UFO Over Los Angeles, California, USA July 26, 2026, UAP Sighting News.

UFO Over Los Angeles, California, USA July 26, 2026, UAP Sighting News
UFO Over Los Angeles, California, USA July 26, 2026, UAP Sighting News.
UFO Over Los Angeles, California, USA July 26, 2026, UAP Sighting News
What really happened when the dinosaur–killing asteroid hit Earth: Worldwide fires incinerated most animals within HOURS – before a global winter wiped out any survivors, study finds
It's one of the most pivotal events in our history – but what really happened when the dinosaur–killing asteroid hit Earth 66 million years ago?
For decades, scientists have debated the sequence of events.
Some believe the asteroid impact itself wiped out the dinosaurs, while others are convinced another after–effect was to blame for their demise.
Now, scientists from Purdue University claim to have settled the debate once and for all.
According to their research, a cloud of dust from the asteroid collision may have caused planetwide combustion – sparking devastating fires that burned most animals to death within hours.
Any survivors would have then perished in a global winter, they say.
'With the dust cloud trapping thermal radiation, it was like the surface and everything on it was being charbroiled,' explained Professor Brandon Johnson, lead author of the study.
'And that's what killed the dinosaurs and all the other animals.'
For years, scientists have known about the Chicxulub asteroid – a six to nine–mile–wide space rock that smashed into Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years ago.
However, until now, the sequence of events that followed has remained unclear.
When the asteroid hit Earth, we know from geology and impact simulations that an enormous cloud of dust and rock vapor was thrown high into the air.
Some of this rock vapor cooled and condensed into tiny rock droplets, known as spherules, which flew away from the impact crater, before falling back to the surface.
Previous studies have suggested that these spherules were hot enough to burn animals without shelter – but not enough for plants to suddenly burst into flames.
For this reason, many scientists have suggested the immediate effects of the collision were not to blame for the mass extinction.
However, in their new study, the Purdue University team believe they've found a missing piece of the puzzle.
Based on fresh evidence from layers of rock, they now believe some of the rock vapor did not condense to form spherules, and instead lingered in the air.

According to their research, a cloud of dust from the asteroid collision may have caused planetwide combustion – sparking devastating fires that burned most animals to death within hours
(pictured: a still from Netflix's 2026 hit, The Dinosaurs)
This 'dust blanket' would have made the surface 3.5 times warmer – making the spherules hot enough to not only kill the animals in their paths, but also to spark spontaneous forest fires.
Professor Johnson explained: 'Without fine dust, this still wouldn't have been a good day for dinosaurs. It would have killed some off, but it probably wasn't enough to start many wildfires.
'With the fine dust, the Cretaceous animals received 17 times the dose of thermal radiation that is 100% lethal to humans.
'It was enough to ignite grass, pine needles, lichen and maybe even directly ignite wood.
'The clouds would have blocked daylight so to any animal, like humans, that don't see far into the infrared, the surface would have probably looked dark.
'You would only have been able to see a reddish glow from the wildfires.
'But there really wouldn't be anything alive to do the seeing anyway, except for any animal that was able to burrow or swim or shelter in some way, to find a way to survive.
'It would have been terrible.' -
Not all the animals would have burned to death in the fires, according to the researchers.
They point out that many would have choked to death on the smoke.
Alexandria Johnson, one of the researchers who specialises in clouds, explained: 'Even if critters were to survive the charbroiling, they would likely have had lasting health effects from these particulates as well.
'But when you look at the time scales of the cooking versus the inhalation risks, the cooking is much faster.'
So, what happened after these first few hours?
According to the researchers, the dust blanket actually supports another popular theory – a global winter.
Once the spherules had finished falling and the fires had petered out, the dust would have blocked warmth from the sun for decades, leaving any remaining animals to starve to death.
To verify these theories, the researchers now hope to find records of the global wildfires.
Alfio Alessandro Chiarenza, a paeleontologist at University College London, who was not involved with this study, said: 'It would be great to figure out which animals survived right at the impact and what their biological features were.
'This could finally tell us why some animals made it when others, like the dinosaurs, didn't.'
RELATED
NASA Airbrushed 'Alien Presence' From Apollo Moon Photos, Whistleblower Physicist Claims

