Without doubt, there are some UFO cases (or those cases that are assumed to be UFO-connected) that never go away – even after not just years but decades. One such event occurred on the night of January 23, 1974. The location was the Berwyn Mountains, North Wales. Without doubt, the expert on this complicated story is Andy Roberts; he’s a long-time researcher of UFOs and numerous other anomalies. As for what happened in January 1974, Andy says: “Prehistoric man lived and worshipped on the mountains leaving behind him a dramatic, ritual landscape dotted with stone circles…Folklore tells us that these mountains are haunted by many types of aerial phenomena, including the spectral Hounds of Hell: those who saw them recalled how they flew through the night sky baying as though pursued by Satan himself. To the south of the Berwyn’s at, Llanrhaedr-ym-Mochnant, the locals were plagued by a ‘flying dragon’ – intriguingly, a common name for UFOs in times gone by.”

Andy continues: “It is against this backdrop of history and myth that on the evening of January 23, 1974 an event took place on the Berwyn Mountains that was to perplex locals and spawned a veritable cascade of rumors, culminating in a claim that, if true, would irrevocably change our view of history and make us revise our plans for the future of both our planet and our species. The claim was that a UFO piloted by extraterrestrials crashed, or was shot down, on the mountain known as Cadair Berwyn and that the alien crew, some still alive, were whisked off to a secret military installation in the south of England for study.”

Certainly, something happened on the Berwyn Mountains at approximately 8:30 p.m. on that famous night. No-one disputes that: it’s the nature of the events that provoke most of the debate. Anne Williams, of Bro Diham, Landrillo, recalled: “I saw this bright light hanging in the sky. It had a long fiery tale which seemed to be motionless for several minutes, going dim and then very brilliant, like a dormant fire which keeps coming to life. It would have been like an electric bulb in shape, except that it seemed to have rough edges. Then fell somewhere behind the hills at the back of my bungalow and the earth shook.” Police Constable Gwilym – off-duty at the time and knocking back a beer or a few in the local Dudley Arms pub – had something to say, too: “There was a great roar and a bang and the glasses shook. The sky was lit up over the mountains. The color was yellowish but other people in the valley described seeing blue lights.”

Crashes are never a desired outcome

Police Sergeant Gwyn Williams stated: ““The walls shook and the mirror swung away from the wall” he recalled. “My first thought was that a big lorry had hit the cinema – it was that kind of a roar and bang. Everyone ran into the street.” Around an hour-and-a-half later, what was described as a huge “luminous sphere” was seen by Ken Haughton, at a height of around 15,000 feet in the sky. He said that it seemed to fall vertically into the sea near to the town of Rhyl. A UFO wave? That’s what many thought. But, many can easily be deceived. That strange lights had been seen maneuvering in the skies, and the fact that the ground shook to a major degree, inevitably provoked fears that an aircraft – or, possibly, something exotic and unearthly – had crashed somewhere on the vast mountains on that winter’s night. It’s no surprise, then, that on the early morning of the 24^th a Royal Air Force emergency rescue team – operating out of the RAF Valley base – carefully scoured the Berwyns from overhead. They came away completely blank: there was no evidence of any kind of crash having occurred. There was no debris, no fires on the mountains, and no mangled bodies, human or otherwise. The entire thing was a mystery.

A very non-mysterious theory was put forward by the authorities: what some believed to have been a crash of something from the skies was actually an earth tremor. That does make some sense: it would have been very easy to mistake the effects of a small earthquake for a large object slamming into the ground. But, what of those lights that were seen in the skies – and at just about the same time? One theory was that they were actually the lamps of men out on the hills hunting for hares. Or, that there had been a meteorite shower – which there actually was. Not everyone was buying into this wholly-down-to-earth picture, however. A letter was fired off to the staff of the Wrexham Leader newspaper by a fairly irate soul, who wrote: “Regarding your front page article ‘Mystery Tremor’ in the issue of January 25, I find the explanation given absolutely ludicrous. The tremors shook houses over a 60-mile radius, and the lights were seen clearly miles away – this was reported by the national press and radio. I know nothing about ‘Hare hunting’ but unless the hunters use aircraft searchlights and kill their prey by lobbing a small atom bomb at them, then I fail to see how anyone can accept such an explanation.”

