But one possible savior could be the private aerospace sector, whose biggest player is SpaceX.

WHAT’S GOING ON WITH MARS SAMPLE RETURN?

This illustration shows NASA’s Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV), which will carry tubes containing Martian rock and soil samples into orbit around Mars. 

NASA

On our planet, the samples would reveal untold secrets about the big “if” in space science: Are we alone in the universe? Over the last several decades, robotic explorers have gleaned from the reddish landscape that life may have had the right conditions to flourish on the fourth rock from the Sun. Scientists might be able to prove this tantalizing possibility if they can get ahold of these rocks. The Voyager golden records, the myriad of international missions that have orbited Mars, and the host of upcoming missions to the possibly aquatic moons in the outer Solar System, would win an incredible endorsement.

Extending the mission timeline is what makes the most sense to preserve the MSR plan as it currently exists, Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at the non-profit The Planetary Society, told The New York Times on Monday.

But NASA leadership does not want to wait until 2040. “That is unacceptable to wait that long. It’s the decade of the 2040s that we are going to be landing astronauts on Mars. It’s also unacceptable at $11 billion,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told reporters at a news conference on Monday.

A concept for multiple robots that would work together to ferry to samples from Mars to Earth. 

NASA/ESA/JPL-CALTECH

NASA will ask for proposals from the private sector to find solutions that would offset costs and maintain the project’s integrity. In addition to that, NASA will develop “a revised plan that leverages innovation and proven technology,” according to their published announcement.

WHAT COULD PUT MARS SAMPLE RETURN BACK ON TRACK?

NASA has historically leveraged its partnerships with the private sector to save on costs. For its Artemis program, which marks NASA’s first major crewed return to the Moon since Apollo, the agency has already issued contracts for companies to launch instruments for studying the lunar environment in preparation for crews and has selected proposals for crewed Moon rovers.

MSR’s architecture shares some similarities with that of Artemis III, of which SpaceX will play a key role.

NASA is now building upon the success, and resolving issues, from 2022’s Artemis I mission. For Artemis II, four astronauts are currently in training to fly around the Moon and back as early as September 2025. Then on Artemis III, the program scales up in a whole new way.

A mobility prototype for NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission was demonstrated in the Mars Yard at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) on April 11, 2023 in Pasadena, California.

MARIO TAMA/GETTY IMAGES NEWS/GETTY IMAGES

SpaceX holds the contract to build the Starship human landing system for NASA, which would ferry astronauts from lunar orbit to the Moon’s surface, and then carry them back up there.

The vehicle will reach the Moon before the four Artemis III astronauts set sail there, according to NASA. Soon after the Orion capsule arrives with the crew, it will rendezvous with the SpaceX lander, and two brave explorers will get onboard to become the first people to descend to and walk on the Moon’s surface since 1972. When the week of the surface expedition ends, Starship would ferry the duo up to meet the orbital Orion capsule, which would then exit the Moon’s environment and fly the crew back to Earth

Artemis III’s sequence resembles, in part, what must happen on Mars Sample Return. Titanium tubes containing the Red Planet samples would be placed on a spacecraft that could launch them into Martian orbit. Here, another spacecraft would jet off to Earth, carrying the samples to their new home.

The Orion spacecraft, with the Moon in the distance.

NASA

“The challenges of getting off the surface of the Moon have been demonstrated already through the Apollo missions,” Dianne DeTurris, an aerospace engineer at California Polytechnic State University, tells Inverse in an email. “A vehicle got off the surface with people onboard successfully 6 times. The issues for getting on and off of Mars are similar, but the distance to travel to get there is much greater, and with that, there is a greater signal lag due to the time difference. Can it be done? Yes. Will it be done? Very likely. The technology exists already, it is just about finding a cost-effective way to execute the task.”

In February, Dreier wrote a column for The Planetary Society arguing that Starship likely wouldn’t come to MSR’s rescue. Among several reasons he cited, a November 2023 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office says the Starship human landing system for Artemis III is running into delays.

“NASA remains responsible for its own destiny,” Dreier wrote. For now, MSR and the first modern human landing seem so close — but just out of reach.

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

Voyager 1 Just Sent Its First Coherent Message Back to NASA In Months

A clever programming fix has cured the spacecraft's electronic aphasia.

BY KIONA SMITH

 

NASA/JPL

“In the last decade, I have learned from Voyager that there is (almost) always a way around a problem, no matter how dire it is,” Voyager mission assurance manager Bruce Waggoner told Inverse in March. “You just have to think ‘outside the box’ when people tell you not to do so.”

Voyager 1 entered interstellar space in 2012, and this illustration shows what it might look like out there (although it’s probably a lot darker in reality).

NASA/JPL

FLIPPED BITS AND ELECTRONIC GIBBERISH

Back in November, a passing cosmic ray hit one of Voyager 1’s three onboard computers, and it “flipped a bit” (or altered a tiny unit of data) in the spacecraft’s Flight Data Subsystem. This unit of data happened to be a key piece of the code that tells Voyager 1 how to package up science and engineering data, including information about its own condition, before sending the message to Earth.

Like the robot version of a person recovering from a stroke, Voyager 1 could receive and understand messages from home, and it could gather data to send back. But when it tried to “speak,” its data came out as a gibberish of random 0s and 1s.

Engineers at NASA realized that to fix the problem, they needed to reprogram Voyager 1 with the correct code. However, there wasn’t enough data storage space on the Flight Data Subsystem computer to hold it all. The programmers had to split the code into sections, which could be tucked into Voyager 1’s computer wherever there was room. Then include instructions about where to find each one.

On April 18, Voyager 1’s team transmitted the new code to the distant spacecraft. Then they waited. It took 22.5 hours for the data, moving at the speed of light, to cross more than 15 billion miles of space to reach Voyager 1, and then it took another 22.5 hours for Voyager 1’s response to cross the vastness of space and reach NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. But after a tense 45 hours, on April 20, the team downloaded Voyager 1’s message: a clear, understandable status update declaring that all was well with the intrepid space robot.

The Voyager 1 team will spend the next few weeks reworking the code that packages science data, and they expect Voyager 1 to return to sending back reports from the edge of the Solar System — ones its human operators can actually read.

Meanwhile, Voyager 2, a well-behaved space robot that hasn’t been in the news lately, is still cruising out of the Solar System on its own trajectory. NASA says it hopes to keep both missions gathering data and calling home until around 2035.

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

Unveiling the Sky: A Closer Look at The UFOs of Soesterberg Documentary

In a world brimming with tales of the unknown, The UFOs of Soesterberg emerges as a beacon of rationality, casting a refreshing light on the enigmatic phenomenon of UFO sightings. Directed by Bram Roza, this documentary delves into a notable event in 1979, where military personnel in the Netherlands reported an unexplained aerial object. Unlike typical sensationalist narratives, Roza’s film stands out for its sober, scientific scrutiny, intertwined with a dash of dry humor, providing a compelling narrative that appeals to skeptics and believers alike.

Roza, with a background in documentary filmmaking, approaches the subject of UFOs with a unique blend of skepticism and open-mindedness. Through The UFOs of Soesterberg, he navigates the fine line between dismissing the unexplained and indulging in fantastical theories. His previous work, including the documentary about the Dutch horror movie The Johnsons, showcases his ability to engage audiences with intriguing subjects, making him a respected figure in the documentary filmmaking community.

What sets this documentary apart is not just its focus on a historical sighting by credible witnesses but also its commitment to demystifying the phenomenon. Roza’s methodical investigation, coupled with his initiative to set up a hotline for UFO sightings, exemplifies a dedication to uncovering the truth behind these mysterious occurrences. The film’s tagline, “Close Encounters of the Dutch Kind,” hints at the numerous sightings in the region, inviting viewers to explore the plausibility of each account.

The UFOs of Soesterberg refuses to offer easy answers or engage in speculation, treating its subjects—both the witnesses and the skeptics—with dignity and respect. The use of animations and drawings for re-enactments adds a visual richness to the documentary, steering clear of the talking-heads format that plagues many documentaries in this genre.

As the documentary tours the Netherlands, captivating audiences with sold-out screenings, it’s clear that Roza has struck a chord. His work not only provides a “glass of water for sane people” amidst the sea of sensationalism surrounding UFOs but also ignites a conversation about the importance of approaching the unexplained with both curiosity and critical thinking.

In the landscape of UFO-related content, The UFOs of Soesterberg stands as a testament to the power of documentary filmmaking that respects its subjects and its audience. Bram Roza’s work is a crucial addition to the discourse on UFO sightings, offering a balanced perspective that is sorely needed.

VIDEOS

• https://youtu.be/sYfI_LpKN-s
• https://youtu.be/m9_k3slyuF4

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

Na reis van 8 miljard jaar bereikte het zonet onze aarde

Een enorme flits van radiogolven werd in 2022 aan de hemel van onze planeet gedetecteerd, en dit na een reis die maar liefst acht miljard jaar duurde. Dat blijkt uit een onlangs gepubliceerd wetenschappelijk onderzoek. Dit fenomeen, door wetenschappers een ‘snelle radio-uitbarsting’ genoemd, werd voor het eerst waargenomen in 2007 en blijft nog steeds grotendeels een mysterie.

Volgens een studie die op 19 oktober in het tijdschrift Science werd gepubliceerd, had geen van de eerder waargenomen ‘snelle radio-uitbarstingen’ (of FRB’s) een zo verre oorsprong of een kracht die vergelijkbaar is met deze die in 2022 werd bestudeerd door het ASKAP-radiotelescoopnetwerk, gevestigd in West Australië.

Ondanks de beperkte duur van slechts minder dan een milliseconde, zou deze explosie van elektromagnetische golven die acht miljard jaar geleden plaatsvond, volgens CNN een hoeveelheid energie hebben vrijgemaakt die equivalent is aan de energie die onze zon over een periode van dertig jaar heeft uitgestraald.

Sinds hun eerste detectie in 2007 zijn er ongeveer duizend FRB’s gesignaleerd, maar de precieze oorsprong van deze signalen blijft vaak onbekend. Voor de FRB die in 2022 werd gedetecteerd, gebruikten wetenschappers de European Very Large Telescope (VLT) vanuit de Atacama-woestijn in Chili. Ze slaagden erin de bron van de emissies te lokaliseren in een groep van twee of drie sterrenstelsels midden in het proces van fusie, interacties en vorming van nieuwe sterren.

Deze ontdekking lijkt de huidige theorieën te bevestigen dat snelle radio-uitbarstingen afkomstig zouden kunnen zijn van magnetars (een zeldzaam type neutronenster) of andere extreem energetische astronomische objecten die het gevolg zijn van exploderende sterren.

FRB's zijn van groot belang voor astronomen omdat hun onderzoek zou kunnen helpen bij het oplossen van andere mysteries van het universum, waaronder die van 'ontbrekende materie'.

• (FVDV and LpR for Tagtik/Source: Courrier International/Illustration picture: Pixabay via Pexels)

 { https://www.msn.com/nl-be/ }

Hubble Has Accidentally Discovered Over a Thousand Asteroids

Asteroids have also been known to “photobomb” images acquired by Hubble of distant cosmic objects like UGC 12158 (see image above). By knowing Hubble’s position when it took exposures of asteroids and measuring the curvature of the streaks they leave, scientists can determine the asteroids’ distances and estimate the shapes of their orbits. The ability to do this with large samples allows astronomers to test theories about Main Asteroid Belt formation and evolution. As Martin said in a recent ESA Hubble press release:

“We are getting deeper into seeing the smaller population of main-belt asteroids. We were surprised to see such a large number of candidate objects. There was some hint that this population existed, but now we are confirming it with a random asteroid population sample obtained using the whole Hubble archive. This is important for providing insights into the evolutionary models of our Solar System.”

According to one widely accepted model, small asteroids are fragments of larger asteroids that have been colliding and grinding each other down over billions of years. A competing theory states that small bodies formed as they appear today billions of years ago and have not changed much since. However, astronomers can offer no plausible mechanism for why these smaller asteroids would not accumulate more dust from the circumstellar disk surrounding our Sun billions of years ago (from which the planets formed).

In addition, astronomers have known for some time that collisions would have left a certain signature that could be used to test the current Main Belt population. In 2019, astronomers from the European Science and Technology Centre (ESTEC) and the European Space Astronomy Center’s Science Data Center (ESDC) came together with the world’s largest and most popular citizen-science platform (Zooniverse) and Google to launch the citizen-science project Hubble Asteroid Hunter (HAH) to identify asteroids in archival Hubble data.

This graph is based on Hubble Space Telescope archival data that were used to identify a largely unseen population of very small asteroids. Credit: NASA/ESA/P. G. Martín (AUM)/E. Wheatley (STScI)

The HAH team comprised 11,482 citizen-science volunteers who perused 37,000 Hubble images spanning 19 years. After providing nearly two million identifications, the team was given a training set for an automated algorithm to identify asteroids based on machine learning. This yielded 1,701 asteroid trails, with 1,031 corresponding to previously uncatalogued asteroids – about 400 of which were below 1 km (~1090 ft) in size. Said Martin:

“Asteroid positions change with time, and therefore you cannot find them just by entering coordinates, because they might not be there at different times. As astronomers we don’t have time to go looking through all the asteroid images. So we got the idea to collaborate with more than 10,000 citizen-science volunteers to peruse the huge Hubble archives.”

This pioneering approach may be effectively applied to datasets accumulated by other asteroid-hunting observatories, such as NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). Once the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has accumulated a large enough dataset, the same method could also be applied to its archival data. As a next step, the HAH project will examine the streaks of previously unknown asteroids to characterize their orbits, rotation periods, and other properties.

Further Reading:

• ESA Hubble, 
• Astronomy & Astrophysics

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

Will We Know if TRAPPIST-1e has Life?

The TRAPPIST-1 system has been the focal point of attention ever since astronomers confirmed the presence of three exoplanets in 2016, which grew to seven by the following year. As one of many systems with a low-mass, cooler M-type (red dwarf) parent star, there are unresolved questions about whether any of its planets could be habitable. Much of this concerns the variable and unstable nature of red dwarfs, which are prone to flare activity and may not produce enough of the necessary photons to power photosynthesis.

With so many rocky planets found orbiting red dwarf suns, including the nearest exoplanet to our Solar System (Proxima b), many astronomers feel these systems would be the ideal place to look for extraterrestrial life. At the same time, they’ve also emphasized that these planets would need to have thick atmospheres, intrinsic magnetic fields, sufficient heat transfer mechanisms, or all of the above. Determining if exoplanets have these prerequisites for life is something that the JWST and other next-generation telescopes – like the ESO’s proposed Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) – are expected to enable.

But even with these and other next-generation instruments, there is still the question of what biosignatures we should look for. As noted, our planet, its atmosphere, and all life as we know it have evolved considerably over the past four billion years. During the Archean Eon (ca. 4 to 2.5 billion years ago), Earth’s atmosphere was predominantly composed of carbon dioxide, methane, and volcanic gases, and little more than anaerobic microorganisms existed. Only within the last 1.62 billion years did the first multi-celled life appear and evolve to its present complexity.

Moreover, the number of evolutionary steps (and their potential difficulty) required to get to higher levels of complexity means that many planets may never develop complex life. This is consistent with the Great Filter Hypothesis, which states that while life may be common in the Universe, advanced life may not. As a result, simple microbial biospheres similar to those that existed during the Archean could be the most common. The key, then, is to conduct searches that would isolate biosignatures consistent with primitive life and the conditions that were common to Earth billions of years ago.

This artistic conception illustrates large asteroids penetrating Earth’s oxygen-poor atmosphere. Credit: SwRI/Dan Durda/Simone Marchi

As Dr. Jake Eager-Nash, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Victoria and the lead author of the study, explained to Universe Today via email:

“I think the Earth’s history provides many examples of what inhabited exoplanets may look like, and it’s important to understand biosignatures in the context of Earth’s history as we have no other examples of what life on other planets would look like. During the Archean, when life is believed to have first emerged, there was a period of up to around a billion years before oxygen-producing photosynthesis evolved and became the dominant primary producer, oxygen concentrations were really low. So if inhabited planets follow a similar trajectory to Earth, they could spend a long time in a period like this without biosignatures of oxygen and ozone, so it’s important to understand what Archean-like biosignatures look like.”

For their study, the team crafted a model that considered Archean-like conditions and how the presence of early life forms would consume some elements while adding others. This yielded a model in which simple bacteria living in oceans consume molecules like hydrogen (H) or carbon monoxide (CO), creating carbohydrates as an energy source and methane (CH₄) as waste. They then considered how gases would be exchanged between the ocean and atmosphere, leading to lower concentrations of H and CO and greater concentrations of CH₄. Said Eager-Nash:

“Archean-like biosignatures are thought to require the presence of methane, carbon dioxide, and water vapor would be required as well as the absence of carbon monoxide. This is because water vapor gives you an indication there is water, while an atmosphere with both methane and carbon monoxide indicates the atmosphere is in disequilibrium, which means that both of these species shouldn’t exist together in the atmosphere as atmospheric chemistry would convert all of the one into the other, unless there is something, like life that maintains this disequilibrium. The absence of carbon monoxide is important as it is thought that life would quickly evolve a way to consume this energy source.”

Artist’s impression of Earth in the early Archean with a purplish hydrosphere and coastal regions. Even in this early period, life flourished and was gaining complexity. Credit: Oleg Kuznetsov

When the concentration of gases is higher in the atmosphere, the gas will dissolve into the ocean, replenishing the hydrogen and carbon monoxide consumed by the simple life forms. As biologically produced methane levels increase in the ocean, it will be released into the atmosphere, where additional chemistry occurs, and different gases are transported around the planet. From this, the team obtained an overall composition of the atmosphere to predict which biosignatures could be detected.

“What we find is that carbon monoxide is likely to be present in the atmosphere of an Archean-like planet orbiting an M-Dwarf,” said Eager-Nash. “This is because the host star drives chemistry that leads to higher concentrations of carbon monoxide compared to a planet orbiting the Sun, even when you have life-consuming this [compound].”

For years, scientists have considered how a circumsolar habitable zone (CHZ) could be extended to include Earth-like conditions from previous geological periods. Similarly, astrobiologists have been working to cast a wider net on the types of biosignatures associated with more ancient life forms (such as retinal-photosynthetic organisms). In this latest study, Eager-Nash and his colleagues have established a series of biosignatures (water, carbon monoxide, and methane) that could lead to the discovery of life on Archean-era rocky planets orbiting Sun-like and red dwarf suns.

Further Reading: 

• arXiv

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

POSTED BY NANCY ATKINSON

Purple Bacteria — Not Green Plants — Might Be the Strongest Indication of Life

Astrobiologists continue to work towards determining which biosignatures might be best to look for when searching for life on other worlds. The most common idea has been to search for evidence of plants that use the green pigment chlorophyll, like we have on Earth. However, a new paper suggests that bacteria with purple pigments could flourish under a broader range of environments than their green cousins. That means current and next-generation telescopes should be looking for the emissions of purple lifeforms.

“Purple bacteria can thrive under a wide range of conditions, making it one of the primary contenders for life that could dominate a variety of worlds,” said Lígia Fonseca Coelho, a postdoctoral associate at the Carl Sagan Institute (CSI) and first author of “Purple is the New Green: Biopigments and Spectra of Earth-like Purple Worlds,” published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters.

Artist’s concept of Earth-like exoplanets, which strikes the careful balance between water and landmass.  Credit: NASA

According to NASA’s Exoplanet Archive, 5612 extrasolar planets have been found so far, as of this writing, and another 10,000 more are considered planetary candidates, but have not yet been confirmed. Of all those, there are just over 30 potentially Earth-like worlds, planets that lie in their stars’ habitable zones where conditions are conducive to the existence of liquid water on surface.

But Earth-like has a broad meaning, ranging from size, mass, composition, and various chemical makeups. While being within a star’s habitable zone certainly means there’s the potential for life, it doesn’t necessarily mean that life could have emerged there, or even if it did, the life on that world might look very different from Earth.

“While oxygenic photosynthesis gives rise to modern green landscapes, bacteriochlorophyll-based anoxygenic phototrophs can also colour their habitats and could dominate a much wider range of environments on Earth-like exoplanets,” Coelho and team wrote in their paper. “While oxygenic photosynthesis gives rise to modern green landscapes, bacteriochlorophyll-based anoxygenic phototrophs can also colour their habitats and could dominate a much wider range of environments on Earth-like exoplanets.”

The researchers characterized the reflectance spectra of a collection of purple sulfur and purple non-sulfur bacteria from a variety of anoxic and oxic environments found here on Earth in a variety of environments, from shallow waters, coasts and marshes to deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Even though these are collectively referred to as “purple” bacteria, they actually include a range of colors from yellow, orange, brown and red due to pigments  — such as those that make tomatoes red and carrots orange.

These bacteria thrive on low-energy red or infrared light using simpler photosynthesis systems utilizing forms of chlorophyll that absorb infrared and don’t make oxygen. They are likely to have been prevalent on early Earth before the advent of plant-type photosynthesis, the researchers said, and could be particularly well-suited to planets that circle cooler red dwarf stars – the most common type in our galaxy.

A collection of bacteria samples in the Cornell University Space Sciences Building. Ryan Young/Cornell University.

That means this type of bacteria might be more prevalent on more and a wider variety of exo-worlds.

On a world where these bacteria might be dominant, it would produce a distinctive “light fingerprint” detectable by future telescopes.

In their paper, Coelho and team presented models for Earth-like planets where purple bacteria might dominate the surface and show the impact of their signatures on the reflectance spectra of terrestrial exoplanets.

“Our research provides a new resource to guide the detection of purple bacteria and improves our chances of detecting life on exoplanets with upcoming telescopes,” the team wrote.

