UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

Oceans of liquid water, deep beneath the icy crusts of three of Saturn's natural satellites, may satisfy the conditions needed for "life as we know it," scientists say. The small, bright-white Enceladus and Dione, and the giant, orange, haze-enshrouded Titan each probably contain such subsurface seas. But the unique structure and contents of each ocean represent a different possible solution to the life equation.

The Cassini-Huygens mission — a collaboration of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency — has been a prolific pioneer of Saturn's moons. When the mission launched in 1997, 18 moons were known to orbit the planet, and 13 more were suspected. But the number of confirmed moons now stands at 53, with another nine marked as "conditional." Cassini's data revealed seven entirely unknown moons that are not observable from Earth. [The Rings and Moons of Saturn in Pictures]

This elaborate system of moons forms a complex clockwork of gravitational resonances; they perturb one another's orbits and constantly sculpt Saturn's rings. And the massive planet gravitationally disrupts the moons, warming some of them to the point of possibly swaddling life beneath their surfaces.

The first hints that something wonderful might be going on beneath the surface of the small moon Enceladus came during the 1981 flyby mission of NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft. Enceladus appeared remarkably bright and unusually smooth, with comparatively few craters. This 314-mile-wide (505 kilometers) moon turned out to be the whitest object in the solar system.

In 2005, Cassini's magnetometer readings of Enceladus raised researchers' eyebrows: The moon's magnetic signature looked more like that of a comet than that of a typical spherical satellite. The field lines seemed to bend around Enceladus' southern pole. On a pass where Enceladus was seen against the black background of space, Cassini's cameras caught plumes of water emanating from that polar region.

Several Cassini flybys confirmed that the area was about 180 degrees Fahrenheit (100 degrees Celsius) warmer than the rest of the moon's surface. The heat source was aligned with four prominent "tiger stripe" features. These turned out to be fissures — cracks in the icy crust through which geysers shoot water into space at about 800 mph (about 1,300 km/h).

Geysers from tiger-stripe fissures: This mosaic of two Cassini images shows water plumes emanating from four cracks in the surface of the southern polar region of the Saturn moon Enceladus. From left to right, the fractures are named Alexandria, Cairo, Baghdad and Damascus.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI

Cassini sailed within 31 miles (50 km) of Enceladus' south pole on March 12, 2008. During that flyby, the probe sampled the plumes, and found that they were made of water laced with ammonia, methane and carbon dioxide. More flybys were planned. By April 2014, it was clear that some of the geyser particles were salty, flavored with potassium and sodium, very similar to Earthly sea spray. Hydrogen gas was detected in the jets, as were silicate crystals, which could only have been formed in boiling water, scientists said. [Photos: Enceladus, Saturn's Cold, Bright Moon]

This evidence, taken together, suggests the presence of a salty ocean of liquid water under the ice, in contact with a hot, rocky seafloor through which mineral-laden hot water flows. It is easy to imagine hydrothermal vents there, very similar to the "black smokers" and "white smokers" found on the bottom of Earth's oceans, where they form oases for communities of life.

Enceladus seems to be begging us to return with instruments capable of detecting amino acids, fatty acids and long-chain carbon molecules — and perhaps even imaging equipment to photograph any possible microorganisms themselves.

Titan, which is 10 times wider than Enceladus, is also a world of liquids. But the fluids flowing on Titan's surface are hydrocarbons, not water. At Titan's surface temperature, water is rock-hard. But methane, ethane and propane slosh around in all three states: solid, liquid and gaseous. The surface of this moon is nearly impossible to see from space at visual wavelengths; thick, orange smog pervades the place. This hazy atmosphere is rich with organic compounds.

Fortunately, Cassini can see in infrared and radar wavelengths. And the Cassini orbiter carried a lander called Huygens, which touched down on Titan's surface in January 2005. Huygens carried cameras down through the atmosphere. And, upon soft-landing on the shore of a hydrocarbon lake, it sent close-ups of rounded pebbles, which were probably made of water. The landforms on Titan are eerily familiar; they look a lot like coastlines and river lands on Earth.

Titan, too, must be warm inside. This moon changes shape as it orbits Saturn once every 16 days. Cassini measured Titan's tidal bulging, finding the surface rising and falling on the order of 30 feet (9 meters). If Titan were completely solid, those tides would be at least 10 times less pronounced, scientists have said.

