EXCLUSIVE - The UFO files the government won't ever release: I've read them all. They fear a full-blown national crisis and destruction of religious faith... but it's time for the REAL disclosure day. Here's what you deserve to know

By STACY LIBERATORE, US SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR

After weeks of anticipation, the latest UFO file dump left many Americans underwhelmed.

While the Trump administration unveiled a third batch of documents, photos and videos tied to unexplained sightings on Friday, critics argue the files stopped well short of addressing the allegations at the heart of the UFO mystery.

Now, one of the few people who claims to have seen some of the hidden UFO files has spoken to the Daily Mail, revealing what he says is inside them – including references to alleged crash-retrieval programs, secret government investigations and 'non-human biologics.'

Investigative journalist Jeremy Corbell said the material has only strengthened his belief that the US government has recovered unidentified craft and biological evidence linked to the UFO mystery.

Corbell has spent years collecting documents, testimony and other material related to the claims, some of which appeared briefly in Sleeping Dog, the documentary he produced with veteran investigative journalist George Knapp.

The film shows a list of files, including one referencing 'non-human biologics,' a term used to describe alleged extraterrestrial tissue or bodies.

Another file is labeled 'Kona Blue,' the name of a proposed Department of Homeland Security program that would have investigated claims involving recovered unidentified craft, advanced technology and other UFO-related allegations. 

The program was never formally established, according to government records.

Years worth of files, testimony and other material that Corbell collected, some of which were featured in Sleeping Dog

Corbell argued that the material is now circulating far beyond the handful of researchers who first obtained it, raising the prospect that additional details could be leaked regardless of whether the government releases the files.

'I can't stop that information from coming out. I am unable to stop it,' he said, adding that 'over 100 journalists already have everything that I have. 

'That's not just in my hands anymore. That's not just in George Knapp's hands anymore.'

However, the US government maintains that it has found no verifiable evidence that extraterrestrial life or alien technology has visited Earth. 

Despite decades of public fascination with UFOs, major Pentagon investigations and declassified government reviews have repeatedly concluded that no case of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) has been confirmed. 

The Trump administration released the third batch of UFO files on Friday, which Corbell said was 'historic,' as more information on the topic 'is always a win.'

However, he added that again, the government has only shared 'low-hanging fruit.' 

'Our government has long known about Non-Human Intelligence, their vehicles, reverse-engineering programs, and biological study of their pilots and occupants. These releases are provoked - not offered,' Corbell said.

David Grusch giving congressional testimony in 2023, during which he claimed the US government had spent decades attempting to recover and reverse-engineer craft of non-human origin. Investigative journalist Jeremy Corbell (circled) listens from behind

'The pressure of journalism, whistleblowers, and congressional oversight forced this door open. Unresolved cases are a start. But complacency is our enemy. If you want the truth, demand it. 

'Full transparency on our government’s continued relationship and correspondence with the UAP phenomenon - nothing less.' 

Representative Tim Burchett, who has seen videos of craft that 'defy any reason,' has suggested that government agencies are using the excuse that UFO disclosure will 'disrupt religion' to withhold files from the public. 

Corbell said the files shown in his documentary touch on allegations involving non-human biologics, government UFO programs, intelligence assessments and unexplained aerial incidents that have remained largely hidden from public view. 

One of the files is named 'ImCon Originals,' he claimed, referring to Immaculate Constellation – which is described in a whistleblower report as a secret, unauthorized Pentagon program created to collect and hide UFO evidence.

Matt Brown, a former US national security official, came forward in 2025 with details about Immaculate Constellation, revealing the alleged secret program to Corbell.

Brown said he discovered references to the program in 2018 while reviewing classified materials at the Pentagon.

Corbell alleged that it is a special access program designed to quarantine high-quality UFO imagery and testimonies from congressional oversight. 

The file 'Pilfer & Pickpocket' also appears in the list, which Corbell has previously claimed are names of UFO crash retrieval programs. However, he stressed that he has not been able to confirm the details.

When asked why he does not release the files himself, Corbell told the Daily Mail that some of the information would cause a national security crisis.

But his 'number one reason' is that the government has made a promise of 'disclosure and transparency' to the American people. 'They deserve a chance to perform that function,' he said.

'Additionally,' Corbell continued, 'every time George and I obtain and release something, it puts sources at risk. Why do that when the government has said it will do it? We don't want to.'

The journalist has become a central player in the UFO disclosure movement, with his work bringing military and intelligence witnesses into the public eye and pressuring the US government into the disclosure process.

Corbell also told the Daily Mail that he personally provided officials with access to several of the UFO videos that were released to the public on May 22.

He did so in what he described as classified 'intel links' connected to hidden government servers, after unknown sources leaked the clips to him.

'Not just file names; if you put the underscores in, they're linked,' Corbell said, claiming the material led directly to classified systems that 'you and I can't access.'

While Corbell has released UFO videos that ended up in the Trump administration's file dump, he has championed other footage of unknown craft that was later explained or challenged by investigators, scientists and the military.

His comments come as the Trump administration has released hundreds of UFO-related records, a move Corbell said falls far short of addressing the questions that have fueled the disclosure movement for years. 

Corbell pointed to David Grusch's 2023 congressional testimony, in which the former Air Force intelligence officer alleged the government had spent decades recovering and studying craft of non-human origin and had obtained what he described as 'biologics' from some crash sites.

'Now, if that's true, and if you believe him, our government in parts has that information,' Corbell said. 'It is time to tell the American public the truth.'

Neither Corbell nor Grusch has publicly released evidence proving the existence of non-human intelligence.

A handout from the Department of War that they said shows a UAP near Japan

Grusch's testimony marked a turning point in the modern UFO disclosure movement, transforming what had long been considered fringe speculation into a topic debated openly on Capitol Hill.

He told lawmakers that he had interviewed numerous current and former government officials who claimed the US was operating secret programs dedicated to retrieving and studying unidentified craft.

His testimony prompted renewed calls for oversight and transparency from members of Congress on both sides of the aisle.

Several lawmakers have since argued that the government should release additional records related to UAPs.

Corbell said public interest in the issue continues to grow as more military personnel, intelligence officials and defense insiders come forward with accounts of encounters involving unexplained objects.

He argued that the administration's recent document releases have heightened expectations that more significant information could eventually emerge.

The Trump administration released the first batch of UFO files on May 8, with a second on May 22. 

They include military reports, FBI accounts and videos showing unexplained objects streaking across the sky. But rather than providing answers, the files have only deepened the mystery. 

Corbell suggested reporters may ultimately force the issue if officials fail to provide further disclosure. 'If they don't, journalism will,' he said.

He stressed he was not claiming to possess definitive proof of alien life or recovered extraterrestrial technology, but argued investigators have uncovered information that warrants further scrutiny.

'What I have obtained over the years is not definitive proof of the things you want,' he said. 'But it's a start. It's a good start.'

He added that disclosure should proceed in stages, beginning with government acknowledgment of alleged craft-retrieval and reverse-engineering programs.

From there, he said, officials should address claims involving 'biologics' before eventually answering what he called the next major question: whether there has ever been direct communication with a non-human intelligence.

'Have there been any agreements? Have there been any direct communications?' Corbell posited.

'After they begin with reverse engineering of craft, because we all know craft exists, biologics, because we're almost there, then the third step will be communications,' he declared.

'And I have evidence of all.'

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The Government Released UFO Files... But They're Hiding Something

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Glowing 'mother orb' launched swarm of mystery objects near secret US site, Pentagon files reveal

By STACY LIBERATORE, US SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR

A glowing 'mother orb' seen near a secret US site is at the center of a newly released Pentagon report.

The document was among a fresh tranche of UFO records released by the Trump administration on Friday, shedding new light on one of the government's still-unsolved aerial mysteries.

Written by the director of the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), the memo details a bizarre two-day encounter in October 2023 during which six federal agents reported witnessing luminous objects behaving in ways investigators have yet to explain.

AARO concluded that 40 percent of the reported activity remains unresolved after its initial analysis.

'The phenomena's most distinctive reported feature was the repeating nature of their pattern of behavior, in which a luminous orange "mother orb" appeared to produce smaller red "orbs," one after another, multiple times over a period of several hours,' reads the memo signed by AARO director Jon T Kosloski.

Witnesses said the glowing orange sphere would appear for one to two seconds, release a cluster of two to four smaller red lights and then vanish.

The smaller objects were reported to move horizontally, change altitude and, in at least one case, remain suspended above a ridgeline for hours before disappearing.

Despite reviewing radar data, flight records and other available information, investigators were unable to fully account for a significant portion of the sightings.

Pictured is an artistic impression of the "mother orb" releasing the smaller "orbs" as reported by the federal agents

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said in a Friday statement: 'The Department of War is in lockstep with President Trump to bring unprecedented transparency regarding our government’s understanding of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP).

'These files, hidden behind classifications, have long fueled justified speculation, and it’s time the American people see it for themselves. 

'This release of declassified documents demonstrates the Trump Administration’s earnest commitment to unprecedented transparency.'

READ MORE

• The UFO files the government won't ever release: I've read them all. They fear a full-blown national crisis and destruction of religious faith... but it's time for the REAL disclosure day. Here's what you deserve to know

While the new report does not provide a location of the incident, subsequent FBI interviews noted it took place over Cheyenne Mountain near Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Cheyenne Mountain Complex is a fortified underground bunker located in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Buried beneath 2,000 feet of granite.

It serves as the Alternate Command Center for North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and US Northern Command (USNORTHCOM), one of eleven unified combatant commands, tasked with protecting the continental US, Alaska, Canada, Mexico and the Bahamas.

The document noted that agents reported the phenomena as 'silent' and provided consistent witness testimonies to characterize their experiences.

While AARO was unable to resolve the case, it noted that the characteristics reported 'do not align with those of military aircraft exhaust.' 

The document was among a fresh tranche of UFO records released by the Trump administration on Friday, shedding new light on one of the government's still-unsolved aerial mysteries

It added that military aircraft were present at the time of the strange sighting, but the altitudes of the mysterious objects were far too high for standard exhaust to appear as orange orbs.

After excluding most explanations, AARO’s preliminary assessment is that unrecognized technology could account for up to 40 percent of the phenomena associated with this incident. 

This conclusion is based solely on witness narratives and the elimination of other hypotheses. It is not yet supported by technical data or physical evidence.

The analysis, however, noted that military aircraft in the area 'were equipped with, and actively deployed, infrared countermeasure flares as a component of a standard exercise.' 

'The reported morphology and behavior of these phenomena align with known characteristics of certain military infrared flares,' the report stated. 

That suggested that 'approximately 60 percent of reported activity is plausible attributable to military aircraft.' 

Consultations with Intelligence Community partners led AARO to assess the possibility of foreign intelligence activity as highly unlikely. 

Although analysts cannot completely rule out the use of entirely novel foreign collection platforms, the reported flight characteristics and kinematics of the object diverged significantly from those of any known adversary systems. 

AARO also consulted subject-matter experts on possible natural phenomena. One potential explanation examined was meteorological activity, but weather conditions at the time were inconsistent with rare events such as ball lightning or sprites. 

Continuing its detailed assessment of a reported UAP incident involving persistent red 'orbs,' the AARO has largely dismissed common environmental and celestial explanations.

AARO examined whether temperature inversions, refractive effects, or other atmospheric conditions could account for the sightings. 

Weather records indicated generally clear skies, seasonable temperatures, and typical light pollution levels for the area. Analysts concluded these conditions were unlikely to produce the reported physical or kinematic features. 

Investigators also evaluated misidentification of stars, planets, meteors, satellite flaring, or rocket launches. 

The diverse viewing angles of multiple witnesses made celestial misidentification improbable. 

While stationary 'loitering' behavior could theoretically align with stars or planets in rare cases, it remains unlikely. 

Attribution to meteors or satellite flares was ruled inconsistent with the reported persistence of at least one red orb for several hours. Bolides (bright meteors) typically show characteristic tails, which did not match the described “mother orbs” morphology.

AARO considers the reported features sufficiently anomalous to justify continued study. 

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While Steven Spielberg has created some of the best aliens in cinema, the 79–year–old director now claims he also knows a thing or two about real–life extraterrestrials.

In an interview promoting his latest sci–fi blockbuster, Disclosure Day, Mr Spielberg says he is certain that aliens have already visited our planet.

Speaking to CBS News, he said: 'I absolutely think that they have been here, and they are here. And who knows, maybe they've always been here.'

The director of Close Encounters of the Third Kind added that this view is 'based on the circumstantial evidence of everything that I've gathered throughout my whole life, everybody I've listened to and every documentary I've ever watched and all the testimonies in Congress that I've heard.'

Now, some scientists say there could be a kernel of truth behind Mr Spielberg's wacky claims.

Dr Jacco van Loon, an astrophysicist from Keele University, told the Daily Mail: 'It is a possibility.'

He added: 'If they visited a billion years ago, they would have encountered seas with microbial life, and bare land.

'While they may not have left artefacts on Earth, one interesting possibility that has been considered is that they may have left artefacts on the Moon or elsewhere in the Solar System, to monitor Earth or simply as waste.'

In an interview promoting his latest sci–fi blockbuster, Disclosure Day, Steven Spielberg says he is certain that aliens have already visited our planet

While it is widely considered likely that life exists somewhere in the universe, the biggest barrier to any advanced civilisation visiting Earth is the enormous distances between stars.

For many scientists, this is an insurmountable barrier to any chance of an alien civilisation travelling to Earth.

Dr Thomas Haworth, an astrophysicist from Queen Mary University, told the Daily Mail: 'We have a feeling that the term "astronomical" means large, but it's quite hard to convey just how large distances are in space.

'To get to the nearest known star with planets, Proxima Centauri, would take the Parker Solar Probe – the fastest spacecraft humans have launched – 6,500 years.

'Although I am sure that life is out there, the odds of life being on the planets next door are low. When we look to other planets, the distances and timescales just get larger and larger, making it harder and harder to travel.'

In science fiction, writers have found a way around this problem by introducing the concept of 'faster than light' travel through wormholes or other exotic technologies.

By jumping faster than the speed of light, alien civilisations would theoretically be able to reduce the vast distances between habitable worlds to manageable trips.

However, in the real world, these modes of transportation remain a total fantasy.

Scientists dispute Mr Spielberg's claims, pointing out that it would take over 6,500 years to reach Earth from Proxima Centauri (pictured), the nearest star with planets

Dr William Alston, an astronomer from University of Hertfordshire, told the Daily Mail: 'The speed of light appears to be the ultimate speed limit in the Universe.

'Nothing with mass can accelerate up to or beyond it, so even the most advanced spacecraft would take a long time to cross interstellar distances. This means that visiting other worlds is not just an engineering challenge, but limited by fundamental physics.'

The only way for an alien civilisation to visit our planet would be for extraterrestrials to settle in for a journey that could take thousands of years to complete.

Even for a civilisation with abundant resources, this would take colossal amounts of energy and resources while achieving very little.

Dr van Loon points out that this massive journey could be made a little easier by the relativistic effects which kick in as a spacecraft approaches near–light–speed.

'Time for the traveller then slows down, which means that they can get to their destination much quicker than someone left behind would see them move,' he says.

'The problem is that the traveller would lose connection with their home, since those left behind would age a lot more than they would.'

However, assuming that a civilisation didn't care about these consequences and had some way of extending their lives for the journey, that means it is at least somewhat theoretically plausible for an alien civilisation to travel to Earth.

The director of Disclosure Day (pictured) says that his UFO claims are 'based on the circumstantial evidence of everything that I've gathered throughout my whole life'

Where do scientists think are the most likely places to find alien life?

• Mars 
• TRAPPIST–1e
• K2–18b
• Kepler–62e and Kepler–62f
• Enceladus
• Titan 

The big problem for Spielberg is that there is no reason that they would, or any evidence to suggest that they have.

Professor Michael Garrett, a leading expert on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) from the University of Manchester, told the Daily Mail: 'Spielberg makes wonderful films, and Disclosure Day is a brilliant slice of cinema, but it's storytelling, not science.

'Earth is a beautiful little blue dot. But in cosmic terms, we are just one of hundreds of billions of planets in our own Milky Way Galaxy.

'The notion that aliens would single us out, cross trillions of miles of space, and then mostly buzz around airbases and farmers' fields rather than introducing themselves to a head of state is a bit far–fetched.'

Despite decades of investigation, scientists have yet to come up with any convincing proof for the existence of alien life.

Radio telescopes have failed to find 'technosignatures' of advanced civilisations, and the 'evidence' for the alien origins of UFO sightings is poor at best.

'If aliens had genuinely visited Earth, we'd have more than blurry video clips and bar–room anecdotes to work with,' says Professor Garrett.

Likewise, Professor Carol Oliver, of UNSW Sydney, told the Daily Mail: 'Steven Spielberg and other people have a need to not be alone.

Scientists point out that there is 'not a shred of credible evidence' for the existence of aliens, and that the world's radio telescopes have not managed to pick up a signal from another civilisation. Pictured: The Green Bank Observatory, West Virginia, USA

Scientists question why aliens would travel for thousands of years just to 'buzz around airbases and farmers' fields'. Pictured: A still from Disclosure Day

'But there is not a single shred of credible evidence that they [aliens] are visiting us now or have visited us in the past.'

Read More

• Steven Spielberg sparks Christian fury amid claims his new movie will destroy beliefs 

Professor Oliver says that people are 'undoubtedly' seeing lights in the sky and that UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) do need to be investigated.

However, she says that people should 'apply a little bit of critical thinking' when considering the possibility of aliens visiting Earth.

Even if a light in the sky is hard to explain right away, the impossible distances between the stars simply make almost any other non–alien explanation more likely.

Professor Oliver adds: 'You can't just simply give it an alien explanation, because you don't understand it.'

WHAT DID BUZZ ALDRIN SAY ABOUT HIS 'UFO ENCOUNTER'?

While UFO enthusiasts have long clung to Buzz Aldrin's story of a strange light appearing alongside his spacecraft in 1969, the Apollo 11 astronaut does not think what he saw was an alien.

During a 2014 Q&A on Reddit, he explained:

'On Apollo 11 in route to the Moon, I observed a light out the window that appeared to be moving alongside us. There were many explanations of what that could be, other than another spacecraft from another country or another world - it was either the rocket we had separated from, or the 4 panels that moved away when we extracted the lander from the rocket and we were nose to nose with the two spacecraft. 

'So in the close vicinity, moving away, were 4 panels. And i feel absolutely convinced that we were looking at the sun reflected off of one of these panels. Which one? I don't know. So technically, the definition could be "unidentified."

'We well understood exactly what that was. And when we returned, we debriefed and explained exactly what we had observed. 

'And I felt that this had been distributed to the outside world, the outside audience, and apparently it wasn't, and so many years later, I had the time in an interview to disclose these observations, on another country's television network. And the UFO people in the United States were very very angry with me, that i had not given them the information. It was not an alien. Extraordinary observations require extraordinary evidence. 

'That's what Carl Sagan said. There may be aliens in our Milky Way galaxy, and there are billions of other galaxies. The probability is almost CERTAIN that there is life somewhere in space. 

'It was not that remarkable, that special, that unusual, that life here on earth evolved gradually, slowly, to where we are today.

But the distances involved in where some evidence of life may be, they may be hundreds of light years away.'

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NASA's 'Son of Concorde' supersonic aircraft has broken the sound barrier for the first time, paving the way for ultra–fast air travel.

