It’s rarely a good thing when experts admit they know what something isn’t, but have no idea what it is. If we’re looking at Mars, there are plenty of candidates for that description, but today’s is one we’ve seen but not heard an answer for before – a mysterious elongated plume over the thought-to-be-long-dead Arsia Mons volcano. This mysterious plume was spotted by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter in October 2018 and was hotly debated back then by astronomers, seismologists, Mars experts and even conspiracy theorists who think it’s a real volcanic eruption that’s being covered up by the powers that be because that’s what the powers that be do. On the other hand, the rest were still arguing long after the plume disappeared. Now … it’s back again. Let the debates begin!

Two images of the Martian volcano plume.

Image credit: ESA/GCP/UPV/EHU Bilbao

“This elongated cloud forms every martian year during this season around the southern solstice, and repeats for 80 days or even more, following a rapid daily cycle. However, we don’t know yet if the clouds are always quite this impressive”.

Jorge Hernandez-Bernal, a PhD candidate at the University of the Basque Country in Spain and lead author of an ongoing ESA study on the plume (nice work if you can get it), says anybody with a good telescope on Earth can see the Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud (AMEC – yes, Mars doesn’t have hurricanes so the mysterious clouds get names) because it’s approaching 1,800 km (1,110 miles) in length – yes, that’s ‘length’, not height. This Martian plume stretches along the ground in a kind of visible air stream beginning from the 20 km (12.4 mile) high volcano’s leeward (downwind) side.

“A martian day, or sol, is slightly longer than an Earth day at 24 hours, 39 minutes and 35 seconds long. A year at the Red Planet consists of 668 sols, approximately 687 days, so the seasons last for twice as long.”

The ESA doesn’t just monitor the Mars Express – it can read your mind too. A Martian year is 687 Earth days, so the mysterious AMEC plume appeared right on time, just like it has in 2015, 2012, and 2009. And before that? The Mars Express wasn’t in orbit before that, but it’s estimated that Arsia Mons last erupted about 50 million years ago and hasn’t had a lava flow anywhere in at least 2 million years – which doesn’t answer the question but is an interesting factoid for your next trivia contest. All the ESA researchers know is that the plume appears around the Martian southern solstice (equivalent to our winter solstice) in the early morning, flows for about three hours and disappears until the following day – a process that’s repeated for 80 days and then abruptly ends.

The plume above the Arsia Mons volcano on Mars.
Image Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

So, it’s not a volcanic cloud but it’s definitely the biggest and seemingly most predictable of similar cloud appearances on Mars. There’s no government cover-up — NASA knows about it too. It‘s made of water ice, so that’s a good thing to keep in mind if and hopefully when humans reach the Red Planet. And it appears like clockwork at Arsia Mons in case the batteries die all at once on everyone’s Martian calendar watches.

Welcome back, AMEC. Yes, we know it’s a boring name but no one knows much Latin anymore.

Some of the most exciting UFO encounters are those that have been witnessed by multiple witnesses at the same time. If you add in a selection of witnesses who are traditionally considered reliable, and then throw in photographic evidence to boot, well, then you have gold. There are only a few good instances of all of these elements coming together in just the right way, but when they do, it all serves to propel a good amount of debate, analysis, and discussion. One such strange incident supposedly happened out at a remote island in the Pacific Ocean, and which produced photographs and testimony that have been picked apart to this day.

On January 16, 1958, the Brazilian ship Almirante Saldanha was off the coast of the remote and rugged island of Trindade, around 680 miles from the east coast of Brazil. The island is a sparsely inhabited, 3.9 square-mile rough slash of volcanic rock lying in the middle of nowhere, its only inhabitants an oceanographic post and a meteorological station run by the Hydrography and Navigation Division of the Ministry of the Brazilian Navy, and the Almirante Saldanha had been brought here for Naval oceanographic research as part of the International Geophysical Year project. Aboard the vessel were Captain José Teobaldo Viegas, various scientists, explorers and a civilian photographer by the name of Almiro Baraúna, brought aboard to take underwater pictures for the expedition, as well as some other civilian reporters and assistants.

