role in human development for as much as 400,000 years. If, as we suspect, the Siberians Denisovans did possess aquiline noses, then with their prominent bridges and heavy brow ridges there is every reason to suspect that their facial details could be said to resemble those of a bird, something noted in individuals with aquiline noses in more modern times.

Illustration comparing an individual with an aquiline nose, heavy brow and prominent nose arch with the head of an eagle by Charles Le Brun

(Image: CC BY 4.0 ).

If correct, then this might have encouraged Siberian Denisovan groups to adopt the guise of birds to engage in early forms of animism and even shamanism, similar to that noted in connection with the AYCC inhabitants of the Qesem Cave in Israel as much as 400,000-250,000 years ago. In other words, Siberian Denisovans came to resemble birds both in physical appearance and in mannerisms, a connection emphasized and even celebrated through ritual practices.

Dreadlocks

Lastly, we chose to give our Denisovan thick, dreadlocked hair as opposed to the frizzy hair seen in Carmel and Gokhman’s reconstruction. Why did we do this? The answer is two-fold. First, it comes from the adoption of dreaded hair for socio-cultural and socio-religious purposes by various modern human populations such as the Himba people of Namibia, the Hindu Sadhus or holy men of India, and the Rastafarians of Jamaica.

Secondly, the deliberate management of long thick hair by dreading and the subsequent use of mud (as well as goat hair in the case of Himba women) to help coat it aids in the prevention of lice and other insect infestations. In addition to this, dreadlocks bunched up on the head would have accentuated the Denisovans’ suspected elongated heads, emphasizing their individual identity in a world that towards the end of their time circa 45,000-50,000 years ago, would have included Neanderthals, anatomically modern humans and, most likely, hybrids stemming from an admixture of all these various lineages of the homo genus.

• Genetic Study Suggests Denisovans Were the Mythological Rakshasas
• The Coming of the Thunder People: Denisovan Hybrids, Shamanism and the American Genesis

Personal Bias

Clearly, such a unique feature is based on speculation of how the Siberian Denisovans managed long hair without cutting it and how it might have come to signify their ritual culture. This is an important point, for no matter what evidence is used to reconstruct the face of an archaic human, it will always involve some personal bias. This can be seen, for example, from the many different representations of Neanderthals. They range from virtual ape-men covered in thick body hair, to others where the individual becomes almost indistinguishable from any red-haired, freckled person you might encounter on the street today.

Thus, it has to be accepted that the Denisovan face imagined by artist George Hernandez under the directions of Cartwright and the author must by definition have its own personal bias. This said, we feel it is the closest representation to date of a Siberian Denisovan, as opposed to the face of the Sunda Denisovan developed by Carmel and Gokhman.

Further assessments on the shape of the Denisovan skull and the proportions of the face can only be achieved following the discovery of additional fossils; most urgently a complete cranium. Beyond this will be the eventual discovery of a Denisovan femur, which will help settle the debate over whether or not the Denisovans were of exceptional size and height.

This was first implied by the enormous size of the two Denisovan molars found in the Denisova Cave. Although the two fragments of the Denisovan skull found at the site in 2016 are also suggestive of a large body frame, not enough fossil remains have come to light to answer the question of height and girth with any degree of certainty. So, until such times we must be content with the two faces of a Denisovan presented to the public so far – that of Carmel and Gokhman’s team from the Hebrew University and that of our own. At least these provide some idea of what this extinct branch of the Homo genus might have looked like.

• Top image: The reconstructed face of a Siberian Denisovan (right) alongside the Hebrew University’s own representation of a Sunda Denisovan (left).           
• Source: Left © Hernandez/Cartwright/Collins; b) © Maayan-Harel)

By Andrew Collins

Andrew Collins is a history and science writer. His most recent book is Denisovan Origins, co-authored with Gregory L. Little (Bear & Co, 2019).

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/ }

Rare Masterpiece Uncovered on Ancient Egyptian Sarcophagus

An Italian-Egyptian team have reconstructed a masterpiece of ancient Egyptian art. They have been able to virtually recreate the face of a leopard that was found on a sarcophagus lid in a necropolis. They recreated the face of the big cat using the latest digital technology.

A team led by Italian archaeologist Patrizia Piacentini, from the Milan State University, found the necropolis under the sands of the desert not far from Aswan. The burial site was unearthed some 15 feet (5m) underground. According to Ansamed, the necropolis “extends for more than 25,000 square meters on the western bank of the Nile River , near the Mausoleum of Aga Khan III.”

Apart from the network of tombs found underground, some burials were also discovered dug into a nearby hill. It is believed that the burial site was in use for a millennium from the 7 ^th century BC until the 3 ^rd century AD when Egypt was a Roman province.

Entrance of the newly discovered tomb, where the leopard painting on the sarcophagus was found.

( University of Milan )

Treasure of Burial Goods

Ansamed reports that “one of the tombs, number AGH026, already made news last year when a large room was found with about 30 bodies buried during the 2nd century BC.” This had a treasure trove of grave goods, including funerary art and a very rare stretcher for transporting mummified cadavers. 

In this location, the team found a leopard that was painted onto the stucco of a shattered lid of a sarcophagus. In ancient Egyptian culture, this animal was the symbol of power and determination. Live Science reports that the representation of the predator was “likely intended to strengthen the spirit of the recently deceased for the journey to the land of the dead.”

The painted image of the leopard was found in a poor condition and much of it was missing.  It was painted onto the fragment of a lid of the sarcophagus, which was very fragile and full of sand. The experts decided to remove the stucco, with the image, from the lid in order to save the artwork. It was a very delicate task and it could easily have gone wrong. Archaeology.org quotes Piacentini as saying “it was a very delicate operation that had us holding our breath, we had tears in our eyes.”

The fragmentary sarcophagus lid with the painted leopard face on it.

( University of Milan )

Recreating the Sarcophagus’ Leopard Face

At one time, the face of the leopard would have been aligned with the face of the mummy inside the coffin. Live Science quotes the lead researcher Piacentini, that the symbol of the leopard “was common in ancient Egypt, but it is very rare to find it painted.” The team took the fragment with the image of the leopard from the site, in order to preserve it.

Then they decided to use some breakthrough technology in an effort to digitally reconstruct the c.2200-year-old painting.  The researchers were able to recreate the leopard, which was originally very realistically painted, with vibrant colors and wide eyes. Piacentini told Fox News “we made the discovery at the end of January 2019, but just finished the 'virtual' restoration of the fragment.”  The digital reconstruction demonstrates the great skills of Egyptian artists and their ability to create realistic and naturalistic works of art.

• The Head of an Emperor, the Shrine of a God: Two Contrasting Finds at the Egyptian Sites of Luxor and Aswan
• Ancient temple dating back 3,500 years found near Aswan in Egypt
• Archaeologists Stumble Upon 10 Egyptian Late Period Rock-Hewn Tombs

Pine Seeds for the Afterlife

Also found in the same tomb as the leopard painting was a dish with some pine seeds.  Based on Roman era cookbooks it seems that these were very popular and used in a variety of foods. It is likely that the seeds were placed beside the burial of a person by his family. The Egyptians believed that the deceased would enjoy them in the afterlife.

The leopard found at Aswan is now being conserved.  Ilaria Perticucci and Rita Reale, both professional conservators, are planning to restore the image in the controlled environments of laboratories in Aswan. It is not known if the restored painting will be put on display in the future. The necropolis, where the remarkable image was found, continues to be excavated by archaeologists.

• Top image: Virtual rendition of the painting of the leopard face found on the ancient Egyptian sarcophagus.        
• Source: University of Milan

By Ed Whelan

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/ }

Here’s what the 2020 candidates — past and present — have said about UFOs, and whether information about them should be declassified

• After the US Navy confirmed a spate of unusual sightings by its pilots last year, candidates in the 2020 election have been asked what they think of the possibility of extra-terrestrial life.
• Some candidates have dodged the question, others have openly shared their views.
• Sen. Bernie Sanders has suggested that he would declassify information about UFOs if he wins.
• President Donald Trump has expressed skepticism about UFOs but told a reporter last year the US was monitoring the situation.
• See what other leading candidates – including those who ran and then dropped out – think.
• Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

As the 2020 presidential race heated up, the candidates came ever-closer scrutiny for their policies on the key issues facing the US.

But some reporters have made it their mission to find out where they stand on a subject usually relegated to fringes of the internet – the existence of UFOs.

The question is getting increasing attention after the Navy confirmed last September that a spate of videos showing military planes being buzzed by mysterious, fast objects.

In response to an freedom of information request in January, the Navy also said it had top-secret information about UFOs that it could not make public as it could cause “exceptionally grave damage to the National Security of the United States” if released.

Here are some of the candidates who’ve shared their thoughts on UFOs, and what they said.

Bernie Sanders suggested he would release classified information if elected

Foto: Democratic 2020 U.S. presidential candidate Sanders rallies in North Charleston, South Carolina

Source: Reuters

Sanders made the suggestion to podcast host Joe Rogan in an interview last August.

Here’s the full exchange:

Rogan: If you found out something about aliens. If you found out something about UFOs, would you let us know?

Sanders: Well, I’ll tell you, my wife would demand that I tell you.

Rogan: Is your wife a UFO nut?

Sanders: No, she’s not a UFO nut. She goes: “Bernie, what is going on do you know? Do you have any access to records?”

Rogan: You don’t have any access? You’ll let us know though?

Sanders: Alright, we’ll announce it on the show. How’s that?

President Donald Trump doesn’t seem to believe in UFOs, but did say his administration was looking into them

Foto: FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump visits India

Source: Reuters

President Donald Trump was quizzed about the rising number of Navy UFO sightings in an interview with ABC News last June.

And though he was sceptical about the reports, he did confirm that the US government was monitoring the situation.

“They do say, and I’ve seen, and I’ve read, and I’ve heard. And I did have one very brief meeting on it. But people are saying they’re seeing UFOs. Do I believe it? Not particularly.”

Asked if he would be told if extraterrestrial life was found, Trump said: “We’re watching, and you’ll be the first to know.”

Amy Klobuchar said she would declassify information so “earnest journalists” can dig into it

Foto: U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) speaks to guests during a campaign stop at the Marion County Democrats soup luncheon at the Peace Tree Brewing Company on February 17, 2019 in Knoxville, Iowa

Source: Scott Olson/Getty Images

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who dropped out of the race after the South Carolina primary, made her remarks to Daymond Steer, a reporter on local New Hampshire newspaper Conway Daily Sun.

The state’s primary in February was the first of the election season.

In his interviews, he typically saves one big question for the last: Do they believe in UFOs and if elected president would they declassify information about them?

“I think we don’t know enough … I don’t know what’s happened, not just with that sighting, but with others,” Klobuchar told Steer in January. “And I think one of the things a president could do is to look into what’s there in terms of what does the science say, what does our military say.”

“Here’s the interesting part of that answer is that some of this stuff is really old,” she said. “So, why can’t you see if you can let some of that out for the public so earnest journalists like you who are trying to get the bottom of the truth would be able to see it?”

Pete Buttigieg said humans ‘should always be looking at what’s going on around us’

Foto: U.S. Democratic presidential candidate and Mayor of South Bend, Indiana Pete Buttigieg campaigns during a SEIU California Democratic Delegate Breakfast in San Francisco, California, U.S. June 1, 2019.

Source: REUTERS/Stephen Lam

Former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, struck a philosophical tone when Steer asked him the same question in January. He dropped out at a similar time to Klobuchar.

The former military intelligence officer remarked that “strange things happen out there” and that though life outside Earth probably existed, he had not seen any evidence that alien life forms had visited this planet.

“As a curious species, [we] should always be looking at what’s going on around us,” Buttigieg told Steer.

“Unimaginably strange things often happened in the grand sweep of American and world history and we should never fail to be on the lookout for what’s happening around us.”

What in the blazes is a ‘blazar’ and should we be worried that the oldest and biggest one in the universe is pointed directly at Earth?

“We present the discovery of PSO J030947.49+271757.31, the radio brightest (23.7 mJy at 1.4 GHz) active galactic nucleus (AGN) at z >  6.0.”

Well, that opening line from a new study published in Astronomy & Astrophysics tells us absolutely nothing about blazars that a non-astronomer can understand. Fortunately, we have Silvia Belladitta, a Ph.D. student at the University of Insubria in Italy and leader of the study, to explain it to us in somewhat simpler terms in a statement to Phys.org.

“The spectrum that appeared before our eyes confirmed first that PSO J0309+27 is actually an AGN, or a galaxy whose central nucleus is extremely bright due to the presence in its center of a supermassive black hole fed by the gas and the stars it engulfs.”

Hey, watch where you’re pointing that thing!

PSO J0309+27 was first discovered when Belladita and her colleagues looked at bright radio sources captured by the NRAO’s Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico, the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System in Hawaii (Pan-STARRS), and the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) space telescope. A bright object was isolated and named PSO J030947.49+271757.31 (PSO J0309+27 for short). Knowing its exact location, they then took measurements from the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) in Arizona and NASA’s Sift space telescope to determine that it was an active galactic nucleus (AGN) – a black hole at the center of a galaxy that was consuming the stars around it. All exciting stuff, but one piece of data from the LBT made this a unique and mind-blowing discovery.

“In addition, the data obtained by LBT also confirmed that PSO J0309+27 is really far away from us, according to the shift of the color of its light toward red or redshift with a record value of 6.1, never measured before for a similar object.”

OK, mind-blowing for astronomers. PSO J0309+27 is a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy and is a billion times more massive than our Sun. For an apples-to-apples (or AGN-to-AGN) comparison, the supermassive black hole at Milky Way’s center is only four million times more massive than the Sun. While PSO J0309+27’s mass is impressive, its light is even more extraordinary. It means that the radar jets blasting out of PSO J0309+27 are pointed directly at Earth – THAT’S why it’s called a ‘blazar’. Any slight deviation would make it a barely detectable non-blazar AGN. At the distance of 13 billion light years, the third remarkable thing about PSO J0309+27 is that it’s barely a billion years older than the entire universe.

“Thanks to our discovery, we are able to say that in the first billion years of life of the universe, there existed a large number of very massive black holes emitting powerful relativistic jets. This result places tight constraints on the theoretical models that try to explain the origin of these huge black holes in our universe.”

Other supermassive black holes pale in comparison.

Yes that’s a big deal to Belladitta and her fellow astronomers, who are now anxiously awaiting the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile coming online this year. The first objects they’ll most likely study are the 100 other known AGNs.

And finally … is Earth in any danger with the biggest and oldest blazar in the universe blazing its jets directly at us? Not a chance.

It’s about time we got some good news.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Airbus A319 Close Encounter With Two Alien Disc

MARCH 25, 2004 ……. FLIGHT OVER MINNESOTA

It was while the Northwest Airlines Airbus A319 was in the airspace of Minnesota, at around 8 pm on the evening of 25^th March 2004, when the air traffic control in Minneapolis received communication from the crew that they could see two unidentified objects approximately 15 miles in front of their position and seemingly traveling in the same direction (and so maintaining this steady cushion).

The plane was traveling at an approximate altitude of 35,000 feet and it appeared the two strange objects were possibly only slightly higher than that. The crew requested any information from the control tower of other air traffic in the area.

However, the response returned that there were no signs of any other aircraft in the plane’s vicinity. They would ask the crew, though, if they were “still seeing the targets” to which they would respond they very much were.

Upon focusing on the scene in front of them further, one of the pilots felt he could see two sets of two objects, which, if correct, would mean that four individual, solid crafts were making their way, from the north, in a west, southwest direction to a destination unknown.

The two spherical objects would remain in their sight for approximately a quarter of an hour before eventually vanishing into the distance. While the plane continued its flight with no further incidents, eventually landing as planned in Los Angeles, the air traffic controller would make a report of the incident to the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC).

The incident would catch the attention of Peter Davenport the NUFORC’s director. So much so, that Davenport would initially arrange to speak with the witness on an upcoming talk radio broadcast. However, before the show could take place, the controller’s supervisor somehow became aware of the impending appearance and would order that the witness not appear on the show and was not to speak of the incident publicly.

While this might be nothing more than a desire to keep such “sensationalist” stories away from a commercial airline so as to avoid any potential negative effects, it also smacks ever so slightly of the way other witnesses, particularly those connected to airlines, have been silenced from telling their stories. NOTE: The above image is CGI.

KEN PFEIFER WORLD UFO PHOTOS AND NEWS

HTTP://WWW.WORLDUFOPHOTOS.ORG

HTTP://WWW.WORLDUFOPHOTOSANDNEWS.ORG

HTTP://WWW.KENPFEIFERDISCOVERIES.COM

THANKS TO MARCUS LOWTH AND https://www.ufoinsight.com

Source: http://worldufophotosandnews.org/?p=25456

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

Latest UFO Footage From the Mediterranean

The most recent UFO footage on the Internet is completely free to download, yet you still can’t find a single video on the Internet that has more images and color than the latest UFO video to come from the Mediterranean. If you need any more proof of how important this newest UFO video is, then just read on.

Most people are familiar with UFO sightings in the United States such as those which have been reported in the Midwest region or the Mississippi Valley Delta. However, there are many videos of UFOs in the Mediterranean which are as varied as the countries they come from. There are many UFO videos from France, Italy, and Spain, and another from Switzerland, to name a few.