The $247 million jet, dubbed X–59, hit a top speed of Mach 1.1, or 713 miles per hour (1,150 km/h), during a test flight on Friday, June 5.

Test pilot Jim 'Clue' Less took off and landed from Edwards Air Force Base, California, soaring to 43,400 feet (13,200m) before setting the new speed record

While the flight lasted just 81 minutes, this is the first step towards supersonic flights from London to New York in under four hours since Concorde was retired.

However, the space agency has plans to push its experimental aeroplane even further.

NASA administrator Jared Isaacman says that X–59 will fly again and hit Mach 1.4, or 925 miles per hour (1,490 km/h), within 'the coming days'.

These flights will test whether the jet's unconventional design really does reduce the sonic boom to a quiet 'thump' as NASA hopes.

Mr Isaacman says: 'X–59 is getting ready for its quiet supersonic debut.'

NASA's 'Son of Concorde' supersonic jet (pictured) has broken the sound barrier for the first time, hitting a top speed of 713 miles per hour (1,150 km/h)

The X–59 has been designed to solve one of the big problems with supersonic flights, which is the intolerable volume of the deafening sonic boom.

As a jet moves through the sky, it pushes the air out of the way like a boat moving through water, creating ripples in the form of sound waves.

At supersonic speeds, the plane outruns this wake of sound waves, causing the ripples to bunch up and compress into a single massive shockwave.

That means supersonic jets, like the Concorde, are constantly trailing a wake of powerful shockwaves, which are heard as a 'boom' when the craft passes overhead.

Because these booms can be as loud as 110 decibels – similar to a loud rock concert – supersonic flights are generally banned over populated areas.

To solve this problem, NASA has been working to develop 'Quiet SuperSonic Technology (Quesst)' that would muffle the boom into a muted 'thump'.

The X–59 supersonic jet is the culmination of that effort, and should make supersonic flight quiet enough to pass over populated areas.

The aircraft has been developed by American aerospace firm Lockheed Martin's 'Skunk Works' division after being awarded the $247.5 million design contract by NASA in 2016.

Test pilot Jim 'Clue' Less took off and landed from Edwards Air Force Base, California, soaring to 43,400 feet (13,200m) before setting the new speed record. Pictured: The pilot's view from inside the cockpit 

X–59: Key specs 

• Manufacturer: Lockheed Martin
• Length: 99.7 feet (30 metres) 
• Wingspan: 29.7 feet (9.0 metres)
• Max. airspeed: 1,218 mph
• Program cost: $247.5m (£187.5m)
• First flight: October 28, 2025 

It features a radically redesigned geometry in which every feature is designed to diffuse and muffle the sonic boom.

The most obvious difference from a normal jet is the thin, tapered nose, which accounts for almost a third of the plane's entire length and is shaped to break up the shockwave.

The downside of this novel design is that the cockpit is located around halfway down the length of the vehicle and doesn't have any forward–facing windows.

Instead, the single pilot uses a system of cameras and augmented reality displays, known as the eXternal Vision System, to see out the front.

According to NASA, this reduces the volume of the shockwave heard at the ground to something between distant thunder and a car door shutting 20 feet (six metres) away. 

Mr Isaacman says: 'I'm grateful to the NASA team and Lockheed Martin Skunk Works for their help getting us to this point, and I hope this is the first of many collaborations as we rebuild NASA's X–plane portfolio.'

Since its first flight in October 2025, the Son of Concorde has already undergone dozens of increasingly demanding tests in a process known as 'envelope expansion'.

This first supersonic flight is just the latest milestone in that gradual process, taking NASA's quiet jet into its next phase of testing.

Part of the reason that Concorde was eventually discontinued was that the sonic boom produced by breaking the sound barrier could be extremely loud for people on the ground 

During the test, the experimental aircraft was chased by a supersonic F15 jet equipped with a probe to record the shockwave

During the test, the X–59 was monitored by a NASA F 15 chase plane, which flew nearby to monitor its progress.

The loud sonic boom from the F15 covered up the sound produced by the X–59, meaning that NASA couldn't be sure how quiet it was.

However, the chase jet is equipped with a specialised probe to take initial measurements of the X–59's shock waves.

Michael Kratsios, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, says: 'The X–59's first supersonic flight is a testament to America's enduring leadership in science, engineering.'

In the next few days, NASA will send the X–59 on its first 'mission conditions' flight, reaching a cruising speed of Mach 1.4 at 55,000 feet (16,764 metres).

While these flights will also be accompanied by a chase plane, it will be a major step towards testing the quiet sonic boom.

This test is important because those speeds and altitudes are what the X–59 will be tested at when it is allowed to fly over several US communities.

Finally, test pilots will push the jet to its absolute limit, reaching a top speed of Mach 1.6 at 60,000 feet – around twice the height and speed of a commercial airline.

According to NASA, the sonic thump produced by X–59 passing overhead will be quieter than the sound of a car door shutting 20 feet away 

The X–59's aerodynamic profile has been designed so that it breaks up the shockwave formed by passing the sound barrier and is much quieter in flight. Pictured: The sonic boom from a scale model of the aircraft during wind tunnel tests 

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After that flight, NASA will move into the next stage of testing, focusing on its sound profile in order to verify its quiet thump capability.

The plane will be flown over populated areas of the US to see how people perceive the thump of X–59 passing overhead.

NASA says that it will share this data with US and international regulators to 'help establish new data–driven noise standards to enable a future viable market for supersonic commercial flight over land'.

In the future, that could open the door to commercial supersonic flights that don't cause major inconveniences for those on the ground.

The history of Concorde  

Concorde was a turbojet–powered supersonic passenger jet that was operated from 1976 until 2003.

It had a maximum speed over twice the speed of sound at Mach 2.04 (1,354mph or 2,180k per hour at cruise altitude) and could seat 92 to 128 passengers.

It was first flown in 1969, but needed further tests to establish it as viable as a commercial aircraft. Concorde entered service in 1976.

It is one of only two supersonic transports to have been operated commercially. The other is the Soviet–built Tupolev Tu–144, which ran as a passenger aircraft only for a few years in the 1970s due to safety issues.

Concorde was the world's first supersonic airliner and operated for 27 years, but it was grounded in October 2003. Pictured is British Airways Concorde G–BOAB taking off with its landing gear still extended over the Cotswolds town of Fairford, Gloucestershire on July 20, 1996, during the annual RAF Fairford airshow

Concorde was jointly developed and manufactured by Aérospatiale and the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) under an Anglo–French treaty. Concorde's name, meaning harmony or union, reflected the cooperation on the project between the UK and France.   

Concorde was retired in 2003 due to a general downturn in the commercial aviation industry after its only crash in 2000, the September 11 attacks in 2001, and a decision by Airbus, the successor to Aérospatiale and BAC, to discontinue maintenance support. 

It wasn't the first plane to break the sound barrier, however; that achievement was managed by the Bell X–1, piloted by Chuck Yeager, in October 1947.

The legendary rocket engine–powered aircraft, designed and built in 1945, achieved a speed of 700 miles (1,127 kilometers) per hour.

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White UFO Over Salt Lake City, Utah USA June 15, 2026, UAP Paranormal Alien Sighting News.

Date of sighting: June 15, 2026

Location of sighting: Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

This report just in from my son in SLC, Utah. He states: "I was outside by my car holding up my sunglasses to clean off the lenses when I noticed these white objects in the sky." 

 

I have to say this is very similar to some of the Dept of War files dropped in the second file set. Often UFOs will shapeshift and even many smaller UFOs will unite into a group, but there is almost always a single UFO section that remains disconnected from the group, as you see in the video and photo. This my friends, is a genuine alien craft, not far from the famous Skin Walker Ranch too.

Scott C. Waring - UFO Sightings Daily

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

Ancient Humonoid-Cat Skull Found On Mars By Curiosity Rover, NASA Source, UFO UAP Sighting News.

Date of discovery: June 15, 2026 (Taiwan Time)

Location of discovery: Mars Sol 665 Curiosity rover

Source: 

• http://www.midnightplanets.com/web/MSL/image/00665/0665MR0028320040402094E01_DXXX.html

Now finding fossils on Mars in NASA photos is old hat for us UFO researchers, however this particular skull is unlike any I have ever found before. Its nose area is two full pieces of bone and its forehead area has four finger-like ridges going up. Its mouth has a strong thick jaw bone and has canine like long protruding teeth growing from top down, two...one on each side. 

 

Fossil life is some of the most indisputable evidence of alien life that one can find, the NASA source solidifies this proof.

 

I also found a carved tunnel object and a round fossil next to a leg fossil. 

Scott C. Waring - UFO Sightings Daily 

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

 

Date of discovery: June 15, 2026

Location of discovery: Mars Sol 664

Source: 

• http://www.midnightplanets.com/web/MSL/image/00664/0664MR0028240300402067E01_DXXX.html

I found these shell fossils in a NASA rover photo which is proof of ancient life and a past sea long ago. Such sea fossils can last millions of years before being broken down by nature. I have found many fossils, this coral like fossil is a rare one. 

 

Oh, and Midnightplanets website is an official lesser known site of NASA. 

Scott C. Waring - UFO Sightings Daily

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

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“As the unprecedented levels of interest in both this topic and the Trump administration’s historic transparency effort continue, WAR.GOV/UFO has received over 1.7 billion hits worldwide since the site’s launch on May 8, 2026,” read a statement provided by Assistant to the Secretary of War for Public Affairs and Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell.

“The Department of War and our agency partners are actively working on the next release of UAP files,” Parnell said.

However, as more videos and documents continue to surface, a fundamental question arises: what, if anything, do they reveal about UAP, and how the United States intelligence community collects and processes information about these objects, whatever their origins may be?

What the Latest PURSUE Release Reveals

Within the latest batch of files from what the Pentagon characterizes as the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE), a previously unreleased file from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) describes an unusual observation of an object that reportedly hovered above the Harare International Airport in Zimbabwe in 2008.

“Individuals debated if the sighting was an advanced reconnaissance device of a foreign government or of extraterrestrial origins,” a short description provided with the document states. Although no video or other supplemental data is provided, the written account that the document contains, which features partial redactions, states that observers described a “disc-like” object possessing a hollow center and “a series of rotating lights on the underside of the airframe.” As the lighting shifted colors, the object reportedly ascended quickly and was soon out of sight.

“Regardless of the origins,” the document states, the incident reportedly “resulted in the decision to place the Zimbabwe [redacted] on high alert.”

Another series of documents describes an observation of an object shaped like a “potato” that was observed near Colorado Springs in 2024.

Witnesses at the time described seeing “distinct edges” on the object, which “appeared to look painted in a creamy/whitish opalescent color.”

A digital rendering of an unresolved UAP Report from Colorado Springs in 2022

(Image Credit: U.S. Department of War).

“It was somewhat translucent with a slight shimmer,” the report states. “The object was made up of what can best be described as articulating fish scales or panels that were non-symmetrical, non-overlapping, and irregular shaped. The object itself was perfectly still but each panel on the object shifted in slow waves starting at different points of origin but at the same time.”

According to an assessment of the sighting by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, which currently leads the Pentagon’s investigations into UAP, “Analysis possibly indicates that the positioning on the sun in relation to Cheyenne Mountain would allow for backscattering of sunlight reflecting off snow-covered ground.”

“This reflection could illuminate low-level clouds in the vicinity,” according to the assessment, which was produced by one of AARO’s intelligence community (IC) partners, adding that such conditions “might account for the visibility of the object followed by its sudden disappearance.”

The report concedes that the analyst had “low confidence in this assessment” based on limited information made available about witnesses at the time, such as their individual field of view, as well as the level of cloud cover over the area at the time.

Another pair of documents describes what sounds like a very intriguing observation of an “intense bright light” seen hovering below the tree line near the observer’s backyard. Emerging from their vehicle, the witness observed a “strange light” that they estimated to be approximately one meter in diameter. The object was described as a “brilliant and beautiful” reddish color the observer had never seen before, adding that “inside the red sphere, at the center, there appeared to be what [redacted] described as a ‘white plasma sun’ about the size of a basketball.”

In this instance, the written accounts were not alone: a supplemental video indeed shows a pair of objects matching the description provided, which look suspiciously like candle balloons, also known as “sky lanterns,” drifting along with the breeze. Additionally, the footage bears a resemblance to a video released by an aviation safety advocacy group last year (and in fact, it may be the same video), which was also quickly assessed to have been sky lanterns, rather than anomalous UAP “orbs.”

In short, the latest Pentagon releases—as with most other recent releases of government data related to UAP—feature some interesting stories, though the majority of the “new” data remains underwhelming.

Screen capture from the Pentagon UAP video titled DOW-UAP-PR061, “Spherical UAP [CALLSIGN] 2021/04/12 vid 0”, where the object’s shadow can be discerned against the nearby landscape (to the left of the small white object, seen just above and to the right of the center of the frame

(Image Credit: U.S. Department of War).

The most intriguing aspect of this behavior is the object’s apparent movement into what we might interpret as a position of concealment. In doing so, the object not only appears to “hide,” but it also demonstrates an obvious change in direction that is suggestive of controlled motion. This is significant for a few reasons: one is that in many purported UAP videos, a phenomenon known as the parallax effect can (and often does) lead to an optical illusion where a slow-moving or even stationary object can have the appearance of moving. This illusion is caused by differences in relative speed between objects closer to the camera and those further distant, causing any closer objects to appear to be moving faster than those in the background (a good explainer on parallax effect and its relationship to UAP sightings can be read here, made available at the website of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office).

In the case of the “Spherical UAP” featured in the video from the second PURSUE release, perhaps some degree of motion parallax cannot be ruled out. However, the object’s descent just before changing direction and entering the rugged portion of terrain cast in shadow appears to clearly demonstrate in this case that the object is engaged in movement, which equally appears to convey intelligent control. Finally, an interpretation that the object may be taking a position of concealment, if correct, may indicate that the object and/or its operators had been aware that it was being observed.

Does anything conveyed in this video offer proof of extraterrestrial technology? Absolutely not. Are there any obvious signs of extraordinary capabilities being demonstrated by this object? No, there aren’t. What this video does demonstrate, however, is footage of an object that appears to be engaged in behaviors that clearly show movement beyond the capabilities of most simple balloons.

In the case of the DOW-UAP-PR061, “Spherical UAP [CALLSIGN] 2021/04/12 vid 0” footage, the object not only demonstrates changes in its direction of motion, but also appears to conceal itself. Obviously, a better interpretation than “balloon” in this instance might be some kind of unmanned aerial system, although what limited information the footage conveys is simply too indistinct to be able to tell. Altogether, it simply remains “unidentified anomalous phenomena” in the purest sense: some kind of object engaging in what appears to be controlled flight, while not exhibiting any otherwise extraordinary capabilities.

However, all of this raises another important question about UAP reports: why do we always have to assume that an object must display “otherworldly” or otherwise extraordinary capabilities for it to qualify as a “genuine” UAP?

The Problem of Conditioning

Another intriguing phenomenon related to the recent release of UAP information by the Pentagon involves the similarity in responses to these releases from both UAP advocates and UAP skeptics.

Some proponents of genuine anomalous UAP have expressed frustration over the Department of War’s release of several dozens of videos, all of which all fail to reveal any “classic” UFO shapes like flying saucers or giant black triangles, nor any confirmation of extraterrestrial technologies detailed in the troves of formerly classified documents included with the releases.

Meanwhile, skeptics essentially argue the same thing: so far, these videos show nothing particularly remarkable, and clearly fail to prove that extraterrestrials have visited Earth.

In short, the fundamental premise of most “believers” and “skeptics” appears to be the same: “UAPs either must represent evidence of extraterrestrials, or else they are unimportant.”

This premise fails to acknowledge several important issues, such as 1) that many ideas about how UAP are supposed to look and behave are based on presumptions about how we expect any technologies produced by extraterrestrials advanced enough to traverse interstellar distances would appear to us, 2) that UAP could still represent a genuine mystery, even if they aren’t evidence of extraterrestrial technologies, and 3) that even if most UAP turned out to be technologies of earthly origin, they could still represent a security concern, and hence warrant U.S. government investigation.

Clearly, it should be acknowledged that there is also witness testimony—some of it quite compelling—that describes unusual characteristics associated with UAP, such as extreme acceleration, erratic movement, exceptional agility/maneuverability, environmental effects, and other capabilities which could only be characterized as “anomalous.” Such descriptions are also part of what informs many of our expectations about how UAPs are supposed to behave. However, it is important to recognize that just because such eyewitness descriptions exist, it does not necessarily mean that we can—or should—attribute such capabilities to all UAP observations, and thereby use such presumptions as a gauge for their credibility on a case-by-case basis.

How the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office Characterizes UAP

A careful review of resources made available by the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) helps to shed further light on the attributes of what it characterizes as UAP.

A page dedicated to education and resources at AARO’s website lists a small collection of studies detailing current state-of-the-art technologies related to spherical drones, novel propulsion systems, and other technologies, which it says represent “advanced propulsion systems that are consistent with UAP observations.” The obvious implication of providing such resources involves the consideration that at least some UAP appear to operate in ways consistent with known earthly technologies, albeit ones that are still in their emergent stages.

AARO also gives us the following definition of UAP, according to an AARO Mission Brief featured at its website: “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) are sources of anomalous detections in one or more domains (i.e., airborne, seaborne, spaceborne, and/or transmedium) that are not yet attributable to known actors and that demonstrate behaviors that are not readily understood by sensors or observers.”

The brief goes on to define “anomalous detections” as “phenomena appearing to demonstrate capabilities or material properties exceeding the known state-of-the-art,” adding that UAP “may consist of one or more objects and may persist over an extended period,” are mainly “attributable to domain-awareness gaps, and in at least some cases “may represent advanced capabilities operating in domain awareness gaps.”

The AARO Mission Brief also separates the misidentification of known objects such as balloons and drones, as well as developmental or experimental platforms, from “genuine” UAP, which it clearly defines as AARO’s designated mission area.

According to past information produced by AARO under the tenure of its inaugural director, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, typically reported UAP characteristics include appearances of generally round objects roughly 1-4 meters in size, possessing white, silver, or translucent coloration. Performance altitudes, on average, fall within 10,000 to 30,000 feet, and velocities of the objects range from hovering in a stationary position to movement at speeds of up to Mach 2 (1534.54 miles per hour).

Above: Table featuring commonly attributed UAP characteristics based on AARO data available in 2023 (Image Credit: U.S. Department of War/All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office).

Despite such capabilities, no kind of thermal exhaust has been associated with these objects, and their propulsion systems remain unknown. Additional signatures associated with such genuinely anomalous UAP, according to AARO, include “intermittent, X-Band (8-12 GHz)” radar, as well as radio frequency emissions in the 1-3 GHz and 8-12 GHZ ranges. While no thermal exhaust evidencing propulsion is evident, intermittent shortwave infrared and medium-wave infrared thermal signatures are occasionally detectable.

“That’s what we’re looking for and trying to understand what that is,” Kirkpatrick told U.S. Senators during an April 2023 hearing that first revealed the AARO technical data described above.

Given the specificity of such technical information (all of which, as cited above, relates to AARO materials produced in 2023 during its early period in operation), one must wonder how such details could be derived from any of the videos or other materials the Department of War has released under the recent PURSUE initiative. The obvious implication is that the data described above must have other, better-quality sources, which have not yet been released by AARO or the Department of War.

