“We’ve Never Seen Anything Quite Like This”: A Strange Ten-Sided “Structure” Has Been Spotted on Saturn’s North Pole
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has glimpsed a strange ten-sided atmospheric wave at Saturn’s south pole, the first regular-sided jet pattern ever observed there.
In a recent paper published in Science Advances, researchers examined Saturn’s peculiar decahedron, detecting signs of an entirely new atmospheric phenomenon for the gas giant. A similar hexagon-shaped wave resides at Saturn’s north pole but differs in noticeable ways.
Years of Hubble observations from 2023 to 2025 allowed the team to trace subtle hints that they eventually resolved into the decagonal wave at Saturn’s south pole.
“We’ve never seen anything quite like this in Saturn’s southern hemisphere,” said co-author Amy Simon, OPAL principal investigator, at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The northern hexagon has been there every time we’ve looked for more than 40 years. This feature is different — it appears to be strengthening, giving us the rare opportunity to watch a giant atmospheric pattern develop.”
Since its 1990 launch into low Earth orbit, the Hubble Space Telescope has been observing our solar system, uncovering new details about our planetary neighbors. One such project is the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) program, which began collecting data with observations of Uranus in 2014 and now provides the crucial evidence for this discovery, with high-resolution images that resolve murky hints from ground-based observations.
As Saturn’s seasons changed, its south pole came into alignment with ground-based observatories. In images from those telescopes submitted to the Planetary Virtual Observatory Laboratory, amateur astronomers Trevor Barry and Jean-Paul Oger, along with Agustín Sánchez-Lavega of the University of the Basque Country in Spain, noticed something interesting happening on the gas giant.
Since 2023, the decagon has continued to develop in what scientists believe may be a new atmospheric pattern on Saturn. Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, Agustin Sánchez-Lavega (UPV), Amy Simon (NASA-GSFC), Michael Wong (UC Berkeley);
Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan
The researchers spotted an undulating band along Saturn’s south pole, which, in further 2025 ground-based telescope images, began to suggest a decagonal (ten-sided) structure. With its incredible image clarity and spatial resolution, Hubble’s imagery finally allowed researchers to resolve the decagonal shape with certainty.
“Given Saturn’s symmetry in its north-south jet stream system, we have been searching for a counterpart to Saturn’s northern hexagon on the south pole in Hubble images since 1990,” said lead author Agustín Sánchez-Lavega of the University of the Basque Country in Spain. “Images from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which orbited Saturn between 2004 and 2017, showed no inkling of a long-lived formation, either. The Hubble data confirmed the feature’s presence back to 2023.”
The wave is an interesting three-dimensional feature that extends through multiple layers of the atmosphere within one of the planet’s jet streams. Because Hubble can image the planet in multiple wavelengths, the decagon’s location appears to shift between observations, as each wavelength penetrates the atmosphere to a different degree.
“The most intriguing part to me is that this seems to have just formed recently,” said Simon. “The question is, why did it suddenly form now when we haven’t seen one before?”
Recognizing Saturn’s decagonal wave is only a first step. Follow-up observations to collect more data and computer models to piece together what is occurring on the planet will be required to firmly grasp the phenomenon. Questions remain about how it formed, how long it may last, and how similar it is compared to the northern hexagonal wave.
One thing the team will be sure to watch for in their continued observations is whether the shape evolves or maintains its decagonal structure. Their continued work could provide important new insights into how atmospheric dynamics operate on gas giants and what they can reveal about our own planet’s atmospheric phenomena.
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NASA photo of Mars sparks theories of alien life as eagle-eyed viewers spot TRACKS in the dust
Another strange image has been unearthed in the NASA archives which some believe is evidence of intelligent life driving along the surface of Mars.
NASA's Curiosity rover, which has been investigating whether Mars could have supported microbial life for the last 14 years, snapped the image just over a year ago on May 19, 2025.
It shows the dusty Martian landscape with rocky hills and distant mountains around 2.40am in Coordinated Universal Time on Earth.
However, the panorama also revealed a large and easily visible pattern in the ground which looked similar to a row of tire tracks.
One person asked: 'Are those Curiosity’s tracks we’re seeing?'
However, others who viewed the NASA image shared on social media that the tracks from the human-made rover are completely different from the pattern seen last year.
Fueling speculation that NASA’s rover had captured proof of some mechanical device driving on Mars, another image taken just two minutes later caught the same pattern in the ground from a different angle - suggesting this was not a camera glitch or trick of the light.
In September 2025, NASA declared it had found the clearest signs of ancient microbial life on Mars in a sample collected by the Perseverance rover.
Images sent from the Curiosity rover on Mars in 2025 captured a strange pattern some have compared to tire tracks
A second image sent by Curiosity photographed the same track from a different angle
Despite the history-making revelation, both the space agency and White House have maintained that no signs of intelligent, extraterrestrial life have ever been found.
There were no other photos from May 19, 2025 publicly posted by NASA that revealed if more tracks were found or if Curiosity got closer to the strange formation to get a more detailed look.
NASA and military officials have frequently called strange and unexplainable objects in space photos 'artifacts,' often blaming them on unusual camera lighting or corrupted data being transmitted back to Earth.
The 2025 image was reposted on Tuesday by social media user Kari Sivertzen, a space enthusiast who regularly shares public NASA images that contain strange anomalies that cannot be easily explained.
Sivertzen said on X: 'Sometimes I spot things that catch my eye, and I share them here. I believe there is life on other planets, and since NASA has found potential traces of life on Mars, it’s the perfect place to look.'
While viewers were immediately drawn to the strange track marks, Sivertzen said she shared the rover's photo to point out clues that a body of water may have existed on Mars in the distant past.
'What I'm actually highlighting here are the depressions in the surrounding area, which look quite distinct and could be consistent with past water activity or an impact,' Sivertzen posted.
However, the photo had some lining up Curiosity's wheel marks to the uniform pattern seen on Mars, which appeared to show a straight line down the center of the track, with evenly spaced prints closely distributed in a straight line - just like a tire in motion.
A social media user to shared the 2025 Mars image said it also revealed signs of an ancient body of water on the planet
Curiosity landed on Mars in 2012 to find evidence that the planet had conditions that could support microbial life billions of years ago
One person replied to the X post: 'It's not the rover, at least what I think, since that would have left two tracks and the "pattern" doesn't match other rover tracks.'
The X user pointed out that Curiosity has no center line in its tire tracks, and the treads also feature a jagged pattern with large square blocks between them.
This was not the first strange pattern or formation astronomy enthusiasts have spotted on the Red Planet.
Last month, Sivertzen shared another shocking photo from Curiosity appearing to show a jellyfish-like being or mechanical device moving along Mars' Gale Crater.
The unearthed panorama from 2023 revealed a small figure in the left corner of the image that appeared to have a large black body perched atop two spindly legs.
Images taken of the same area less than a minute earlier showed no sign of the mysterious figure.