Although most UFO videos in Europe and North America take the viewer on a ride through the sky and onto the ground, some of these videos feature scenes that are taken from within the atmosphere of earth. These images are especially impressive because they include blue and green flashes and streaks that appear to be video film. Of course, this doesn’t mean that they’re actually from an extraterrestrial craft, but it does show that UFO videos from the Mediterranean can be as captivating and mesmerizing as those from other parts of the world.

What does this mean for someone who wants to see a UFO up close and personal? It means that if they want to be truly amazed by the amazing technology we humans have at our disposal, then they need to watch a video from the Mediterranean. You can’t compare these videos to the ones from Florida, Texas, or California, because the European videos feature some amazing imagery and not all of them are filmed on black and white.

Because the many images in these videos are taken from the atmosphere of earth, they don’t make much sense unless you understand what’s going on. You need to remember that NASA scientists didn’t believe in the existence of UFOs until they started taking pictures of them from the surface of the moon. When you take a video from the atmosphere of earth, you are viewing what is known as an enhanced digital video.

But not all videos from the atmosphere of earth show the same footage, so you need to watch one from each country in order to compare. In fact, some European UFO videos do not include footage at all, as they come from both above and below the atmosphere of earth. If you want to see some of the most spectacular images of the new generation of UFO footage from the Mediterranean, then you need to get on the Internet and see for yourself.

The videos that feature imagery from the atmosphere of earth are typically far superior to the ones that don’t, and they all have the power to awe anyone who views them. The human race has been fascinated by the UFO phenomenon since the very first time a person took a picture of an object in the sky. Nowadays, the technology used to capture the most exciting UFO videos from the earth has reached new heights.

There are even several of these videos on the Internet that you can download without having to pay a cent, but you can only do that if you want to see these videos for yourself. People who want to see the latest UFO footage on the Internet can find numerous websites that offer it, and if you want to experience what it is like to be on the ground when a UFO zooms across the sky, then you need to see one of these videos from the Mediterranean. There is no arguing the fact that these videos are the latest and greatest form of entertainment available, so why would you be interested in anything else?

• http://footageofufos.com/2020/03/latest-ufo-footage-from-the-mediterranean/

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

The camera from NASA's satellite Stereo Ahead HI2 which orbits around the Sun has has picked up somethings that shouldn't be there.

The unknown object which looks like a huge "Ezekiel's Wheel" made its appearance on February 19, 2020 and it is still out there and NASA has not yet issued a response to the strange apparition.

It is not the first time that this UFO, which also looks like the spacecraft in the 2001 movie "A space Odyssey", appears in front of the Stereo Ahead HI2, the same satellite also caught this object in 2011.

It was said at the time that it was a camera artifact, but when it comes to a camera artifact then why does it only come back after nine years and not more often as you would expect.

Stereo is a solar observation mission. Two nearly identical spacecraft were launched in 2006 into orbits around the Sun that cause them to respectively pull farther ahead of and fall gradually behind the Earth. This enables stereoscopic imaging of the Sun and solar phenomena, such as coronal mass ejections.

  

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

Strange object hovering in the dark sky over Preston

Preston, Lancashire, UK – A UFO was caught on camera flying above Preston in the early hours of February 20. Gail Jacques spotted a mysterious bright white object moving above the city’s rooftops. She first saw the UFO over Preston Prison at round 1:30 am.

Gail's picture of the 'Preston Prison UFO' has since been magnified.

Pic: Marek Ostiadel

According to Gail, the object hovered for several minutes before moving at incredible speed. She immediately snapped photos of the strange flying object.

Her interest in knowing the true identity of the Preston Prison UFO led her to share the pictures with friends on social media.

Gail said that the UFO was too fast and precise for a helicopter. She explained that it moved so fast in seconds.

The pictures have generated mixed reactions online, with many Prestonians offered possible explanations.

Some say it’s a plane or helicopter, others say it’s a drone, and a few say it’s something not of this world.

Is it a plane? Is it a drone? Or is it something out of this world...?.

Pic: Marek Ostiadel

There are also who say it’s a Venus or Jupiter. Some believe it is the International Space Station.

Stephen Hall explains that it’s not a star as it’s below the cloud cover. He finds it interesting.

Steve Connolley does not believe it’s the International Space Station (ISS) as it seems too far away from sunset or sunrise, as the ISS is generally only visible close to these times.

Alison Fidder countered the explanation that it’s the planet Venus by saying that the planet sets at around 9:30 pm at the moment.

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

Is the end near for Mars Odyssey? Trump's proposed 2021 budget could doom long-lived mission

By Nola Taylor Redd 

The new budget request includes a massive cut to Mars Odyssey that effectively ends its mission.

NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft passes above Mars' south pole in this artist's concept illustration. The spacecraft has been orbiting Mars since October 24, 2001. The spacecraft will serve as a vital relay for NASA's Mars rover Curiosity's landing on Aug. 5, 2012. [Related: Mars Rover Curiosity Landing Coverage]

(Image: © NASA/JPL-Caltech )

NASA's longest-running Mars mission may be on the chopping block.

While President Donald Trump's 2021 budget request clearly threatened NASA missions like the jet-borne telescope SOFIA, another potential shutdown was tucked inside the request. Proposed cuts to the 2001 Mars Odyssey program would bring its budget to a scant million dollars a year, effectively terminating the mission. The budget request is just that, a request; Congress makes the ultimate decision about budgets and can choose to continue funding the mission. Nevertheless, the threat has Mars scientists anxious about the mission's future.

"I can't think of any situation where you would say, OK, let's just turn it off," said Tanya Harrison, a planetary scientist who studies Mars and has relied on Odyssey observations. "You never know what you're going to find if you keep going with these missions."

• Related: Mars Odyssey: Pictures from longest Mars mission
  

• More: A brief history of Mars missions

Odyssey launched in April 2001, arriving in orbit around the Red Planet six months later. Within a year of its launch, the spacecraft found water ice beneath the ground, the first direct evidence of subsurface water on the Red Planet. Since then, the spacecraft has made a number of important discoveries and observations, including the longest continuous observations of Martian weather.

But science isn't all Odyssey does. Right now, it's also the primary communications connection for the Curiosity rover. "It's the workhorse for sending data back from the rovers," Odyssey team member Phil Christensen told Space.com. Christensen, a planetary scientist at Arizona State University, leads the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) instrument on Mars Odyssey. With NASA's next Mars rover, Perseverance (formerly known as Mars 2020), scheduled to arrive in February 2021, a communication crisis could become a future concern.

The proposed defunding is even more puzzling, the scientists said, because the spacecraft is in relatively good health and has enough fuel to last up to a decade longer. "Something else [on the spacecraft] will die before we run out of fuel," Christensen predicted.

True, a series of strong solar flares put one instrument out of commission in 2003. And the spacecraft lost one of its reaction wheels in 2012, though its existing three are sufficient to point Odyssey in the right direction. But despite approaching its second decade, the spacecraft appears to have a bright scientific future in store — assuming it survives the 2021 budget proposal.

Budget woes

The concerns all stem from Trump's budget request, a document the executive branch sends Congress to start the annual budget process. The request outlined presidential priorities and how the administration would like money to be allocated for the fiscal year beginning in October.

That request highlighted the proposed cancellation of the SOFIA and WFIRST space telescopes, the latter of which previous requests have also targeted. In contrast, Odyssey's changes were tucked away in hundreds of pages of documents. There, a chart cuts Odyssey's budget from $11.5 million in 2019 to $1 million in 2021 and no funding in later years (fiscal year 2020 is only partially enacted at this point and so is not listed). No explanation for it is given.

It's easy to shrug off the long-lived mission, which has already received eight mission extensions. But when it comes to spacecraft, a functioning mission is worth more than might be expected. A colleague once told Christensen that a pile of parts is worth a certain amount value, which increases when the parts are assembled and again when a spacecraft survives the rugged testing required of space-faring machinery. But once the spacecraft is functioning at Mars, the value is without measure.

"When it's in orbit and has proven itself for 20 years, it's literally a priceless resource," Christensen said. "Why would you turn off something that's already there and working and doing a great job?"

Money is most likely the motivating factor. The NASA budget tends to be a zero-sum game, with few overall increases. And the agency wants to beef up a program to bring samples home from Mars, which generally requires moving money from another NASA column in the budget request. That's what Christensen suspects is happening.

Odyssey isn't the only Mars mission facing a requested budget reduction. The 2021 budget also proposes cutting the Curiosity rover's funds by about 25%, a substantial hit for the brave little rover. Christensen suspects that the $10 million cut from Odyssey and $10 million from Curiosity has all been applied to a sample return mission. At the same time, the Mars Future Mission program request jumped by nearly $200 million in 2021 alone, with funding forecast to increase further over the next five years. 

But to Christensen, it doesn't make sense to scrap Odyssey to make that happen. "Sample return is going to be a multibillion-dollar endeavor," he said. "In the big picture, saving $10 million isn't really that important."

Bringing rocks back from Mars is something Mars scientists have long fought for. Coincidentally, Christensen said he's spent many years advocating for sample return because he thinks it's important. And he's sure that shutting down Odyssey isn't something that NASA administrators are undertaking lightly.

"They've got some tough decisions to make," he said.

A rock and a hard place

NASA has struggled through proposed budget cuts in the past that failed to kill their missions. The SOFIA "telescope on a plane" mission has lost funding in presidential budget requests several times over the past few years, yet it's still flying. 

But if Congress goes along with the Odyssey cancellation, the process will be long and complicated. The Odyssey mission control room sits not at a NASA center but at Lockheed Martin's Colorado office.

A spacecraft can't just be turned off, especially not one orbiting a world with potentially habitable environments, like Mars. Exactly how Lockheed Martin would decommission Odyssey has not yet been disclosed. According to a member of the Odyssey team who wished to remain anonymous, NASA has declined to acknowledge the proposed budget cut to the team or take steps to decommission the spacecraft, according to team members. 

NASA did not respond to requests from this reporter for the decommissioning plan and postponed interview requests, At NASA's request, Lockheed Martin canceled a scheduled interview to discuss the subject, leaving not only the Odyssey team but also the public in the dark.

In January, NASA and Lockheed Martin shut down the Spitzer Space Telescope, an infrared instrument orbiting the sun behind Earth. That decommissioning took roughly six months of coordination between the two organizations. "It's not a trivial process to decommission a spacecraft," Christensen said.

To close its mission by October 2020, when the proposed 2021 budget goes into effect, the spacecraft would likely have to begin its decommissioning program about six months earlier. If the budget hasn't been sorted out by May 1, 2020, the Lockheed Martin team may find itself between a rock and a hard place.

One option is to continue operating the spacecraft as normal, fingers crossed tightly for a budgetary rescue. If Congress stands by the spacecraft, the mission will continue into its second decade and hopefully beyond that. But otherwise, the private company may find itself scrambling at the last minute to rush the decommissioning process, potentially causing entirely new problems.

The other, more likely option according to the confidential source is that the company will balk at the potential funding loss and begin the shutdown process. (Without comment from NASA or Lockheed Martin, it's unknown what other steps would be required to decommission the spacecraft.) 

Both Christensen and the anonymous source said that they've heard rumors that Odyssey would dump its fuel at some point between May and October. Christensen speculated that could be a step to prevent potential explosions in the future, which would litter the Martian atmosphere with thousands of pieces of debris. 

Once the spacecraft has dumped its fuel, even an increased budget wouldn't save Odyssey. Without fuel, the spacecraft won't be able to point or transmit. If unchanged, its current orbit should keep it drifting around Mars for another 30 years, per the guidelines that prevent a spacecraft from impacting a planet within 50 years of leaving Earth.

A continued presence

Odyssey has been in orbit for a long time. A child born when the spacecraft launched would be in their first year of college today. So a proposed cancellation is "not surprising, since the mission is so old," Harrison said. "The oldest missions tend to be put on the chopping block."

Odyssey carries what is currently the only infrared imager orbiting Mars. Over the last 19 years, that instrument, THEMIS, has produced an incredibly detailed view of the planet and its physical nature. Measuring the surface temperature at day and night provides insight into the properties acting on Mars today, such as wind and glaciation, as well as the volcanic processes of the past.

The spacecraft has also been able to study Martian weather patterns over its lifetime. "If you showed up on Earth and watched the weather for one year, you'd say, this is what the climate is like on Earth," Christensen said. "If you keep track of the climate over a 20-year period, then you have a totally different view of how the atmosphere is behaving."

Those records can have long-term implications for one day sending humans to Mars, and continued observations can only improve them. In 2018, a global dust storm single-handedly shut down the Martian rover Opportunity by obscuring its solar panels for an extended period. 

The same phenomenon could endanger human habitats on Mars. "If we're going to send humans there, the weather's going to be really important," Christensen said. "To this day, we cannot predict when the next big Martian global dust storm is going to occur."

Threats to Odyssey may also affect other missions at Mars, since the spacecraft serves as a major communications hub for surface missions. Rovers carry very small antennae, perfect for sending data short distances but an option for the long transmission from Mars to Earth. Instead, they ping satellites orbiting the planet. Christensen said there are currently four spacecraft capable of relaying those signals home: Odyssey, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), NASA's MAVEN spacecraft and the European Trace Gas Orbiter. Of those, Odyssey does most of the heavy lifting.

"Odyssey is really good at communication," Christensen said. "We've done it for a really long time."

MRO, the most likely communication replacement, has had its own share of trouble since its 2005 launch. "It seems to have gone into safe mode more frequently [recently]," Harrison said. She remembered a period where the spacecraft was out of commission for four months, making it a tenuous replacement for Odyssey.

MAVEN is currently focused on studying the upper atmosphere. Its orbit was recently shifted to allow it to shoulder some of the burden of communication, but doing so limited its scientific observations. The European spacecraft could also serve as a redundancy, as long as the agency is willing to give up collecting some of its own scientific data to allow Curiosity and the future Perseverance rover, formerly known as Mars 2020, to phone home.

The tradeoff between orbital and surface science is something all of the potential replacements would face. Shutting down the working Odyssey mission would not only eliminate the science produced by the spacecraft itself but also cut into the time other orbiters can spend doing science.

Both Harrison and Christensen said that communication redundancies mattered. "Having that backup contingency is really important, especially as we're about to launch another rover to Mars," Harrison said. "The more communication relays we have to Earth, the better."

Christensen remains optimistic about Odyssey's odds of survival and suggested some alternative models that could support the spacecraft even if Congress does cut its funding. "I think there are creative ways to keep this mission alive," he said. The mission could become student-run, he said, providing undergraduate and graduate students with the hands-on training they need and allowing them to engage with Mars. Or science could be outsourced to countries unable to send their own mission to the Red Planet, in exchange for additional funding. Or a college or university could step up to run the spacecraft and handle the funding.

"These things are too priceless to just flip the switch when you don't have to," Christensen said.

Harrison echoed that sentiment. "These missions are so complicated and we put so much effort into them that it seems like a waste to turn them off from a budget standpoint if they're still working," she said.

• Trump calls for $25 billion NASA budget for 2021 to boost moon and Mars goals
• Trump's 2021 NASA budget request supports X-59 experimental jet 
• Space Force gets $15.4 billion in 2021 budget request

Follow Nola on Facebook and on Twitter at @NolaTRedd. 

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'Cosmos: Possible Worlds' takes us back into a universe of science

A new season of the rebooted television show "Cosmos" arrives on screens today (March 9) after a one-year delay.

As in 2014's second season, the third installment of "Cosmos" is hosted by American Museum of Natural History astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson. The original series, which aired in 1980, featured Cornell University astronomer Carl Sagan and introduced countless people to the wonder of space science, and the reboot, which airs on the National Geographic channel, is carefully designed to do the same.

(The release of the new third season of "Cosmos" was delayed for a year while National Geographic investigated claims of sexual misconduct by the show's host. The network eventually dismissed the allegations and Tyson apologized publicly for any misunderstanding of his behavior.)

"Part of the DNA of 'Cosmos' is its capacity to blend the science with storytelling," Tyson said during a media event held by the Television Critics Association in California in January. "We all know storytelling from the beginning of our species. We all know science because you learned it in your science textbooks. Previously, when you wanted to communicate science … it felt very lecture-y." The new "Cosmos" is not lecture-y. It is easily digested science backed by great visuals.

• Related: The best sci-fi TV shows on Netflix 

The new season consists of 13 episodes, with subjects including the fascinating story of the unlikely originator of the rendezvous concept that enabled the Apollo lunar landings, the 20-year Cassini mission to Saturn and a visit to the New York World's Fair of 2039.

The Cassini episode in particular touches the heart: The show quite lyrically presents the end of the probe's long life, when it was directed to destroy itself in Saturn's atmosphere. This sort of creative, daring storytelling is at the core of the success of "Cosmos" and is bolstered by lavish, feature-quality visual effects.

"We have animations, we have visualizations, and there's music behind it," Tyson said. "These are tools that have been well known in the industry, but no one ever thought to put it to science. That's what 'Cosmos' does." 

The result is quite moving, as we see a cluster of mission scientists barely holding back tears as their beloved spacecraft plunges to its demise.

In a later interview, Ann Druyan, Sagan's widow and co-writer on the original series, said that beneath the show's overall theme of exploring the history of our understanding of the universe, there is another strong motif — that of the relevance and importance of science in our lives and culture.