If it ends up being true that additional, higher-quality UAP data exists in U.S. government holdings—data from which AARO’s own technical attributes for genuinely “anomalous” UAP are derived—it therefore stands to reason that the recent batches of imagery fall significantly short of being the “best data” that has been obtained about these objects. Still, some of the videos, such as DOW-UAP-PR061 (described earlier in this article), nonetheless appear to match the so-called “target package” for genuine UAP first characterized by Kirkpatrick in 2023, even if they aren’t the most astonishing UAP videos in existence. Again, we should consider the conditioning outlined earlier, which has helped to encourage the public’s never-ending expectation for “extraordinary” revelations, most of which end up falling flat once they do finally come to light.

The bigger questions, for now, are whether such examples of higher-quality UAP data do indeed exist, and if so, whether they will be made public in any future releases.

“We are collecting as much data as possible, following the data where it leads, and sharing our findings whenever possible,” AARO states on its website. “We will not rush to conclusions in our analysis. In many cases, observed phenomena are classified as ‘unidentified’ simply because sensors were not able to collect enough information to make a positive attribution.”

Arguably, if there are better quality UAP materials in AARO’s holdings, there are probably very reasonable considerations for why that information has not yet been released, which may include uncertainty about whether some data could involve potentially sensitive information about experimental U.S. technologies or those of foreign adversaries, the release of which could have implications that, for now, may warrant secrecy.

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

A group of hikers were trekking through the mountains of Chile when they noticed a brilliant light shimmering in the distance high above the peaks. 

They quickly grabbed their cameras and began recording. The footage appears to show a triangular object surrounded by a strange energy field, possibly magnetic or plasma-like in nature, emitting an intense light that flickers and shimmers in the sky. 

Some skeptics suggest the object could simply be sunlight reflecting off something on the ground. However, the footage appears to show it hovering at a considerable altitude above the mountains. Others argue that the triangular shape is not the object's true form at all, but rather the result of the camera being out of focus, causing the shape of the camera's aperture to become visible. 

To this day, it remains unclear what was captured on camera. Was it a secret piece of advanced technology, a rare atmospheric phenomenon, an out-of-focus optical effect, or something far more mysterious?

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

The 20 best Alien & UFO documentaries for those who want to believe and to freak You out tonight

Story by Katie Rife, Kevin Jacobsen

After seeing Steven Spielberg's "Disclosure Day," check out these real-life accounts of strange aerial sightings.

What is it about UFOs that we humans find so fascinating? Is it the desire to know that there may be life beyond our planet? Is there something about these flying objects being unidentified that makes us feel like amateur detectives? Is it the conspiracy element that drives us to seek answers that the government may be covering up?

No matter what drives our interest, it's the intangible mystery of it all that connects UFO enthusiasts. For decades, documentarians have been intrigued by stories of UFO sightings, from centuries-spanning intros to the subject like UFOs: The Secret History (2010), to character-driven pieces such as Curse of the Man Who Sees UFOs (2016), to the prolific works of James Fox.

Ahead, we're looking at some of the best UFO documentaries that explore what may be out there, for those of us who want to believe.

1. Ariel Phenomenon (2022)

Director Randall Nickerson spent more than a decade gathering material for this documentary, which tells the story of a massive otherworldly sighting and the psychological effects of not being believed. On Sept. 16, 1994, 60 children claimed they saw a UFO on their school grounds in rural Zimbabwe; their accounts were dismissed, but the group is still sticking to their story nearly 30 years later. Ariel Phenomenon follows one of those witnesses as she returns to the site of the event as an adult, bringing in a BBC reporter and a Harvard professor to corroborate her story — and those of her classmates — for the first time. —Katie Rife

• Where to watch Ariel Phenomenon: Amazon Prime Video (to buy)

2. Curse of the Man Who Sees UFOs (2016)

If the title of this documentary isn't enough to sell you on it, the highly entertaining story therein surely will. The cursed man who sees UFOs is Christo Roppolo, an eccentric Californian who claims to have videotaped multiple sightings over the years. Director Justin Gaar joins him on various pursuits to capture more footage, and he (and most viewers) find it impossible not to be charmed by Roppolo's enthusiasm. As the film shifts to a more poignant meditation on Roppolo's life beyond his hunt for aliens, Gaar shows how investigating the human observer is just as fascinating as what they observe. —Kevin Jacobsen

• Where to watch Curse of the Man Who Sees UFOs: Tubi

3. I Know What I Saw (2009)

James Fox is a mainstay of the UFO sighting scene, and his film for the History Channel is considered one of the most thorough and well-researched documentaries on the “nuts and bolts” side of extraterrestrial research. Fox’s focus here is on the link between the U.S. military and the UFO phenomenon: What do they know, how long have they known it, and why aren’t they sharing this information with the public? His approach is straightforward and fact-based, utilizing footage from congressional hearings and press conferences, along with interviews with retired military and government officials, to lend an air of legitimacy to the subject. —K.R.

• Where to watch I Know What I Saw: Amazon Prime Video

4. Love & Saucers (2017)

David Huggins, a New Jersey-based artist who claims to have had a consensual sexual relationship with a female alien that lasted for several years, could be nothing more than a joke. What makes this documentary about Huggins so good, though, is that it doesn’t treat him as one, instead using his story as a jumping-off point into an earnest exploration of the nature of belief and, indeed, of reality itself. Sequences of Huggins explaining his artwork — a series of paintings depicting his encounters that numbers in the hundreds — to skeptical gallery-hoppers skillfully strike a tricky tonal balance, and the addition of a religious studies professor who compares Huggins’ experiences to those of medieval saints brings a fresh, fascinating perspective. —K.R.

• Where to watch Love & Saucers: Fandango at Home

5.  Mirage Men (2013)

This provocative documentary, based on the book of the same name by Mark Pilkington and John Lundberg, presents a radical alternative theory of UFOs: that they’re all lies. What the directors posit is that, 60 years ago, the U.S. military deliberately concocted the extraterrestrial phenomenon as a way to distract the public from classified weapons research, and that the government has been manipulating belief in aliens ever since. Interviews with former members of the AFOSI (Air Force Office of Special Investigations) officers support Pilkington and Lundberg’s case, and the film has a spooky aura that makes you feel as if you’re being watched. But by whom? —K.R.

• Where to watch Mirage Men: Tubi

6. Moment of Contact (2022)

Another documentary investigation of a global extraterrestrial event, this film focuses on the Varginha UFO Incident, which began in the winter of 1996 when three teenage girls saw a four-foot-tall creature with a huge head and red eyes they described as “the devil” in Varginha, Brazil. Things get even weirder from there as documentarian James Fox shines a light on a lesser-known example of a so-called UFO “flap” in his deep-dive, interview-based style. —K.R.

• Where to watch Moment of Contact: Tubi

7. Out of the Blue (2003)

Billing itself as “the definitive investigation of the UFO phenomenon,” this 2003 film was originally produced for the Sci-Fi Channel, and its reputation has only grown in the years since its release. It also marked the directorial debut of James Fox, a name that appears multiple times on this list. Fans praise the documentary for the depth of its research and its level-headed approach to what can be a very out-there topic. It’s convinced of the existence of UFOs, and argues this point passionately, which was a risky stance to take 20-plus years ago — but, given revelations since, it’s a stance that’s aged as well as the documentary itself. —K.R.

• Where to watch Out of the Blue: Amazon Prime Video

8. The Phenomenon (2020)

Documentarian and UFO expert James Fox’s 2020 follow-up to I Know What I Saw incorporates new information that’s come to light in the decade since that previous film’s release, creating an informative overview of what we know about what the U.S. government knows about UFOs (or, to use the more official term, UAPs — unidentified anomalous phenomena). The documentary covers revelations from The New York Times’ bombshell 2017 investigation into the Pentagon’s clandestine UFO program, pairing it with new evidence for a movie that comes with the endorsement of both Jacques Vallée (a scientist/UFOlogist) and now-deceased U.S. Senator Harry Reid. —K.R.

• Where to watch The Phenomenon: Amazon Prime Video

9. UFOs: The Secret History (2010)

If you're looking for a primer on the history of unidentified flying objects and our cultural understanding of them, this is where to start. Director David Cherniack doesn't resort to sensationalist storytelling; rather, he treats the subject with earnest sincerity as we learn about 19th-century sightings, explore what might really have happened in Roswell, and hear modern-day accounts. Bolstered by expert analysis, the film provides a fascinating look into governmental cover-ups over the years and humanity's natural curiosity for what may be out there. —K.J.

• Where to watch UFOs: The Secret History: Amazon Prime Video

10. Unacknowledged (2017)

UFOlogist Steven M. Greer is the founder of the Disclosure Project, a group that advocates for classified information on extraterrestrials to be made available to the public. This crowdfunded 2017 documentary is part of that mission, collecting theories and stories from the early-‘60s through the present day that all point toward a government cover-up of the truth about aliens. Like I Know What I Saw, this film relies heavily on interviews with retired military personnel to give it credibility, along with archival footage to bolster Greer’s convincing case. —K.R.

• Where to watch Unacknowledged: Amazon Prime Video

11. Unsolved Mysteries, "Something in the Sky" (2022)

The long-running newsmagazine show has performed dozens of investigations into extraterrestrial encounters, but this 2022 episode, part of the revival series on Netflix, is among the best. Its focus is on the UFO sightings that occurred all over West Michigan in 1994, where multiple people — including a National Weather Service meteorologist — saw what they described as clusters of lights flying over Lake Michigan before abruptly disappearing. This episode, the second episode of Volume 3, is structured around first-person interviews, and while it offers no clear answers, it’s pretty darn compelling. —K.R.

• Where to watch Unsolved Mysteries: Netflix

12. Witness of Another World (2018)

Like Ariel Phenomenon and Love & Saucers, this UFO documentary from director Alan Stivelman focuses on the human consequences of extraterrestrial contact. The film follows Juan, an Argentinian gaucho whose life was so shattered by an alien encounter that he still lives as a hermit and refuses to talk about what happened to him even 30 years later. Astronomer and UFOlogist Jacques Vallée appears to shed additional light on Juan’s story, and dramatic effects sequences dramatize the emotional impact of his close encounter. —K.R.

• Where to watch Witness of Another World: Fandango at Home (to rent)

13. The Age of Disclosure  (2026)

What makes The Age of Disclosure so unique is that it’s told from the perspective of government and military officials. Instead of interviewing the usual crackpot weirdos that so many UFO documentaries do, The Age of Disclosure features interviews with senators like Kirsten Gillibrand, ex-CIA officials, Navy pilots, and former NORAD director James D. Cobb. 

The major point that The Age of Disclosure wants to reveal is how deep the US government and military truly are in the search for aliens and UFO technology, and how desperate both are to keep American citizens in the dark. Whether it’s to protect secret info from foreign governments or to keep society from devolving into panic, the documentary claims there is a lot that the average person doesn’t know. It’s a seriously compelling and shocking documentary purely because of the number of big-name figures it was able to attract. If you liked the conspiracy aspect of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), you’ll love the alleged real conspiracies happening in our government right now that The Age of Disclosure uncovers. 

14. The Manhattan Alien Abduction ( 2024 )

The three-part docuseries The Manhattan Alien Abduction tells the wild story of Linda Napolitano, who claims that in 1989 aliens abducted her in the middle of Manhattan. The story also purports that dozens of witnesses have stepped forward to corroborate her claims. 

But there are cracks in the tale, like how none of the witnesses have ever publicly identified themselves, and one woman who claims to know for certain that Napolitano is making it all up. That makes this Netflix docuseries so gripping because it isn’t just an abduction story; it also examines whether there’s a potential hoax and scam behind it all. If you loved Hulu’s crypto-turned-cartel docuseries Sasquatch (2021), you’re going to love all the questions, conflicts, and mysteries in The Manhattan Alien Abduction.

15. The Mothman of Point Pleasant ( 2017 )

The Mothman is one of the wildest and strangest stories in American history. Here are the facts: Starting in late 1966, in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, dozens of locals started seeing a strange winged creature. Soon after, UFO sightings spiked, residents claimed ominous men in black visited them, and some even got phone calls from a strange man who identified himself as Indrid Cold. The hysteria continued to grow for a year until December 1967, when the Silver Bridge connecting Point Pleasant to Gallipolis, Ohio, collapsed into the river below, killing 46 people, all while the Mothman allegedly flew overhead. 

Was the Mothman a cryptid, an alien, or just a sandhill crane? Why so many UFO sightings? Who were the men in black? Were they from the government or aliens themselves? Or was the entire thing a case of mass hysteria? If so, how could it all culminate in a very real disaster? Nobody knows for sure, but everyone has theories. For a complete timeline of events, including interviews with locals, newspaper transcripts, and more, The Mothman of Point Pleasant is a great documentary to watch. If you loved 2002’s The Mothman Prophecies, check out this doc to discover the true story that inspired it. 

16. The Program ( 2024 )

In 2017, The New York Times broke a story about how the US government had secretly been looking into the possibilities of UFOs. Since then, we’ve found ourselves in a new era of alien obsession and ufology. The main difference is that this time, members of Congress and the military are also asking these questions. 

The Program is a documentary about the alleged government/military cover-up of UFOs and alien encounters. It shows real footage from congressional hearings with people who claim to have in-depth knowledge that, until recently, was purposefully being suppressed. For fans who loved The Age of Disclosure and its deep dive into the government’s potential knowledge of UFOs, The Program will be an engrossing watch you don’t want to miss. 

17. Travis: The True Story of Travis Walton  ( 2015 )

One of the most famous alien abduction stories ever is that of Travis Walton. In 1975, he and a group of workers were driving through the forest when they reported a bright light in the sky. Walton allegedly ran toward the light and was beamed up. He then went missing for six days before returning to society and giving an in-depth abduction story that involved alien probing and more. His story became the basis for the 1993 film Fire in the Sky. 

Travis: The Trust Story of Travis Walton pulls back the Hollywood glamour and presents the timeline of events told by Walton himself, as well as numerous paranormal researchers and skeptics. It also dives into the mental struggles that Walton has had throughout his life, dealing with the fame and scrutiny that came with his story. If you’re a fan of Fire in the Sky, you’ll want to check out the true story behind it. 

18. The Rendlesham UFO: The British Roswell (2025 )

In 1980, a well-documented UFO sighting happened at the RAF Woodbridge base in England’s Rendlesham Forest. Military personnel reported seeing strange lights in the forest, and when they investigated, it turned out to be a UFO. The official report from the RAF says the lights were able to break apart and fly off in different directions, and the areas they touched tested positive for radiation. 

The Rendlesham UFO - The British Roswell sees a group of investigators travel to the forest to commune with whatever entity caused the ordeal. The film mixes mysticism with ufology to create a unique, new-age alien documentary unlike any other. For enthusiasts who believe that UFOs and metaphysics are intertwined, this is a great watch. 

19. The Phoenix Lights - Beyond Top Secret - Expanded and Updated (2018 )

One of the most well-documented UFO encounters ever happened in 1997 over Phoenix, Arizona. For almost two hours, residents of Phoenix saw strange glowing orbs in the sky, all moving synchronously. With dozens of eye-witness videos and thousands of reports made to the police (including one by Kurt Russell), there’s no denying that something was over the Arizona skies that night. 

Even wilder, there’s still no formal explanation for the events. Skeptics point to the large number of Air Force bases near Phoenix and say it could have been the Air Force flying jets… but the military has never said it was flying jets that evening, especially completely silent ones (and if you live near an Air Force base like me, you know how loud fighter jets are). For a documentary that explores one of the wildest mass UFO sightings in human history, you need to watch The Phoenix Lights - Beyond Top Secret. If you love the historical inspiration behind the film Battle: Los Angeles (2011), but want something more rooted in history, this documentary will definitely make your jaw drop.

20. Moment of Contact ( 2022 )

In 1996, an alleged alien encounter happened in Varginha, Brazil, where a group of girls said they spotted some kind of injured creature, and shortly after, witnessed tons of military personnel throughout the town. Skeptics say it was all a misunderstanding and that the girls likely saw a disabled homeless man covered in dirt. But believers say it’s the biggest alien cover-up since Roswell. 

Moment of Contact sheds light on this story and follows a team of filmmakers as they head to Brazil and search for answers. If you’ve ever seen The Cove (2009) and love the way it’s filmed like a real movie following the documentary crew on their journey, you’ll enjoy the similar vibe of Moment of Contact. Even for non-believers, it’s a fun adventure to watch the crew search for clues and information from the infamous 1996 event. 

{ https://ew.com/ }

Secret NASA audio captures 'alien base' comment during moon mission debrief

By CHRIS MELORE, US DEPUTY SCIENCE EDITOR

A third batch of UFO files was released by the Pentagon on Friday morning.

The document drop included recorded NASA briefings after Apollo 16, which referred to an 'alien starbase' on the dark side of the moon. The comments were not included in the official transcript from the 1972 mission.

Among the most bizarre releases was a 1958 CIA memorandum discussing a phone conversation with a scientist regarding concerns about a destroyed 'space message and its transmitter.'

The scientist, Dr Leon Davidson, was a chemical engineer who worked on the Manhattan Project and at Los Alamos, and studied UFOs.

The third set of documents was quietly uploaded to the Department of War's website on the same day as the release of the Hollywood blockbuster Disclosure Day.

According to the Pentagon, there have been 'unprecedented levels of interest' in the UFO files, with the website receiving more than 1.7 billion hits worldwide since it launched in May.

The latest trove adds dozens of documents, photographs and videos to the government's rapidly expanding public archive of unexplained sightings.

Follow along for the latest updates.

20:42

NASA audio hidden for decades reveals discussion about an 'alien base' on the moon

Audio from a secret NASA meeting following the Apollo 16 mission has been released as part of the third batch of UFO files, revealing a discussion about a possible 'alien base' on the moon.

Apollo 16 flew from April 16 to April 27, 1972, and saw astronauts John Young and Charles Duke become the first humans to explore the moon's rugged highlands while Thomas 'Ken' Mattingly remained in lunar orbit.

Buried within the 55-minute discussion is a brief exchange about unusual gravity readings, laser measurements and unexplained anomalies detected on the moon's far side.

The speakers focus on what one participant describes as a 'great big hole' near the Van de Graaff crater, a distinctive lunar formation known for unusual magnetic and geochemical characteristics.

'In the backside of the moon around Fendi graph, that's where we get our big hole,' one speaker says.

The discussion then takes an unexpected turn.

'It could be an alien star base or something. Anyway, the next slide shows the front side of the moon.'

The remark appears amid a broader technical discussion of lunar data and anomalies, although the context of the comment remains unclear from the audio alone.

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21:55

UFO over airport in Zimbabwe triggered CIA alarm

A newly released CIA cable shows that intelligence assets in Zimbabwe were placed on high alert after a UFO was reported hovering over the country's main airport in the summer of 2008.

The document details an incident that unfolded on July 2 and drew the attention of both US intelligence and military officials.

According to the cable, the object 'hovered at an undetermined altitude directly over the Harare airport,' prompting concerns that it could represent hostile foreign activity.

At one point during observation, ‘beams’ were observed emanating from the object,' read the cable.

It also quoted witnesses describing the UFO as 'disc-like in shape with a hollow center, [with] a series of rotating lights on the underside of the airframe.'

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19:23

Navy issued urgent message about 'flying discs,' warning new wave is 'imminent'

A newly released memo from the US Navy revealed how the military branch was issuing urgent orders after spotting a wave of 'flying discs' in 1948.

In a three-page memo, the Navy issued instructions asking all of its personnel, commands and offices to carefully observe and immediately report any sightings of 'flying discs' - a term at the time for UFOs.