A physicist has claimed NASA edited Apollo Moon photos to erase an 'alien presence' and buried negatives showing UFOs, just as the Artemis programme prepares to return astronauts to the lunar surface.
PHOTO Screenshot/Youtube
NASA secretly scrubbed signs of an 'alien presence' from historic Apollo photographs of the Moon, a whistleblower physicist has claimed in an interview.
Physicist Maaneli 'Max' Derakhshani, who studies alleged anomalies on the lunar and Martian surface, told the American Alchemy podcast that multiple Apollo missions in the 1960s and 1970s captured unexplained objects that were later edited out.
He alleged that the doctored images helped conceal what some astronauts privately interpreted as evidence of a non‑human intelligence near the Moon.
According to Derakhshani, several of NASA's most famous astronauts also spoke of telepathic warnings from extraterrestrials not to return.
NASA has long denied any such alien presence, and there is currently no independently verified proof that the claims are true.
Derakhshani's central charge is simple enough. He says original Apollo photographs stored in NASA‑linked archives show objects that are mysteriously absent from later, widely circulated versions of the same frames, and that this amounts to airbrushing an alien presence out of history.
In one case, he pointed to an Apollo 14 photograph of astronaut Edgar Mitchell standing on the lunar surface. A scan held by the Lunar and Planetary Institute, an archive that he said NASA has managed since the 1970s, shows Mitchell casting a long shadow across regolith and a pitch‑black lunar sky.
'You zoom in everywhere, it's completely black,' he told host Jesse Michels.
However, in a separate copy of the same frame hosted in a 'March to the moon' collection managed by Johnson Space Centre and Arizona State University, Derakhshani said a distinct blue orb appears in the sky above Mitchell. In his telling, it is 'very clearly' visible and has no obvious prosaic explanation such as lens flare or film damage.
That kind of discrepancy is the backbone of his argument. Not proof of aliens, he stressed, but in his view, a pattern that is awkward to write off as simple cataloguing glitches or dust on an old scanner.
The most striking example, at least visually, comes from Apollo 17, the final Moon landing mission in 1972. Astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt took a series of photographs from the surface that have been pored over for decades by space buffs and sceptics alike.
According to Derakhshani, one famous frame shows three solid blue lights in the black sky above a lunar hill. When the image is brightened, he said, the region between the lights also brightens, hinting that they may be attached to a single larger object rather than being isolated specks of noise.
NASA's own description of that image, released as part of a batch of declassified UFO‑related materials in May, noted that a 'special investigation' had been opened after experts suggested the lights could belong to a sizeable physical object in space.
No public conclusion was announced, and NASA and the Pentagon both maintain that no proof of alien craft has ever been found.
Derakhshani claims other Apollo 17 frames contain pale metallic streaks against the darkness, which, when heavily zoomed and brightened, look to him like insect‑shaped objects with faint trails that resemble engine exhausts.
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and other sceptics argue that the oddities are nothing more than cosmic rays striking the film or the detector, a routine nuisance in space imaging.
Derakhshani pushed back, calling the odds of repeated, solid round lights showing up in that way 'statistically very improbable.'
The physicist's case is not limited to pixels. He links the alleged image editing to a broader narrative of internal secrecy at NASA, much of it resting on the word of former insiders whose stories are impossible to fully verify.
One of them is Ken Johnston Sr, described by Derakhshani as a pilot who trained Apollo astronauts and served as a backup astronaut during the programme.
On the podcast, he recounted Johnston's claim that he had been ordered to destroy a batch of early‑generation Apollo photographic negatives because they contained 'anomalies' that were 'not supposed to be there.'
Rather than comply, Johnston allegedly kept some of the negatives and later uploaded copies online, presenting them as evidence of a cover‑up.
NASA has been asked for comment on the latest accusations regarding image tampering and alleged instructions to destroy material. At the time of writing, there is no public response addressing Derakhshani or Johnston by name.
Officially, the agency's line on UAP mirrors that of the Pentagon, emphasising the need for better data and bluntly stating that no confirmed extraterrestrial technology has been recovered.
Michels and Derakhshani revisited long‑circulated tales that Neil Armstrong, the first human on the Moon, confided to acquaintances in Washington DC that 'we were told not to come back to the moon.'
Eugene Cernan, who commanded Apollo 17, is said to have told a friend, Japanese curator Josen Takano, that he received a kind of telepathic message during the mission: 'We don't really want you here.'
American Alchemy also revisited Edgar Mitchell's stories of attempting telepathic experiments during Apollo 14, and separate claims that aliens 'followed' their rocket. The conversation soon drifted to Apollo 11's Buzz Aldrin, whose comments over the years about an unexplained object seen en route to the Moon have been dissected into oblivion.
Derakhshani argued that Aldrin's changing account suggests he 'knows more than he can say publicly.'
Aldrin himself was far more blunt in a 2014 Reddit Q&A, writing: 'It was not an alien. Extraordinary observations require extraordinary evidence.'
Derakhshani has pushed his theory further in a separate interview, arguing that NASA is actively blurring 'technosignatures' on the Moon, structures he claimed could be up to 30 metres high and 100 metres long.
He has put the probability that artificial constructions exist on the lunar surface at 'more than 50%' and suggested that the agency is wary of returning because of what it might find there.