The object in 2023 was seen in Gale Crater and was not present in images taken seconds before
Curiosity rover has been exploring Gale Crater since 2012. The area is a huge impact crater roughly the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, with a towering mountain rising from its center.
Scientists believe this location will provide more evidence that life once existed on Mars thousands, and possibly millions, of years ago.
Like the Perseverance rover, it is using onboard instruments to study rock layers, clay deposits and climate history to look for microbial traces of life.
Skeptics have previously claimed that people see strange images in the Martian landscape because the human brain naturally attempts to recognize familiar shapes in ambiguous images, a phenomenon known as pareidolia.
It is the same psychological effect that can cause people to see faces in clouds, animals in rock formations or human-made structures across the barren Martian landscape.
Mars has produced several famous examples, most notably the so-called ‘Face on Mars,’ which was photographed by NASA’s Viking 1 orbiter in 1976.
Higher-resolution images later revealed that the apparent face was an ordinary eroded hill whose human-like appearance resulted from shadows and the relatively poor quality of the original photograph.
NASA and the Trump Administration are now planning for the first manned mission to Mars by the end of the decade.
EXCLUSIVE - DR PHIL: There are crystal clear secret UFO videos the government's hidden in plain sight. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. What I've heard... and the terrifying reason for the cover-up may be more damaging than a PANDEMIC
Dr Phil McGraw is beginning to lose patience with the Trump administration's efforts to disclose decades of government-held secrets about unidentified flying objects, though he doesn't believe the President is to blame.
'I think the President is fully committed to wanting transparency, but I think his intention and what's getting bureaucratically executed are two very different things,' Dr Phil told the Daily Mail after the Pentagon released a new batch of documents and images related to UFOs, also known as unidentified anomalous phenomena or UAP.
Included in the latest dump were six videos of UAP encounters by Special Operations forces on an AC-130J gunship over the Gulf of Oman in September 2021. The footage, which appears to have been taken by a cellphone of screens, shows objects picked up by infrared cameras and other sensors.
An accompanying report indicated the Special Ops forces on the ship 'observed approximately 25 instances of UAPs while conducting a live fire exercise in the Gulf of Oman.'
Beyond that, little additional information was provided.
For Dr Phil that's a problem.
'This is the fifth tranche of information they've put out,' he said of the new material. 'There's not any context to this. There's very seldom any follow-up information.'
The renowned talk show host and former practicing clinical psychologist is a member of President Trump's Religious Liberty Commission and is in close contact with members of Congress about this disclosure process.
'This is the fifth tranche of information they've put out,' he said of the new material. 'There's not any context to this. There's very seldom any follow-up information'
'My point is: Are we really getting disclosure here?' he continued. 'Or are we getting information without context, so you don't really know the meaning of what they're reporting? Is that an accident? The pattern suggests that it's not really an accident.'
Dr Phil stresses that he is not one to engage in reckless speculation. In fact, House and Senate members have apparently sought him out to share their concerns over the potential of a mental health crisis, if non-human life and technology is revealed to the public.
'[Members of Congress] speak as candidly with me about it as anybody and maybe more so,' he told the Daily Mail. And these top government officials, he said, are as worried as he is that they're not getting the full story.
'The information about this, I've come to find, is very fractionalized,' Dr Phil explained. 'There's not one place or one person or group of people that has all the information. So, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand knows.'
That observation, he said, has given rise to suspicion, shared among members of Congress, that additional information may be held outside of federal government control.
'I think there is a fairly strong belief that a lot of this information has been housed, moved, managed, however you want to say it, to the private aerospace industry. Maybe to escape Freedom of Information Act requests,' Dr Phil shared.
The Freedom of Information Act or FOIA is a federal law that gives citizens the right to ask for and view records held by federal agencies.
But if the information is not in government hands, the system can be thwarted.
'There are a lot of people who believe that [addition information is] in the possession of private aerospace companies, not the government, in terms of physically holding it and housing it. And I think there are senators and representatives that want to know… There are people on the Hill who believe that that's been done,' he said.
'Let's say something has been recovered,' Dr Phil continued in reference to potential non-human technology. 'The propulsion systems that have been described in some of these aircraft are pretty amazing. Some of them have no heat signature, some of them are astoundingly fast.
'They move in ways that we don't have the technology to navigate and move. If you were able to reverse engineer that and there was some kind of new energy source that would be a quantum leap forward, right? What would that be worth?'
It would be naive, he argued, to dismiss the possibility that groups would not be motivated to keep advanced technology hidden in defiance of administration demands.
A screenshot of a video released showing an unresolved UFO report from last year. The footage shows a small orb-like object traveling across the screen
Dr Phil observed, for instance, why aren't high-definition images and videos of these UFO encounters also being released?
'I've seen gun cameras, they're not grainy. You can see with great clarity, but we're not getting those and at least in some cases, they exist. We're not getting the best evidence that I believe exists.'
'I've seen radar readouts that are crystal clear. So why are we looking at stepped-down, degraded videos?'
There is also another possible explanation, he said, for the steady flow of UFO disclosures that offer clarity: a distraction campaign.
'Culturally, we kind of have attention deficit disorder,' said Dr Phil. 'We read headlines and if nothing big comes out and pays off, we kind of get inoculated to it... We adapt and don't have the same reactivity. That could be intentional. "Let's wear them out. Maybe this will blow over and they'll move on to the next big thing."'
Overall, Dr Phil's involvement in the UFO disclosure process has more to do with safeguarding public health than anything else – and he paints a concerning picture when it comes to the consequences of a potential revelation that humans are not alone in the universe.
'When we have the highest levels of anxiety and depression, and loneliness among our young people that we've ever had since we started keeping records, our mental health system is fully deployed,' he said.
'If all of a sudden, 10 percent of the population really had a problem with [disclosure of non-human life] and really needed help with it that could be 20 or 30 million people. It could be like a pandemic. I think it's important that we think about that ahead of time and be prepared.'
Dr Phil rages over UFO 'lie' the US government has told Americans for years: 'I don't trust them about this at all'
Dr Phil McGraw has exposed the staggering number of UFO sightings which the Pentagon has never investigated despite overseeing the White House's massive disclosure campaign.
In a video released on Wednesday, Dr Phil claimed he was 'absolutely certain' the US government has been deceiving the American people for the last 80 years, covering up evidence of unexplainable encounters with UFOs and potential contact with alien life.
Although he did not claim to have proof that UFOs exist, the famed TV personality and author revealed how more than 1,800 legitimate reports of UFOs made by the public have been ignored by the Pentagon.
He added: 'Can some of those be explained away? I'm sure they can, maybe all of them, I don't know. The point is nobody in the government is even looking at these things.'
McGraw, who has previously criticized the ongoing rollout of documents, photos and videos allegedly tied to the government's UFO files, claimed the entire campaign was a giant lie that was continuing to keep the truth about extraterrestrials from the public.
'Most of you are as angry as I am that the government has lied straight to our face. This is what really p***** me off, there is not one government agency that lets everyday Americans report UAPs [Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena].'
