US Military Has Machine That Can Levitate UFO Metal, Confirms Stanford Top Scientist

Professor Garry Nolan is one of the most reputable experts examining the enigma of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs). He has been studying UAP materials for many months and has made numerous astonishing statements about UFOs. His contributions lend credibility to this particular mystery, which many mainstream scientists hesitate to discuss.

Dr. Nolan works at Stanford University as a professor of Immunology. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize, which is a big honor. He is known as one of the best immunologists in the world. He has many patents and has written a lot of research papers. He has also started two companies listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange because of his successful inventions.

In June 2022, Australian investigative journalist Ross Coulthart interviewed Dr. Nolan and learned from him shocking UAP information that the U.S. government had been investigating for the past few years. Dr. Nolan said that one thing he is sure about is that we do not know what UAPs are: “We do know that there is something here something that I think defies explanation but that something can be studied from a scientific Viewpoint.”

Although this interview was recorded in 2022, Dr. Nolan adheres to David Grusch’s statement that the U.S. government has been lying about UAPs for the last 60-70 years. He believes the reason behind this is that the U.S. government itself does not know what they are dealing with. “Absolutely, there is a cover-up,” says Dr. Nolan. “I mean, there has been both a cover-up and a disinformation campaign to make people appear as if they were crazy.”

Coutlhart questions the potential dangers of admitting one’s thoughts on these mysterious events, to which Dr. Nolan responds, “I think it’s dangerously necessary… ignoring the physics of what these things are capable of doing.” Coutlhart further asks, “Let’s talk about ‘It.’ What is it?”

Dr. Nolan replies, “You know, I wish I knew… Whatever it is appears to be so far advanced from us that it beggars understanding.” When pressed further by Coutlhart if he believes the phenomenon to be of human origin, Dr. Nolan decisively states, “I’m sure it’s not human..I think it’s whatever it is it’s been here a long time so and certainly it’s been here longer than we’ve been civilized so at the very least who really owns the planet who was here first uh I’m not sure it was.”

Dr. Nolan explained he studied the brains of pilots who claimed to have encountered the phenomena. After their UAP/ UFO encounters, they all got damaged or hurt such as buzz noises in their head, got sick, etc. Most of them have had similar kinds of bad things. He showed the MRIs of some people that revealed damage in the middle of the basal ganglia – an area responsible for motor control and other core brain functions, including intuition.

Dr. Nolan said the damage should have killed those people, yet they were alive. He obtained MRIs of some prior to their encounters and they had the damage, so they were most likely born with it. “These are all so-called high-functioning people. They’re pilots who are making split-second decisions, intelligence officers in the field, etc,” he said.

Alleged UFO material

Former Pentagon UFO official Lue Elizondo shared a truly eye-opening statement in his interview with James Iandoli of Engaging The Phenomenon on June 11, 2021. They discussed crash retrievals and materials related to unidentified flying objects (UFOs) or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs). Elizondo acknowledged the sensitivity of the topic and the potential consequences of discussing it openly.

However, Elizondo expressed his belief that the US government does possess exotic materials but could not provide further details due to the lack of transparency from the government. He mentioned the three layers of analysis that can be conducted on a piece of material, namely physical, chemical, and atomic or nano-level research.

Coulthart asked the Stanford professor about this research on a peculiar material known as Bismuth magnesium. Dr. Nolan described it as a layered substance consisting primarily of bismuth, with traces of lead and magnesium. Despite his assessment of its isotope ratios showing nothing out of the ordinary, he expressed his intent to study a significantly larger sample in the future. This expanded sample size would allow him to conduct more comprehensive tests, potentially shedding light on its properties.

Terahertz Transmistter

Coulthart speculated on the material’s ability to levitate when exposed to a specific waveform. While Nolan acknowledged hearing about such claims, he had not personally witnessed or tested the phenomenon. When pressed by Coulthart about whether he had attempted any experiments, Nolan clarified that the required waveform for levitation would be “Terahertz Waves,” which he had not utilized.

Coulthart highlighted that the U.S. Army possessed the necessary terahertz transmitter for potential experiments with the Bismuth magnesium material. However, Dr. Nolan remained tight-lipped about the specifics, stating he could not discuss whether such research had been conducted.