Artemis III is expected to fly astronauts around the Moon in 2027, with Artemis IV pencilled in for a landing in 2028, the first since Apollo. If there is anything artificial sitting quietly on the rim of a crater, those missions will have front‑row seats.
The latest round of allegations lands just as NASA prepares to send astronauts back to the lunar surface for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972. That half‑century gap has fuelled a cottage industry of conspiracy theories about why the US walked away from the Moon after only a handful of landings.
Alien Missile Found on Mars? UFO Researchers Claim NASA Rover Image Uncovers Extraterrestrial War

A NASA Mars image has reignited claims of an alien missile and ancient war, but scientists point to natural geology and pareidolia.
PHOTO By
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/pia16764.html / wikimedia commons
A resurfaced image captured by NASA's Curiosity rover inside Gale Crater on Mars has prompted renewed speculation online after a UFO researcher claimed it shows an 'alien missile' embedded in the Martian surface.
The claim was made by Scott C Waring, who operates the website UFO Sightings Daily. Waring argues the object is an unexploded extraterrestrial weapon left behind following an ancient conflict on Mars.
NASA has not identified the object as an artificial structure or weapon, and there is no scientific evidence supporting Waring's interpretation.
Curiosity has explored Gale Crater since landing on Mars in 2012, returning thousands of images used by scientists to study the planet's geology and ancient environmental conditions.
The image circulating online appears to show a long, narrow object protruding from rocky terrain.
According to Waring, the feature resembles a missile measuring just over eight feet in length.
He further speculated that the object could be evidence of an advanced civilisation that once existed on Mars and was destroyed during an ancient conflict.
Waring also suggested such technology would be of interest to governments seeking advanced weapons.
Those claims are entirely speculative and are not supported by NASA or by any published scientific research.
Although NASA has not commented specifically on the latest image, the agency has repeatedly explained that similar viral claims involving Mars photographs are typically examples of pareidolia.
Pareidolia is the tendency for the human brain to recognise familiar objects or patterns in random shapes, such as seeing faces in clouds or animals in rock formations.
Because Mars contains billions of years of fractured rock, erosion and sedimentary formations, unusual-looking features are common in rover photographs.
Scientists generally caution against drawing conclusions about artificial structures based solely on visual appearance.
Curiosity images have repeatedly generated speculation about alleged alien artefacts.
In 2022, photographs of a feature nicknamed the "Mars doorway" circulated widely online.
NASA later explained that the formation was a naturally occurring fracture in bedrock measuring approximately 12 inches high and 16 inches wide, created through geological processes similar to those found on Earth.
Curiosity's primary mission is to investigate whether Mars once possessed environmental conditions capable of supporting microbial life.
The rover studies rock layers, soil composition and atmospheric conditions rather than searching for advanced civilisations or technological artefacts.
Over more than a decade on Mars, Curiosity has produced significant evidence that parts of the planet once contained liquid water and environments potentially suitable for microscopic life billions of years ago.
However, neither Curiosity nor any other Mars mission has produced evidence confirming the existence of extraterrestrial technology or ancient Martian civilisation.
Without additional scientific evidence, the object highlighted by Waring remains an unusual rock formation whose appearance has prompted online speculation rather than a verified archaeological or technological discovery.
NASA Mars rover finds alien missile, proof of ancient war. UFO UAP sighting news. 👽
Mysterious object in NASA Mars photo ignites theories of extraterrestrial life on the Red Planet
NASA's Curiosity rover has captured countless strange-looking rocks during its years exploring Mars.
Now, one resurfaced image is fueling extraordinary claims that the Red Planet was once the site of an alien war.
UFO researcher Scott C Waring shared a photo taken by the rover that appears to show what he believes is an unexploded 'alien missile' lying on the Martian surface.
He argued the object is evidence of an ancient conflict that wiped out a once-thriving civilization, claiming space agencies have remained silent because of its potential military significance.
Waring even speculated the mysterious object could represent advanced extraterrestrial weapon technology that governments would rush to obtain if it were ever recovered.
The remarkable claims, however, are not supported by NASA, which has offered no indication that the object is anything other than a naturally occurring rock formation.
Scientists have long noted that Mars is shaped by billions of years of volcanic activity, meteorite impacts and relentless wind erosion, processes capable of sculpting rocks into surprisingly artificial-looking shapes.
Similar discoveries have repeatedly sparked claims of alien artifacts on the Red Planet before later being explained as examples of pareidolia, the human tendency to see familiar objects and patterns where none actually exist.

A UFO researcher shared a photo taken by the Curiosity rover that appears to show what he believes is an unexploded 'alien missile' lying on the Martian surface
Still, the peculiar shape has reignited debate online, with believers convinced Curiosity has stumbled across the remnants of an extraterrestrial battlefield while skeptics see little more than another Martian rock.
NASA has also maintained that it has no evidence of extraterrestrial life and has yet to find any signs of current or past life on Mars.
However, Waring estimated the object measures just over eight feet long and speculated it could be an intact piece of extraterrestrial technology.
He claimed such a discovery would be highly sought after by governments hoping to study advanced weapons, while wondering who might reach it first and what purpose it may have served.
Waring offered no evidence to support those claims, and NASA has not identified the object as anything other than part of the Martian landscape.
While the UFO researcher suggested the object is a remnant of an alien missile, others suggested it could be a crashed extraterrestrial ship.
Another Facebook user who shared the image argued that the object appears long and narrow, with what they described as two compartments.
They speculated that one compartment looked empty while the other seemed to contain 'packages,' adding that what appeared to be wings may have broken off in a crash, leading them to conclude it was 'most likely' some type of aircraft.