Druyan said she feels that in the last few years, there has been a "flight from reality" in how we deal with science. She was frank in her assertion that there is widespread "loss of respect for science" and that "deception" about these topics has become "business as usual." 

That attitude permeates both the public and institutions, she said. Working on the original series, "Carl [Sagan] and I had many differences with our government, but we felt tremendous pride in the achievements of the space program and what it was doing," she said. "Now something has really changed in the government's attitude towards science, which was once its shining jewel. It's hostile and cynical. When anybody is hostile and cynical about our most powerful tool for apprehending reality, you know they're up to no good. 'Cosmos' is our way of standing up for the awesome power of science." 

She credited executive producer Seth MacFarlane with getting the reboot of the show on the air. "There would be no second season of 'Cosmos' without Seth … I'd been trying for years to get a new 'Cosmos' produced, and it wasn't until I met Seth that there was a champion for 'Cosmos.'"

The "Cosmos" team insists that good storytelling is the key to enlightening and engaging the public, according to producer Jason Clark. "We're not actually taking you out to space," he said, "so we have to visualize that in a way that feels profound and real, but that doesn't lose a connection with the audience in the art of storytelling." 

He described Sagan's performance in the original series as akin to a fireside chat and said that Tyson has embraced the same narrative style.

"I feel really in this season that [Tyson] delivered this incredible kind of connected, simple, one-on-one capability that we could support with visuals," Clark said, by taking viewers to "the far reaches of the universe or down into the quantum level. And when you go there, it's transformative." The team emulated the visual storytelling style of the best big-budget fiction films, he said, with the added benefit that "this is all real … it's true, so it's quite powerful."

Tyson brings his own unique style to this new iteration of "Cosmos," one that is well suited to increasingly cynical 21st-century viewers. When asked if he wrote in a different voice for Tyson than for Sagan, executive producer Brannon Braga said no. "It's in 'Cosmos's' voice," he said. "Neil's ability to take those words and make them naturalistic and connect with an audience on the camera is a perfect combination and resulted in success."

Tyson and the writers are dedicated to preserving the overall tone that Sagan and Druyan established in the original series, the team said, and rekindling a faith in science to answer the big questions that underlie "Cosmos." They have done so with grace and dignity, something rarely achieved in this kind of television, and one that has the potential to unite the viewing audience.

"Rather than hit people over the head for their beliefs, we present the notion that if we're going to survive … at some point we have to establish what is true and what is not," Tyson said. "If you understand that, you'll be in a much better position to make decisions that affect the survival of humanity. It's an appeal for all of us to gather together and imagine the future as a community — not as a country, not as a faction, but as a species."

"Cosmos" premieres on the National Geographic channel on March 9 at 8 p.m. ET/9 p.m. CT and will be reprised on the Fox television network this summer.

•  Carl Sagan: Cosmos, pale blue dot & famous quotes 
•  Book excerpt: 'For Small Creatures Such As We' by Sasha Sagan 
•  Sasha Sagan dives into science, space and spirituality in new book 

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Surprise! Earth and the moon aren't made of exactly the same stuff.

By Charles Q. Choi 

The new findings provide a boost to the giant-impact theory of the moon's origin.

This composite image of the moon was constructed using data gathered by NASA's Clementine mission in 1994.

(Image: © NASA)

The moon and Earth may be more different than previously thought, challenging existing models for how the moon formed, a new study finds.

Earth originated about 4.5 billion years ago, and previous research suggested that the moon arose a short time after that. For the past three decades, the prevailing explanation for the moon's origin was that it resulted from the collision of two protoplanets, or embryonic worlds. One of those was the newborn Earth, and the other was a Mars-size rock nicknamed Theia, after the mother of the moon in Greek myth. "Once the dust settled, two bodies were left — Earth and the moon," new study co-author Zachary Sharp, a planetary scientist at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, told Space.com.

This "giant impact hypothesis" seemed to explain many details about Earth and the moon, such as the large size of the moon compared with Earth and the rates of rotation of the two bodies. However, in the past 20 or so years, evidence has emerged to challenge that hypothesis and suggest a multitude of alternatives.

• Related: How the moon formed: 5 wild lunar theories

Computer models of the giant-impact scenario often say that 70% to 90% of the moon should be made of material from Theia. The problem is that most bodies in the solar system have unique chemical makeups, and so the Earth, Theia — and therefore the moon — should too. However, rock samples that the Apollo missions returned from the moon show that the natural satellite's composition is uncannily similar to Earth's, much more similar than such models would predict for versions of elements called isotopes. (Isotopes of an element each have different numbers of neutrons in their atomic nuclei.)

This extreme similarity in isotopes of elements such as oxygen has raised great challenges for the giant-impact scenario. One possibility is that the proto-Earth and Theia were nearly identical to start with when it came to oxygen isotopes, which seems unlikely. Another is that the proto-Earth and Theia's oxygen isotopes were fully mixed in the aftermath of the collision, perhaps due to an impact so violent that it vaporized a large portion of the early Earth, with the moon emerging from the resulting, doughnut-shaped mass called a synestia. But this and other scenarios may require unlikely impact conditions, scientists have said.

In the new study, researchers conducted new high-precision measurements of oxygen isotope levels in a range of lunar samples. The researchers expanded on previous work by focusing on a wide variety of types of moon rock.

The scientists found that there were subtle but regular differences in oxygen isotopic composition depending on the kind of lunar rock tested, Sharp said. This suggested that prior work that averaged together lunar isotope data while ignoring differences in rock type might not have given an accurate picture of the differences between Earth and the moon.

"Going into this project, it was expected that our results would likely mirror that of previous studies," study lead author Erick Cano, a stable-isotope geochemist at the University of New Mexico, told Space.com. "The most surprising part of our results was finding the amount of variation that we did between the individual lunar samples."

• Related: How the moon was made: Lunar evolution explained (infographic)

To explain these findings, the researchers suggested that the giant collision between proto-Earth and Theia did indeed lead to mixing between the bodies. Still, the resulting moon and Earth had distinct compositions, albeit very similar ones, Sharp said.

Later, in the first 1,000 or so years after the impact, vaporized rock from the disk of debris left behind by the impact likely led "to lava raining down on the moon for hundreds of years," Sharp said. Complex physical and chemical interactions between this lava rain and the ocean of magma that covered the newborn moon could then have led to an oxygen isotopic composition in the uppermost lunar rocks that was more similar to Earth's. In contrast, samples that came from the deep lunar mantle had the most different oxygen isotopic composition of the lunar rocks tested when compared to Earth.

The most important implication from these findings is that giant-impact models no longer have to account for virtually indistinguishable oxygen isotopic compositions between Earth and the moon, Cano said. "I think this will open the door for an entirely new range of impact scenarios," he added.

Future research can expand on this new study by analyzing other lunar samples, Cano said. "The obstacles for this future research may be the limited quantities of material that we have from the Apollo missions," he said. "Some of these lunar rock types were only brought back in very small quantities and can be very difficult to obtain for study."

Cano, Sharp and study co-author Chip Shearer, a lunar scientist also based at the University of New Mexico, detailed their findings online Monday (March 9) in the journal Nature Geoscience.

• What is the moon made of?
• How was the moon formed?
• The moon on Earth: Where are NASA's Apollo lunar rocks now?

Follow Charles Q. Choi on Twitter @cqchoi.

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

{ https://www.space.com/ }

UFO Captured By Drone In Utah

What I don't understand is why does it make a turn like a plane, I mean UFOs don't have to do that as they have inertial dampeners or gravity nullifiers with that rotating like that is done because of the ailerons, this object is rotating to make a turn like a plane does and that's illogical, might be something from the Air force new type of plane with that.

Other videos, selected by peter2011

Interesting video

{ https://www.disclose.tv/ }

Extraterrestrials Are Waiting For The Right Moment Before They Make Contact – Scientists Say

Cynthia McKanzie – MessageToEagle.com

If you were a member of an alien race would you think it’s wise to initiate contact with humans? Could humanity handle contact with extraterrestrials?

According to scientists, extraterrestrials are deliberately waiting for the right moment before they reveal themselves to Earthlings.

In a recent study published by the Astronomical Journal scientists have tried to shed new light on the Fermi paradox and the Aurora Effect by investigating the existence of alien civilizations on other planets.

Credit: Public Domain

“We model the settlement of the Galaxy by space-faring civilizations in order to address issues related to the Fermi Paradox. We are motivated to explore the problem in a way that avoids assumptions about the agency (i.e., questions of intent and motivation) of any exo-civilization seeking to settle other planetary systems,” researchers write in their study.

Scientists started by considering the speed of an advancing settlement front to determine if the Galaxy can become inhabited with space-faring civilizations on timescales shorter than its age.

They included the directed settlement of nearby settleable systems through the launching of probes with a finite velocity and range. In addition to this, researchers also considered the effect of stellar motions on the long-term behavior of the settlement front which adds a diffusive component to its advance.

“The results of these models demonstrate that the Milky Way can be readily filled-in with settled stellar systems under conservative assumptions about interstellar spacecraft velocities and launch rates,” scientists said.

The Fermi Paradox, a concept presented by physicist Enrico Fermi regarding the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence has intrigued all researchers searching for alien life. According to the Fermi Paradox due to the number of planets and stars in the galaxy, there should be another world teeming with intelligent extraterrestrial life. If this is true, then Earth should have already been visited or at least contacted by aliens.

However, since humans have not yet come across evidence of intelligent extraterrestrial life, many doubt the existence of alien civilizations.

See also:

• Are Extraterrestrials Capable Of Altering Our Reality?
• Extraterrestrial Material May Be Present On The Moon – Focus On Space Archaeology – Astronomy Professor Says
• Extraterrestrial Probes May Study Us Now But They’re Too Small To Spot – Astrophysicist Says
• More About Extraterrestrial Life

Researchers of the recent study say that it’s possible extraterrestrials are in close vicinity to the Earth, but they’re simply waiting for the time when Earth or the Solar System gets closer to their homeworld before sending out a probe or launching an expedition.

“If long enough is a billion years, well then that’s one solution to the Fermi paradox,” Carroll-Nellenback told Business Insider. “Habitable worlds are so rare that you have to wait longer than any civilization is expected to last before another one comes in range.”

“Every system could be habitable and could be settled, but they wouldn’t visit us because they’re not close enough,” he added.

Most people believe that humans will sooner or later establish open contact with aliens, but it’s possible certain requirements must be met before this meeting can take place. Science fiction authors and some scientists sometimes say humans will be invited to join the Galactic Club, but when this will happen is unknown.

Our world will change completely once we enter the Galactic Club.

Credit: Artist Unknown

According to David Schwartzman, a biogeochemist at Howard University in Washington D.C, there is a reason not to give up on SETI. Schwartzman thinks aliens are out there, despite the fact that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) has only found silence. He also outlines what we need to do for planet Earth to be initiated into the Galactic Club.

“Our world will change completely once we enter the Galactic Club.

I submit that if we want to enter the Galactic Club, the challenge lies in reconstructing our global political economy. A few minor side benefits should result, like no more war, no more poverty, a future for all of humanity’s children with a substantial proportion of biodiversity intact. We should not expect the Galactic Club to save us from ourselves,” Schwartzman said.

Written by Cynthia McKanzie – MessageToEagle.com Staff Writer

{ http://www.messagetoeagle.com/ }

'Invisible UFOs' Fill the Skies

In my previous article on “Invisible UFOs,” I discussed three cases from the U.K., and all from the 1950s. It’s now time to take a look at a very similar case from the United States and also occurred in the 1950s. The documentation on this intriguing story can be found in the UFO section of the FBI’s website, The Vault. With that all said, let’s now take a look at the case itself.  It all goes back to 1951 and strange, aerial activity that occurred in the vicinity of a military installation, Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. The documentation on the incident starts as follows: “On September 20, Andrew J. Reid G-2 [Army Intelligence] Ft. Monmouth, NJ, provided following report of unconventional aircraft observed by radar at above Army installation. On Sept 10, fifty one], an AN/MPG-1 radar set picked up a fast moving low flying target, exact altitude undetermined at approximately 11:10 a.m., southeast of Ft. Monmouth at a range of about twelve thousand yards. The target appeared to approximately follow the coast line, changing its range only slightly but changing its azimuth rapidly. The radar set was set to full aided azimuth tracking which normally is fast enough to track jet aircraft, but in this case was too slow to be resorted to. Target was lost in the N.E. at a range of about fourteen thousand yards.”

Matters had barely begun, however, as the following extract from the official papers reveals: “This target also presented an unusually strong return for aircraft[,] being comparable in strength to that usually received from a coastal ship [italics mine]. The operator initially identified target as a ship and then realized that it could not be a ship after he observed its extreme speed. September 10, fifty one  an SCR-584 radar set, at 3:15p.m., tracking a target which moved about slowly in azimuth north of Ft. Monmouth at a range of about 42,000 yards at extremely unusual elevation angle.”

Notably, the movements of the vast craft  were also picked up by another radar expert: “Both sets found it impossible to track the target in range due to it speed and the operators had to resort to manual range tracking in order to hold the target. The target was tracked in this manner to the maximum tracking range of 32,000 yards. The operator said the target to be moving at a speed several hundred mph higher than the maximum aided tracking ability of the radar sets. The target provided an extremely strong return echo at times even though it was the maximum range. However, echo signal occasionally fell off to a level below normal return. These changes coincided with maneuvers of the target.”

There was more amazing activity to come: “On September 11, fifty one [sic] at about 1:30 p.m. the target was picked up on an SCR-584 radar set that displayed unusual maneuverability. Target was approximately over Navesink, NJ, as indicated by his 10,000 range, 6,000 feet altitude and due north azimuth. The target remained practically stationary on the scope and appeared to be hovering [italics mine]. The operator looked out of the vehicle housing the radar in an attempt to see the target, since it was at such a short range, however, overcast conditions prevented such observation.”

And we have this incredible data from the base’s staff: “Returning to their operating position the target was observed to be changing in elevation at an extremely rapid rate, but change in range was so slow the operator believed the target must have risen nearly vertically [italics mine]…Once again the speed of the target exceeded the tracking ability of the SCR-584 set so that manual tracking became necessary…The weather was fair when the observation was made September 10th and cloudy for the September 11th report.”

Truly, a fascinating and amazing early encounter of the UFO kind. And of the invisible type, too.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Back in late 2013, Micah Hanks wrote a feature here with the title of:“Arnold’s Flying Saucers: Were They Saucers at All? He stated: “Despite the popularity this subject would garner in those golden years after the War, perhaps there is no early UFO incident that has proven to be quite as influential as that of Kenneth Arnold, a civilian pilot who spotted an entire fleet of strange aircraft while flying over Washington state in June of 1947.

The strange craft that Arnold observed would spark a flame that grew like wildfire, eventually forming the modern UFO phenomenon, and at the center of it all was the curious staple that became known as the flying saucer.” Arnold’s encounter took place near to Mt. Rainier and, in no time at all, resulted in the birth of the UFO phenomenon. Of course, there are numerous theories for what Arnold encountered: alien spacecraft, top secret of the U.S. military and even a flock of geese. Whatever the truth, for many Arnold’s experience is still perceived today as one of the most important UFOs cases of the 20th century.

It was said for a long time that the biggest problem with Arnold’s encounter was that it lacked any kind of corroboration. That may not have been the case, though. It’s now time to introduce you to a man named Fred Johnson, a prospector who just might have been in the right place – and at the right time – to see exactly what Arnold sighted. Both the military and the FBI took an interest in what Johnson had to say, as the following documentation – from the FBI – demonstrates: “Fred Johnson reported without consulting any records that on June 24, 1947, while prospecting at a point in the Cascade Mountains approximately five thousand feet from sea level, during the afternoon he noticed a reflection, looked up, and saw a disc proceeding in a southeasterly direction. Immediately upon sighting this object he placed his telescope to his eye and observed the disc for approximately forty-five to sixty seconds.”

Johnson “remarked that it is possible for him to pick up an object at a distance of ten miles with his telescope. At the time the disc was sighted by Mr. Johnson it was banking in the sun, and he observed five or six similar objects but only concentrated on one. He related that they did not fly in any particular formation and that he would estimate their height to be about one thousand feet from where he was standing. He said the object was about thirty feet in diameter and appeared to have a tail. It made no noise. According to Johnson he remained in the vicinity of the Cascades for several days and then returned to Portland and noted an article in the local paper which stated in effect that a man in Boise, Idaho, had sighted a similar object but that authorities had disclaimed any knowledge of such an object. He said he communicated with the Army for the sole purpose of attempting to add credence to the story furnished by the man in Boise.”

The FBI concluded: “Johnson also related that on the occasion of his sighting the objects on June 24, 1947 he had in his possession a combination compass and watch. He noted particularly that immediately before he sighted the disc the compass acted very peculiar, the hand waving from one side to the other, but that this condition corrected itself immediately after the discs had passed out of sight. Informant appeared to be a very reliable individual who advised that he had been a prospector in the states of Montana, Washington and Oregon for the past forty years.”