For many, it was all a huge – and almost unique – coincidence provoked by those lamps, the meteorite shower, and an earth tremor that was powerful enough to shake homes and cause windows to shatter. All in relatively close proximity to each other. And all at around the same time. Perhaps that’s what happened. On the other hand, though, you can easily see why more than a few people might have chosen to use one word to describe the chaos on the mountains: “Hmmmmm.” The coincidence angle is broadly the theory that Andy Roberts goes with. Indeed, Andy wrote an entire book on the subject – and from the perspective of everything being very much UFO-absent. Its title: UFO Down? The Berwyn Mountain UFO Crash. It should be read by one and all.

Era -Arqueologia recently announced that archaeological excavations that took place in the Perdigões complex in the Évora district of Portugal revealed a “unique structure in the Prehistory of the Iberian Peninsula”. In fact, nothing similar has ever been found in Portugal before now.

The Perdigões structure was a prehistoric ceremonial site that was found in the middle of a complex of 12 ditch enclosures and “articulates with the visibility of the megalithic landscape that extends between the site and the elevation of Monsaraz, located to the east, on the horizon,” as described by António Valera who was the archaeologist in charge of the excavations.

The site was used for religious ceremonies, burials, and for rituals as several pits with sacrificial items had been recovered. People would travel long distances to attend ceremonies and festivals at the location which was a good way for them to socialize and strengthen their bonds with each other.

Woodhenge at North Newnton.

The circular shaped structure has been nicknamed “Woodhenge” in reference to Stonehenge except this one was made from wood. “A possible access to the interior of this structure is oriented towards the summer solstice, reinforcing its cosmological character,” Valera explained, adding, “this situation is also known in other European countries as ‘woodhenges’ and ‘timber circles’, where astronomical alignment entrances are frequent, underlining the close relationship between these architectures and the Neolithic views of the world .”

It has been described as a “monumental wooden construction, of which the foundations remain, with a circular plan and more than 20 metres in diameter,” Valera noted. While this “Woodhenge” is the first of its kind to be found in Portugal, it is incredibly similar to other structures found in the central part of Europe and the British Isles – like Stonehenge. This may indicate that the people of Perdigões were in communication with those living in locations far from them and that those living across Europe were much more connected with each other during the Neolithic period than previously thought.

Woodhenge is the wooden version of Stonehenge.

The complex dates back from around the end of the Middle Neolithic Period (about 3400 BC) to the start of the Bronze Age period (around 2000 BC) – a time frame that lasted approximately 1,400 years. This time period brings up the possibility that the ancient Bell Beaker culture may have constructed “Woodhenge” as they are believed to have originated in Portugal and their culture thrived from around 3500 BC to 2500 BC.

Valera finished off by stating the importance of finding this structure, “discovery reinforces the already high scientific importance of the Perdigões enclosure complex in the international context of European Neolithic studies while increasing its heritage relevance,” which was recognized as a National Monument in 2019. Several pictures of “Woodhenge” can be seen here.

In the autumn of the year of 1944, Slovak military commander Antonín Horák was performing military operations somewhere in the Tatra mountains during the Slovak National uprising, which was a concerted guerrilla military movement organized by the Slovak resistance movement insurrectionists in an attempt to resist occupying German troops and drive them away. This was a dangerous time, when the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany were patrolling the wilds, and indeed Horák’s unit was ambushed by one such unit as they were hiding in a trench to escape detection. The skirmish did not end well for the Slovaks, with nearly all of his men being slaughtered, and he himself was shot and left for dead. This would pave the way for a strange discovery made out in the wilds of Slovakia, which has captured the imagination and stirred speculation ever since.

When he awoke, Horák was lying in the trench in a pool of mud and his own blood, surrounded by the corpses of his fallen comrades. He at first thought that he was the only one who had survived, and it was only through the help of two local villagers that he did not join them in death. Two villagers carried him away on a makeshift stretcher, and it would become clear that two of the other Slovak soldiers had also survived, although all of them were wounded and immobile. The villagers told them that they were being brought to a secluded, secret cave out in the wilds where they would be able to hide away and recover. However, once they reached this cave, Horák knew that it wasn’t just a typical cave. He was immediately suspicious when one of the villagers told him not to wander too deep into the recesses of this place, as it was considered to be possibly haunted and there were many steep drops within. It seemed as if the villagers were hiding something, and Horák made a mental note to explore it when he had the chance.

He had his chance when in the morning the chief villager, named Slávek, said some prayers while facing the murk within and then informed the soldiers that he would be back later in the afternoon. When he was gone, Horák peered into the gloom and felt curiosity getting the better of him. He was weak and unable to walk so well, but he was able to get up and hobble about, using a light to pierce through the darkness as he felt his way along. It soon became clear that the walls of the cave were not the typical rough rock that one would expect, but rather polished to a mirror sheen, as if formed of glass, and of a bluish black coloration. He then decided to go even deeper yet, finding a small vent in the floor after penetrating into the cave for around 90 minutes. Taking this vent deposited him within a huge chamber and grotto with white stalactites covered in a strange, enamel-like substance, and sitting within this cavern was a very curious sight, indeed.