A slice of Titan: Radio-science studies using Cassini signals sent to NASA's Deep Space Network suggest that this moon harbors a global ocean lying between a frozen water-ice crust above and a high-pressure ice layer below. The silicate core of Titan is likely infused with water as well.

Credit: A. Tavani/NASA

But the floor of Titan's subsurface ocean may be compacted and frozen, not warm, scientists have said. This could prevent warm liquid water from receiving the complex mix of minerals necessary for life to arise, at least from below. Therefore, it's critical to know if the organic-rich surface of Titan can "communicate" with the subsurface seas.

One great mystery about Titan is how so much methane can be present at its surface. Methane breaks down quickly, so something must be replenishing it. If there are deep cracks, or cryovolcanic vents, through which ammonia from a salty underground ocean may rise, sunlight would break down the molecules, thus liberating lots of methane. That same pathway could let surface material and atmospheric organic material seep or slide down to the waters beneath. In that case, life may be possible within Titan's interior ocean, even if its floor is frozen. [Amazing Photos: Titan, Saturn's Largest Moon]

Like Enceladus and Titan, the Saturnian moons Dione and Tethys are subject to the warping and twisting effects of Saturn's tidal gravity. And both of these worlds show bright, relatively smooth and roughly circular surface patches where ponds of liquid water appear to have frozen across craters. They would make nice skating rinks. These events likely happened relatively recently on geologic time scales.

Dione in front of Saturn: Cassini's wide-angle camera shot three images — through blue, green and infrared filters — as the spacecraft flew 24,200 miles (39,000 km) from the moon to produce this photo.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI

Dione is similar to Enceladus but, at 700 miles (1,100 km) in diameter, is about two times larger. Dione's icy crust is much thicker than that of Enceladus, boasting a substantial 60 miles (100 km) of crystallized water. But a recent study based on Cassini's gravity measurements suggests that a tremendous quantity of liquid water sloshes beneath that shell.

The floor of Dione's subsurface ocean is probably the rocky core of the moon itself, according to the study. A future submarine probe may find many sources of heat and mineral nutrients to sustain life, if biology ever began there — or was seeded from afar. Dione's waters likely have been liquid through most of the moon's history, adding the vital element of time for biology to evolve and differentiate, researchers have said.

Snow-globe worlds: Observations by the Cassini-Huygens mission suggest that three Saturn moons harbor liquid-water oceans beneath their icy shells.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Such "snow-globe worlds" — bodies with cold crystal exteriors housing warm liquid oceans full of particles cascading and mixing — are not unique to Saturn.

The dwarf planet Pluto may enclose such an ocean. Pluto and its largest moon Charon, which is about half as wide as the dwarf planet itself, can be considered a binary system. Their mutual attraction may heat up their interiors, and parts of Pluto seem to have been resurfaced in the recent past, scientists have said.

Giant Jupiter exerts massive tidal forces on the four large moons first noted by Galileo Galilei four centuries ago. The innermost of these moons, Io, almost seems to be turning inside out. More than 400 active sulfur volcanoes blast this moon's guts into space. Its core of molten iron singes the surface from below. Of the worlds in our solar system, Io may bear the closest resemblance to classical notions of hell. All of its water long since lost, it's the driest object in the solar system.

There are no water oceans on Io. But each of its three siblings — Europa, Ganymede and Callisto — encloses a sea beneath its surface.

Europa, which is slightly smaller than Earth's moon, holds a thin oxygen atmosphere. This world sports the smoothest surface in the solar system, with very few impact craters, implying that it's being repaved with water ice from inside, scientists have said. Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have spotted hints of water-vapor plumes emanating from Europa that may be similar to the "cryogeysers" of Enceladus.

Saturn's ocean-harboring moons get most of the press, but the ringed planet's many dry satellites are fascinating in their own right. Each Saturnian moon is a unique jewel in the majestic planet's necklace.

Some of these moons, like Mimas, look like the results of ancient, catastrophic collisions. Shady Phoebe, with its inky-black surface, pours matter out into space. It tints the rings and stains one hemisphere of Iapetus, the "next moon in" toward Saturn, with dark reddish shading. Sparky Hyperion is lightweight and spongy — almost like a giant piece of volcanic pumice — and electrically active. A few moons apparently are captured asteroids, visitors from deep space that strayed too close. And Cassini has spotted clumpy cocoons within the rings where tiny future moons may be growing. Together, the many moons of Saturn form an enthralling exhibit of nature's creativity.