Coulthart mentioned that Tom Delonge’s To the Stars Academy (TTSA) worked with the U.S. Army to study this material using the right equipment. Coulthart wondered why the U.S. government keeps such materials if stories about flying objects are just made up. Nolan thinks there is a lot of false information out there but believes there might be real materials that we should know about. He wants the government to tell us clearly if those special materials are real or not.

In 2019, Tom DeLonge claimed that his UFO research organization had acquired “potentially exotic materials featuring properties not from any known existing military or commercial application.” “The structure and composition of these materials are not from any known existing military or commercial application,” Steve Justice, TTSA’s COO and former head of Advanced Systems at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works said in a statement. (Source)

According to the press release, some of these materials were in the possession of investigative journalist and UFO researcher Linda Moulton Howe, who, in 2004, gave a presentation at the Xcon Conference regarding these materials. In her lecture, a video of which has been on the Internet for years, she suggests that the material could become a “lifting body” with the right amount of electromagnetic static and certain RF frequency. These are undoubtedly the same materials mentioned  by Tom DeLonge on his Joe Rogan interview where he stated, “if you hit it with enough terahertz, it’ll float.”

In this video, Dr. David Chester, a scientist from Quantum Gravity Research, makes several references to pulsed terahertz waves. Towards the end, he mentions that pulsed terahertz waves in a metamaterial can slow down the speed of light. He further explains that this is beneficial for anti-gravity engineering. According to him, due to the way everything couples together in the equations, a reduced speed of light requires less energy to achieve the desired anti gravitic effects.

This is some really interesting information on terahertz, thanks to Observing The Anomaly.

AAWSAP commissioned 37 scientific papers that are now public. Someone FOIA’d about UAP materials being studied and DIA responded with 5 of these papers. One paper was on spintronics and another on metamaterials. TTSA bought an alleged sample of Roswell crash material and gave it to the Army to study in 2019. According to Puthoff it appeared to be a metamaterial that acts as a waveguide at the terahertz frequency. The two papers on spintronics and metamaterials also touches on creating materials that operate at this frequency and specifically that such materials would be radiation resistant and ideal for long space travel.

Hal Puthoff also discusses the sample with UFO Joe. Notice the bolded statement below. (Source)

So the answer is, we don’t, yet, really know where it came from. And it’s true that ten years ago Linda Howe provided us with a sample. And we did a lot of tests. Got electron microscope pictures and irradiated it with various gigahertz frequencies, megahertz frequencies and so on. We couldn’t make anything out of it. So it kind of went on the shelf. And it was only after this paper on meta-materials was published, we said, “Oh my gosh. The claim here, that this could have some real utility as microscopic waveguides, would actually fit the structure, you know, that we see there.” Okay, well where do we go with that?

Well, the truth of the matter is, that piece is actually pretty mangled and what you’d really like to do is say, “Okay, well let’s have a nice, clean piece of this, and let’s irradiate with terahertz frequencies, first of all, to see if it really does act as a microscopic waveguide for terahertz frequencies. And then, if that works, we’ll iradiate it with other kinds of fields and see if there are any unexpected responses and so on.” So it is still, despite the fact it gets unbelievable publicity out there, it’s still an absolutely unknown. It does range all the way from…this was a fraud of junk material sent to us, to…no, this came off the wedge of an ET craft.

We don’t know the answer to that, and the only way we are going to get something of value is to determine its properties or maybe reproduce it under nice conditions and determine its properties. So, it is still a giant question mark out there. So even though it’s, you know, it’s like…a few percent of our effort at TTSA, it’s like 99% of our criticisms (laughs). That’s just what you get in this field. That’s the way it goes. Some of us have developed very hard skins. Another question?

Puthoff elaborates further in another interview: (Source)

Well, years later, decades later actually, finally our own science moves along. We move into an area called metamaterials, and it turns out exactly this combination of materials at exactly those dimensions turn out to be an excellent microscopic waveguide for very high frequency electromagnetic radiation terahertz frequencies. So, the wavelength is 60 microns, which is a pretty small size. But it turns out because of the metamaterial aspect of this material, those bismuth layers that act as waveguides can be one twentieth the size of the wavelength, and usually when you make a waveguide it’s gotta be about the size of the wavelength. So, in fact this turned out to be a material that would propagate sub-wavelength waveguide effects. Why somebody wants to do that we still don’t know the answer to that.