There within the grotto was a sort of huge, cylindrical object or shaft set within the rock, described as dark, metallic, and completely smooth like the walls of the cave, only here there could be seen strange symbols like hieroglyphics etched into the surface. He warily approached the anomalous structure, and rapping on its side with his pickaxe produced a slight echo that suggested it was hollow inside. The material it was fashioned of looked almost like a shiny onyx, but when he took a few experimental swings at it with his pickaxe he found that he was unable to leave any chip or scratch upon it. Some reports say that he even tried to fire upon it with his pistol, and even that did not scathe it. He decided to crawl back through the cave and fetch some things he felt he would need to further explore this curiosity. He did not tell his wounded fellow soldiers what he had seen, but rather since the weather was getting worse and it was apparent that the villagers would not be able to return, he told them he needed their belts and some rope to help him capture any animals he could find for food.

Armed with this new equipment he went back to the mysterious object several times over the next few days, and used the belts and rope to climb down within it through a large, diamond-shaped crack at its top. The interior was covered in what appeared to be clay and limestone, and the sounds in there were said to be unnaturally amplified. The whole of it was said to actually be in the shape of a crescent moon, and as he explored, he came across the remains of what seemed to be a cave bear, a long extinct species that he surmised had fallen to its death within the structure eons ago. He then tried again to shoot at the walls, but this only produced “green sparks” and smoke. There were found to be some sort of horizontal grooves in the walls of the cylindrical chamber, which seemed warm to the touch. No other entrance into the strange cave was found, and so Horák decided to make a note of its location and then conceal the vent that led to this place.

The villagers returned and on of his fellow soldiers would pass during the night, making it impossible for him to make any further excursions into that mysterious cave, but he wrote about it and made sketches in his diary. He eventually was rescued and able to make it home, but that bizarre cave and its cylinder occupied his thoughts for years. On many occasions he meant to go back and find it once again, but it was too dangerous and so it was mostly just an oddity that only he knew of. It was not until 1965 that Horák would publish an excerpt from his diary concerning the finding in in the National Speleological Society News, and from there the place he called the “Moonshaft” or also “Mooncave” began to capture the imagination of adventurers, geologists, spelunkers, and mystery seekers from all over the world.

Sketch of the entrance leading to the mysterious chamber

One of the problems with going in to actually check out if any of it was true or not is that the political climate in the former Czechoslovakia was not exactly conducive to exploration expeditions, and the area was considered mostly off-limits. In the meantime, Horák, who had since emigrated from Czechoslovakia to the United States, was interviewed by numerous researchers and even Dr. J. Allen Hynek, of Project Blue Book fame. However, it would not be until by Czech explorers Ivan Mackerle and Michal Brumlík ventured into the region in 1980 that any actual follow up field work would be done on the matter. Other expeditions would trickle in, but none of them were able to locate the mysterious cave. One of the main problems is that Horák’s diary is very vague about the actual location, merely mentioning that it is in the Tatra Mountains and in the vicinity of the villages of ´diar, Lubochňa and Plaveč, but considering the sprawling, isolated wilderness of the region that could be anywhere. To this day there are occasional claims that the cave has been found, but no proof offered, leaving us to speculate about what it could all mean.

What did Antonín Horák found out in that wilderness? Theories have included that it was a geological anomaly, ancient copper mine, an entrance to some underground world, the remnants of a lost civilization, or a crashed alien spaceship embedded within the rock, but no one knows for sure and we probably never will. The only person who knows for sure, Antonín Horák, would in later years just sort of vanish, taking whatever secrets he had with him and leaving behind only some scattered diary entries and sketches of what he claimed to have found. We are left to wonder just what it is that he found out there, and what still might be buried beneath the Slovakian wilderness. Ancient civilization, alien spaceship, or just a very strange cave? We may never know for sure.

According to a new study, some people alive today carry genes from an ancient ancestor that has yet to be identified. In fact, this unknown species may have been around as far back as a million years ago.

According to the study, sometime between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago, ancient humans mated with Neanderthals – quite a long time before Homo sapiens migrated from Africa to Europe approximately 50,000 years ago. Adam Siepel, who is a computational biologist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and one of the authors of the paper, explained to Live Science, “Our best conjecture is that an early group of anatomically modern humans left Africa then encountered and interbred with Neanderthals, perhaps in the Middle East,” adding, “This lineage [of humans] would then have been lost — either gone extinct, or absorbed by the Neanderthals, or migrated back to Africa.”