The order was given after a large number of reports of strange disc-shaped objects in the sky, pushing the military to collect all reliable information to figure out what they were.

Moreover, the memo revealed how the Air Force warned the Navy that those UFO sightings were the first of many the US believed were about to take place.

'The Director of Intelligence, US Air Force has informed the Navy Department that a cycle of reappearance of "Flying Discs" is becoming apparent, and that the beginning of a new interval is imminent.'

In recent years, Naval personnel have testified to seeing UFOs not only in the skies above Earth's oceans, but also diving into the sea at extreme speed without disrupting their course - something that is believed to still be beyond human capabilities today.

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17:54

'Plasma sun' orbs seen in American's backyard

A 2026 FBI report revealed an interview with a homeowner in the Northeastern US who had a striking sighting one evening around 9.15pm local time.

While pulling into his driveway in July 2025, the man noticed a bright red glowing orb about three feet in diameter hovering silently below the tree line in his backyard.

Inside the red sphere was a brilliant white 'plasma sun' the size of a basketball.

His spouse, watching from inside on their security camera, also saw the orb, according to the FBI.

A second identical red orb soon appeared above the house. The couple watched as both orbs moved together, changed direction and flew westward above the trees.

They eventually merged into what looked like a single orb before disappearing. The witness and his spouse recorded a short video of the orbs as they moved away, which was included in the latest Pentagon file dump on Friday.

A few weeks later, the witness claimed to have seen several smaller white orbs flying higher overhead from west to east.

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17:24

US law enforcement officers have shocking encounter with UFO orbs

A group of trained federal agents described encountering glowing orbs that 'hatched' red lights, silent hovering objects that mimicked vehicles and intelligent light formations seen flying over a remote portion of the western US over two nights in October 2023.

The special agents reported seeing glowing orange orbs near hills or ridgelines. They hovered motionless, pulsed between bright orange and clear and sometimes moved quickly across the sky.

Some orbs suddenly released three to four smaller red lights that flew out in straight lines, in vertical or clustered formations or downward like flares.

The agents also saw rows or clusters of red lights, sometimes in groups of nine or more, hovering in perfect patterns like squares over airfields or ridgelines.

The officers also described the UFOs imitating car headlights or taillights on the road ahead. When approached, the 'vehicles' hovered silently 15 to 20 feet off the ground without touching the dirt or kicking up dust, then drifted away over rough terrain.

While the reports submitted to the Pentagon did not reveal if pictures or videos of the incidents were taken, artist recreations were attached to the latest files.

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16:46

'Potato' shaped UFO seen over key military facility

A witness interview in Friday's UFO files revealed an encounter with a 'potato' shaped craft over one of America's more highly secure underground military facilities.

The 2024 FBI report documented the sighting by a US Army intelligence officer and four other members of his unit.

In February 2022, as they left their office building in Colorado Springs, they saw the strange UFO hovering over the Cheyenne Mountains.

The object was described as creamy or whitish, somewhat translucent with a slight shimmer and made of irregular, non-overlapping panels like 'articulating fish scales.'

The UFO stayed perfectly still, but the panels on its surface shifted slowly in waves. After about two minutes, the object suddenly vanished as if it cloaked itself in mid air.

Cheyenne Mountain is a heavily protected underground military complex in Colorado. It is famous for being the former home of NORAD, North American Aerospace Defense Command.

Built deep inside the mountain during the Cold War, it was designed to survive a nuclear attack and continuously monitor North American airspace for missiles, aircraft and space threats.

The report included an artist's impression of the incident.

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15:51

'Plasma-like sphere' spotted hovering above a pond in the US

One video released on Friday shows what officials described as a 'plasma-like sphere' hovering above a pond at an undisclosed location in the US, appearing to shift shape and brightness as it moved.

15:48

Trump releases THIRD bombshell tranche of UFO files

The Trump administration has released a third tranche of previously classified UAP files, adding dozens of new documents, photographs and videos to the government's rapidly expanding archive of unexplained sightings.

The materials were quietly uploaded to the Department of War's website on Friday morning and include a series of cases that investigators were unable to definitively explain, leaving the nature of the phenomena unresolved.

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Trump releases THIRD bombshell tranche of UFO files

The Trump administration on Friday opened another chapter in its UFO disclosure campaign, releasing a third wave of previously hidden files.

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15:46

CIA destroyed a 'message from space'

A one-page memo in the third tranche of UFO files released on Friday revealed a 1958 phone conversation between the CIA and a scientist about an alleged 'space message' which had been destroyed after its reception on Earth.

The scientist, Dr Leon Davidson, was a chemical engineer and UFO researcher who worked on the Manhattan Project, the mission to create the world's first atomic bomb in World War II.

The memo stated that Davidson was told by the CIA that the agency 'cannot resolve his problem concerning the space message and its transmitter because records on the matter have been destroyed by the evaluating agency.'

The memo then acknowledged that two agents from the CIA had been in contact with Davidson before the scientist reached out to the agency regarding the mysterious transmission.

The memo admitted that agents 'Walker and Skakich' attempted to conceal their identity from Davidson while speaking to him about the message from space.

'Referenced telephone conversation disclosed that there is nothing in the record to show that Davidson knew he was dealing with the Agency in his contacts with Walker and Skakich, that in fact, an effort had been made to to conceal their CIA identity from him.'

'But the answer was hardly fair to Davidson, and one not likely to be fully accepted by him,' the memo continued, noting that Davidson was given no answers on how or why the transmission was destroyed.

It is unclear when and where Davidson allegedly received his message from space.

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UFO leakers expose disturbing government tactics used to keep America's alien cover-up a secret

By STACY LIBERATORE, US SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR

Americans have been told that anyone with knowledge of secret UFO programs should come forward.

Members of Congress have urged witnesses to testify, government agencies have established official reporting channels and advocacy groups have promised support and protection. Public interest in UFOs has surged to levels not seen in decades.

Yet behind the growing push for disclosure, a very different story is emerging from the people who say they answered the call to step forward.

A trio of whistleblowers and witnesses recently took the stage at Contact in the Desert, the world's largest UFO-themed gathering, claiming they have paid a devastating personal price for sharing what they know.

Air Force veteran Dylan Borland, who testified before Congress last year about encountering a 100-foot triangular craft near Langley Air Force Base, painted a troubling picture of life after coming forward.

'Somebody... falsified classified information and lied to the government to persuade the government and is threatening me with treason,' Borland said.

'You want to know how my life is? The rest of my life that will be hung over my head. Statute of limitations for treason is life.'

Former national security official Matthew Brown described a disturbing home intrusion that he believes was meant as intimidation, while US Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer Alexandro Wiggins said he fears his involvement in the UFO issue could jeopardize his retirement and future career prospects. 

A trio of whistleblowers and witnesses recently took the stage at Contact in the Desert, the world's largest UFO-themed gathering, claiming they have paid a devastating personal price for sharing what they know

The Daily Mail has not independently verified the allegations made by Borland, Brown or Wiggins. 

The Pentagon has repeatedly stated that service members and government employees can report UFO incidents through official channels, while the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) has said it is committed to gathering information from witnesses and whistleblowers. 

Investigative journalist Jeremy Corbell, who joined the three men on stage last weekend, told the Daily Mail: 'You heard Senior Chief Wiggins. He is an active-duty Navy servicemember, a single father and just one year away from retirement.

They pressured him, saying they would get the Secretary of Defense to force him to sit for a deposition, even though he had already publicly stated that he respectfully declined,' Corbell said. 

'Borland, threatened with treason, Brown, threatened with counter-espionage against American assets. It is character assassination.'

Borland said he initially reported his concerns through congressional channels and later met with officials from the government's UFO investigation offices. 

He said he never intended to become a public figure and only came forward after exhausting official avenues. 

Since then, Borland claimed his family has also been targeted.

Air Force veteran Dylan Borland testified before Congress in 2025 about encountering a 100-foot triangular craft near Langley Air Force Base in Virginia while stationed there 

'My wife has been threatened disgustingly,' he said. 'I have been doxxed. They have shown pictures of the inside of my house. I've been threatened with treason.'

He added that both he and his wife are now unemployed, saying: 'It's been miserable.'

When asked if he regretted coming forward, Borland told the Daily Mail: 'I do not wish I had stayed quiet as I swore an oath to protect the US Constitution. 

'I fulfilled that oath by becoming a whistleblower. Unfortunately, upon doing so, I was put into the position where I needed to become public. 

'If the truth is known and people and agencies are held accountable, then I can justify my actions. Without that, I am another sacrifice in the coverup.'

Brown said at the conference that he also never intended to become a public whistleblower.

Matthew Brown is a former US national security official who told investigative journalists Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp about an alleged UFO program named 'Immaculate Constellation'

He initially came forward through official channels after discovering information related to an alleged program known as 'Immaculate Constellation.' 

The program is described as a secret, unauthorized Pentagon program created to collect and hide UFO evidence, which allegedly acts as an unacknowledged special access program designed to quarantine high-quality UFO imagery and testimonies from congressional oversight. 

The Department of Defense (DoD) officially denies the existence of Immaculate Constellation. A DoD spokesperson has stated that there is no historical or present record of any such Unacknowledged Special Access Program (USAP).

 'I was a UAP whistleblower to Congress,' he explained at the conference, saying he responded after lawmakers invited intelligence personnel to provide information behind closed doors.

According to Brown, the consequences have been severe. 'I have lost my career,' he said. 'I spent over a decade building it.'

Brown said the fallout has affected every aspect of his life, including plans he and his wife once had for the future.

'I'm 35,' he said. 'This started for me five years ago. My wife and I wanted a family. Seems very remote now. It's very difficult to imagine a future at this moment. It has been hell.'

He also described a disturbing incident in which someone allegedly entered his home while he and his wife were sleeping.

According to Brown, nothing of value was stolen despite expensive electronics being left untouched. Instead, personal items were moved around the house and his grandfather's ashes were allegedly removed and left outside.

'The only thing taken out of the house is, as you said, my grandfather's ashes,' Brown said. 'They took away from me and left as a message in the street next to the garbage.'

US Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer Alexandro Wiggins said he fears his involvement in the UFO issue could jeopardize his retirement and future career prospects.

Brown believes the incident was intended as intimidation, saying: 'It's meant to mess with your brain. It's meant to mess with your life.'

Even though he said his life has fallen apart since coming forward, Brown told the Daily Mail that he does not wish he had stayed silent.

'There was a clear moral imperative then, just as there is now, to disclose the truth about UAP to the public,' he continued.

'I do wish my government had protected the whistleblowers. I do wish there had been help for the people who told the truth. I do wish I had never been forced to go public. 

'Most of all, I wish there were a way to protect our families from the pain caused by our sacrifices.'

Wiggins' story is different from the two whistleblowers, as he is still on active duty.

The 23-year veteran testified alongside Borland last year, describing a strange encounter while aboard the USS Jackson off the Southern California coast on February 15, 2023.

Wiggins said he witnessed a Tic-Tac craft emerge from the Pacific and join three other Tic-Tacs in a flying formation over the Navy vessel.

Leaked military video from 2012 revealed three orbs captured flying over the Persian Gulf

All of the Tic-Tacs shot off at the same time with incredible speed, without creating a sonic boom or making the typical engine trails of a plane or drone.

Wiggins explained what he viewed as pressure from government investigators after he had already shared his account with Congress.

He testified that representatives from the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) repeatedly contacted him and eventually reached out to his chain of command.

After declining further interviews, Wiggins said he was surprised by the response.

'They said, "Well, we're gonna let you know that we'd like to push back and tell you that if we have to get Pete Hegseth ... to get him to come in, that's what we're going to have to do,"' Wiggins stated. 'I was surprised to hear that.'

As an active-duty service member nearing retirement, Wiggins said he worried about the potential impact on his career.

'I can see this becoming an issue for my retirement,' he said. 'I can see this being an issue as a father retiring and attempting to get jobs and such.'

Wiggins told the Daily Mail that he wrestled with telling the public about what he witnessed in 2023.

'I knew back then, just like I know now, that staying silent wasn't the answer. I am proud of my service to the US armed forces, and I am proud of my decision I made,' he said.

Corbell argued that such stories explain why many potential whistleblowers remain reluctant to come forward despite public calls for transparency.

'None of these guys asked to testify,' Corbell said. 'They did everything right. Reported up the chain of command.'

He described what he sees as a pattern of retaliation against individuals connected to the UFO issue.

'Our wives get threatened, our moms get threatened, we lose jobs,' Corbell said.

New UAP footage and questions about government accountability | Backscroll

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Is the Gulf Stream about to collapse? Mysterious 'cold blob' in the Atlantic suggests key current is weakening, scientists warn

• READ MORE: This year's super El Niño to be the strongest EVER recorded

By WILIAM HUNTER, SENIOR SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY REPORTER

A mysterious 'cold blob' has emerged in the North Atlantic – and scientists say it indicates a critical ocean current is on the verge of collapsing.

While the rest of the Earth's oceans have grown warmer amid the building El Niño, one patch of sea southeast of Greenland has remained stubbornly chilly.

For decades, scientists have been baffled over why this 'hole' is cooling down while everywhere else heats up.

Now, a group of researchers argue that it is because the critical Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is slowing down.

AMOC is a vast network of ocean currents carrying warmth from the tropics to Europe, of which the Gulf Stream is one small part.

However, recent data suggests that human–caused climate change could be driving this system to a tipping point that could trigger its total collapse.

Were AMOC to collapse, it would plunge northern Europe into a 'new Ice Age' and trigger famines by disrupting crucial monsoon rains in Africa and Asia.

Lead author Professor Stefan Rahmstorf, of Potsdam University, told New Scientist: 'Even if, in some modelling approaches, it seems possible that the cold blob is caused by the atmosphere, in fact, the data show it is caused by the ocean.' 

A 'cold blob' in the North Atlantic could be a sign that the crucial Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is slowing down 

AMOC plays a crucial role in keeping the planet's current climate stable by moving heat, nutrients, and carbon around the world.

The 'engine' driving this global conveyor belt is the cold, salty waters that form in the North Atlantic around Greenland.

As this dense water sinks towards the bottom of the ocean, warm water from the Tropics is pulled northwards, and the cycle keeps the current moving.

However, scientists are concerned that fresh water from Greenland's melting glaciers is disrupting this process by diluting the water and making it less dense.

Studies have shown that AMOC has already slowed by about 15 per cent since the mid–20th century due to climate change, and could be driven into total collapse in the future.

Since a slowing AMOC would result in less warm water arriving in the North Atlantic, scientists had suggested that it could be part of the explanation for the cold blob.

However, our direct observations of AMOC only date back around 20 years, which makes drawing a strong connection challenging.

Likewise, other researchers have proposed a competing theory, arguing that the cold blob is actually being caused by changing wind conditions.

The North Atlantic 'cold blob' or 'warming hole' is a region of ocean that has been getting cooler even while the rest of the planet gets hotter 

In 2022, scientists claimed that the rapid warming in the Arctic has shifted the jet stream over the cold blob region and that these strong westerly winds are drawing more heat out of the ocean.

However, a group of researchers led by Professor Rahmstorf now say they have found strong evidence linking the cold blob to AMOC's decline.

Instead of using computer–based climate models, the researchers used 'climate reanalyses', which are based on direct measurements from satellites, buoys and ships.

They found that surface heat loss has actually decreased in the cold blob since 1995, meaning that the wind is not taking more heat away.

Likewise, they discovered that the cold blob is not just cooling at the surface, but also at 3,280 feet (1,000 m) below the waves.

According to the researchers, this clearly shows that the warming hole is being caused by a change in the way ocean currents distribute heat and not by the wind.

This is vitally important because it would make the North Atlantic cold blob one of the 'early warning signals' that AMOC is weakening.

In their paper, published in Geophysical Research Letters, the researchers conclude: 'Our analysis supports the interpretation of the observed "cold blob" as a sign of a weakening AMOC.'

Scientists found that the amount of heat being lost from the surface has actually decreased over time (illustrated), meaning that it is not wind–driven heat loss causing the cooling 

Researchers found that the cool spot is also getting colder beneath the surface, which suggests that it is being driven by changes in ocean currents, such as the AMOC 

More immediately, this means that the cold blob could also threaten the 'subpolar gyre', a massive swirling current that surrounds the North Atlantic.

This current helps to bring salty water to the surface to feed the process of cooling and sinking that drives AMOC.

However, if the subpolar gyre failed, it would actually cool the UK and northern Europe even faster than a full AMOC collapse.

A recent Parliamentary report warned that the collapse of the subpolar gyre could create 2°C (3.6°F) and 3°C (5.4°F) of cooling over the North Atlantic, threatening the viability of agriculture in the UK.

Professor Rahmstorf warns: 'The subpolar gyre passing this tipping point could already lead to serious climate impacts in western Europe as early as in the 2040s'

ATLANTIC OCEAN CIRCULATION PLAYS A KEY ROLE IN REGULATING THE GLOBAL CLIMATE

When it comes to regulating global climate, the circulation of the Atlantic Ocean plays a key role.

This is due to a constantly moving system of deep-water circulation often referred to as the Global Ocean Conveyor Belt which sends warm, salty Gulf Stream water to the North Atlantic where it releases heat to the atmosphere and warms Western Europe.

The cooler water then sinks to great depths and travels all the way to Antarctica and eventually circulates back up to the Gulf Stream.

When it comes to regulating global climate, the circulation of the Atlantic Ocean plays a key role

This motion is fuelled by thermohaline currents – a combination of temperature and salt.

It takes thousands of years for water to complete a continuous journey around the world.

Researchers believe that as the North Atlantic began to warm near the end of the Little Ice Age, freshwater disrupted the system, called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).

Arctic sea ice, and ice sheets and glaciers surrounding the Arctic began to melt, forming a huge natural tap of fresh water that gushed into the North Atlantic.

This huge influx of freshwater diluted the surface seawater, making it lighter and less able to sink deep, slowing down the AMOC system.

Researchers found the AMOC has been weakening more rapidly since 1950 in response to recent global warming.

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Atlantic 'cold blob' caused by weakening ocean current system that's likely nearing a tipping point, reanalysis finds

by Krystal Kasal, Phys.org

A part of the Atlantic Ocean, just south of Greenland and Iceland, has been cooling off while the rest of the world gets hotter. This enigmatic patch is often referred to as the "cold blob" and scientists have been trying to figure out the mechanisms behind its cooling. While some studies have blamed increased heat loss at the sea surface, others suggest weaker currents are bringing less heat to the area. Now, a new study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, provides additional support for the latter—now using reanalysis data based on direct weather observations instead of just modeling.

"A further weakening of the AMOC could have major repercussions for future climate for millennia, given that the AMOC is known to have a tipping point beyond which it is likely to shut down," the study authors write.

Still, some think that the cold blob is caused by surface heat loss and atmospheric effects, but models and proxies have not reached consensus.

Not just a surface-level problem

The research team decided to back up modeling with observational data to attempt to settle the debate. They used observation-based reanalysis data for ocean heat content and surface fluxes, including satellite and temperature measurements and combined this with climate models. They also conducted a heat budget analysis, which quantified the balance between incoming and outgoing heat in the cold blob region. The data for quality reanalysis goes back to 1955 and the satellite data goes back to 1993, allowing the team to determine changes over many decades.

Their results indicated that the cooling in the "cold blob" is a deep ocean phenomenon, driven by changes in ocean heat transport, not just surface temperature changes. The data indicated that surface heat loss has actually decreased in the cold blob area, contradicting the idea that increased surface cooling is responsible.