We may never for sure if Fred Johnson encountered the very same craft that Kenneth Arnold did. At the very least, however, it’s a fascinating and thought-provoking story.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Linda Moulton Howe: Earthly Phenomena Thousands of Years Old Could Have an Alien Origin

Linda Moulton Howe – For thousands of years they have been monitoring human development and interacting with the selected, molding and changing historical outcomes. We have been the subject of guidance, manipulation, and experimentation.

They have been referred to as the Ancient Sky Gods and The Watchers. But we would now refer to them as ‘The ET Presence’. Archived Show – Awakening Expo, Manchester, UK.

Linda Moulton Howe…1000′s Of Years Old Earthly Phenomena That Could Have An Alien Origin?

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

Black Ring UFO Seen Over Disneyland, Los Angeles, CA March 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: March 8, 2020
Location of sighting: Disneyland, Los Angeles, California, USA

Here is an interesting video of a possible ring UFO over Disneyland theme park in LA, CA this week. In the past some rides at parks have been known to cause black rings, however there are also serious US military reports that do note seeing a ring UFO suddenly change into a saucer shaped cloud over a military base. 

What significance does this have to real UFOs? UFOs can create clouds around them, or so the evidence presented by the US government documents have stated since 1957 of the Fort Belvoir UFO Case, it's photos are below. The Condon Report (p.168) devoted 11 pages to this case. One morning in September, 1957 an Arm private at Fort Belvoir, Va. was called from his barracks by his buddies to witness what appeared to be a black, ring-shaped UFO approaching. The private grabbed his Brownie camera and snapped 6 pictures of it, of which this was the first. After about 5 minutes, the black ring, which appeared "solid" to the soldier and glided steadily along, began to be "engulfed in white smoke." Photos at end of this post. 
Scott C. Waring 

Eyewitness states: 

The following video is of what happening on earth date 3/8/2020 “Alien Portal.” Share it people got to know what’s coming 😰. That was not the only place that happened at, it happened at SD too.

Actual photos taken by a US solder of metal ring UFO making cloud around it. 

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

Coronavirus Could Give Us an Idea What Will Take Place When ET Life Reaches Earth

It would be nice to find life on other worlds, no doubt about it! However, it may be wise to reconsider this entire thing. If we indeed find alien life, can we handle it epidemiologically, biologically, and emotionally?

We are currently in the middle of an alarming worldwide situation with previously unknown disease COVID-19. As of this writing, confirmed cases reach close to 90,000 in 68 countries, leading to over 3,000 deaths. Tokyo Olympics are threatened to be postponed, flights have been grounded, major international gatherings canceled, and a global recession looms. In the US, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had its worst week since the 2008 and 2009 recession, shedding one-third of its gains since the 2016 election. Most of these are due to fears of the negative impact of COVID-19.

Humanity is suffering the effects of the disease, but the Chinese and Asian-looking people are taking the big blow. The virus started in Wuhan, China, and ugly behaviors have surfaced around the world. At a California high school, an Asian-American 16-year old was assaulted and accused of carrying the virus. There’s an underlying anti-Chinese sentiment in South Korea, with some shops posting signs not allowing Chinese. In Vancouver, a Chinese boy playing at a school playground was taunted as being a virus carrier.

COVID-19 has nothing to do with space, as it is an entirely terrestrial problem. But the thing is, even its terrestrial origin, it leads to thousands of deaths around the world. What more if the virus came from the space? NASA is poised to launch in July a new rover to Mars that will hunt for microbial life and collect some soil and rock samples that will be bought to Earth. These samples are potentially containing that microbial life.

NASA has a long history of protecting the Earth from biohazards from other planets and vice versa, according to a column in Space.com. The agency has one division solely formed for that goal, which is formally known as the Office of Safety and Mission Assurance (OSMA) and commonly known as the Planetary Protection office.

Still, the risk exists. Even the strictest labs always have a non-zero chance that something could escape. Imagine it will, and many people will become infected. Aside from the impact of their health, they would not only be racialized but also extraterrestrialized, in the sense that they are not even fully human anymore.

The battle against SARS-CoV-2 shows that humanity can have a unified effort, and it will be the same if one of those alien living things threatens us all. Collectivism is among our highest qualities. On the other hand, the othering, racializing, directed at people of Chinese descent, is one of our lowest qualities.

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

The Fascinating and Terrifying UFO Incident Experience of Travis Walton (1975)

The Travis Walton UFO incident refers to an American logger who claims he was abducted by a UFO on November 5, 1975, while working with a logging crew in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in Arizona. Walton reappeared after a five-day search. The Walton case received mainstream publicity and remains one of the best-known alleged alien abduction stories, although skeptics consider it a hoax.

Other videos, selected by peter2011

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

Mohenjo-Daro: An ancient city destroyed by a nuclear attack thousands of years ago?

Is it possible that Mohenjo-Daro – an ancient city that belonged to the Indus Valley Civilization- was destroyed by a nuclear attack thousands of years ago?

Only seven years after the first atomic explosion in New Mexico, theoretical physicist Robert Oppenheimer, one of the people often named as “father of the atomic bomb” was giving a lecture at the University of Rochester. On that occasion, a student asked him if the first nuclear device that went off was the one at Alamogordo, during the Manhattan Project. Dr. Oppenheimer respond: Well … yes. In modern times, yes, of course.

What did Dr. Oppenheimer want to say? If we look at the theoretical physicist’s answer literally, it means that in ancient times nuclear bombs –or variations of them— existed among ancient civilizations.

Consequently, this brings us to one of the most important questions most of us have tried never to ask: Was mankind visited in the distant past by other civilizations beyond earth. And if so, did these ancient civilizations really have advanced technologies like nuclear bombs?

In modern-day Pakistan, in the vicinity of the banks of the Indus River, we can find one of the most enigmatic archaeological sites on the surface of the planet –which once belonged to one of the oldest civilizations on the planet, the Indus Valley civilization— Mohenjo-Daro.

Together with Harappa located some six hundred kilometers further northeast, Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa are two of the most prominent ancient cities that belonged to the Indus Valley Civilization.

Interestingly, if there is something surprising at Mohenjo-Daro, then it is the complete absence of buildings that can be identified as temples or palaces or any kind of symbolism that may be associated with such.

Archaeologists sustain that all buildings follow a uniform pattern, highlighting its construction in adobe bricks with no ornaments and windows, all within an urban planning far more advanced than that of any other ancient civilization thousands of years ago, with wide avenues and straight roads (many of them perfectly paved), with rectangular buildings which were all equipped with a network of drainage systems, canals, pipes and sewers, etc.

Interestingly, just as the ancient Sumerian civilization, the Indus Valley seemed to have emerged all of a sudden, without any trace of an earlier evolution prior to the apparition of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro.

But if the appearance of such amazing civilization remains a mystery, their disappearance is even more fascinating and was initially attributed to the arrival of invading peoples of Indo-European origin.

But many researchers argue that something entirely different happened at Mohenjo-Daro.

We only have to take a look at ancient Vedic texts, a set of antique Sanskrit writings which are considered legacies of the gods, where we find references which may help get to the bottom of the numerous mysteries that surround Mohenjo-Daro and the Indus Valley Civilization.

One of the ancient texts, the Mahabharata, an extensive poem of some 215,000 verses details events that occurred in the city of Mohenjo-Daro where both gods and mortals were wrapped in an epic war, overshadowing the remote origins of the city since the Mahabharata places the ancient city in the years 3103 BC during the Kali Iuga or ‘Black Age0 –a kind of apocalypse that occurred in the distant past that modified much of the ancient history of India.

There are hundreds and hundreds of unanswered questions, but there are ancient texts that offer many answers despite being considered as heretic and misinterpreted by modern scholars.

Interestingly, many ancient texts shed light onto the numerous enigmas of history and if not almost entirely, they illuminate the path of a truly untold story that bends the possibilities of our written history.

As we mentioned above, one of such texts is the ancient Mahabharata.

“Gurkha, flying a swift and powerful vimana,
hurled a single projectile
charged with the power of the Universe.

An incandescent column of smoke and flame,
as bright as ten thousand suns,
rose with all its splendor.

It was an unknown weapon,
an iron thunderbolt,
a gigantic messenger of death,
which reduced to ashes
the entire race of the Vrishnis and the Andhakas.

The corpses were so burned
as to be unrecognizable.

Hair and nails fell out;
Pottery broke without apparent cause,
and the birds turned white.

…After a few hours
all foodstuffs were infected…
…to escape from this fire
the soldiers threw themselves in streams
to wash themselves and their equipment.”

 A second passage:

“Dense arrows of flame,
like a great shower,
issued forth upon creation,
encompassing the enemy.
A thick gloom swiftly settled upon the Pandava hosts.
All points of the compass were lost in darkness.
Fierce wind began to blow
Clouds roared upward,
showering dust and gravel.

Birds croaked madly…
the very elements seemed disturbed.
The sun seemed to waver in the heavens
The earth shook,
scorched by the terrible violent heat of this weapon.

Elephants burst into flame
and ran to and fro in a frenzy…
over a vast area,
other animals crumpled to the ground and died.
From all points of the compass
, the arrows of flame rained continuously and fiercely.”

— The Mahabharata

According to many researchers, this controversial ancient text perfectly describes the use of nuclear weapons 5,000 years before the Americans utilized them on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Similarly, there are plenty of texts that relate to all kinds of details that illustrate the existence of airships (vimanas) and rockets or missiles capable of reaching long distances.

While as always we must remain with a minor sense of skepticism, we can argue that the above-mentioned text is not original, or its translation is not the most accurate. However, there are many other details that point towards an abrupt end of the inhabitants of Mohenjo-Daro.

It is necessary to mention there is a great contradiction when assessing the reasons and causes that could have caused the sudden disappearance from the maps of an ancient city like Mohenjo-Daro.

Although on one hand it has been speculated that a possible invasion resulted in the slaughtering of its people at the hands of invading hordes, archaeologists have only found around 30 skeletons in the streets. The obvious question we need to ask here is: Where is the rest of the population then? Where does the name ‘mound of the dead’ come from?

Is it possible that most of the population of Mohenjo-Daro escaped before the terrible invasion?

While invading forces is one theory, some archaeologists speculate that the city may have been abandoned due to a sudden change in the course of the Indus River, some tie around 1700 BC, but it does not explain other mysteries that surround Mohenjo-Daro.

Although very few skeletons found, it seems that death came to them very quickly.

Interestingly, there is a so-called epicenter of around 45 meters in diameters at the center of the city where the terrain and buildings appear to be crystallized as if they were exposed to a massive heat source.

On the buildings located near the center of the city, researchers have found that the bricks of the walls that are faced towards the exterior and looking away from the epicenter are also fused or melted.

However, this could have only been achieved, according to researchers, by exposing the buildings to a temperature of above 1500 ° centigrade.

What kind of weapons could have caused such devastating effects on both people and the surrounding buildings? Is it possible that as some people sustain, Mohenjo-Daro was really destroyed by a nuclear explosion?

Due to the fact that this hypothesis is considered extremely sensationalist and many believe it to be impossible, there isn’t a single serious study which tackles the presence of radioactivity present at the location of the city of Mohenjo-Daro.

The presence of objects and surfaces which appear to be melted or fused have been associated with forces of nature as observed in other locations such as Scotland, Australia and Egypt, all product of rays and electric arcs of great power.

Regrettably, as with other discoveries that challenge our history, many researchers have ignored the numerous mysterious surrounding Mohenjo-Daro and have not tried to answer the mysteries behind its sudden disappearance and fascinating history.

When you think about Mohenjo-Daro and mention it in the same sentence with Nuclear Weapons you would then be called a conspiracy theorist.

Interestingly not only are Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro the only locations were we can discuss this extravagant hypothesis and question whether it is plausible, there are several locations where researchers have detected the “footprints” of what they are calling ‘possible nuclear explosions in ancient times’.

As it turns out, there are at least three major points in the area between the mountains of Rajmahal and the Ganges River where scientists have spotted large layers of ash and a presence of radiation which is higher than the average normal.

But stay curious and ask questions no one else is willing to ask, stay focused and always come to your own conclusion, Who knows, maybe after all the secrets of the atom and nuclear power were known to the ancients thousands of years ago.

• Featured image by KPEKEP

µ

{ https://www.ancient-code.com/ }

Are Humans the Meanest Species in the Universe?

NASA/ESA

Melinda Snodgrass got the idea for her science fiction novel The High Ground when she started thinking about how awful human beings can be.

“I had a sudden vision of this nine-foot-tall alien ant-like creature with mandibles and claws—just a hideous, horrifying creature,” Snodgrass says in Episode 370 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “And it was cowering in absolute terror from a small human holding a machine gun. And I got to thinking about humanity and our tendency to be really mean, mean monsters.”

The novel takes place in a universe in which a human empire called the Solar League has subjugated five alien species, who now live as servants and second-class citizens. Snodgrass thinks this is a pretty plausible first contact scenario.

“If we do invent a faster-than-light drive, and go out into the universe, and meet other aliens, I am convinced that the first thing we will do is kick the holy crap out of them,” she says. “So instead of us always fighting off the invading aliens, we are the invading aliens.”

She also believes that any moral progress humans have made is much more tenuous than people realize, and that women’s rights could quickly vanish if childbearing became a priority, as is the case in the Solar League. “When you’re going out into space and colonizing planets, if you happen to end up on a planet that isn’t a goldilocks planet—a very Earth-like world—where there’s a harsh environment, the thing that becomes a precious commodity is your ability to sustain the population,” she says. “So over the ensuing years, women fall back into a much more traditional role.”

All of that creates a lot of conflict for her character Mercedes de Arango, one of the first women to attend the Solar League’s elite military academy. It’s a predicament Snodgrass can relate to, having once been the only female lawyer at her law firm.

“I literally had a bunch of male lawyers from this big office building run downstairs, and I heard them calling, ‘We hear Charlie’s hired himself a girl. Where’s the girl?'” Snodgrass says. “And they all came and looked at me in my office like I was a creature in a zoo. It was very bizarre.”

Listen to the complete interview with Melinda Snodgrass in Episode 370 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.

Melinda Snodgrass on her father:

“My dad was just fantastic, he was the center of my life. I loved him so much, and he gave me every opportunity—to study opera in Europe, to ride horses, when I was 16 he sat me down and said, ‘We’re opening a checking account and you have to manage it,’ and on and on. At the time of his death he was managing a small natural gas and oil company, and now I actually manage the company. I took it over in 2002, and I’ve been running it ever since. So I have this sense of history with being the heir apparent—or the heiress apparent—to a business. … It is weird though, because at times my dad would slip. I had a half-brother, who was a great deal older than I was, and dad would sometimes say, ‘My other son, John.’ And then people like Senator Montoya, who was having lunch with us that day, was laughing and saying, ‘Wait a minute, what’s she?'”

Melinda Snodgrass on Roger Zelazny:

“Roger and I became very close in the final two years of his life. He joined our gaming group, he would come and have dinner at our house many, many evenings. He was just the most charming, kind person I’ve ever known. … When I had just started writing, this literary agent that I had—who was also Victor Milan‘s and Bob Vardeman‘s agent—we were all at this dinner, at the local science fiction convention, and she said, ‘You have to change your name.’ And Roger immediately said, ‘No. No she doesn’t.’ He said, ‘Look at my name. Even though I’m on the bottom shelf in every bookstore, nobody forgets my name.’ And he turned to me and he said, ‘Don’t you change your name, because nobody will ever forget that name.’ And I kept it.”

Melinda Snodgrass on the Jean Cocteau Cinema:

“[George R.R. Martin] has turned it into probably the best science fiction independent bookstore in the Southwest. Because in addition to the little movie theater, there’s a bar—they have a liquor license—and then there’s concessions, and he has artists come in and hang their art for a few weeks, so you get to see various Santa Fe artists, and he has all of our books. And when they’re not doing movies, he’ll have events. Connie Willis will come down, and I’ll interview her, and then she’ll do a signing afterward. … So you can go in and buy some books, and have a White Walker Cocktail while you’re there, watch an independent movie, and when George is in town you’ll often find him there, ensconced in his armchair by the fireplace, in the evenings, to visit with people.”

Melinda Snodgrass on Star Wars: Episode V—The Empire Strikes Back:

“I was in this law office, and I hated it. I would get into work in the morning, close my door, cry for about 15 minutes, and then get control of myself and get on with work. … [Victor Milan and I] went to see The Empire Strikes Back, and we got to the scene with Yoda and Luke, and Luke says, ‘I’ll try,’ and Yoda says, ‘Do or do not. There is no try.’ And for some reason it was like a thunderbolt for me, and I was like, ‘I can spend the rest of my life in this law firm, and in a few years maybe I’ll have the big office and I’ll be terrorizing some young associate the way I’m being terrorized, or I can try to chart my own life. ‘Do or do not, there is no try.’ So I walked into the office the next morning, I typed off a letter of resignation, I packed up my plants and my diplomas, I laid it on my boss’s desk, and I walked out.”

{ https://www.wired.com/ }

One of the biggest mysteries out there in the Universe is inching closer to answers. An astonishing eight new repeating radio signals known as fast radio bursts (FRBs) have been detected flaring from deep space.

At the start of 2019, just one of these mysterious signals, FRB 121102, was known to flash repeatedly. In January, scientists reported a second repeating one (FRB 180814).