Understanding the complex history of our ancient ancestors is no easy task. It’s been known for a long time that humans and Neanderthals mated while they were both living in Europe and prior to Neanderthals going extinct about 40,000 years ago.

And despite being extinct for tens of thousands of years, some humans today still carry Neanderthal genes. In fact, according to a 2010 study, researchers found that between 1% and 4% of the genes found in people currently living in Asia, Europe, and Oceania belonged to their Neanderthal ancestors. In a more recent 2014 study, at least 20% of DNA found in today’s humans could be from Neanderthals.

And we can’t forget about Denisovans who, up until around 15,000 years ago, shared caves and mated with early humans. In fact, about 1% of the Denisovan genomes came from an unknown ancestor which points to interbreeding. Additionally, around 15% of the interbreeding sequences that the researchers located in Denisovan DNA have also been found in today’s humans.

As for this mysterious DNA that some humans carry today, it would have originated when Neanderthals mated with the unknown species, and then carried it along to when they mated with early humans and through the evolutionary line right down to today’s population. Siepel added that this mysterious ancestor could have belonged to Homo erectus, but since they have no DNA from that species to compare it to, it’s just a theory for now.

Based on this new information, interbreeding surely wasn’t a rare event. Siepel finished off by stating, “A picture is emerging of a series of distinct but related populations moving around the globe and frequently interacting with one another, with occasional interbreeding events that produced hybrid offspring.” “These hybrid offspring might in some cases have suffered from reduced fitness — this is an area of controversy — but apparently many of them were healthy enough to survive and reproduce, leaving a patchwork of archaic and modern human DNA in Neanderthals, Denisovans and modern humans.”

Related videos, selected and posted by peter2011

Some people say that Mars gets all of the attention these days because that’s where some book once said men are from there … and that argument probably carries a little weight. However, it wasn’t that long ago that Venus was the center of attention, especially within the space program of the former Soviet Union which had a lander program that sent probes into the swirling hot and dense atmosphere laden with carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid. (It’s no wonder author John Gray gave Mars to men.) That didn’t stop the Japanese space program from sending orbiters to Venus, and it’s data from the Akatsuki spacecraft that has revealed something ominous on the planet’s hidden surface – a giant unidentified wave plowing across the planet every 4.9 days at over 200 miles per hour (328 km per hour). Is this another reason women should wish they wrote their own damn book first?

“If this happened on Earth, this would be a frontal surface at the scale of the planet, and that’s incredible.”

In a press release by the Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço (IA) announcing the study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, co-author Pedro Machado describes the unexplained cloud wall which is the first disturbance of this magnitude to be discovered in the lower atmosphere of Venus. Machado notes that the images from Akatsuki orbiter were confirmed by astronomers (including himself) using the Galileo National Telescope (TNG) in Canary Islands and NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) in Hawaii. Going back to other past observations, the team now can recognize indicators which show the wave has been speeding around Venus since at least 1983.

“This planet-wide cloud discontinuity can sometimes extend as far as 7500 kilometres, across the equator, from 30º north to 40º south, and happens at the lower cloud level, at altitudes between 47.5 and 56.5 kilometres.”

Based on what they pulled together from observations made by other missions and telescopes, combined with computer simulations, the team concluded that these mysterious planet-sweeping waves are cause by … something they’ve never seen before on any other planets.

Throw in the facts that Venus rotates in the opposite direction of Earth (and almost all of the other planets in our solar system) at a snail’s pace of one rotation every 243 Earth days, while its atmosphere flows at 60 times faster than Earth’s (the normal wind speed relative to the surface is about 360 km/h or 224 mph), its density is 93 times that of Earth’s and pressure is about 92 times Earth’s (don’t forget it’s loaded with sulfuric acid) and you can see why researchers want to know more about these waves. Unfortunately, almost all of the future missions to Venus are still in the proposed or conceptual stages.

What Venus needs is a woman billionaire to champion Venus like Elon Musk has championed Mars.

Or a new book.

Thunderstorms on Jupiter are so violent and strong that ammonia-rich hail called “mushballs” could rain down from the sky. Apparently ammonia works similar to anti-freeze when it’s mixed with ice crystals which makes them melt and ultimately creates huge storms.

This new information was collected by NASA’s Juno spacecraft which arrived at Jupiter in July of 2016 and orbits the planet every 53 days. It studies the planet’s atmosphere in order to get a better understanding of Jupiter’s meteorology.