Dr. Nolan is said to have a good friendship with Jacques Vallée, Kit Green, Eric Davis, and Colm Kelleher. They all came to him to analyze the UAP materials after he had developed some wonderful instruments using mass spectrometry.

“Some of the objects are nondescript, and just lumps of metal. Mostly, there’s nothing unusual about them except that everywhere you look in the metal, the composition is different, which is odd. It’s what we call inhomogeneous. That’s a fancy way of saying ‘incompletely mixed.’ The common thing about all the materials that I’ve looked at so far, and there’s about a dozen, is that almost none of them are uniform. They’re all these hodgepodge mixtures. Each individual case will be composed of a similar set of elements, but they will be inhomogeneous,” he explained.

Dr. Nolan found out that some of the fragments from the so-called UFO crash in Brazil have extraordinarily altered isotope ratios of magnesium. He explained:

“It was interesting because another piece from the same event was analyzed in the same instrument at the same time. This is an extraordinarily sensitive instrument called a nanoSIMS – Secondary Ion Mass Spec. It had perfectly correct isotope ratios for what you would expect for magnesium found anywhere on Earth. Meanwhile, the other one was just way off. Like 30 percent off the ratios. The problem is there’s no good reason humans have for altering the isotope ratios of a simple metal like magnesium. There’s no different properties of the different isotopes, that anybody, at least in any of the literature that is public of the hundreds of thousands of papers published, that says this is why you would do that. Now you can do it. It’s a little expensive to do, but you’d have no reason for doing it.”

Dr. Vallée collected purported metal from the UFO cases dated back to 1947 and brought them to Stanford University for analysis. Dr. Gary Nolan, a Stanford microbiologist analyzed the 3-D atomic structure of the unknown metal with a state-of-the-art Multiparameter Ion Beam Imager (MIBI) capable of discerning the precise composition of matter at the level of its isotopes.

The result might be shocking for non-believers, as when he put the sample in the vacuum chamber of the machine, he found out that their composition was unlike any other known metal on Earth.

“If you’re talking about an advanced material from an advanced civilization you’re talking about something that I’ll just call it an ultra material right it’s something which has properties where somebody is putting it together again at the atomic scale so we’re building our world with 80 elements somebody else is building the world with 253 different isotopes,” Dr. Nolan said.

Could humans be altering the isotopes in these strange objects for unknown purposes? Dr. Nolan speculates that it is possible, but proving it requires getting down to the atomic level, possibly with a super quantum interference device (SQUID). However, neither his budget nor the budgets of the groups analyzing UFO/UAP encounters have that kind of funding yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bN5e6FPlpK0

 { https://www.howandwhys.com/ }

23-12-2023 om 21:41 geschreven door peter  

A MYSTERIOUS triangular craft zipped across the sky over a military base and, as astonished Ministry of Defence police looked on, aimed a search light at the ground below.

The incredible sighting above Cosford RAF Base in Shropshire on March 31, 1993, was one of hundreds reported across the UK by members of the public, police officers and military personnel over a two day period.

A UFO sighting over Cosford RAF Base in Shropshire in 1993 was one of hundreds reported over a two day period

Credit: facebook/Royal Air Force Cosford

Nick Pope is former head of the MoD's UFO research programme

Credit: Chris Loomis / National Geographic

Thirty years on the Cosford Incident, as it came to be known, remains unexplained.

For Nick Pope, then head of the MoD’s UFO research programme, it proved an intriguing mystery.

He tells The Sun there was a “spooky postscript” that linked the sightings to similar events in Belgium. 

“There was a wave of sightings over a period of about six hours on March 30th and 31st, 1993, involving a vast triangular shaped craft that was capable of moving from very slow speeds of 30-40mph to high Mach speeds in an instant,” he recalls. 

“At that acceleration, the G forces would kill a human pilot, and yet there was no sonic boom reported.

“Some of the witnesses heard an unpleasant, low frequency humming sound that they could feel as well as hear. 

“One witness saw it fire a narrow beam of light down at the ground, tracking backwards and forwards as if it was looking for something. 

“A small cluster of sightings at 1.10am turned out to be a Russian rocket re-entering the Earth's atmosphere, but that would only result in a high altitude firework display, so there was something else going on.

“We investigated and drew a complete blank.