In February, President Trump ordered the US Department of War to oversee the declassification and release of all documents related to UFOs and alien life.
To this point, there have been five batches of files released, mainly coming from the FBI, CIA, NASA and the Pentagon, but the vast majority have contained vague reports, unrelated information or images which were too obscure to be considered real proof.
Dr Phil McGraw slammed the US government's alleged coverup of UFO sightings amid the highly criticized disclosure campaign led by the Pentagon
In his new video posted on X, McGraw took aim directly at the federal government, alleging that nearly every private citizen in the US was being shut out of the conversation surrounding UAPs - the updated term for UFOs.
He claimed that 93 percent of Americans have no official way of reporting UFO sightings to the government or military. That is more than 310 million people.
Officially, the only people who have the ability to file a report directly with the federal government about alleged sightings of strange flying objects or other phenomena are current and former federal employees, military service members, government contractors and pilots.
'It's turned a blind eye from most Americans. So, if the government doesn't want to see it, who does, where is all that information going?' he asked.
'If 99 percent of it proves to be nothing to see here, fine. What about the one percent?'
The only avenue Dr Phil said was available to the general public were two private, non-government databases which allow anyone to submit reports about UFOs and other unexplainable encounters.
These are NUFORC, the National UFO Reporting Center, and the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON).
McGraw noted that NUFORC currently had 1,855 UFO reports that they classified as 'Tier 1,' meaning that someone provided one of the hardest-to-explain sightings of a UFO which could not be dismissed as a bird, balloon, camera glitch or human-built aircraft.
Dr Phil claimed that the American people were being lied to by the US government, who he said had been concealing the truth about UFOs for 80 years
Despite independent analysis determining that all of these reports, going back decades across the US, could only be described as a potential extraterrestrial spacecraft, Dr Phil revealed that none of the 1,855 had likely been investigated - meaning these cases are missing from the UFO disclosure rollout.
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EXCLUSIVE
Moreover, the Pentagon division in charge of examining UFO sightings - known as the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) - continues to promise that they will eventually begin taking reports from the public, but it never has.
AARO said in a statement: 'Please note that reporting is limited at this time to current or former US Government employees, military personnel, or contractor personnel with direct knowledge of US Government programs or activities related to UAP dating back to 1945.'
'AARO is NOT currently accepting reports of UAP sightings/encounters from the general public. In the future, reporting eligibility will be expanded to the general public and include reports of any event related to UAP.'
Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, chairwoman of the House Oversight Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, has previously slammed AARO for obstructing Congress's attempt to reveal the truth about UFO encounters.
She accused former AARO director Sean Kirkpatrick’s office of blocking, stonewalling and suppressing UAP information from Congress and the public. Kirkpatrick left AARO on December 1, 2023.
'They should be saying, "here's how to submit that report through the proper channels," but there is no channel, proper or otherwise!' McGraw declared.
'Eighty years of "trust us" has gotten us nowhere. I don't trust them about this at all,' the TV host added.
El Niño is being supersized before our eyes: Scientists warn the devastating climate event is 'firmly established' – and is on track to wreak havoc until at least February
The El Niño weather phenomenon is 'supersizing before our eyes' as it threatens to wreak havoc on the UK in autumn and early winter, experts have warned.
Scientists from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said the climate pattern – where Pacific sea surface temperatures become significantly warmer than average – is now 'firmly established' and is set to have huge impacts on rainfall and temperatures globally, triggering floods, drought and extreme heat.
Forecasts indicate an 'exceptionally huge likelihood of nearly 100 per cent' that El Niño will cause problems until February – the first time such an unequivocal update has been issued.
In the UK, El Niño is likely to make autumn and early winter colder, wetter and stormier, according to the Met Office.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said: 'El Niño is being supersized before our eyes. The science leaves no room for doubt: the planet is in uncharted waters – and those waters are heating up.
'Sea surface temperatures are rising, temperatures keep climbing and the world is in the danger zone of extreme weather.
'The race now is between rising risks and our commitment to take climate action and protect people. We must win that race.'
Scientists warned El Niño is 'firmly established' and 'being supersized before our eyes' as temperatures continue to rise
The El Niño Southern Oscillation is a naturally occurring climate cycle that shifts between hot El Niño years and cool La Niña years once every two to seven years.
As we enter an El Niño phase, the powerful trade winds that normally blow hot water across the Pacific towards Australia weaken, or even reverse.
That prevents cool waters welling up from the deep ocean below and causes hot water to collect near the surface off the west coast of South America.
Eventually, that warm water starts to spread out, raising the average global temperature and causing major disruptions to weather patterns around the globe.
The WMO said sea surface temperatures in the region at the heart of El Niño are already well above average and are continuing to rise.
The developing El Niño has gathered pace dramatically in recent months, with Pacific Ocean temperatures now more than 2C above average in some regions.
Scientists say the warmth lurking beneath the surface is even more remarkable, with some underwater areas reaching a staggering 8C above normal.
For September to November this year, the WMO's forecasts indicate there will be above-normal temperatures across almost all land areas around the world.
Forecasts indicate an 'exceptionally huge likelihood of nearly 100 per cent' that El Niño will wreak havoc until February
El Niño generally begins developing between March and June and reaches its peak intensity between November and February.
Its impact on global temperatures can extend beyond the period of peak ocean warming and be most pronounced in the year after development.
'El Niño has the potential to deliver a massive blow to communities and economies across the world,' WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said.
'We are already seeing disruption and devastation from droughts and floods and we expect these impacts to increase as El Niño intensifies.'
Britons have been told to brace for a cold and stormy winter as warm ocean temperatures in the Pacific send 'waves' rippling through the atmosphere.
These waves push the world's most powerful weather systems – including the jet stream – off their usual course, wreaking havoc on Britain's winter weather.
This winter, experts predict the jet stream will send storms towards the UK along powerful currents of fast-moving winds.
While it is still too early to say when these storms will occur, the latest weather predictions agree that bad weather is increasingly likely.
The developing El Niño has gathered pace dramatically in recent months, with Pacific Ocean temperatures now more than 2°C above average in some regions
Will Lang, chief meteorologist at the Met Office, told the Daily Mail: 'El Niño conditions increase the chance of storms in late autumn and early winter.'
Professor Bill McGuire, Professor Emeritus of Geophysical Hazards, said: 'Powerful El Niños typically bring mild, stormy Autumns and early Winters to the UK, followed by bitter cold, although this isn't set in stone.'
A separate study, published last week, found the El Niño events have been ramping up for decades.
Scientists from the University of Michigan examined corals in the Galapagos Islands to estimate the strength of previous events.
Their analysis revealed that El Niños have become nearly 40 per cent stronger in the last 40 years than the previous 1,000.
'We don't see a time in the past where El Niños have been as strong as today,' said lead author Professor Julia Cole.
'We show that the strength of El Niño changes in parallel with the warming of global temperature.
