If you’re planning a trip to Mars, you may want to wait until Elon Musk develops a spaceship big enough to take a load of water to the Red Planet … a LOT Of water. All of those scientific studies showing the existence of water on Mars may be negated by a new one which shows water escaping from the planet faster than expected. And no, you can’t keep filtering and drinking your own sweat and urine … no matter how big your bladder is.

“We use the Atmospheric Chemistry Suite on the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter to characterize the water distribution by altitude. Water profiles during the 2018–2019 southern spring and summer stormy seasons show that high-altitude water is preferentially supplied close to perihelion, and supersaturation occurs even when clouds are present. This implies that the potential for water to escape from Mars is higher than previously thought.”

“Implies” … that means it’s not for certain, right? That’s a good question to ask Franck Montmessin, a planetary scientist at the University of Paris-Saclay in France and co-author of the study published in the journal Science. He explains to Space.com what he and fellow researchers found using the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, which is taking atmospheric samples for a wide variety of scientific projects. Montmessin was most interested in how water was distributed at various altitudes of the Martian atmosphere during a two-year period. His team was shocked to find far more water vapor in the upper atmosphere – 10 to 100 times – than it should, based on cold temperatures.

“Unconstrained by saturation, the water vapor globally penetrates through the cloud level, regardless of the dust distribution, facilitating the loss of water to space. Because supersaturation is observed concomitantly with dust or ice particles, we conclude that condensation does not efficiently prevent water vapor from becoming supersaturated, even when seeds for condensation exist. We speculate that this may be due to rapid drops in temperature and/or rises in water concentration, which occur faster than condensation can keep up with.”

With the weak gravity of Mars, it’s no surprise that the planet has a tough time keeping evaporating water close to the surface. While condensation accumulation in the lower cloud levels was expected, the clouds can’t absorb the water vapor at the levels Mars is releasing, and that vapor is reaching the upper atmosphere unimpeded, where’s it’s broken down by ultraviolet radiation and the hydrogen and oxygen atoms take off into space. The team found the loss is particularly acute during the Martian perihelion, when the planet is closest to the sun.

That sounds a lot stronger than “implies,” doesn’t it? Unfortunately, the study doesn’t offer any alternatives, just the promise of more studies. This could help Elon Musk sell his idea of terraforming Mars by nuking the polar ice caps to put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that would help keep more water vapor from disappearing into space. There’s just that little matter of residual radiation for Mars colonists to deal with.

Maybe we should stay here for a while and fix Earth instead?

If you’re planning a trip to Mars, you may want to wait until Elon Musk develops a spaceship big enough to take a load of water to the Red Planet … a LOT Of water. All of those scientific studies showing the existence of water on Mars may be negated by a new one which shows water escaping from the planet faster than expected. And no, you can’t keep filtering and drinking your own sweat and urine … no matter how big your bladder is.

“We use the Atmospheric Chemistry Suite on the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter to characterize the water distribution by altitude. Water profiles during the 2018–2019 southern spring and summer stormy seasons show that high-altitude water is preferentially supplied close to perihelion, and supersaturation occurs even when clouds are present. This implies that the potential for water to escape from Mars is higher than previously thought.”

“Implies” … that means it’s not for certain, right? That’s a good question to ask Franck Montmessin, a planetary scientist at the University of Paris-Saclay in France and co-author of the study published in the journal Science. He explains to Space.com what he and fellow researchers found using the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, which is taking atmospheric samples for a wide variety of scientific projects. Montmessin was most interested in how water was distributed at various altitudes of the Martian atmosphere during a two-year period. His team was shocked to find far more water vapor in the upper atmosphere – 10 to 100 times – than it should, based on cold temperatures.

“Unconstrained by saturation, the water vapor globally penetrates through the cloud level, regardless of the dust distribution, facilitating the loss of water to space. Because supersaturation is observed concomitantly with dust or ice particles, we conclude that condensation does not efficiently prevent water vapor from becoming supersaturated, even when seeds for condensation exist. We speculate that this may be due to rapid drops in temperature and/or rises in water concentration, which occur faster than condensation can keep up with.”