The team writes, "To explain a cooling trend in the cold blob region by surface heat loss while the AMOC is steady, this heat loss would need to increase to outcompete the AMOC's heat supply. The opposite is seen in the ERA5 data: surface heat loss has in fact decreased (since 1993 significantly, since 1955 slightly) over the cold blob. The latter is to be expected when the AMOC supplies less heat to the region and thus less is released to the atmosphere."

An approaching tipping point

Further weakening of this crucial current system could have far-reaching effects on weather, sea level and ecosystems, according to many climate models. The researchers urge policymakers to think of risk management strategies to lessen the impact that the AMOC tipping point might bring.

They write, "Given the well‐established existence of a tipping point of the AMOC, as well as recent studies finding a range of different 'early warning signals' of the ocean circulation approaching such a tipping point, the strong evidence for a weakening AMOC is a serious concern for society and policy. While large uncertainty remains over how close Earth is to this tipping point, standard CMIP6 simulations of future global warming scenarios suggest it is crossed in a substantial subset of these model simulations around the middle of this century."

• Correction note (June 8, 2026): An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the year as 1933; this was a typographical error, and the correct year is 1993. The text has been updated to reflect this correction.

{ https://phys.org/earth-news/earth-sciences/ }

Mysterious ‘cold blob’ in the Atlantic suggests the AMOC is weakening

A patch of ocean south-east of Greenland is the only place on Earth that is cooling, and it could be a sign that the warm water "conveyor belt" in the Atlantic is slowing down

By Alec Luhn

Over the past 150 years, Earth’s entire surface has been warming, except for one patch of the north Atlantic. Located south-east of Greenland, this area has cooled by as much as 1°C and is known as the “warming hole” or the “cold blob”.

The swath of ocean — dubbed the “cold blob” or “warming hole” — has cooled by nearly 1 degree Celsius (1.8 Fahrenheit) since 1900.

Scientists have long debated whether this anomaly is driven by heat loss from the ocean surface due to changes to winds and clouds, or whether it’s a signal of the weakening of a critical system of ocean currents, which transports heat. The new research concludes it’s the latter, and the finding points to a worrying future.

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, works like a vast ocean conveyor belt, pulling warm water from the tropics to the Northern Hemisphere, where it cools, sinks and flows back south.

A raft of research suggests this system is weakening as human-driven global warming melts ice and causes a surge of freshwater into the ocean, disrupting the AMOC’s delicate balance of heat and salinity. Some scientists warn the AMOC is heading toward a tipping point, potentially as early at this century, which would mean a future collapse is locked in.

An AMOC shutdown would be a global catastrophe, causing accelerated sea level rise on the US East Coast, plunging Europe into a winter deep freeze and shifting the monsoon in Africa, driving prolonged droughts.

The cold blob has been interpreted by some as a fingerprint of AMOC change, because it’s the region to which the AMOC brings much of its heat.

To better unravel what’s happening in this part of the Atlantic, the study scientists combined real-world ocean heat data from instruments and satellites with climate models.

They found that cooling in the cold blob was not just happening on the surface but also deep in the ocean, where atmospheric conditions like winds and clouds have a much weaker influence.

All signs point to the influence of the AMOC, the study found. “It is changing ocean heat transport” which is driving the cooling of the cold blob, said Stefan Rahmstorf, a study author and a physics and oceans professor at Potsdam University, Germany.

There is also plenty of other evidence the AMOC is weakening, independent of the cold blob, he added, with some studies suggesting it’s at the weakest it’s been in around 1,000 years.

Previous studies have demonstrated it’s possible to generate a cold blob through atmospheric conditions alone, said René van Westen, a marine and atmospheric researcher at Utrecht University, who was not involved in the research. But the fact the new study found consistent results across different datasets “strengthens the robustness of the conclusions,” he said.

David Thornally, a professor of ocean and climate science at University College London, also not involved in the research, said that the study bolsters evidence of a link between the cold blob and a weakening AMOC, but cautioned that the sparseness of real-world data means the available datasets “are best viewed as good approximations rather than perfect representations of reality.”

Uncertainties remain, he told CNN, and “I don’t think (this study) will be the final word on the issue.”

Jonathan Baker, a senior climate scientist at the UK Met Office, agreed, telling CNN “I would view this study as adding evidence for an AMOC contribution to the cold blob, rather than definitively settling the question.”

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New UFO files describe spinning discs, glowing orbs and one object shaped like a potato

By ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) - One was a rotating disc that sent out beams of light. Another was a shining red orb of a hue the observer had never seen before. Then there was the one compared to a potato, and also a bean, but with a coat of shimmering, fish-like scales.

Those were some of the UFOs described in documents released Friday by the Pentagon, the third release since President Donald Trump directed his administration to give the public full disclosure around what it knows about alien life and mysterious objects in the sky.

The 72 files released on Friday don´t include the kind of blockbuster revelation that Trump has teased. There´s no conclusive evidence of alien life or government cover-ups. But the files reveal new details about some recent sightings, along with the government's efforts to explain what many find inexplicable.

Take, for instance, the potato.

It happened in 2022, on a brisk February morning in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Five U.S. Army members at Fort Carson walked out of an office building and saw something strange hovering over Cheyenne Mountain, a few miles to the west.

"The object was `potato´ shaped with distinct edges and appeared to look painted in a creamy/whitish opalescent color," according to an account in an FBI document. It was made up of "articulating fish scales or panels that were non-symmetrical, non-overlapping and irregular shaped."

FILE - A patron passes a painting inside the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, N.M., on June 10, 1997.

(AP Photo/Eric Draper, File)

It stayed motionless, shimmering, for about two minutes, the men recounted to the FBI. Then it vanished in the blink of an eye. None of the men had phones on them. There's no video, no photos.

Authorities tasked with investigating the episode said they couldn't explain it easily. Their report found - with "low confidence" - that it may have been "backscattering of sunlight." Low light from the rising sun could have reflected off the mountain's snow and illuminated low clouds above, it said.

The men insisted it was a clear, cloudless day. No aircraft or balloons were believed to be in the area. The four-page report, heavily redacted and attributed only to an "intelligence community partner," said it didn't appear to be technology from a foreign adversary. An FBI rendering looks just like one might imagine - like a scaly, pale potato above a low mountain.

The case remains unsolved.

A similarly inclusive report examined a series of sightings in October 2023, this time by six federal law enforcement agents. Multiple times, the agents said, they saw a bright orange orb appear above a ridgeline and spawn two to four smaller red orbs.

The orbs disappeared quickly most of the time, but in one instance, the agents said an orb hovered motionless in the sky for several hours. There's no video or photo evidence of the sightings, the report said.

An analysis dated this month goes through a series of possible explanations. Military aircraft were conducting exercises in the area, and some deployed flares. There could have been other testing of developmental U.S. technology nearby, the report said. It listed those as "plausible" but not conclusive explanations.

Yet it didn't rule out the possibility that it was some "unrecognized technology." With relatively little evidence to work from, it called for more investigation into the case.

The analysis was conducted by the Pentagon´s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, which Congress created in 2022 to investigate reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena, also known as UAP. Previous reports from the agency say it has not found any evidence of extraterrestrial life.

Among the most recent files is an FBI report from February detailing a sighting in an undisclosed part of the Northeast United States. A person whose name is blacked out reported coming home and seeing an intense light hovering below the trees in their backyard. It was described as a sphere of a "brilliant and beautiful" red, which the person had never seen.

"Inside the red sphere, at the center, there appeared to be what (redacted) described as a `white plasma sun´ about the size of a basketball," according to the FBI file.

A second sphere appeared, and both silently flew out of sight, the file says. Cellphone footage shows two glowing red orbs floating across the sky. The White House shared the video on social media on Friday with no message beyond the file´s name: "`NORTHEASTERN ORB SIGHTING,´ 2025."

So far, the Trump administration's transparency campaign has led to the release of about 300 files dating to the 1940s, some brand-new to the public and some adding detail on previously known cases.

The newest batch includes a 2008 CIA report from Zimbabwe labeled as "never before released." On a July day above the country´s main airport, observers reportedly saw something straight out of a Hollywood movie: It was "disc-like in shape with a hollow center, and had a series of rotating lights on the underside of the airframe."

"At one point during observation, `beams´ were observed emanating from the object," the CIA report said.

The lights changed colors, and the aircraft ascended high out of view, the report says. There was debate about where it came from, according to the report, with some suggesting a foreign government and some positing "extraterrestrial origins."

The Pentagon is pictured in Washington, Thursday, June 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

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A new picture of the missing Air Force general allegedly tied to UFO secrets has opened up an even greater mystery about the final hours before he vanished. 

The photo captured retired Major General William Neil McCasland exiting a local sporting goods store in New Mexico with a mysterious parcel just a day before he walked out of his Albuquerque home on February 27.

The new clue was released by the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office after a Freedom of Information Act request by Lauren Conlin, a reporter at Los Angeles Magazine.

McCasland was seen during the day wearing sunglasses and appearing alert and composed as he walked out of REI with the large white shipping bag and another smaller item tucked under his left arm.

It is not known what was in the mystery package, although such soft and malleable bags are often used for mailing clothing. The smaller, yellow item in McCasland's hand has been theorized to be a lightweight first aid kit by viewers online.

According to McCasland's wife, Susan Wilkerson, the Air Force veteran left behind his phone, wallet, wearable devices and prescription glasses when he left their home around 11am local time. She also claimed her husband 'planned not to be found.'

McCasland had also changed his clothes, leaving his normal attire behind, and only took a pair of boots and his .38-caliber revolver with him.

The general's disappearance has become a national talking point after it was revealed that he possessed both US nuclear and UFO-related secrets and his career allegedly connected him to several other scientists and nuclear workers who died or disappeared.

A new surveillance image shows retired Air Force general William Neil McCasland the day before he vanished without a trace on February 27

The item seen in McCasland's hand on February 26 has been compared to a waterproof first aid kit by viewers on social media

In a post on X, revealing the newly obtained photo, Conlin speculated that McCasland may have been picking up previously ordered items from the camping and hiking store.  

'McCasland doesn't appear to be carrying a traditional REI shopping bag. However, REI does allow customers to place orders online and pick them up in-store, leaving open the possibility that what he's carrying may have been retrieved rather than purchased during that visit,' she explained Friday. 

In May, chilling bodycam and 911 recordings seemed to suggest that the general had a set of clothes his wife did not know about when he vanished.

Wilkerson was heard telling a 911 dispatcher in February: 'He's left his phone, he changed his clothes into I don't know what. I think he's on foot.'

Those recently released recordings also seemed to dispute Wilkerson's claims on social media that her husband did not possess any up-to-date classified information.

Police were seen speaking to an unidentified female witness on the phone who claimed she and members of the US Space Force had dinner with McCasland the night before he vanished.

The unnamed caller claimed she worked with McCasland, who was still a member of the Kirtland Partnership, a nonprofit working to protect and expand Kirtland Air Force Base, a major military research facility and nuclear weapons lab in New Mexico.

The retired general reportedly met with the group at a restaurant in Albuquerque around 6pm local time, possibly minutes or hours after the photo in REI was taken.

William Neil McCasland, 68, was last seen around 11am on Friday, February 27 near Quail Run Court NE in Albuquerque, the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office said

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'He was the head of Air Force Research Lab to the point the man's names are in the UFO documents that are fixed to be released,' the witness claimed. 'He's in that depth, so he has a very high security clearance.'

The new photo of McCasland also appeared to show the general, known to be an avid hiker, in good health and active at the time of his disappearance.

However, the woman who allegedly met with McCasland said something seemed wrong during the meeting with Space Force and the retired general was not acting like himself that night.

'I was shocked this morning when I saw the alert because what I noticed Thursday evening [February 26] is that he wasn't his usual self. He was kind of spacey and quiet and you know that that happens with people.'

According to Wilkerson's statement to police, McCasland was just prescribed a new medication hours before he vanished, which was supposed to battle several symptoms he was allegedly having that the couple feared were signs of cognitive decline.

McCasland was reportedly seeing doctors for his physical and mental difficulties, including brain fog and trouble sleeping.

Before police arrived at the home, Wilkerson had told 911 dispatchers the military veteran feared his brain was 'deteriorating.'

Despite his wife's claims of potential mental decline, government officials have revealed that McCasland was still being looked at as a key witness in the ongoing effort to declassify decades-old secrets related to UFOs and extraterrestrials.

In early May, Air Force veteran and UFO whistleblower David Grusch specifically named McCasland as one of the officers who had been in charge of classified programs related to non-human craft recovery and reverse-engineering.

Grusch alleged that the general had not been cooperative with recent efforts by lawmakers looking to interview him over his knowledge of America's suspected contact with extraterrestrials.

Meanwhile, intelligence experts have specifically mentioned McCasland's disappearance as a key concern tied to alleged foreign espionage.

Former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker has told the Daily Mail that there is enough evidence to suspect foul play in several of the disappearances and deaths, especially among those individuals tied to nuclear research and rocket technology.

Swecker said: 'I think there's enough of a pattern, even if it's a small group, I think there's a smaller group of missing people that warrant an investigation by the FBI, which is the lead agency in counter-espionage, counterintelligence. I would be looking for that, unless we show something points to another direction.'

{ https://www.dailymail.com/sciencetech/index.html }

The Trump administration has released a third tranche of previously classified UAP files, adding dozens of new documents, photographs and videos to the government's rapidly expanding archive of unexplained sightings.

The materials were uploaded to the Department of War's website on Friday morning and include a series of cases that investigators were unable to explain, leaving the nature of the phenomena unresolved definitively.

Among the newly released records is a 2025 FBI report describing a video captured by a citizen in the northeastern US.

According to the witness, a bright object hovered over their backyard as a 'brilliant red sphere' roughly the size of a basketball.

Another never-before-seen video shows what officials described as a 'plasma-like sphere' hovering above a pond at an undisclosed location in the US, appearing to shift shape and brightness as it moved.

Friday's release also includes dozens of long-hidden CIA files about mysterious sightings, revealing that the agency assembled a panel of top scientists to investigate 'flying saucers' amid fears the reports could clog military warning systems and spark mass hysteria. 

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said in a statement: 'The Department of War is in lockstep with President Trump to bring unprecedented transparency regarding our government’s understanding of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP). 

'These files, hidden behind classifications, have long fueled justified speculation, and it’s time the American people see it for themselves. This release of declassified documents demonstrates the Trump Administration’s earnest commitment to unprecedented transparency.'

One video released on Friday shows what officials described as a 'plasma-like sphere' hovering above a pond at an undisclosed location in the US, appearing to shift shape and brightness as it moved. The incident was captured in 2025

Another video released on Friday, was taken by Americans in 2024. The footage shows glowing lights hanging over a pond in the northeastern region of the US

According to the Pentagon, there have been 'unprecedented levels of interest' in the UFO files, and the Department of War's website has received over 1.7 billion hits worldwide since its launch on May 8.

A second release took place two weeks later. 

Many of the images and videos in today's release were submitted by American citizens, with officials noting that footage was captured using iPhones.

The FBI report describes the July 2025 sighting from a witness who parked their car after returning from work.

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'The light was hovering approximately 25 feet off the ground, below a tree line near the center of their backyard, at an estimated distance of 90 feet,' officials stated. 

The witness briefly stepped out of their vehicle before grabbing their phone to record the strange sight. Their spouse soon joined them outside to see what was happening. 

'The spouse also witnessed the light, describing it as a “brilliant red sphere” about one meter in diameter. The center of the red sphere appeared to be a white plasma “sun” about the size of a basketball,' the report continued.

The FBI assessment explained that the object slowly rose into the air and drifted left, prompting both witnesses to notice a second identical orb hovering directly above it.

The witness then pulled out an iPhone 14 Pro Max and began recording as the two glowing objects moved westward over a nearby tree line. According to the report, the orbs traveled silently and smoothly, appearing to move in lockstep as if flying in formation or connected to one another.

As they disappeared from view, both witnesses said the objects appeared to merge into a single orb. They estimated the phenomenon traveled roughly 75 yards from its original position before vanishing.

The materials were quietly uploaded to the Department of War's website on Friday morning and include a series of cases that investigators were unable to definitively explain, leaving the nature of the phenomena unresolved

This image is an artistic interpretation of a reported incident near a sensitive national security site in the western US involving unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) over a period of two days in October 2023

Above is an artistic interpretation of a sighting described by law enforcement in the western US three years ago

The sighting occurred within 25 miles of several other unexplained encounters, including the so-called 'Triangle Orbs,' 'Red Orb Rotation' and 'Orbs Over the Pond' incidents, in a sparsely populated area familiar to both witnesses.

The other unresolved video, also filmed in the northeastern US, is reported as showing a light source hovering over a pond at an estimated distance of 2,700 feet. 

'The luminous object resembled a “plasma-like sphere” intermittently changing shape and luminosity,' the FBI description stated.

'At times, the primary light source appeared to separate into smaller luminous points.'

A smaller luminous object could be seen hovering just above the water beneath the primary light source, appearing distinct from any reflection on the surface.

Pictured is an artistic interpretation of a 2022 incident potentially involving a UFO reported near Colorado Springs, Colorado

Above is another artistic impression of a UFO sighting in 2023 submitted to the FBI from law enfrocement

According to the report, the object remained largely stationary for about 45 minutes before suddenly disappearing. The witness reported hearing no sound at any point during the encounter.

The footage was captured by a private citizen using an iPhone and was later analyzed and authenticated by the US government. Officials said the video was cropped to protect the witness's identity, but stressed that no other edits, enhancements or alterations were made to the footage.

Officials had previously indicated that the next UFO file release would include newly declassified CIA records, an agency that some whistleblowers have accused of playing a central role in concealing evidence of extraterrestrial activity. 

However, the documents released Friday do not substantiate those allegations. 

In one newly released CIA file labeled 'Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects, Report, 1952-1953,' officials warned that growing public fascination with flying saucers could become a national security risk by overwhelming military reporting channels and distracting personnel from genuine threats. 

Among the cases discussed by the panel were the so-called 'Foo Fighters,' mysterious glowing objects reported by Allied pilots during World War II that appeared to fly alongside aircraft and perform unusual maneuvers. 

The batch also includes a 1958 CIA memorandum detailing a conversation with Dr Leon Davidson about the alleged destruction of a mysterious 'space message,' and the device said to have transmitted it. 

A censored version of the memo has long been publicly available. 

Another newly released CIA record details a far more recent incident that reportedly triggered alarm within the intelligence community.

According to a cable dated July 2, 2008, CIA assets in Zimbabwe were placed on high alert after an unidentified object was spotted hovering above the country's main airport in Harare.

The cable, which was circulated throughout the US government and military during the final months of the George W. Bush administration, described a craft that 'hovered at an undetermined altitude directly over the Harare airport.'

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Washington — The Pentagon on Friday released a new group of documents and videos related to UFOs, or UAPs, the third release since the government began a wave of new disclosures last month.

The latest batch includes 53 documents and 10 images from the CIA, FBI, NASA, the Department of Defense and other unspecified agencies, along with six videos and three NASA audio recordings. The videos show orb-like objects in the sky, while a set of images and clips offer "artistic interpretations" of reported sightings.

Several of the documents detail encounters reported by federal law enforcement officers in 2023, in which five agents reported seeing strange orbs on the horizon. One agent recounted their partner asking, "Are you seeing this?" as a glowing orb lit up the sky.

What's in the latest files?

The Pentagon uploaded the files to its UFO website. Four of the videos show eyewitness footage of strange encounters, a shift from previous releases, which were dominated by military footage. The new videos, which were collected by the FBI, include details from interviews with the witnesses.