“We need to create a database for signs of life to make sure our telescopes don’t miss life if it happens not to look exactly like what we encounter around us every day,” said co-author Lisa Kaltenegger, CSI director and associate professor of astronomy at Cornell University, in a press release from Cornell.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

A ‘World-Changing’ Underwater UFO—Caught on Video—Is a Legit Threat, Says Ex-Navy Officer

Geraint Rowland Photography//Getty Images

The Omaha Incident

One incident to which Gallaudet points in particular is a July 19, 2019 encounter between the Independence-class littoral combat ship USS Omaha and a so-called transmedium UAP. In the incident, the crew of the Omaha (sailing off the coast of San Diego) used their AN/KAX-2 electro-optical sensor to record a spherical UAP hovering just over the surface of the Pacific Ocean. The AN/KAX-2 is a stabilized sensor turret built for maritime environments that includes a digital video camera, night vision camera, and laser rangefinder.

The video, seen here, is a recording of a screen showing the output of the AN/KAX-2. The video appears to have been taken with the night vision camera, which uses imaging infrared to record objects in darkness. The object seemingly moves, tracked by the sensor operator, and then stops to hover. The object stops and hovers a short distance above the surface of the ocean. At the end, the object disappears, with sailors remarking that it made a splash as it entered the water. Meanwhile, one sailor off camera radios the other ships in the area—the guided missile destroyers Pinckney, Kidd, and Rafael Peralta—asking for a MH-60 helicopter to be launched as soon as possible.

RELATED STORY

J Allen Hynek: The Man Who Made Us Watch the Skies

The video was leaked to UFO investigator Jeremy Corbell Lockyer, and was later verified as genuine by the Navy. A search of the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (the Pentagon’s web site for releasing official photos and video) shows three of the warships in the encounter—Pinckney, Kidd, and Omaha—in formation in the Eastern Pacific six days later, on July 25.

Sightings in Puerto Rico and Elsewhere

Gallaudet also references another sighting from 2013, spotted by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol personnel. The sighting—which took place near Aguadilla, Puerto Rico—was filmed using a similar imaging infrared camera. The video, shown here, depicts another spherical object appearing to enter the water and then re-emerge without losing any speed. The retired admiral writes, “Over three minutes, the object appears to fly at speeds between 40 and 120 miles per hour, enter and exit the Atlantic Ocean without any significant deceleration, reach a maximum underwater velocity of 95 miles per hour, and at one point split into two parts before entering the water again.”

Other possible evidence cited by the admiral includes an incident in 2022, in which the NOAA underwater exploration ship Okeanos Explorer discovered an unusual series of holes on the North Atlantic seafloor at a depth of 1.6 miles. The centimeter-sized holes were in an unusually straight line and scientists are apparently at a loss to explain their origin.

No Ordinary UAP Advocate

NOAA Ocean Exploration

NOAA image of the holes found in 2022 in the North Atlantic. NOAA states: "A close look at the sublinear sets of holes in the sediment observed during Dive 04 of the second Voyage to the Ridge 2022 expedition. These holes have been previously reported from the region, but their origin remains a mystery. "

RELATED STORY

Ufology: From Fringe Field to Serious Science

Gallaudet entered the U.S. Navy in 1989 after attending the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Gallaudet, according to his official biography, received “masters and doctoral degrees in oceanography from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1991 and 2001 respectively.” He served with a number of naval oceanography and meteorology commands, and was superintendent of the U.S. Naval Observatory. He assumed command of the Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command in 2014, and served as Oceanographer of the Navy from 2016 until retirement in 2017.

After his Navy career, Gallaudet served for two years as acting administrator in charge of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Today, he sits on the advisory board for Americans for Safe Aerospace, which describes itself as a “nonprofit organization dedicated to aerospace safety and national security with a focus on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP).” ASA is led by Ryan Graves, a former U.S. naval aviator who reports having his own UAP sighting on active duty in 2014. In a 2023 op-ed published in The Hill, Gallaudet called UAPs the “story of the century,” and clearly did not rule out an extraterrestrial cause for them.

It’s rare for a high-ranking U.S. military officer to directly address UAP issues, even in retirement, and the incidents Gallaudet calls attention to are unusual, to say the least. Barring flat-out hoaxing by military and civilian government personnel, the videos and photographic evidence are not easily explained. Whether this will result in greater research to the same extent as the UFO/UAP issue remains to be seen.

• KYLE MIZOKAMI

  Kyle Mizokami is a writer on defense and security issues and has been at Popular Mechanics since 2015. If it involves explosions or projectiles, he's generally in favor of it. Kyle’s articles have appeared at The Daily Beast, U.S. Naval Institute News, The Diplomat, Foreign Policy, Combat Aircraft Monthly, VICE News, and others. He lives in San Francisco.

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

The Alien Reactor: Insights from Bob Lazar’s Discussion with Joe Rogan

In an eye-opening episode of the Joe Rogan Experience, Bob Lazar, a figure notorious for his claims about advanced technology and extraterrestrial elements, delves into the existence of what he describes as an “alien reactor.” His detailed conversation with host Joe Rogan sheds light on the mysterious technology that supposedly defies the fundamental laws of physics as we understand them today.

Understanding the Alien Reactor

Bob Lazar, who first came into the public eye in the late 1980s after claiming to have worked on reverse engineering extraterrestrial technology at a site called S-4 (near the infamous Area 51), discusses his experiences with a technology that seems to originate from beyond our world. According to Lazar, the reactor operates on an unknown element, which later discussions in the scientific community would relate to the hypothetical Element 115, ununpentium. This element purportedly enables the reactor to generate power without the byproduct of heat, contradicting the first law of thermodynamics which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, and that heat is a typical byproduct of energy conversion.

Zero-Heat Emission and Its Implications

The absence of heat emission from the reactor is a profound anomaly. In traditional physics, any device that utilizes energy—like the simplest electrical device to complex industrial machinery—inevitably produces heat as a form of energy waste. Lazar’s claim that the alien reactor remains at ambient temperature regardless of the power it exerts is particularly fascinating because it suggests a form of energy efficiency completely unknown to current technological capabilities.

Testing the Boundaries of Known Science

During the podcast, Lazar describes how he and his colleagues conducted numerous tests to understand the reactor’s capabilities. From attempting to measure magnetic fields that were non-existent to using infrared cameras that required liquid nitrogen for cooling due to their sensitivity, the tests consistently demonstrated the extraordinary nature of the reactor. Lazar reflects on how these tests not only challenged his understanding of physics but also left him perplexed about the fundamental operating principles of the device.

The Stealth of Advanced Technology

Lazar also recounted observations of the reactor’s operational tests, including how the craft, powered by the reactor, could lift off the ground silently, only producing a faint corona discharge—a type of electrical discharge—accompanied by a subtle hissing sound that ceased once the craft was airborne. This capability suggests a technology capable of controlled, noiseless flight, which is a stark contrast to conventional propulsion systems that are typically loud and produce significant physical disruptions such as air displacement and heat.

Broader Implications and Continuing Mysteries

The discussion on Joe Rogan’s podcast not only revisits Lazar’s claims but also reignites interest in the broader implications of such technology. If true, the existence of an alien reactor and the technology surrounding it could revolutionize our understanding of energy, propulsion, and perhaps the very fabric of physical laws. Moreover, it raises questions about the origins of such technology, its custodians, and the purposes for its use, whether past or present.

VIDEO

• https://youtu.be/fHqYinYGRMg

Bob Lazar’s account, controversial and debated, continues to stir both skepticism and fascination. Whether one views his claims as a peek into covert technological marvels or as fanciful tales, they undeniably enrich the ongoing dialogue between science and the speculative realms of UFOlogy and extraterrestrial technology. As science advances and our capabilities to test and understand unknown materials improve, perhaps the truth behind Lazar’s claims will one day come to light, offering new insights into a universe that remains profoundly mysterious.

Mysterious Aerial Phenomena Over Langley Air Force Base: New Insights from Exclusive Footage

In a recent and unprecedented event, new video footage has surfaced, showing unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) swarming over Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. This footage, obtained exclusively by NewsNation, highlights a significant and baffling aerial display that took place in December last year, capturing the attention of military and aviation experts, as well as the public.

The video was introduced to the public on NewsNation’s morning show “Morning in America,” where Ross Coulthart, a special correspondent, discussed its implications. The footage was captured by Jonathan Butner, a local observer, who managed to film what appeared to be multiple drone-like objects hovering over one of the United States’ most critical military installations.

Analysis of the UAP Footage

The objects captured in the footage resemble drones but display characteristics that are not typical of conventional drone technology. According to Butner, the objects were approximately the size of a car, lacked visible propulsion systems, and moved with precision over the base. This has led to intense speculation about the technology behind these objects, as well as their origin and purpose.

Ryan Graves, a former Navy pilot and the founder of Americans for Safe Aerospace, was also featured in the broadcast. He emphasized the need for a systematic approach to reporting such sightings, especially to understand better and mitigate any potential threats these UAPs might pose to national security.

Government and Military Response

The incident at Langley has not gone unnoticed by U.S. government officials. It has been the subject of congressional hearings, with questions directed towards military leaders about the security of sensitive airspace and the capabilities in place to monitor and respond to such intrusions. Senator Mark Kelly, in one such hearing, probed the adequacy of current defense measures and the apparent ease with which these UAPs infiltrated a highly secure military zone.

Broader Implications

The appearance of UAPs at Langley is part of a larger pattern of similar incidents at key military installations across the United States. The discussion around these events has moved beyond simple curiosity and entered realms of national security, technological assessment, and international relations. The speculation ranges from advanced adversarial surveillance technology to domestic or even unknown entities testing the boundaries of current aerospace capabilities.

VIDEO:

• https://youtu.be/xX2RH-LPNf4

As the authorities work to understand the nature and origin of these UAPs, the incident underscores the need for advancements in aerospace monitoring and defense technologies. It also highlights the importance of creating a supportive environment for pilots and military personnel to report their observations without fear of retribution or stigma.

This ongoing situation presents a complex puzzle that combines elements of technology, security, and policy. As more information becomes available, it will be crucial to address these phenomena with a comprehensive strategy that ensures the safety and security of national airspace. The development of such strategies will likely be a topic of robust discussion and action in the coming months, as the U.S. government and military seek to reassure the public and safeguard the nation’s interests.

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

There is DVD of US Intelligence Members Communicating with Extraterrestrials, Former US Military Claims

Former US intelligence officer David Grusch testified before Congress during the July 2023 UAP hearing, stating that we have numerous spacecraft of non-human origin. If this is the case, one might wonder if any contact has been established between humans and these extraterrestrial species. There have been persistent rumors suggesting that the US government may have signed treaties with these extraterrestrials and has been engaged in collaborative efforts with them over an extended period.

According to a rather extraordinary claim made by former US government consultant Timothy Good, it is alleged that the 34th President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, had three clandestine meetings with extraterrestrials. Good claimed Eisenhower met aliens at a remote air base in New Mexico in 1954. In more recent times, former Israeli Space Head Haim Eshed stated that aliens and the U.S. government had reached some type of deal to stay quiet about their experiments on Earth and secret facilities on Mars. Eshed went on to claim the existence of a “Galactic Federation” and implied that then-President Trump was on the brink of making significant revelations in this regard.

Video Evidence

During a podcast with former Fox News anchor Clayton Morris on his show Redacted, Joshua Reid, a former United States Navy serviceman with a background in missile weapons defense systems, brought a wealth of knowledge and experience to the table. He opened the conversation by referencing his personal experiences in the Navy, specifically during the years 2004 to 2006. Reid’s background made him intimately familiar with topics related to secret space projects, a subject that has piqued his interest for over two and a half decades.

It is worth noting that Joshua Reid’s extensive research in the field of UAPs and classified information has led him to the inner workings of certain government activities. His extensive four-year investigation revealed a disconcerting pattern. It appeared that military technology, particularly in special access programs, was unintentionally making its way to foreign adversaries, including China. This exchange of classified information seemed to involve universities and professors who were receiving grants to reverse engineer technologies from these programs.

The remarkable twist in this story was that Hillary Clinton’s emails were potentially facilitating the sale of this classified information to China and other foreign entities. China would fund universities, enticing professors to divulge information on special access programs. This enabled them to advance their technology rapidly, potentially reaching parity with the United States.

Former Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III, well-versed in these special access programs, played a crucial role in this unfolding drama. He represented David Grusch and became a central figure in the whistleblower saga. According to Reid, multiple whistleblowers were involved, with two possessing firsthand information and tangible evidence. The fear of repercussions led these individuals to testify in front of congressmen, notably, Indiana Congressman André Carson. However, it was not until these whistleblowers presented video evidence of intelligence community members communicating with extraterrestrials that congressmen took their claims seriously.

The impact of these videos was profound. Congressmen were visibly shaken, with one trembling and another drinking water profusely. This sudden shift in demeanor signified that the evidence was both extraordinary and unsettling. The whistleblowers were introduced to Inspector General McCullough, who had an extensive background in the very special access programs at the center of the controversy.

“I’ve heard that we can confirm this later, but from what I’m hearing, André Carson is this Congressman that they testified in front of, along with a few others. The Congressman didn’t take these guys seriously, but what ended up happening is they pulled out the evidence, a DVD, and they showed these congressmen video evidence of intelligence community members communicating with extraterrestrials. After these videos were shown to congressmen, they were noticeably shaken in fear. One of them was holding a piece of paper and could not stop shaking. Another was drinking water profusely, and this is when they began to take this very, very seriously and introduce these gentlemen to the former Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, McCullough. Hence, he enters the picture as someone who understands these SAP programs, has been read into these programs from back in the day, and is now representing these gentlemen.”

Morris was eager to learn more about the DVDs and the physical evidence related to the astounding claims made by the whistleblowers. He posed the question of where this evidence was currently held and whether the public would ever have the opportunity to view it.

Joshua Reid responded by revealing that the evidence, in the form of DVDs and other materials, was regarded as an “insurance policy.” This meant that the evidence was securely in the hands of two prominent UFO researchers. Furthermore, Reid confirmed that these researchers had not only seen the evidence but also verified its authenticity, which was a significant factor contributing to the growing interest in this matter.

Morris was eager to learn more about the DVDs and the physical evidence related to the astounding claims made by the whistleblowers. He asked Reid where this evidence was currently held and whether the public would ever have the opportunity to view it.

Joshua Reid responded by revealing that the evidence, in the form of DVDs and other materials, was regarded as an “insurance policy.” This meant that the evidence was securely in the hands of two prominent UFO researchers. Furthermore, Reid confirmed that these researchers had not only seen the evidence but also verified its authenticity, which was a significant factor contributing to the growing interest in this matter.

One of the prominent UFO researchers who has been sharing insider knowledge on UAPs is investigative journalist Ross Coulthart. It is quite uncertain if Coulthart possesses this DVD evidence but he did reveal that there exists a huge UFO in the possession of the United States that cannot be moved, and he knows the location of the craft. Ross mentioned the existence of non-human intelligence engaging with Earth for a long time and the recovery of certain objects, but he could not disclose specific details due to concerns about revealing advanced technologies.

Read also:

• Dimension
• US Govt. Has UFO & They Can Go Inside It, Reveals Ex-DIA Intelligence Officer
• Journalist Reveals Bob Lazar’s Astonishing Claim: Extraterrestrials See Humans as ‘Containers of Souls’
• Journalist Reveals Clues to Location of Huge Buried Alien Spacecraft: It can be Stormed like Area 51

In a recent episode of “The UFO Podcast,” host Andy engaged in a thought-provoking conversation with Ross. The discussion centered around the secrecy surrounding UFO sightings and government knowledge. Ross, who has deep insights into the matter, shared his perspective on why certain details remain undisclosed.

Andy began by addressing a critical question that has been on the minds of many UFO enthusiasts: the location of the mysterious craft. He asked Ross whether he could reveal where the craft was being held.

Ross responded: “Let me tell you, I can’t tell you the country it’s in; it’s not America. But what I can tell you is that the place where it is kept is used for another purpose that is a laudatory purpose that’s as much in your interests in your country in the UK as it is in mine in Australia and as it is in America. The simple reasons are that there are other uses for the place where this object is stored, and we could end up with a storm Area 51-type scenario if you came out and announced it.”

Ross went on to explain the potential consequences of revealing such information, including international incidents and threats to the safety of personnel at the facilities. He also emphasized the importance of protecting sources, drawing on his experience as a journalist dealing with sensitive intelligence.

Interestingly, Steve Sprague, a UFO researcher who studied the UAP phenomenon for 30 years, claimed that an aerospace executive would come forward and share the information during the July 2023 Congressional Hearing on UAPs. This unidentified insider is described as a C-level executive within the United States-based company, which, according to Sprague, is a top firm reverse-engineering alien technology.

According to the insider, aliens not only exist but have been present on Earth for at least five millennia, if not longer. Startlingly, the individual revealed the existence of at least two civilizations currently residing on our planet: humans and a group known as the “Ganzi,” originating from a distant part of our galaxy, roughly forty light years away. The Ganzi are characterized as technologically advanced beings who possess knowledge far surpassing humanity’s capabilities.

The insider also touched upon significant presidential briefings that have taken place, shedding light on the United States government’s awareness of these developments. On various occasions, President Biden was reportedly briefed on advanced technologies recovered from the Ganzi. The briefings included demonstrations of lasers capable of remarkable feats, such as extracting elements directly from ore and analyzing biological and geological data.

Videos of these briefings purportedly exist, with one showing Biden interacting with three Ganzi beings through a small device placed in his ear. Notably, one of the individuals accompanying the beings was John Podesta, who later assumed the role of Senior Advisor for Clean Energy Innovation. The insider also linked breakthroughs in fusion energy and laser technology to the company’s efforts in reverse-engineering Ganzi technology.

Sprague wrote, “Date 4 – May 19, 2022, Biden is now in Alaska and stopped off to refuel at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. This video is the most incredible of all. Biden meets with three of the Ganzi. Biden puts a small device in his ear and a conversation occurs without sound. The video lasts for nine minutes and then four people enter the area. One of the people is John Podesta. The other three are unknown. The beings leave and the video ends. In September of 2022, Biden names Podesta as the Senior Advisor for Clean Energy Innovation. December 14, 2022, America has a breakthrough in fusion. To achieve this scientific feat – a laser is used. This laser has ‘unique’ properties.” (Source)

Sprague’s claims cannot be verified; however, it is certain that there exists an alien craft, and the United States has successfully accessed its interior. Dr. James Lacatski, a retired DIA intelligence officer who established the UFO program that operated from 2008 to 2010, has confirmed this. He stated that the craft possesses a streamlined configuration suitable for aerodynamic flight but lacks conventional features such as an engine, wings, intakes, exhaust, or fuel tanks.

{ https://www.howandwhys.com/  }

Terry Lovelace Alien Abduction Is Most Convincing UFO Encounter With Biological Evidence

Terry Lovelace, a retired assistant attorney general and lawyer, who served as a media and EMT in the United States Air Force from 1973 to 1979, claims that an extraterrestrial craft took him. Lovelace claims to be repeatedly abducted by aliens, fitted with a tracking device and experimented on.

In 1973, Lovelace joined the U.S. Air Force immediately after graduating from high school. He received training as a medic/EMT and was stationed at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, which was previously called Sedalia Air Force Base. The base served as a B-2 bomber base and missile base and was home to the 351st Strategic Missile Wing, with many Minuteman II nuclear-armed ICBM silos scattered across the rural area.

Lovelace was assigned as a base medic and drove an ambulance during the graveyard shift from 11 PM to 8 AM along with his partner, who he referred to as “Toby.” One night in January 1975, while on their regular shift, they were outside the ambulance stargazing when Toby, an amateur astronomer, pointed out the constellations and planets. Typically, their shifts were uneventful, but that night turned out to be very significant, altering the course of their lives.

Lovelace (now 69) went camping with Toby at Devil’s Den state park in northern Arkansas. While conversing near a crackling fire, they had difficulty hearing each other due to the loud sounds of crickets and tree frogs. Suddenly, an eerie silence enveloped them. “That sounds kind of clichéd – out of a movie – but that is exactly what happened to us,” he said.

As they gazed toward the horizon, three bright UFOs emerged and advanced in their direction. As the lights drew closer, the two partners could see that they were emanating from a black triangular prism as wide as two city blocks.

Alien sketch by Terry Lovelace

Terry’s re-drawn sketch originally dated Sep 4, 1977, of the massive 5-story-tall craft he and his friend “Toby” encountered in the clearing at Devil’s Den State Park in June of that year. Credit: Terry Lovelace

Lovelace noticed a blue laser beam rapidly moving across them, possibly scanning their presence. Soon after it stopped, they lost consciousness. Upon awakening, he noticed Toby gazing outside the tent, and spotted a triangle-shaped object hovering above a group of approximately twelve children who were standing in a meadow below them. Lovelace questioned, “Why are these children out here at this time of night?”

“They aren’t little kids. Don’t you remember they took us and they hurt us?” Toby answered.

According to Lovelace, when Toby uttered those words, he experienced a sudden recall of memories of being inside a UFO. In later years, he resorted to hypnosis to recover his missing memories. Through one of these sessions, Lovelace recollected an incident where he had been taken aboard a spacecraft and subjected to medical experimentation by peculiar entities.

Those entities were humanoid forms, but their characteristics were distorted and almost non-human. They communicated with each other through telepathy and seemed to be performing a medical procedure on Lovelace. During his hypnosis sessions, Lovelace experienced flashes of memory where he was on an examination table and screaming, but no sound was coming out of his mouth. He could hear telepathic messages in his head, urging him to stop screaming because they did not intend to harm him and would take him back.

Lovelace said that they had a terrible experience that left their skin red and sore like a bad sunburn all over their body, even the soles of their feet. They had to go to the hospital at the base for two days because they were very dehydrated.

While they were there, they were questioned many times by some men who said they were from the “Office of Special Investigations.” They searched his home and car for a camera that Lovelace said he did not have, but they did not believe him. They also told him not to see his partner Toby again, who was sent to another base. The whole experience made Lovelace have nightmares and affected him mentally for a long time.