Trinidade Island

On this day the ship, which had been anchored at Trinidade for several days, was preparing to depart headed back towards Rio de Janeiro when at around midday a number of those gathered on the deck observed something very strange in the sky approaching the island from the east, and flying towards the “Pico Desejado” (Wished Peak). The object was described as gray, metallic and glinting or shining, and roughly spherical in shape, with what seemed to be a ring around it, similar to the planet Saturn, as well as a greenish, phosphorescent vapor wreathing it. It was so unusual and moving at such high speed that it was obvious to those who saw it, including the photographer Baraúna and Captain Viegas himself, that this was no normal aircraft. Baraúna would later say of the sighting:

The deck was full of sailors and officers. Suddenly, Mr. Amilar Vieira and Captain Viegas called me, pointing to a certain spot in the sky and yelling about a bright object which was approaching the island. At this same moment, when I was still trying to see what it was, Lieutenant Homero, the ship’s dentist, came from the bow toward us, running, pointing out to the sky and also yelling about an object he was sighting. He was so disturbed and excited that he almost fell down after colliding with a cable. Then I was finally able to locate the object, by the flash (of light) it emitted. It was already close to the island. It glittered at certain moments, perhaps changing its own light – I don’t know. It was coming over the sea, moving toward the point called the Galo Crest.

The object apparently approached the peak to eerily hover over it for a few moments before disappearing behind it momentarily, and then reappearing, after which it continued its inscrutable journey out over the forlorn sea. This all happened as the crew stared in awed fascination, but Baraúna was a professional photographer and had the presence of mind to snap a series of four pictures of the mysterious object. He would explain of this:

I had my Rolleiflex 2.8, Model E, which was kept inside an aluminum box for protection against the corrosive effects of water and salt. I had left my Leica with a telephoto lens in my cabin a few moments before. I had lost thirty seconds looking for the object, but the camera was already in my hands, ready, when I sighted it clearly silhouetted against the clouds. I shot two photos before it disappeared behind the peak Desejado. My camera was set at a speed of 125 [125th of a second], with the aperture at f/8, and this was the cause of an overexposure error, as I discovered later.

 

 

 

The object remained out of sight for a few seconds – behind the peak – reappearing bigger in size and flying in the opposite direction, but lower and closer than before, and moving at a higher speed. I shot the third photo. The fourth and fifth ones were lost, not only because of the speed the saucer was moving, but also for another reason: In the confusion produced as a result of the sighting, I was being pulled and pushed by other persons also trying to spot the object and, as a consequence, photographed the sea and the island only – not the object. It was moving out to sea again, in the direction from which it had come, and it appeared to stop in midair for a brief time. At that moment I shot my last photo (the last on the film). After about ten seconds, the object continued to increase its distance from the ship, gradually diminishing in size and finally disappearing into the horizon.

When the otherworldly object was gone, the ship’s commander ordered the negatives to be developed right away and they were amazed by what they saw. Several of the crew aboard the ship would report that the vessel had experienced technical malfunctions during and after the encounter, as if the craft was exerting some influence on their electrical systems either accidentally or intentionally. Baraúna would say of this:

According to the rumors I heard at the deck, the electronic equipment of the ship stopped working during the apparition of the object; what I can confirm is that after the ship left the island, the equipment malfunctioned three more times and the officials didn’t have any plausible explanation for what was happening. Every time the ship stopped, the lights weakened slowly until the point they completely went out. When this happened, the officials would walk to the deck with their binoculars, however, the sky was clouded and they couldn’t see anything.

Once the ship was back in Rio, Baraúna was then allegedly approached and interviewed by various Naval officials about the mystery object he had photographed. The military wanted to know numerous details about the sighting and were very interested in analyzing the photographs, which apparently impressed them very much and were deemed to be genuine after exhaustive testing by the Laboratório de Reconhecimento Aéreo da Marinha, which is the Brazilian Navy’s Aerial Reconnaissance Laboratory. Baraúna said of his time with these officials and the analysis of the images:

I was interviewed by several high-staff officers, who asked me all kinds of questions. I went there twice. At the first meeting, they requested the negatives for examination. They were sent to a civilian organization, the Cruzeiro do Sul Aerophoto grammetric Service, remaining there for four days. I was told by the Navy officers that the analyses proved they were genuine -excluding definitely the possibility of a trick or falsification. On the second visit, they performed several time-tests. While I worked with my Rolleiflex, taking shots at the same time intervals I had used to photograph the object, three Navy officers with chronometers registered the times. They came to the conclusion – based on these tests as well as on studies concerning the ship’s position and examinations of charts of the island – that the object was flying at a speed between 900 and 1,000 km./hour [about 600 mph]. The object’s size was also estimated on the basis of studies related with the island’s details also appearing on the photos, diagrams drawn on charts, graphs, et cetera. The object was about 120 feet in diameter and about 24 feet high.

One of the photos

It was not long before the photos got out into the wild, and they were featured heavily in Brazilian news publications and in the media at large. They generated a huge amount of discussion and debate, and through it all the Brazilian Navy stayed quiet, neither confirming or denying the alleged incident. The negatives were still floating around though, and before long the story was leaking out of official mouths, and with all of the rabid media attention it was getting, the Navy Ministry was forced to say something on the matter, giving a typical government opaque and ambiguous statement that reads:

With reference to the reports appearing in the press that the Navy is opposed to divulge the facts concerning the appearance of a strange object over Trindade Island, this Cabinet declares that such information has no basis. This Ministry has no motive to impede the release of photographs of the referred-to object, taken by Mr. Almiro Barauna, who was at Trindade Island at the invitation of the Navy, and in the presence of a large number of the crew of Almirante Saldanha from whose deck the photographs were taken. Clearly, this Ministry will not be able to make any pronouncement concerning the object seen, because the photographs do not constitute sufficient proof for such purpose.

In Brazil, the photos have widely been accepted as very good photographic evidence of UFOs, but there has of course been skepticism to wash all of it down. The U.S. Air Force’s UFO task force Project Blue Book labelled it curtly as a hoax, and Baraúna has had much damning criticism levelled against him. It has been pointed out that the photographer was a known hoaxer and fraud, apparently having a long history of faking pictures of things such as bogus treasures on the ocean floor, and he often used trick photography in humorous articles, including even one devoted precisely on how to fake UFO photos. It has been suggested that what is shown in the photos is trickery at best, and merely a misidentified aircraft seen through fog at best. Yet, we are still left with the estimated 50 witnesses aboard the vessel who apparently saw the phenomenon.

In the end, the Bralilian government has not had much else to say on the matter, and it is technically unsolved. The photos still do the rounds, and there are myriad explanations and in-depth breakdowns and analyses to be found. Yet, they still manage to remain elusive teases that can’t really be proven or disproven. Indeed, the whole Trinidade Island incident is mired in a muck of uncertainty, government opaqueness, and a lack of straight answers. While it has so many promising elements of something exciting, it is unfortunate that it is likely to remain a specter that will never truly be solved or find a consensus, and will go on as just another one of the many UFO accounts that will probably remain swirling about without landing on one thing or another

Are you ready to ride a woolly mammoth … or at least see one or a herd running free in a park? That day just got one step closer this week with the announcement that well-preserved skeletal remains of a teenage woolly mammoth were discovered in Siberia – and the foot bones still had some ligaments attached. Because the skeleton pieces are in such good shape, there’s hope the rest of it and others may be found in the area, perhaps even a head containing preserved brain matter. Is this the missing link to Mammoth Park?

“Fragments of a skeleton with soft tissues of an extinct animal were found on the shore of Lake Pechevalavato in the vicinity of the village of Seyakha, Yamal District, by local residents. The head of the village Stanislav Vanuito immediately informed the scientists about the unique find.”

In a press release by the Scientific Center for the Study of the Arctic, director Dmitry Frolov announced the discovery of the remains by people living near Lake Pechevalavato in northern Siberia. (Video of the find here, photos and maps here.) He said he is sending a team of scientists from the center study the remains and mark the spot in the lake bed where they were found to help future searchers. The Yamal District is a hot spot for mammoth remains, which is good news for researchers but bad for the environment – it means the permafrost is melting at a fast pace and exposing the skeletons and artifacts from thousands of years ago (not to mention methane gas), as the Moscow Times reports.