“All the time I was doing my investigation, there was something niggling away at the back of my mind that I couldn't put my finger on. I knew I was missing something.

“Weeks later, a light bulb went off and I realised it’s the date. On March 30 and 31, three years earlier, there was a wave of sightings, again of a huge triangular shaped UFO over Belgium.

“The Belgians scrambled two F16 fighters to try and intercept this thing, which the airborne radar locked onto, but the UFO kept breaking the lock. It was playing cat and mouse with them.”

'More than coincidence'

The Chief of Staff of the Belgian Air Force, General Wilfried de Brouwer, personally investigated the UFO and ruled out stealth aircraft from other military powers, including the US.

“The official position of the Belgian government is that these sightings remained unknown,” says Nick. 

“The unofficial postscript was ‘thank goodness they were friendly, because if they hadn't been there was nothing we could have done’.”

Nick believes the matching dates are more than coincidental.

“Every now and then the phenomenon of UFOs does that to you,” he says. “It's almost like it’s toying with you.”

The unofficial postscript was ‘thank goodness they were friendly, because if they hadn't been there was nothing we could have done’

Nick Pope, Former Head Of The MoD’s UFO Research Programme

As well as being taken seriously by the UK intelligence departments, Nick believes the sightings would have been among the global incidents that were investigated by the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Programme (AATIP).

The top secret £17.5million unit, which ran between 2007 and 2012, features in the first episode of National Geographic’s new documentary series UFOs: Investigating The Unknown.

Through the testimony of first hand witnesses, the five part series looks into five decades of US government secrecy around the subject.

It includes the notorious secret desert base Area 51, and the unexplained malfunction of U.S. nuclear missiles after a sighting nearby.

'Tic Tac' incident

US Commander David Fravor reported seeing a 'Tic Tac' shaped UFO off the coast of Southern California in 2004Credit: ABC

A UFO similar to the infamous 'Tic Tac' seen by US Navy pilots, spotted over the UK hovering over Leicestershire in 2021

Credit: Lucy Jane Castle

The opening episode includes intriguing footage of a “Tic Tac” shape spotted by two RAF pilots off the coast of Southern California in 2004.

Lt Commander Alex Dietrich and Commander David Fravor recall seeing a “churning” on the surface of the ocean as an unidentified object hovered over the water and then shot upwards at astonishing speeds.

Commander Fravor describes it as a “long cylindrical white object, with rounded ends, roughly 40 feet long, that looked like a giant Tic Tac. It was pure white. It had no windows, no wings, no visual signs of propulsion”.

He says the object was changing direction rapidly, like a “ping pong ball bouncing off a wall”.

Former US Army Counterintelligence agent Luis Elizondo reveals the ‘Tic Tac’ was travelling at speeds unachievable in the SR71 - the fastest US jet of all time - but was able to change direction in an instant.

“We fly the SR71 at 3,200mph and if you want to turn that takes over half the state of Ohio to do it,” he says.

“But these can turn instantly. And we’re not talking about 3,200mph, they have been recorded at 13,000mph. The question arises, how is that possible?”

Elizonda - who worked in the AATIP programme until it ended in 2012 - became increasingly frustrated with the government’s refusal to take sightings seriously.

He eventually resigned from the Department of Defence in 2017, over “excessive secrecy and internal opposition". In his resignation letter, he warned that “ignoring these threats is not in the best interest of the Department”.

Nick, who ran the UK equivalent of the AATIP programme from 1990 to 1994, says the secrecy of governments around the issue stems from “embarrassment”. 

“The US government portrays itself as the world's preeminent superpower, so to acknowledge that there are things in their airspace, whatever they are, that are faster and more manoeuvrable and run rings around fast jets doesn't play very well,” he says. 

“So there’s the embarrassment factor, and maybe a little bit of fear that either an adversary has made a quantum leap in development, which has left the US in a poor second place, or, as some believe, this really is extra terrestrial, in which case we're not at the top of the food chain anymore."

'Secretive'

He adds that the UK government is "just as secretive".

"Even when the Ministry of Defence had its programme, we consistently downplayed both our involvement and the phenomenon itself," Nick explains.

"We dismissed it as being of little or no defence significance and routinely sent out letters to the public saying, ‘We glance at these reports to see if there's anything of defence interest, but we don't do much else.’