With the weak gravity of Mars, it’s no surprise that the planet has a tough time keeping evaporating water close to the surface. While condensation accumulation in the lower cloud levels was expected, the clouds can’t absorb the water vapor at the levels Mars is releasing, and that vapor is reaching the upper atmosphere unimpeded, where’s it’s broken down by ultraviolet radiation and the hydrogen and oxygen atoms take off into space. The team found the loss is particularly acute during the Martian perihelion, when the planet is closest to the sun.

That sounds a lot stronger than “implies,” doesn’t it? Unfortunately, the study doesn’t offer any alternatives, just the promise of more studies. This could help Elon Musk sell his idea of terraforming Mars by nuking the polar ice caps to put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that would help keep more water vapor from disappearing into space. There’s just that little matter of residual radiation for Mars colonists to deal with.

Maybe we should stay here for a while and fix Earth instead?

When it comes to bullies, they’re generally the biggest kid in the neighborhood, and they often bully under the guise of “providing protection.” “Biggest” becomes “richest” or “most powerful” when considering adult bullies. Does this hold true for planetary bullies? We now have an answer as a famous planetary physicist knocked down the so-called “Jupiter Shield Theory,” which proposes that the giant planet protects Earth from space rocks, with new models showing that Jupiter is actually a powerful sniper shooting comets at us. That doesn’t sound very jovial, Jupiter!

“Our simulations show that Jupiter is just as likely to send comets at Earth as deflect them away, and we’ve seen that in the real solar system.”

In a recent interview with Gizmodo, Kevin R. Grazier, whose name you may be familiar with as a science consultant for Battlestar Galactica and the films “Gravity” and “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales” or as an author and lecturer on planetary science, astrobiology, and spacecraft operations, backed up his 2018 and 2019 papers on Jupiter’s effect on centaurs (icy bodies between Jupiter and Neptune) and the Jupiter Family Comets (JFCs are comets within Jupiter’s gravitational influence) with models and simulations showing the giant planet’s solar system bullying tactics.

“This research was equal parts planetary dynamics and computer science or, arguably, data science. In our simulations, a large fraction of the objects that become JFCs are first grabbed by Jupiter into what are called temporary capture orbits, or TSCs—orbits that circle Jupiter a few times, then leave Jupiter, often on a very different orbit. We know that TSCs happen. The comet P/111 Helin-Roman-Crockett spent over 11 years in orbit around Jupiter in the 70s and 80s, and will be captured again in the 2070s. The exit geometry from these events is what determines if the object is on a JFC orbit or not.”

The models show how Jupiter pulls ice balls from the scattered disc between it and Neptune and then flings them in the direction of Earth. While this was a good thing in our planet’s early days when it may haven the source of minerals, water and even life, it’s a danger today – as people in Siberia will attest and those watching for Near Earth Objects warn.

“On the flip side, though, it takes things that come nowhere near Earth and flings them our way, meaning it is also a threat. To find out which side is more important—to determine whether Jupiter is truly friend or foe—you need to look at the story in some detail.”

Jonti Horner, co-author with Grazier on the two papers and an astronomer at the University of Southern Queensland, thinks it’s time to focus on the objects between Jupiter and Saturn, along with smaller clusters amongst Neptune and Uranus, to search for future sniper attacks by our formerly close friend. NASA is considering a pair of missions in the mid-2020s to study Jupiter’s Centaurs up-close using two spacecraft.
Will they be able to stop the sniping and bullying? Perhaps they need to take a robot psychologist.

Some of the most spectacular UFO reports are those that involve actual contact or engagement with the craft in question, and cases such as these abound. Among these some of the more intriguing have been the various airborne UFO encounters in the records, and one of the most well-known and documented of these is a compelling case from 1953. It is an account that was widely witnessed, surrounded by oddness, and which resulted in the disappearance of two men and remains mired in questions and conspiracies right up to the present.