This new paper - available on preprint server arXiv, and submitted to The Astrophysical Journal Letters - describes eight new repeating signals detected by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) radio telescope.

This brings the known total of repeating FRBs to 10. It means we're starting to build a statistical database of repeaters, which could help astronomers to figure out what these signals actually are.

Fast radio bursts are certainly perplexing. They are detected as spikes in radio data, lasting just a few milliseconds. But, in that time, they can discharge more energy than 500 million Suns.

Most FRBs are only detected once and can't be predicted, so tracing them back to their source is really tricky (although, as demonstrated earlier this year for the first time, not impossible).

That's why repeaters are so important. And the news that they are not as rare as we thought means it might be possible to trace more back to their source galaxies, and determine what kinds of environments they come from.

We can also start looking for similarities and differences between repeating FRBs.

"There is definitely a difference between the sources, with some being more prolific than others," physicist Ziggy Pleunis of McGill University told ScienceAlert.

"We already knew from FRB 121102 that the bursts can be very clustered: sometimes the source doesn't burst for hours and hours and then suddenly you get multiple bursts in a short amount of time. We have observed the same thing for FRB 180916.J0158+65, for which we report ten bursts in this paper."

On the other side of the scale, six of the FRBs reported in the paper only repeated once, and the longest pause between signals was over 20 hours. The eighth one (FRB 181119) repeated twice after the initial detection, pinging a total of three times.

We don't yet know what this means, but it could indicate - as hypothesised in a paper last month by Harvard-Smithsonian astrophysicist Vikram Ravi - that all FRBs are actually repeaters, but some are a lot more active than others.

"Just as some volcanoes are more active than others, and you can think a volcano is dormant because it has not erupted in a long time," Pleunis noted.

But there are similarities between FRBs, too. The individual bursts from repeaters seem to last a little bit longer than the bursts from one-off FRBs. That's pretty interesting.

There's also the frequency drift. The first two repeaters - FRB 121102 and FRB 180814 - showed a downward drift in frequency, with each burst getting successively lower. Think of a sad trombone sound effect.

Most of the eight new repeaters,also demonstrated this downward frequency drift. This could be a clue as to what's producing the signals.

"I just think it is so amazing that nature produces something like that," Pleunis said. "Also, I think that there is some very important information in that structure that we just have to figure out how to encode and it has been a lot of fun to try to figure out what exactly that is."

CHIME is optimised for monitoring a very broad swathe of the sky, across a lower range of frequencies than radio telescopes like ASKAP or the Parkes Observatory in Australia, which have also detected FRBs.

So far, CHIME's approach is proving remarkably effective at detection. In addition to these repeaters, and the repeater announced in January, CHIME has detected a number of one-off bursts, too. It's not optimised for tracing those detections to a source, though.

That's where the broader scientific community comes in. Just today, a different team of researchers, including Ravi, announced they had made headway localising the eight new repeaters to known galaxies, just based on the direction the signals came from.

We can even roughly tell how far away the bursts may have originated based on how dispersed the signal is - the higher these measures, the farther the distance.

In fact, this is where it gets intriguing, because one of the signals, FRB 180916, has the lowest dispersion seen yet, indicating that it could be nearby.

"Even with the biggest telescopes, if it's closer to you, you always get a better view than if it's something farther away," astronomer Keith Bannister from Australia's national science agency CSIRO, who was not involved in the research, told ScienceAlert.

"So that particular low dispersion measure was super exciting, because there's a good chance that that will be nearby. And that means it will be easier to look at, once we really know exactly where it is in the sky."

The polarisation of the signals (how twisted the signal is) is informative, too. If the signal is really twisted up, it means it came from an extreme magnetic environment, such as can be found around a black hole or neutron star. This is what the signal from FRB 121102 was like.

But the team was able to measure the polarisation of one of the new signals, FRB 180916, and it was really low. This tells us that not all repeating FRBs come from extreme environments.

We don't know what this means yet. We don't know if there are several different classes of objects or events producing these signals. We don't know if they all repeat, or why they repeat. But these results are bringing us tantalisingly close to finally having some answers.

"I think (and I hope!) the paper will prompt other astronomers to point their telescopes to these newly discovered sources," Pleunis said.

"Then, there is a lot of information here for model builders to work with. I think it will help them figure out what produces repeating FRBs.

"Also, I think our findings will influence the search strategy of other teams that try to discover repeating FRBs."

• The research has been submitted to The Astrophysical Journal and is available on arXiv.

{ https://www.sciencealert.com/ }

Designing 'Avenue 5': HBO's epic space cruise ship comedy's look explained

Avenue 5 concept imagery for a 2-mile space cruise ship at the heart of of HBO's space comedy.

(Image: © HBO)

( Image credit: HBO )

• The world's first space tourists in pictures
• SpaceX to fly private astronauts to space station for startup Axiom in 2021
• Bigelow Space wants to launch you into orbit with SpaceX for $52 Million

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik.

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Instagram.

{ https://www.space.com/ }

This gas-giant exoplanet has water-rich clouds. Here's why it thrills astronomers.

Three teams of astronomers have been fascinated by an alien world known as K2-18b. But what's all the fuss about?

In September, two teams announced that they had found signs of liquid water in the planet's atmosphere — a landmark discovery in the search for potentially habitable alien worlds. But the mere presence of water isn't the only condition necessary for life. Other conditions, like temperature and pressure, can also affect a planet's habitability. Now, a third team reports that the pressures of liquid water on the same world may be good for life to evolve — another intriguing development for scientists.

"We recognized pretty early on that this is a very unique target," Björn Benneke, an astronomer at the University of Montreal, told Space.com. Benneke led one of the teams that announced the atmospheric analysis in the September 2019 study, which was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters in December. He presented the findings in January at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

• Related: 7 ways to discover alien planets

Benneke and his colleagues used the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes to study K2-18b a dozen times over a three-year period, to collect precise observations of its atmosphere.

Although scientists have studied exoplanet atmospheres before, those worlds have been larger than K2-18b, which is only about 2.6 times the size of Earth and 8.5 times its mass. The planet's small size made the observations especially challenging, requiring multiple detailed measurements that, combined, could provide a more in-depth probe of the world. 

"Nothing like this has been done before," Benneke said.

"Similar to Earth"

K2-18b is 110 light-years away, in the constellation Leo, where it orbits a small but active type of star that can hurl bursts of radiation at orbiting planets. Although the star is smaller and dimmer than the sun, K2-18b's 33-day orbit means the planet receives roughly the same amount of energy from its star as Earth receives from the sun.

The star's small size makes it easier to detect details of a diminutive planet like K2-18b because observations of a planet depend on how much light it blocks as it passes in front of its star from Earth's perspective. A smaller planet blocks less light than a larger one, but a smaller star has less light to block, making that small signal somewhat easier to see. (The planet's orbit also helped scientists capture multiple passes across its star.)

In the Hubble and Spitzer observations, Benneke and his team found the signature of water in the exoplanet's atmosphere — and not just any form of water. "Even more exciting, we discovered in the data that there's a cloud deck on the planet," Benneke said.

The clue was that starlight beaming through the atmosphere came to an abrupt stop at a certain altitude. Benneke and his colleagues used models to determine that the height was the perfect pressure and temperature for water to survive.

"The only plausible explanation is that these are liquid water clouds, very similar to what we have on Earth," Benneke said.

As the clouds fill with water droplets, they most likely create rainfall. But that rain would never touch the ground. Instead, it would fall until temperatures and pressures caused it to evaporate once again, the researchers said. Benneke compared rainfall on K2-18b to terrestrial virga, which occurs when high temperatures and pressures cause rain to evaporate before it reaches the ground.

Finding a similar weather pattern on an exoplanet is an intriguing prospect to Benneke.

"[K2-18b] is the coldest planet with [atmospheric] detection, the smallest planet, the least-massive planet," he said. "To me, it's the most exciting one."

A common mystery

Although K2-18b has the right conditions for Earth-like clouds to form, that doesn't make the planet itself Earth-like. Instead, it is classified as a sub-Neptune, a gas giant without a surface. NASA's Kepler spacecraft determined that sub-Neptunes are likely the most common type of exoplanets in the Milky Way, making up more than three-fourths of the planetary population.

Nonetheless, astronomers are having a difficult time understanding the relatively small gas giants, and that's one reason the K2-18b findings are so exciting. "We don't quite know what's going on with these planets," Benneke said. "It's probing this regime of planets that we have a very poor understanding of right now."

Sub-Neptunes have masses that fall somewhere between Earth and Neptune, and there's no analogue in the solar system. Understanding worlds like K2-18b can help improve scientists' knowledge of how planets grow and evolve. "If you want to understand planets as a whole, the diversity of planets, it's very critical that you understand the most common ones," Benneke said.

• The biggest alien planet discoveries of 2019
• Another day, another exoplanet, and scientists just can't keep up
• An Earth-size planet in the habitable zone? New discovery is one special world.

Follow Nola Taylor Redd on Facebook and on Twitter at @NolaTRedd.

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

{ https://www.space.com/ }

'They Are Already Here' author explains the spread of UFO belief: Q&A

By Meghan Bartels 

"They Are Already Here" by Sarah Scoles.

(Image: © Pegasus Books)

Do you remember reading a New York Times story in 2017 that claimed to unveil a Pentagon program dedicated to investigating UFOs? Did you hear rumors about why the FBI closed a solar observatory the next year for then-undisclosed reasons? Are you confused about why there seem to be so many documentaries about alien sightings?

"They Are Already Here: UFO Culture and Why We See Saucers" (Pegasus Books, 2020), by freelance journalist Sarah Scoles, tackles these questions and many more. (Read an excerpt from "They Are Already Here.")

After reading that New York Times story, Scoles was suspicious and wanted to figure out what was really going on with the Pentagon program. She didn't solve that mystery, but she did end up writing a book about contemporary UFO culture. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

• Related: Best space books and sci-fi for 2020

They Are Already Here (Pegasus Books, 2020) | $14.99

Journalist Sarah Scoles takes a close look at UFO culture and why so many people, like Fox Mulder, just want to believe.

Space.com: When did you know that this was going to be a book?

Sarah Scoles: I wrote two articles for Wired … but then after those were done and published, I was still on my computer late at night trying to figure out what was going on with why UFOs were so popular right now and what was going on with this Pentagon program. I didn't think that all of that research really had a place in an article or that an article could be long enough to encompass it. And so I talked to my editor, and I said, "Books are generally a bad idea. Should I do this one?" She said, "You know, if it's something you're going to be Googling late at night no matter what, you might as well write something about it." That was kind of the moment where I was like, "I guess I just am down this rabbit hole and can't stop so I might as well share what I find with other people."

(Image credit: Rebekah Scoles)

Space.com: Talk about the importance of traveling to reporting for this project. Where did you visit that most influenced your thinking about UFO culture?

Scoles: I realized at some point that I, on my own, was not going to solve whatever the mystery of UFO sightings or this investigation program was and I would have to take a different tactic, which was understanding the people and the kind of culture surrounding it. Especially since I'm a freelancer, I had more freedom to go places and do things. And I thought that it would be the best way to do justice to that community, to go and actually experience the places and events that they take part in. And so, for most of the chapters, I think I ended up going somewhere. And so the on-the-ground reporting was important to me. 

One of my favorite places is this small tourist attraction in Colorado called the UFO Watchtower, which gets its own chapter in the book and was a place I had been before just because I live here and I go on lots of road trips. But I hadn't never tried to understand it as a cultural phenomenon. It's this weird, small attraction in the middle of nowhere. And once I went there with a reporting mindset, rather than just a tourist mindset, it was cool to see it as kind of a community gathering place and where people with lots of different opinions on lots of different things can interact with each other in a peaceful way, which I think is kind of lacking in general in society right now.

Another place that was really formative for my thinking about all this was going to the International UFO Congress outside of Phoenix. And it was my first interaction with people who were really into UFOs. And also there, you find skeptics, you find hardcore believers, you find people who believe that there's a bunch of aliens in the basement talking to politicians all the time, and even people who just think it's classified military projects. And just seeing that there was this thing that drew all these people with these widely varying opinions and relationships to evidence, a thing that brought them together was informative, I think.

Space.com: You end up writing a lot about information, authority and trust. How did working on the book change the way you think about those topics?

Scoles: I came into it with a pretty traditional science-journalist mindset: Why do people not value scientific expertise, why do they subscribe to conspiracy theories, and why do they think about evidence in illogical ways? — just like fundamentally not understanding that. I think I came away from it having looked at the history of UFOs, and specifically the way the government agencies have dealt with the topic in the past, which is some bad-faith investigation projects and a lot of hiding of documents and proceedings for one reason or another.

I came to understand why it was that people didn't trust the government on this topic or didn't trust scientists. And a lot of it was because, in the past, federal agencies and scientists had kind of dismissed the topic, been untruthful about the topic or, in some cases, spread false information, and I think also coming to think of UFOs as a belief system instead of actually a scientific topic helped me understand the ways that other people think about other things like vaccinations or climate change. People don't interact with it like you would a scientific experiment. And while I don't think that's great, I feel like I came away understanding why people think that way.

Space.com: Why did you think it was so important to approach these people on your own terms and to try to understand them?

Scoles: It actually comes from a story that I won't name that I did kind of early in my science journalism career, where I took this kind of pseudoscience subculture and just ripped it apart and wasn't very nice to the people who were part of it. I didn't really like the feeling that I had after publishing that article. I didn't like the way that people thought that I had entered it in bad faith, which I probably had, and that I had spent 2,000 words making fun of what they believed, which even if it was a thing that I didn't think was valid, was important to them.

I've kind of kept that with me. When you're not talking about people who have power or money, I guess I didn't want to punch down is the journalism lingo. And so when I set out to [write this book], it was very important to me not to write a book that was just making fun of people, which I think it would have been easy to do. [I wanted] to actually try to engage with people who thought differently than I did and to understand where they were coming from and not just say that where they were coming from didn't make sense.

As I was choosing people to talk to, sometimes I would encounter people who weren't powerful or weren't making money off of people, but who had beliefs or experiences that I didn't think that I could treat respectfully while maintaining my own credibility. And so in that case, I would just not write about them and instead choose people who I thought I could do journalistic justice to while also not just making fun of what they thought.

Space.com: You talk about two recent moments in particular, the New York Times story on the alleged Pentagon program and the Sunspot investigation. What similarities stood out to you about the two events, and what do you think that tells us about society in the past few years?

Scoles: The biggest thing I took away from the commonalities between those two is the influence that the media has on the way that information becomes public. So after the New York Times story happened, it disclosed this supposed UFO investigation program. And then all of a sudden, there were hundreds of other articles kind of repeating the same thing. Because it was a compelling story, because it gets clicks and because journalists don't have time to re-report everything that someone else reported, so a lot of times, things just get summarized again and again and again and kind of mutate over time.

I kind of tell the same thing at Sunspot. There was an evacuation of an observatory, the FBI was there, no one knew what was going on. All of a sudden, in the headlines, there was this idea that it was because the observatory found something about aliens, and then also the refutation of that idea. And it just kind of spread, the way that things spread on the internet. And all of a sudden, there's this whole narrative. I think just the way that information propagates on the internet, because people click them, because people love aliens and UFOs and are interested, whole new stories and myths can kind of pop up out of not a whole lot of information. Although that's always been true, that's also what happened at Roswell. So maybe history just repeats itself.

Space.com: Do you think there's been a surge in interest in UFOs, or does it just feel like it?

Scoles: Honestly, it's hard to tell exactly, especially once you're in the bubble of something. The people who I'm paying attention to because I'm reporting on this feel like there's been an upsurge in information, but they're part of that community. … I think there is an exaggerated sense of people's interest in it. 

Throughout UFO history, the media coverage of UFOs has been disproportionate to the actual interest in UFOs. But then, when there is media coverage, people do become more interested, and this is kind of this cycle. The polls about belief in UFOs kind of have people holding steady on par with the interest in the '90s. So maybe the interest is larger than it was in the early 2000s, but it's not disproportionate to what it has been in the past.

Space.com: What do you hope a reader takes away from the book?

Scoles: I think the biggest thing I hope that people come away with, which I think is what I came away with, is a little more empathy for people who believe things that you might think are ridiculous or ill-informed. People are motivated by all kinds of factors in their personal lives or in history or surrounding culture. You can't just dismiss people's deeply held beliefs because they don't agree with yours. … 

I think, especially because of belief systems around topics that are scientific or kind of science-adjacent, we see a lot of issues around that now, where scientific topics become belief-centric or conspiracized and politically influenced. Instead of just throwing out what lots and lots of people think, it might be better to engage with it a little bit.

The other thing is, the reporting has made me think a lot about government transparency and accountability and the way that federal agencies treat topics and treat information — which is a lot of hiding of things or not talking about things or giving statements that people can't interpret. I don't think that really serves us, the taxpayers, very well.

You can buy "They Are Already Here" on Amazon.

• UFOs are real, but don't assume they're alien spaceships
• I watched an entire flat-Earth convention — here's what I learned
• Eclipse superstitions are a thing of the past, and the present

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her @meghanbartels.

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

{ https://www.space.com/ }

Many people are convinced that UFOs piloted by aliens are real but there are also unidentified flying objects equipped with advanced propulsion technology which belong to the military.