Another image taken by NASA's Curiosity rover sparked claims of a long-lost civilization as a formation in the distance appears to have a 'doorway'
Another user commented: 'Would be cool if it actually was a crashed ship?'
Earlier this month, Waring shared another mysterious Mars photo he claimed showed a dwelling on the Red Planet.
The discovery was made in a panorama taken by Curiosity last month inside Gale Crater, the 96-mile-wide impact basin that has been the rover's home since landing on Mars in 2012.
Among the dusty landscape, some have pointed to a formation in the distance that they say resembles a structure with a doorway, similar to an early human dwelling.
'What looks like cut boulders is actually clay-type walls and an entrance way made by intelligent beings who needed protection from the elements. We had them on Earth long ago, and they had them on Mars long ago,' Waring said.
NASA has not commented on the latest claims, but the agency previously addressed similar speculation after Curiosity photographed a door-like feature in 2022.

NASA has not commented on the latest claims, but the agency previously addressed similar speculation after Curiosity photographed a door-like feature in 2022
'The mound, on Mount Sharp, has a number of naturally occurring open fractures – including one roughly 12 inches (30 centimeters) tall and 16 inches (40 centimeters) wide, similar in size to a dog door,' NASA said at the time.
'These kinds of open fractures are common in bedrock, both on Earth and on Mars.'
While Waring is sure Curiosity spotted a hidden doorway on the Martian landscape, others believe otherwise.
'Nah, just a rock formation. I definitely think it's possible that entrances could be there, but this just looks like a shadow,' one X user commented on his post.
However, Waring said: 'Chances of intelligent beings creating this structure... 100 percent.'
Curiosity rover is a car-sized, nuclear-powered robot searching for signs of life and learning about the Red Planet's unique environment.
Ocean explorer tracks down terrifying 'alien' sharks that can clone themselves lurking off US shores
An ocean adventurer has tracked down four of the most bizarre sharks living around the US that even experts describe as 'alien creatures.'
Wildlife biologist Forrest Galante said the US is home to one of the most diverse shark populations on Earth. There are over 100 different species living around the country, from tiny lantern sharks to larger predators the size of a bus.
In a new special for Discovery's annual Shark Week airing Wednesday at 10pm ET, the researcher traveled from Southern California to the Gulf Coast, to the Florida Keys and finally to New England in search of the rarest and strangest species on Earth.
His hunt started with the California swell shark, a predator that can inflate itself like a balloon and glows in the dark.
Galante then pursued a bizarre member of the hammerhead family in Louisiana, the bonnethead shark, which is said to be able to clone itself.
In the nearby Florida Keys, the adventurer chased after the nearly extinct small-toothed sawfish, which has a roughly three-foot beak that looks like a motorized chainsaw.
His nationwide alien hunt then took him to Cape Cod, where the basking shark, a gentle giant described as the size of a spaceship, lives quietly for decades.
However, Galante's first stop, in his native Southern California, provided the biggest challenge, locating the elusive swell shark at the bottom of the Pacific.

A California swell shark glows in the dark near Sanata Cruz Island

The Swell shark has eyes like a cat's that allow it to see at night
The swell shark's unique eyes give it night vision and, as its name would suggest, they can swell its body up to twice its normal size to scare off predators.
However, researchers have discovered an even more amazing ability of the swell shark - it glows in the dark.
While some swell sharks have been found at depths of up to 1,500 feet, the species is believed to prefer swimming in shallower waters, meaning humans can actually catch these 'alien' sharks while fishing.
Moreover, while many shark species need to keep moving in order to breathe, the swell shark can sit on the ocean floor and use a technique called buccal pumping to draw water into its mouth and push it over their gills using cheek and throat muscles.
This allows the elusive shark to hide in rocky caves for hours at a time.
After failing to spot the shark near the warm waters outside Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant and on a fishing trip to Santa Barbara, Galante headed for California's Channel Islands, an eight-island archipelago where a wealth of different species live, including sharks, seals and humpback whales.
After diving into the water near the largest of the Channel Islands, Santa Cruz Island, Galante almost immediately found an amber-colored pouch about the size of a hand.
'This is the live egg case of a swell shark. Inside here is a living baby swell shark,' Galante explained, noting that the pouches will sit on the ocean floor for between nine and 12 months before hatching.