For a deeper look into all that Cassini has found in its 13 years in the Saturn system, watch the 73-minute documentary "Kingdom of Saturn — Cassini's Epic Quest," available at Amazon XiveTV.

The author, @DavidSkyBrody, is the writer and director of "Kingdom of Saturn — Cassini's Epic Quest," a documentary look back at the mission, available at Amazon XiveTV. Dave Brody was formerly executive producer at Purch, the parent company of Space.com and Live Science.

Follow this author @DavidSkyBrody. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

In Part One of this article, I presented the inside story of Disney’s 1995 UFO documentary, Alien Encounters from New Tomorrowland, which supposedly was produced with the sole purpose of promoting Disneyworld’s then-new “ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter” attraction in Orlando, Florida. The documentary quickly became engrained into UFO conspiracy lore, with many in the UFO community speculating that it was a sort of “soft Disclosure,” intended as a test of public reaction to a possible future announcement of alien contact. Despite Disney having close historical ties to the US government and military, there is simply no evidence to support the acclimation theory for the Disney documentary, although certainly the specifics of its content served to strongly reinforce ideas that had thus far been sown into the UFO community by disinformation operatives dating back at least to the early-1980s. According to writer/producer, Andrew Thomas, the content of his documentary was crafted entirely by him, and he was given free rein by Disney to make essentially whatever he wanted, which he did.

Still, for reasons detailed in Part One, the Alien Encountersdocumentary remains something of an oddity, both for its content, and for what its director, Andrew Thomas, describes as Disney’s “completely counter-intuitive” TV scheduling. It aired in only a handful of US cities at inopportune times on selected dates in February and March 1995, with no notice. The result, says Thomas, was that “no one would be watching it.” An incredibly odd marketing strategy considering its purpose was to promote a major theme park attraction for families.

Disney’s “ExtraTERRORESTRIAL Encounter” attraction, which closed in 2003.

Disney, one of the world’s largest corporations, is not known for poor marketing strategies, and yet, not only did it display appalling promotional skills for its 1995 UFO documentary, but this same shocking absence of PR know-how had also been exhibited by Disney on another UFO-related project during the same timeframe.

A few months before the broadcast of its Alien Encounters documentary, in January of 1995, Disney made the unprecedented move of staging a major UFO conference at its Orlando resort, titled “UFOs: The Reality of the Phenomenon.” As with the documentary, the official purpose of the conference was to help promote its new “ExtraTERRORestrial” attraction. Disney sought to bring together the world’s leading UFO experts for several weeks. These included major names of the time, like Budd Hopkins, George Knapp, Don Schmitt, Kevin Randle, and Zecharia Sitchin, among others. Such a line-up at the height of UFO hysteria in America would ordinarily have attracted many hundreds, if not thousands, of attendees. Strangely, though, Disney chose not to advertise their costly multi-week event. As a result, the world’s leading UFO speakers spoke to almost no one at all.

The entrance to the 1995 Disney UFO conference. Photo courtesy of Don Ecker.

The man tasked with organizing the conference for Disney was Don Ecker, Director of Research at UFO Magazine, then the world’s most popular UFO publication. I interviewed Ecker in 2015. “In a way,” said Ecker, “the Disney conference is kind of a murky legendary incident in the history of UFOs in the United States.”

Ecker recalled:

This was going to be a two-week event and Disney wanted me to host it. They would fly me down to Orlando. I would be the person choosing all the speakers and organizing the line-up. There were two groups of speakers that came in. One group for week one, the second group for week two. Disney had set aside an auditorium for this whole thing [NOTE: David Halperin, whose work is referenced in Part One, has the event lasting four weeks, not two].

Speakers at the 1995 Disney UFO conference in Orlando, Florida, Left to right: Russ Estes, Vicki Ecker, Yvonne Smith, Don Ecker, George Knapp, Kevin Randle, and Zecharia Sitchin. Photo courtesy of Don Ecker.

It wasn’t until the conference began that Ecker learned of Disney’s non-promotion of the event.