Most of these military UFOs are still secret. Now on March 9, 2020 a visitor to the Grand Canyon in Arizona has taken a photo of an object traveling extremely fast suggesting that this craft could be such a secret military UFO.

The UFO was not visible when the photo was taken and there was no sound. After viewing the photo the UFO showed up.

Could it be that the photographer, who has uploaded the image to Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), has accidentally photographed such a secret man-made craft?

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

“Oh, the places you’ll go when you can surf a supernova!”

While that sounds like a great title for a fictional children’s book on space travel by the late Dr. Seuss, it’s actually a real idea for near-speed-of-light space travel by a renowned theoretical physicist who has lately been thinking way outside the box. Will humans someday travel in spaceships propelled by the power of supernovas?

“In this paper, we explore the possibility of using natural astrophysical sources to accelerate spacecrafts to relativistic speeds. We focus on light sails and electric sails, which are reliant on momentum transfer from photons and protons, respectively, because these two classes of spacecrafts are not required to carry fuel on board.”

“By considering a number of astrophysical objects such as massive stars, microquasars, supernovae, pulsar wind nebulae, and active galactic nuclei, we show that speeds approaching the speed of light might be realizable under broad circumstances.”

Theoretical physicist Abraham “Avi” Loeb tore himself away from theorizing that interstellar comets might be alien spaceships to join brains with astrobiologist Manasvi Lingam to ponder ways humans might accomplish the same type of travel at much higher speeds. In a pre-published paper, “Propulsion of Spacecrafts to Relativistic Speeds Using Natural Astrophysical Sources” summarized in Scientific American, Loeb and Lingam propose using the already real technology of laser-pushed light sails with some massive propellants far more powerful than lasers. Loeb explains to Universe Today how he got the idea.

“Back in December 2019, my wife and two daughters were on travel and I had the luxury of staying at home alone for a week and thinking about science. While taking a shower, I thought on how the Sun is not effective at launching lightsails to high speed, but a brighter source of light might be. I followed this thought with detailed calculations on supernovae, which are billions of times brighter than the Sun for a week and realized that lightsails with existing parameters can reach the speed of light if they are strategically placed ahead of time around the massive star that is about the explode.”

How hot WAS that water? Loeb shared his idea with colleague Lingam, who helped determine (apparently without the benefit of a shower) that a supernova was the best source of speed-of-light, or even one-tenth speed of light, power. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist in a hot shower to see some big non-black holes in this idea – like finding supernovas when they’re just about to explode, positioning the sailing ship and insuring it and its crew survive the trip, regardless of how fast they arrive at their destination. Lingam says none of this is a problem.

“There are many challenges such as sail stabilization, maintaining high reflectance and preventing heating, and avoiding damage while traveling in the source environment as well as the interstellar medium. Most of these issues may be overcome, at least in principle, by utilizing electric sails instead of light sails. Alternatively, if one decides to stick with light sails, then one will have to fold the sail during some stages of the voyage, choose an unusual sail architecture, and rely upon nanophotonic structures to improve stability.”

Nuclear-powered cars once made sense too – have you seen any of those lately? That’s not a problem for deep, out-of-the-box thinkers like Loeb and Lingam. In fact, they invoke the name of the late Frederick Dyson in revealing the other, more attainable benefit of this kind of thinking – if our piddly human brains can come up with these ideas, advanced civilizations have probably implemented them already and are using them to get around the galaxy. If that’s the case, signs of them, like Dyson spheres, might point SETI researchers in the right direction for finding their location and putting a marker on the map for when we finally invent the ships ourselves. Better yet, we can aim our instruments at these spots to send messages to come and get us – kind of an interstellar Uber call. That assumes these aliens are benevolent. Otherwise, it could be more like a message telling extraterrestrials that their dinner is ready for pickup.

Food for deep thought.

Getting back to a human level of thinking, Supernova Surfers would be a great name for a band.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

If you have read my 2017 book, The Roswell UFO Conspiracy, you’ll know that I largely gave up – years ago – on the theory that what has popularly become known as “The Roswell Incident” involved extraterrestrials and an alien spacecraft. If the truth does surface one day, I strongly suspect that the decades-long controversy will shown to have been something very different. I’m talking about secret, high-altitude experiments using human guinea-pigs, in the summer of 1947 in New Mexico. Of course, I may be wrong. And, if Roswell does turn out to have been an extraterrestrial event, I’ll be very pleased, as it will vindicate the research of all those who believe that aliens have visited Earth. But, I just don’t see it happening. As my research into Roswell continues at a steady pace, I’m getting more and more data that suggests Roswell was a dark and disturbing, secret test that went catastrophically wrong.

There’s no doubt that one of the biggest and most controversial”spin-offs” from the original story is that of the Majestic 12 documents. For those who may know, Majestic 12 – or MJ12 – was said to have been a top secret group created in 1947 by President Harry Truman. Essentially to keep the Roswell bodies and craft under wraps, and to investigate concerns relative to alien intrusions. It was 1987 when the Majestic 12 documents became public knowledge, something that led many UFO investigators to believe that this was finally the smoking-gun everyone was looking for. Indeed, Tim Good gave the documents significant coverage in his 1987 book, Above Top Secret. There’s no doubt, though, that the late Stanton Friedman was the one person – more than any other – who flew the flag for Majestic 12.

In the same way that I once believed Roswell involved aliens, I was also of the opinion – for quite a while – that the Majestic 12 documents were the real thing. My views, however, began to change as time went by and as new revelations surfaced. Eventually, to the point where – today – I’m convinced the documents and the story they tell are pure bullshit – something I addressed to a lengthy degree in my 2019 book, Flying Saucers from the Kremlin. It demonstrates how and why the Majestic 12 papers just don’t stand up as real documents. It’s not just UFO researchers like me who have shot down the documents. The National Archives have done a praiseworthy job of doing exactly that, too.

National Archives staff state that they have “…received many requests for documentation and information about ‘Project MJ-12.’ Many of the inquiries concern a memorandum from Robert Cutler to Gen. Nathan Twining, dated July 14, 1954. This particular document poses problems for the following reasons: The document was located in Record Group 341, entry 267. The series is filed by a Top Secret register number. This document does not bear such a number. The document is filed in the folder T4-1846. There are no other documents in the folder regarding ‘NSC/MJ-12. Researchers on the staff of the National Archives have searched in the records of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs on Staff, Headquarters U.S. Air Force, and in other related files. No further information has been found on this subject.”

The National Archives adds: “Inquiries to the U.S. Air Force, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National Security Council failed to produce further information. The Freedom of Information Office of the National Security Council informed the National Archives that ‘Top Secret Restricted Information’ is a marking which did not come into use at the National Security Council until the Nixon Administration. The Eisenhower Presidential Library also confirm that this particular marking was not used during the Eisenhower Administration. The document in question does not bear an official government letterhead or watermark. The NARA conservation specialist examined the paper and determined it was a ribbon copy prepared on ‘diction onionskin.’ The Eisenhower Library has examined a representative sample of the documents in its collection of the Cutler papers. All documents in the sample created by Mr. Cutler while he served on the NSC staff have an eagle watermark in the bond paper. The onionskin carbon copies have either an eagle watermark or no watermark at all. Most documents sent out by the NSC were prepared on White House letterhead paper. For the brief period when Mr. Cutler left the NSC, his carbon copies were prepared on ‘prestige onionskin.'”

And the questionable issues continue, as the National Archives make abundantly clear: “The National Archives searched the Official Meeting Minute Files of the National Security Council and found no record of a NSC meeting on July 16, 1954. A search of all NSC Meeting Minutes for July 1954 found no mention of MJ-12 nor Majestic. The Judicial, Fiscal and Social Branch searched the indices of the NSC records and found no listing for: MJ-12, Majestic, unidentified flying objects, UFO, flying saucers, or flying discs. NAJA found a memo in a folder titled ‘Special Meeting July 16, 1956’ which indicated that NSC members would be called to a civil defense exercise on July 16, 1956.”

Finally, there is this from the National Archives: “Robert Cutler, at the direction of President Eisenhower, was visiting overseas military installations on the day he supposedly issued this memorandum— July 14, 1954. The Administration Series in Eisenhower’s Papers as President contains Cutler’s memorandum and report to the President upon his return from the trip. The memorandum is dated July 20, 1954 and refers to Cutler’s visits to installations in Europe and North Africa between July 3 and 15. Also, within the NSC Staff Papers is a memorandum dated July 3, 1954, from Cutler to his two subordinates, James S. Ia and J. Patrick Cone, explaining how they should handle NSC administrative matters during his absence; one would assume that if the memorandum to Twining were genuine, Lay or Cone would have signed it.”

I could just about accept one or two slight errors in the Majestic 12 documents – after all, I have found occasional errors in 100 percent genuine files relating to UFOs – but the Majestic 12 papers are absolutely overwhelmed by errors and problems. Namely, the very ones the National Archives detailed above. I get it why people are drawn to the Majestic 12 material: it’s exciting, it gets conspiracy-theorists fired up, and it offers data that suggests aliens really did come down on the Foster Ranch, Lincoln County, New Mexico in the summer of 1947. The fact is, though, the documents are bogus and aliens did not crash at Roswell. Move on.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

NASA is busy recruiting astronauts for future missions to the ISS, the Moon and Mars, but a new discovery may shove a few humans off of the Martian ships to make room for pigs. Specifically, those hogs trained in the art of truffle-sniffing. The Curiosity Rover recently found organic compounds on the Martian surface that resemble those in coal, crude oil and white truffles. Will Elon Musk add a pen to his Mars ship or will pigs fly First Class?

“If you find thiophenes on Earth, then you would think they are biological, but on Mars, of course, the bar to prove that has to be quite a bit higher.”

In a press statement by Washington State University announcing the publication of a new paper on the subject in the journal Astrobiology, WSU astrobiologist Dirk Schulze-Makuch describes the discovery by Curiosity of thiophenes – compounds with the formula C4H4S (four carbon, four hydrogen and one sulfur atom) which can either be biotic or abiotic. They are found on Earth in kerogen (solid, insoluble organic matter), coal, crude oil, as well as in fossilized stromatolites (single-celled cyanobacteria) and other microfossils. And in white truffles (Tuber magnatum) or trifola d’Alba Madonna (“Truffle of the White Madonna” in Italian), the most expensive edible fungus in the world. (The highest price paid for a single white truffle is $330,000 for one weighing 1.5 kilograms (3.3 lb.))

No, not these truffles.

“In the biological scenario, bacteria, which may have existed more than three billion years ago when Mars was warmer and wetter, could have facilitated a sulfate reduction process that results in thiophenes.”

The press release points out that thiophenes can be formed by thermochemical sulfate reduction (heating compounds to 248 degrees Fahrenheit (120 degrees C) until they break down, or may have been brought to Mars by meteorites. Since there’s no fun or glory in finding those, the biological sources are the ones Schulze-Makuch and co-author Jacob Heinz (from the Technische Universität in Berlin) want the next rover to search for.

The Rosalind Franklin Rover — named for an English chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose work was central to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA, RNA, viruses (we could use her now!), coal, and graphite – will be launched in July 2020 with a Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer to collect larger molecules than Curiosity can. In particular, they want it to search for light isotopes that are “a telltale signal for life.”

What about the truffle-sniffing pigs?

“I think the proof will really require that we actually send people there, and an astronaut looks through a microscope and sees a moving microbe.”

Schulze-Makuch isn’t big on that idea just yet. Besides, how will they be able to sniff and root while wearing a space suit? And who would want to try to get a pig into a spacesuit in the first place?

Someone who wants at least $330,000 for 1.5 kg of Martian white truffles, that’s who!

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Of the many and varied kinds of UFO encounters that have been reported since 1947 – the year in which the Flying Saucer was “born” – some stand out more than others. One category of encounter that particularly intrigues me involves UFOs caught on radar. And when the incidents involve pilots pursuing UFOs through the sky – while ground-radar is tracking them at the same time – this makes a fairly persuasive case for the reality of a genuine UFO. It gets weirder, though: what about incidents in which UFOs are tracked on radar – sometimes by staff at more than one military base – but the UFOs cannot be seen visually. Its almost as if some UFOs have the ability to become invisible to the human eye. Maybe they do. That’s the theme of today’s article. I’ll share with you three fascinating cases. The first comes from the late J.R. Oliver, whose wife very generously gave me permission to use the account of her late husband, and which makes for fascinating reading. Oliver prepared the account some time before his death, of which the following is just an extract from a much longer account:

“In August 1949, in order to test the updated air defenses of England against attack, Operation Bulldog was launched. Operation Bulldog’s attacking forces consisted of aircraft of the Benelux countries supported by U.S. air squadrons based on the continent. Flying from various airfields in Holland, France, Belgium and Germany, their objective was to attack London and other prime targets in southern and midland England, without being officially ‘downed’ by fighter aircraft brought into action by the defensive network of Fighter Command. The radar defense chain extended from Land’s End, along the south coast and up to the north of Scotland, overlapping at all heights from sea level to about 100,000 feet. Even so long ago, it was almost impossible to fly a glider across the Channel without it being plotted. The exercise ran for fifteen days and was structured in such a way that the technical resources and personnel of the defensive screen were stretched to the limit.”

It wasn’t long at all before something very weird occurred, as Oliver noted in his letter: “Within about fifteen minutes, the PBX operator came in, approached the Duty Controller and advised him that Bethe first to see the contact and my plot was the first to go on the plot board. As other operators took their positions, more plots were called out concerning position of the object and its height. The object was flying roughly parallel with the south coast, from west to east. Reaching a point out to see off the ‘heel’ of Kent, it abruptly turned north and as it approached the Thames estuary we passed it on to Martlesham radar, with whom we had been in contact via the PBX link, and whose radar area impinged on our own. Shortly after, we lost contact with it, due to the limit of our own radar range.”

Oliver then noted something even more incredible: “It was a simple matter to assess the speed of the object from the times and distances between plots and its height was directly read from our Type 13 radar, designed to read the height of any aircraft within its range. Flying at close to 50,000 feet, the air speed of the object we had observed and plotted in accordance with RAF standard procedures was assessed at very nearly 3,000 miles per hour [italics mine]. The general consensus regarding its size, among the very experienced radar personnel engaged in the operations, was that the object offered an echo similar to that of a large passenger or freighter surface vessel, something in the region of 15,000 or 20,00 tons [italics mine]. Word filtered down that on approaching Bempton radar in Yorkshire, the object suddenly increased speed and headed directly upwards, vanished off-screen at about 100,000 feet.”

Despite the careful tracking of the huge object – by the radar operators of several military bases – the UFO was never visibly seen: it was only encountered on the radar screens. Now, let’s take a look at another case that involved an “invisible UFO.” It comes from a man named William Maguire. In September 1952, he was serving in the U.K.’s Royal Air Force – on radar. Of his experience of the UFO type – that occurred  at a military facility called RAF Sandwich in the south of England – Maguire told me: “The mechanics were being blamed for not calibrating the instruments properly; we were being blamed for not interpreting the readings properly. But the obvious answer staring us in the face, on every single instrument on the base, was the fact that there was sitting up at an unbelievable height, this enormous thing with the equivalent mass of a warship and it just stood there…and stood there…and stood there.”

Invisible UFOs?

So, we have a second case that involves the tracking by radar of a gigantic craft, but that is not encountered visually. On March 26, 1957, there was yet another amazing encounter. The document states in part: “A report was received from Royal Air Force Church Lawford on 26th March, 1957 of a sighting of an unusual nature. The object moved at a speed timed at exceeding 1400mph. This in itself was unusual as the object had accelerated to this speed from a stationary position. No explanation has yet been found for this sighting but a supplementary report, including a copy of the radar plot, was requested and has been received from Church Lawford this afternoon.”

It’s important to note that the “sighting” was seen on radar. Yet again, nothing was actually seen in the sky. Invisible UFOs? Maybe. There is, however, another explanation – very different, but also very intriguing – that I’ll get to in part-2 of this article.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Over the years – decades, in fact – the CIA has declassified a wealth of UFO-themed documentation. The stash is filled with reports of UFO encounters filed by pilots, police-officers, scientists and members of the public. Many of those same reports were extracted from worldwide newspapers that the CIA carefully scrutinized on a regular basis. While there is no definitive smoking gun in the files, there’s no doubt that the papers demonstrate the longstanding interest – and occasionally the concern – the CIA had about the UFO phenomenon. There are some genuinely intriguing cases in the CIA’s archives, one of which I’m going to bring to your attention today. Dated September 20, 1957 and prepared for the Acting Director of Central Intelligence, it begins as follows:

“As reported by components of the US Air Defense Command, an unidentified flying object (UFO) was tracked by US radars on a relatively straight course from the eastern tip of Long Island to the vicinity of Buffalo. The object was reportedly moving westward at an altitude of 50,000 feet and speed of 2,000 kts. ‘Jamming’ was reported by several radars in this vicinity and westward as far as Chicago. In a subsequent briefing for representatives of the IAC, the US Air Force reported that the original reports had been degraded somewhat by information that: (a) there was an 11 minute break in the tracks; (b) weather conditions in the area were of the type which have in the past produced false radar pips and electronic interference; (c) B-47’s of SAC were in the area near Chicago on an ECM training flight. The ADC has not completed its investigation of this incident, but in any event it now seems clear that the phenomena reported west of Buffalo were not related to the UFO.”