Galante discovered a swell shark's egg, which looks like a large leather pouch

The California swell shark is harmless to humans and feeds on small fish
Moments later, the explorer found an adult swell shark hiding in a rocky cave along the ocean floor.
Galante pointed out the loose belly skin, which gives the swell shark its ability to grow in size and wedge itself in the rocks to prevent predators from pulling it out and killing it.
'They'll curl into a ball and wedge themselves in with that big, fat, inflatable belly. They're basically the puffer fish of the shark kingdom,' he said.
As Galante and his camera team turned off their lights, the alien-like shark lit up with its bioluminescent ability, glowing on its own in the Pacific waters.
The adventurer noted that scientists believe swell sharks use the protein in their skin to glow, and that the light is a form of communication in areas of the ocean where there is little light.
'It looked like something from another planet. Truly one of the most amazing alien shark species I have ever seen. It was an extraterrestrial dream come true.'

The bonnethead shark is a member of the hammerhead family but looks like a shovel

Pictured: Forrest Galante holds a bonnethead shark. A bonnethead female can clone itself using a process called parthenogenesis
Next, Galante's expedition took him to the protected waters along the Gulf Coast, searching for the bonnethead, a three-foot-long member of the hammerhead shark family.
Unlike the classic variety of this species, this creature has a head shaped like a shovel. The bonnethead is also believed to be the only shark in the world that eats both meat and plants.
Since the endangered bonnethead mainly eats crustaceans, Galante and his camera crew used a Cajun seafood bowl as bait to lure one close to shore along the Louisiana coast.
'These are hands down one of the most alien shark species that we have here in North America.'
The sharks are one of the only known sharks in the entire world to conduct parthenogenesis, a form of asexual reproduction where female sharks can develop an embryo from an unfertilized egg cell without needing sperm from males.
'It would be an exact genetic clone of this beautiful animal. Truly one of North America's weirdest sharks that can clone itself. How bizarrely strange is that?'

The small toothed sawfish is nearly extinct, with one of its last major habitats being the Florida Keys

Pictured: Galante examines the saw-like bill of a sawfish captured and tagged by conservationists
Moving on to the southern tip of Florida, Galante went searching for the nearly extinct small-toothed sawfish, which has seen 95 percent of its global population wiped out - largely by disease and coastal development.
The elusive sawfish, which has a long bill that looks just like a motorized chainsaw, is believed to be living along the Florida Keys, with less than 1,000 remaining.
Teaming with shark experts in the Florida area who tag and release local species, Galante's hunt resulted in researchers actually finding a 13-foot-long small-toothed sawfish that had already been tagged in the past.
'Whenever you capture data on an animal like this is actually more valuable, potentially, than catching one for the first time because that'll tell us what has changed since the last time they caught this creature,' he explained.
'This is a huge win scientifically for an animal that is creeping towards extinction.'
Galante noted that the strange saw-like nose contains tiny, gel-filled sacks with air inside which vibrate. Those vibrations help the shark detect objects in the murky waters near the Florida coast.
'Tell me that's not an alien. It felt like a spaceship with a chainsaw on its face.'

A basking shark measuring nearly 30 feet swims near Cape Cod

Pictured: Galante approaches a basking shark, which is called a filter feeder that consumes plankton
Galante's final search took him to the cold waters of New England to hunt for an 'alien' giant in Cape Cod Bay - an area known for a resurgence of great white sharks.
However, Galante set out in search of the basking shark, a creature that can grow to nearly 30 feet in length - twice the size of a great white.
This enormous creature is a filter feeder, dining on plankton near the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.
Using a local pilot and a drone from the air, Galante and his team spotted a basking shark near Cape Cod, which was so massive the drone's sensors mistook it for a moving vehicle.
According to Galante, this particular basking shark was likely over 30 years old and was covered in scars, suggesting many difficult migration trips along the US East Coast.
'That shark is one of the most unbelievably alien, bizarre, weird, incredible sharks. A giant filter feeder swimming through like a spaceship.'
RELATED
This Woman Claimed the First Humans Were Androgynous Beings from Lemuria, Which She Believed Came Before Atlantis and Was Humanity’s First Home