'Our findings tell us that the big El Niño events of the last 40 years are not normal in the context of the last thousand years.'
VN slaat alarm om extreem sterke El Niño: dit kunnen we er in Nederland van merken
Afbeelding: Yavuz Solgun / PexelsDe Verenigde Naties trekken aan de bel. El Niño is inmiddels duidelijk aanwezig en lijkt de komende maanden uit te groeien tot een uitzonderlijk sterk klimaatverschijnsel. Volgens de Wereld Meteorologische Organisatie (WMO) is de kans dat El Niño tot februari 2027 aanhoudt bijna 100 procent. Maar wat betekent dat eigenlijk voor ons in Nederland?
El Niño is geen nieuw verschijnsel, maar een natuurlijke klimaatcyclus die gemiddeld iedere twee tot zeven jaar voorkomt. Tijdens zo’n periode warmt het zeewater in het tropische deel van de Stille Oceaan sterk op, waardoor ook de lucht erboven warmer wordt. Die extra warmte kan vervolgens invloed hebben op het weer duizenden kilometers verderop.
Voor Nederland klinkt dat misschien behoorlijk verontrustend, maar er is hier geen reden tot paniek. El Niño heeft volgens het KNMI geen grote directe invloed op ons weer. We krijgen dus niet automatisch een extreem warme winter of een zomer vol overstromingen.
Toch kan El Niño op langere termijn wel degelijk merkbaar zijn. Onderzoek van het KNMI naar ongeveer 150 jaar aan gegevens laat bijvoorbeeld een duidelijk verband zien tussen sterke El Niño’s en een natter voorjaar in delen van West- en Midden-Europa, waaronder Nederland. Dat effect ontstaat pas maanden later. De invloed van El Niño werkt namelijk via veranderingen in de atmosfeer en luchtdrukgebieden door naar Europa.
De timing is daarbij belangrijk. Volgens het KNMI wordt de hoogste wereldgemiddelde temperatuur doorgaans pas drie tot vier maanden na de piek van El Niño bereikt. Een sterke El Niño die eind 2026 zijn hoogtepunt bereikt, kan daardoor juist in 2027 voor extra warmte zorgen.
Tijdens een zeer sterke El Niño kan de wereldgemiddelde temperatuur tijdelijk ongeveer 0,2 graden Celsius hoger uitvallen. Dat klinkt misschien al heel weinig, maar komt bovenop de door klimaatverandering veroorzaakte opwarming. Voor Nederland betekent dit dus niet dat we ons direct moeten voorbereiden op een compleet ander klimaat. Wel kan een sterke El Niño wereldwijd voor extra weersextremen zorgen en indirect bijdragen aan veranderingen in ons eigen weer. Vooral het voorjaar van 2027 kan daarom interessant worden om in de gaten te houden.
UFO Nuclear Test Link Reportedly Debunked by Experts Warning Believers Not To Act Like 'Religion'
Astronomers in Australia and the US have now gone public with a challenge to the UFO claims first put forward in 2025
PHOTO Sparker/Pinterest
International astronomers have published a devastating critique dismantling high-profile 2025 UFO claims that mysterious objects orbited Earth decades before the launch of Sputnik.
Led by researchers from Wellesley College and the University at Albany, the peer-reviewed study, accepted for publication in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, argues that previous assertions linking photographic 'transients' to US nuclear weapons tests relied on faulty mathematics and severely compromised archival data.
The original research, conducted under the Vanishing and Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations project, suggested that anomalous light flashes captured by California's Palomar Observatory represented non-human technology drawn to atomic detonations.
However, the latest scientific evaluation exposes deep methodological flaws, proving that glass plate defects, dust scratches, and incorrect observational timescales generated an illusory statistical signal.
As academic backlash mounts against unrefereed counterclaims, the rigorous study revives fierce debates over whether fringe UFO proponents truly welcome scientific stress-testing or prefer shielding speculative hypotheses from empirical reality.
The new critique focuses on alleged 'technosignatures' seen on photographic plates decades before the space age. The controversy began when astronomer Dr Beatriz Villarroel and collaborators reported evidence of objects apparently orbiting Earth years before any human‑made satellite was launched.
Working under the VASCO project, they said old photographic surveys from the Palomar Observatory in California showed fleeting 'transients' that could be sunlight glinting off non‑human technology.
A companion paper, co‑authored with Vanderbilt University anaesthesiologist Stephen Bruehl, went further, claiming a statistical correlation between the dates of those transients and US nuclear weapons tests in the 1950s.
If that had stood up, it would have been dynamite. Mysterious objects in pre‑Sputnik orbit, apparently clustering around nuclear detonations, look like the script treatment for Oppenheimer 2.
It also offered believers what they have long craved, a peer‑reviewed breadcrumb trail pointing towards UFOs as alien surveillance craft drawn to humanity's most dangerous toys.
The VASCO project, short for Vanishing and Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations, is built on a smart, almost old‑school idea. Villarroel's team uses archival photographic plates, taken long before the sky was crowded with satellites and space junk, to hunt for technosignatures, signs of advanced technology that might briefly flare and then vanish.
The studies at the heart of the current argument used early 1950s images from the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey, known as POSS‑I. Each region of sky was photographed twice in quick succession, once with a red‑sensitive plate and once with a blue‑sensitive one.
VASCO's software scanned the digitised plates looking for things that appeared in one exposure but not the other. Those were labelled transients and, in the more speculative framing, possible UFO‑like artefacts in orbit.
The most attention‑grabbing claim was statistical. Villarroel's team said there were far fewer transients recorded on plates taken during Earth's shadow, when sunlight could not reflect off orbiting objects.
They calculated that deficit as a '22 sigma' result. In particle physics, 5 sigma is the gold standard for a discovery. Twenty‑two is almost absurdly strong, the sort of number that suggests either profound new physics or that something, somewhere, has gone mad in the spreadsheets.
In a second paper, Bruehl and Villarroel said that the dates of these transients significantly overlapped with the timing of nuclear tests. The implication, not exactly buried in the framing, was that whoever might be flying those hypothetical craft was paying close attention to mushroom clouds.
The pushback has now arrived in the form of a detailed critique led by Wesley Watters of Wellesley College. His paper, titled 'Critical Evaluation of Studies Alleging Evidence for Technosignatures in the POSS1 – E Photographic Plates,' was accepted by the Australian astronomy journal after peer review and posted online ahead of print.
What makes this more awkward for UFO enthusiasts is who is doing the debunking. Watters has previously argued that unidentified aerial phenomena deserve serious, agnostic study.
Co‑author Kevin Knuth, a physicist at the University at Albany, SUNY, has published work examining US Navy pilot UAP encounters. Both have been affiliated with Avi Loeb's Galileo Project, which is explicitly set up to examine UAPs scientifically, not to scoff at them.
In other words, this is not a hit job from dyed‑in‑the‑wool sceptics. It is criticism from scientists who, if anything, have stuck their necks out to say UFO reports should not be laughed out of the room.