It was the evening of November 23, 1953, and what had started out as a routine, quiet night for Air Defense Command Ground Intercept radar operators at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, was about to get very weird very fast. It started with an unusual radar signature that was picked up over the Soo Locks area of Lake Superior, near the border with Canada. It was particularly odd, as the area in question was restricted airspace, no one should have been there at all, yet here was this anomalous target just flying through as if it had every business in the world to be there. The nearby Kinross Air Force Base was notified, and they began scrambling a fighter to take to the air and intercept the mystery aircraft. An F-89C Scorpion was prepped for take off and roared up into the sky towards the unknown, carrying within pilot First Lieutenant Felix Moncla and radar operator Second Lieutenant Robert L. Wilson. Little did anyone know that they were about to fly out into one of the greatest UFO mysteries in history, or that they would not be coming back at all.

Felix Moncla

Once in the air, Wilson went about trying to track the mysterious object, but this would prove to be easier said than done, as he had trouble getting a lock on it. Instead, ground radar operators kept constant radio contact, guiding the plane towards its target, yet as they descended from a higher altitude to engage, the object reportedly made a sudden sharp turn and evaded them. The F-89 panned around to continue to the pursuit, and the object managed to match their movements and remain elusive, almost as it was toying with them. Meanwhile, ground radar was watching this cat and mouse game unfold as two blips on a radar screen, and at one point at an altitude of 8,000 feet and around 70 miles from Keweenaw Point the two blips seemed to merge on the screen. This was not necessarily completely shocking in and of itself, as there was no distress signal issued and it was just thought that the two aircraft were passing over or under each other, yet when the expected separation of the single blip into two did not happen, and radio contact with the F-89 was lost as that blip just continued off as one signature things got more worrying. It was thought that this meant the two objects had collided, yet the single blip continued its journey on its original course with no sign of having any problems, until it left the radar range altogether.

There were panicked attempts to recover radio contact with Moncla, but there was nothing but silence in return, and so it was assumed that their plane had crashed and a rescue mission was immediately launched, involving both the American and Canadian Air Forces, as well as numerous ships. The area where the blips had become one was then scoured for any sign of the men or their plane, but not a single sign of any wreckage was found, as if they had just flown off the face of the earth. Neither was any sign found of the mysterious aircraft that had started all of this, and it too seemed to have just vanished.

In the meantime, the USAF got off to an unsteady start trying to explain all of this to the public, at first saying that the F-89 had crashed after chasing a mysterious unidentified object, but they soon backpedaled away from this and completely changed their story. The official report was now that the object that was being chased was actually a Canadian C-47 Skytrain, later oddly changed to a DC-3 airliner, that had flown off course and that the F-89 had crashed due to pilot difficulties on the way back from successfully guiding the Canadian aircraft back on course, speculated as likely caused by Moncla experiencing vertigo, combined with the poor weather at the time. Yet, this doesn’t really jibe with the fact that two radar blips had gone in, merged, and only one had come out. The Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) also changed their story, at first saying that the DC-3 pilot had not been aware of the American jet at all, yet they later claimed that there had been no Canadian aircraft in the area at all at the time of the incident. Either way, according to the RCAF the incident had never happened at all.

Curious, and it would get even curiouser when ex-Marine and UFO researcher Donald Keyhoe found in leaked Air Force documents that far from considering this an open and shut case, the government in fact considered it to be a very anomalous occurrence that they could not explain. Keyhoe also found that there had been wildly conflicting stories from Air Force officials when informing the families of the victims, with some saying the plane had come in low to crash into Lake Superior and others saying that the plane had exploded and disintegrated in midair. This last one is strange, because does vertigo cause a plane to explode in midair? Without any wreckage to examine it is hard to say, but what is for certain is that the USAF and RCAF couldn’t keep their stories straight. Making it a bit more ominous and conspiratorial is the fact that investigators from the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) who looked into it were surprised to find that Moncla’s mission had apparently been struck from the official record altogether. They would write:

There is no record in the Air Force files of sighting at Kinross AFB on 23 November 1953… There is no case in the files which even closely parallels these circumstances.