This woman claimed Lemuria came first: a vast continent in the Pacific that served as the birthplace of the Third “Root Race.” These weren’t modern humans. She described them as androgynous, psychic beings that reproduced by laying eggs before biological sex, as we know it, even existed.
According to 19th-century occultist Helena Blavatsky, Atlantis wasn’t humanity’s beginning. It was the aftermath. She lived from 1831 to 1891 and became a major figure in modern Western occultism. In 1875, she helped establish the Society in New York with Henry Steel Olcott, William Quan Judge, and others.
Blavatsky argued that the world’s religions came from an older hidden wisdom preserved by advanced teachers called Masters or Mahatma
Her writing combined Hindu and Buddhist ideas with Western esotericism, Neoplatonism, spiritualism, contemporary science, and her own cosmic history. Supporters saw her as a restorer of ancient wisdom. Critics accused her of invention, fraud, and borrowing. Her influence is not in doubt.
Plato described a powerful island empire beyond the Pillars of Hercules, usually identified with the Strait of Gibraltar. The island was said to be larger than Libya and Asia Minor combined. Its rulers commanded a strong navy and tried to conquer lands around the Mediterranean.
Helena Blavatsky
In Plato’s story, Atlantis attacked ancient Athens about nine thousand years before the dialogue’s supposed conversation. Athens defeated it. Soon afterward, earthquakes and floods destroyed the island.
Plato said the account passed through Egyptian priests to the lawgiver Solon, but no matching Egyptian record has been found. Many scholars therefore read Atlantis as a philosophical story about power, pride, moral decay, and punishment rather than a reliable report about a prehistoric empire.
This moral structure was important for Blavatsky. Plato’s Atlantis fell after political ambition and ethical decline. Blavatsky expanded that pattern.
In her version, Atlantis was a real ancient civilization with great knowledge and psychic abilities. It fell because many inhabitants became selfish, corrupt, and willing to misuse their powers.
Blavatsky took the scientific name and gave it a completely new meaning. In The Secret Doctrine, Lemuria became the home of the Third Root Race of humanity. Atlantis became the home of the Fourth Root Race.
These “Root Races” were not simply ethnic groups in the modern sense. They were vast stages in a spiritual and physical evolution that, according to Blavatsky, unfolded over immense periods.
Each stage had its own form of humanity, its own continent, and its own role in the growth of consciousness. Blavatsky’s system included seven Root Races in total.
Blavatsky’s language about race came from the nineteenth century and is deeply problematic today. Her system sometimes mixed spiritual rank, physical development, continents, and living peoples in ways that created racial hierarchies.
Later occult movements developed some of these ideas in more openly racist directions. It is therefore important to understand “Root Race” as a historical Theosophical term. It is not a scientific category or an acceptable modern description of human differences.
In Blavatsky’s system, the first two Root Races were not physical humans like us. They were shadowy or subtle beings.
The First Root Race was described as nonphysical and lacking ordinary self-consciousness. These beings did not have solid bodies, bones, or separate sexes. They were closer to spiritual forms than physical organisms.
The Second Root Race was denser but still not fully material. Blavatsky called these beings “boneless” because they had not yet developed complete physical bodies.
These early beings did not reproduce in the familiar human way. The story uses images of division, budding, expansion, and forms produced from subtle bodies.
These claims are part of Blavatsky’s esoteric mythology. They are not supported by biology, archaeology, or the fossil record. Even within Theosophy, they are presented through symbols and allegorical language.
Blavatsky described early Lemurians as huge, partly material beings. Over time, they became more solid and developed bones and physical organs. They were first presented as sexless or hermaphroditic. This meant that male and female were not yet separate biological forms
Later, according to Blavatsky, they reproduced through eggs. Eventually, one sex began to dominate in each body. Distinct men and women appeared, and reproduction became sexual.
Blavatsky imagined Lemuria as the cradle of humanity, inhabited by egg-laying hermaphrodites who lived in psychic harmony. Physical human bodies and the division into male and female appeared when higher beings descended into earthly life. This is a simplified version of a much more complicated story in The Secret Doctrine.
In the longer Theosophical account, celestial beings help guide evolution. Some provide the early patterns from which bodies develop. Others awaken mind and self-consciousness. The human form is therefore not presented as the result of biological evolution alone. It is part of a spiritual drama in which souls, subtle bodies, nature, and higher intelligences work together.
One important moment is the awakening of mind. Theosophical writers describe beings called the Sons of Wisdom or Lords of Flame stimulating early human forms. This gives humanity true self-awareness. Before it, the Lemurians are alive but lack developed reflective thought. After it, they can recognize themselves, build civilization, and make moral choices.
This entire episode is presented as an explanation for differences in human spiritual and intellectual development. Souls were said to have reached different stages before entering physical humanity.
This is where Blavatsky’s Lemuria becomes more than a strange creation story. It becomes her explanation for the human condition. People are physical animals, but they also contain mind and spirit. The Lemurian age represents the difficult joining of these levels.
It explains why human beings can be instinctive and violent while also being intelligent, creative, morally responsible, and capable of spiritual insight.
Blavatsky placed Lemuria across a huge region. Her description stretched from areas near Madagascar and the Indian Ocean toward Ceylon, now called Sri Lanka, as well as Sumatra, Australia, and the Pacific.
She did not describe Lemuria as one small island. It was an enormous continent that changed shape during its long history. According to her account, most of the continent eventually disappeared. Islands and scattered areas of land were supposed to be its surviving mountain peaks and fragments.
A modern Theosophical account says that the first large Lemurian cities arose in a region associated with present-day Madagascar.
The later Lemurians were said to have received instruction from divine rulers. These teachers showed them how to survive in a changing physical world. They learned practical skills, science, building, mathematics, astronomy, and the arts. Theosophical sources describe cities made from stone, lava, metals, marble, and other materials.
This civilization did not appear instantly. It developed after humanity became physical, gained self-consciousness, and faced a world with changing seasons and harsher conditions.
Blavatsky claimed that Lemurians once enjoyed a natural spiritual awareness. They communicated partly through direct mental contact and felt a strong connection with nature and the divine.
As human intelligence developed, this innocent unity gradually disappeared. Humanity gained individual thought but also became more capable of selfishness, conflict, and error.