"But behind closed doors, there were highly classified intelligence assessments, trying to figure out if it could be Russia or China or something truly exotic.”

The existence of the US programme was exposed by Elizondo after he quit, leading to demands for its reinstatement and more transparency from the government.

“It was embarrassing for them because publicly, they said for years that we don't have a programme anymore,” says Nick. 

“Since a programme called Project Blue Book closed in 1969, they had denied there was any interest in UFOs or AUPs - unidentified aerial phenomena - as they were renamed.

“Then suddenly, it was revealed that not only did the Pentagon have this shadowy programme called AATIP, but the US Navy had been routinely encountering these things for years and had got some on camera.

“Arguably, the US government was caught in a lie.”

In 2020 the US set up the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) which, earlier this month, reported to Congress that it was reviewing 650 incidents, but that there is no evidence that any of them are of extra-terrestrial origin.

'Game-changer'

Nick believes the shooting down of a Chinese “spy balloon” off the coast of South Carolina earlier this year is a game-changer for the military's approach to UAPs.

“I think it both helps and hinders,” he says. 

“Balloon sounds very low tech, but this was carrying immensely sophisticated, insidious signals intelligence equipment which, according to assessments released by the State Department, was attempting to hack into secure US military communication systems.

"But these things are very slow so nobody supposes spy balloons are the same things, for example, as we see in the 2004 Navy videos. 

“Some UFOs will turn out to be spy balloons, but that has blurred the lines and may be taking people's eye off the ball. 

“But where it's helped, immensely, is for years the military have had this conventional, one-dimensional view of monitoring airspace.

“They have filters on their radars and if it doesn't behave like an aircraft, they're not interested.

"They missed the spy balloon, which was spotted by members of the public, and the government only got involved when it made a local news station.

“As a result of that they changed the filters and they're picking up a lot more, so it's going to be interesting.”

'200 sightings a year in UK'

During his time at the MoD Nick says he dealt with around 200 sightings a year in the UK.

Of those, 80 per cent were easily explained, 15 per cent were lacking the information or evidence to investigate, and only five per cent were “weird, genuinely unexplained”.

“Typically they were sightings from pilots, police officers, military personnel, tracked on radar or where we had good photos or videos that intelligence analysts looked at and couldn't come up with a conventional explanation," he adds.

The UK programme closed in 2009 - but Nick now believes we are lagging behind the US.

“In the US there has been a 180 degree flipping of the narrative from fringe to mainstream,” he says.

“Five years ago this was all crazy conspiracy theories, sci-fi fantasy; now it’s discussed in Congress and NASA's doing a study. So at some level this is out in the open.

“But the UK is still playing catch up. We need to up our game because this is a global phenomenon and whatever we're dealing with doesn't just fly in the US. There are sightings all around the world, and many in the UK.” 

While UFOs and extra-terrestrials conjure up images of little green men with domed heads and huge eyes, Nick believes that if a spaceship ever lands, we’d be in for a surprise when we looked inside. 

“Almost certainly we would find AI, not an alien,” he says. 

“Even if they could work around the apparent barrier of lightspeed, the impact of micro meteors and gamma ray bursts means interstellar travel for biological life forms is very difficult. 

“But even here we are on the verge of creating sentient AI, so imagine what a civilization with a million years' head start has probably achieved. 

“I think there would be a secure radiation-proof metal box or sphere and deep inside that would be sentient AI. 

“They would be coming here, hopefully, as scientists, explorers and anthropologists or even tourists - and not as conquerors.”

Nick remains “undecided” on whether the UFO reports are evidence of extra-terrestrial activity, but believes there is life on other planets.

“We don't yet have a smoking gun but we have a lot of interesting material,” he says. 

“I'm 100 per cent convinced there's life out there in the universe, and not just life but other civilizations. 

“As to whether we're being visited, I don't know. But I hope so.

"Of all the explanations, it would be the most interesting. And let's face it, the world would be a more fun place with aliens in it than without.”