One encounter happened in July 2025. The video, titled "Northeastern Orb Sighting," shows two bright lights moving through the sky. 

"The witnesses described the orbs' motion as silent and smooth, and as moving in tandem as though they were flying in formation or tethered together," the video description said, citing the FBI's interviews.

Another video, called "Orbs Over the Pond," shows an encounter from October 2024, which occurred within 25 miles of the Northeastern Orb Sighting. The footage shows "a light source below the horizon, hovering above a pond at an estimated distance of 2,700 feet," the Pentagon's description said.

"The luminous object resembled a 'plasma-like sphere' intermittently changing shape and luminosity. At times, the primary light source appeared to separate into smaller luminous points," the Pentagon said. "A luminous point below the primary source hovered just above the water and did not appear consistent with a surface reflection. The object remained generally stationary for approximately 45 minutes before disappearing."

One of the files includes documents from a panel convened by the CIA in 1952 and 1953, dubbed the "Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects." The panel concluded that flying saucers did not pose a physical threat, but recommended an official policy of "debunking" the issue to "strip the UFO subject of its mystery." The group warned that a "morbid national psychology" around UFOs could be exploited by adversaries.

Another intriguing disclosure centers around a series of strange events in the Western U.S. that occurred over the course of two days in October 2023. Five "federal law enforcement special agents" provided their accounts to the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, and each narrative is included in the files.

One agent said the sightings began with "weird lights moving along in groups miles away." Another said red lights "accelerated instantly and maneuvered with perfect, smooth coordination into a horizontal formation." A person identified as Witness 4 described smaller orbs "being hatched from the larger very bright orange light" multiple times, losing count "after five occurrences." Witness 3 said the discharged orbs were like "grapes being expelled from a basketball," and recalled their partner saying, "Are you seeing this?"

The FBI produced digital renderings of the agents' accounts to recreate the sightings. The Pentagon said that the renderings were prepared in 2026:

The files also include a July 2008 CIA report of a UFO sighting above the Harare International Airport in Zimbabwe that was transmitted to the White House Situation Room and the intelligence community. Individuals aware of the incident didn't know if the hovering object, which appeared to emanate "beams," was a reconnaissance device of a foreign government or extraterrestrial in nature.

According to observers, "the object was disc-like in shape with a hollow center, and had a series of rotating lights on the underside of the airframe." Its presence put the area on high alert.

A more recent sighting in 2022 near Colorado Springs, Colorado, describes a "potato"-shaped object that appeared painted in a "creamy/whitish opalescent color" that was "somewhat translucent with a slight shimmer." The FBI created an artistic interpretation based on the description:

After the object was reported to the Defense Department, an intelligence partner conducted an analysis that assessed with "low confidence" the sighting could have been attributed to "sunlight backscattering," where sunlight reflecting from snow on Cheyenne Mountain illuminated the underside of low-altitude clouds. Even with that analysis, the case remains unresolved as of this month.

The recent releases of files were prompted by an executive order President Trump signed earlier this year mandating the Pentagon to disclose more documents related to UFOs. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the move "demonstrates the Trump Administration's earnest commitment to unprecedented transparency."

{ https://www.cbsnews.com/ }

The fungal network hidden beneath our feet: Secret web of fungi could circle Earth 2.7 TRILLION times

• READ MORE: Warning to British gardeners over an outbreak of honey fungus
  

By WILLIAM HUNTER, SENIOR SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY REPORTER

It might sound like something out of The Last of Us, but scientists have uncovered a hidden fungal network lurking beneath our feet.

Almost every part of the Earth's surface is criss–crossed by tiny living threads known as arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi.

Now, a study has calculated just how colossal this secret web really is.

Placed end–to–end, scientists say Earth's fungi network stretches over 68.35 quadrillion miles (110 quadrillion km).

That's long enough to circle the planet 2.7 trillion times, or to cover the distance from the Earth to the sun one billion times over.

Researchers also found that the network contains approximately 300 megatonnes of carbon – about five times the weight of all living humans on Earth put together.

Lead author Dr Justin Stewart, with the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN), says: 'It is hard to overstate the importance and enormity of these fungi.

'There could be up to 10 meters (33 feet) of mycorrhizal network in just a teaspoon of soil.'

Scientists have mapped a vast hidden network of fungi beneath our feet, which could stretch 2.7 trillion times around the Earth 

Stretched end to end, these complex networks would cover the distance from the Earth to the sun over one billion times over 

Besides frozen ice caps, AM fungi can be found in almost every corner of the world.

They live among plant roots and thrive in the first 15 inches (40 cm) of soil, but can be found even in the deepest soil layers up to 26 feet (eight metres) beneath the surface.

These networks might be totally invisible to the naked eye, but they are one of the most important aspects of the world's ecosystem.

Threadlike structures called hyphae fill the soil, connecting to plants via their roots and creating complex symbiotic relationships.

Scientists estimate that these fungi form 'trade relationships' with 70 per cent of all plant species on Earth, exchanging nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus for carbon.

Studies have shown that plants get up to 80 per cent of their phosphorus from these relationships, as well as 20 per cent of their nitrogen.

To see exactly where these fungal threads can be found, scientists from SPUN attempted to calculate the biomass of the entire world–spanning network.

They started by gathering over 1,600 soil samples from 4,000 sites around the world, measuring the length of all the hyphae in a given amount of soil.

AM fungi consist of thread–like structures called hyphae, which burrow into plant roots to establish complex 'trading relationships', exchanging nutrients for carbon 

Researchers found that the network contains approximately 300 megatonnes of carbon – about five times the weight of all living humans on Earth put together

This information was combined with global data on climate, soil chemistry, and vegetation and used to train machine learning models to predict fungal density across every terrestrial ecosystem.

To work out how much biomass this translates to, the team also needed to work out the radius of the tubular hyphae strands.

This was done by using a robotic imaging system to measure over 300,000 living hyphae across fungal systems grown in the lab.

The result is an interactive map that reveals the incredibly dense networks of fungi thriving right beneath your feet, which you can find on the SPUN website.

Dr Stewart compares these findings to discovering a vast web of 'transport infrastructure' beneath the soil.

He says: 'Roads may not cover most of Earth’s surface, but they enable the movement of people, food, energy, and materials that society depends on.

'Mycorrhizal fungi do something similar underground, as they build hyper–efficient supply chains that move carbon and nutrients between plants and soils.'

Farmland had mycorrhizal densities that were approximately half as high as in wild ecosystems.

Tiny living threads known as arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi can be found in almost every environment on Earth. This map is the first attempt to work out just how big their network really is 

Grasslands such as the Tibetan Plateau are home to 40 per cent of the world's AM fungi, despite being some of the least protected ecosystems on Earth 

Wild grassland ecosystems such as the Sud Wetlands in South Sudan and the Tibetan Plateau were home to 40 per cent of the world's AM fungi.

Dr Stewart says: 'Wild grasses in particular appear to support very high densities of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks.

'In some observational studies, more than 100 metres of fungal hyphae were found in a single gram of soil.'

That is a particularly important finding because grasslands are some of the world's least protected ecosystems, being converted into farms four times faster than woodlands.

If the network of mycorrhizal fungi in the soil were degraded or lost, it could have enormous consequences for the world above ground.

Co–author Dr Toby Kiers, executive director of SPUN, told the Daily Mail: 'Without these fungi, we lose the living infrastructure that holds ecosystems together.

'Degraded soils lose their ability to recover because the fungal workforce that rebuilds them is gone.

'These fungal communities are a foundation for ecosystem resilience. Lose the fungi, and much of what grows above ground becomes far more fragile.'

WHAT ARE THE OLDEST FUNGI EVER DISCOVERED?

For many years, fungi were grouped with, or mistaken for plants. 

Not until 1969 were they officially granted their own 'kingdom', alongside animals and plants, though their distinct characteristics had been recognised long before that.

Yeast, mildew and molds are all fungi, as are many forms of large, mushroom-looking organisms that grow in moist forest environments and absorb nutrients from dead or living organic matter. 

Unlike plants, fungi do not photosynthesise, and their cell walls are devoid of cellulose.

Geologists studying lava samples taken from a drill site in South Africa discovered fossilised gas bubbles, which contained what could be the first fossil traces (pictured) of the branch of life to which humans belong ever unearthed

Geologists studying lava samples taken from a drill site in South Africa discovered fossilised gas bubbles 800 metres (2,600 feet) underground.

In April 2017, they revealed that they are believed to contain the oldest fungi ever found.

Researchers were examining samples taken from drill-holes of rocks buried deep underground, when they found the 2.4 billion-year-old microscopic creatures. 

They are believed to be the oldest fungi ever found by around 1.2 billion years.

Earth itself is about 4.6 billion years old.

Earth itself is about 4.6 billion years old and the previous earliest examples of eukaryotes - the 'superkingdom' of life that includes plants, animals and fungi, but not bacteria - dates to 1.9 billion years ago. The fossils have slender filaments bundled together like brooms (pictured)

They could be the earliest evidence of eukaryotes - the 'superkingdom' of life that includes plants, animals and fungi, but not bacteria.

The previous earliest examples of eukaryotes - the 'superkingdom' of life that includes plants, animals and fungi, but not bacteria - dates to 1.9 billion years ago. That makes this sample 500 million years older.

It was believed that fungi first emerged on land, but the newly-found organisms lived and thrived under an ancient ocean seabed.

And the dating of the find suggests that not only did these fungus-like creatures live in a dark and cavernous world devoid of light, but they also lacked oxygen.

{ https://www.dailymail.com/sciencetech/index.html }

Billy Meier (born 1937) is a Swiss UFO contactee who claims he has been in communication with extraterrestrial beings known as the Plejaren since childhood. He gained international attention in the 1970s after publishing hundreds of UFO photographs, films, audio recordings, and detailed contact reports documenting his alleged encounters. 

According to Meier, his first contact occurred when he was about five years old. Over the years, he claimed to have met extraterrestrials named Sfath, Asket, Semjase, and Ptaah, who shared information about spirituality, human evolution, future world events, and advanced technologies. 

His case remains one of the most controversial in UFO history. Critics argue that several of his photographs resemble small suspended models rather than spacecraft, and investigations by skeptics concluded that much of the evidence could be explained as hoaxes or misrepresentations. 

The famous "Wedding Cake UFO" photograph, for example, has been cited as potentially depicting a fabricated model, while Meier's former wife publicly claimed that some of the UFOs were created using household objects. Even respected UFO researchers such as Jacques Vallée and Stanton Friedman expressed doubts about the authenticity of the evidence. 

Despite the controversy, Meier's photographs became some of the most widely circulated UFO images in the world, leaving a lasting impact on UFO culture and mythology. More than fifty years later, the debate continues: if even a small portion of his evidence is genuine, the implications would be extraordinary.

  

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

Pentagon drops 72 new UFO files with spinning discs, glowing orbs and a potato craft

The Pentagon has released 72 new UFO files detailing eyewitness accounts of mysterious objects in the sky including a spinning disc shooting beams of light, glowing red orbs, and a potato-shaped craft

by Kelly Williams - Content Editor

new UFO Files have been released

(Image: Getty Images)

Fresh UFO documents have been unveiled by the Trump administration, featuring several striking accounts of enigmatic aerial phenomena. One involved a spinning disc that emitted beams of light.

Another described a glowing red sphere of a colour the witness had never encountered before. Then there was the object likened to a potato, and also a bean, but covered in glistening, fish-like scales.

These were amongst the UFOs detailed in papers published on Friday by the Pentagon, marking the third disclosure since President Donald Trump instructed his administration to provide the public with complete transparency regarding what it understands about extraterrestrial life and puzzling sky objects.

The 72 documents unveiled on Friday

The 72 documents unveiled on Friday don't contain the sort of bombshell revelation that Mr Trump has hinted at. There's no definitive proof of alien existence or governmental conspiracies.

However, the papers unveil fresh particulars about some recent encounters, alongside the government's attempts to clarify what many consider baffling.

Consider, for example, the potato. It occurred in 2022, during a crisp February morning in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Five US Army personnel at Fort Carson emerged from an office building and spotted something peculiar suspended above Cheyenne Mountain, several miles to the west.

The papers unveil fresh particulars about some recent encounters

(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)

"The object was 'potato' shaped with distinct edges and appeared to look painted in a creamy/whitish opalescent color," according to an account in an FBI document. It comprised "articulating fish scales or panels that were non-symmetrical, non-overlapping and irregular shaped".

It remained stationary, glistening, for approximately two minutes, the men recalled to the FBI. Then it disappeared in an instant.

None of the men carried phones with them. There is no footage and there are no photographs.

Officials charged with examining the incident stated they couldn't account for it readily. Their report concluded – with "low confidence" – that it might have been "backscattering of sunlight".

Dim light from the emerging sun could have bounced off the mountain's snow and lit up low clouds overhead, it suggested.

There's no definitive proof of alien existence or governmental conspiracies

(Image: Getty Images/Science Photo Library RF)

The men maintained it was a bright, cloudless day. No aircraft or balloons were thought to be in the vicinity.

The four-page report, extensively censored and credited only to an "intelligence community partner", stated it didn't seem to be technology from a foreign adversary.

An FBI illustration appears exactly as one might expect – resembling a scaly, pale potato hovering above a low mountain. The case remains unresolved.

A similarly inconclusive report scrutinised a sequence of sightings in October 2023, this time by six federal law enforcement officers.

On multiple occasions, the officers reported, they witnessed a brilliant orange orb materialise above a ridgeline and produce two to four smaller red orbs.

The files have been released under the Trump administration

(Image: AFP via Getty Images)

The orbs vanished rapidly most of the time, but in one instance, the officers claimed an orb remained suspended motionless in the sky for several hours. The report stated there is no video or photographic evidence of the sightings.

An assessment dated this month examines a range of potential explanations. Military aircraft were carrying out training exercises in the region, with some deploying flares.

There may have been additional testing of experimental US technology in the vicinity, the report noted. It described these as "plausible" though not definitive explanations.

However, it didn't dismiss the possibility that it involved some "unrecognised technology".

With comparatively scant evidence available, it urged further investigation into the incident. The assessment was carried out by the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, established by Congress in 2022 to examine reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP).

Earlier reports from the agency indicate it has discovered no evidence of extraterrestrial life. Amongst the latest files is an FBI report from February outlining a sighting in an undisclosed location in the north east United States.

An individual whose identity is redacted reported returning home to witness an intense light hovering beneath the trees in their rear garden. It was characterised as a sphere of "brilliant and beautiful" red, unlike anything the person had previously observed.

"Inside the red sphere, at the centre, there appeared to be what (redacted) described as a 'white plasma sun' about the size of a basketball," according to the FBI file.

A second sphere materialised, and both silently departed from view, the file states. Mobile phone footage captures two glowing red orbs drifting across the heavens.

The White House posted the video on social media on Friday with no accompanying message beyond the file's title: "'NORTHEASTERN ORB SIGHTING,' 2025."

Thus far, the Trump administration's openness initiative has resulted in the publication of roughly 300 files spanning back to the 1940s, some entirely fresh to the public and others providing additional details on previously known incidents.

The latest collection features a 2008 CIA document from Zimbabwe marked as "never before released".

On a July afternoon above the nation's primary airport, witnesses allegedly observed something resembling a scene from a Hollywood blockbuster: it was "disc-like in shape with a hollow center, and had a series of rotating lights on the underside of the airframe".

"At one point during observation, 'beams' were observed emanating from the object," the CIA document stated.

The illumination shifted colours, and the craft climbed high beyond sight, the document reveals.

Discussion arose regarding its origins, according to the document, with some proposing a foreign government while others suggested "extraterrestrial origins".

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{ https://www.dailystar.co.uk/latest/spaced-out }

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FBI 302: senior U.S. intel official reports seeing “super-hot” orb-like UAP

Overview

A newly circulated FBI 302 interview report is drawing attention in UFO/UAP circles after it described an alleged late-2025 encounter involving orb-like aerial objects at a U.S. military site in the Western United States. According to the document, a senior U.S. intelligence official—identified in the source as USPER—gave a first-hand account of seeing a “super-hot” orb hovering near the ground before it accelerated away at a speed that reportedly outpaced a helicopter sent to track it. The report has begun circulating through recent declassified-intelligence discussions, adding another case to the growing archive of government-sourced UAP material.

This is an FBI 302 interview conducted with a senior US intelligence official regarding his first-hand account of a UAP encounter at a US military facility. USPER relayed to FBI agents that he and other federal and state personnel conducted searches to where orbs had been searching the area with a helicopter, they found a “super-hot” orb hovering over the ground. The orb is reported to have travelled for 20 miles at a speed too fast for the helicopter in pursuit.

An additional “swarm” of lights were seen moving in all directions. A total of four or five additional orbs were seen shortly thereafter for a short time, flaring up and then down. This pattern of four or five orbs flaring up, then down continued over the next thirty minutes across the area. Redactions have been made to protect the identity of eyewitnesses, the location of government facilities, or potentially sensitive information about military sites not related to UAP.

No redactions have been made to any files released under President Trump's directive concerning information about the nature or existence of any encounter reported as a UAP or related phenomena.

What the Document Says

The source material, hosted in a UAP-focused archive and presented as an FBI-collected statement, says the official and other federal and state personnel searched an area where orb-like objects had previously been seen. After that search, a helicopter was deployed and the team reportedly located a high-temperature orb positioned low over the ground. The account says the object then traveled roughly 20 miles, moving too quickly for the helicopter in pursuit. The same statement also describes an additional “swarm” of lights moving in multiple directions, suggesting a broader, multi-object event rather than a single isolated sighting.

The report further states that four or five additional orbs appeared shortly afterward, briefly flaring up and then dimming down, with that pattern repeating over a period of about 30 minutes across the area. According to the document, the encounter involved multiple government personnel and a range of observation methods, including night-vision equipment, ground observers, and personnel in aircraft. The source also says other pilots in separate aircraft observed the objects, while some of the linked images in the archive allegedly come from the same incident and were captured through night-vision devices.

Why It Matters

What makes the case notable is not simply the presence of unusual lights, but the provenance of the account. The document is presented as an FBI 302 interview, a format used to record witness statements and investigative interviews. In the UAP field, that makes the report relevant as a piece of primary-source documentation, even as the underlying explanation for the observations remains unresolved. For researchers, the key issue is separating what was reported from what was concluded. The document describes sighting conditions, perceived movement, and apparent heat signatures, but it does not by itself establish the nature of the objects.

The account also comes amid broader public interest in recently released and declassified intelligence-related UAP material, much of which has fueled debate about how military and intelligence agencies record unexplained events. Cases involving multiple witnesses, sensor overlap, and night-vision imagery are especially significant because they offer more data points than a single anecdotal report. Still, even in such cases, unusual aerial behavior can stem from a range of possibilities, including misidentification, sensor artifacts, classified technology, or genuinely unexplained phenomena.

Broader Context

As with many UAP disclosures, the document is likely to be scrutinized for timing, chain of custody, and corroborating evidence. The archive identifies the file as USPER-Statement-Redacted.pdf and notes it as a late-2025 incident connected to a sensitive government testing installation. For now, the report adds to the record of government personnel describing orb-like UAP in ways that suggest speed, heat, and coordinated movement—details that continue to keep the case in the center of ongoing UAP investigations and public discussion.