Read also:

• Man Who Ran Area 51 Claimed They Had Alien Crafts & Non-Human Beings: So Bob Lazar Is telling Truth
• 9-Minute UFO Footage Captured By Chilean Navy Still Baffles Scientists
• Scientists & Astronauts Claim That Extraterrestrial Beings Live Among Us
• Jacques Vallee On Footage Of UFO Landing At Holloman AFB: Occupant Carried Vertical Staff With Spiral Antenna

Terry Lovelace was profoundly disturbed by his encounter and left with numerous unanswered queries. Subsequently, he authored a book titled “Incident at Devils Den: A True Story,” with the intention of uncovering the facts about extraterrestrial abductions and inspiring others to share their experiences.

During a routine X-ray of his leg in 2012, a foreign object was discovered in his leg above the knee. The X-ray revealed an artificial object, about the size of a fingernail, with two wires attached, which the radiologist believed resembled an “RFID compute device.” The radiologist also noticed a collection of foreign objects in his’s calf muscle and was surprised that there was no corresponding scar in the skin. This discovery led Lovelace to recall a traumatic event from 1977 that they had never intended to disclose to anyone.

The most astonishing aspect of this discovery was that there were no signs of incision or surgery on Lovelace’s leg, and the radiologist who detected the object claimed that an absent scar would mean Lovelace was born with this thing in his leg.

On his personal blog, Lovelace writes:

“September of 2017, I was a guest speaker at a UFO event in Houston. It was my first public appearance and opportunity to speak candidly on the topic of alien abduction. This was the time when I decided to write a book. It’s an important topic. We deserve to be informed and not mislead.

I fear we’ve been desensitized about the UFO phenomena by the media especially the motion picture industry. Close Encounters of the Third Kind was released in November 1977. my experience happened in June that same year. Now, YouTube provides a flood of valid information mixed with confabulation and deception. Know the truth. Alien’s really exist and some live and walk among us without so much as a second look. There are probably many species from different worlds or different dimensions here on Earth today.

Terry Lovelace with former AATIP manager Luis “Lue” Elizondo, late June, 2019.

Credit: Terry Lovelace

Some aliens may actually be our ‘benign space brothers’ as some have claimed. Here to join hands and walk mankind into a new era of peace and higher consciousness. Maybe so, but not the ones we met. The beings we met were monsters. They kidnap people and subject them to terror and brutality in pursuit of their agenda. They are 100% purpose-driven and void of empathy for human or animal suffering. We are their lab rats. Once you’re tagged as their specimen you’re tagged for a lifetime. Like a wild animal on the Serengeti Plane.”

Five years ago, Terry Lovelace published a book that caused significant issues, leading to a year-long harassment incident over his home outside Dallas. Lovelace reports that following the book’s publicity, military aircraft, including two and four-seaters, as well as Airbus 350s with no registered “N” numbers, flew over his house. These aircraft, which were drab-olive in color, were spotted making flyovers at least twice a week, often every day. Lovelace captured many photos of the incidents, including one that appears to show a UFO in the same frame as one of the intruding aircraft.

After publishing a book about his experience, Lovelace received a call from Tom DeLonge, founder of To The Stars Academy, along with General Neil McCasland and Lue Elizondo, who were interested in the X-rays of Lovelace’s leg, which had been injured during the encounter.

Bill Cox writes:

“I can attest to the fact that TTSA was interested in speaking with Terry regarding possible biological effects that he may have suffered,” states former AATIP manager Elizondo in an email. “Biological effects (are) a potential serious aspect of what we studied in AATIP and we now know that certain elements with the U.S. Government are equally concerned as we were. If Terry is suffering any medical consequences as a result of an alleged encounter with a UAP while serving in the military, then he deserves medical care.

“It is my experience that helicopters of unknown utility have been reported by certain individuals. It is not yet known if this is some sort of intentional harassment or simply a matter of being near a congested flight corridor. Obviously, flying a helicopter is expensive and logistically intense if this were some sort of campaign to intimidate individuals on a regular basis. We would need to do additional research to better determine the nature of these incidents,” he added, “before making any sort of proclamation.

“Terry is a good person who is also credible. I believe Terry and others are convinced their experiences are legitimate.”

{ https://www.howandwhys.com/ }

On April 18, 2024, NASA's Live stream captured the presence of two unidentified flying objects. 

While the International Space Station was traversing Canadian territory, these objects appeared beneath it, prompting NASA to track them using the ISS camera. NASA  continued  to track them until the objects vanished from view somewhere over the North Atlantic Ocean. 

Speculation surrounds the origin of these objects. Considering their distinct flight trajectory and distance from the ISS, it seems unlikely that they emanated from the station itself. 

Characterized by their rectangular shape devoid of visible wings or propulsion systems, these mysterious entities raise questions whether they could be linked to an undisclosed advanced space project or that they are of extraterrestrial origin.

  

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

Mysterious Skies: A Close Encounter in Yakutat, Alaska

In the remote coastal village of Yakutat, Alaska, nestled within the enigmatic expanse known as the Alaska Triangle, residents have reported a startling increase in unidentified flying object (UFO) sightings. This area, notorious for its mysterious disappearances totaling over 16,000 since 1988, has long been a focal point for those interested in paranormal phenomena. Recently, several locals have come forward with footage and personal testimonies of an unusual incident involving bizarre aerial maneuvers that challenge conventional explanations.

One of the key witnesses, Nick Pavlik, a commercial driver and fisherman from Yakutat, shared his unnerving experience from a cold morning in December 2019. According to Nick, the peacefulness of the early hours was shattered by an inexplicable sighting. Awakening to the sound of raindrops, he ventured outside to investigate and captured on camera what he describes as sporadic, blinking lights moving erratically above the treeline. The sighting left him with an unsettling feeling, a sentiment echoed by others in the community.

Nick’s girlfriend, Tessa Marie Devereaux, also witnessed the strange phenomena. Stirred from sleep by Nick, Tessa joined him to observe the unsettling spectacle. Her account adds to the eerie nature of the incident, noting that the object seemed to respond with a bright blue flash when she acknowledged its presence. This interactive element of the sighting raises more questions than answers about the intentions and origins of these mysterious visitors.

Cranston Negus, another Yakutat local, corroborated these accounts. Having received a text from Nick about the sighting, Cranston met up to view the footage and later observed the same unusual movements in the sky, describing them as unlike anything he had ever seen. The object’s ability to maneuver at right angles and its sudden flashes of color were particularly baffling.

The sightings in Yakutat do not seem to be isolated incidents. Within days, another local, Quinn Newland, and his mother witnessed a similar phenomenon. While observing the night sky, they noticed what appeared to be a planet moving irregularly, further complicating the community’s attempts to understand these mysterious events.

• https://youtu.be/5qyISB4XJns

These continuous and corroborated sightings from multiple angles suggest a pattern that has intrigued both locals and UFO enthusiasts alike. The Yakutat incidents contribute to the larger discussion surrounding UFO sightings globally and underscore the need for further investigation. Whether these are mere atmospheric anomalies, top-secret aircraft tests, or indeed visitations from extraterrestrial beings remains a subject of debate and fascination.

As the residents of Yakutat continue to gaze skyward, their experiences serve as a reminder of the vast unknowns that still exist in our world and beyond. With each new report, the intrigue surrounding the Alaska Triangle deepens, inviting both skepticism and wonder in the quest to unravel the truth behind these celestial mysteries.

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

What’s the Most Effective Way to Explore our Nearest Stars?

It was 1903 that the Wright brothers made the first successful self-propelled flight. Launching themselves to history, they set the foundations for transatlantic flights, supersonic flight and perhaps even the exploration of the Solar System. Now we are on the precipice of travel among the stars but among the many ideas and theories, what is the ultimate and most effective way to explore our nearest stellar neighbours? After all, there are 10,000 stars within a region of 110 light years from Earth so there are plenty to choose from. 

It’s not just the stars that entice us to explore beyond our Solar System. Ever since the first exoplanet discovery in 1992 we have been discovering more and more alien worlds around distant stars. The tally has now reached over 5,500 confirmed exoplanets and they too demand our attention as we reach out among the stars. There have been many ideas and technologies proposed over the past few years but to date, even Proxima Centauri (the nearest star system to our own) remains out of reach. 

In his thesis recently published, lead author Johannes Lebert from the Technische Universität München (TUM) attempts to develop a strategy, based on existing interstellar probe concepts and knowledge of nearby star systems. Lebert was driven by the exoplanet discoveries that continue at pace and the development and interest, both commercially and technically in interstellar probes. Not only does he explore the technologies but he also looks at the returns too. 

Artist’s illustration of HD 104067 b, which is the outermost exoplanet in the HD 104067 system, and responsible for potentially causing massive tidal energy on the innermost exoplanet candidate, TOI-6713.01. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

In the strategy developed in the thesis he looks at the two main objectives which are duration of the mission and the returns. By returns he refers to the sum of all rewards provided by the stars explored during the mission and of course be largely scientific.  He considers a multi vehicle approach using several probes which do not return to Earth and are capable of exploring different stars thereby maximising the mission returns. Finally he explores the routing of such a mission to ensure maximum mission returns. Succinctly he calls this his ‘Bi-objective multi- vehicle open routing problem with profits.’

The thesis concludes with several recommendation. First that the use of efficient routing around the stars, a more limited number of probes can be used, limiting reducing fuel costs. This should be balanced by the mission returns which increase faster should more probes be used to explore the same number of stars simultaneously. This does however increase mission costs due to increase fuel costs. Whichever strategy is used, small-scale remotely operated or autonomous craft are far more suited to the need. 

Lebert goes on to explain that higher probe numbers also brings the benefit that probes can be tailored to suit the star systems they are destined to explore. Unlike a smaller number of probes that will have to cater for a greater range of systems.  There is a concept known as the ‘derived scaling law’ which articulates that higher probe numbers do inherit a risk of less efficient deployment.

It’s an interesting read that reminds us that, whilst we are developing the probes, and there are quite a number on the drawing board; Breakthrough Starshot, Interstellar Express, Interstellar Probe, Innovative Interstellar Explorer, Tau Mission to name a few, we do need to consider just how we plan, manage and deploy to maximise the scientific gain. 

Source : 

• Optimal Strategies for the Exploration of Near-by Star

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

Juno Reveals a Giant Lava Lake on Io

Juno made the two close flybys of Io in December 2023 and February 2024. Images from Juno’s JunoCam included the first close-up images of the moon’s northern latitudes. Undoubtedly, Io looks like a pizza – which has been the conclusion since our first views of this moon, when Voyager 1 flew through the Jupiter system in March 1979. The mottled and colorful surface comes from the volcanic activity, with hundreds of vents and calderas on the surface that create a variety of features. Volcanic plumes and lava flows across the surface show up in all sorts of colors, from red and yellow to orange and black. Some of the lava “rivers” stretch for hundreds of kilometers.

Juno scientists were also able to re-create a spectacular feature on Io, a spired mountain that has been nicknamed “The Steeple.” This feature is between 5 and 7 kilometers (3-4.3 miles) in height. It’s hard to comprehend the type of volcanic activity that could have created such a stunning landform.

Speaking of volcanic activity, two recent papers have come to a jaw-dropping conclusion about Io: this moon has been erupting since the dawn of the Solar System.

All the volcanic on Io is activity is driven by tidal heating. Io is in an orbital resonance with two other large moons of Jupiter, Europa and Ganymede.

“Every time Ganymede orbits Jupiter once, Europa orbits twice, and Io orbits four times,” explained the authors of a paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, led by Ery Hughes of GNS Science in New Zealand. “This situation causes tidal heating in Io (like how the Moon causes ocean tides on Earth), which causes the volcanism.”

However, scientists haven’t known how long this resonance has been occurring and whether what we observe today is what has always been happening in the Jupiter system. This is because volcanism renews Io’s surface almost constantly, leaving little trace of the past.

The team of scientists, led by Katherine de Kleer at Caltech and Hughes at GNS Science used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile observe the sulphur gases in Io’s atmosphere. The isotopes of sulfur were used as a tracer of tidal heating on Io because sulfur is released through volcanism, processed in the atmosphere, and recycled into the mantle. Additionally, some of the sulfur is lost to space, and because of Jupiter’s magnetosphere, a bunch of charged particles whirling around Jupiter that hit Io’s atmosphere continuously.

It turns out that the sulfur that is lost to space on Io is a little bit isotopically lighter than the sulfur that is recycled back into Io’s interior. Because of this, over time, the sulfur remaining on Io gets isotopically heavier and heavier. How much heavier depends on how long volcanism has been taking place.

What the teams found is that tidal heating on Io has been occurring for billions of years.

“The isotopic composition of Io’s inventory of volatile chemical elements, including sulfur and chlorine, reflects its outgassing and mass loss history, and thus records information about its evolution,” the team wrote in the paper published in Science. “These results indicate that Io has been volcanically active for most (or all) of its history, with potentially higher outgassing and mass-loss rates at earlier times.”

Juno continues to makes its way through the Jupiter system. And during Juno’s most recent flyby of Io, on April 9, the spacecraft came within about 16,500 kilometers (10,250 miles) of the moon’s surface. It will perform its 61st flyby of Jupiter on May 12.

JunoCam is a public camera, where members of the public can choose targets for imaging, as well as process all the data.  JunoCam’s raw images are available here for the public to peruse and process into image products. Here you can see the most recent images that have been processed.

Papers: 

1. Isotopic Evidence of Long-Lived Volcanism on Io
2. Using Io’s Sulfur Isotope Cycle to Understand the History of Tidal Heating
   

Further Reading: 

• NASA, 
• GNS Science

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

A mysterious object found on the floor of the Baltic Sea has baffled explorers for years (

The Baltic Sea Anomaly was discovered over a decade ago by divers looking for treasure, but it remained a mystery for years as to why and how it got to the bottom of the ocean

The truth about a strange, unexplained object lying on the floor of the Baltic Sea that prompted UFO claims may have finally been revealed.

The Baltic Sea Anomaly is said to be over 140,000 years old and is thought by some to be formed out of straight and angular pieces of metal. Discovered by divers who were originally searching for a shipwreck, the object has puzzled viewers for years as no one knows for sure what it is or how it got there.

Swedish explorers Peter Lindberg and Denis Asberg were in the northern Baltic Sea as part of the Ocean X team in June 2011, looking for treasure, when their sonar radars detected the 70ft long Millennium Falcon-looking piece in the canyon of an underwater mountain in the Gulf of Bothnia.

Asberg told TV4 in Sweden at the time: “We were really surprised and puzzled. We were thinking what is that we have found here. This is not a wreck. At that time we thought for sure there was a natural explanation.

"We wanted to look into it some more and decided to keep this totally quiet. We contacted geologists, marine biologists and when they said they had never seen anything like this, of course more thoughts were triggered. It could be something really awesome that we’ve found."

Adding to the mystery of the structure, the explorers explained that there appears to be a long "stair-like formations" leading to a dark hole and another unknown object around 200m away.

The enigmatic nature of the discovery prompted wide speculation with some guessing it could be the remains of the lost underwater city of Atlanta, a rouge member of an alien UFO fleet that crashed on the sea bed or some kind of anti-submarine device left over from the Second World War.

Despite its resemblance to a large rock, some scientists have said that it's not made of natural materials and is in fact constructed of metal. Even more mysteriously, electrical and satellite equipment reportedly cuts out when in close proximity to the object, according to Ocean X diver Stefan Hogerborn.

He said: "Anything electric out there, and the satellite phone as well, stopped working when we were above the object, then when we got away about 200 metres, it turned on again.

Sat nearly 300ft below the surface, the Ocean X team continued to explore the object for years after its discovery, including returning to the scene to produce a documentary in 2016 and taking samples from the site with the intention to find out the truth behind it. However, others have attempted to end speculation, claiming it is simply a natural, geological formation.

Volker Brüchert, a Stockholm University geologist, reportedly studied some of the samples collected by the team and said: "What has been generously ignored by the Ocean-X team is that most of the samples they have brought up from the sea bottom are granites and gneisses and sandstones."

He believed there is nothing mysterious about it, saying: "I was surprised when I researched the material I found a great black stone that could be a volcanic rock. My hypothesis is that this object, this structure was formed during the Ice Age many thousands of years ago." Göran Ekberg, a marine archaeologist at Maritime Museum in Stockholm, said: "A natural, geological formation can't be ruled out. I agree the finding looks weird since it's completely circular. But nature has produced stranger things than that."

Research undertaken by the Stockholm University later established that the Baltic Sea anomaly is the remains of a process of glacial movements that took place in that area of the ocean in the Ice Age period and could account for how the object reached its location.

{ https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/ }

Five UFO abduction cases that could FINALLY be solved - as new study investigates 30-years' worth of evidence

• Couple 'lost' several hours on night-time drive
• Man was abducted in forest in front of six colleagues
•  READ MORE New witness of 1973 alien abduction in Mississippi

By ROB WAUGH FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

Roughly 100 alien abduction cases spanning over the past 30 years are set to be investigated by scientists with hopes of unraveling the mysterious experiences.

Researchers at Rice University in Texas plan to analyze a trove of archives consisting of thousands of documents in the form of books, journals, photographs, slides, reports, meeting notes and letters.

The cases include the famous story of Betty and Barney Hill, a New Hampshire couple who say they were abducted in 1961 while driving up a mountain.

Other cases include one that inspired a new Netflix show - the Pascagoula abduction.

Roughly 100 alien abductions spanning over the past 30 years are set to be investigated by scientists with hopes of unraveling the mysterious experiences

The 'Archive of the Impossible' at Rice University plays host to material from Jacques Vallee (whose work inspired Steven Spielberg's 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind') and author Whitley Streiber, who claimed to have been abducted by aliens in his 1987 book Communion among hundreds of other abduction stories.

1. The Pascagoula abduction

Featured in the new Netflix series 'Files of the Unexplained', the Mississippi abduction of Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker occurred happened in 1973.

The two men reported to the sheriff's department that they had been abducted by aliens while fishing - and each appeared with a puncture wound in their arm.

Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker claimed to have been abducted in 1973

Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker claimed to have been abducted in 1973

As UFO's blue lights flashed and it descended closer to the marshland below, three, five-foot grey 'wrinkled-skin creatures' with 'pincer-like' claws (illustrated above) seized the two men — subjecting to them to examination, according to Parker, 'just like any doctor would'

Both men passed polygraph tests when interviewed about their experiences - and it appeared their stories matched.

The two men reported being manipulated by aliens with pincer-like claws and experimented on.

Hickson told The Washington Post, 'I was just getting ready to get some more bait, when I heard a kind of zipping sound. I looked up and saw a blue flashing light. Calvin turned around too.

'We saw a 30-foot-long object with a little dome on top.'

Detectives secretly left a tape recorder running to catch the men out but they did not 'drop the act' once police left the room.

Another witness, Maria Blair, recently gave video testimony that was obtained by DailyMail.com, which appeared to corroborate the men's story. 

2. Whitley Strieber

Science fiction and horror writer Whitley Strieber's abduction story in his 1987 non-fiction book Communion has become one of the iconic stories of alien abduction.

The cover image of the book, showing a slender, almond-eyed alien is an iconic image of what UFO fans refer to as 'grey' aliens.

Science fiction and horror writer Whitley Strieber

Christopher Walken in the film Communion, based on Strieber's experience

The alleged abduction happened on Boxing Day in 1986, after Strieber and his wife went to bed after eating Christmas leftovers.

Strieber describes the beings he encountered as 'visitors', but makes no conclusion about their origin.

Strieber wrote, 'In 1985 I had an experience of close encounter that frightened and confused me. I was injured by it but still could not believe that it had been a physical experience. It was just too strange. 

'Still, I was very curious and began going out into the woods at night from our little upstate New York cabin to try to somehow re-engage.'

He has since written several books on the subject of alien encounters.

3. Betty and Barney Hill

Betty and Barney Hill's 1961 experience became one of the iconic alien-abduction stories - with the couple encountering a strange light on a road in New Hampshire's White Mountains.

The couple couldn't remember some of the drive, and their watches had stopped working.

Betty and Barney Hill's 1961 experience became one of the iconic alien-abduction stories

Betty and Barney Hill's 1961 experience became one of the iconic alien-abduction stories

Psychiatrist and hypnotist Benjamin Simon helped the couple to remember their experience of being walked into a flying saucer by grey-skinned aliens.

Under hypnosis, they recalled being attached to needles attached with long wires, as aliens took samples of their hair and skin.

The couple's story became a book and a film starring James Earl Jones - and both stuck by their story until their deaths.

4. Travis Walton

The abduction of Travis Walton in 1975 gathered national attention because of the presence of six witnesses - fellow forestry workers.

On November 5, 1975, the 22-year-old UFO enthusiast Walton spotted a light in a forest, and ignored warnings and ran towards it.

The abduction of Travis Walton in 1975 gathered national attention

His experiences formed the basis of a 1993 film

Struck by a blue light, Travis disappeared and the other forestry workers fled the scene.

It was the first UFO abduction to be reported while the victim was still missing.

Seven days later, Walton reappeared - and revealed that he awoke being observed by three small aliens, and then found himself walking along a highway five days later.

He detailed his experiences in a book, which became the 1993 film Fire in the Sky: in 2021, he appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast.

5. Dr Leo Sprinkle

Many UFO abduction experiences are frightening and disturbing - but some who claim to have encountered aliens have a more positive view of their abductee.

Dr Leo Sprinkle, a psychologist at the University of Wyoming, hypnotically regressed alleged abductees in the Sixties, following Betty and Barney Hill's encounter.

Dr Leo Sprinkle, a psychologist at the University of Wyoming, became involved in hypnotically regressing alien abductees

Sprinkle eventually identified as an abductee himself - believing that the aliens are helpful 'cosmic citizens' helping humans to deal with their problems.

Sprinkle went on to hold an annual Rocky Mountain UFO conference on the more positive aspects of UFO encounters before retiring from the university in 1989.

Sprinkle claims that UFO encounters are part of 'cosmic consciousness conditioning', designed to enhance human consciousness.

Nigel Watson, author of Captured by Aliens? A History and Analysis of American Abduction Claims, told DailyMail.com, 'I think it is great that they are conducting an intense analysis of the data in these files, and it will be fascinating to see what they do with this material.

'The major problem with alien abductions is that we have to consider how they come about. Such psychological concepts as sleep paralysis, fantasy proneness and false memory syndrome have all been used to 'explain' alien abduction experiences.