A U-2 Dragon Lady

The report continues: “We have no intelligence on Soviet activities (e.g. long-range air, submarine, or merchant shipping operations) which can be related specifically to this reported event. We believe it unlikely that a Soviet aircraft could conduct a mission at this speed and altitude and return to Bloc territory. However, we credit the USSR with the capability to have a submarine-launched cruise-type missile of low subsonic [supersonic] performance and a range of about 500 n.m., but we have no specific evidence of the existence of such a missile. We have examined possible Soviet motives for launching a one-way vehicle on an operation over the US, and consider that there would be little motivation at this time, except possibly a psychological or retaliatory motive, which we believe is marginal. One-way reconnaissance operations are largely ruled out by the likelihood that the results would be of small value, and the risk of compromise would be very great.”

It’s clear that this case raised eyebrows and was the subject of significant investigation. It may well have been a genuine UFO. There is, however, another possibility. In 1999, Gerald K. Haines – in his position as the historian of the National Reconnaissance Office – wrote a paper titled “CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90.” It’s now in the public domain, thanks to the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. It can be read at the CIA’s website at this link. Haines’ paper detailed the history of how, and why, the CIA became interested and involved in the phenomenon of UFOs. Although Haines covered a period of more than forty years, I will bring your attention to one particular section of his paper. Haines revealed an intriguing connection between UFOs and the U-2 spy plane. On August 4, 1997, the U.K.’s Independent newspaper ran an article titled “US hid spy plane projects behind UFO hysteria.” The article was focused on Haines’ paper.

In part, it stated: “Early U-2s were silver and reflected the sun’s rays and often appeared as fiery objects to people below, Mr. Haines said. They were later painted black. Air force investigators, ‘aware of the secret U-2 flights, tried to explain away such sightings by linking them to natural phenomena such as ice crystals and temperature inversions.’By 1956 the air force internally had clear explanations for 96 per cent of UFO sightings, Mr. Haines wrote, referring to the experimental aircraft. ‘They were careful, however, not to reveal the true cause of the sighting to the public.’ At the height of the Cold War the CIA hid its involvement in studies of UFO sightings because it feared that if word came out it would lead to a national hysteria that could be exploited by the Soviet Union.”

In light of all the above data, it’s possible that this September 1957 case involved a high-flying spy plane – whether the U-2 or another kind – rather than a true UFO. Sometimes, what appears to be a UFO may be something definitively home-grown. And highly secret, too.

{https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Encounters with UFOs or alien entities can be a life-changing experience and elicit a wide range of reactions from the people who experience them. For some it is fear of the unknown, an overwhelming terror induced by seeing something they feel they were not meant to. For others it might be awe and wonder, and still others still might doubt what they have seen at all, trying to stuff the experience into a neat little hole of the logical and rational explanations, regardless of that creeping feeling clawing at the back of their mind that it is anything but. However, humans being humans there is also another reaction, to just open fire and kill them all, and there are actually quite a few accounts of this happening.

There are supposed attacks by humans on UFOs dating back all the way to at least the 1940s, and by far the most famous of these is perhaps the one that occurred on February 25, 1942. On this evening air raid sirens all over the city of Los Angeles, California began blaring, followed by a fierce barrage of anti-aircraft fire lighting up the night sky. Considering that the United States had just entered World War II just months before, this was thought by the terrified populace to be an enemy attack launched by the Japanese. Although officials would later claim that “The Battle of Los Angeles” had been the result of a false alarm and jumpy nerves, of course conspiracy theorists have said that not only is this a cover-up, but that it was not the Japanese at all, but rather UFOs that were being fired upon in a panic. A very famous image used as evidence of this is one circulated in the news at the time which purportedly shows spotlights converging on a UFO in the sky over Los Angeles as tracer fire erupts everywhere. The image has been debated and discussed for years, and although accused of being touched up and hoaxed, still often gets placed on lists of iconic UFO images. Just what is it we are looking at here?

Iconic photo of the Battle of Los Angeles

War time seems to have a lot of these kinds of accounts, and it seems to make sense, what with everyone trigger happy and the tendency for UFOs to seem to be drawn to human military conflict for whatever reasons. Troops in the Vietnam War certainly seem to have experienced this first hand from time to time. One particularly bizarre incident occurred in 1970, at Lone-Jon Island, where a 5-man team of soldiers claimed that they were being hunted by bright lights measuring a mere 4 inches by 4 inches in size. These lights were described as disc-shaped and having what were called “black eyes,” and they were said to be capable of great feats of maneuverability, darting, zig-zagging, and hovering all over the place. The team claimed that when they fired upon the objects they would shift color to an angry glowing red, with the black eye part morphing into a bright green. These intimidating, menacing lights apparently stalked and attacked the team during both daylight and nighttime hours over a period of 5 days, often coming shockingly close, to within 5 feet of the team’s position. One of the men supposedly took several photos of the bizarre incident.

When the men got back from their harrowing ordeal and were debriefed they told of what had happened to them and were reportedly told to forget about it. Their equipment was also searched and some of it confiscated, including the pictures that had been taken. People were brought in to interview them extensively on what they had seen, and although it was unclear who they were, at least one of the men was convinced that they were CIA. Even odder still is that a few months later some American personnel allegedly showed up at the homes of the soldiers’ parents asking about any photographic materials that may have been sent to them. The whole thing adds the layer of a sinister cover-up to the already rather scary events depicted by the report.

American forces don’t seem to have been the only ones dealing with hostilities with UFOs. In a really weird report, in the summer of 1968, a Ranger recon unit was operating along the DMZ in an area that what was referred to as the “North Country” in the early morning hours. The team was wary and on edge, completely attuned to their surroundings, as it had already been established that an enemy Viet Cong unit was positioned on the other side of the hill, so the enemy could have been anywhere creeping about in the jungle around them. At approximately 2AM, the team claimed that a bright, fluorescent blue light could be seen closing in on their position, and that the strange, unidentified object stopped to hover momentarily around a quarter of a mile away before moving towards the baffled unit once again. The entire time the flying object was said to be completely silent.

As the recon unit struggled to comprehend this bizarre sight that they were seeing, the NVA on the other side of the hill, after presumably gawking at the sight as well, did what humans do and reportedly began firing on the light in full force. The night lit up with tracer rounds blazing skyward towards the strange object floating there and it must have been quite a haunting, mesmerizing sight. For a few moments the object did not react, merely absorbing the assault without showing any sign of distress or damage. Indeed, it seemed to be completely unfazed by the barrage of bullets raging at it. Then, it was claimed that a blindingly bright beam of light lashed forth from the object and the NVA machine gun fire abruptly stopped to send the jungle into a sudden silence so profound that it was jarring, the instant quiet almost deafening in the wake of the cacophony that had exploded through the air just moments before. The light in the sky then reportedly cruised off in complete silence to leave nothing but the droning sounds of the nighttime jungle behind.

The next morning, the recon team decided to make their way to the NVA camp to see what had happened, sensing that they were going to find something weird at the very least and they would not be disappointed. They found the enemy camp to be seemingly abandoned, and strewn about were 12.7MM machine guns and other assorted firearms that looked as if they had been partially melted by a relentless, scorching heat. A closer inspection of the camp turned up what appeared to be piles of ashes and bits of what could have been charred bones scattered about. The leader of the team apparently took pictures of the scene, which he would later include in his report of the spooky incident. Shortly after, he went to rejoin his unit but was told that he had been reassigned to another team. When he asked about what had become of his report and the photos he was allegedly told that no such report existed, and that if he were to continue pressing the matter he could face prison time. Other members of the team were purportedly similarly intimidated with such threats.

Another incident involving the NVA was reported in the State Journal in Lansing, Michigan on Sept. 29, 1972, in a piece entitled What Was UFO Over Hanoi? The report claimed that a huge, luminous orange spherical UFO had appeared at a high altitude above Hanoi on a clear day, and then hovered in a stationary position. North Vietnamese air defenses had then almost immediately fired upon it with three consecutive surface-to-air missiles, but these were either unable to reach it or unable to harm it, although after the missiles were fired it was reported that the UFO diminished somewhat in intensity, becoming “less bright” than it had been before. Nevertheless it reportedly continued to hover over the city for a full one hour and 20 minutes before leaving. In a similar incident reported by the Russian publication Aura-Z, another UFO was supposedly seen over Hanoi and was also fired upon by missiles, which apparently did hit it but had no effect. In this case, the UFO is claimed to have fired a “fine, needle-like, light blue ray” at the defense batteries, completely destroying them and allegedly killing around 200 personnel in the process. This particular, no doubt spectacular report has been suspected of being a hoax, but it is intriguing nonetheless.

Moving on into 1978 we have a truly spectacular case in which an actual alien was not only supposedly shot at, but allegedly killed. The setting for this bizarre tale is Fort Dix and McGuire, located about 18 miles southeast of Trenton, New Jersey, in the United States. It started with personnel at the base spotting UFOs nearby for several weeks, and in the early morning hours of January 18, 1978 an on-duty airman who has only ever been identified by the pseudonym “Sgt, Jeffery Morse,” was purportedly approached by a NJ State Trooper who had quite the story to tell. The trooper explained that an MP on the base had been pursuing one of the UFOs that had been seen on base, and had ended up not only encountering an alien, but shooting and evidently killing it.

According to the this state trooper, the MP had spotted a low-flying unidentified craft and proceeded to chase it for around an hour before his vehicle was suddenly bathed in the bright blue-green light of an oval-shaped UFO hovering directly above him, which caused his engine to stall and cut off all radio communications. As the MP sat there staring in shock and awe, a humanoid creature apparently then crept out from the gloom of night to step directly into the beams of his headlights, which showed that it was about 4 feet tall, with and oversized bald head, large black eyes, slender torso, thin arms and legs, and wet looking grayish skin. The already spooked MP had apparently then completely panicked and lost it, hoisting his .45 automatic sidearm and wildly blasting away at both the creature and the UFO hovering over him until it was empty, hitting the humanoid several times to send it running off into the night as the mysterious craft above shot up into the sky. The bizarre creature had then apparently succumbed to its wounds and fallen to die right there on the grounds of the Air Force Base, and the trooper was on his way to check the report out.

More personnel joined them and when they approached the area where the alien had died they did indeed see it lying there motionless, and without getting too close began roping off the area. It was as they were doing this that a group of what Morse called “blue berets” swooped in and took charge, telling them to leave and not speak of what they had seen. After that it would seemingly be all bushed under the carpet and the body whisked away to who knows where. Morse would apparently tell all of this to UFO researcher Leonard H. Springfield, and explain of the incident:

We found the body of the thing near the runway. It had apparently climbed the fence and died while running. It was all of a sudden hush-hush and no one was allowed near the area. We roped off the area and AFOSI came out and took over. That was the last I saw of it. There was a bad stench coming from it too. Like ammonia smelling but wasn’t constant [in] the air. That day, a team from Wright-Patterson AFB came in a C141 and went to the area. They crated it in a wooden box, sprayed something over it, and then put it into a bigger metal container. They loaded it in the plane and took off. That was it, nothing more said, no report made and we were all told not to have anything to say about it or we would be court-martialed.

Morse and other witnesses were then purportedly repeatedly interrogated and warned to not talk of the matter, forced to sign forms that bound them to secrecy, after which each and every one of them was transferred far away, with Morse sent all the way over to Okinawa, Japan. He would say that after that they had continued their harassment, once detaining him at the airport for no reason when he came to the States to visit his family, and he even passed to Springfield an official looking report that he claimed verified his story. Interestingly, far from this being just the ramblings of this one guy Morse, there was some amount of corroboration, when a retired Air Force Major George Filer III would in later years step forward to claim that the whole story was indeed true, and that he had been there that night as well. Although Flier hadn’t actually seen the corpse himself, it was apparently a big deal on base at the time, with everyone talking about the “alien body” and a whole lot of intense activity and unfamiliar vehicles and aircraft about that was not usual. Unfortunately, there is no way to know if either Morse or Flier were telling the truth or not, and of course the Air Force has flat out denied that anything of the sort ever happened, labelling it all a hoax. We will probably never know how much truth any of it holds, if any, but it is a pretty wild ride at any rate.

Adding to all of this are those air engagements, dogfights in which pilots have allegedly actually shot at UFOs in dogfights, Independence Day style. According to the account, early on the morning of April 11, 1980, 23-year-old Peruvian air force lieutenant Oscar Santa Maria Huerta was conducting exercises in his fighter jet over La Joya Air Force Base, when he was ordered to investigate a strange, silvery object that had appeared in restricted airspace. He soon made visual confirmation with the strange object, which he at first thought was a balloon or spy device that was not supposed to be there, and seemingly did not hesitate to engage with extreme prejudice. He allegedly completely blazed up and opened fire on the object, saying:

I reached the necessary distance and shot a burst of sixty-four 30mm shells, which created a cone-shaped ‘wall of fire’ that would normally obliterate anything in its path. Just one of those shells would wipe out a car, but they had no effect on the object. I thought that the balloon would then be torn open and gases would start pouring out of it. But nothing happened. It seemed as if the huge bullets were absorbed by the balloon, and it wasn’t damaged at all.

The object responded by shooting off at a rapid pace, with Huerta in hot pursuit, headed in the direction of the city of Camana, approximately 84km from the base. At some point the object abruptly stopped in mid flight, to send the fighter pilot in evasive maneuvers to avoid and shoot past it, but he kept at it, positioning himself for another attack run. As he came in once again, the object made a fast climb, evading the fighter. The strange object or craft then proceeded to evade similar efforts to launch an attack, and then Huerta had the idea to attack it instead from above, yet it managed to stay well above him even as they climbed to a dangerous 19,200 meters. He was definitely getting the impression that this was no normal weather balloon or spy drone, and getting closer he could see that it certainly was not, of which he would say:

I was startled to see that the ‘balloon’ was not a balloon at all. It was an object that measured about 10 meters in diameter with a shiny dome on top that was cream-colored, similar to a light bulb cut in half. The bottom was a wider circular base, a silver color, and looked like some kind of metal. It lacked all the typical components of aircraft. It had no wings, propulsion jets, exhausts, windows, antennae, and so forth. It had no visible propulsion system. At that moment, I realized this was not a spying device but a UFO, something totally unknown. I was almost out of fuel, so I couldn’t attack or maneuver my plane, or make a high-speed escape. Suddenly, I was afraid. I thought I might be finished. I was zigzagging to make my plane harder to hit, always with my eyes on the rearview mirrors, hoping it wouldn’t chase me.

Dangerously low on fuel, Huerta managed to land his fighter, and many of the base personnel could witness the object still buzzing about like an angry bee before leaving the area. Huerta would later say, “I find myself in the unique position, at least for the moment, and as far as I know, of being the only military pilot in the world who has actually fired a weapon and struck a UFO. It still gives me chills to think about it.”

Our most recent, and very quite possible the most completely bonkers one of the bunch, is the time a guy apparently attacked and maybe killed an alien being with a samurai sword. In 2009, a resident of a ranch near Phoenix, Arizona by the name of John Edmonds claims that he was under siege by mysterious alien entities that would prowl about his property at night to peek into windows and actually come to him and his wife in the night to assault and perform medical experiments on them, leaving behind needle like holes in their skin, bruises, and causing them to come down with mysterious illnesses. These creatures were described as being basically “Grey Aliens,” the classic description of large bald heads holding those almond shaped eyes and with skinny frames, and he says they relentlessly prowled about his remote property. Edmonds believes they are inter-dimensional in nature, and would say of these strange entities in an interview with Coast to Coast AM:

I have heard and seen critters moving around on our enclosed sun room. The west wall contains four large windows. The speed generated by their movement (3 critters) at once made the glass in the double pane windows actually buzz and misalign in the frames to the point the windows are now very difficult to close and lock properly with out using a screw driver to realign them in the frame first. I believe the high frequency buzz is a side effect of their partial in phase or out of phase inter-dimensional travel. In a safe situation critters transcend cleanly from one dimension to another. In what they perceive as risky circumstances, they only physically materialize to a point of just crossing the dimensional physical threshold. The buzzing occurs at a quantum level as they are partially in both dimensions at the same time. If they are suddenly startled they pull back out of phase into their regular dimension. If they feel safe, then they come completely into this dimension and the buzzing stops. This is the perfect opportunity to physically grab one and then hold on as hard as possible because they will try to “bug out” again immediately.

And grab them he would. These creatures would also kill the man’s dogs and some of his horses, but it appears they had chosen the wrong house to mess with, because according to Edmonds one evening he had had enough, grabbing a Japanese katana-style sword he owned and confronting it to hack away. During the melee, he would allegedly viciously, mortally wound it,

I killed in self defense after repeated home invasions by similar creatures over a period of many years. The assaults by these creatures were responded to in the most violent behavior I could respond with because of weekly and some times daily confrontations during which our home, ranch, horses and dogs were killed. Pierced by the sword with six inches of cold steel perforating the body cavity and seemingly lifeless, the Gray alien still managed to disappear before I could withdraw the weapon and chop off the head. My intention in removing the head was to see if this would prevent it from disappearing. It is my hypothesis the head controls the ability to control the dimensional transference between one place and another. I had hoped to interrupt the process by diminishing the body integrity. I wiped up the blood/Fluid and tissue of the Gray I nearly split in two parts with an exceptionally well sharpened Samurai sword. After hand to hand combat with these little parasites.