The bones were retrieved from Russia's remote Yamal Peninsula.

(AP: Governor Of Yamalo-Nenets Region Of Russia Press Office/Artem Cheremisov)

“Temperatures above the Arctic Circle have soared to nearly 40 degrees Celsius this summer as climate scientists warn that melting permafrost could release mass amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.”

While they hope to get an accurate date on when this particular young mammoth died – possibly proving some survived past the generally accepted date of their extinction 10,000 years ago – the scientists at the center also hope the soft tissue and brain matter can one day facilitate the cloning or resurrection of the creatures. They also want to get the remains out of the ground and into the lab before another bad sign of the times happens, as The Guardian reported in 2019.

“Woolly mammoth ivory preserved in the permafrost in Russia’s Yakutia region make up 80% of Russia’s trade in a largely unregulated market worth as much as £40m each year, according to Russian officials.”

While $52,000 per year may not sound like much, a global warming increase will increase that too. It’s already happening in the Yakutia district in northeast Siberia, where ivory demand by China resulted in over 100 tons of mammoth remains being excavated, stripped of ivory and sold. It’s estimated that the Yakutia has 500,000 tons of mammoth remains still in the ground … for now. The demand for regulation of excavation is high, but money talks in Siberia too.

Let’s hope that demand doesn’t drive the already controversial cloning or resurrection of the mammoth as well.

Is it worth a mammoth ride?

Today’s Jeopardy category is “Portals to Hell.” Remember, your answer must be in the form of a question. For $500, this Gateway to Hell is growing at a frightening rate of 30 meters (98 feet) per year.

“Washington D.C.!”

Sorry, that wasn’t a question.

“What is the Batagaika crater, located in the ice-covered Chersky Range in northeastern Siberia?”

Correct! It’s summer in Siberia, a season which has actually become more noticeable due to climate change. It means that Siberians are shedding clothing and the ground is shedding permafrost. In some areas, the end result is exploding pingos – ice-and-dirt-covered methane pockets whose heat-induced blasts leave large sinkholes behind. However, the Batagaika crater, about 660 km (410 miles) northeast of the city of Yakutsk, has been around for some time – long enough to grow to 1 km (.652) in length and 100 meters (328 feet) deep, and acquire the name “Gateway to Hell.”

Batagaika crater NASA image)

The Batagaika crater began forming in the 1960 when forests near the Batagaika river were cleared and permafrost began melting faster than normal. While paleontologists loved its massive exposure of Ice Age animal fossils, the steep cliffs and landslides make erosion occur even faster and land is dragged into the Gateway to Hell at an accelerated and dangerous pace, threatening everything in its path, including the homes, livestock and scenery of the local Yakutians, who first named this creation of invading resource-stealers the “Gateway to Hell.”

“The catch with Batagai is that although it survived multiple episodes of warming in the past, where the warming has been natural – in the last 50 or 60 years human disturbances have destabilised this ancient permafrost. 

“So, I guess the message is that we need to be very careful.”

Geology professor Julian Murton of the University of Sussex told the BBC that a mere 60 years of warming has exposed permafrost from 650,000 years ago — the oldest of its kind in Eurasia and the second oldest in the world. Needless to say, that’s not good.

Growth of the Batagaika crater NASA image)

“Though this may sound so far away from our daily concerns and daily life, actually it’s not just curiosity that drives the Batagai research. It’s also the applicability of the results to the ongoing environmental changes – because the past is the key to the future. And by understanding the processes that occurred in the past and their aftermath, we can adapt to the ongoing future.”

Is it too late to close the Gateway to Hell? Verkhoyansk in northeastern Siberian recorded the Arctic’s highest ever temperature this summer — 100 F (38C) – the temperature of hell to Siberians. Is having wood for your fireplace or end tables worth widening the mouth of hell?

This story continues to appear every summer, and never gets better … only bigger. How long will it be before the Batagaika crater reaches big cities … Moscow … China … India … Europe … beyond? Does humanity stop it with sandbags … or climate change reversal?

Please give your answer in the form of a question.