• UFOs: Investigating The Unknown premiers on Tuesday 2nd May at 8pm on National Geographic UK

{ https://www.thesun.co.uk/ }

23-12-2023 om 01:49 geschreven door peter  

Einstein’s Student Claimed US Govt. Re-Engineered UFO & Studied Alien Bodies; Oppenheimer & Others Were Involved

In the 1980s, Dr. Sarbacher confirmed several facts about UFOs and ET to researchers William Steinman, Stan Freidman, Jerry Clark, and William Moore. He said that he had been officially told about the crash of an extraterrestrial craft in the Southwest in the early 1950s. This crash may have been the Roswell UFO crash, or it may have happened at a different time. (Source)

He confirmed to them (as well as to Wilbert Smith three decades before) that the issue was classified as more important than the development of the Atom Bomb. According to him, the debris was both incredibly light and highly durable. He understood that the aliens were lightweight and constructed somewhat like insects. He stated that a limited group of individuals, including Von Braun, Vannevar Bush, Oppenheimer, and Eric Walker, were likely involved in the crash debris analysis. They were unsuccessful in their attempts to reverse-engineer the technology.

Back in 1983, William Steinman, the author of the book “UFO Crash: Aztec, New Mexico, March 1948,” wanted to talk to Sarbacher about UFOs and dead aliens. He tried to get in touch with him and start a conversation. Steinman received a reply from Sarbacher in an amazing way. Sarbacher wrote him the following in a letter: (Source)

“Dear Mr. Steinman: I am sorry I have taken so long in answering your letters. However, I have moved my office and have had to make a number of extended trips. To answer your last question in your letter of October 14, 1983, there is no particular reason I feel I shouldn’t or couldn’t answer any and all of your questions. I am delighted to answer all of them to the best of my ability. You listed some of your questions in your letter of September 12th. I will attempt to answer them as you had listed them.

1. Relating to my own experience regarding recovered flying saucers, I had no association with any of the people involved in the recovery and have no knowledge regarding the dates of the recoveries. If I had I would send it to you.

2. Regarding verification that persons you list were involved, I can say only this: John von Neuman was definitely involved. Dr. Vannevar Bush was definitely involved, and I think Dr. Robert Oppenheimer also.

My association with the Research and Development Board under Doctor Compton during the Eisenhower administration was rather limited. o although I had been invited to participate in several discussions associated with the reported recoveries, I could not personally attend the meetings. I am sure that they would have asked Dr. von Braun, and the others that you listed were probably asked and may or may not have attended. This is all I know for sure.

3. I did receive some official reports when I was in my office at the Pentagon but all of these were left there as at the time we were never supposed to take them out of the office. 4. I do not recall receiving any photographs such as your request so I am not in a position to answer. 5. I have to make the same reply as on No. 4.

I recall the interview with Dr. Brenner of the Canadian Embassy. I think the answers I gave him were the ones you listed. Naturally, I was more familiar with the subject matter under discussion, at that time. Actually, I would have been able to give more specific answers had I attended the meetings concerning the subject. You must understand that I took this assignment as a private contribution. We were called “dollar-a-year men. My first responsibility was the maintenance of my own business activity so that my participation was limited.

About the only thing I remember at this time is that certain materials reported to have come from flying saucer crashes were extremely light and very tough. I am sure our laboratories analyzed them very carefully.

There were reports that instruments or people operating these machines were also of very light weight, sufficient to withstand the tremendous deceleration and acceleration associated with their machinery. I remember in talking with some of the people at the office that I got the impression these “aliens” were constructed like certain insects we have observed on earth, wherein because of the low mass the inertial forces involved in operation of these instruments would be quite low.

I still do not know why the high order of classification has been given and why the denial of the existence of these devices. I am sorry it has taken me so long to reply but I suggest you get in touch with the others who may be directly involved in this program.”

According to UFO researcher Anthony Bragalia, researcher D.M. Duncan located Sarbacher’s son, Robert Sarbacher Jr., living in Texas. Duncan had a revealing dialogue with Sarbacher. It turned out that the younger Sarbacher had once questioned his father about the UFO phenomena. His father spoke sparingly about the saucer subject. (Source)

Sarbacher Jr. said of his father: “He knew that they were real for the obvious reason that they would be going 600 mph and then make a direct 90-degree turn in mid-air without slowing down… separated from all inertia and gravity. Dad said that the reason he was called in was to build the right kind of missile to track these things since they were way too fast for any of our planes to catch. They wanted the missile to not destroy any of the UFOs, but to be able to track them. So Dad had cameras installed (like on the V-2 rockets) so when the UFO comes into our air space we would shoot missiles at them with cameras on them, since only a missile could keep up with the speed turns.”