Watters and his colleagues start with a mundane but brutal problem, the plates themselves. Old photographic glass is riddled with defects, from dust and scratches to emulsion flaws and copying artefacts.
Astronomers spent years trying to use similar plates to catch fleeting optical signals from gamma‑ray bursts, only to conclude the medium just was not up to that kind of work at scale.
Because of that, Watters refuses to call the POSS‑I blips 'transients' at all. His team rebrands them 'Selected POSS 1‑E Features,' or SPFs, until someone can prove they are real astronomical objects.
Then they try to reconstruct, plate by plate, what subset of the survey VASCO actually used, a task made harder because Villarroel's team did not publish their full working dataset.
Once they do that, a pattern emerges, and not a good one. SPFs cluster at plate edges, disappear in wide stripes, and bunch oddly in certain regions. The sky map is a mess. For a robust statistical analysis, you need an underlying distribution that is roughly uniform and random, something that can be modelled as a Poisson process.
Watters argues that the VASCO features fail that basic test, which means the more sophisticated maths layered on top is on wobbly ground from the start.
When the Australian‑led group re‑ran the crucial Earth‑shadow calculation with their reconstructed dataset, the jaw‑dropping 22 sigma result vanished. They found no statistically significant deficit of features in Earth's shadow.
On closer inspection, only 11 of the 645 plates VASCO used were even in shadow, and just five were fully so. Most of the supposed signal came from a single problematic plate that sat in one of the odd 'bands' where defects were already clustering.
Watters' team points out that VASCO's correlation used the wrong observing timescale, treating the survey as if it spanned 2,718 observing days instead of the actual 312 days from which their plates were drawn. Correct that, and the apparent UFO‑nuclear overlap collapses into something more prosaic.
A loose relationship between the periods when the Palomar telescope was operating and when nuclear tests were conducted, perhaps because both favoured clear weather over the western US. As for aliens timing their fly‑bys to our detonations, that statistical mirage evaporates.
The final part of Watters' critique is almost philosophical. He accuses the VASCO papers of circular reasoning, treating the features as genuine transients from the outset and then using that assumption to argue they must be real technosignatures. Without independent confirmation that most of these specks are not just plate defects, the logic folds in on itself.
None of this means the VASCO concept is useless. On the contrary, trawling clean, digitised archives for technosignatures is a sharp, modern twist on classic astronomy. The problem, according to Watters, is that this particular dataset is simply too dirty and too sparse in the critical regions to bear the UFO‑flavoured weight put on it.
Predictably, the backlash has not been limited to journal pages. Unrefereed online documents have popped up purporting to rebut the Australian‑led critique, bypassing peer review entirely and demanding to be treated as equal parts of the scientific conversation.
Researchers who are unconvinced by the UFO‑friendly statistics are branded 'part of the problem' or worse. At which point many working scientists quietly ask themselves why they should spend time on this stuff when they could be doing almost anything else.
And that is the uncomfortable question hanging over this latest UFO skirmish. Does the UAP community actually want their favourite claims tested, stress‑tested even, inside the sometimes painful machinery of science, or do they want those claims protected from serious challenge? If you are unwilling to let your beliefs be broken by better data and better maths, you are not really doing science any more. You are doing something else entirely.
No confirmed evidence of extraterrestrial life after nearly 70 years of searching
By Life Signs
Pale, millimetre-scale leopard spots with dark rims cover part of the Cheyava Falls rock in this Perseverance WATSON image.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.
Source. The features are potential biosignatures, not photographed fossils or organisms.
Mars, K2-18 b and decades of UAP reports offer intriguing fragments, but each remains separated from confirmed extraterrestrial life by a different evidentiary gap.
An early alert was probably aircraft radar. Otherwise, the loudspeaker produced static and the chart recorder drew no meaningful feature. It was a tiny search by current standards, but it established the basic discipline: choose a plausible signal, observe, test interference and report the null result.
Later surveys covered far more sky, bandwidth and signal types. The scale can sound exhaustive when described by raw numbers. As SpaceDaily’s account of SETI@home explained, volunteer computers processed about 12 billion threshold events before a decade of filtering reduced the data to roughly 100 sky positions worth another look. Those billions were not billions of possible alien messages. Most were radio interference, statistical fluctuations or other products of an instrument listening from a noisy technological planet.
Even the largest search samples only a sliver of the possible combinations of sky position, frequency, time, signal shape and transmitter power. A civilisation could be quiet, use a method not being monitored, transmit in another direction or exist millions of years out of step with the brief era in which Earth can listen.
The word “evidence” covers several levels that are easily collapsed in public discussion. A detector may register a feature. Researchers may show that the feature resembles a molecule or process associated with life. They must then ask whether the feature is real, whether the identification is unique and whether geology, chemistry, contamination or technology can explain it.
A biosignature is therefore not a synonym for an organism. NASA defines a potential biosignature as a substance or structure that might have a biological origin but requires more evidence before a conclusion can be reached. A technosignature has the same logic: it is an observable sign that could reveal technology, not any unexplained event by default.
Confirmation would demand convergence. Independent instruments should recover compatible results. Alternative explanations should be actively tested rather than merely overlooked. The evidence must fit its environment, because a molecule produced by life in Earth’s oceans may have a different source in a hydrogen-rich atmosphere, and a light moving strangely in a compressed video may move normally once range and camera motion are known.
The most tangible of the current fragments sits inside a sealed tube on Mars. Perseverance drilled the Sapphire Canyon core from a rock called Cheyava Falls in Jezero Crater in July 2024. The rock formed in an ancient river-valley setting and contains fine clay and silt, organic carbon, sulphur, oxidised iron and phosphorus.
In a 2025 peer-reviewed analysis in Nature, the rover team described millimetre-scale reaction fronts nicknamed leopard spots. Instrument data were consistent with two iron-rich minerals, vivianite and greigite, arranged where electron-transfer reactions had occurred between sediment and organic matter.
That combination matters because related reactions on Earth can support microbial metabolisms, and microbes can participate in the formation of these minerals. The wet sedimentary setting could also preserve traces of ancient life. NASA consequently described Sapphire Canyon as Perseverance’s best candidate for signs of ancient microbial processes.
But the minerals can form without biology. Heat, acidic conditions and reactions involving organic compounds offer abiotic routes, and the rover cannot reproduce the range of microscopy, isotope measurements and controlled experiments available in an Earth laboratory. SpaceDaily’s earlier examination of Cheyava Falls reached the necessary boundary: this is a compelling pattern in a habitable context, not a fossil, cell or confirmed product of metabolism.
K2-18 b is more remote in every sense. The planet is about 124 light-years away, roughly 2.6 times Earth’s radius and 8.6 times its mass. It orbits in the conventional habitable zone of a cool red dwarf, but that does not establish an ocean or a surface where familiar life could live.
The disputed chemistry is therefore a fragment twice removed. The first question is whether the sulphur-bearing gases are present. Only after that would researchers ask how they formed. Even a secure detection of DMS would not by itself demonstrate an ocean, a habitable climate or biology.