There are other esoteric pictures of Lemurians. Some modern traditions describe them as large reptilian humanoids with telepathy and advanced technology. These ideas should not all be placed directly in Blavatsky’s mouth. They belong to a wider body of occult and New Age storytelling that grew around Lemuria.
Blavatsky supplied a powerful basic framework. Some later versions describe Lemurians as gentle spiritual beings living in harmony with the Earth. Others describe them as giants, reptiles, extraterrestrials, or hidden masters.
In Blavatsky’s history, Lemuria was older than Atlantis. The destruction of Lemuria prepared the way for the Atlantean period.
Theosophical tradition often contrasts the ways the two continents were destroyed. Lemuria was associated mainly with fire, volcanic activity, and underground forces. Atlantis was destroyed mainly by water. These disasters were not always imagined as single events occurring in one night. Continents could break apart through several upheavals over long periods.
Large sections of Lemuria were supposedly destroyed by volcanic eruptions and geological changes. The remaining people migrated to other lands or became part of later human populations.
Again, this is an occult narrative. Modern geology does not support the existence of a continent of this kind beneath the Indian or Pacific Ocean.
Atlantis belonged to Blavatsky’s Fourth Root Race. Its people were more physically developed and more intellectual than the Lemurians. They built large societies and possessed knowledge that later ages supposedly lost. Blavatsky helped popularize the modern image of Atlantis as a technically advanced civilization rather than simply a wealthy ancient kingdom.
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Over time, however, many Atlanteans used their knowledge for personal power and control. Their technical and psychic skills grew while their moral responsibility weakened. Atlantis became a warning that intelligence without ethics can destroy a civilization.
This theme explains why Atlantis remained attractive to later spiritual writers. It could be used to discuss modern fears about science, weapons, political power, and technology.
A society may become brilliant at engineering, communication, warfare, or controlling nature while remaining emotionally and morally immature. Atlantis then becomes a mirror rather than an archaeological claim. Its sinking represents the collapse that follows when human ability grows faster than human wisdom.
Blavatsky also wrote that not every Atlantean died. Groups of survivors escaped and carried their knowledge to other parts of the world. Atlantean survivors formed new societies in Egypt and the Americas. This idea became common in later alternative history.
It has been used to explain pyramids, monumental architecture, ancient myths, and similarities between distant cultures.
Mainstream archaeology does not accept a lost Atlantean parent civilization as the source of Egyptian or American civilizations. These societies developed within their own historical and cultural settings.
The survivor story serves an important purpose inside Theosophy. It allows wisdom to pass from one world age to another.
A continent may vanish, but part of its knowledge remains hidden in symbols, temples, religious traditions, initiation ceremonies, and secret schools. Blavatsky believed that ancient teachings had been scattered and disguised. Her own work claimed to reconnect these fragments with their original source.
Some believers treat them as higher-dimensional realms or states of consciousness. They connect the lost continents with the fourth and fifth dimensions, higher vibrations, unity, telepathy, healing, and expanded awareness.
Lemuria is often linked with harmony, emotional openness, connection with nature, healing, and group consciousness. Atlantis is linked with knowledge, mental power, spiritual technology, and the danger of using such power irresponsibly.
The lack of scientific evidence does not make Blavatsky’s ideas historically unimportant. She changed the popular imagination. She helped turn Atlantis into the model of a lost high-technology civilization and Lemuria into a spiritual homeland of early humanity.
Later occultists, New Age teachers, channelers, novelists, and alternative historians continued to reshape these stories. Her version also survives because it deals with lasting questions.
Where did consciousness come from? Is technological progress the same as human progress? Can a civilization destroy itself through arrogance? Does knowledge survive the fall of cultures? Are myths memories, symbols, or inventions?
Blavatsky answered these questions with an immense hidden history. Most scholars and scientists reject that history as fact, but its symbols still speak to many people.
Atlantis began as Plato’s story about a powerful society brought down by pride. Lemuria began as a scientific guess about animal geography. Blavatsky transformed both into chapters of spiritual evolution. Modern New Age belief then moved them into higher dimensions and personal healing.
Helena Blavatsky’s importance lies less in proving that lost continents existed than in showing how flexible such stories can be. She gathered philosophy, religion, science, myth, and occultism into one dramatic vision. In that vision, humanity rises, falls, forgets, and begins again.
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Earth's catastrophic cycle: Study reveals how our planet's biggest disasters strike every 27 million years – and it suggests we could be due one soon
From devastating earthquakes to deadly asteroid impacts, our planet's biggest disasters have more in common than initially appears.
According to a new study, the most destructive events on Earth are based on a regular, hidden cycle.
Professor Michael Rampino, a geologist at New York University, says that disasters strike once roughly every 27 million years.
And his predictions suggest that we could be due for a cataclysm in the not–too–distant future.
In a new paper, Professor Rampino re–examines 89 geological events spanning the past 260 years using the latest age data and statistical techniques.
These events include marine mass extinctions, oceans suddenly being depleted of oxygen, vast chains of eruptions and earthquakes, fluctuations in sea levels, and changes in seafloor spreading rates.
According to his analysis, these events are connected by a main 27–million–year cycle – as well as shorter or longer patterns linking some types of event.
That means, despite having wildly different causes and effects, all of Earth's worst disasters could be triggered by a single, hidden planetary pulse.