'Even the methods by which we use psychology to examine these processes in pursuit of alien abduction investigation can be conditioned by our culture. 

'In the USA there has been far more recourse to using polygraph tests and hypnotic regression compared to other countries.'

'Besides looking at those areas of 'normal' psychology and sociology, perhaps this new study project might discover rarer factors involved with the abduction experience. 

'Will it even support the popular idea that real extraterrestrial aliens have come here to take and examine humans against their will?'

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

NASA’s Juno Mission Provides Close-Ups of Intriguing Features on Io

In December 2023 and February 2024, NASA’s Juno spacecraft made extremely close flybys of Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io, getting within about 1,500 km (930 miles) of the surface and obtaining the first close-up images of the moon’s northern latitudes. Planetary scientists have now transformed the images collected during the flybys into animations that highlight two of Io’s most dramatic features: a mountain and an almost glass-smooth lake of cooling lava called Loki Patera.

The JunoCam instrument aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft imaged Io, the most geologically active body in our Solar System, on February 3, 2024, from a distance of about 7,904 km (4,911 miles).

Image credit: NASA / SwRI / MSSS.

“Io is simply littered with volcanoes, and we caught a few of them in action,” said Juno’s principal investigator Scott Bolton, director of the Space Science and Engineering Division at the Southwest Research Institute.

“We also got some great close-ups and other data on a 200-km- (127-mile-) long lava lake called Loki Patera.”

“There is amazing detail showing these crazy islands embedded in the middle of a potentially magma lake rimmed with hot lava.”

“The specular reflection our instruments recorded of the lake suggests parts of Io’s surface are as smooth as glass, reminiscent of volcanically created obsidian glass on Earth.”

Maps generated with data collected by Juno’s Microwave Radiometer (MWR) instrument reveal Io not only has a surface that is relatively smooth compared to Jupiter’s other Galilean moons, but also has poles that are colder than middle latitudes.

During Juno’s extended mission, the spacecraft flies closer to the north pole of Jupiter with each pass.

This changing orientation allows the MWR instrument to improve its resolution of Jupiter’s northern polar cyclones.

The data allow multiwavelength comparisons of the poles, revealing that not all polar cyclones are created equal.

“Perhaps most striking example of this disparity can be found with the central cyclone at Jupiter’s north pole,” said Juno’s project scientist Dr. Steve Levin, a researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“It is clearly visible in both infrared and visible light images, but its microwave signature is nowhere near as strong as other nearby storms.”

“This tells us that its subsurface structure must be very different from these other cyclones.”

“The MWR team continues to collect more and better microwave data with every orbit, so we anticipate developing a more detailed 3D map of these intriguing polar storms.”

{ https://www.sci.news/ }

Open Minds UAP News: John Greenewald of the Black Vault: Important Update on Alleged UFO Whistleblower

 Alejandro Rojas

 

In today’s episode: We talk to John Greenewald, founder of The Black Vault. For decades John has been using FOIA to get formerly classified documents from the government. Recently he received documents showing the correspondence between the DoD and alleged UFO whistleblower David Grusch. Grusch has claimed, including on the record during a congressional hearing, that DoD’s AARO UAP program has not reached out to him. New documents may show otherwise. We also cover the latest UFO/UAP News and look at a couple weird videos from the Enigma app.

• https://youtu.be/PTLJTrvIXOQ

{ https://openminds.tv/ }

The Enigma of the Roswell UFO Incident

In the annals of UFO folklore, few events have captured the imagination and stirred controversy as much as the Roswell UFO incident of 1947. This event has become a cornerstone of extraterrestrial conspiracy theories and continues to intrigue both skeptics and believers over seven decades later. The incident unfolded in the quiet desert town of Roswell, New Mexico, where a mysterious object crashed during the summer of 1947, sparking widespread speculation and government scrutiny.

The Initial Discovery

The saga began when a local rancher, Mac Brazel, discovered unfamiliar debris scattered over his property. The materials found were unusual, possessing properties that baffled those who handled them. Reports described them as lightweight yet remarkably resilient, able to return to their original shape after being crumpled. This led to immediate speculation about their otherworldly origins.

Military Involvement and the Cover-Up Allegations

The recovery of the debris by the military added layers of mystery to the incident. The Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) issued a press release stating they had recovered a “flying disc,” a statement that was quickly retracted and replaced with a claim that the debris was merely a downed weather balloon—a mundane explanation that did little to quell public curiosity.

Over the years, the U.S. government’s narrative regarding Roswell has shifted multiple times, fueling accusations of a cover-up. Theories have suggested that the debris was part of a secretive military project like Project Mogul, which aimed to detect Soviet nuclear tests. Critics argue that the constant changes in the official explanation indicate an attempt to obscure the truth.

Eyewitness Accounts and Further Speculations

Eyewitnesses at the time, including military personnel and local civilians, provided accounts that contradicted the official explanations. Some described seeing metallic beams with hieroglyphic symbols and materials that behaved unlike anything conventional. Reports also surfaced of bodies—presumed to be extraterrestrial beings—being recovered from the crash site. These accounts contributed to the lore surrounding Roswell, suggesting a conspiracy of monumental proportions that involved recovered alien technology and creatures.

Cultural Impact and Legacy

The Roswell incident has had a profound impact on popular culture, inspiring movies, books, and television shows. It has become synonymous with government secrecy and the potential for extraterrestrial visitation, keeping the public’s interest alive. The town of Roswell itself has embraced its identity as a UFO phenomenon hotspot, hosting visitors from around the world drawn by the mystery.

VIDEO:

• The Mystery of The Infamous Roswell UFO Crash | Absolute Documentaries
• https://youtu.be/VFLqXnPFTDw

Despite numerous investigations and reports, the truth about the Roswell incident remains elusive. Whether it was a secret military project, an extraterrestrial spacecraft, or something entirely different, Roswell continues to be a focal point for those seeking to understand the possibilities of what might lie beyond our world. As new pieces of information slowly emerge, the debate over what really happened in 1947 endures, keeping the Roswell mystery as relevant today as it was over seventy years ago.

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

Italy UFO Crash Confirmed By Grusch & Elizondo Had Two Giant Alien Bodies

The world has been astounded by the extraordinary revelations of military whistleblower David Grusch, who has made astonishing claims about UFOs. In his compelling testimony, Grusch claims that the United States government has recovered intact and partially intact vehicles of non-human origin. Given his credibility, these assertions mark the most significant and impactful claims made in decades.

In the midst of it, according to the French paper le Parisien, Grusch states that the United States and its allies have been involved in secret programs for almost ninety years and reveals that one of the recovered craft was found in Italy in 1933. This UFO crash incident is said to have happened when Italy was under the rule of Fascist Benito Mussolini.

The claims regarding the UFO coverup originate directly from the documents released from Mussolini’s office. According to these documents, Mussolini went to great lengths to suppress witnesses and classified the unidentified craft as highly confidential. Mussolini prioritized the study of the craft, leading to the formation of a secretive organization comprised of Italy’s most skilled engineers and scientists. This organization was purportedly under the command of Guglielmo Marconi, a renowned engineer and radio inventor.

Mussolini UFO files

According to Roberto Pinotti, an Italian journalist, writer, and UFO researcher, the alleged UFO crash occurred in Magenta, Lombardy, Italy on April 11, 1933, fourteen years prior to the famous Roswell UFO incident in New Mexico. The crash involved a flying saucer-like object and triggered an investigation by a secretive wartime intelligence unit known as the “Gabinetto RS/33” (or RS/33 Cabinet), which was authorized by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini to study the phenomenon.

Pinotti revealed in his book “UFO Contacts In Italy Volume Two” that the crashed UFO was stored in the hangars of SIAI Marchetti in Vergiate. While Mussolini believed the unconventional flying vehicle to be a secret weapon of France, Britain, or Germany, Sen. Guglielmo Marconi, a head of the Italian Royal Academy of Sciences, purportedly considered it to be of extraterrestrial origin.

Pinotti writes that between 1933 and 1940, there were numerous UFO sightings in Italy. These included an incident where an Italian fighter plane intercepted a UFO between Ravenna and Rome, as well as multiple UFO sighting over Mestre and Venice in August 1936.

Mussolini’s UFO files contain telegrams and reports related to the recovery of the UFO and subsequent investigations. They suggest that a secret commission, established by Mussolini and including Fascist Ministers Italo Balbo and Galeazzo Ciano, was responsible for studying the UFO phenomena in Italy. The files indicate that the commission was headed by Guglielmo Marconi.

Read also:

• Two US Marines Claimed Corbell’s Huge Mojave Triangle UFO Is Definitely Not Flares
• Karla Turner Claimed She Found Evidence That Aliens Are Manipulating Human Reality
• Ex-CIA Officer Encountered With Reptilian Alien; Says Reptilian Race Walking Among Us
• Whitley Strieber’s Alien Abduction & Stranger Who Told Him ‘Mankind Is Trapped’

Pinotti also mentions the existence of drawings and documents authenticated by a forensic consultant, Dr. Antonio Garavaglia. These documents were released to the Italian media, including television n

Recovered Bodies

Journalist Christopher Sharp of Liberation Times did extensive research on the Italy crash and found that alongside the crashed UFO, two human-like bodies were allegedly recovered at the site in Lombardy, Italy, in 1933. The bodies described by Mr. Sharp sparked intrigue and speculation due to their unusual characteristics and alleged extraterrestrial origin. He writes:

Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio – 1959

Two bodies allegedly lay on a table. They look like twins. They’re dead and preserved with formaldehyde. The bodies are in bad shape. They look like victims of a bad car accident – but the heads remain intact. But their features trouble a French biologist invited to study the bodies.

Two males, very tall (around 7ft), long blonde hair, very high and spacious foreheads, clear blue eyes that look somewhat Asiatic, small noses, small mouths, small chins, thin lips, very clear pale skin, but no signs of facial hair. Their hands, although slender are human-like, their toes are small and their feet flat.

The story gets weirder. Their skin appears perfectly white but shows no signs of keratin granules, which play an important role in providing natural moisturization for the skin, in addition to UV protection, and water retention.

Startlingly, the biologist discovered that their lymphatic systems were dominant and practically replaced the blood system, providing a high degree of protection from any disease. They were not human, at least as we know it. That’s at least how the story goes.

There are two accounts of these alleged recovered bodies within Wright-Patterson, which inform this story.

The first was from William Brophy, whose father claimed to have seen the bodies when serving as a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Air Force (USAF). Brophy claimed that his father told him the story, among those of other UAP encounters whilst serving in the USAF.

The second account is from UAP researcher Leonard Stringfield, who told the story of the French biologist in his 1982 book, named ‘UFO Crash/Retrievals: Amassing the Evidence: Status Report III’.

U.S. officials allegedly confirmed to the French biologist that the bodies were not human and were of extraterrestrial origin. After much hesitancy and many years, the biologist decided to tell his story, and his account was picked up by Stringfield.

The bodies allegedly came from a UAP crash (according to Brophy’s account), which occurred long before Roswell. They were apparently recovered in 1933, in Lombardy, Italy, where a mysterious craft had crashed.

Overall, the accounts surrounding these bodies raise intriguing questions about the possibility of extraterrestrial life and its potential connection to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, making it a subject of interest and speculation among enthusiasts of unidentified aerial phenomena.

Later, the information of the retrieved unknown craft was somehow confided with Pope Pius XII by Mussolini himself as they were in good relations. But after Mussolini became an ally with Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich, Pope became uneasy about the craft and leaked it to the US from the Vatican. After the war, the craft was allegedly brought to the USA, where it supposedly remains today.

Lue Elizondo, a former government official involved in UFO investigations, mentioned seeing documents from Mussolini’s office that were “compelling” and suggested that pieces of an Italian craft were transported to the USA after World War II. It is speculated that the craft in question was not a typical UAP with advanced technology but rather a vehicle powered by jet engines and rockets, resembling the flying wing designs of the Horten brothers. The purpose of this technology transfer to the Axis powers is unclear but likely for military advantage.

Raymond Szymanski, a retired US Air Force engineer, claimed that Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is a warehouse of extraterrestrial life and crashed flying saucers. He mentioned the presence of state-of-the-art climate-controlled facilities and underground cryogenic chambers within Hangar 18, also known as “The Blue Room,” where alien debris, technology, weapons, bodies, and captured aliens are allegedly stored. These claims are supported by testimonies from individuals like Clyde Wheeler and a lady from Cincinnati who claimed to have witnessed saucer-shaped craft and handled paperwork related to the autopsy of small alien bodies.

Wright-Patterson Air Force Base was the location for various government UFO research projects, including Project Sign, Project Grudge, and Project Blue Book. Senator Barry Goldwater once requested access to a secret UFO room at the base but was denied by General Curtis Emerson LeMay, who reacted angrily.

{https://www.howandwhys.com/ }

Tucker Carlson says UFOs are piloted by 'spiritual entities' with bases 'under the ocean and the ground'

• Carlson weighed in with his UFO theories on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast
• The Fox News vet stated UFOs 'don't behave according to the laws of science'
• READ MORE: Inside the 'UFO cult' led by a 'sex maniac' who tried to clone babies

By MATTHEW PHELAN SENIOR SCIENCE REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

UFOs and their pilots might not be 'extra-terrestrials' from a distant planet at all, but 'spiritual entities' who have inhabited Earth for as long as humanity itself.

At least, that's the 'supernatural' theory Fox News vet and one-time MSNBC host Tucker Carlson put forward this week on comedian Joe Rogan's podcast

'There's a ton of evidence that they're under the ocean and under the ground,' Carlson told Rogan's listeners during the show's usual, sprawling, three-hour-long chat format, adding: 'They've been here for a long time.'

Carlson's latest comments echo an increasingly common refrain from UFO-curious lawmakers, including Missouri Congressman Eric Burlison and his fellow GOP legislator Tim Burchett, who both compared UFOs to Biblical entities in the past year.

UFOs and their pilots might not be 'extra-terrestrials' from a distant planet at all, but 'spiritual entities' who have inhabited Earth for as long as humanity itself - according to Fox News vet and one-time MSNBC host Tucker Carlson who spoke this week on The Joe Rogan Experience

Above, Rep. Tim Burchett (left) next to fellow 'UAP Caucus' member Rep. Eric Burlison during a press conference held by members of the House Oversight committee ahead of a public UFO hearing last July. Both Congressman have compared UFOs to Biblical entities in the past year

'The first chapter of Ezekiel is pretty clear of a UFO sighting,' Rep. Burchett told reporters in January of 2023, ahead of his push to bring UFO whistleblowers to testify before Congress last summer.   

'Whenever I use the term "angels,"' added Rep. Burlison, who has been privy to classified briefings on the UFO phenomena, 'to me, it's synonymous with an extradimensional being.'

Tucker Carlson appeared to earnestly cosign these notions on his April 19 podcast appearance, while pleading ignorance on many unanswered questions surrounding the issue, now more commonly called Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena or UAP.  

'They're from here and they've been here for thousands of years,' Carlson said, 'whatever they are.'

'And it's pretty clear to me that they're "spiritual entities,"' he continued, 'whatever that means.' 

The veteran broadcaster explained that by 'supernatural' he meant that the beings were 'above the observable nature' and that they 'don't behave according to the laws of science.'  

'With that fact set,' Carlson put it rhetorically, 'what do you conclude?'

Earlier in 2024, Rogan commented on Carlson's growing public interest in UFOs, wondering ahead of Carlson's appearance on his program: 'What does he know?'   

But speculation linking UFOs to religious visitations and/or theories about interdimensional beings have been a recurring feature within the discourse on the topic since the early 20th Century. 

Above the 16th century painting titled 'The Madonna with Saint Giovannino' believed to be the work of Italian Renaissance artist Domenico Ghirlandaio. Some believe the painting includes a reference to 'ancient' UFOs with a skybound object seen above the Virgin Mary's left shoulder

Above, a closer look at the mysterious glowing aerial object depicted in Ghirlandaio's painting

READ MORE: 

• Pentagon ordered to re-investigate 1945 crash of mysterious 'avocado' UFO dubbed 'Roswell before Roswell' - as expert reveals eyewitness accounts of the encounter

President Biden signed into law a December 2022 amendment to investigate a UFO case from 1945. The 1945 UFO sighting was dubbed the 'Roswell before Roswell' and involved an 'avocado-shaped' craft that crashed in New Mexico. Jaques Vallée, a former contractor for the government's UFO office, wrote a book about the case and described the August 1945 crash to DailyMail.com. Vallée and his co-author interviewed witnesses who were just young children at the time of the crash, on the edge of the atomic bomb testing site near San Antonio, New Mexico - about 100 miles from the infamous Roswell crash two years later.

The concept gained its highest and arguably most reputable profile with the publication of the book 'Passport to Magonia: from Folklore to Flying Saucers' by the astronomer and Internet pioneer Jacques Vallée in 1969.

Vallée, who later served as the inspiration for François Truffaut's character in Steven Spielberg's UFO blockbuster 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind,' had spent years pouring over volumes of ancient texts for the groundbreaking tome. 

He paired 1180 encounters with 'luminous' flying 'earthenware vessels' reported over Japan, Roman accounts of hovering 'shields' and Native American stories of 'baskets from heaven' to argue a continuity with modern 'flying saucer' cases. 

In more recent years, Vallée, now a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and computer scientist, published a study of physical evidence from a UFO crash in a peer-reviewed science journal, Progress in Aerospace Sciences. 

As he told Wired, Vallée hopes that research will become 'a template [...] for what serious UFO research could be in the future, if one plays by the rules.'

But similar arguments, linking UFOs to demonic entities or angelic miracles, have also been made in less scholarly form on cable TV shows like 'Ancient Aliens,' and online by conspiracy theorists and evangelical Christians, among others. 

The editor for Phenomena Magazine, Brian Allan, to cite one account, spoke to Anglican Pastor Ray Boeche who claims that a faction within the Pentagon deeply believes that UFOs are the product of demonic forces.

'The Defense Intelligence Agency were looking at this demonic element, and they labelled these sorts of aliens as 'non human entities,' Allan said. 

'They believed that there was a demonic component to the UFO phenomenon: they are not invading us, it's Biblical.'

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

Astronomers Discover 454 New Asteroids in Main Belt

A set of 632 main-belt asteroids (178 previously known and 454 unknown objects) has been identified in the archival images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Citizen scientists from around the world contributed to the identification of this asteroid bounty. Professional astronomers combined the volunteers’ efforts with machine learning algorithm to identify the asteroids.

This Hubble image of the barred spiral galaxy UGC 12158 looks like someone took a white marking pen to it. In reality it is a combination of time exposures of a foreground asteroid moving through Hubble’s field-of-view, photobombing the observation of the galaxy. Several exposures of the galaxy were taken, what is evidence in the dashed pattern. The asteroid appears as a curved trail due to parallax: because Hubble is not stationary, but orbiting Earth, and this gives the illusion that the faint asteroid is swimming along a curved trajectory. The uncharted asteroid is in inside the asteroid belt in our Solar System, and hence is 10 trillion times closer to Hubble than the background galaxy.

Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Pablo García Martín, UAM / Joseph DePasquale, STScI / Alex Filippenko, UC Berkeley.

Over 4 billion years ago, the eight major planets around our Sun formed by sweeping up debris from a vast disk of dust and gas surrounding the Sun.

This is common to the planet birthing process, and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope was the first to optically see similar disks surrounding newborn stars, providing a peek into the Solar System’s formative years.

Now, 4 billon years later, the planet construction yard is still cluttered with leftover debris.

Most of this ancient space rubble — asteroids — can be found between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter within the main asteroid belt.

“We are getting deeper into seeing the smaller population of main belt asteroids,” said Dr. Pablo García Martín, an astronomer at the Autonomous University of Madrid.

“We were surprised with seeing such a large number of candidate objects.”

“There was some hint of this population existing, but now we are confirming it with a random asteroid population sample obtained using the whole Hubble archive.”

“This is important for providing insights into the evolutionary models of our Solar System.”

Because of Hubble’s fast orbit around the Earth, it can capture wandering asteroids through their telltale trails in the Hubble exposures.

As viewed from an Earth-based telescope, an asteroid leaves a streak across the picture.

Asteroids ‘photobomb’ Hubble exposures by appearing as unmistakable, curved trails in the photographs.

As Hubble moves around the Earth, it changes its point of view while observing an asteroid, which also moves along its own orbit.

By knowing the position of Hubble during the observation and measuring the curvature of the streaks, scientists can determine the distances to the asteroids and estimate the shapes of their orbits.

The asteroids snagged mostly dwell in the main belt, which lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

Their brightness is measured by Hubble’s sensitive cameras. And comparing their brightness to their distance allows for a size estimate.

The faintest asteroids in the survey are roughly one forty-millionth the brightness of the faintest star that can be seen by the human eye.

“Asteroid positions change with time, and therefore you cannot find them just by entering coordinates, because at different times, they might not be there,” Dr. Merín said.

“As astronomers we don’t have time to go looking through all the asteroid images.”

“So we got the idea to collaborate with over 10,000 citizen-science volunteers to peruse the huge Hubble archives.”

• The results appear in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
• Pablo García-Martín et al. 2024. Hubble Asteroid Hunter III. Physical properties of newly found asteroids. A&A 683, A122; doi: 10.1051/0004-6361/202346771

{ https://www.sci.news/ }

Microsoft’s New AI Makes Convincing Deepfakes Worryingly Easy

The potential for misuse feels dangerous with VASA-1.

BY JACKSON CHEN

 

Microsoft

There are innocuous examples with VASA-1, like infusing Mona Lisa with Anne Hathaway’s rap skills but we’re more concerned about the likelihood that this will be used to create deepfakes with a more nefarious purpose — think spreading misinformation or carrying out identity theft.

A SIMPLE RECIPE

Microsoft explains that you simply upload an image and an audio recording and VASA-1 spits back out a 512 x 512 resolution video with up to 40 fps and barely any latency. Looking at the demos, VASA-1 does a convincing job syncing the audio to the lip movements and can even deliver emotions and expressions through subtle facial movements with eyebrows and head nods.