UAP reports belong to another evidence category altogether. They concern events observed in Earth’s atmosphere, oceans or nearby space, often through human testimony or sensors designed for defence rather than scientific measurement. “Unidentified” describes the status of an observation. It does not describe the origin of an object.
The historical volume is undeniably measured in thousands. According to the US National Archives, Project Blue Book collected 12,618 sightings between 1947 and 1969, leaving 701 categorised as unidentified. More recently, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, held 1,870 reports as of 30 May 2025. Those counts come from different programmes and should not be added into one clean statistical series, but they show how many reports can accumulate without producing an extraterrestrial conclusion.
AARO’s latest annual report received 319 cases and resolved 114 of them, while also closing 256 older cases. All 370 resolutions involved ordinary objects or events, including balloons, satellites, birds, aircraft, drones, one rocket launch and one manned jet pack. The office moved 191 new reports into an active archive because the available data were insufficient and sent nine for deeper intelligence, scientific or technical analysis.
Insufficient data can preserve an unknown indefinitely. A sincere witness may not know distance or speed. A short infrared clip may lack original metadata. A bright satellite flare can appear to move or hover in surprising ways. AARO resolved 238 older reports as satellite flaring after adding three-dimensional modelling, an unusually clear example of better analysis converting mystery into identification.
This does not make UAP investigation pointless. An unidentified event near an aircraft can represent a flight hazard, a drone, foreign surveillance or a sensor problem even if it has nothing to do with extraterrestrial life. It does mean that volume is not proof, a distinction also central to SpaceDaily’s coverage of recent Pentagon UAP releases.
All three cases suffer from limited access, but in different ways. Cheyava Falls is a physical sample from a once-wet environment, yet the most capable laboratory is millions of kilometres away. K2-18 b is observed as a tiny modulation in the light of a star, so noise and model assumptions can imitate chemistry. UAP records concern nearby events, but many were not collected with the calibration, metadata and repeatability a controlled scientific observation would require.
The limitations create three distinct risks. Mars can preserve non-biological chemistry that looks suggestive in a life-friendly setting. Exoplanet retrievals can prefer a molecule because the tested model library is incomplete. UAP cases can remain unresolved because essential measurements were never taken. Calling all three “evidence for aliens” erases the very information needed to judge them.
The fragments also invite a common human shortcut. Once an observation fits a hoped-for story, every remaining uncertainty can feel like an empty space waiting for that story. Science treats the empty space differently. It asks what additional observation would distinguish the proposed explanation from its rivals.
Nearly 70 years without confirmation sounds like a verdict only if the search is assumed to have been complete. It has not been. Radio SETI has examined a small portion of a vast parameter space. Mars rovers have sampled a few locations on one planet. Webb has begun atmospheric studies of worlds whose signals sit near the limits of its instruments. Ocean worlds such as Europa and Enceladus have not yet been sampled directly for life.
Null results still narrow the possibilities. A silent radio survey constrains certain transmitters at certain times and frequencies. A disputed spectrum exposes which systematics must be controlled in the next observation. An ordinary explanation for a UAP helps investigators recognise the same optical or orbital effect in future reports.
Nor does the absence of confirmed life support the opposite claim that Earth is alone. Detection and prevalence are different questions. A search may fail because life is rare, because technology is brief, because the target is wrong or because the instrument is not yet sensitive to the signal that exists.
On Mars, confidence would rise if multiple independent lines of evidence converged on biology: diagnostic microscopic structures, distinctive isotope patterns, complex organic distributions and a geological context that excludes plausible abiotic formation. Bringing a well-documented sample into a controlled laboratory would allow tests Perseverance cannot perform, although contamination control would remain essential.
For an exoplanet, repeat spectra across instruments and transits would need to recover the same molecular features. Researchers would then have to show that the gases coexist in quantities difficult to maintain without biology under a physically credible model of the planet. One molecule, especially one inferred near the noise floor, is unlikely to carry the conclusion alone.
A technological signal would need equally strong provenance. A radio transmission might repeat from the same point on the sky, show structure inconsistent with natural emission and survive checks against terrestrial and satellite interference. A UAP case would need calibrated multi-sensor data, precise geometry and a documented chain of custody before extraordinary performance could even be established. Extraordinary motion inferred from an underdetermined image is not yet extraordinary technology.
The careful answer in 2026 is therefore less dramatic than either certainty. Humanity has not confirmed extraterrestrial life, and it has not shown that life is absent beyond Earth. It has a Martian sample worthy of better tests, an exoplanet spectrum teaching astronomers how fragile remote biosignatures can be, and a large archive showing that an unresolved observation is not an identified alien craft.
The answer still arrives only in fragments. The task is not to dismiss them, and not to assemble them into a conclusion too soon. It is to keep asking which fragment survives the next measurement.
Aliens and the Bible? By Garrick R. OxleyAugust 31, 2026 Many wonder what recent UFO disclosures mean for religious belief. Here’s how to cut through the confusion.
Many wonder what recent UFO disclosures mean for religious belief. Here’s how to cut through the confusion.
Getty Images
In “Disclosure Day,” a movie released this summer, famed director Steven Spielberg once again invited audiences to ponder the existence of extraterrestrial life—and the implications it would have for religion on Earth.
In a CBS interview, Mr. Spielberg described what might happen if the government suddenly confirmed that it had concealed evidence of extraterrestrials: “If this truth were just known overnight…that would mess up a lot of people.” He added, “What does this do to the fundamental beliefs that many of us have? Is God our God only on this planet, or is God a God for every system where there’s civilization, intelligent life…?”
These are provocative questions. And Mr. Spielberg is not the only one making headlines about UFOs and the possibility of life on other planets.
What was once considered fringe or conspiratorial has in recent months popped up everywhere from the White House to the Catholic Church, as public fascination with unidentified anomalous phenomena—or UAPs, as the government calls them—has become more mainstream.
In May, the Pentagon began making large swaths of UFO files public with very little context, leaving curious sleuths to piece together their own interpretations. The dumps began just weeks after former President Barack Obama set off a media frenzy for stating in an interview that aliens are real, though he later tempered that take.
“Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there,” the former president, who made a surprise visit to the “Disclosure Day” set, posted on social media. “I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!”
Some religious adherents, as well as nonbelievers, maintain that the existence of life on other planets might undermine many faiths because it would complicate assertions that humans are unique. But others argue the opposite.
“Belief in UFOs is really one of the best things that’s happened to religion in a long time,” said Diana Walsh Pasulka, a religion scholar at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. “It’s a blow to the secular, materialist worldview.”
Whether one views the possibility of alien life as an impediment to religious belief or an asset, for Christians, the truth must be compatible with Scripture.
Familiar Fascination
The idea of otherworldly beings coming to Earth is nothing new.
“People would call it the plurality of worlds. So even back in the time of Socrates and Aristotle, there were Greek philosophers who talked about beings on other planets and other stars,” Ms. Walsh Pasulka said.