{ https://uaps.world/ }

Overview

Fox News aired a special report, “Unexplained Encounters,” that revisited the United States’ longest‑standing mystery: unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP). Anchored by Bret Baier, the segment linked contemporary congressional efforts to protect whistleblowers with a historical record of sightings that stretches back to World War II. The program highlighted recent legislative talks, declassified documents from the Trump administration, and testimonies from former military officials, underscoring a shift from routine dismissal toward systematic inquiry.

UFO FILES: Search for answers returns to earliest UAP sightings

Legislative Push and Whistleblower Protections

House leaders are preparing to meet White House officials to request explicit immunity for individuals who disclose classified information about UAP. Senator Mark Kelly (D‑AZ) stressed that “scientific research must be free from retaliation if these phenomena represent advanced technologies, possibly from foreign adversaries.” The proposed safeguards aim to encourage pilots, intelligence analysts, and other insiders to come forward without fear of career repercussions. Lawmakers argue that a transparent pipeline of data is essential for national‑security assessments and for evaluating any potential technological threats.

Early Sightings: The “Foo Fighters” of WWII

The report devoted considerable attention to the “Foo Fighters” reported by Allied aircrews in the 1940s. One of the most detailed accounts came from Polish Air Force Flight Lieutenant Roman Sobinski, who, on a 1942 bombing run over Germany, described an object “almost the size of the moon” that remained unmoved when his rear gunner fired. After landing, Sobinski’s crew was initially mocked by military officials, who suggested the pilot might have been intoxicated. Subsequent declassified records, released during the Trump administration, catalogued fourteen similar incidents between December 1944 and January 1945, describing orange‑colored, cylinder‑shaped lights that followed aircraft with “perfect control.” These documents reveal that the phenomenon was not isolated to a single squadron but was reported across multiple units.

Military and Government Investigations

Former Army Director for the UAP Task Force, Col. Karl Nell (Ret.), appeared on the program to assert that the phenomenon is “100 % real.” He recounted how wartime reports reached the White House, prompting the Office of Scientific Research and Development to launch investigations—efforts that later discovered German pilots were observing comparable lights. Anthropologist Peter Skafish, co‑founder of the SOL Foundation, traced the post‑war surge in sightings to 1947, noting that reports became “near‑daily” across the United States. Skafish characterized the Air Force’s Project Blue Book as largely a public‑relations operation designed to “mollify” the public by offering conventional explanations such as weather balloons or cosmic‑ray research, rather than conducting a rigorous scientific analysis.

Outlook and Implications

The Fox News segment concluded that the convergence of historic eyewitness accounts, newly released government documents, and growing legislative interest marks a turning point in how the United States addresses UAP. While past administrations often dismissed or “debunked” sightings, the consistency of reports from trained military personnel now compels a more serious scientific and security‑focused approach. Experts cited in the report suggest that, statistically, the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe is increasingly plausible. As Congress moves toward protecting whistleblowers and as intelligence agencies continue to evaluate the data, the nation appears poised to transition from speculation to structured investigation—potentially reshaping both defense policy and our broader understanding of the skies.

{ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApIGY58p6jY }

Scientists Have Detected Something Deeply Alarming at the Bottom of the Ocean

Shutterstock / Futurism

Mysteries of the Deep

Something is stirring in the waters off the coast of Greenland, and it isn’t a submarine fleet sent by Donald Trump.

According to reporting by the New Scientist, evidence is mounting that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation — a massive system of deep sea currents that acts like a conveyor belt for the world’s oceans known as AMOC — is starting to slow its gears. As it does, cold waters from the Greenland ice sheet are allowed to pool in the North-Atlantic, creating a “cold blob” that’s only getting colder as the rest of the world warms up.

This in turn has a major impact on jet streams, fueling extreme weather across the world. Should it collapse, the New Scientist notes that the AMOC could act as a climate tipping point, setting off a chain reaction resulting in much colder weather for some, and much drier weather for others by as early as 2040.

“The cold blob can disturb the atmospheric jet stream and storm activities, so it has implications for extreme weather events in North America and Europe,”  Laifang Li, assistant professor of meteorology and atmospheric science at Penn State explained in a press release announcing an earlier study on the AMOC.

Identifying how severe this cold blob ends up being may depend on the cause for the weakening AMOC — a topic which has researchers split. Some, like Li, say it’s caused by atmospheric forces, while others have identified oceanic conditions as the culprit.

In the latter camp is Stefan Rahmstorf, researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, whose team found evidence that heat loss from the ocean surface has been slowly shrinking since 1955, meaning whatever’s happening is driven by ocean currents. As Rahmstorf plainly told the New Scientist: “even if, in some modelling approaches, it seems possible that the cold blob is caused by the atmosphere, in fact, the data show it is caused by the ocean.”

One thing that’s sure is that the AMOC is definitely weakening, as troubling data from deep-ocean buoys shows crucial ocean currents slow at various points throughout the Atlantic. What this ultimately means remains to be seen — but rest assured, it isn’t good.

More on climate change: 

• Remember How Sucking Carbon Out of the Air Was Going to Save the Planet? We Have Terrible News

{ https://futurism.com/category/future-society }

NASA has taken a step toward quiet supersonic flight. The X-59 experimental aircraft broke the sound barrier for the first time without producing the deafening sonic boom typically associated with supersonic aircraft. This confirmed that the concept works and that the mission is proceeding according to plan.

The NASA X-59 aircraft completed its first supersonic flight as part of the Quest mission. Credit: NASA / Lori Losey

How the test was conducted

Pilot Jim Less took off from Edwards Air Force Base in California and accelerated the X-59 to approximately 1,148 km/h, which is 1.1 Mach—ten percent faster than the speed of sound. The flight altitude was about 13,230 m. The test lasted 81 minutes, during which the team evaluated flight characteristics in subsonic and supersonic modes.

An F-15 fighter jet flew alongside for observation. Its loud sonic boom drowned out any sounds from the X-59, so it was not possible to assess the aircraft’s quietness during this flight.

NASA’s X-59 aircraft completed its first supersonic flight as part of the Quest mission.

Source: NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center

The next milestone

The next step will be a flight under mission conditions. The X-59 is scheduled to reach a speed of Mach 1.4, or approximately 1,489 km/h, and climb to an altitude of about 16,760 meters. These parameters form the basis for the final phase of testing.

Following this, the X-59 will conduct test flights over several communities in the United States. NASA will collect data on how people perceive the noise from the aircraft and will share it with U.S. and international regulators to help develop new noise standards.

Mission objective

The X-59 aircraft is central to the Quest mission, which aims to demonstrate that supersonic commercial flights over cities are possible without causing noise pollution for people on the ground.

As part of the program, NASA is developing methodologies and technologies for designing supersonic airliners. American manufacturers will be able to build new aircraft with the confidence that they will meet quiet flight requirements, and passengers on international routes will reach their destinations faster.

• According to nasa.gov 

• Posted in Business, News, Science

{ https://universemagazine.com/en/articles-en/ }

On Wednesday, the Archdiocese of Washington removed Father Stephen Rossetti from his position as exorcist due to his public statements claiming that unidentified flying objects (UFOs) are demonic in nature. From now on, the only demons he will have to contend with are his own.

UFO Phenomenon. Stock photo: Unsplash

The decision to revoke the decree was made by the Archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Robert McElroy. He emphasized that Rossetti’s statements contradict the official doctrine of the Catholic Church.

According to The New York Times, the archbishop emphasized in his statement that Rossetti’s attempts to link UFOs to demonic activity, as well as his recent posts on social media, are causing serious harm to the Church’s clear teachings on the devil, evil spirits, and the rite of exorcism.

A threat from the sky

Stephen Rossetti is an ordained priest, a licensed psychologist, and the author of several books detailing his experiences with exorcism. This time, however, his public reflections went too far. 

Monsignor Stephen Rossetti. Photo from the AP archives

During his live streams on Facebook and YouTube, he told viewers about the “dangers” of UFO sightings and speculated on their demonic undertones.

According to The Associated Press, Rossetti said, “As an exorcist, I’ve tried to warn people about this threat. The thing is, demons love to hide. They don’t want to reveal their actions, because they’re much more effective when we don’t even suspect they’re there.”

“I am personally convinced,” added the exorcist, “that a significant portion—and perhaps even the majority—of UFO sightings are actually manifestations of demons.”

Contrary to the doctrine

It is worth noting that the idea that aliens have a demonic origin is becoming increasingly widespread among Christians.

According to Christopher Baglow, director of the Science and Religion Initiative at the University of Notre Dame, the Church does not formally have an official position on the possibility of extraterrestrial life. However, as Baglow explained to the NYT, Rossetti crossed a line by attempting to present his own views as a new doctrine that all Catholic believers are supposedly required to accept.

After his dismissal, a dejected Rossetti reacted in the traditional Catholic spirit: he felt deeply guilty and asked for forgiveness.

“I ask forgiveness for any ways that I have not been faithful to the teachings of the Church’s Magisterium,” said the exorcist in his final statement.

• According to CNBC 

• Posted in News, Science

 { https://universemagazine.com/en/articles-en/ }

El Nino has arrived: Scientists warn global phenomenon is primed to match catastrophic event that killed 50 million

By CHRIS MELORE, US DEPUTY SCIENCE EDITOR

El Nino has arrived, and weather experts fear the global climate phenomenon may be primed to match a deadly event that led to the deaths of more than 50 million people.

The natural climate pattern occurs when warmer-than-usual waters in the Pacific change the weather around the world for a minimum of several months.

Ocean conditions have now warmed to the point where El Nino is active and will likely continue well into next year, officials declared on Thursday. 

A spokesman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said: 'El Nino conditions are present and expected to strengthen into the Northern Hemisphere winter 2026-27.'

The declaration means the agency has found that sea surface temperatures are at least +0.9°F above average and are expected to stay that way for the foreseeable future.

Climate scientists fear this frequent weather event will become a 'Godzilla' or 'Super' El Nino by the end of the year, meaning sea surface temperatures rise to 3.6°F above normal or even higher - which NOAA classifies as 'strong.'

The agency confirmed those fears on Thursday, stating that there is a 63 percent chance of El Nino becoming 'very strong' between November 2026 and January 2027.

Climate officials added that this El Nino will likely be one of the strongest since 1950, and there is a fear it could match an event from 1877, which triggered severe droughts and crop failures around the world, contributing to more than 50 million deaths globally.

Scientists warn that a so–called 'super El Nino' could push global temperatures (above) to record–breaking highs 

Many climate historians think the 1877 event reshaped world history, and some consider it one of the first 'truly global climate disasters.'

Just a 4.86°F increase in sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean wreaked havoc across several continents.

Parts of Africa, Southeast Asia and Australia experienced severe drought and forest fires. India saw its normal monsoon rains disappear, while Northern China suffered devastating dry spells that led to harvest failures. In Brazil, rivers dried up and agriculture collapsed.

There were also outbreaks of malaria, plague, dysentery, smallpox and cholera across already weakened populations.

Researchers have estimated that the resulting scarcity of food and disease outbreaks killed up to 4 percent of the Earth's population at the time. That would be the equivalent of at least 250 million people dying if El Nino caused that to happen today.

While every El Nino is different, in the US, it typically brings warmer-than-normal temperatures across the northern half of the country and parts of Alaska. Cooler conditions are more common across the southern states, especially from Texas through the Southeast.

The climate pattern also tends to shift storm tracks, increasing the chances of wetter-than-average weather across California, the Southwest, the Gulf Coast and much of the Southeast. 

Meanwhile, drier conditions are often seen in parts of the northern Rockies, the Ohio Valley, the Great Lakes and sections of the Mississippi Valley.

Drought-stressed wheat plants near parched ground in a field in Kansas last month. Scientists fear El Nino will lead to more droughts, especially in the northern US

Thursday's announcement revealed that the area of the central Pacific where scientists actively monitor sea surface temperatures for El Nino was 1.3°F above normal - breaking the El Nino threshold of 0.9°F.

However, NOAA also revealed that ocean waters in the eastern Pacific have already risen to 3.8°F above average. This pattern, where warmer water is detected in the east, is typical when a strong El Nino is developing.

AccuWeather senior meteorologist Chad Merrill said in a statement: 'Most El Ninos begin in the fall, so this is developing much earlier and faster than expected.'

El Nino often disrupts global rain patterns, making the climate wetter in the southern US and drier in the north

(stock image)

In the US, El Nino has a major impact on the natural jet stream, which flows from west to east over the middle of the country.

As El Nino heats the Pacific, this pushes the jet stream farther south, so it flows over the southern and Gulf states.

This brings wetter weather to the South, drier weather to the Midwest and warmer weather to the Pacific Northwest and Northern Plains.

'It will intensify drought in the Northwest and northern Rockies and lessen drought intensity and coverage in the Southwest,' Merrill added.

'It won’t do anything to eliminate the long-term drought in the Southeast and mid-Atlantic until we get to late fall and early winter.'

Deepti Singh, associate professor at Washington State University, told the Washington Post: 'Simultaneous multiyear droughts similar to those in the 1870s could happen again.'

'What is different now is that our atmosphere and oceans are substantially warmer than they were in the 1870s, which means the associated extremes could be more extreme.'

Climate forecasts show that 2026's temperatures in the Pacific Ocean are already well above average - triggering El Nino

While Super El Ninos have had a catastrophic impact on the globe in past years, meteorologists have noted that it may help the East Coast avoid a devastating Atlantic hurricane season.

Overall, AccuWeather is now predicting a below-average hurricane season, with fewer named storms and fewer tropical cyclones developing into major hurricanes.

However, AccuWeather's Lead Long Range Forecaster Paul Pastelok told the Daily Mail that this does not mean Americans should let down their guard in 2026, as a major hurricane can still reach land despite the presence of El Nino.

'It only takes one storm, and then boom! We're not saying that El Nino is going to weaken and dampen the Atlantic Basin season completely,' he said.

'There's still a lot of warm water, a lot of potential there. So, [I] just wanted to make sure [if] people were saying, "Oh, we don't have to worry about anything this year." That's not true. It only takes one storm.'

Pastelok noted that the devastating Hurricane Andrew, which made landfall in Southern Florida as a Category 5 storm in 1992 and killed 65 people globally, developed during an El Nino summer.

{ https://www.dailymail.com/sciencetech/index.html }

What’s Behind Steven Spielberg’s Lifelong Obsession With Flying Saucers and Extraterrestrial Visitors?

Half a century after “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” the director returns to the subject of UFOs with “Disclosure Day.” His science fiction films are informed by his fascination with alien encounters in American suburbia

Jake New | Freelance Writer

Director Steven Spielberg on the set of Disclosure Day, his latest UFO-inspired film Niko Tavernise / Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment

Two deputies were hot off a coffee run when they first crossed paths with the cosmic unknown.

Near the end of a late-night patrol in Portage County, Ohio, the men stumbled across an abandoned vehicle facing the wrong direction. One of them cautiously approached the driver’s side before scanning the nearby woods. Nothing. Suddenly, a bright light emerged directly above the treetops, filling the air with a heavy electric hum.

The glow appeared to come from a strange egg-shaped object as “big as a house,” the officers later recalled. Back in their cruiser, they radioed the sheriff’s office. A sergeant instructed them not to let the unidentified flying object out of their sight.

The pair chased the UFO across some 70 miles of eastern Ohio and Pennsylvania. Two more officers from neighboring towns joined the pursuit, which lasted nearly an hour. At daybreak, the four men stood together outside a gas station in Conway, Pennsylvania, watching in disbelief as the craft shot into the sky and vanished from view.

If this scene sounds familiar, that’s because Steven Spielberg borrowed it for an early sequence in his 1977 film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The Portage County incident was one of several purported UFO encounters that inspired the movie, for which Spielberg drew on decades of reports and research.

“If you believe, it’s science fact; if you don’t believe, it’s science fiction,” Spielberg told Sight and Sound ahead of the film’s release. “I’m an agnostic between the two beliefs, so for me it’s science speculation. It’s not ten light-years away. It’s right in the heart of American suburbia.”

Close Encounters cemented Spielberg as one of Hollywood’s pre-eminent directors and laid the foundation for his lasting association with stories about aliens and UFOs. Nearly 50 years later, he has built one of the most successful careers in American cinema—and it’s populated with visitors from the stars.

Now, Spielberg’s latest project, Disclosure Day, revisits the subject once again. Arriving in theaters on June 12, the director’s new movie imagines humanity receiving definitive proof of alien life and discovering the measures that powerful groups have taken to keep this fact hidden.

“He wanted to make a film about What’s the truth, and how does it come out?” David Koepp, the film’s screenwriter, tells Smithsonian magazine. “He viewed this as the summation of what he had to say on what is perhaps the single most important subject to him.”

Flying saucers

June 14, 1947. Morning.

America’s most famous UFO case began just after a spring storm swept across the high plains outside Roswell, New Mexico. Rancher W.W. Brazel had driven out to inspect his property for damage, but what he found scattered across the sand didn’t look like storm debris.

Brazel decided that the expansive pile of metallic scrap might be worth reporting to the nearby Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF). On July 8, the Roswell Daily Record published the Army’s assessment under the headline “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region.”

The military ultimately concluded that the wreckage was a weather balloon. But the Roswell incident was far from the only UFO encounter reported that summer. On June 24, a pilot spotted nine objects in the skies near Washington’s Mount Rainier, setting off a frenzy of similar reports. Newspapers called them “flying saucers.”

Spielberg had been born just six months earlier, in December 1946. During the first year of his life, Americans reported more than 800 UFO sightings.

“Carl Jung suggested that a belief in UFOs stems from ‘an emotional tension having its cause in a situation of collective distress or danger, or in a vital psychic need,’” film historian Joseph McBride writes in Steven Spielberg: A Biography. “The Cold War and collective anxieties about the dangers of nuclear war helped stimulate that tension in Spielberg’s formative years.”

McBride also points to other tensions that may help explain Spielberg’s affinity for aliens. The director’s father, Arnold, was a workaholic electrical engineer who helped design early computers. His mother, Leah, was an eccentric concert pianist with a love of the arts. Both were the children of Jewish immigrants. More than a dozen of Arnold’s relatives died during the Holocaust.

“Spielberg is always interested in the rewards and problems involved in the meeting of cultures,” McBride tells Smithsonian. “With his immigrant family background, that comes naturally to him, and growing up Jewish in progressively more WASPish communities heightened that concern for him. UFOs and other forms of aliens fascinate him for that reason.”

For a kid growing up in the 1950s, those anxieties came packaged as flying saucer movies. Spielberg devoured UFO classics like The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and It Came From Outer Space (1953). But for the would-be director, movies weren’t simply something to be watched. After seeing Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) in theaters, he began making his own films with his father’s eight-millimeter camera. Arnold often assisted behind the scenes, building miniature sets and designing lighting rigs.

When Spielberg was 17, he produced his first feature-length film, Firelight. Made on a budget of about $500, the science fiction thriller follows a group of scientists investigating strange lights in the skies above Arizona. Spielberg screened the movie during a sold-out, one-night run at a local theater, ultimately earning $1 in profit.

After graduating from high school, Spielberg enrolled at California State University, Long Beach, but grew restless and dropped out before earning a degree. Soon after, in 1969, he became the youngest director ever signed to a long-term studio contract.

Kindred seekers of truth

October 18, 1973. Night.

As far as UFO witnesses go, the men inside the helicopter were unusually credible: four United States Army reservists, all experienced air crewmen and self-described flying saucer skeptics.