There were other odd things that would pop up related to the case. One is that UFO researcher John Tenney would claim to have spoken to a member of the USAF who claimed that there had been a faint radio transmission from Moncla hours after his plane was said to have gone down, which seems weird and is hard to know what to make of. There would also be a possible clue in the report of some railway workers along the Canadian Algoma Central Railway, who claimed that they had heard a huge explosion on the night of the incident. These incoming leads have done little to solve the mystery, and indeed had only served to sprinkle it with more oddness.

The whole Kinross incident actually received relatively little coverage and remained fairly obscure to the general public at the time, perhaps to the relief of the governments involved, and it flew under the radar for quite a few years until it was sort of resurrected again in 1968. In October of that year, some wreckage was found near the eastern shore of Lake Superior that looked very much like that of a USAF fighter plane, but the only confirmation forthcoming was an Air Force officer admitting that they seemed to be from one of their planes, but the report was ever officially recognized and the identity of the parts remains unknown. In 2006 interest in the case was piqued again when it was claimed that a group of Michigan divers from the “Great Lakes Dive Company” had discovered Moncla’s F-89 at the bottom of Lake Superior, even providing sonar and photographic evidence. However, efforts to contact the company all led to a man calling himself “Adam Jimenez,” who was very vague about it all. It would later be found that the Great Lakes Dive Company didn’t even really exist, and that the claims were a part of an elaborate hoax, and Jimenez soon completely disappeared.

With so many mysteries and so much conspiracy surrounding it theories have flown about what happened to the plane and the two men. Maybe it was a crash just as the military has said, but maybe it was something more. The idea has been put forward that this could have involed some top-secret experimental aircraft, possibly from a foreign power, that was engaged out there. There is also the notion that this was a genuine UFO encounter with something beyond our understanding, an otherworldly craft that either collided with the F-89, shot it down, or even abducted the entire plane to whisk it off to places unknown. In the end we are left with a case that officially remains a simple crash, but which is far from satisfactorily explained. With all of the changing stories and obfuscation, there are only a few things we know for sure. We know that Moncla and Wilson took off in that plane to never return. We know that two radar blips converged and only one left. And we know that there has never been any other trace found of the missing plane or crew. Other than that, there is nothing concrete to go on, the government has been very opaque on the whole incident, and we will probably never get the answers we seek, even as that plane and its two crew remain missing.

My previous article was titled “The Strange Radar-Based Saga of the ‘Ring Angels.'” As I said, it was a story that most people have probably no awareness of. Certainly, it has largely been forgotten. As I also noted in the article, a down to earth explanation was found for the weird, radar-based affair that ran from 1958 to 1959 at the Marconi Research Center in Essex, U.K. With this affair still in my mind, I thought why not share with you another largely forgotten saga from decades long gone. This one, however, most assuredly does not have a down to earth explanation. Arguably, it’s out of this world – which will give you an idea of the subject matter! We’re talking about a fascinating UFO encounter that occurred less than two months after pilot Kenneth Arnold had his encounter that led to the dawning of the age of the Flying Saucer. The whole thing went down on August 12, 1947. The following affidavit on the case was prepared by the eyewitness – a military officer, Captain John Paul Strapp – at Flight Test, Muroc Army Air Field, Muroc, California. That same affidavit was witnessed by a Counter Intelligence Corps agent, Thomas A. McMillan. It reads as follows:

“At 11:50 hours, 8 July 1947, while the undersigned was sitting in an observation truck located in Area # 3, Rogers Dry Lake, for the purpose of observing a P-82 ejection seat experiment, the following unfamiliarity was observed. The undersigned was gazing upward toward a formation of two (2) P-82’s and an A-26 aircraft flying at 20,000 feet, preparing to carry out a seat ejection experiment, when I observed a rounded object, white aluminum in color, which at first resembled a parachute canopy. The first impression was that a premature ejection of the seat and dummy had occurred. This body was ejected at a determined height lower than 20,000 feet, and was falling at three (3) times the rate observed for the parachute which ejected thirty minutes later. As it fell it drifted slowly north of due west against the prevailing wind, toward Mount Wilson. The speed, horizontal motion could not be determined, but appeared slower than the maximum velocity 50-80 aircraft.