But it was not until after 1945 that modern conceptions of UFOs began to develop, according to Jeffrey Kripal, a historian of religions at Rice University. “The flying saucer and the alien and the UFO—it’s definitely a Cold War invasion narrative,” he said.
That narrative explains why UAPs are often perceived as hostile to humans. But it has also evolved over time and led to the formation of some religions—like Scientology, which counts many a Hollywood celebrity among its adherents—that see extraterrestrials as good or even part of a divine plan. Some adherents to the Nation of Islam, for example, believe that its founder will inaugurate an apocalyptic return to Earth on a spaceship.
Thousands of years ago, King Solomon wrote, “there is no new thing under the sun” (Ecc. 1:9). UFO fascination falls into this category. The underlying curiosity today is not that different from what people felt decades ago when they discussed rumors about Area 51 and flocked to movies like “Men in Black,” “Independence Day” and “War of the Worlds.”
Interest in aliens also evokes Acts 17:21, which speaks of people who “spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.” Some tend to be on the edge of their seats about every alleged sighting or new document dump. Maybe this time the right piece of smoking gun evidence will be released, they think. Undeniable proof never comes, yet there is a certain thrill in the chase.
The wide spectrum of views toward aliens and UFOs and their impact on religion can feel overwhelming. But Christians do not need to be confused. God has provided a firm anchor for answering life’s greatest questions: His Word, the Holy Bible.
Even if the truth of a specific news event appears to be murky, no alien discovery can overthrow Scripture. Jesus Christ said, “Scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35). He also taught, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4). The Bible reveals one God who created the entire universe, and the purpose He is carrying out within it.
Having this foundation means Christians do not need to be on edge for every UFO rumor, fearful it will shatter their belief system. They are confident that the Bible is true, and that the truth about alien life cannot break or overthrow it.
Does the Bible Teach Aliens?
Some Bible readers have wondered if Ezekiel chapter 1 in the Old Testament describes UFOs.
Take time to read the chapter. The prophet Ezekiel observed living creatures, wheels, brilliant light and an extraordinary structure moving through the sky. It can appear to fit modern concepts of alien spacecraft. Verse 15 identifies “living creatures” with “four faces.”
But notice that the last verse of the chapter shows that what had been described was “the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord” (vs. 28). It was depicting God on His throne and the angels surrounding it. Far from proof of green men from Mars or anything like that.
The beings described here are cherubim—powerful angelic beings associated with God’s throne. In chapter 10, Ezekiel says directly that the beings from the vision are cherubim: “And the cherubims were lifted up. This is the living creature that I saw by the river of Chebar” (10:15). Also read verse 20.
Various other verses also speak of cherubim. For instance, II Samuel 22:11 says “He [God] rode upon a cherub, and did fly: and He was seen upon the wings of the wind.”
Read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation and you will find no proof of alien life.
Some may still ask: Even though the Bible does not say aliens exist, could life exist elsewhere in the universe?
Scripture does not directly address the topic. Yet it does reveal that God created all things (John 1:3; Rev. 4:11). If the knowledge of extraterrestrial life were important to God’s purpose for mankind, He would have revealed it.
What is important is the knowledge God has revealed—including a spirit realm that plays an important role in His purpose for human beings.
Angels are created beings who serve God (Psa. 103:20). They are much more powerful than most realize. The illustrations found in books and in churches do not do them justice. Scripture shows that angels play an important role in God working with human beings here on Earth.
There are also fallen angels—demons—in this spirit realm who serve Satan the devil. Ezekiel 28:14 shows Satan himself is a fallen angel, having previously been “the anointed cherub that covers.” Satan and the demons are not pursuing their own interests, either—like angels, they are focused on people.
II Corinthians 11:14 adds that the devil can appear to be something he is not: “Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.” This principle would also apply to demons.
Some believe recent UFO sightings are really encounters with these fallen spirits.
“I don’t think they’re aliens. I think they’re demons,” Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert, said in a podcast interview.
That sentiment was echoed by Monsignor Stephen Rossetti, formerly an exorcist with the Archdiocese of Washington. He was removed in June by the archbishop, who said statements by Mr. Rossetti “gravely undermine” Catholic teaching on demons and the devil.
“It’s my personal belief that probably many, if not most, of these UFO sightings are in fact demons,” Mr. Rossetti said in a May 29 video posted on his Facebook page.
Thinking alien encounters are demonic could seem like a safer or more biblical position than that they are real aliens. Yet we should also be careful of believing every sighting is an evil spirit.
While it is possible this could be true in rare situations, not every unexplained light, object or noise is demonic. Many UAP reports have ordinary explanations—balloons, satellites, birds, aircraft or drones. Others remain unresolved simply because there is not enough reliable data to determine what was seen. An unexplained sighting is not necessarily a supernatural one.
More important than dissecting every document or sighting is understanding the very real spirit world Scripture reveals.
The Spirit Realm
Spirits in the spirit realm include God the Father, Jesus Christ, Satan the devil, and a multitude of angels, both righteous and fallen.
Some angels have greater authority than others, such as the archangels Gabriel and Michael. Satan was the archangel Lucifer before he rebelled against God.
Satan and the demons also interact with human beings—but to deceive and oppose God’s purpose.
Hebrews 1:14 says righteous angels are “ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation.” Who are the heirs of salvation? Christians. Read Romans 8:17 and Titus 3:7.
Put simply, the role of angels is to help the people God is working with succeed and reach salvation.
We could not know this unless Scripture revealed it. Hebrews 13:2 adds, “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” God could use an angel to help us and we have no idea what really happened. They can appear and work in a way that leaves people unaware.
Also understand that angels are not mindless tools. They really care about people. Luke 15:10 says, “There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repents.”
What goal do Satan and the demons have? Revelation 12:9 says the devil “deceives the whole world.” Satan and his demons deceive people into accepting lies and not believing the truth of the Bible. This deception could involve aliens and UFOs but also many other things in life.
I Timothy 4:1 speaks of a time when “some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils [demons].” The next few verses provide some specific examples of these doctrines. Demons have doctrines just like people and churches do. They use these teachings to harm and deceive.
The apostle John warned: “Believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God” (I John 4:1). Unlike angels, Satan and the demons work to spiritually destroy Christians and keep them from fulfilling their incredible potential in God’s Plan.
The Bible also warns against admiring righteous angels to the point of worship. Colossians 2:18 says: “Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels.” While angels do play a valuable role, God is the only Being a Christian may worship.
Where Should We Focus?
As time goes on, there will be more alleged UFO sightings, eyewitness accounts and document leaks. But the Bible shows what is really worth focusing on: “Seek those things which are above, where Christ sits on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth” (Col. 3:1-2).
Setting affection on things above does not mean obsessing over objects in the sky. It means focusing on God and His Plan instead of rumors and conspiracy.