Professor Michael Rampino, a geologist at New York University, says that disasters strike once roughly every 27 million years. This could mean Earth is due for a new disaster soon
The idea that Earth's geological upheavals follow a regular pattern dates back to the 1980s.
The concept has proven extremely controversial, with many geologists arguing that there is no single mechanism that could connect such disparate events.
However, Professor Rampino remains adamant that there really is something deeper behind all of the mass extinction events.
In his paper, published in the journal Evolving Earth, Professor Rampino writes: 'While these ideas are still mostly outside the mainstream of current geological thinking, they could be the first steps in an important conceptual breakthrough in the Earth sciences.'
Alongside the main 27–million–year cycle, there are shorter mini–cycles, connecting some events every 8.9 million years.
Some disasters also appear to be connected by an even longer interval, up to 270 million years apart.
According to Professor Rampino, these events could be connected by nearly imperceptible shifts taking place deep within the Earth.
Beneath the outer layer of the crust, the Earth's semi–liquid mantle circulates at an incredibly slow rate through convection.

In a new study, Professor Rampino analysed 89 geological disasters and mass extinction events, revealing what he believes to be a deeper cycle
If there are periodic changes in this circulation, it could trigger huge increases in volcanic activity, plate tectonics, and other large–scale geological processes.
Since all of these systems are so closely interlinked, changes happening deep within the Earth could have deadly knock–on effects in the oceans, climate, and biosphere.
For example, Professor Rampino looked at the ages of continental flood basalts, areas of cooled lava covering thousands of square miles that are the result of massive volcanic eruptions.
Not only do the ages of these flood basalts match up almost exactly with his 27–million–year–cycle, but they also coincide with two of Earth's biggest mass extinction events.
Another alternative explanation is that long–term variations in Earth's orbit influence the distribution of ice, water, and sediments across the planet.
Professor Rampino suggests these could subtly alter the stresses in Earth's crust and influence volcanic and tectonic activity over millions of years.
At present, there is no direct evidence to support either mechanism as a cause of disasters.
However, the most intriguing explanation places the blame for these disasters on Earth's movements within the galaxy as a whole.

Geological upheavals appear to be connected by a main 27–million–year cycle, as well as shorter cycles of about 8.9 million years and longer ones lasting up to 290 million years

These cycles could be linked to long–term convection patterns inside the Earth's mantle, the semi–liquid layer beneath the crust
Over millions of years, our solar system wobbles up and down across the plane of the Milky Way, crossing the centre–line every 30 million years.
Professor Rampino points out that the timing of these crossings aligns with major upheavals on Earth.
The gravity of nearby stars during this crossing could disturb comets out in the distant Oort cloud, making a devastating asteroid impact more likely.
Alternatively, as the Earth moves through the crowded galactic centre, it picks up some of the dark matter densely packed in this region.
These dark matter particles could collect in the Earth's core and annihilate each other, triggering a massive release of heat.
He writes: 'The great surge of heat released in this annihilation process could be up to 250 times the Earth's present internal heat flux, which could initiate an intense pulse of global geologic activity.
'Such a major global geologic disturbance would be predicted about every 30 My or so as the Solar System encountered dense clumps of dark matter near the Galactic mid–plane.'
Professor Rampino points out that nine of the Earth's 13 mass extinction events occur within 0.3 to six million years of crossing the galactic plane.
Could Earth's biggest disasters follow a hidden cycle?

Alternatively, Professor Rampino believes the disasters could occur when the Earth cross the plane of the Milky Way galaxy once every 30 million years
That could be particularly worrying news since Earth crossed the Galactic plane just three to four million years ago.
If this theory is correct, we could be due another disastrous geological upheaval anytime in the next two million years or so.
However, Professor Rampino admits that this is still a 'very controversial mechanism' and there is limited evidence to support its existence.
He added: 'We note that these results run counter to long–accepted interpretations of the nature of the geologic record, especially regarding a supposed lack of regular multi–million–year cycles in Earth's history.'