The mission has so far shown rotating white clouds full of ammonia in the upper atmosphere of the planet that measures over 2,000 square miles. These ammonia-rich clouds are located about 10 miles above other clouds and they cause flashes of lighting in addition to casting huge shadows on Jupiter.

Swirling “Pearl” storm on Jupiter.

Thunderstorms on Jupiter are similar to those that occur here on Earth as they both move around water within the atmosphere. One huge difference, however, is that the thunderstorms on the Gas Giant begin to form approximately 31 miles beneath the storm bands. The temperatures where the storms are formed are around the freezing point which means that if a storm is strong enough, it can move the ice into the upper portion of the atmosphere where it will then melt.

Tristan Guillot, who is a planetary scientist at the Côte d’Azur University in Nice, France, and an author of the papers, explained this further, “On Jupiter as on Earth, a mixture of two thirds water and one third ammonia will remain liquid down to a temperature of -100°C [-148°F],” adding, “The ice crystals which have been lifted high into Jupiter’s atmosphere are melted by ammonia — forming a liquid — and become the seeds for exotic hailstones, or “mushballs”.”

He went on to say, “The mushballs, being heavier, then fall deeper into the atmosphere until they reach a point where they evaporate. This mechanism drags ammonia and water down to very deep levels in the planet’s atmosphere.” “This can potentially explain Juno measurements that Jupiter’s ammonia abundance is variable until at least 100 miles below the visible clouds.”

There are even auroras on Jupiter.

Guillot went into further details about the storms, “During Jupiter’s violent storms, hailstones form from this liquid, similar to the process in terrestrial storms where hail forms in the presence of super-cooled liquid water.” “Growth of the hailstones creates a slush-like substance surrounded by a layer of ice, and these “mushballs” fall, evaporate and continue sinking further in the planet’s deep atmosphere.”

According to the data collected by Juno, there is more ammonia found near the equator on Jupiter although the exact amount is currently unclear.

In a second study, a team of international experts created models that indicated that the “mushballs” and storms on Jupiter “dry out” the atmosphere of its ammonia, while a third study detailed the flashes of lightning on the planet. The three papers can be read in full here, here, and here.

Some things about planets are constants. Most of them form around stars and stay in their orbit. Some get cut loose for a variety of reasons and become rogues. A few get too close to black holes and get sucked into the abyss. Then there’s blanets. What are blanets? Get ready to meet the bravest planets in the universe.

“In Wada, Tsukamoto, and Kokubo (2019), we proposed for the first time that a new class of planets, blanets (i.e., black hole planets), can be formed around supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in the galactic center. Here, we investigate the dust coagulation  processes and physical conditions of the blanet formation outside the snowline in more  detail, especially considering the effect of the radial advection of the dust aggregates.”

Keiichi Wada, Yusuke Tsukamoto and Eiichiro Kokubo are Japanese space researchers and university professors who have updated their 2019 paper on stuff that is seen around supermassive black holes with a new study submitted to The Astrophysical Journal detailing what they’re calling a new class of exoplanets – the blanet. In particular, they have been studying the supermassive black holes found at the center of most galaxies which are usually very active, with a disc of accretion dust and gas circling around it and avoiding consumption in a game of supermassive cat and mouse. While they originally thought planets in these accretion discs had been rogue exoplanets or planets orbiting stars captured by the black hole, this new study proposes that they actually form in the disc in somewhat the same way planets form around young stars.

“Our results suggest that blanets could be formed around relatively low-luminosity active galactic nuclei during their lifetime (100 million years). The gaseous envelope of a blanet should be negligibly small compared with the blanet mass. Therefore, the system of blanets are extraordinarily different from the standard Earth-type planets in the exoplanet systems.”

By “extraordinarily different,” the team means they grow much faster into much, much more massive than star-based planets. While the growth of planets in star-orbiting accretion discs are slowed by collisions, the black hole accretion discs have a lower viscosity – i.e., less traffic – that reduces the risk of collision. Because the viscosity is even lower at the outer edges of the disc, planets out there can grow quickly to masses that are 20 to 3,000 Earth masses, reaching what is considered the upper limit of planet size but not quite large enough to become a small star instead.

“The dynamical stability of such a system around a SMBH (supermassive black hole) may be an interesting subject for future studies.”

As you may have expected, these blanets can’t be seen – the study was done using models of supermassive black hole behavior. The team thinks all of this is “interesting” enough for future studies, provided they can find the grant money.

Could life exist on one of these blanets? A better question is: Why would life want to live so close to a supermassive black hole?

Because it’s there?