Philippians 4:8 provides more parameters for what to think about: “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”
While there is nothing wrong with keeping up with the news, we should be careful of how content about aliens makes us feel. If we find that it draws us toward negative thinking, we should adjust our news consumption.
There is a great irony in the obsession with aliens. People scan the heavens searching for intelligent beings greater than we are, but do not stop to consider the awesome future God has in store for ordinary people.
We saw that angels help the heirs of salvation. Psalm 8 adds more: “What is man, that You are mindful of him? And the son of man, that You visit him? For You have made him a little lower than the angels, and have crowned him with glory and honor” (vs. 4-5).
Today, people are “a little lower” than angels. But God has great glory and honor in store for humans.
Hebrews 2 quotes the same psalm and expands on it: “Unto the angels has He not put in subjection the world to come, whereof we speak. But one in a certain place testified, saying, What is man, that You are mindful of him? Or the son of man, that You visit him? You [God] made him [man] a little lower than the angels; You crowned him with glory and honor, and did set him over the works of Your hands: You have put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that He [God] put all in subjection under him [man], He left nothing that is not put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him” (vs. 5-8).
“All things” have not yet been put under man’s control. But that is the awesome future just ahead. Christians who receive salvation will be much more powerful than any angel or demon today. They will rule all things alongside God the Father and Jesus Christ. They will rule in the “world to come,” a responsibility that has not been offered to any angel.
Peter added: “Of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you…which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into” (I Pet. 1:10, 12).
As powerful as angels are, they are not privileged to understand the Plan of God the way human beings can—the way you can.
The Alleged Nixon–Jackie Gleason Alien-Bodies Encounter
One of the strangest stories in American UFO lore involves President Richard Milhous Nixon, born January 9, 1913 and died on April 22, 1994; the 37th U.S. President, and the comedian and actor Jackie Gleason, born February 25, 1915; died on June 24, 1987;- and four alleged deceased extraterrestrial bodies, supposedly being kept at a secret Air Force facility in Florida. The story is fascinating—but it is important to distinguish what was actually documented from what has only been alleged. There is no publicly verified evidence that Nixon showed Gleason extraterrestrial bodies.
Jackie Gleason, best known for The Honeymooners, had a genuine interest in UFOs and paranormal subjects. His fascination was sufficiently well known that stories about his alleged UFO experiences became part of his biography. He even had a distinctive, circular house in New York that was popularly nicknamed the “Mothership.” Gleason was also acquainted with Richard Nixon. According to accounts surrounding the story, the two men played golf together and had a personal relationship during Nixon’s presidency.
The most commonly repeated version places the incident in 1973, during Nixon’s presidency. According to the story, Nixon unexpectedly arranged for Gleason to accompany him to Homestead Air Force Base in South Florida. Gleason was allegedly taken, under the accompaniment of armed guards, through a heavily secured area of the base and eventually brought into a restricted room.
There, he saw four small humanoid bodies. The beings were described as approximately two feet tall, with relatively large heads, small or bald heads, and unusually large ears. Some versions say the bodies were embalmed or preserved and were being kept in cases. The account claims Gleason was deeply disturbed by what he saw.
The most important source for the allegation was Beverly McKittrick Gleason, born in 1925; died on 1983; Jackie Gleason’s second wife, and she swote that the story is true. According to Beverly’s later account, Gleason returned home after the alleged encounter and told her that Nixon had taken him to Florida to see the bodies. She said that he was extremely upset and that he described the beings to her. Beverly subsequently discussed the story publicly. In a later interview, she said she initially believed Gleason’s account completely because he appeared convinced that what he had seen was genuine. She also said that Gleason became angry when she talked publicly about it, because it was meant to be a secret. That last point has become an important part of the UFO legend: Gleason himself apparently did not publicly confirm the story, while his former wife continued to describe what he had allegedly told her.
According to Beverly’s account, Gleason had wanted the matter kept private. When the story became public, he reportedly objected strongly. This has been interpreted in two completely different ways. UFO proponents argue that his anger could have resulted from a genuine concern that he had revealed a government secret. Skeptics point out that anger over a sensational story does not demonstrate that the story was true. Gleason could simply have been angry that a private conversation had been made public. Anyway, you look at the matter, it was common knowledge at the time that the US government very much did not want the public to learn of such eerie stories.
The story has changed considerably as it has been retold. In one version, Nixon took Gleason to Homestead Air Force Base and showed him four preserved bodies. Other versions add a crashed flying saucer, pieces of an extraterrestrial craft, or even a spacecraft allegedly being kept inside a hangar. Some later accounts contain considerably more details than the earliest versions. This evolution is significant because it makes it difficult to determine exactly what, if anything, Gleason originally claimed.
A UFO researcher presenting the case at a 2003 crash-retrieval conference noted that three people claimed to have been told versions of the story originating with Nixon, Larry Warren, and Beverly Gleason, while emphasizing Beverly as the principal witness concerning Gleason’s account. This is where the evidence becomes extremely weak. There is no publicly authenticated government document, photograph, autopsy report, military record, or physical evidence establishing that Homestead Air Force Base possessed extraterrestrial bodies. Likewise, there is no publicly authenticated document establishing that Nixon personally took Gleason into a secret facility to view them. The story therefore belongs in the category of an unverified UFO allegation, rather than established history. Interestingly, even accounts sympathetic to the story acknowledge the lack of proof. One modern discussion of the case explicitly notes that there is no proof that aliens were stored at Homestead or that Nixon showed them to Gleason. Naturally, the U.S. government would not allow any proof to be made available to the public.
It is widely known that the United States government wanted information on UFOs (unidentified Flying Objects) is to be kept secret from the public. Such proof in the way of documentation would be highly classified. This matter is especially true for concealment considering any wreckage, ,especially of machines from the crafts, and the dead bodies of extraterrestrial crew thereof. There would also be very harsh penalties for exposing such otherworldly information to the general public, but often then when the situation gets “out of hand”, a very strong downplaying and misinformation campaign strategy becomes used. When there is absolutely no proof to a story about otherworldly aliens, the skeptics can convince a great majority of the public to simply dismiss the story; not to pay any further attention to it. And the United States government can be satisfied with that outcome.
What makes the story unusually persistent is that it isn’t simply an anonymous Internet tale. There really was a Jackie Gleason, there really was a Richard Nixon, they really knew one another, and Gleason really did have a strong interest in UFOs and paranormal subjects. Beverly Gleason also really did tell the story publicly and later discuss it in interviews. What remains unproven is the crucial part: whether Gleason actually saw extraterrestrial bodies—and whether President Nixon was the person who showed them to him.
So the best historical assessment is: The Nixon–Gleason alien-body story is a well-established UFO legend with a traceable history and identifiable witnesses, but there is no publicly verified evidence that the alleged event actually occurred. That distinction is particularly important because later books, podcasts, television programs, and Internet accounts sometimes present the story as an established fact rather than as an allegation. But, if the story is true, the U.S. government would see to it that the claims would be just an allegation as far as the public could tell.
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