Captain Lawrence Coyne was flying the crew to Cleveland when he nearly collided with a cigar-shaped craft with a red light on its nose. The object stopped directly above the helicopter, bathing the cockpit in an eerie green glow. The crew attempted to descend but instead found themselves rising more than 3,500 feet into the sky. Then, the object released the helicopter and vanished.

By the early 1970s, UFO reports had fallen sharply in the U.S. Aliens had become the domain of amateur investigators and sensationalist tabloid publications like the National Enquirer. In a 1971 essay for the Saturday Evening Post, science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, who co-wrote the screenplay for the Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey, declared that “flying saucers are dead.”

As it turns out, Clarke’s assertion arrived too early. The Coyne incident was part of a wave of UFO reports in 1973 that revived interest in the strange events.

“There’s this absolutely stunning spate of sightings that comes out of nowhere and kind of shocks everybody,” says Greg Eghigian, a historian at the Pennsylvania State University and the author of After the Flying Saucers Came: A Global History of the UFO Phenomenon. “That ushers in a renaissance in the UFO world. There’s this generation of young people starting to get into UFOs.”

Spielberg was an enthusiastic member of this new generation of UFO devotees. By then a professional filmmaker, he hoped to return to the ideas he’d first explored in Firelight. But he found that, wunderkind or not, he lacked the clout to get such an unusual movie off the ground. Even after striking a deal with Columbia Pictures in 1973 to direct a science fiction feature, he struggled to secure the creative freedom required to make a serious-minded UFO film. “Everybody thought, ‘What, you want to make a movie about the National Enquirer?’” Spielberg recalled earlier this year.

The studio changed its tune after Spielberg released Jaws (1975), a movie so successful that it created the summer blockbuster. Columbia gave the director free rein to make his passion project.

Spielberg pored over magazine and newspaper articles about UFOs and interviewed people who claimed to have seen them. He also sought access to the classified archives of Project Blue Book, a government program tasked with investigating reports of UFOs, and studied the work of J. Allen Hynek, the project’s famous defector.

Hynek, an astronomer, had joined the program as a skeptic, but he grew increasingly troubled by how easily the military dismissed cases that he believed were credible. He went public with his doubts, publishing The UFO Experience in 1972. The book describes the Portage County chase as “a fine example … of a Close Encounter of the First Kind.”

Under Hynek’s system, a First Kind encounter refers to a UFO observed at close range. A Second Kind encounter involves a UFO that leaves behind physical evidence. Close Encounters of the Third Kind concern sightings that feature “animated creatures.” Spielberg cribbed the phrase for the title of his new UFO film.

When Hynek learned that his work was being used without permission, he wrote to the director. Spielberg apologized and pledged to make The UFO Experience required reading for his creative team. The production later hired the astronomer as a technical consultant and gave him a cameo in the film.

“That shows that Spielberg’s heart was in the right place,” says Mark O’Connell, Hynek’s biographer. “I strongly believe that Hynek perceived Spielberg as a fellow traveler, a kindred seeker of truth.”

J. Allen Hynek on the set of Close Encounters of the Third Kind  Columbia Tristar / Getty Images

The Hopkinsville goblins

August 21, 1955. Dusk.

After spending an evening playing cards with family and friends near Kelly, Kentucky, Billy Ray Taylor stepped outside to gather some water from the backyard well. When he returned, he claimed that he’d seen something “real bright, with an exhaust all the colors of the rainbow,” pass over the farmhouse.

Taylor and his companions later said that they saw a small figure emerge from the thick darkness outside. About three and a half feet tall, it had long arms and large, luminous eyes. Another followed. And then another. The creatures circled the property, appearing at the farmhouse’s windows, floating among the trees and easily avoiding gunfire.

During a break in the chaos, the group fled to the nearby Hopkinsville police station to report what they’d seen. But officers found no evidence of the so-called Hopkinsville goblins.

An artist's rendering of a so-called Hopkinsville goblin  Tim Bertelink via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 4.0

“The Kelly-Hopkinsville case, if considered entirely apart from the total pattern of UFO sightings, seems clearly preposterous, even to offend common sense,” Hynek wrote in The UFO Experience. “The latter, however, has not proved a sure guide in the past history of science.”

When Columbia Pictures asked for a follow-up to Close Encounters, Spielberg once again mined Hynek’s case files for inspiration, gravitating toward the Hopkinsville incident. The proposed sequel, titled Night Skies, would have focused on a group of aliens terrorizing a rural family.

An emphasis on families in peril was emerging as a recurring motif in the director’s films. When Spielberg was a teenager, his parents’ marriage began to unravel, and they divorced in 1966.

In a 1999 interview on “Inside the Actors Studio,” host James Lipton theorized that Close Encounters’ famous musical exchange between humans and aliens was an attempt to resolve the tensions within Spielberg’s own family. “Your father was a computer scientist. Your mother was a musician,” Lipton said. “When the spaceship lands, how do they communicate? They make music on their computers, and they are able to speak to each other.”

Spielberg poses with E.T. in 1982.  Mark Sennet / Getty Images

Spielberg eventually abandoned the sequel to Close Encounters—but he salvaged one major element. The cadre of evil aliens included a gentle being named Buddee who befriended the family’s son. Buddee became the basis for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), which would prove to be another hit for Spielberg.

E.T. stars a lonely boy named Elliott who helps a stranded alien find his way home. The plot follows a family in peril, but this time, the danger comes from something more personal: the fallout of a divorce. The movie begins with Elliott and his siblings mourning the collapse of their family. The audience never meets the children’s father, but his presence looms large, haunting conversations around the dinner table.

“How do you fill the heart of a lonely child, and what extraordinary event would it take to fill Elliott’s heart after losing his dad?” Spielberg said in a 2017 documentary. “It would take something as extraordinary as an extraterrestrial coming into his life.”

ET The Extra Terrestrial (1982) Official 20th Anniversary Trailer Movie HD

Ancient aliens and absent fathers

3500 B.C.E. The dawn of civilization.

In Mesopotamia, the Sumerians told stories of benevolent gods who emerged from a cosmic ocean to share their knowledge. Ancient Indian texts described surreal encounters with flying machines powered by quicksilver.

In his 1968 book, Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved Mysteries of the Past, Swiss author Erich von Däniken argued that such myths were the consequence of encounters with aliens. He proposed that these beings were responsible for much of human progress, from the construction of Egypt’s pyramids to the creation of Peru’s Nazca Lines. Mainstream scientists, including Carl Sagan, dismissed von Däniken’s theories. Nevertheless, his pseudoscientific books sold nearly 70 million copies.

When Spielberg and fellow filmmaker George Lucas started developing the Indiana Jones movie Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), they briefly considered drawing from von Däniken’s book. What if the Ark of the Covenant was not a biblical miracle, Lucas mused during early story sessions, but rather “some kind of super high-powered radio from one of Erich von Däniken’s flying saucers?”

The pair scrapped the concept but returned to it decades later, with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008). In the film’s mythology, the titular skull once sat inside the head of an ancient interdimensional alien. Spielberg had flirted with the idea elsewhere. War of the Worlds (2005), his adaptation of the 1898 H.G. Wells novel of the same name, features alien machines buried beneath the earth long before modern civilization arose.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers

But a deeper connection links Spielberg’s alien films beyond von Däniken’s theories and Hynek’s research.

Fractured families and distant fathers continued to haunt the director’s filmography. When Spielberg’s parents announced their separation, Arnold claimed responsibility for the breakup. Years later, Spielberg realized that the gesture was meant to protect Leah from her children’s anger. “I simply took him at his word when he said, ‘It’s my idea that we separate,’” Spielberg recalled in 2022. “And I lived with that, and I blamed my dad for that, for years.”

In Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford), an archaeologist who was once estranged from his father, discovers that he has unwittingly repeated the pattern with his own son. In War of the Worlds, Tom Cruise plays a divorced dad named Ray who tries to keep his children alive during an alien invasion. In both films, the fathers make amends.

Close Encounters’ protagonist (Richard Dreyfus) abandons his family to explore the stars, whereas Indy builds a relationship with his son, and Ray goes to great lengths to keep his children safe. These artistic choices reflected events in Spielberg’s own life: In the intervening decades, he’d married and become a father himself.

“Today, I would never have the guy leaving his family and go on the mothership,” Spielberg said in 2005. “I would have the guy doing everything he could to protect his children.”

An age of disclosure

July 26, 2023. Morning.

In a packed hearing on Capitol Hill, lawmakers listened to witnesses describe the existence of “nonhuman biologics” and objects in the sky that could outfly any American jet. Another 100 people crowded into the overflow room, gasping at each revelation.

The House Oversight Committee had convened the hearing to examine what the U.S. government refers to as unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP). The Senate and NASA were conducting similar inquiries. For decades, UFO reports had been treated as fodder for tabloids and trade paperbacks. Now, they were the subject of sworn testimony before Congress and front-page headlines in the New York Times.

Eghigian, of the Pennsylvania State University, credits the heightened attention to a 2017 Times article about a secret government program investigating UAPs. The article helped kick off an “age of disclosure,” in which UFO truthers anticipate that the U.S. government will finally reveal what it knows. Spielberg has said that the same story rekindled his own interest in UFOs after years spent working on other projects.

“We’ve gone in a straight line back to the beginning,” Eghigian says. “It’s very much akin to the late 1940s and early ’50s, a time in which you get a lot of discussion about the military knowing this information but not sharing it with us.”

L to R: Colman Domingo, Tommy Martinez, Emily Blunt and Josh O'Connor in Disclosure Day  Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment

Disclosure Day builds on this renewed interest, following a whistleblower (Josh O’Connor) running from a shadowy government contractor while carrying a backpack filled with evidence that aliens have visited Earth. A TV weather reporter in Kansas City (Emily Blunt) is pulled into the conspiracy after she inexplicably begins speaking an alien language live on air.

The film mines 70 years of UFO mythology, including famous episodes like the 1947 Roswell crash. But it also features deeper cuts, such as a supposed incident in which President Richard Nixon showed actor Jackie Gleason the recovered bodies of dead aliens.

“We were looking for a unified theory of the UAP phenomenon,” says screenwriter Koepp, who also wrote War of the Worlds and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. “So we decided consciously to include as much of the lore as possible and not debunk or cherry-pick, but figure out, ‘How does this all go together?’”

Much of the material was drawn from Spielberg’s lifelong study of the subject. As he tells Empire magazine, he has “seven solid decades of a vast personal interest in what lies beyond our atmosphere, in the cosmos, and what is within our atmosphere right here on planet Earth.”

“There’s Something Out There” - Steven Spielberg on Alien Visitors, and an “E.T.” Sequel

The director’s thinking about UFOs has evolved over those decades. During a 2023 episode of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” the television host pressed Spielberg to theorize what these mysterious objects could be. “What if they’re not from an advanced civilization 300 million light-years from here,” the director mused, but rather human anthropologists from the future who are exploring the past?

Spielberg could very well have been describing his own career. Throughout his filmography, he has used cinema to revisit moments in history, from the abolishment of slavery to the horrors of the Holocaust. In 2022, he turned this anthropological lens toward himself in the semi-autobiographical film The Fabelmans, a project he has described as “$40 million of therapy.”

But Spielberg hardly needed a biopic to excavate his past. His UFO films have always given this impulse a particularly vivid form, pairing broken families and absent fathers with the realization—as terrifying as it is comforting—that we are not alone in the universe.

A first encounter

The 1950s. Before dawn.

Depending on the telling, the story sometimes takes place in a field in New Jersey. Other times, it’s a desert outside Phoenix. Sometimes Spielberg is 5 or 6. Other times, he’s 10 or 11. But the emotion of the moment is always the same.

Spielberg’s father wakes him in the middle of the night and rushes him to their car without explanation. This wasn’t like his dad. Arnold was a reserved man, a calm counterpoint to his free-spirited wife. “My heart was beating,” Spielberg told critic Roger Ebert in 1998. “I didn’t know what he wanted to do. He wouldn’t tell me, and he put me in the car and we went off.”

The pair drove until the warm lights of the suburbs faded into darkness. At their destination, Arnold spread a blanket on the ground, and the two lay down. He pointed to the stars as a meteor shower streaked across the sky. Suddenly, the young Spielberg was aware of the vastness of outer space. Before him stretched a universe of immense scale and endless possibility.

The Fabelmans | Official Trailer [HD]

“I think he was just overcome with wonderment, and that influenced his storytelling—not just in this film, but in all his films,” Koepp says. “Nobody captures wonderment quite the way he does.”

Many have speculated about Spielberg’s lifelong fascination with UFOs. With the impending release of Disclosure Day, online conspiracy theorists have added to the pile, proposing that the director is quietly working with the government to “soft launch” the existence of aliens to a public that might otherwise panic. But the real reason may be simpler.

Perhaps Spielberg returns to stories about aliens and UFOs not because he’s in on an intergalactic secret, but because they transport him to a powerful moment from his childhood—the night his father told him to look up and handed him a key to the cosmos.

{ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/ }

Steven Spielberg says 'we are not alone' as ET director shares alien belief

Steven Spielberg is behind some of the biggest alien movies of all time, including E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and the director has shared why he now truly believes aliens exist

BY Yasmin Vince - TV Reporter and Claudia Trotman - Assistant Showbiz Editor

Steven Spielberg has shared his thoughts on aliens 

(Image: AFP via Getty Images)

Steven Spielberg has declared he genuinely believes in extraterrestrial life ahead of launching his newest sci-fi blockbuster. The Oscar-winning filmmaker, responsible for beloved classics E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, insisted "we are not alone".

The 79-year-old director's fresh offering Disclosure Day centres on a weather presenter, portrayed by Emily Blunt, who encounters a baffling alien incident while on air. The conspiracy thriller also features Pride And Prejudice star Colin Firth, Euphoria's Colman Domingo and Challengers actor Josh O'Connor, who takes on the role of a tech-savvy whistleblower attempting to leak classified government documents about extraterrestrial existence to the masses.

The picture arrives nearly five decades following the debut of Oscar-nominated Close Encounters, which linked three individuals who encounter alien experiences, reports the Mirror.

Steven Spielberg has opened up 

(Image: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)

Prior to Disclosure Day's arrival, Spielberg revealed his conviction that aliens exist somewhere out there. He revealed: "I do believe that we are not alone in the cosmos, in the universe. As far as whether I believe that aliens are here and have been here, 50 years ago, when I made Close Encounters, I would have said seeing is believing.

"And I haven't seen one. I've not even seen a UFO. But today, with all the smartphones that are out there, and all the things that I've seen, and all the people who I believe, I believe the believers. I am absolutely ready to say that I do believe we are not alone here on this planet," he told the The Rest is Entertainment podcast.

At the UK premiere of the film, the director told the BBC that he reckons aliens will be uncovered during our lifetime. He explained: "I've become more optimistic that people are going to be able to discover things that we have not been allowed to discover."

His leading man Josh O'Connor concurred that there was "something out there" but insisted he didn't reckon we'd be encountering extra-terrestrial life anytime soon. Meanwhile Emily Blunt declared it was "mathematically insane to imagine we are the only civilisation".

Spielberg is renowned for his alien-focused films. In 1982, he unleashed E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, chronicling a young lad who assists an alien marooned on Earth to return home.

Just like Close Encounters, that picture secured Spielberg a best director nod at the Oscars, plus a nomination for best picture. ET became his most successful box office triumph after 1993's Jurassic Park.

Elsewhere in the podcast, the filmmaker disclosed his repeated efforts to helm a James Bond film over the years, confessing his rejection ultimately led him to another enormously successful franchise in Indiana Jones.

A new trailer was unveiled for Disclosure Day

(Image: Universal Pictures)

He explained he approached Albert 'Cubby' Broccoli, the iconic American producer who co-founded and developed the James Bond franchise following Jaws becoming a smash hit for him in 1975.

"I'd always wanted to make a James Bond film from the day I saw Dr. No, so I called Cubby after Jaws and volunteered. I said, 'If you need a director, I would love to direct one.' And he said no. Then Cubby called me again after Close Encounters came out, which was another big hit. A few years later, he said, 'We'd like to use the five notes in Moonraker.' And I said, 'I'll make you a deal. I'll give you permission to use the five notes if you let me direct a Bond film.' And he said no. But I gave him the five notes anyway.

"So they consistently turned me down - at least, Broccoli did. He never explained why he wasn't letting me into the Bond family. But when I told that story to George Lucas in 1977, when we were in Hawaii together getting ready for the release of Star Wars: A New Hope, he said, 'I have something better than Bond. It's called Indiana Smith,' which is what it was called at the time. He told me the premise of the Indiana Jones series, and that's how I got that job. So if they ever asked me to make a Bond film now, my answer would be: 'You can't afford me.'"

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{ https://www.dailystar.co.uk/showbiz/  }

We are not alone in space – and maybe not even on Earth. At least that's what the public believes.

Most Americans believe intelligent life exists on other planets, and one in five think they've already made contact with us. 

For those who don't think that's happened yet, many expect contact at some point in the future. 

If such face-to-face encounters were to take place on Earth, Americans say they would greet the alien visitors with more fascination than fear, along with some unease. 

The government's recent release of UFO files has some Americans saying we've already been visited by extraterrestrial life. This is especially the case among those who have watched the videos in the UFO files.

And people suspect there's still more to come. Eight in 10 think the government knows more about UFOs than it is telling.

The percentage who believe intelligent life exists on other planets has become more widespread in recent years. Looking back just to 2010, fewer than half of Americans believed that. Since that time, higher numbers of men, women and people across age groups and education levels now believe in the existence of intelligent life.   

People say they would be more curious than scared about the prospect of meeting extraterrestrials should they come to Earth. But such contact also generates some anxiety — more would be nervous than calm.

Ever seen a UFO?

The debate about whether UFOs have visited Earth continues. 

Seventeen percent of Americans report having personally seen something they thought was a UFO. This is similar to what Gallup polling has shown in recent years, but a higher percentage than what their polling found in the 1970s.

More men than women report having seen a UFO. 

People who say they have seen what they believe was a UFO overwhelmingly think intelligent life exists, and most would be curious upon meeting such beings, with many also saying they would feel nervous and excited about the prospect. 

So, what are they?

Americans are split on whether reports of UFOs might sometimes be caused by alien spacecrafts visiting Earth, or are always the result of human or natural activity that comes from Earth. 

Those who believe intelligent life exists out there overwhelmingly think reports of UFOs are at least sometimes the result of alien spacecraft visiting. But those who don't believe in intelligent life think the more likely explanation is human or natural activity.

Most Americans have heard or read at least something about the federal government's release of files and videos related to Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, or UAP, also known as Unidentified Flying Objects, and four in 10 report watching videos that were released. 

Three in 10 say this material has made them more likely to believe that aliens visited Earth, a figure that rises to four in 10 among those who have watched videos. 

Americans still think the U.S. government knows more.

A big majority says the government is not telling all it knows about UFOs. It's the predominant opinion among those who believe in extraterrestrial life, as well as those who do not. And there is agreement across party lines on this: Most Democrats, Republicans and independents don't think the government is telling the public all it knows.

This CBS News/YouGov survey was conducted with a nationally representative sample of 2,023 U.S. adults interviewed between June 2-4, 2026. The sample was weighted to be representative of adults nationwide according to gender, age, race, and education, based on the U.S. Census American Community Survey and Current Population Survey, as well as 2024 presidential vote. The margin of error is ±2.8 points. CBS News polls cited in this analysis from 1997, 2010, 2017 and 2021 were conducted by phone.

link CBS News poll - June 2-4

• https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/cbsnews_20250608_1_updated.pdf

{ https://www.cbsnews.com/politics/ }

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