Here comes the sun
Ddoo-doo-doo-doo
Here comes the sun
And I say it’s all right
— “Here Comes The Sun” The Beatles

You would be hard-pressed to find anyone who disagrees with George Harrison’s musical response to seeing the Sun. We know our star has been around for a few billion years and will be around for a few billion more, so it gives us nothing to be concerned about in these days when we have so many worries here on Earth … right? RIGHT?

“Solar minimum is underway. The sun’s magnetic field is weak, allowing extra cosmic rays into the solar system. Neutron counts from the University of Oulu’s Sodankyla Geophysical Observatory show that cosmic rays reaching Earth in 2020 are near a Space Age peak.”

That bad news about the Sun comes from Spaceweather.com, a great resource for “News and information about the Sun-Earth environment.” While its normal bad news concerns geomagnetic storms caused by sunspot, this is ironically bad news about the opposite – the Sun has been in a prolonged (over 100 days straight and counting) period of no sunspots. Even worse, this continues a trend started last year when 2019 set a record for the least number of sunspots in a year. It’s so bad, Forbes sees it as a case of the Sun being in a “lockdown” – not exactly a pleasant term these days.

Wait a minute, you say. Aren’t sunspots linked to coronas and sun flares that can cause serious damage to the Earth’s magnetic field, not to mention our electronic grid?

Solar flares bad, right?

Right you are, junior Solar Scientist. They’re also linked to the auroras, so the Northern and Southern Lights aren’t too bright these days. However, a lack of sunspots is also linked to an Earhtly condition known as the solar minimum, when many scientists believe can cause dramatic drops in Earth’s temperature. The big example of this is the ‘Little Ice Age’ or Maunder Minimum period from 1645 to 1715 when sunspots disappeared and so did the heat. Cause or coincidence?

“The earthquakes analyzed during two grand solar minima, the Maunder (1645-1720) and the Dalton (1790-1820) showed a decrease in the number of earthquakes and the solar activity. After the last [grand] minima (Dalton) the earthquakes pattern increased with solar maxima.”

A 2011 paper titled “Influence of Solar Cycles on Earthquakes” by Marilia Tavares also linked the lack of sunspots to a drop in earthquakes. But that sounds more like a good thing, right? And most people don’t really care that there are fewer auroras, right? And not all scientists buy into the solar minimum theory, right? So, what’s the big deal?

“Sunspot counts suggest it is one of the deepest of the past century. The sun’s magnetic field has become weak, allowing extra cosmic rays into the solar system. Excess cosmic rays pose a health hazard to astronauts and polar air travellers, affect the electro-chemistry of Earth’s upper atmosphere, and may help trigger lightning.”

OK, more lightning is bad and we all care about the ISS crew. But we care more about our own health on the ground. NASA agrees that, although we’re definitely heading into a solar minimum, it won’t be an ice age and may not even knock a few degrees off of global warming.

“The warming caused by the greenhouse gas emissions from the human burning of fossil fuels is six times greater than the possible decades-long cooling from a prolonged Grand Solar Minimum. Even if a Grand Solar Minimum were to last a century, global temperatures would continue to warm. Because more factors than just variations in the Sun’s output change global temperatures on Earth, the most dominant of those today being the warming coming from human-induced greenhouse gas emissions.”

A perfect good news/bad news report from NASA. We don’t have to worry about the lack of sunspots because we’re doing a fine job burning ourselves up with the climate change caused by fossil fuels.

Staying inside away from whatever it is the Sun is throwing at us these days sounds like good thing to continue to do for a while.

The little piece of rock called “Allan Hills 84001” began its long journey many millennia ago on the planet Mars, where it crystallized from molten rock 4.091 billion years ago, a time when liquid water is thought to have existed here. There it lay for millions of years, just another rock on the surface of the red planet, until around 17 million years ago, when a meteor impacted with the surface to propel it out into the sea of stars. One in space, it was inexorably drawn into orbit around our sun, where it floated through the void for eons, before having its orbit slowly change, gravity and perhaps other asteroids smashing into it all conspiring to move it inexorably closer to Earth and farther away from its place of birth. Then, 13,000 years ago it was grabbed by our gravity and fell from the sky to land in the frozen badlands of Antarctica, upon the Allan Hills Far Western Icefield, from which it gets its name. This was the end of its epic journey to our world, but only the beginning of the mysteries it posed.

During the 1984-1985 Antarctic summer, Roberta Score, Lab Manager of the Antarctic Meteorite Laboratory at the Johnson Space Center and part of an Antarctic expedition of meteorite hunters, found the rock while out on his snowmobile in the frigid wasteland and brought it in. It wasn’t much to look at, about 6 inches long by 4 inches by 3 inches in dimension, 4.3 pounds, and looking like a big potato dipped in tar, but through its chemical composition it was ascertained to have originally come from Mars. This was very exciting, as there were only 11 other such meteorites, called the shergottite–nakhlite–chassignite (SNC) class of meteorites, ever found, and this one was by far the oldest of them all. This was exceptional, because its estimated age would make it the only known Martian meteorite to have formed on a “wet Mars,” meaning at a period in its natural history when liquid water was thought to have been present on the planet surface. Of course, this meant that if there had ever been some sort of microbial life on Mars, then this would be our best chance of proving it, and this is where the story gets interesting.