“As this object descended through a low enough level to permit observation of its lateral silhouette, it presented a distinct ovular outline, with two (2) projections on the upper surface which might have been thick fins or nobs. These crossed each other at intervals, suggesting either rotation or oscillation of slow type. No smoke flames, propeller arks, engine noise, or other plausible or visible means of propulsion were noted. The color was silvery, resembling aluminum painted fabric, and did not appear as dense as a parachute canopy. When the object dropped to a level such that comes into line of vision of the mountain tops, it was lost to the vision of the observer.

“The following is my own personal opinions about this subject:

1.  I think it was a man-made object, as evidenced distinctly by the the outline and functional appearance.

2.  It’s size was not far from 25 feet with a parachute canopy. 

3.  The path followed by this object appeared as though it might have been dropped from a great height. Seeing this was not a hallucination or other fancies of a sense. This statement was given freely and voluntarily without any threats or promises under duress. This statement consists of two (2) pages, and is the truth to the best of my knowledge and belief. I have initialed all corrections deemed necessary.”

So, what we have here is the testimony of a highly credible individual. Not only that, the witness was able to get a good look at the craft and calculated that it was around twenty-five-feet in diameter and similar to a “parachute canopy” in shape. A classic from decades long gone? Yep!

Now and again, I will dig into a weird story that most people may be completely unaware of. And, that is very much the case today. It’s time to head back to 1959 and a strange radar-based affair that went down in England. It was revealed by the media on July 27, 1959 that  for almost a year an unusual phenomenon had been perplexing radar specialists at the Marconi Research Center at Great Baddow, near Chelmsford, Essex, England. The mystery all began early one morning in mid-1958. That was when a number of scientists at the center noticed the appearance of a strange point of light on their radar screens. It appeared to spread out into a ring, then faded and finally completely vanished. This was repeated several times, and the effect was very much likened to the spreading ripples of water on a pond. The rings lasted for two and a half to six minutes. An identical event occurred several days later, but on this particular occasion, the phenomenon had moved from its original position to a different location.

The puzzled scientists began to investigate the strange “ring angels,” as they soon dubbed them, and over the following twelve months or thereabouts recorded ‘ring angel” activity at no less than seventy sites throughout the south-east of England. Despite this, there were no corresponding visual sightings – not a single one. The rings began to appear all over the south and east of the country: reports surfaced from Ipswich, Reading, Canterbury and Tunbridge Wells. Nor were the “ring angels” hindered by changing weather patterns, as evidenced by the fact that a number of positive radar tracking were made in areas that, at the time, were engulfed in thick fog.

Was it possible that the culprits were nothing more mysterious than flocks of birds? This particular theory was carefully scrutinized by a Dr. E. Eastwood, who, at the time, was the Director of Research at the center. Eastwood found that several of the rings had been reported in areas which were regular roosting for starlings. This speculation was weakened, however, when it was noticed that some of the speeds of movement displayed by the “ring angels” were greater than those normally expected of birds. Dr. Eastwood elaborated on this particular theory and said the following: “Another problem is that if these are bird roosts, the birds don’t use them every night. Our once a week observations don’t show the same centers each time by any means.”

Another theory put forward was that they originated as a result of changing patterns in the air itself. “This makes it a very attractive theory,” said Dr. Eastwood, “except that no-one has satisfactorily explained why the air should produce a radar echo.” Despite a lack of a conclusive answer, the rings presented no long-term interference to the practical use of the radar sets, nor to the mystified operators. Finally, however, an answer was found. As the British Society for the History of Science (BSHS) reveal: “A copse of trees covered with starlings revealed the cause of the strange rings of Angels: successions of waves of birds, separated by three minute intervals, took off from the roost moving in expanding circles to feeding grounds.”

On this particular subject, Dr. David Clarke says, in an article titled “Radar Angels”: “Throughout its early history, radar was dogged with technical problems that often led to spectacular misinterpretations of ‘angels’ as enemy aircraft and flying saucers. It is a popular misconception that radar – like the camera – cannot lie and that UFOs ‘confirmed’ by radar must by definition be solid, mechanical objects possibly from outer space.” Sometimes a mystery proves to be not so mysterious, after all. But, we are still left with a fascinating tale!