The alleged sword and aftermath

He would then collect tissue and blood samples and purportedly send them to a researcer called “W.C. Levengood” for analysis, who would allegedly inform him that they were most certainly not only not human, but unlike anything seen before, even going as far as to say they were the smoking gun for the existence of aliens. Unfortunately for any of us waiting for concrete answers, this Lenengood apparently then just sort of disappeared and took the samples with him. Convenient. That, plus the fact that the alien managed to vanish after being damn near cut in half by a sword, leaves us with no physical evidence outside of photographs and the samples that Edmonds insists totally, for real exist, and this ends up just another wild report with no corroboration. Unsurprisingly, it remains unproven, and we are left to wonder just how much of this completely absurd report is true. It is certainly novel, though, attacking an alien entity with a samurai sword. Whether his insane story is true or not, he deserves points for creativity at the very least.

So what are we dealing with here? Are these genuine stories of humanity doing what we do best and trying to blow stuff up real good, or is this just hoaxes and fabrications? I have no doubt that many people would have such negative, violent reactions to encountering the unknown, but did any of these really happen? There seems to be no way to really know for sure, the physical evidence always flirting with us and staying out of grasp, and while they are certainly spectacular reports, it is probably better to take them with a grain of salt and maybe even hope they are not real, because we would likely not stand a chance in a fair fight with these forces. Make of this all what you will.

True or hoax?

{https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

It was midway through 1971 when a brief but intriguing letter was sent to the Pentagon by someone who had some notable things to say about UFOs. He or she was, however, determined to remain anonymous. It was a letter that was also shared with the FBI – by Pentagon staff. If its contents were true, then it told an incredible story. In some ways, we could say that it amounted to a planned, “forced UFO disclosure.” As for the letter itself, you can read it at the FBI’s website, The Vault, (in this particular UFO portion of the site and specifically on page 110). With that said, onto the content of the letter. It begins as follows: “In approximately seven months or January, 1972, certain copies of top-secret documents shall be sent to the New York Times as well as two other newspapers. These documents are related to and will be an ostentation of the involvement of the Pentagon in the controversial ‘Unidentified Flying Objects’ or ‘Flying Saucer’ subject. It will show that not only the US Air Force was involved in UFO research but the other military branches as well.”

The source of the story continued : “Analysis and the actual conclusions of the classic UFO cases shall be revealed. This shall be accomplished by zeroxed [sic] documents and photographs that General Wolfe had reviewed when he was head of the Army’s UFO support program in the Pentagon during the Eisenhower years.” They concluded with these words: “Sorry, but it is concluded here that this is the best course to take because we feel that the secret UFO investigations are parallel in nature to the Times-Pentagon-Vietnam controversy. If we are wrong in taking this action, time will tell.”

Pentagon

As for that “Times-Pentagon-Vietnam controversy,” this is a reference to the so-called “Pentagon Papers.” History.com say of this affair: “The Pentagon Papers was the name given to a top-secret Department of Defense study of U.S. political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. As the Vietnam War dragged on, with more than 500,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam by 1968, military analyst Daniel Ellsberg—who had worked on the study—came to oppose the war, and decided that the information contained in the Pentagon Papers should be available to the American public. He photocopied the report and in March 1971 gave the copy to The New York Times, which then published a series of scathing articles based on the report’s most damning secrets.”

Now, let’s take a look at General Wolfe. He was actually General Kenneth Bonner Wolfe. The U.S. Air Force provides detailed information on the general: “Kenneth Bonner Wolfe was born in Denver, Colo., in 1896. He attended high school in Portland, Ore., and San Diego, Calif., and in January 1918 enlisted as a private first class in the Aviation Section of the Signal Reserve Corps. He received ground and flying training at Berkeley, Calif., and Park Field, Tenn., and in July 1918 was commissioned a temporary second lieutenant in the Air Service. He served for a brief period at Park Field as a flying instructor and then moved to Souther Field, Ga., in the same capacity. In January 1919 he returned to Park Field and in March of that year went to Carlstrom Field, Fla. In July 1919 he was made officer in charge of flying at Souther Field, Ga., and the following January was appointed chief engineer officer at the Air Intermediate Depot at Americus, Ga. On July 1, 1920 he received his Regular Army commission as a second lieutenant in the Air Service, and was promoted to first lieutenant that same day.”

The USAF adds: “He began a tour as flying instructor at Brooks Field, Texas, in November 1922, and during this time assumed charge of aero repair at that station in addition to his other duties. In May 1926 he moved to Clark Field, Philippine Islands, as plans and operations officer. He joined the Fifth Air Force on Okinawa in August 1945, as chief of staff and became commanding general two months later. After assuming command of the Fifth, he directed its transition from a mighty assault force to the occupational air arm of Japan and southern Korea, operating from headquarters at Nagoya, Japan. In January 1948 he returned to the United States and was appointed director of procurement and industrial mobilization planning at Air Materiel Command headquarters at Wright Field, Ohio. He was appointed deputy chief of staff for materiel at U.S. Air Force headquarters in September 1949. Rated a command pilot, combat observer and aircraft observer, General Wolfe has more than 7,000 hours flying time. He has been awarded the Distinguished Service Medal with oak leaf cluster and the Order of the British Empire.”

Papers do not reveal what steps the Pentagon and/or the FBI took with regard to this letter and its whistle-blower-type writer. At least one department of the DoD dismissed it out of hand. On the other hand, there’s the matter of timing and relevancy: the source, recall, suggested that revealing the government’s UFO secrets would be “parallel in nature to the Times-Pentagon-Vietnam controversy.” The time-frame was interesting too: Ellsberg provided the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times in March 1971. It was only months later that the mysterious letter surfaced. Of course, history has shown that no such mass-release of UFO documentation ever occurred. Was it all just a prank? Was the source speaking truthfully, but prevented at the last moment from disclosing whatever it really was they knew? Almost fifty years later, we will almost certainly never know. But, maybe one day, the bones of the story will be fleshed out – if someone is willing to chase down the story.

{https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

BIJBELS RUIMTESCHIP VERSCHIJNT OP NASA TELRSCOOP ( VIDEO )

Eind vorig jaar schreven wij een artikel over ruimteschepen uit de tijd van de bijbel en hoe deze in onze tijd weer worden waargenomen op aarde.

Net alleen op aarde, zo blijkt nu, maar ook op de ruimtetelescopen van NASA verschijnt nu een dergelijk schip en het schijnt richting aarde te komen.

Wij mogen onszelf gelukkig prijzen dat wij in heel interessante tijden leven waarin veel opmerkelijke dingen gebeuren. Dat wij leven in een tijd die misschien later zal blijken een overgang te vormen van de ene naar de andere soort wereld.

Eind vorig jaar schreven wij in een artikel onder andere het volgende:

Van William Guy gaan we naar Nancy Lieder die in haar nieuwsbrief zegt dat hetgeen gefilmd is door William Guy gelijk is aan het bekende wiel van Ezechiël. Een soort groot cirkelvormig ruimteschip.

Zij geeft de volgende verklaring voor de vreemde cirkelvormige ufo"s:

Deze cirkelvormige ufo's worden regelmatig wereldwijd gezien en zijn een waarschuwing voor hen die de bedoeling begrijpen van de ervaringen van Ezechiël. Deze profeet is bekend geworden als een die verwoesting en herstel voorspelde. De verschijning van cirkelvormige ufo's of ufo's in een cirkelformatie dient als waarschuwing voor de komende poleshift en de dramatische gevolgen daarvan.

De aarde zal worden verwoest door enorme aardbevingen en hoge vloedgolven die ervoor zullen zorgen dat hele kustregio's zullen verdwijnen, waarbij de bewoners verdrinken en de complete infrastructuur wordt vernietigd.

En dan nu naar berichten die laten zien dat er zich een enorm groot ruimteschip in de vorm van een wiel van Ezechiël in de ruimte bevindt. Die naam wiel van Ezechiël is ontstaan door de beschrijving van een ruimteschip in de bijbel door Ezechiël.

Hij zag iets dat leek op een enorm, ontzagwekkend voertuig. Het wordt ook wel een wagen genoemd. Het had vier enorme wielen met daarnaast vier bijzondere geestelijke wezens, waarvan later wordt gezegd dat het cherubs zijn.

NASA heeft een aantal telescopen in de ruimte, waaronder de Stereo ruimtetelescopen die op de zon gericht staan waarmee er nu opmerkelijke opnames zijn gemaakt.

Beelden van een enorm object dat zich door de ruimte beweegt en lijkt op het ruimteschip zoals dit ooit door de profeet Ezechiël werd beschreven.

Als we zeggen ruimteschip, dan praten we in dit geval echt over enorm. Een object ter grootte van de maan dat lijkt op de beschrijving van een profeet uit de bijbel.

Een enorm toevallig passerend ruimteschip onderweg misschien naar een ander zonnestelsel of naar de aarde om een deel van de wereldbevolking op te halen en deze te behoeden voor de rampen die gaan komen? 

Uit een eerder door ons gehouden poll blijkt dat bijna 60 procent van onze lezers zonder aarzelen aan boord zou stappen mocht het toestel hier naartoe onderweg zijn.

Dus wie weet, duimen maar en hopen maar dat we terecht komen op een planeet waar je nog gewoon 130 mag rijden en waar ze nog nooit van Mark Rutte hebben gehoord.

{ https://niburu.co/ }

Rare Jellyfish UFO Finally Caught On Video, Brasil, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Sunday, Feb 16, 2020
Location of sighting: Sao Paulo, Brasil

This is a rare capture of a UFO type I have heard about, but only seen a few times in blur photos in old reports. A jellyfish shaped craft was recorded in the sky over Brasil last week. The object has a half dome white body and long thick tentacles similar to a jellyfish. This has to be the best close up of a jellyfish UFO I have ever seen. In the video we see the tenticlals yet they don't move. Had this been a balloon the tentacles would be plastic and blowing to the opposite direction the wind is, however they long objets just hang there. That means not a balloon. This is the best recording of a jellyfish UFO in existence. This is incredible proof that not only are we being visited by aliens, but the tech they use mimics living creatures. 
Scott C. Waring

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

Navy Pilot Says ‘Dark Mass’ Made Torpedo Disappear

 By Andrew Daniels

U.S. D.O.D. GRAPHIC BY RON STERN. (RELEASED)

[PUBLIC DOMAIN]WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

The retired Navy Commander who spotted the infamous Tic Tac-shaped UFO relayed another strange story from a Navy helicopter pilot on the Joe Rogan Experience.
Back in the '90s, the pilot was retrieving BQM drones and submarine telemetry torpedoes from the ocean when he saw an unexplained "dark mass coming up from the depths."
The pilot said the torpedo "just got sucked down underwater, and the object just descended back down into the depths."

You might not know the name David Fravor, but you probably know what he saw … even if he’s still not sure what that was. Fravor is the retired U.S. Navy Commander who in 2017 told the New York Times that he spotted a Tic Tac-shaped UFO from the cockpit of his F/A-18F Super Hornet—“around 40 feet long and oval in shape”—100 miles off the coast of San Diego in 2004.

There’s video, of course, of Fravor’s now-legendary encounter, originally released for public viewing by The New York Times and To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science, a UFO research group from former Blink-182 member Tom DeLonge:

 

Last month, that UFO video made headlines once more when the Navy confirmed it was real. The clip indeed showed “unexplained aerial phenomena,” but the service said it and two other videos should have never been released to the public in the first place.

So Fravor has begun the requisite publicity tour. In an interview with the comedian and podcaster Joe Rogan, Fravor recounted his sighting from 15 years ago, but also revealed a new story from a Navy helicopter pilot who reached out with his own strange, creepy tale while on the job.

Back in the ‘90s, this pilot’s job was to fetch BQM aerial target drones and submarine telemetry torpedoes from the ocean. At the time, the pilot was flying a CH-53—“a big, heavy-lifter the Marine Corps uses for certain things,” Fravor told Rogan. “Off the East Coast they do a lot of shooting, at the time it was off Puerto Rico.”

“The helo drops a swimmer in the water, he hooks the whole thing up and they fly back,” Fravor said. “The first time they were out and they were going to pick up a BQM, he’s sitting in the front—in the CH-53 you can see down by your feet—and as he’s looking down, they’re 50 feet (15 metres) above the water, he sees this kind of dark mass coming up from the depths.”

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As the pilot picked up the BQM, he was apparently at a loss for words. “He’s looking at this thing going, ‘What the hell is that?’ And then it just goes back down underwater. Once they pull the kid and the BQM out of the water, this object descends back into the depths.”

One dark mass coming up from the depths is weird enough. Two is officially cause for concern. A few months later, the helicopter pilot saw the exact same thing.

“He’s out picking up a torpedo, they hook the diver up on the winch, and as they’re lowering him down, he sees this big mass. He goes, ‘It’s not a submarine’. He’s seen submarines before. Once you’ve seen a submarine you can’t confuse it with something else. This big object, kind of circular, is coming up from the depths and he starts screaming through the intercom system to tell them to pull the diver up, and the diver’s only a few feet from the water.

“They reverse the winch and the diver’s thinking, ‘What the hell is going on?’ And all of a sudden he said the torpedo just got sucked down underwater, and the object just descended back down into the depths. They never recovered it.”

The helicopter pilot swears the torpedo didn’t sink, per Fravor—and that pilot even told the Times about the incident back in 2017, but the paper never reported it. We’re guessing the editors would reconsider today.

So … what was the dark mass if it wasn’t a submarine? A whale? The Loch Ness Monster? For now we can only speculate, at least until the next video leaks.

Source: News.com.au

{ https://www.popularmechanics.com/ }

Oval-Shaped UFO Moves Vertically Over Rush Hour Traffic

A UFO hunter is urging the witnesses of a Tic Tac-shaped spacecraft moving above a rush hour traffic as he claims he has obtained a report many people witnessing it.

Chris Evers, 59, claims multiple witnesses saw a UFO that looked like a little oval-shaped mint flying vertically above heavy traffic in Hull.

Chris Evers, 59, believes a UFO craft zoomed over Hull last Tuesday 

(Image: Hull Live)

Chris, the founder of the Hull UFO Society in the 90s, said he received reports of an extraterrestrial craft flying over the city on Tuesday at around 5:30 pm last week.

Chris said he got a report through to him that a UFO was a large Tic Tac-shaped device or craft flying during a rush hour, and apparently several people saw it.

Chris noted that the UFO was flying upright and not horizontally. The report also made mention of the two strange protrusions at the bottom of the bizarre object.

He now encourages people to come forward with proof of the sighting.

Chris, who runs an online magazine Outer Limits, said that he had been told witnesses took pictures of it, but he hasn’t seen any.

His interest in UFO was first sparked by seeing a mysterious object over Hull when he was 14.

He said he has been interested in the extraterrestrial since 1974. Chris eventually founded the Hull UFO society, and his Outer Limits magazine has been going on for four years this coming April.

According to Chris, the area has a lot of strange activities, including the famous incident involving a UFO moving under the Humber Bridge.

A UFO hunter is urging the witnesses of a Tic Tac-shaped spacecraft moving above a rush hour traffic as he claims he has obtained a report many people witnessing it.

Chris Evers, 59, claims multiple witnesses saw a UFO that looked like a little oval-shaped mint flying vertically above heavy traffic in Hull.

Chris, the founder of the Hull UFO Society in the 90s, said he received reports of an extraterrestrial craft flying over the city on Tuesday at around 5:30 pm last week.

Chris said he got a report through to him that a UFO was a large Tic Tac-shaped device or craft flying during a rush hour, and apparently several people saw it.

Chris noted that the UFO was flying upright and not horizontally. The report also made mention of the two strange protrusions at the bottom of the bizarre object.

He now encourages people to come forward with proof of the sighting.

Chris, who runs an online magazine Outer Limits, said that he had been told witnesses took pictures of it, but he hasn’t seen any.

His interest in UFO was first sparked by seeing a mysterious object over Hull when he was 14.

He said he has been interested in the extraterrestrial since 1974. Chris eventually founded the Hull UFO society, and his Outer Limits magazine has been going on for four years this coming April.

According to Chris, the area has a lot of strange activities, including the famous incident involving a UFO moving under the Humber Bridge.

Chris, the founder of the Hull UFO Society in the 90s, said he received reports of an extraterrestrial craft flying over the city on Tuesday at around 5:30 pm last week.

Chris said he got a report through to him that a UFO was a large Tic Tac-shaped device or craft flying during a rush hour, and apparently several people saw it.

Chris noted that the UFO was flying upright and not horizontally. The report also made mention of the two strange protrusions at the bottom of the bizarre object.

He now encourages people to come forward with proof of the sighting.

Chris, who runs an online magazine Outer Limits, said that he had been told witnesses took pictures of it, but he hasn’t seen any.

His interest in UFO was first sparked by seeing a mysterious object over Hull when he was 14.

He said he has been interested in the extraterrestrial since 1974. Chris eventually founded the Hull UFO society, and his Outer Limits magazine has been going on for four years this coming April.

According to Chris, the area has a lot of strange activities, including the famous incident involving a UFO moving under the Humber Bridge.

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