He told me, still in disbelief:

Disney never gave it an ounce of promotion. They did not promote it at all. In the two weeks that we were there, the most highly attended day for speakers in an auditorium that could have seated several hundred, we may have had 10 or 12 attendees at most. We had virtually no audience at all. That Disney didn’t promote it made no sense to me then, and it makes no sense to me now.

Ecker said that abduction researcher Budd Hopkins was particularly outraged by the lack of attendees: “He just upped and left in the middle of the week. Didn’t even say goodbye or thanks.” Despite the almost total lack of attendees, the other speakers (approximately twenty in total) still delivered their prepared lectures each day based on their current research.

More Disney conference speakers. Left to right: Don Ecker (standing), Jesse Marcel Jr., Don Schmitt, Bruce Cornet, William Bramley, Budd Hopkins, Barry Taff, Clifford Stone, Stanley McDaniel. Photo courtesy of Don Ecker.

The conference could not have been cheap. “These speakers had received airline tickets to fly in, free room, board, and meals for two weeks, everything paid for by Disney,” said Ecker.

On the final evening, during a goodbye meal at the resort, Ecker received an official thank you from Disney World.

Ecker told me with disgust:

They presented me with a “Mousker.” This Disney drone—this gofer kid—came running up to me and said, “Mr Ecker, we have something we want to present you with.” So, I followed him literally into a hallway behind one of the big rooms. A Disney executive came up to me, along with another kid carrying a cardboard box. The kid reached into the box, pulled out this statue of Mickey Mouse and they presented it to me. That was their way of saying thanks for the job I did for two weeks putting this thing together. Looking at it in retrospect, I really felt like they took me to the shower, dropped the soap in front of me, and asked me to bend over and pick it up.

The “Mousker” presented to Don Ecker by Disney for his organization of the UFO conference. Its plaque reads: “To Don Ecker, UFO, Thanks from the publicity staff, Walt Disney World Resort, ‘UFO Summit – 1995.”

The whole thing seemed to defy logic from a marketing standpoint. Disney had created a costly alien-themed attraction and claimed to want to promote it through a two-pronged marketing campaign consisting of a multi-week conference at Disney World and a tie-in documentary (Alien Encounters from New Tomorrowland). Yet, inexplicably, Disney promoted neither the conference nor the documentary, rendering both of them entirely useless as marketing tools. “It was basically like Disney taking tens-of-thousands of dollars and burning it on a bonfire,” said Ecker.

Could there have been an ulterior motive behind the conference? It was held in the mid-1990s, before the global dominance of the Internet and email, before ufologists began sharing all their work online. With this in mind, could the conference have been an orchestrated opportunity for intelligence agencies to assemble under one roof the leading figures in ufology for an extended period of time in order to simply take the current pulse of the UFO subculture, and perhaps to further seed and steer it in service of its own psychological warfare goals? We’re in deep into speculative territory here, but logical justifications for the conference are hard to find. It was not promoted. It was not attended. To my mind, it served no obvious purpose, unless its purpose was potential intelligence-gathering and dissemination of disinformation. Given the documented history of intersections between UFOs, Disney and officialdom, this theory may hold at least some measure of water.

In his book, The Trickster and the Paranormal, George P. Hansen observes:

Any legitimate analysis that tries to explain belief about UFOs must recognize that the UFO subculture is awash in disinformation spread by government personnel, and that this has played an enormous role in shaping the subculture. Virtually all UFO investigators who make regular public presentations are from time to time are approached by people who claim to have seen materials or documents while in military service that confirmed that the government has UFO projects… These low-profile informants are a major source of UFO beliefs held by millions of people. Their information circulates quietly throughout the culture…

As with much else in the weird world of UFOs, in the absence of solid answers, we find ourselves wading through what Lorin Cutts terms The UFO Mythological Zone, “the gap between fact and belief, what we see and what we want to see, what we experience and how we interpret it.” In the absence of facts, says Cutts, “many people simply choose what they want to believe.”

When it comes to the curious cases of Disney’s 1995 UFO documentary and conference, all I know is that I don’t know what to believe. I’m perched on a ledge in Undecidedsville, overlooking the sprawl of The Mythological Zone below. I invite you to join me here, to dangle your feet, and to think a while. Shall we jump off the edge, or spit off it? Either way, it’s important that we look with clear eyes, and recognize the spectacle for what it is.