Allan Hills 84001

In 1996, a team of scientists led by David McKay, Everett Gibson and Kathie Thomas-Keprta from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, came forward with a rather sensational and earth shattering announcement. According to their findings, they had uncovered evidence of what appeared to be fossilized microbial life deep within Allan Hills 84001. The team claimed that they had observed within the meteorite myriad microscopic structures, extremely tiny at only 20–100 nanometres in diameter, but which were more similar to some sort of fossilized nanobacteria that any known natural process. Indeed, the structures superficially resembled terrestrial bacteria, although on an even smaller scale. Some of these structures almost seemed to be making up a colony of organisms the way they were interwoven with each other. In addition, there were found traces of organized magnetite crystals, which are significant as on Earth these are only known to be formed through biological processes and could be seen as a very strong biosignature. At the time the announcement was sensational, covered by news agencies all over the world, and then U.S. president Bill Clinton even made a formal televised announcement on these amazing findings. For many this was it, the final proof we needed that we are not alone in the universe, but controversy and skepticism were brewing even from the beginning.

One of the main arguments against this being evidence of alien life was that it was seen as more likely that this was terrestrial contamination of some sort, as this had been found in other Martian meteorites as well. Another strike against them was that over the years it would be found that non organic processes could produce results extremely similar to what is seen in Allan Hills 84001, some of which have been recreated in lab settings. In the opinion of skeptics, there was nothing present in the meteorite that could not be explained by explanations other than alien life. On top of this was the idea that the structures were simply way too small to feasibly contain what is needed to support life, and if real they would be by far the smallest lifeforms ever seen. However, the team defended their research, saying that the structures were too melded to the rock itself to have been contaminants, and that the magnetite crystals, when taken with the observable morphology of the structures, were more likely to have been made by biological processes than through the theorized natural methods through which they could be theoretically produced. As for the laboratory reproductions of some of the processes, McKay argued that they had used unrealistically pure raw materials as a starting point and could not adequately explain all of the features. Indeed, there has still been no demonstrable way to explain simultaneously all of the properties that have been suggested as possible biogenic properties in the Allan Hills meteorite or how it could all be produced by nonorganic processes in the combination they show, and so the debate has raged on.

Image of the suspected fossilized Martian microbes

Over the years the discussion has continued, and the mystery of the Allan Hills meteorite has still not been totally solved. Indeed, there have been occasional new discoveries made with the rock that further point to the presence of fossilized organisms. For instance, in 2010 it was announced that more data had been found to support the fossil theory, and in 2020 the meteorite was found to possess what appear to be nitrogen-bearing organics. Adding to it all is that there has been similar evidence for life found in other Martian meteorites since. In 2019, a team of scientists in Hungary found what appear to be the biosignature of filamentous iron-oxidizing bacteria, the mineralized remains of ancient microbes and their alteration of minerals in the rock, in another Martian meteorite from Allan Hills, called ALH-77005. So, is any of this true proof that life exists, or at least existed, on Mars? At the moment, no, but it has still generated much debate, and the legacy of Allan Hills 84001 is that it really pushed to the forefront the study of astrobiology, which is the theoretical science of life on other worlds. Everett Gibson, one of the scientists from the original team that studied the meteorite has said of this:

The interest resulted in the Mars Exploration Program being reinstated. The Mars Exploration Rovers, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Phoenix lander, Curiosity rover, Mars Express mission with its Beagle 2 Mars lander — all can be traced to the ALH 84001 research. The excitement of the possibility of potential past or present life on Mars is too important for humans to ignore. The ALH 84001 announcement, despite whether you are a believer of the hypothesis or not, has clearly been the guiding idea for the development of the new interdisciplinary field of astrobiology. This must be viewed as positive for the field of scientific discoveries.

What is there locked in this piece of rock? Is the answer to the ultimate question of if we are alone to be found here? Or is it just wishful thinking and misidentification? As we push further into the reaches of space, we will undoubtedly continue to make new, groundbreaking discoveries, perhaps even finding life. In the meantime we have that meteorite, which has held its secrets for millions of years and might still do so for some time to come.

The forests and woodlands of our world have always held an allure for us, and have been the wellspring of countless legends and myths over the centuries. Here within these darkened stands of trees it often seem to be a world beyond us, which we are just scratching at the surface of with our senses. There is a sense that something lies beyond it all, thrumming in the background past our understanding, and that looking out at these vistas we are on the cusp of understanding something that dangles past the periphery. On some occasions it seems as if some people have made a rather strange connection with the wilds, phasing through this tenuous unseen veil into some place beyond what we normally see, and often coming back with some very bizarre stories to tell. Here we will look at instances of people seemingly travelling through worlds within the forest, whisked off to another realm to come back with odd tales of missing time, portals, alien landscapes, and other weirdness.