To finetune the result, VASA-1 lets you control where the generated avatar is looking, how close the model is, and the emotion you want to convey. You can go with a standard neutral expression or inject some happiness, anger, or surprise into your AI-generated video.

On a more unrealistic note, VASA-1 can also handle source material like paintings or singing audio. As convincing as all of these models are, we can still see slight irregularities like some rippling around the ears or an unnatural warping effect with big head movements.

JUST A TASTE OF VERSION 1

As the name hints, VASA-1 is only the first model for Microsoft’s overall VASA framework, meaning this could (or likely will) be improved upon. These initial example videos generated from VASA-1 are only demonstrations of the research project’s capabilities thus far, so again, there aren’t any plans to push this into the public’s hands yet.

“We have no plans to release an online demo, API, product, additional implementation details, or any related offerings until we are certain that the technology will be used responsibly and in accordance with proper regulations,” Microsoft noted on its website.

As concerning as this tech is and Microsoft does acknowledge its potential for misuse, the research team argues that there are a lot of upsides here. For example, VASA-1 could be used to ensure everyone gets an equal opportunity at education, assist those with communication issues, or even just offer a friendly face to those who need it. Still, if we were placing bets, I’d lean towards tech of this caliber being used for the wrong purposes.

{ https://www.inverse.com }

The Giant Planets Migrated Between 60-100 Million Years After the Solar System Formed

New research in the journal Science establishes dates for giant planet migration in our Solar System. Its title is “Dating the Solar System’s giant planet orbital instability using enstatite meteorites.” The lead author is Dr. Chrysa Avdellidou from the University of Leicester’s School of Physics and Astronomy.

“The question is, when did it happen?” Dr. Avdellidou asked. “The orbits of these planets destabilised due to some dynamical processes and then took their final positions that we see today. Each timing has a different implication, and it has been a great matter of debate in the community.”

“What we have tried to do with this work is to not only do a pure dynamical study, but combine different types of studies, linking observations, dynamical simulations, and studies of meteorites.”

The meteorites in this study are enstatites or E-type asteroids. E-type asteroids have enstatite (MgSiO3) achondrite surfaces. Achondrite means they lack chondrules, grains of rock that were once molten before being accreted to their parent body. Specifically, this group of meteorites are the low-iron chondrites called ELs.

When giant planets move, everything else responds. Tiny asteroids are insignificant compared to Jupiter’s mass. Scientists think E-type asteroids were dispersed during the gas giants’ outward migration. They may even have been the impactors in the hypothetical Late Heavy Bombardment.

Enstatite achondrites that have struck Earth have similar compositions and isotope ratios as Earth. This signals that they formed in the same part of the protoplanetary disk around the young Sun. Previous research by Dr. Avdellidou and others has linked the meteorites to a population of fragments in the asteroid belt named Athor.

This work hinges on linking meteorites to parent asteroids and measuring the isotopic ratios.

“If a meteorite type can be linked to a specific parent asteroid, it provides insight into the asteroid’s composition, time of formation, temperature evolution, and original size,” the authors explain. When it comes to composition, isotopic abundances are particularly important. Different isotopes decay at different rates, so analyzing their ratio tells researchers when each meteorite closed, meaning when it became cool enough that there was no more significant diffusion of isotopes. “Therefore, thermochronometers in meteorites can constrain the epoch at which major collisional events disturbed the cooling curves of the parent asteroid,” the authors explain.

The team’s research shows that Athor is a part of a once much larger parent body that formed closer to the Sun. It also suffered from a collision that reduced its size out of the asteroid belt.

Athor found its way back when the giant planets migrated. Athor was at the mercy of all that shifting mass and underwent its own migration back into the asteroid belt. Analysis of the meteorites showed that this couldn’t have happened earlier than 60 million years ago. Other research into asteroids in Jupiter’s orbit showed it couldn’t have happened later than 100 million years ago. Since the Solar System formed about 4.56 billion years ago, the giant planet migration happened between 4.5 and 4.46 billion years ago.

Another important event happened right around the same time. About 4.5 billion years ago, a protoplanet named Theia smashed into Earth, creating the Moon. Could it all be related?

“The formation of the Moon also occurred within the range that we determined for the giant planet instability,” the authors write in their research. “This might be a coincidence, or there might be a causal relationship between the two events.”

“It’s like you have a puzzle, you understand that something should have happened, and you try to put events in the correct order to make the picture that you see today,” Dr. Avdellidou said. “The novelty with the study is that we are not only doing pure dynamical simulations, or only experiments, or only telescopic observations.”

“There were once five inner planets in our Solar System and not four, so that could have implications for other things, like how we form habitable planets. Questions like, when exactly objects came delivering volatile and organics to our planet to Earth and Mars?”

The Solar System’s history is a convoluted, beautiful puzzle that somehow led to us. Everything had to work out for life to arise on Earth, sustain itself, and evolve for so long. The epic migration of the gas giants must have played a role, and this research brings its role into focus.

Never mind habitability, complex life, and civilization, the migration may have allowed Earth to form in the first place.

“The timing is very important because our Solar System at the beginning was populated by a lot of planetesimals,” said study co-author Marco Delbo, Director of Research at France’s Nice Observatory. “And the instability clears them, so if that happens 10 million years after the beginning of the Solar System, you clear the planetesimals immediately, whereas if you do it after 60 million years you have more time to bring materials to Earth and Mars.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

The Mystery of Cosmic Rays Deepens

But there are ways to indirectly track down their origin. One of the more promising methods is by observing gamma rays (which do travel in straight lines, thankfully).

When cosmic rays bump into other bits of matter, they produce gamma rays. So when a supernova goes off and sends cosmic rays out into the Universe, it should also send a gamma-ray signal letting us know it’s happening.

That’s the theory, anyway.

But the evidence hasn’t matched expectations. Studies of old, distant supernovas show some gamma ray production occurring, but not as much as predicted. Astronomers explained away the missing radiation as a result of the supernovas’ age and distance. But in 2023, the Fermi telescope captured a bright new supernova occurring nearby. Named SN 2023ixf, the supernova went off just 22 million light-years away in a galaxy called Messier 101 (better known as the ‘Pinwheel Galaxy’). And yet again, gamma rays were conspicuously absent.

“Astrophysicists previously estimated that supernovae convert about 10% of their total energy into cosmic ray acceleration,” said Guillem Martí-Devesa, University of Trieste. “But we have never observed this process directly. With the new observations of SN 2023ixf, our calculations result in an energy conversion as low as 1% within a few days after the explosion. This doesn’t rule out supernovae as cosmic ray factories, but it does mean we have more to learn about their production.”

So where is all the missing gamma radiation?

It’s possible that interstellar material around the exploding star could have blocked gamma rays from reaching the Fermi telescope. But it might also mean that astronomers need to look for alternative explanations for the production of cosmic rays.

Nobody likes a good mystery better than astronomers, and digging into the missing gamma radiation could eventually tell us a whole lot more about cosmic rays and where they come from.

Astronomers plan to study SN 2023ixf in other wavelengths to improve their models of the event, and will of course keep an eye out for the next big supernova, in an effort to understand what is going on.

• The most recent gamma-ray data from SN 2023ixf will be published in Astronomy and Astrophysics in a paper led by Martí-Devesa.

 { https://www.universetoday.com/ }

The Solar Eclipse Like We’ve Never Seen it Before

You had to be in the right part of North America to get a great view of the recent solar eclipse. But a particular telescope may have had the most unique view of all. Even though that telescope is in Hawaii and only experienced a partial eclipse, its images are interesting.

You had to be in the right part of North America to get a great view of the recent eclipse. Image Credit: DKIST/NSO/NSF/AURA

The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) is at the Haleakala Observatory in Hawaii. With its four-meter mirror, it’s the largest solar telescope in the world. It observes in visible to near-infrared light, and its sole target is the Sun. It can see features on the Sun’s surface as small as 20 km (12 miles.) It began science operations in February 2022, and its primary objective is to study the Sun’s magnetic fields.

This is a collage of solar images captured by the Inouye Solar Telescope. Images include sunspots and quiet regions of the Sun, known as convection cells. (Credit: NSF/AURA/NSO)

Though seeing conditions weren’t perfect during the eclipse and the eclipse was only partial when viewed from Hawaii, the telescope still gathered enough data to create a movie of the Moon passing in front of the Sun. The bumps on the Moon’s dark edge are lunar mountains.

via GIPHY

“The team’s primary mission during Maui’s partial eclipse was to acquire data that allows the characterization of the Inouye’s optical system and instrumentation,” shares National Solar Observatory scientist Dr. Friedrich Woeger.

The Moon plays a critical role in measuring the telescope’s performance. Its edge is well-known and as a dark object in front of the Sun, it acts as a unique tool to measure the Inouye telescope’s performance and to understand the data it collects. Since the telescope has to correct for Earth’s turbulent atmosphere with adaptive optics, the Moon’s known qualities help researchers work with the telescope’s optical elements.

“With the Inouye’s high order adaptive optics system operating, the blurring due to the Earth’s atmosphere was greatly reduced, allowing for extremely high spatial resolution images of the moving lunar edge,” said Woeger. “The appearance of the edge is not straight but serrated because of mountain ranges on the Moon!” This serrated dark edge covers the granular convection pattern that governs the “surface of the Sun.”

The Inouye Solar Telescope studies the Sun’s magnetic fields, which drive space weather. What we see in the video is visually interesting, but there’s a lot of data behind it.

It’ll take several months to analyze all of the data it gathered during the eclipse.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ )

Amazing Amateur Images of April 8th’s Total Solar Eclipse

Tales of a Total Solar Eclipse

We were also treated to some amazing images of the eclipse from Earth and space. NASA also had several efforts underway to chase the eclipse. Even now, we’re still processing the experience. It takes time (and patience!) for astro-photos to make their way through the workflow. Here are some of the best images we’ve seen from the path of totality:

Tony Dunn had an amazing experience, watching the eclipse from Mazatlan, Mexico. “When totality hit, it didn’t look real,” Dunn told Universe Today. “It looked staged, like a movie studio. the lighting is something that can’t be experienced outside a total solar eclipse.”

Dunn also caught an amazing sight, as the shadow of the Moon moved across the low cloud cover:

Black Hole Sun

Peter Forister caught the eclipse from central Indiana. “It was my second totality (after 2017 in South Carolina), so I knew what was coming,” Forister told Universe Today. “But it was still as incredible and beautiful as anything I’ve ever seen in nature. The Sun and Moon seemed huge in my view—a massive black hole (like someone took a hole punch to the sky) surrounded by white and blue flames streaking out. Plus, there was great visibility of the planets and a few stars. The memory has been playing over and over in my head since it happened—and it’s combined with feelings of awe and wonder at how beautiful our Universe and planet really are. The best kind of memory!”

Like many observers, Eliot Herman battled to see the eclipse through clouds. “As you know, we had really frustrating clouds,” Herman told Universe Today. “I shot a few photos (in) which you can see the eclipse embedded in the clouds and then uncovered to show the best part. For me it almost seemed like a cosmic mocking, showing me what a great eclipse it was, and lifting the veil only at the end of the eclipse to show me what I missed…”

Totality Crosses Into Canada

Astrophotographer Andrew Symes also had a memorable view from Cornwall, Ontario. “While I’ve seen many beautiful photos and videos from many sources, they don’t match what those us there in person saw with our eyes,” Symes told Universe Today. “The sky around the Sun was not black but a deep, steely blue. The horizon was lighter–similar to what you’d see during a sunset or sunrise–but still very alien.”

“The eclipsed Sun looked, to me, like an incredibly advanced computer animation from the future! The Sun and corona were very crisp, and the Sun looked much larger in the sky than I’d expected. The eclipsed Sun had almost a three-dimensional quality… almost as if it were a dark, round button-like disk surrounded by a bright halo affixed to a deep blue/grey background. It was as if a ‘worm hole’ or black hole had somehow appeared in front of us. I’m sure my jaw dropped as it was truly a moment of utter amazement. I’m smiling as I type it now… and still awestruck as I recall it in my mind!”

Success for the Total Solar Eclipse in Aroostook County Maine

We were met with success (and clear skies) watching the total solar eclipse with family from our hometown of Mapleton, Maine. We were mostly just visually watching this one, though we did manage to nab a brief video of the experience.

What I was unprepared for was the switch from partial phases to totality. It was abrupt as expected, but there almost seemed to be brief but perceptible pause from day to twilight, as the corona seemed to ‘switch on.’ We all agreed later on that the steely blue sky was not quite night… but not quite twilight, either.

When’s the next one? I often wonder how many watchers during a given eclipse were ‘bitten by the bug,’ and looking to chase the next one. Spain is set to see an eclipse a year for the next three years, starting in 2026:

Spain in August… be sure to stay cool and bring sunblock. Don’t miss the next total solar eclipse, and be thankful for our privileged vantage point in time and space.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ )

10 Notable UFO Landing Cases from the Late 20th Century

The late 20th century witnessed a surge in UFO sightings that captivated the public and researchers alike. With reports spanning across the globe, these encounters not only sparked curiosity but also left physical evidence and credible testimonies. This article delves into ten of the most compelling UFO landing cases from this era, exploring the unique circumstances and lasting implications of each.

1. New Mexico, 1976

In the quiet expanses of New Mexico, an unsettling series of animal mutilations coincided with reports of UFO landings. Law enforcement and locals found themselves puzzled by the precise surgical removals on cattle, connected with strange craft observed in the night skies, leaving behind physical traces and a community on edge.

2. China, 1977

Amidst political turbulence post-Mao, a silent luminous object was witnessed landing on a hilltop in Fujian Province. The incident, involving over 150 soldiers, ended with a high-stakes standoff, the craft emitting disorienting effects on the troops before it ascended swiftly into the night sky.

3. Argentina, 1979

In the remote town of Viseras, oil field workers encountered a UFO at dawn. The object responded to the workers’ signals using its lights, leaving behind a petrified sand circle and distressed local wildlife, suggesting a possible interest in the area’s natural resources.

4. United Kingdom, 1980

The Rendlesham Forest incident, often dubbed “Britain’s Roswell,” involved multiple military personnel from the nearby RAF Bentwaters. Witnesses reported close encounters with a structured craft capable of telepathic communication, leaving lasting health effects on those involved.

5. USSR, 1985

In a secretive episode from the Soviet era, a military installation tracked a high-altitude object before witnessing it dispatch a smaller craft that landed. The rapid mobilization of military units and subsequent cover-up attempts highlighted the tense relationship between UFO phenomena and Cold War sensibilities.

6. USSR, 1990

Another significant Soviet case involved a radar interference by an unidentified triangular craft that briefly landed, affecting electronic equipment and personnel. The incident left behind no physical evidence but contributed to a pattern of sightings that challenged official dismissals of UFO reports.

7. Peru, 1996

High in the Andes, shepherds reported seeing multiple objects, including a larger mother ship, from which beings emerged to collect environmental samples. This case echoed older accounts from the 1950s and suggested a scientific curiosity about Earth’s biosphere.

8. Brazil, 1997

In the rural outskirts of Santo Angelo, witnesses described encounters on consecutive nights involving different unidentified objects. Each incident resulted in physical traces such as crop circles, with local UFO groups scrambling to document the events.

9. South Africa, 1998

A farmer in Bloemfontein experienced vehicle failure and temporary paralysis close to a landed UFO, an encounter that paralleled other cases worldwide where proximity to UFOs appeared to influence human physiology and mechanical functionality.

10. Malaysia, 2000

As the millennium closed, villagers in Kampong witnessed an intensely bright light associated with a UFO landing. The next morning, a Y-shaped indentation marked the landing site, adding to the global archive of physical evidence supporting the reality of UFO visitations.

VIDEO:

• 10 UFO LANDING CASES OF THE LATE 20TH CENTURY | Richard Dolan Show
• https://youtu.be/6NjL3T3fMvQ

These cases, diverse in geography and details, share common threads of unexplained phenomena and enduring intrigue. They reflect a global pattern of encounters that continue to challenge conventional understandings of reality and prompt questions about what lies beyond the known frontiers of science and technology. As we look back on these incidents, they encourage a reevaluation of our place in the cosmos and underscore the importance of an open, informed approach to the unknown.

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

‘Yeah, I Think There’s A Cover Up’: Rep. Tim Burchett Has Hilarious Reaction To Classified UFO Briefing

Steven Spielberg set to direct new UFO movie with Jurassic Park writer... 50 YEARS after iconic Close Encounters of the Third Kind

By TERRY ZELLER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

Steven Spielberg is poised to revisit science fiction, following his success in directing classic films such as Close Encounters, E.T. and War of the Worlds.

The SOscar-winning director is making a 'UFO film based on his own idea,' according to a report from Variety on Wednesday.

He is reportedly teaming up again with screenwriter David Koepp, known for their collaboration on the 1993's Jurassic Park.

Although no title has been confirmed for the upcoming film and details remain limited, the reunion between the writer and director responsible for one of cinema's greatest blockbusters is undoubtedly an exciting prospect.

Notably, Koepp is penning the upcoming installment in the Jurassic World franchise, slated for release next year. 

Steven Spielberg is poised to revisit science fiction, following his success in directing classic films such as Close Encounters, E.T. and War of the Worlds; seen in February

The Oscar-winning director is making a ' UFO film based on his own idea,' according to a report from Variety on Wednesday

Recently, Spielberg has shifted his focus away from the dinosaur saga, allowing other directors to helm the latest Jurassic World trilogy. 

Instead, the veteran filmmaker delved into The Fabelmans, a personal project drawing from his own youth. 

This acclaimed film, centered on a young man's dream of filmmaking, received praise and earned nominations during last year's awards season. 

Additionally, Spielberg directed a remake of West Side Story, starring Rachel Zegler and Ansel Elgort. 

The director hasn't tackled a full-fledged UFO film since 1977's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which cemented its status in pop culture as one of the most influential alien stories. 

Richard Dreyfuss portrayed Roy Neary, an average blue-collar worker from Indiana whose life takes a dramatic turn after encountering a UFO. 

It became a monumental success, both at the box office and among critics.

The film earned nine Academy Award nominations, clinching the Oscar for Best Cinematography and receiving a Special Achievement Academy Award for Sound Effects Editing.

Spielberg followed up with ET, the heartwarming story of a young boy named Elliot who befriends an alien stranded on Earth. 

Released in 1982, the film became a cultural phenomenon, grossing over $800 million worldwide and holding the title of the highest-grossing film of all time until 1993. 

He is reportedly teaming up again with screenwriter David Koepp, known for their collaboration on the 1993's Jurassic Park 

Although no title has been confirmed for the upcoming film and details remain limited, the reunion between the writer and director responsible for one of cinema's greatest blockbusters is undoubtedly an exciting prospect

The director hasn't tackled a full-fledged UFO film since 1977's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which cemented its status in pop culture as one of the most influential alien stories

Spielberg followed up with 1982's ET, the heartwarming story of a young boy named Elliot who befriends an alien stranded on Earth

Then came 2005's War of the World, which followed the harrowing journey of a father, played by Tom Cruise, and his children as they struggle to survive an alien invasion

Its impact extended to the awards circuit, earning nine Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, and winning four Oscars, including Best Original Score and Best Visual Effects. 

Then came 2005's War of the World, which followed the harrowing journey of a father, played by Tom Cruise, and his children as they struggle to survive an alien invasion. 

The film garnered commercial success, grossing over $600 million worldwide and becoming one of the top-grossing films of the year. 

It also earned three Academy Award nominations for Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Visual Effects. 

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

Dit is de meest 'buitenaardse' bestemming op aarde

©Shutterstock

Dit is de meest 'buitenaardse' bestemming op aarde
Ergens in de Indische Oceaan vind je de meest buitenaardse plek op aarde: Socotra. Een eiland dat toebehoort aan Jemen en een ecologisch heiligdom herbergt. De plek is moeilijk te bereiken en er geldt dan ook een negatief reisadvies voor het eiland, gezien de ideologische en religieuze conflicten. Desalniettemin kun je de omgeving vanuit je stoel veilig ontdekken. Klik verder en ga mee op een buitenaardse reis op aarde!

©Shutterstock

Paradijs op aarde
Vier eilanden vormen de Socotra-archipel in de Indische Oceaan.

©Shutterstock

Socotra-archipel
Het ligt ongeveer 380 km uit de kust van Jemen.

©Shutterstock

Ontstaan
Experts schatten dat het eiland 35 miljoen jaar geleden van het continent is gescheiden.

©Shutterstock

Omvang
Het eiland Socotra is 132 km lang en 50 km breed.

©Reuters

Taal
De lokale taal is Socotri, maar het is mogelijk om in het Arabisch te communiceren met een deel van de lokale bevolking.

©Reuters

Betekenis
In het Sanskriet betekent Socotra 'Eiland van Geluk'.

©Shutterstock

Klimaat
Omdat de taal zeer specifiek is, is er geen vertaling voor sommige dier- en plantensoorten.

©Reuters

Mythologie
In de oude Griekse mythologie was de troon van Uranus verborgen in de bergen van Socotra.

©Shutterstock

Mythologie
De Grieken dachten dat het het huis was van heksen en tovenaars.

©Shutterstock

Magische plek
Het is moeilijk om niet onder de indruk te zijn van zoveel natuurlijke schoonheid.

©Reuters

Fauna
Socotra is ook de thuisbasis van vele vogelsoorten die alleen op het eiland te vinden zijn.

©Reuters

Landschap
Veel grotten en bergen vormen de topografie van het eiland.

©Shutterstock

Landschap
Evenals prachtige witte zandstranden.

©Shutterstock

Landschap
Je vindt hagelwitte zandduinen aan de paradijselijke kustlijn

©Shutterstock

Typische boom
De Drakenbloedboom is een exotische boom afkomstig uit de regio.

©Reuters

Typische boom
Het is genoemd naar zijn rode boomsap.

©Shutterstock

Typische boom
De takken zien eruit als paddenstoelen en sommigen zeggen dat ze zelfs lijken op zwevende UFO's.