Our first report is from a Reddit poster called “RavenMysteries1331,” who claims that her and her husband came to what can only be described as some sort of portal out in the woods. The location is unspecified, but she says that they were out camping at a place called “Deep Creek Campgrounds,” where there is a dim tunnel through a hill that is supposedly haunted. Thinking it might be kind of cool to go check it out, they made their way to the tunnel one evening, not really taking it seriously and as they went in it was all just a bit of a spooky good time. Things got unusual when they began walking through the murk and just didn’t seem to be able to reach the end. It was taking an inordinate amount of time to make progress through the darkness, a 10-minute walk turning into 30 with no end in sight. Then things would get very bizarre, and the witness describes what happened next:

Were not really panicking but were still not out of this damned tunnel. We’re filming and realizing the time stamp on the camera keep changing, the phone is fairly useless but keeps showing weird times, notifications etc. Finally, we reach the end and I decide there’s no way I’m going back through. Here’s our second mistake. There’s a trail going across the tunnel. My husband wants to go back through then meet us while I and our daughter go over the top to wait. At the top the trail ends, which is unusual but not a big deal as I can see the trail we came up and my husband will be coming up shortly. I take pictures, full panoramas, everything. Never out of sight of the trail. Husband shows up and we start looking around for the next trail or any trail, never going more than 150 feet in any direction solo while one of us stands near the trail.

We decide we can’t find it, well head back down the trail. The trail that is now not where it was. But that’s okay because I took pictures of some unusual trees and things so ill use them as a marker. I open the pictures, all of them are time stamped wrong, the images are different. The entire skyline 100 feet away, mountains etc, is completely different. And now we start to get worried. We look for nearly three hours, how to get down, how to find the trail back, nothing. Finally, we realize were fairly screwed and start planning what we’re going to do. At which point the glitchy phone gets a phone call and we realize it works. We call 911 who puts us through to a Ranger Rescue team. They find us maybe an hour later, mere feet from a trail, and .1 entire miles from the tunnel… At this point we go on our merry way and decide we will never hike again. Which we probably will because well, why not?

What happened here? Did these people get pulled into sort of a parallel dimension, perhaps one that planned to keep them? Similarly we have to story of “LeoLeonidas21,” on the Missing 411 forum, who says by his own admission that he was “Missing 411’d” in the woods of North Carolina, in the United states. At the time he was in the mountains doing fieldwork for a geology assignment at college, looking at rock formations and taking samples. He was with a group of 30 others, and they decided to take a hike down a well-defined trail that started off the Blue Ridge Parkway, and would take them on a 45-minute hike up to a summit. They made it to the top without incident, but on the way back something very strange would happen to the witness. At one point he stopped to tie his boot, and told the others he was with to continue on, that he would catch up to them shortly. Yet, what would normally be a mundane activity would turn into a journey into bizarreness. He explains of what happened:

The point where I stopped to tie my boot was at the bottom of a switchback that ran about 20 feet, vertically, up the slope, getting narrower as you approached the top of that section of the trail; I was facing the direction the group was heading, and had direct visibility for about 200 feet, while the trail behind me was just off to the right of my vision, about 5 feet up the slope — I had stopped right at the corner of the last turn coming down, and stepped to the inside of the turn to keep the trail clear for the people I could see coming up the trail (the direction of my group) and down the trail (the direction we were headed).

When I knelt down, I told the guys I was with that I’d catch up after tying my boot. The people coming up the slope were about 200 feet ahead of me, walking in my direction but still coming around the turn at the end of the straightaway. Up the hill and off to my side (but technically behind me on the trail), about 10 linear feet away, was another 2 or 3 people coming down the trail as well — about 2 turns up the switchback. I did my business and then stood up — I am going to make a note here and emphasize it, I DID NOT CHANGE THE DIRECTION I WAS FACING AT ANY POINT UNTIL I STOOD UP.

When I stood up, I noticed a couple of things: the very obvious trail was gone and replaced with grass, fallen branches, and brush, and more eerily: there were no people ahead of me or beside me, there was no switchback going uphill (it was all vaguely level though uneven), and there was no. sound. No birds, no wind, no squirrels, no forest noises. This was very odd, but I, at first, chalked it up to possibly turning when I stood up without realizing it. And then it happened: the sensation. That I was being watched. That something was coming towards me. I started panicking and looking around more fervently to get my bearings, but nothing looked familiar. The feeling of being watched grew into a feeling that whatever was watching me wished to cause me harm and was radiating extreme feelings of hate, violence, and general evil towards me. And the sensation that it was approaching grew, as if it had gone from creeping along, to slowly walking, to full on running at me. Not knowing what else to do, I took off at the fastest sprint my terrified body could muster in the direction, all while racking my brain to figure out what had happened.

Eventually, I busted out of the treeline and onto the trail right in the middle of my group of classmates. Of particular note was that they were now within 30 feet of the trail head, and you could clearly see the highway and the parking lot on the opposite side of it. Like I said, this was another 20 to 25 minutes down the trail from where I stopped to tie my shoes, but the whole experience seemed to take no more than five minutes in total. Everyone asked what happened, and I merely stated that I lost the trail after tripping and thought I was lost. I didn’t know how else to explain or describe what happened, and I still don’t know what it was. To this day, I won’t go into the woods by myself — not even past the treeline on my parents’ land, despite being in view of the house and the neighbor’s houses.

The sensation of missing time features in a good many such reports, as if these people have entered a zone where time passes at a different rate than the one they have left, or perhaps they have lost some memory of what they have been through. In our next account Missing 411 commenter “spiral venom” says he was in Rocky Mountain National Park, in the United States. On this occasion he was hiking along a trail called Tonahutu Creek alone when he noticed that the forest around him had gone completely silent, with all sounds and even smells gone, and as he tried to figure this all out, he claims a strange fog began to roll in. After this, things would turn into a bizarre series of strange events and time loss, of which he says:

I was walking South East when suddenly the area went completely silent. No wind, no animals, not even the smell of the outdoors. It’s like I walked into a bubble where nothing existed, or where everything was muted. I took out my phone to check the time, and it was just after 3:45. Though it seemed there was a weird fog around me. I kept walking. The silence still there, the odd feeling, too.

I walked for another good 10-15 minutes when I turned my attention to the sky. The clouds seemed to be moving rapidly, as if a storm was coming. The forecast did not call for any rain, or snow that day – it was odd to see low hanging clouds that were moving so rapidly – almost as if I was viewing a time lapse video. I heard a rumble that came from the ground, it was emanating from what I assume was deep below, a large crack that sounded like thunder ended the rumble. The clouds stopped moving quickly but had a very light pink/purple tinge to them. At this point I was speed walking, trying to get out. My fight or flight response seemed to kick in and my adrenaline was pumping. The odd feeling in my gut turned to complete terror, yet there was nothing around me that would evoke such feeling. No wildlife, no bears, no mountain lions.

Another crack and a flash of light later everything seemed to be completely normal. Wind returned, the birds that filled the air with sound was now replaced with the sound of crickets. The only strange thing now was the time, it was 6:30PM. I was already on my way back to the truck before this all happened, but it should not have taken me that long to get back to the trailhead. It only seemed like 15 minutes had passed, and yet more than 4 hours had elapsed. I have no recollection of what happened in that time, besides what I have written here today. I have only told a few people this. Some said I was abducted, others said I entered a time slip.

What happened here? It is interesting to note the loss of time, coupled with the sudden and complete silence, which is also a hallmark of these kinds of cases. Are these people somehow wandering through a portal of some sort? Next we have poster “projectpittsburg,” who was camping in Allegheny National Forest, Pennsylvania, when he had his brush with the weird. He says that as he was hiking he passed a couple go the other way with their dog, which seems normal enough, but would soon prove to be anything but. He explains:

My feet were still facing the direction I was walking and as the passed by me with the dog I was looking over my shoulder to say goodbye (NEVER MOVED THE DIRECTION OF MY FEET). Then once I turned forward, the trail had turned perpendicular on me and was completely clear of bushes. It was a wide open, very straight stretch of nothing but grass and small rocks. I was confused by the fact that it seemed like I was in another part of the Forest. I pulled out my map and compass and the compass was telling me that I wasn’t facing the direction of the trail. And by the looks of the terrain it wasn’t even on the map. It was like I was in a whole other part of the Forest I was not familiar with!

I was VERY confused at this point and just started walking forward off the straight path into the tree line. Once I got off, I walked through a small area of trees, I was probably walking for 30-45 seconds and not one time did I hear a single noise beside the noises of my own footsteps. This was very strange. After the 45 seconds I was met by a group of 4 people that were talking and cooking. Now I definitely should have heard them talking and laughing like I had heard the other two hikers with the dog I had just previously met which is why I was concerned. At this point my experience was over. Now the whole eerie feeling lasted about 30-45 seconds, but a whole hour had passed and the campers told me I could set up camp with them and hangout with them for the night since it was getting too late.

Very strange, indeed. In another case of what seems to have been a trip into some pocket dimension we have poster “Winzron” and his childhood experience. At the time he lived with a foster family on a wooded property, with a clear trail that he and his foster brother often hiked together. They knew the area very well, and on this day they went for a walk along it on a bright summer’s day. Little did they know that they were headed for a trip to the land of the weird. He says of the trail and his unsettling experience:

To clarify a bit while walking on the trail you could clear as day see the lake and huge clearing/camping area where people would park their campers, I would say a mile away at the most. My brother and I frequented the trail alot because we liked catching bugs/frogs and the sort. There was one day it was bright sunny in middle of July; this is in the Midwest U.S so muggy and hot. Me and him are walking the trail and I hear what started out be a faint clicking sound. To this day I have yet to hear a sound like it. It progressively got louder to the point that you would have to be deaf to not hear it, the weird part was my brother did not hear a thing. It started to startle me on how loud it was. My brother decided to start carving into tree (which he did frequently), but I urged him that we should leave because I was scared.

Once he started something, he had to finish it, so I had to wait for him to finish so I stepped no more that 15-20 paces from him and my foot felt like it fell through something so I stumbled a bit looking down. When I looked up nothing looked familiar and it seemed like I was dropped in the middle of a forest with no end to it. It was really cold and absolutely no sound. My brother was nowhere to be found and I felt extremely terrified so I took off yelling a screaming. I ran for a good distance and I had the same sensation where I felt like I missed a step and stumbled forward. When I looked up everything was normal and could hear my family calling my name. When I approached them, they looked frantic and said they had been looking for me for a couple of hrs. No one ever believed me.

Oddly, the witness says that he had a smell of burning rubber that seemed to follow him around and could not be washed off for several days after this. How do we explain the strange details on these cases, such as the sudden silence, the missing time, and most obviously the completely altered landscapes these people often find themselves in? It almost seems as if they might be stepping through some veil between this reality and another, perhaps lingering in some limbo realm between the two, and it is enough to make one wonder what would have happened if they had stepped all the way through. Would they have vanished off the face of the earth or simply come back with an even weirder story to tell? Such accounts hint at mysteries lurking out in the wild places of our world, past the periphery of civilization and away from our city lights, where nature goes about its business and perhaps things beyond nature do as well. Perhaps when we enter these wilderness realms we enter a place where anything can possibly happen, and where realities converge. Perhaps the old legends of the forests have some basis to them after all, and just maybe there are things here we were not meant to fully understand.