©Shutterstock

Typische boom
Een andere inheemse boom is de Woestijnroos

©Reuters

Typische boom
De ongebruikelijke vorm lijkt op een olifantenpoot.

©Shutterstock

Ongewone plek
Socotra Island is uniek en bevat veel kenmerken die alleen daar te vinden zijn.

©Shutterstock

Ongewone plek
Het wordt beschouwd als een buitenaards eiland omdat het de thuisbasis is van een breed scala aan fauna en flora.

©Reuters

Ecologisch heiligdom
Ongeveer 75% van het eiland bestaat uit beschermde gebieden.

©Shutterstock

Erfgoed
Socotra werd uitgeroepen tot UNESCO-werelderfgoed.

Zie ook:

• n dit gekke stadje huist een onverklaarbaar fenomeen

{ https://www.msn.com/nl-be/feed?ocid=msedgntp&pc=acts }

Are We Living in an Alien-Controlled Simulation?

Where the lines between science fiction and scientific possibility blur, a fascinating theory has emerged at the crossroads of ufology and existential philosophy. It suggests that our reality, with its vast diversity of world religions and beliefs, might be nothing more than a sophisticated simulation controlled by extraterrestrial beings. This notion, endorsed by leading UFO expert Nick Pope, introduces a captivating explanation for the complex tapestry of human spirituality and the enduring mystery of UFO sightings.

Nick Pope, a former head of the British Government’s UFO project, articulates a compelling narrative that our perceived universe could be a construct—a cosmic game designed by alien intelligences. This simulation theory, as it’s known, posits that the myriad of religious beliefs on Earth might be the result of different programmers (or “designers”) contributing to the simulation’s code. Each designer, with their unique ideologies and potential flaws, crafts a distinct aspect of our world, leading to the rich variety of religious experiences and doctrines witnessed throughout human history.

The implications of this theory are profound, offering a radical perspective on the nature of existence and the origins of religious diversity. It suggests that what we consider as divine intervention or spiritual revelation could be interpreted as glitches or intentional features embedded by our extraterrestrial programmers. This viewpoint not only challenges conventional religious narratives but also invites us to reconsider the authenticity of our experiences and beliefs.

Nick Pope

• https://youtu.be/4jNJNxEoWow

“God Versus Aliens,” a documentary featuring Pope and other UFO experts, delves deeper into this hypothesis. It explores the potential for life as we know it to be a simulation, controlled and observed by beings far more advanced than ourselves. The film provocatively suggests that the concept of a higher power, central to many religions, might actually refer to an alien race with the technology to fabricate universes.

Are UFOs demonic beings or angels?

Such a revelation, if ever confirmed, would undoubtedly send shockwaves through the fabric of society, especially the religious domain. Pope speculates on the varied reactions humanity might face, from the denial of religious leaders to the existential crisis among the faithful. He raises intriguing questions: Was religion a deliberate insertion into the simulation, or did it emerge as a spontaneous byproduct? And how would the discovery of our simulated existence reconcile with the deeply ingrained beliefs held by billions?

The documentary also touches on historical UFO sightings and encounters, framing them as possible interactions with the architects of our simulation. These events, often dismissed or shrouded in secrecy, could be evidence of our creators’ influence or experiments within the simulation.

The theory ventures into speculative territory when considering the role of anomalies within religious texts. Pope humorously notes instances in holy scriptures that seem absurd or out of place, suggesting they could be “Easter eggs” left by the programmers—a concept familiar to anyone who’s played a video game.

While the simulation theory remains a subject of debate and skepticism, it undeniably opens up a Pandora’s box of philosophical and theological inquiries. It forces us to ponder the very foundation of our beliefs, the nature of our universe, and our place within it—whether as autonomous beings or mere characters in an elaborate extraterrestrial orchestration.

As we continue to witness unprecedented UFO sightings and encounters, the quest for understanding our existence and the potential influence of non-human intelligences becomes more pressing. The simulation theory, with its bold assertions and imaginative insights, offers a unique lens through which we might explore these enduring mysteries.

Whether we are living in an alien-controlled simulation or not, the conversation around this theory enriches our pursuit of knowledge, challenging us to question the known and venture into the unknown. It beckons us to look up at the stars, not just in wonder, but in search of answers to the ultimate question: What is reality?

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

Betty Andreasson’s Multiple UFO Experiences, Underwater Base & Humans In Glass Container

The abduction of Betty Andreasson Luca is considered to be one of the most documented cases in the history of Ufology. The woman from Massachusetts experienced multiple abductions, and her case is widely studied by UFO researchers. It became popular after the publication of the best-selling novel “The Andreasson Affair,” which came out in the late 1970s. She attended many radio shows and TV interviews where she discussed her encounter with grey aliens and even drew sketches of the incident.

Betty Andreasson was born on January 7, 1937, to Waino and Eva Aho. She went to school in Westminster and Gardner MA and had a great interest in art since childhood, which later became her passion. Betty married twice and with her first husband, she gave birth to seven children. She met her second husband Bob Luca in 1977.

According to the official reports, on the evening of January 25, 1967, Betty was at home with her seven children and parents. At around 6:30 p.m., she was busy in the kitchen when the lights in the house started blinking strangely. Soon after it, the kitchen’s window was hit by a reddish light beam, and the whole house went out of electricity. The children got terrified with the scene and Betty tried to calm them down. Her father looked out to find the source of the light and saw five strange-looking humanoid creatures walking right towards the house. Before he could understand the situation, the beings walked inside the house through the door which put the whole family in a state of shock.

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One creature went to Betty’s father while the other four came to her, and one of them started talking with her telepathically. The one who was made telepathic contact with Betty was about 5 feet tall, while others were shorter than him. The description by the witnesses was similar to the modern illustration of grey aliens. They had only slits on their mouth, three fingers in one hand, and wore a blue-colored one-piece suit.

Betty was frightened but at the same time, she felt calm by the friendly nature of the beings. They did not harm any member of the family and even released her daughter from a state of unawareness. Then she was taken outside and boarded on their saucer-shaped craft with a small dome that was standing in the backyard. After that, the ship went up in the air and merged with the mothership where Betty went through medical tests and was under the effects of strange equipment. Later, she was taken to some strange place where she felt much pain which, according to her, was a “spiritual experience.”

Later that night, Betty returned home at 10:40 p.m. and found her family still in a frozen state, where one of the aliens was watching them in her absence. Then the family was put to bed by the beings and the aliens left. What’s more, she forgot about her abduction until undergoing hypnotherapy in later years.

Betty said in some of her interviews that the creatures were angelic in nature but not biblical. She is a religious person, had only some school education and did not understand much about UFOs. Only after this bizarre experience, she understood that whatever she had experienced that night was much like a UFO abduction

In 1975, Dr. Allen J Hynek posted an ad in the newspaper to learn more about the abduction experiences and asked help from common people. Betty answered his ad by sending a letter, but it was rejected due to its unusual details. It was only in 1977 when her case was deeply investigated by the experts including a solar physicist, an electronics engineer, an aerospace engineer, a telecommunications specialist, and a UFO investigator.

Her case was first investigated by Jules Vaillancourt, a Mutual UFO Network investigator in 1977. He said: “What I found most amazing about Betty was her ability to draw. The detail of the (space) craft and the beings she drew under hypnosis were such that it really made me believe there was something to this.”

He also added that the detective who had given a psychological stress evaluation to Betty and her daughter believed in her story. She even spoke the language of aliens under hypnosis. Her case investigation continued for 12 months where she and her daughter had gone through hypnosis sessions, lie detector tests, and a psychiatric interview. Both mother and daughter passed them with a genuine reaction. Author and UFO researcher Raymond E. Fowler wrote five books on her UFO experiences that include the famous “The Andreasson Affair” series.

During one of her hypnotic regression sessions, she remembered one of the early abductions that occurred to her in childhood. It took place in 1950 when she was taken from her home into a spacecraft as usual. But this time, the craft was flying toward an ocean or sea. She was terrified that the craft would crash into the water. But the ship submerged into the water and entered into a kind of tunnel. Betty could see everything underwater, as the place was filled with light. What she said next under hypnosis is so bizarre that even gave a chill to Fowler.

She saw people from all eras, different races, encased in the glass container. Fowler called it “The Museum of Time.” Betty said that people in the container were in old-fashioned clothes, and there were uncountable cubicles with humans inside at that underwater base.

Fowler wrote that when he listened to her one of the regression session recordings, his mind blew up as he found it difficult to believe. “A cold chill coursed through my body when Betty was describing people and animals enclosed in glassy cubicles in an icy cavern.”

Betty traveled a lot across the country, attending numerous TV interviews and radio shows and lecturing about her UFO experiences. She and her husband Bob Luca had been unsettled for many years until 1995 when they moved to Virginia. They lived in VA for 5 years and then moved to Florida. Shed died on March 18, 2022.

References:

{ https://www.howandwhys.com/ }

FORMER NAVAL OFFICER RAISES ALARM ABOUT “WORLD-CHANGING” UNDERWATER UFO CAPTURED ON VIDEO

SO-CALLED "UNIDENTIFIED SUBMERGED OBJECTS" COULD POSE AS LARGE A THREAT AS UFOS, THE FORMER ADMIRAL ARGUES.

GETTY / FUTURISM

{ https://futurism.com/the-byte }

Purple is the New Green: Purple Bacteria Could Dominate Wide Range of Exoplanetary Environments

With more than 5,500 detected exoplanets, the search for life is entering a new era. Using life on Earth as a guide, astrobiologists from Cornell University and the University of Minnesota looked beyond green landscapes to expand their ability to detect signs of surface life on other worlds. In new research, they characterized the reflectance spectra of a collection of purple sulfur and purple non-sulfur bacteria from a variety of environments.

To expand our baseline for finding life in the cosmos, Coelho et al. have measured the reflectance of purple bacteria that thrive across a range of anoxic and oxic environments.

Image credit: Sci.News.

From house plants and gardens to fields and forests, green is the color we most associate with surface life on Earth, where conditions favored the evolution of organisms that perform oxygen-producing photosynthesis using the green pigment chlorophyll a.

But an Earth-like planet orbiting another star might look very different, potentially covered by bacteria that receive little or no visible light or oxygen, as in some environments on Earth, and instead use invisible infrared radiation to power photosynthesis.

Instead of green, many such bacteria on Earth contain purple pigments, and purple worlds on which they are dominant would produce a distinctive ‘light fingerprint’ detectable by next-generation ground- and space-based telescopes.

“Purple bacteria can thrive under a wide range of conditions, making it one of the primary contenders for life that could dominate a variety of worlds,” said Dr. Lígia Fonseca Coelho, a postdoctoral researcher with the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell University.

“We need to create a database for signs of life to make sure our telescopes don’t miss life if it happens not to look exactly like what we encounter around us every day,” added Dr. Lisa Kaltenegger, director of the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell University.

For the study, the authors collected and grew samples of more than 20 purple sulfur and purple non-sulfur bacteria that may be found in a variety of environments, from shallow waters, coasts and marshes to deep-sea hydrothermal vents.

What are collectively referred to as purple bacteria actually have a range of colors including yellow, orange, brown and red due to pigments related to those that make tomatoes red and carrots orange.

They thrive on low-energy red or infrared light using simpler photosynthesis systems utilizing forms of chlorophyll that absorb infrared and don’t make oxygen.

They are likely to have been prevalent on early Earth before the advent of plant-type photosynthesis and could be particularly well-suited to planets that circle cooler red dwarf stars — the most common type in our Galaxy.

“They already thrive here in certain niches,” Dr. Coelho said.

“Just imagine if they were not competing with green plants, algae and bacteria: a red sun could give them the most favorable conditions for photosynthesis.”

After measuring the purple bacteria’s biopigments and light fingerprints, the researchers created models of Earth-like planets with varying conditions and cloud cover.

“Across a range of simulated environments, both wet and dry purple bacteria produced intensely colored biosignatures,” Dr. Coelho said.

“If purple bacteria are thriving on the surface of a frozen Earth, an ocean world, a snowball Earth or a modern Earth orbiting a cooler star, we now have the tools to search for them.”

• The team’s work appears in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
• Lígia Fonseca Coelho et al. 2024. Purple is the new green: biopigments and spectra of Earth-like purple worlds. MNRAS 530 (2): 1363-1368; doi: 10.1093/mnras/stae601

{ https://www.sci.news/ }

Tardigrades Have Unusual Response to Ionizing Radiation, Study Reveals

by Natali Anderson

 

Tardigrades can survive remarkable doses of ionizing radiation, up to about 1,000 times the lethal dose for humans. How they do so is incompletely understood. In a new study, scientists from the University of North Carolina found that a tardigrade species called Hypsibius exemplaris suffers DNA damage upon gamma irradiation, but the damage is repaired. The study shows that this species has a specific and robust response to ionizing radiation: irradiation induces a rapid upregulation of many DNA repair genes.

An artist’s impression of the tardigrade species Hypsibius exemplaris.

First discovered in 1773, tardigrades are a diverse group of microscopic invertebrates famous for their ability to withstand extreme conditions.

Also known as water bears or moss piglets, they can live for up to 60 years, and grow to a maximum size of 0.5 mm, best seen under a microscope.

Tardigrades are able to survive for up to 30 years without food or water, for a few minutes at temperatures as low as minus 272 degrees Celsius (minus 457 degrees Fahrenheit) or as high as 150 degrees Celsius (302 degrees Fahrenheit), and minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit) for decades.

They withstand pressures from virtually 0 atm in space up to 1,200 atm at the bottom of the Marianas Trench.

They are also resistant to radiation levels up to 5,000-6,200 Gy.

“What we saw surprised us. The tardigrades are doing something we hadn’t expected,” said Professor Bob Goldstein, a researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

In their research, Professor Goldstein and his colleagues examine how Hypsibius exemplaris tardigrades can survive intense radiation.

They found that the species is not immune to DNA damage — irradiation does damage their DNA — but the tardigrades can repair extensive damage.

They were surprised to find that the tardigrades can increase the volume of production from DNA repair genes.

Unlike humans, they can ramp up the level of DNA repair genes’ products to such an extreme extent that they become some of the most abundant gene products in animals.

“These animals are mounting an incredible response to radiation, and that seems to be a secret to their extreme survival abilities,” said Dr. Courtney Clark-Hachtel, a researcher at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.

“What we are learning about how tardigrades overcome radiation stress can lead to new ideas about how we might try to protect other animals and microorganisms from damaging radiation.”

• The findings appear in the journal Current Biology.
• Courtney M. Clark-Hachtel et al. The tardigrade Hypsibius exemplaris dramatically upregulates DNA repair pathway genes in response to ionizing radiation. Current Biology, published online April 12, 2024; doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.03.019

{ https://www.sci.news/ }

USO emitting powerful light filmed by research vessel in the Gulf of Mexico

A crew member on a research vessel on a trip studying bioluminescence in the Gulf of Mexico filmed what appears to be a USO. 

Here is his testimony: Before you read: I understand this is not technically a “UFO”, because it was seen in the water. 

I work on a research vessel. Recently we had a trip, studying bioluminescence in the Gulf of Mexico. Around 2345, we were conducting research as normal, when a science party member saw a strange light about a quarter mile off our stern. 

We immediately started to make way towards the light. The intensity of the light was quite astonishing, nobody in the crew or the science party knew what to make of it. At first, we thought it could have been a sunken vessel, or a navigation buoy of some kind that sunk. 

We proceeded to get as close as possible to the light, and eventually we hovered directly on top of it. Our vessel has a moonpool in the center, which the crew and science party were able to carefully observe the light from directly on top. 

We used a sub-surface camera to attempt and capture what the object may have been. The science party onboard automatically ruled out the light being produced by bioluminescent phytoplankton. 

This light source was 100% on the bottom of the ocean, and not something that was floating through the water column. It did not move in the current. The water depth at this specific location was 60’ deep. As we hovered on top of the light, we used an EK-80 ( sonar ) to provide us with imagining of the ocean floor at this location. 

To our surprise, this object producing the light did not have a physical shape that we could detect. It was invisible to our sonar. The sonar is also capable of imaging objects that are below the sea floor ( objects that could be partially submerged in the mud ), and objects that could be as small as 3’ in length/ width. 

Any speculations on what this object could have been? Consider the strength of the light having to shine through 60’ of water, and being strong enough for us to observe from a considerable distance away. There was definitely an arc of visibility that seemed to be brighter when viewed from further away, then top down. 

TLDR: Saw a very bright light source shining from the ocean floor, was invisible on our sonar. Object had no physical shape but produced a strong light. 

See more original images and videos of the strange light: https://imgur.com/a/LpYobmL

  

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

How Did Pluto Get Its Heart? Scientists Suggest an Answer

University of Arizona astronomer Adeene Denton, one of the study’s co-authors, said the formation of the heart “provides a critical window into the earliest periods of Pluto’s history.”

“By expanding our investigation to include more unusual formation scenarios, we’ve learned some totally new possibilities for Pluto’s evolution,” Denton said in a news release. Similar scenarios could apply to other objects in the Kuiper Belt, the ring of icy worlds on the edge of our solar system.

The study focuses on the western half of the heart, a roughly 1,000-mile-wide, teardrop-shaped region called Sputnik Planitia. That region contains an assortment of ices and is roughly 2.5 miles lower in elevation than the rest of Pluto. It’s clearly the result of a massive impact.

“While the vast majority of Pluto’s surface consists of methane ice and its derivatives, covering a water-ice crust, the Planitia is predominantly filled with nitrogen ice which most likely accumulated quickly after the impact due to the lower altitude,” said study lead author Harry Ballantyne, a research associate at the University of Bern.

The eastern half of the heart is covered by a similar but much thinner layer of nitrogen ice. The origins of that part of Tombaugh Regio are still unclear, but it’s probably related to the processes that shaped Sputnik Planitia.

Ballantyne and his colleagues ran a wide assortment of computer simulations for the ancient impact. Those simulations reflected a range of sizes and compositions for the impacting body, at different velocities and angles of approach. The best fit for Sputnik Planitia’s shape involved a 400-mile-wide object, composed of 15% rock, coming in at an angle of 30 degrees and hitting Pluto at a relatively low velocity.

Based on those parameters, the object would have plowed through Pluto’s surface with a splat. The resulting shape wouldn’t look like your typical impact crater. Instead, it would look like a bright, icy teardrop, with the rocky core of the impacting body ending up at the tail of the teardrop.

“Pluto’s core is so cold that the rocks remained very hard and did not melt despite the heat of the impact, and thanks to the angle of impact and the low velocity, the core of the impactor did not sink into Pluto’s core, but remained intact as a splat on it,” Ballantyne explained.

Previous scenarios for Sputnik Planitia’s origin relied on the presence of a deep ocean beneath Pluto’s surface to explain why the impact region hasn’t drifted toward Pluto’s nearest pole over time. But the researchers behind the newly published study found that the best matches in their simulations called for an ocean measuring no more than 30 miles in depth. “If the influence of ammonia proves negligible, Pluto might not possess a subsurface ocean at all, in accordance with our nominal case,” they wrote.

The researchers say they’ll continue their work to model Pluto’s geological history — and how those models could apply to other Kuiper Belt objects as well.

Meanwhile, the New Horizons spacecraft is continuing its journey through the solar system’s far reaches, nearly nine years after its Pluto flyby. Mission scientists recently reported detecting higher than expected levels of interplanetary dust, which suggests there may be more to the Kuiper Belt than they thought. They’re hoping to identify yet another icy world that the spacecraft can observe up close in the late 2020s or the 2030s.

• In addition to Ballantyne and Denton, the authors of the Nature Astronomy study, titled “Sputnik Planitia as an Impactor Remnant Indicative of an Ancient Rocky Mascon in an Oceanless Pluto,” include Erik Asphaug, Alexandre Emsenhuber and Martin Jutzi.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

One-on-One with Nick Pope: Delving into UFO Mysteries and Government Insights

Nick Pope, a former civilian employee for the British Ministry of Defense, is a renowned journalist and UFO investigator whose career has deeply intertwined with the enigmatic world of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP). Pope’s unique position within the government allowed him to run the UFO program, famously known as the “UFO desk,” from 1991 through to 1994. His work involved assessing the defense, national security, and flight safety implications of UFO sightings—a task that revealed more about the skies than previously understood.

During his tenure, Pope approached the UFO phenomenon with a healthy skepticism. With approximately two to three hundred sighting reports coming annually, 80% of these could be explained as misidentifications of ordinary objects or phenomena. However, a persistent 5% remained categorized as “unknown,” which neither confirmed nor denied extraterrestrial activity. This core of unexplained cases exhibited behaviors and technologies seemingly beyond contemporary aerospace capabilities.

Nick Pope’s journey into the UFO phenomenon was not just a career but a transformational experience. Over the years, as he delved deeper into historical files and new reports, his skepticism transformed into a realization of the phenomenon’s complexity and significance. This shift in perspective was not just personal but reflective of a broader change in societal attitudes towards UFOs.

In his post-MoD life, Pope has continued to be a significant figure in UFO research and advocacy, using his insider knowledge to educate the public and media. His involvement in the subject has grown alongside public interest, especially following major media disclosures like the 2017 New York Times revelations about the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) and the US Navy’s infrared videos of UFOs.

The landscape of UFO investigation and the public’s perception of it have evolved. What was once fringe has edged into mainstream discussions, driven by government acknowledgments and legislative actions. Hearings and reports from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Pentagon, along with active engagement from Congress, signify a shift towards demanding transparency and exploring the implications of UAPs without stigma.

Pope highlights the importance of rebranding ‘UFOs’ to ‘UAPs’, advocating for a more serious and unprejudiced discussion within government circles and the public sphere. His insights suggest that the phenomena might not just be extraterrestrial but could also involve other dimensions, as hinted by modern physics theories like string theory and the experiments conducted at the Large Hadron Collider.