Perhaps one of the most famous science fiction authors of all time is the legendary British writer, inventor, and explorer Sir Arthur Charles Clarke. Penning such beloved science fiction classics as 2001: A Space Odyssey, as well as dozens of other books and numerous articles on the fantastical worlds beyond our imagination, as well as winner of countless writing awards, including the prestigious Hugo and Nebula awards, he is among the most recognizable authors in the genre who has ever lived. He would go on to become a great undersea explorer as well, and a seeker of various world mysteries, famously hosting the classic TV program Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World. In addition to writing and other pursuits, Clarke was also a visionary thinker and futurist, thinking up such ideas as satellite communications, tablet devices, and other amazing technological innovations well before their times, and his predictions about future trends were more often than not astoundingly accurate. One area that Clarke really found fascinating was the idea of human colonization of the planet Mars, as well as the possibility of life there, and some of his ideas on the matter of Martian life are very bizarre and unorthodox to say the least.

One of the strangest claims that Clarke made was after noticing something he saw as odd in a series of images from NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor. This was a mission launched in November of 1996 as a part of the larger Mars Exploration Program, and had the aim of mapping out the entire planet, as well as identifying good landing sites for rovers and landers on the surface. It would successfully complete its mission in 2001, before suddenly and mysteriously ceasing transmissions in 2006 during the second, extended phase of its mission. Before contact with the spacecraft was lost, it had managed to send back reams of data on the planet and its surface, and it was as Clarke examined these that he made the observation that some features of the landscape seemed to change with the seasons. What did he think this meant? Why, that there were trees and bushes on Mars, of course. Clarke would say of this:

I’m now convinced that Mars is inhabited by a race of demented landscape gardeners. I’m quite serious when I say have a really good look at these new Mars images. Something is actually moving and changing with the seasons that suggests, at least, vegetation. The image is so striking that there is no need to say anything about it — it’s obviously vegetation to any unbiased eye.

Arthur C. Clarke

In particular, he pointed out several features that he claimed looked remarkably like Earth banyan trees, which really did shift with the seasons, and he wasn’t joking around, in fact mentioning this several times to an audience gathered at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, for a lecture he was attending remotely from Sri Lanka. It is true that he was very serious, despite the chuckles and raised eyebrows it provoked from the scientific community, and it must be remembered that Clarke was no quack or loon, but rather one of the greatest futurists and science thinkers of his time. He would even elaborate further when questioned by Popular Science about whether he thought there was animal life up there as well, to which he said:

If there is vegetation, it seems probable there are other life-forms as well. But they (skeptics) are right to be cautious — we still don’t have 100 percent proof. I think it’s in the high nineties! Nothing could be more important than the discovery of other life-forms. It’s getting lonely down here.

Unfortunately for Clarke, who died in 2008, rovers have yet to find any evidence of these “banyan trees” on Mars, and scientists mostly believe the dark splotches he observed are caused by natural phenomena, but it just goes to show what a planetary Rorschach blot Mars has become since we first started observing it from afar. From canals on Mars to giant faces, roads, pyramids, cities, and other seemingly artificial structures, as well as forests, spaceships, and even handguns, as our technology has progressed people have been seeing all manner of strange stuff on the red planet, but most of this has been explained away to distorted perceptions, tricks of shadow and light, and our innate desire to see patterns in things. It’s a phenomenon known as “pareidolia,” the same thing that makes us see familiar shapes in random clouds, and astronomer Phil Plait has explained of this, “It’s very clear that human brains are designed to pick out patterns. If you can’t pick out the tiger hiding in the grass, you are lunch; you don’t reproduce.”

An image from Mars showing Clarke’s “forests”

Regardless, people continue to find numerous anomalies on Mars, some of which are difficult to explain away, and as our technology gets better this is likely to get even more intense. There is a lot of debate on how real some of these anomalous images are, as well as conspiracies that NASA is covering up what it finds on Mars, and although evidence of these fringe theories is scant, it all serves to show just how much fascination the red planet generates in us. So far, we haven’t found any concrete proof of life on Mars, but the dream is still very much alive, and as we expand out into the solar system there are sure to be mysteries and possibly even life. Arthur C. Clark was very excited about the future prospects of this, and said at a panel joined by fellow great thinker Carl Sagan:

We are now in a very interesting historic moment with regard to Mars. I’m not going to make any definite predictions because it would be very foolish to go out on a limb, but whatever happens, whatever discoveries are made in the next few days or weeks or months, the frontier of our knowledge is moving inevitably outward.

It has already embraced the Moon. We still have a great deal to learn about the Moon and there will be many surprises even there, I’m sure. But the frontier is moving on and our viewpoint is changing with it. We’re discovering, and this is a big surprise, that the Moon, and I believe Mars, and parts of Mercury, and especially space itself, are essentially benign environments — to our technology, not necessarily to organic life. Certainly benign as compared to the Antarctic or the oceanic abyss, where we have already been. This is an idea which the public still hasn’t got yet, but it’s a fact.

I think the biological frontier may very well move past Mars out to Jupiter, which I think is where the action is. Carl, you’ve gone on the record as saying that Jupiter may be a more hospitable home for life than any other place, including Earth itself. It would be very exciting if this turns out to be true. I will end by making one prediction. Whether or not there is life on Mars now, there will be by the end of this century.

Clarke would insist to his dying day that there was life on Mars and would not back down from his theories. It doesn’t seem that the forests described by Arthur C. Clarke actually ever existed at this point, but it is indicative of our long fascination with the Red Planet and life beyond our own world. As we delve further into the mysteries that Mars and the other planets in our solar system, perhaps we will uncover new wonders we can only dream of. Maybe our endless exploration will finally turn up the evidence of life we crave, and one can only hope, those forests that Clarke talked about all those years ago.

Looking for a new hobby you can pursue during the coronavirus lockdown – one that’s fun, easy to start, potentially profitable and only minimally dangerous? Then it’s time to head to your nearest river, creek or canal with a giant magnet on a monofilament line and try your hand at magnet fishing. Will Read did just that recently in the River Sowe in south Coventry, England, and ‘caught’ 60 small lead cubes with mysterious inscriptions all over them. What are they, what do the inscriptions say and since when did lead become magnetic?

“We were out magnet fishing as our daily activity in lockdown and we were at a relatively isolated spot. At first we found keys and pennies and other bits and bobs and then we looked down and saw what we thought were tiles.”

OK, magnet fishing with your two young sons doesn’t sound like social distancing, but they were in water so that’s kind of OK in certain jurisdictions. Anyway, the answer to the “Lead is magnetic?” question is that Read and his kids picked the lead cubes up with their hands. That’s not exactly safe either (lead is poisonous) but it’s somewhat safer than magnet fishing with a magnet – many localities ban it because the magnet could find and set off guns, bombs and hand grenades. (Not sounding like such a fun hobby anymore, is it?)

“I will get them appraised to find out more about what they are and how much they are worth. I could be sitting on an absolute pool of cash, or they could be worth nothing. But I won’t make any decision on what to do with them until I’ve found out more about exactly what they are.”

OK, that’s the big reason why Read and other fans go magnet fishing – the possibility of finding old coins, metal relics and other magnetic objects of value. Read told CoventryLive that he and his sons found 60 of the mysterious cubes, which could be a big payday if he could find someone who knew what they were. (Pictures of the cubs can be seen here.)

A haul of mysterious cubes has been found by a magnet fisherman

(Image: Will Read)

One of the cubes found by Will Read 

(Image: Will Read)

Cubes found in a Coventry contain a grid system 

(Image: Will Read)

All of the cubes are identical except for one unique side on each. Friends and Facebook were of no help, other than pointing out that the writing looks like Sanskrit. One person proposed the Indian/Hindu possibility:

“…they contain a numerical formula to summon the protection of Rahu, described by the Shrivinayaka Astrology website as a planet with God-like powers. Rahu’s sphere of control includes thieves, magicians, snakes, poison, jails and isolated places, according to the resource.”

A powerful planet which controls thieves and magicians. There are some who believe Sanskrit was given humans by aliens. Are these of alien origin? A contributor on a beachcombing website popular with magnet fishermen website strengthened the Hindu religion connection – pointing out that the symbols are ‘yantra’ which are used in worship – and gave a reason for why the cubes were underwater.

“Worshippers who place the “so-called magic square” in running water receive his protection from “hidden enemies, wrong diagnosis of illness and deceit”.”

Magic squares were discovered by Asian and Indian mathematicians as far back as 190 BCE. They’re considered ‘magic’ when each square in an n-by-n grid is unique, yet all lines through it (across, down, diagonal) add up to the same number. Magic squares are an integral part of Hindu rituals.

Yeah, yeah, yeah … are the cubes worth anything?

Well, Read still isn’t sure if the cubes have any value, but he’s keeping his fishing spot secret since he also found a silver coin that might have some value. And he’s waiting for anyone to explain why 60 cubes were in that one spot on the bottom of River Sowe.

If you decide to give magnet fishing a try, watch out for bombs, grenades and lead … and wear a mask and wash your hands.

Some UFO encounters are not only seen by multiple witnesses, but also by very traditionally reliable ones. On the evening of April 17, 1966, sheriff deputies Dale Spaur and Wilbur Neff were out on patrol in Portage County, Ohio, in the United States when something would happen that would forever change their lives. It had so far been an uneventful night, and when at 5 AM they came across an abandoned car on the side of the rural road State Route 224, near the town of Atwater, it was seen as something to break the monotony. Spaur got out of his vehicle to go investigate the car, not expecting to find much, and that is when he reportedly felt a sensation like vibrating and humming reverberate through his skull. When he looked around trying to figure out where the sound was coming from, he saw rising above the nearby trees something beyond his wildest imaginings. This would culminate into one of the strangest police chases on record.

Ascending out of the wooded are near the road was what looked to be a large, glowing disc, estimated as being about 40 feet across and issuing that odd humming noise. As the object slowly moved over the treetops, Spaur called out to his partner and was relieved that Neff was seeing the same thing and that he wasn’t losing his mind. That enigmatic disc then moved out across the landscape until it was hovering directly above them, bathing the area in light to create a sort of artificial daytime. They could see that it actually looked like “an ice cream cone tipped on its side,” and both men could hear that sound, which was later described as being like that of “an over-loaded transformer.” Although it was approximately 150 feet above them, they would both report that they could feel waves of heat emanating from it.