• https://youtu.be/YQfg7UE0P4w

Through his work and public engagements, Nick Pope continues to foster a nuanced understanding of UAPs, encouraging open-mindedness and scientific inquiry into one of humanity’s most profound mysteries. Whether addressing conferences, participating in documentaries, or appearing in news segments, Pope remains a pivotal figure in bridging the gap between government secrecy and public curiosity, driving the narrative from the shadows of fringe theory into the light of mainstream scientific and cultural discourse.

• www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHCNufc-RO8

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

 By Chris Eberhart  -  Fox News

UFOs that have shown the ability to seamlessly transition from air to sea without a splash or crash debris are an "urgent" national security concern with "world-changing" scientific ramifications, an ex-Navy officer said.

In July 2019, the USS Omaha recorded a UFO – or UAP (unidentified anomalous phenomena) – that buzzed a Navy fleet off San Diego and disappeared into the ocean without a trace.

The video, first released by Jeremy Corbell and verified by the Pentagon, displays capability that "jeopardizes U.S. maritime security, which is already weakened by our relative ignorance about the global ocean," oceanographer and retired Rear Adm. Tim Gallaudet said.

"The fact that unidentified objects with unexplainable characteristics are entering US water space and the DOD is not raising a giant red flag is a sign that the government is not sharing all it knows about all-domain anomalous phenomena," Gallaudet wrote in his March 2024 report. 

• ‘UFO REVOLUTION’ DOCUSERIES SHOWS UAP FLYING OVER MILITARY BASE, ‘BLOWS UP DECADES OF CONSPIRACIES’: EXPERT

A recording of a UFO flying by the USS Omaha off the coast of San Diego in July 2019 and then vanishing into the ocean without a splash or crash debris.

 (Jeremy Corbell/Weaponized Podcast)

Gallaudet sent the strong warning message in a 29-page report for the Sol Foundation, a think tank focused on researching UAPs and their implications, that was published last month. 

He told Fox News Digital that it's "scientifically valid" to explore these unexplained transmedium (between the atmosphere and the ocean) events involving objects displaying abilities that have never been seen before. 

• CONGRESSMAN HAS GRIM TAKE AFTER ACCESS TO UFO FOOTAGE: THIS TECH ‘COULD TURN US INTO A CHARCOAL BRIQUETTE’

"Pilots, credible observers and calibrated military instrumentation have recorded objects accelerating at rates and crossing the air–sea interface in ways not possible for anything made by humans," Gallaudet wrote in his report. 

A Fox News Digital-created UFO hotspot map based off information by the Department of Defense. 

(Julia Bonavita/Fox News Digital based on AARO's Data)

They defy physics while being far superior in terms of engineering and materials needed to create this type of craft that could revolutionize virtually every aspect of human life from air and maritime transportation to energy generation to agriculture, he argues.

"To meet the security and scientific challenges, transmedium UAP and USOs should be elevated to national ocean research priorities," Gallaudet argues. 

WATCH JEREMY CORBELL'S VIDEO OF UFO GOING FROM AIR TO SEA

• www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSc2ytIevI0

Video

The Department of Defense or NASA still haven't been able to explain the UFO seen in the 2019 video that Corbell, an investigative journalist and leading civilian voice about UFOs, released in 2021. 

How the object was able to move that fast and seemingly vanish remains a mystery. 

• UFO WHISTLEBLOWER TESTIFIES HIS LIFE WAS THREATENED OVER SECRET ALIEN TEACH RETRIEVAL

Former Navy pilot Ryan Graves, ex-Navy commander David Fravor and former U.S. intelligence officer David Grusch testify before the House of Representatives subcommittee focused on UFOs. 

(House subcommittee on National Security, the Border and Foreign Affairs)

The DoD created the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) tasked with getting answers, but the AARO's reports have concluded there's no verifiable evidence of extraterrestrial life.

Experts have criticized the reports as "underwhelming" and directly conflict with former intelligence officer David Grusch's testimony in front of the House Oversight Committee national subcommittee hearing in July 2023. 

READ TIM GALLAUDET'S FULL REPORT

Grusch testified that he had knowledge of secret government-run crashed-UFO-retrieval program to reverse-engineer the technology. 

He also said the government "absolutely" has UFO tech and "biologics" of "non-human origins" since the 1930s and knows the exact locations where they're being held.

• RUSSIAN UFO ENGAGEMENTS, SECRET ‘TIC TAC’ REPORT AND 3 KEY FIGURES SLIP UNDER RADAR AT CONGRESSIONAL HEARING

"The underwhelming document, which lacked any NASA data, appeared to be a perfunctory appeasement of congressional concerns regarding UAP," Gallaudet wrote, referring to AARO's most recent report.

Going back to focusing on underwater UFOs, Gallaudet said there's been legislative acknowledgment of their potential existence but "the literature on this subject is sparse and unsystematic."

WATCH HIGHLIGHTS OF DAVID GRUSCH'S CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY

Video

Tim Gallaudet, CEO, Ocean STL Consulting, LLC / Explorer's Cub Fellow / Former Deputy / Acting NOAA Administrator (2017-2021) Former Oceanographer of the Navy (2014-2017). 

(Tim Gallaudet/X)

"There are only a handful of books and scattered accounts by largely nonprofessional researchers, in contrast with the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of books published about UAP sightings in the sky," Gallaudet wrote. 

He lists a handful of sources that describe "luminous orbs, silver and gray discs, and triangular and cigar-shaped objects with various lighting configuration …. (and) their movement seems to defy known physical laws."

• UFO ‘HOTSPOTS’ MAP REVEALS CLUSTER OF SIGHTINGS LINKED TO ATOM BOMBS, WAR ZONES

Gallaudet called on the U.S. government, academics, philanthropies and the private sector to invest in in-depth research about undersea UAPs. 

"Sometime in the future, the government may start openly researching UAP to a greater degree than the perfunctory categorization effort underway at AARO," he wrote. "When that occurs, subsequent exploration for UAP on and under the sea will have the benefit of making new ocean science discoveries as well. 

"Any hunt for USOs or supporting undersea infrastructure will almost certainly identify new marine species, geologic features, and oceanic processes."

{  https://www.foxnews.com/ }

Tom DeLonge Claims Secret DoD Document From UFO Program Proves Telekinesis Is Real

Tom DeLonge, the former lead vocalist and guitarist of the popular band Blink-182, has always had a keen interest in UFOs. He has spent many years researching and studying the topic. He has even formed a company, To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science (or To The Stars) to investigate and promote research on UFOs and other related phenomena.

DeLonge’s To The Stars is behind publishing the three footages (captured in 2004 and 2015 by the US Navy) that were released in 2017 and 2018. They depict UFOs and include audio recordings of the pilots. These videos gained a lot of attention when they were released.

His interest in UFOs began at a young age. As a child, DeLonge was fascinated by stories of alien encounters and sightings. He used to spend hours reading books and watching documentaries about UFOs, and was particularly interested in the famous Roswell incident of 1947, where a UFO allegedly crashed in New Mexico.

DeLonge’s research led him to conclude that UFOs are real and that they are of extra-terrestrial origin. He believes that there is a wealth of evidence to support this conclusion, including reports of sightings and encounters, as well as physical evidence such as radar tracks and photographs.

During a podcast with Daniel P Carter of BBC Radio 1 Rock, DeLonge disclosed that he has a secret official Pentagon document from a UFO program that shows telekinesis is a real ability. He believes that telekinesis has been proven in the lab and that consciousness precedes matter, and once we discover that, life is going to get very interesting.

He suggests that we have the ability to heal ourselves and create new types of Sciences and Engineering tweets. He also believes that telepathy is going to be a part of it, and that they have found an area in the brain that they believe is where telepathy happens. He thinks that once people accept all of the stuff that they have been talking about, it’s going to change the world. Below is the transcript of his conversation with Carter:

“I always tell people there is this really cool document (that I have) that was a part of the UFO program where they were studying a kid in China who can move objects with his mind. He is around 10 years old, so they wanted to figure out how that’s possible, and they recreated it in the lab.

I have the whole Department of Defense document, and it goes through it and says they were able to put a piece of paper in a glass jar, screw the lid on it, and move the paper through the lid and then six feet across the floor, all with their mind. 100 people can do this, only 10 have mastered it, and it was just wild.

So telekinesis has been proven in the lab, but no one knows about it. I’m like, to be able to move things with the force, like in Star Wars, is a big deal. It sounds ridiculous, that’s why, and within the current paradigm, it sounds ridiculous. I’m sure, or you won’t remember, but we had a conversation at the Reading Festival many years ago where I think I probably came across as a total maniac, even to someone as open-minded as yourself. But, I was talking about reading a bunch of different things, which means nothing, but I was looking at different realms of consciousness because that’s the basis of everything I believe.

I believe that consciousness precedes matter and I highly agree with you. Because the current paradigm is that consciousness is a facet that’s created by matter, which is just this weird thing that’s come about because our brains are complicated and that’s nonsense. I think it’s exactly the opposite and once we discover that stuff, life is going to get very interesting.

Once we discover that mind over matter, not the other way around, we will have the ability to heal ourselves, create new types of Sciences and Engineering, and become a civilization where telepathy is a part of it. I believe that’s all going to happen. There is one person, who was up for the Nobel last year, is one of the top geneticists in the world, at one of the Ivy League schools that we are working with, who worked on part of the UFO program at the Pentagon. I was talking to him, and they found an area in the brain that they believe is where telepathy happens, and he believes he can create something to enhance it by a thousand times, like some type of drug that targets that area of the brain.

So, that’s the thing, people do think it’s ridiculous, but not the people who have an open enough mind to research and jump in. These guys are like World leading PhDs, and that’s been the kind of the story of my life, is everything I’ve told, even on Rogan, is not made up, it’s coming from somewhere, and I can’t say where it’s coming from, but at the end of the day, it’s all real. I think it’s going to be a very exciting time once people accept all of the stuff that we’ve been talking about here on this interview, I think it’s going to really change the world.”

Read also:

• Ex-NASA Astronaut: ‘We have Contact With Alien Cultures & Their Appearance Is Bizarre’
• Famous 19-Sec UFO Footage Could Be Greatest Leak: CGI Experts Say It Is Real Deal
• This Is Clearest UFO Photo Ever Released That Shows Typical Alien Craft
• Ex-Apollo Astronaut Claimed Humans Are Ancient Aliens, Visited Earth From Space

Moreover, as in the January 2022 Thrasher Magazine issue, DeLonge was asked: “Would you say UFOs are driven by aliens or do you think it’s more like a drone?” He replied: “I think both.” He suggested that it is important to note that while studying UFOs, we must be aware of the fact that they could be remotely controlled and may have occupants. (Source)

“I think the biggest misconception is that they are coming from other planets. Evidence doesn’t really support that. The evidence supports that it’s dimensional and that it’s parallel timelines that exist with frequency. It’s really complicated, different, and interesting. But once you understand that, you have no way out of reexamining the religious world and wondering what the Star of Bethlehem really was,” DeLonge explained.

Further, he was asked if UFOs or aliens are coming from the oceans. He said that while the origin of UFOs is a separate conversation, it is believed that they do exist in our oceans. With the use of sensors placed throughout the ocean to detect submarines and other objects, it has been reported that there have been sightings of unidentified submerged objects (USOs).

In one instance, a helicopter pilot was testing torpedoes, and a navy SEAL was sent down on a wire to retrieve the torpedo. However, as soon as he touched the water, a large craft came underneath him, took the torpedo, and left at the high speed. The navy SEAL was in shock and panicked, requesting to be pulled up immediately. Although there were initial plans to have the witnesses speak on television, they later backed out, and some of them testified to the committee. Nonetheless, similar incidents continue to occur frequently, and it is, indeed, extraordinary.

DeLonge’s views on UFOs have been met with both praise and criticism. Some people believe that his research is valuable and that it is important to investigate and study UFOs in an open and honest manner. Others believe that DeLonge’s opinion is misguided and that there is no evidence to support his conclusions.

Despite the criticism, DeLonge remains committed to his research and wants to continue promoting the truth about UFOs. He believes that UFOs are real and that they are of extra-terrestrial origin, and that the truth about UFOs should be investigated and studied openly and honestly. Through his work To The Stars, DeLonge hopes to bring more attention to the topic of UFOs and to promote research and discussion about this fascinating phenomenon.

{ https://www.howandwhys.com/ }

Is Dark Matter Real? Inside the Theories That Leave This Mysterious Phenomenon Out

Is there more to the universe than meets the eye, or are the rules different than we thought? (Spoiler alert: it's probably the first one.)

BYKIONA SMITH

 

William Attard McCarthy/Moment/Getty Images

The universe is hiding something.

Stars at the outer edges of galaxies whirl around the galactic center far more swiftly than the laws of physics say they should. At even larger scales, galaxy clusters clump together in ways that should only be possible if the galaxies were more massive than they appear. And most of our models of how the Big Bang happened suggest that much more matter should have been created than we see.

Either there’s more to the universe than meets the eye, or the rules of physics work very differently than we think they do. Most astrophysicists and cosmologists (scientists who study the origins and evolution of the universe) today lean toward the first option: dark matter. But a few have devoted their efforts to finding a set of rules that could produce the universe we see, without dark matter.

Inverse spoke with experts in both fields about dark matter, the laws that make our universe work, and the quest to understand everything.

Most of the material in the universe is stuff we can’t see, can’t measure, and barely understand. Cue existential crisis in 3... 2... 1...

VISUAL CAPITALIST/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/GETTY IMAGES

HIDDEN MASS OR NEW RULES OF PHYSICS?

The things we can see in the universe — planets, stars, vast clouds of gas, and galaxies — make up only about 5 percent of what’s out there, according to physicists. Another 70 percent is dark energy, a little-understood force that’s driving the expansion of our universe (we know it’s expanding because astronomers have measured the way light waves from distant stars get stretched out as their sources accelerate away from us), and the remaining 25 percent is stuff called dark matter.

Dark matter doesn’t absorb, emit, or reflect light, and it doesn’t seem to interact with normal matter in most ways; theoretically, you could walk through a wall made of dark matter and never see it or feel it. The only rule of physics that dark matter seems to follow is gravity: It has mass, apparently, and that mass has gravity and forms a vital part of the scaffolding of galaxies, galaxy clusters, and the universe itself at a large scale.

As explanations go, dark matter sounds weird, but it works well. The amount of “extra” matter created in the Big Bang seems to match the amount of unseen mass in the universe. It balances physicists’ equations nicely and explains what we see in the universe around us.

But because dark matter doesn’t interact with light or matter, scientists haven’t yet actually detected it directly; they can only see how its gravity affects the universe around it. That leaves a little sliver of doubt and inspires some physicists and cosmologists to look for other ways to explain those effects.

One of the most popular alternatives to dark matter is called Modified Newtonian Dynamics, or MOND, and it proposes that gravity works a little differently than Isaac Newton first described it. The farther away an object is, the weaker its gravitational pull feels. According to MOND, gravity’s effect weakens slightly less over distance than it does in Newton’s original equations. That, allegedly, explains why galaxies seem to spin fast, as if they have a lot more mass on their outer edges than it appears.

MOND, and other modified ways of describing gravity, “are quite good at describing the properties of galaxies, but usually fail at describing the large-scale structure of the Universe,” astrophysicist Sébastien Comerón tells Inverse. And to replace dark matter, any new model of how the universe works has to explain everything we see, at large scales and small ones.

A recent study, led by cosmologist Rajendra Gupta, tackled that problem. Gupta suggested earlier this year that the universe might be 26.7 billion years old — nearly twice as old as all our evidence so far suggests — and that the laws of physics are much less consistent than we thought.

“I was trying to understand the so-called 'impossible early galaxy' problem,” Gupta tells Inverse. When astronomers peer into the distant, early universe with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), they see galaxies that look more massive and more neatly structured than they should; just 1 billion years after the Big Bang, galaxies shouldn’t have had time to pull so much mass together. (The same is true of some of the earliest supermassive black holes in the universe.)

Those precocious early galaxies challenge what we think we know about how supermassive black holes and galaxies form and evolve.

But Gupta tackled the “impossible early galaxies” problem by developing a new model of the universe, which would explain the precocious early galaxies. His model hinges on a century-old theory called tired light, which suggests that light actually loses energy as it travels across space. It also leans on another old theory that suggests the laws that govern how our universe works (like gravity) aren’t so constant after all — they weaken over distance. According to Gupta’s model, those changes add up to differences in how light appears by the time it reaches JWST, making the universe look younger than it is.

Some of the galaxies in this image are among the oldest ever seen by astronomers — and they’re suprisingly massive.

XINHUA NEWS AGENCY/XINHUA NEWS AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES

The model suggested another conclusion as well: Dark matter and dark energy don’t exist.

“The model yields matter content just enough for the Universe's ordinary matter; there is no room for dark matter. In fact, there is no dark energy in this model either,” says Gupta. “Accelerated expansion of the Universe, attributed to the dark energy, is due to the weakening of the forces of nature in the new model.”

But there are some problems with the idea, starting with the fact that both “tired light” and the idea of varying physical constants (like gravity) fell out of fashion among scientists a long time ago because they didn’t fit with observations about how the universe behaved.

“I think it is an interesting idea to explain the origin of recently discovered compact bright galaxies at high redshift with just varying two new parameters that determine the property of photons. However, it remains to be seen whether the model can explain the other phenomena,” cosmologist Kaiki Inoue tells Inverse. Those other phenomena include some inconsistences in how the cosmic microwave background looks in different directions, as well as how galaxy clusters and even larger-scale structures form. “So, in my opinion, it is an interesting idea but not a fully developed model,” says Inoue.

DON’T BET AGAINST DARK MATTER

NGC 1277, seen here in an image from the venerable Hubble Space Telescope, appears to contain no dark matter. Most galaxies are surrounded by an unseen halo of the mysterious stuff, so NGC 1277 is strange and interesting.

“It is worth doing exploratory work outside the box,” says Comerón. “But the likelihood of this particular avenue being the one that solves the problems in cosmology is rather low in my opinion.”

It’s not clear yet whether modified gravity theories, like MOND, actually fit well with Gupta’s proposed model of the universe, either.

One of the best arguments in favor of dark matter may be its inconsistency. Comerón and his colleagues recently discovered a galaxy that apparently contains no dark matter — which is weird but not unheard of. And if we’re seeing not invisible, undetectable matter, but different laws of physics, those laws should apply to all galaxies in the same way.

“I have sometimes been attracted by the idea of alternative gravities myself, but the discovery of the odd properties of NGC 1277 leaves me little doubt that dark matter exists,” says Comerón. “If dark matter could be explained by a modification of gravities, it would be odd to have gravity modified in all galaxies except in a few. On the other hand, one could conceive mechanisms to remove dark matter from galaxies that have got a peculiar formation or interaction history.”

And that seems to be the consensus among most astrophysicists and cosmologists. So far, no one has figured out how to directly measure dark matter — and until they do, there will always be at least a little room for debate about its existence. But Inoue and his colleagues recently used gravitational lensing to map how dark matter is distributed along one narrow swath of the universe, and others are busily trying to work out exactly what it’s made of and how it behaves.

“I would not bet any money against dark matter,” says Comerón.

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

Creepy Video Shows Humanoid-Shaped UFO Floating Over US Park. What Is It?

Footage shared Sunday on social media appeared to show a bizarre humanoid UFO floating in mid-air somewhere over Sequoia Park in California.

Footage was captured by multiple people and shared by the @528vibes social media channel. It appears to show a humanoid-type glowing white figure standing in place in our skies and doing some weird poses. But unlike any other UFO video shared online, there are multiple reports of the same bizarre being appearing year after year, with no specific explanation as to what it is.

Some people apparently claim these bizarre UFO people are “interdimensional beings” but obviously there’s no proof to this claim in mainstream science, News18 noted. 

• (RELATED: CIA’s ‘Secret UFO’ Retrieval Operations Aren’t New News — You’re Just Being Fed The Same Stories From A New Source)

Others think this is a psychological operations test for the underworld government to trick us into thinking the Second Coming of Christ is upon us, even though there’s no evidence to suggest Jesus ever floated through the air looking like a giant Stay Puft balloon.

The U.S. government and its agencies will never actually admit to us that aliens and UFOs are real — at least not until they figure out how to (a) profit off these beings and (b) use these beings to inflict further control upon us. 

• (RELATED: UFO Appeared Underwater Off US Coast, DOD Doesn’t Care, Says Navy Veteran)

Then there’s the potentially obvious answer: These videos are fake. I don’t really care what the answer is, so whatever you think is correct as far as I’m concerned.

{ https://dailycaller.com/ }

The Stephenville Lights: A Riveting Chapter in UFO Sightings

In the quiet town of Stephenville, Texas, renowned as the “milk capital of the world,” an extraordinary event unfolded in January 2008 that would catapult it into the global spotlight for reasons far beyond dairy production. The so-called Stephenville Lights represent one of the most credible and extensively documented UFO sightings in modern history, captivating not just the local community but the world at large.

A Night Like No Other

It all began on an ordinary evening, as Steve Allen and his friends enjoyed a casual gathering by a campfire. What they witnessed next would challenge their understanding of reality. A set of intensely bright lights appeared, approaching at an astonishing speed, their brilliance outshining anything Allen had ever seen. The most astonishing aspect? The complete absence of sound from the approaching marvel, coupled with an inexplicable sense of peace that enveloped Allen as the lights passed by.

This encounter was not isolated. Lee Roy Gaitan, a local constable, reported a similar, mystifying experience, describing a reddish-orange orb that split into a dozen pulsating lights before vanishing at an inconceivable speed. The sightings prompted widespread curiosity and concern, with the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) stepping in to investigate, drawing dozens of witnesses forward with tales of the extraordinary.

Beyond the Lights: A Closer Look

The intrigue surrounding the Stephenville Lights was not merely anecdotal. Robert Powell, a nanotechnology engineer and UFO investigator, armed with radar data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, lent a scientific backbone to the witness accounts. His analysis revealed unidentified objects moving without transponders, a requirement for all aircraft in controlled airspace, thereby deepening the mystery.

The radar data meticulously corroborated the witnesses’ accounts in terms of location and timing, presenting an irrefutable anomaly that defied conventional explanations. The U.S. military’s eventual admission of conducting fighter jet training exercises in the area failed to satisfy skeptics, with the discrepancies between the military’s operations and the observed phenomena remaining unresolved.