It then began a slow, inexorable crawl down the road, and Spaur was able to snap out of his awe and call it in. At first dispatch seemed skeptical and thought it might be a joke, but when they figured out that Spaur was genuinely in a state of duress they told him to fire on the object. Perhaps luckily for them, this order was almost immediately overridden by their sergeant and they were told instead to pursue it. As this was going on the police lines were being inundated with panicked callers reporting the same thing, and Spaur and Neff got into their vehicle to engage.

The two took off in hot pursuit, that strange craft oddly choosing to follow the road they were on. It picked up its pace considerably, at some points forcing the police cruiser to gun it up to around 103 miles per hour as they tore after it, and during this chase other law enforcement officers would become involved as well. One of these was police officer, Wayne Huston, who joined in the chase, and police Chief Gerald Buchert was actually able to snap three photographs of the object. During the chase the strange craft displayed evidence of intelligent control, maneuvering carefully and even slowing down when the road got too difficult for its pursuers or if they hit traffic, only to speed up again as if it were playing a game. All of this was witnessed by amazed locals, who were still inundating the Sheriff’s office with reports of what was going on. The patrol cars would screech and tear after this thing for a full 86 miles, often reaching over 100 miles per hour, until they began to run out of gas in the vicinity of Conway, Pennsylvania. As the cops stopped at a service station to fill up on gas the UFO dutifully stopped as well, as if waiting for them, but it must have gotten bored because it then made that humming sound again and allegedly shot up straight into the sky to disappear.

All of this was far from the imaginings of the officers, as the object had been clearly seen by hundreds of people over the course of the chase, and the very next day the media went nuts with it. “THEY TAILED A SAUCER 86 MILES!” one headline read, and before long it was nationwide news, the thought of these brave law enforcement officers chasing an alien spaceship across the state capturing the imagination. It was such big news, in fact, that it soon drew the attention of the U.S. Air Force UFO investigation, Project Blue Book. Maj. Hector Quintanilla, who was actually director of Project Blue Book at the time, personally went to Ohio to interview the men, although it seems more like he was there to explain it all away. During the time he spent talking to witnesses, Quintanilla’s story would change several times. He went from thinking it was a satellite to the explanation that it was a weather balloon, before going to the old standby that it was Venus they had been chasing, refracted through fog, basically a stationary celestial object they had mistaken for a flying saucer. Not only them, apparently, but the dozens upon dozens of others who had seen them chasing it. They had all seen Venus, according to the official statement.

Of course, Spaur and the other witnesses insisted on what they had seen, but they were starting to draw their fair share of ridicule. In the face of increasing jabs at their credibility and accusations that they were making it all up, numerous witnesses even retracted their original statements in order to avoid the negative publicity, but Spaul stood behind his testimony, even as the whole experience began to take its toll on him. Not only did Spaul lose 20 pounds due to the sheer stress of it all, but by all accounts, he suffered a bit of a mental breakdown as well. He would end up losing his job, his wife would leave him and take their two kids way, and he would end up broke working in a coal mine in West Virginia. He would once lament to a reporter:

Thirty-four years old and what do I have? Nothing. Who knows me? To everyone, I’m Dale Spaur, the nut who chased a flying saucer. If I could change all that I have done in my life, I would change just one thing. And that would be the night we chased that damn thing. That saucer.

Impressively, despite all of this, he never deviated from his story, even as others who had been with him at the time backed away from it all. He would eventually remarry and move to Cleveland, where he would open a bar and try to lay low. He would even act as a consultant on the Stephen Spielberg film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which is in part based on his amazing account. Sadly, Dale Spaur died of pneumonia on April 4th, 1983, having never backed down from his version of events even though it had effectively altered the entire course of his life. Many of his friends and family still believe him to this day, and his son, James Spaur, has said of his father’s encounter:

He believed what he saw was extra-terrestrial. I believe him. Nothing we made could fly like that. In Pennsylvania, it hovered over his car. He could feel the heat coming off it. Then it went straight up and disappeared. Poof. Gone! And remember, my father served in the Air Force. You couldn’t put a bird up there he doesn’t recognize.

What happened on that evening with these men? One idea had been that it was an experimental aircraft of some sort, another is that it was a weather balloon, and then we have the official explanation of our old friend, Venus. Yet, many witnesses saw this bizarre chase and reported the same thing, saying that it was a hovering glowing UFO that was very obviously under intelligent control. Or was it perhaps aliens? Although the other officers involved backed away from it all, they would still admit that they had seen something odd, and Spaur himself never faltered on his report, managing to remain mostly consistent even through continued questioning. Why would he do that when it was obviously ruining his life if it wasn’t true? This doesn’t seem to be a case of someone just trying to get a little fame. It all remains sort of an obscure account that has faded into the background, but it has all of the hallmarks of a great case, including multiple witnesses, intriguing details, and some very reliable observers. Whatever happened here, the bizarre UFO chase of 1966 is a pretty cool little case that we may never fully solve.

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One of the debates that has hovered around the UFO phenomenon is just what UFOs are. For some they are experimental aircraft being tested by the government. For others they are alien spaceships from across space, here on their inscrutable missions. Other ideas are that they are interdimensional interlopers, shifting across the bridge between realities from some parallel dimension. Yet, these are not the only ideas out there, and one that is gaining more and more attention is that aliens might not be any of the above, but rather human beings from the future.