A Continuing Enigma

The Stephenville UFO sighting stands as a pivotal moment in the study of unidentified aerial phenomena, bolstering the credibility of UFO sightings with a potent mix of eyewitness testimony and corroborating scientific data. It challenges skeptics and believers alike to consider the limits of our understanding and the possibilities that lie beyond.

This incident serves as a reminder of the vastness of the unknown and the potential for extraordinary events to occur in the most unexpected of places. As we continue to explore the skies above, the Stephenville Lights remind us that some mysteries remain tantalizingly out of reach, inviting us to keep questioning, searching, and wondering about the vast expanse of our universe.

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

Ex-Israeli Space Head Interview On UAPs: Aliens Exist & Working With US Astronauts On Mars

In December 2020, Haim Eshed, a retired Israeli general and former head of the Israeli Defense Ministry’s space directorate gained attention for making controversial claims about extraterrestrial life and alleged secret collaborations between humans and aliens. He stated that aliens and the U.S. government had reached some type of deal to stay quiet about their experiments on Earth and secret facilities on Mars.

In his claims, Mr. Eshed said ETs exist and monitor our nuclear capabilities. There is a “Galactic Federation,” and the alien species with whom humanity will contact is “Grey.” According to him, Earth is their Petri dish, and they are also trying to understand the whole fabric of the universe. He further stated that some of the smaller UFOs are robots/AI, consciousness is present after death, and humans have anti-gravity technology but it is still classified.

The above-mentioned information was shared by Mr. Eshed in his book “The Universe Beyond the Horizon,” published in November 2020 and discussed in his interview with Israel’s daily newspaper “Yedioth Aharonot.” He had been a director of space programs for the Israel Ministry of Defense for nearly 30 years, is a former chair of the Space Committee of the National Council for Research and Development for the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Space, and is a member of the steering committee of Israel Space Agency. He is responsible for the launch of 20 Israeli-made satellites and is widely cited as the father of Israel’s space program. (Source)

In the book, Eshed makes implausible claims that include stories of how aliens prevented potential nuclear disasters, including an unspecified nuclear incident during the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Below is the English translation of his interview titled “The UFOs asked not to advertise that they are here, humanity is not yet ready,” where he also discussed the Skinwalker Ranch and alleged contact between aliens and US presidents.

Until recently, Eshed actually managed to hold back, but then Trump officially established the “Space Force”, and the press was given an announcement that the Pentagon’s Task Force for Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” would begin publishing its findings to the public every six months. At the same time, the “Skinwalker” cattle ranch of the American billionaire Robert Bigelow in Utah – a place that was previously suspected to be a favorite destination for extraterrestrials – recorded some things that no amount of popcorn in the world would be enough to watch.

“Unidentified phenomena have now been recorded at this farm,” said Eshed. “A team of scientists from NASA and MIT graduates brought all possible instruments there – cameras, spectrometers, spectrographs, gamma-rays, X-rays, UV, IR, all fields, and they saw things that I was left with my mouth open. I spoke with Prof. Isaac Ben-Israel (currently the chairman of the Space Agency) who was also thrilled.”

What did they see there? “You know the term portal in this context? So you see a UFO appear there – you photograph it in the entire spectrum of the cameras, you see the radiation in all frequencies, it’s raging!”

Could not it be some familiar aircraft? “No! It shows definite signs of UFOs: crazy accelerations, lack of gravity, 90-degree changes of direction at tremendous speeds, shape-shifting. And all the scientists there are in complete shock.”

And what is the UFO doing? “ You see the radiation jump, and you see how a shape-changing body arrives, light comes out of it at a frequency that you cannot see with the naked eye – in fact, you do not see anything when you look normally – but with the cameras, at the high frequencies, you see this body perform” Kill from utilization’ – drawing blood from the cattle on the ground in front of your eyes.”

What exactly did they see? “Something like a cloud like that. Like you draw a ghost for children. It’s like an undefined cloud, amorphous, and the horns come out of it, and you see the cow twitching. And when it’s over, everyone runs to the field to see, and there’s nothing there, no blood – but the cow’s body has a cut which is like with a laser. They removed its organs and pumped the blood! If they had told me that, I would have said: Shit, it’s a show. But professors from MIT and leading researchers have seen and confirmed it, and everyone is shocked. So listen, we have to at least check.”

Why does not Robert Bigelow himself tell about it? “He received huge funding from NASA as part of programs that my friends there only mumble about under their breath, and he made a written commitment that everything goes to the Pentagon and is housed there. It upsets him that the Ministry of Defense is not ready to release anything.”

…American presidents also testified to this. Truman admitted seeing a whole bunch of aliens over Washington. Nixon, who was a friend of comedian Jackie Gleason and knew he was crazy about UFOs, told him, ‘I’m going to make your life’s dream come true,’ and took him to the White Patterson base and showed him alien bodies. Gleason got depressed about it. Eisenhower’s granddaughter testified that her grandfather had signed an agreement with the aliens, that they would have a secret landing base here in Area 51 in Nevada, that they could come in contact with a small number of people, conduct experiments, and that the condition was that they provide us with technologies — for example, anti-gravity.

Read also:

• Ex-NASA Astronaut: ‘We have Contact With Alien Cultures & Their Appearance Is Bizarre’
• Elon Musk’s SpaceX Continues To Detect Something Massive On Its Missions
• Harvard Scientist Believes Ancient Mars Civilization Could Be Source Of UAPs From ODNI Report
• Ex-Apollo Astronaut Claimed Humans Are Ancient Aliens, Visited Earth From Space

And we received these technologies? Yes. We have anti-gravity and other things. So why are they hiding from us and how can all the governments and armies in the world be able to cooperate in concealment of this magnitude? Not “all the world governments”. There is a group of partners – the Americans, the Russians, the Japanese, the English, and the Chinese – all coordinated at a level that is still not allowed to publish, and those who asked not to publish it are them.

Who are “them”? The Galactic Federation. Is there such a thing? It exists. I wrote about it even though it was perceived as a conspiracy theory, but lately former senior generals are also saying to publish [sic], and Trump was on the verge of finding out, and a few mainstream professors are also saying: guys, tell us. But the aliens in the federation say: wait, let the spirits calm down first, do not publish yet because look what’s happening. You’re still fighting each other, you’ll destroy yourself.

Why not come and talk to us directly? Because it will create panic and collapse humanity. What will happen? The markets will collapse, there will be nothing to eat, people will become cannibals, hospitals will be shut down, all the dark passions will come out, it may be the end – and they are not interested in it. On the contrary, they are constantly keeping track – and there are a lot of reports about it – the nuclear events in the world, they are monitoring all the stations and nuclear weapons bases – I am willing to give you all the things in writing [sic] – and there have been things they have prevented. Know that it is not just luck that the Russians in the Bay of Pigs did not use nuclear weapons against the Americans. Someone neutralized it. Without them I have no doubt that humanity would have already destroyed itself. They want to say to humanity: children, calm down!

Why not make contact when their intentions are peaceful and say so explicitly? The UFOs have asked not to publish that they are here, humanity is not ready yet. There will be a great rampage of everyone, and what the Inquisition did to guys like Galileo and Copernicus will return. They want to make us sane and understand first. In general, what are space and spacecraft – think, in World War I we did not even have planes – and they do not want mass hysteria here, with the best example being what happened in 1938, with Orson Welles’ World of Wars show, and the police collapsed and everything exploded And what they say is: first of all let’s stand, that the stock markets will not fall, that there will be no rampage, that humanity will calm down a little.

Are we in communication with them regarding the date of publication? There is an agreement between the U.S. government and aliens – I can not prove it, I understand it sounds like a conspiracy theory – but the understanding is that the Galactic Federation has nine elements of advanced aliens of various kinds, who signed a contract with us to do experiments here.

What interest do they have in us? There are all kinds of resources here. There is water here in quantities that are not found nowhere else, there is all kinds of vegetation, all kinds of animals, the ocean.

But for an intelligent species more developed than us, how are we useful to them? We are their petri dish. They too are researching and trying to understand the whole fabric of the universe, and they want us as helpers. To date the petri dish has not been stabilized – but it is estimated that we are reaching this stage: religion is accepting their existence – the Vatican has already announced that it wants to baptize them; the UN has appointed an ambassador for foreign affairs (Molan Othman); the corona calmed everything and brought us closer to them.

Come on, in the present age there is no way such a thing would have been kept secret. How many years have they kept a secret that the earth is not the center of the universe? 1,500 years. Or the ‘Manhattan Project’ (US atomic bomb project)? Do you know how many people worked there? 150 thousand people. How many knew what it was? Three. So if you want to keep such a thing a secret, you can. And there is a terrible, obsessive system of silence, of the Americans, who have decided, under the guidance of the aliens, who are not yet publishing. Robert Bigelow also said: I can not publish the films.

How many life forms are there in space? There are thousands of stars with conditions similar enough to ours, and serious scientists have identified and documented dozens of life forms – even though the mainstream does not accept it. The closest to us are what we call the ‘grays’, which are gray creatures with large eyes with them.

Where are they in geographic relation to us? Supposedly some came from the Pleiades, planets that have living conditions we know of – we can not get there, but they can get to us because they are much more advanced.
Where else in the neighborhood is there life? “There is an underground base on Mars. There are their representatives there as well as our American astronauts.” How do we know that? “Do you want articles? There are. But science, so far, doesn’t want to hear.”

What does their craft look like? The big spacecraft is almost the size of a small town. Small spaceships come out of it – most of them robotic, manned by intelligent robots. At first, they will send such robots, primitive to them, or a message we will have to decipher.

To reach us they need to move at least at the speed of light. What is their propulsion method – rocket? Nuclear? No. They have a method of producing a bubble that neutralizes time-space, and the tool does not move – space moves, and this is consistent with general relativity. Take for example an ant that wants to get from one end of a page to the other. Now let’s say I folded the page in half – it moves to its other side in a second. That’s how you fold time-space as well.

What do they use to move time-space? This is a bit of complex physics; motion is based on dark energy – 25 percent of the universe is dark matter – which allows time-space to be distorted and reach other galaxies in no time. You can create a tiny black hole – that, by the way, is what you do with a particle accelerator in Switzerland – that sucks stars out quickly and spits them out. These are technologies that sound like science fiction but we are at the threshold.

And what will happen when they come to us? Humanity will connect to the fabric of the universe, and once we connect, our science will leap in thousands of years, we will be capable of anti-gravity, we will move between star systems, religion will lose the control it has today – aliens do not believe in religion, they believe in deciphering the fabric of the universe, which is not God, it is math.

Tell me, why are they always described as relatively short creatures, with long necks and big heads? This is exactly the way the immediate human imagination will see them. No. They have all kinds of shapes – they are a function of the star around which they cluster, and some of them can shapeshift.

Is it biologically feasible? Yes. Here is an example that you will understand immediately [Eshed points to the heavy wooden table between us]. It’s a table, right? It’s made of atoms. And if the nucleus of the atom is here on the table – do you know where its electron is? Maybe in Rosh Pina, maybe in the middle of nothing. It’s quantum theory; the material is empty.

Even when we die we do not die, because we are made of molecules and atoms, and we move to another energy. You connect back to the cosmic fabric, to the web, to the connection of consciousnesses. You are consciousness.The consciousnesses will not die. Everything you have accumulated is added. It goes to the same network – and everything you have accumulated in your life, the personality, the total of what you have gone through, it accumulates. Stephen Hawking also realized that our consciousness adds to the fabric of the universe. We are building blocks. Stepping stones.

{ https://www.howandwhys.com/ }

UFO Appeared Underwater Off US Coast, DOD Doesn’t Care, Says Navy Veteran

KAY SMYTHE - NEWS AND COMMENTARY WRITER

A report published in March detailed how UFOs may be just as present under our oceans as they apparently are in our skies and the Department of Defense (DOD) doesn’t seem to care.

The report comes from retired Rear Adm. Tim Gallaudet, who developed the data for the Sol Foundation, finding that there are many instances in which UFOs/UAPs seem to travel from the skies into our oceans without any sort of issue. One of the most widely reported of these events was the UFO caught on video dropping into the ocean in 2019. The Pentagon called the object a “transmedium vehicle.”

“The fact that unidentified objects with unexplainable characteristics are entering US water space and the DOD is not raising a giant red flag is a sign that the government is not sharing all it knows about all-domain anomalous phenomena,” Gallaudet wrote in the 29-page report.

The frequency of reports on “transmedia vehicles” moving from air to ocean from credible sources transcends the abilities of “anything made by humans.” 

• (RELATED: Analysis Reveals Aliens Might Be Living In Our Oceans. And They’ve Been There For A Long, Long Time)

Not only that, but these vehicles seem to defy the laws of physics. And no one from NASA or the DOD has been able to explain it, Fox News argued. The one governmental body publicly investigating this and other evidence of alien technologies, the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), said they’ve found absolutely nothing to suggest UFOs are real.

“The underwhelming document, which lacked any NASA data, appeared to be a perfunctory appeasement of congressional concerns regarding UAP,” Gallaudet said of the most recent AARO report. 

• (RELATED: UFO Videos Would ‘Harm National Security’ If Released, Navy Claims)

Since we’ve only explored about 25% of our oceans, there is almost certainly something down there that most of us would consider pretty alien … as if the oceans weren’t scary enough.

{ https://dailycaller.com/ }

The 5 most believable UFO sightings ever reported in North Carolina

• Read about five alien encounters that may forever remain unexplained.

When you think of the most common places where you might hear a UFO sighting reported, what comes to mind? Area 51? The vast plains of the Midwest? Anywhere with a cornfield? 

North Carolina ticks one of those boxes, so perhaps it’s not surprising that our great state lands in the Top 10 states where sightings have been reported, according to the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC).

As it turns out, the number of sightings reported in any given state corresponds relatively closely to where the state ranks in population. So as the ninth most populous state in the country, it could be expected that North Carolina ranks as No. 10 in sightings. (As the 32nd most populous state, Nevada isn’t in the Top 10 for UFO sightings.) 

These sightings get published on the NUFORC’s Data Bank, where they’re indexed based on location, description, and date. In early 2022, WBTW in Wilmington reported that dozens of sightings were logged over just a few months. These reports spanned from two cigar-shaped objects in Edenton to a glowing disc near the Charlotte Douglas International Airport. 

But alas, all of these reports are entered anonymously, and as far as we know, none of them are subject to any follow-up investigation. But what about the stories that have names attached, with more details than a brief description in an anonymous database? 

We went looking for those, and here are the most credible — or at least most detailed — accounts we could find. 

1. The Greys

Sev Tok is an author, co-owner of the Spirit Shack in Oriental, and field investigator for the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), an international organization that investigates UFO reports around the world.

In her book, “You Have The Right To Talk To Aliens,” Tok told of her own encounter with extraterrestrials, which she says occurred in Arapahoe. 

“I came [into] face-to-face contact with these beings, they’re what we call The Greys, the small ones with the big eyes,” Tok told Greenville’s WNCT last summer. “I was paralyzed on this bed and I was lying on my side and I could feel there was something behind me.

“When I moved my head and turned around, there was a Grey standing behind me doing something to my back,” she continued. “Then I turned my head back around and I found myself back in my bedroom.”

Tok said the Greys left two red X marks on her back, pictures of which can be found in her book. She sold copies of the book and hosted UFO Talks to discuss alien encounters in a judgment-free space at her shop, The Spirit Shack, though the business sadly closed in November.  

2. Lumberton Alien “Attack”

Back in 1975, before the NUFORC Data Bank existed, a string of well-documented sightings sent UFO investigators from around the country flocking to the southeastern NC town of Lumberton.  

People reported more than eight sightings in the course of just a few days in the first week of April that year, including two incidents of UFOs being followed by state troopers. News reports from the area allegedly inspired some of the earlier sequences in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

The most credible report came from a soybean field off Philadelphus Road just north of the Pembroke town line on the afternoon of April 6, where The Robesonian newspaper reported a total of seven people, most from the Strickland family, saw something land in a field near their home. 

It reportedly looked like five large, triangular-shaped metallic objects, with some witnesses claiming they flew in formation while others rerpoted seeing chrome-like attachments connecting them. A young boy “said he saw the object kick up a cloud of dust as high as a house” when it landed in the newly plowed field. The object stayed only a few minutes before lifting off again and disappearing into the sky. 

The objects reportedly left circular impressions at the landing sight with a strange blue-gray “ash,” while surrounding plants did not appear harmed or burnt. This and other incidents that week — about 80 witnesses total, 40 of whom were police — led many in the town to believe they were facing an “alien attack,” though sightings dropped off as the month progressed. 

3. The Asheville School for Boys

In the early morning hours of May 9, 1964, two students at the Asheville School for Boys spotted a silver, saucer-shaped craft with a blue light emanating from its windows hovering over the school’s water tower. A golden disk “moved wildly” atop the craft as it hovered, according to the boys’ matching accounts. Then, suddenly, sparks rained down from the saucer before it took off in the direction of the rising sun at an “amazingly fast speed.” 

Declaring themselves to be of “sound mind and body,” the students attested to their encounter the following day in signed statements, their names and signatures later redacted by the bureaucrats charged with declassifying the case files of Project Blue Book, which was released in 2015. Upon the release of the findings, which included illustrations by the boys, Asheville school administration officials told WLOS it was the first time they’d heard of the sightings.

Investigators at the time chalked the boys’ sightings up to the “imagination of the observers” and the “misinterpretation of conventional objects” like aircraft and various stars and planets.

4. Salisbury Shapes

Project Blue Book also included around 700 sightings that not even investigators could explain away, including an occurrence in Salisbury in 1966. On Feb. 2 of that year, shortly after 11 p.m., a woman who remained unnamed in the files reported that she had just gotten into bed when her dog began barking in a panicked manner. When she threw open her curtains, she saw a silver, diamond-shaped object hovering just 300 feet away from her window above a cluster of trees in her neighbor’s backyard. 

Though the craft didn’t actually move when she first spotted it, the woman described it as remaining in “a tremendous state of activity,” with a dozen smaller objects “resembling balls” orbiting around the central body, each taking its own path and flashing red, green, and white lights. Small “explosions” emanated from the craft, these also exhibiting fantastic color changes. With pen and paper in hand, the observer sketched as best she could what she saw in the sky.

The craft hovered for three or four minutes before shooting to a new position nearby. “The speed with which it moved was so rapid that I could not begin to estimate it,” said the woman, a trusted teacher in the community who declared that she had been a lifelong skeptic until the incident. 

As time passed, the object slowly moved away, though it remained in sight long enough for the woman’s husband to return home from work close to midnight and also view the object. Viewing the flying diamond through binoculars, the man also reported seeing small, colorful explosions and brilliantly flashing lights surrounding the object. The craft remained in view until around 1 a.m., a full hour and a half after it was first sighted. “I do not know what the object was,” the woman confessed, “but I hereby swear that I saw the object as described.”

5. Greensboro Balloons

While a series of lights recorded and reported over the Outer Banks in 2019 can most likely be identified as flares from military jets doing exercises nearby, another video captured over Greensboro earlier that year is not as easily explained. 

Photographer Bret Jones, who goes by Space Bret on YouTube, said he went out to try to document the behavior of birds when he spotted a “random flashing” object floating in the sky above. The five-minute video — magnified and slowed down — shows the pill-shaped object soaring through the sky and producing a series of flashes. 

“I noticed a strange flashing light in the sky near an airplane. It was moving slowly in the sky, a little slower than the planes flying around,” Jones said on YouTube. “I did not think I captured it at all, because the focus would only hunt and not lock on.”

He later magnified the video by 900x and saw the pill-shaped object, which appeared to emanate flashes from both ends. The video sparked debate online between those who thought it was a large balloon — a theory strengthened by the sudden appearance of a Chinese spy balloon over the United States in 2023 — or a visit from some other far more foreign entity. 

• This article first appeared on Good Info News Wire and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Ex-Navy officer says underwater UFO capability 'jeopardizes US maritime security'

Image credit: YouTube screenshot

An ex-Navy officer said UFOs that can move from air to sea without a splash or crash debris represent an "urgent" national security concern that can have "world-changing" consequences, according to Fox News Digital.

Back in July 2019, the USS Omaha reportedly captured video of a UFO that raced past a Navy fleet around San Diego and mysteriously vanished into the ocean without a trace.

The video of the strange incident was first released by filmmaker Jeremy Corbell and later confirmed by the Pentagon, according to NBC News. Oceanographer and retired Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet said the UFO's capability "jeopardizes U.S. maritime security, which is already weakened by our relative ignorance about the global ocean."

"The fact that unidentified objects with unexplainable characteristics are entering U.S. water space and the DOD is not raising a giant red flag is a sign that the government is not sharing all it knows about all-domain anomalous phenomena," Gallaudet wrote in a 2024 report.

Gallaudet wrote a 29-page report about the possibility of underwater UFOs that was published by the Sol Foundation — a think tank specifically focused on UFOs and the possible consequences of their existence.

The former Navy officer told Fox News Digital that it is "scientifically valid" to investigate the mysterious transmedium events that demonstrate capabilities that have never been seen before.

"Pilots, credible observers, and calibrated military instrumentation have recorded objects accelerating at rates and crossing the air-sea interface in ways not possible for anything made by humans," Gallaudet said in his report.

"To meet the security and scientific challenges, transmedium UAP and USOs should be elevated to national ocean research priorities," he continued.

When the 2019 UFO video was first released, the Defense Department quickly confirmed that it was captured by Navy personnel and noted that it would be reviewed by the Pentagon's Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force.

NBC News reported at the time that the clip of the UFO was released just a few days before "60 Minutes" aired an interview with two former Navy officers who said they had previously been told to investigate "multiple anomalous aerial vehicles" that reportedly descended 80,000 feet in less than a second. The incident in question took place off San Diego in 2004.

However, the reports have been criticized for producing "underwhelming" evidence and directly contradicting former intelligence officer David Grusch's testimony in front of the House Oversight Committee in 2023.

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