One of the ideas that has been floated about concerning the origins of UFOs and alien encounters is that these are not aliens from another planet or dimension at all, but are rather us. The idea here basically boils down to the notion that these entities are humans from the future, perhaps so far in the future that we have evolved past being superficially recognized as such. One of the main people in recent years behind this theory is Michael Masters, a professor of biological anthropology at Montana Technological University, who has been fascinated with UFOs ever since his father had an encounter with one when he was just a child. Over the course of his career as an anthropologist, he has sought real scientific enquiry into the UFO phenomenon, and culminating in his book on the matter Identified Flying Objects: A Multidisciplinary Scientific Approach to the UFO Phenomenon.

One area Masters has seen as particularly intriguing is the idea that “aliens” might actually be human beings from far in the future, and he uses his knowledge of human evolution to help support this claim. In many reports of aliens, we have what are called in UFOlogy “the Greys,” perhaps the most commonly encountered type of entity. These beings are usually described as thin, bipedal, and hairless, with enlarged craniums, small mouths and jaws, tiny noses, and very large eyes, all very humanoid considering that if they have travelled from another planet it seems unlikely that they would resemble us so closely. Instead, Masters and others who subscribe to his theory believe that this appearance is more in keeping with the trends and patterns of human evolution throughout our history on this planet. Indeed, looking at the expected path of human evolution into the future, it is predicted that we will develop hairlessness, larger heads for more brain space, smaller mouths, and many of the other features of these so-called aliens. As a matter of fact, if one were to look at these predicted trends and fast forward an image of a modern human to simulate these changes, one will come up at some point with a being that looks very much like the Greys that are seen on UFOs. It does seem to make sense. After all, it seems more likely that we would evolve to look like them than for a completely alien species from another world to evolve to look like us.

At the same time that we are evolving into this form, our technology would be making leaps and bounds as well, possibly leading to the ability to travel through time at some point, and with these fantastical machines and alien physical appearance, it would be only natural for humans to come to the conclusion that they are seeing extraterrestrials rather than time travelers. It all seems like something straight out of a science fiction story, but then again, so is the idea that aliens are visiting Earth from across light years and a sea of stars. In fact, according to Masters, the time traveler idea is actually the more rational explanation for UFOs, a simpler possibility than assuming spacefaring civilizations exist and are visiting us, and he has said of this to Space.com:

If we continue to evolve in the same way we have over the six to seven million years since we first started walking upright and our neurocranium – the upper part of our skull and brains – continued to increase in size and get more rounded. If the same dominant trend continues in the future we are likely to look very much like what is commonly described in UFO reports. The book ties together those known aspects of our evolutionary history with what is still an unproven, unverified aspect of UFOs and aliens. We know we’re here. We know humans exist. We know that we’ve had a long evolutionary history on this planet. And we know our technology is going to be more advanced in the future. I think the simplest explanation, innately, is that it is us. I’m just trying to offer what is likely the most parsimonious explanation. I think the simplest explanation, innately, is that it is us.

Well, what if we do for a moment assume that aliens are actually us from the future and UFOs their craft, then why would they be coming here to this time in the first place? The answer to that question could go any number of ways. Perhaps they are here just to study us or to investigate times in their history. Maybe they are here as tourists of a sort, just observing the past. Masters has said of his own thoughts on the matter:

The alleged abduction accounts are mostly scientific in nature. It’s probably future anthropologists, historians, linguists that are coming back to get information in a way that we currently can’t without access to that technology. Perhaps this is my bias as a paleoanthropologist, but I think they are studying their own past. There could also be a tourism component in which people pay to go back and experience monumental moments in human history. Undoubtedly in the future, there are those that will pay a lot of money to have the opportunity to go back and observe their favorite period in history. Some of the most popular tourist sites are the pyramids of Giza and Machu Picchu in Peru … old and prehistoric sites.

Masters even goes as far as to speculate that the fact they are time travelers rather than space faring aliens could explain why they mostly keep to themselves and have not announced their presence. After all, doing so would possibly cause disruptions in the time line and make things complicated. He has explained of this:

If they have come all this way through space, why not introduce themselves after such a long journey? With time it makes more sense, because of the complication which arrives from interjecting yourself into the past. This doesn’t change the past but you become part of the past. There’s nothing which forbids the interaction so it’s not as if we’d come into contact with our future selves and explode. It just complicates things.

There’re certainly still missing pieces of the puzzle. There are aspects of time that we don’t yet understand. Wanted is a theory of quantum gravity, and we can meld general relativity and quantum mechanics. I’m just trying to put forth the best model I can based on current scientific knowledge. Hopefully, over time, we can continue to build on this.

It could also explain why we have not made any radio contact with these aliens out there in the yawning chasm of space, because they are just us slipping around through time. It’s all a pretty wild theory, but in many ways is no more outlandish than any other idea on what aliens and UFOs might be. It certainly puts an interesting spin on things, to imagine that at least some of these entities might not be alien intelligences from beyond the stars or through the veil between dimensions, but us. Is there anything to this, or is it just grasping at straws? In the void of any concrete answers concerning the UFO phenomenon it seems at least a possibility worth pursuing, and perhaps in time we will know for sure.

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