Stunned at the revelation, Duncan wanted to clarify this, and Sarbacher’s son replied, “Yes, exactly to track UFOs, or rather to photograph and watch them… When he first told me about the missiles… the first thing I thought was, what? You were trying to destroy them? He (Sarbacher Sr.) said very normally and matter of factly, ‘No, we put cameras on the end of them.'”

Sarbacher never changed his story, and he resisted the urge to expound or make assumptions. Everyone who spoke with him was impressed. However, his statement could not be corroborated because all of the people he mentioned had passed away. It was the summer of 1986 when Sarbacher passed away.

{ https://www.howandwhys.com/ }

23-12-2023 om 01:08 geschreven door peter  

Some UFO records must be released, US Congress says

The records are to be released once 25 years has passed since their creation, unless the president directs them to remain classified, and newer records can be released sooner if the agency that created them allows it.

Related: 

• UFO whistleblower tells Congress the US government is hiding evidence of 'non-human intelligence'

https://youtu.be/tYQmWhOP31w

{ https://www.space.com/ }

21-12-2023 om 01:11 geschreven door peter  

This US President Hid Secret UFO/Alien Document In Govt. Building That Might Prove Aliens Exist

Robert Merritt, a federal informant from the Watergate era revealed a letter in which President Richard Nixon confirmed the existence of aliens. The letter was made public by the journalist and researcher Linda Moulton Howe.

• Note: Robert Merritt is a confidential informant for the New York Police Department’s Intelligence Division. He has also worked for the Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department, the FBI, the U.S. Secret Service, the U.S. Marshals Service, the ATF, the Manhattan District Attorney, and the U.S. Attorney for New York City. He lives in New York City.

Merritt’s testimony is corroborated by Douglas Caddy, a man who acted as a defense attorney for the parties convicted in the Watergate scandal and who claimed he knew where Nixon’s ET disclosure letter is hidden in the White House. The two published a book titled “Watergate Exposed: How the President of the United States and the Watergate Burglars Were Set Up as told to Douglas Caddy.”

In this historic Dark Journalist Episode, Merritt stepped forward for the first time ever in public and revealed his three meetings with President Nixon in a deep underground location beneath the White House.

During the first meeting, the president read aloud to Merritt a letter written in his own handwriting, where he revealed that they were protecting an extraterrestrial being. Scientists at Los Alamos eventually learned to communicate with the Being and developed vast knowledge from this interaction which helped them to achieve advanced technology and science. After reading it, Nixon sealed the letter in a time capsule, hiding it somewhere in the White House unknown to himself.

The second meeting was to give Merritt a copy of the letter. His mission was to give it to the National Security Advisor at the time, Henry Kissinger. No one else could know of the existence of the letter. Years later, the co-author of the letter, Douglas Caddy notified the National Archives that the capsule is still in the White House and that he would reveal its location if they assured that it would be released publicly.

• Note: Douglas Caddy, LLD, is an attorney, the cofounder of Young Americans for Freedom, and served as the criminal lawyer for the burglars in the Watergate break-in.

Merritt’s influence was so great within the White House that he was a key witness in the Watergate scandal. The Huston Plan referred to was a 43-page report of proposed security operations put together by White House aide Tom Charles Huston in 1970 at the request of President Richard Nixon, who wanted more control over domestic intelligence on so-called left-wing radicals and the anti-war movement.

Caddy’s conditions on the National Archives were simple, they could take possession of Nixon’s time capsule as long as they publicly revealed the content of the letter. As a person interested in history, politics, conspiracy theories, and the existence of extraterrestrial life, Linda Moulton Howe began to follow the events. Howe discovered that the Huston Plan accidentally revealed the existence of the time capsule hidden in the White House and its contents.

Read also:

• Ex-US Navy Officer Saw ‘Non-human Entities’ In His Bedroom After ‘Gimbal UFO’ Encounter
• Journalist Reveals First-Ever Photograph of UFO Shot Down in Syria in 2021

This is from a partial transcript of the interview provided by Linda Howe:

MERRITT: He had this letter. He pulled it out, and he read this one piece of paper to me. And then he put that letter in a manila envelope, and he put a gold seal over the top of the middle, and then he put a piece of tape across that, and on the front was handwritten, “To Henry Kissinger.” He asked for it to be hand-delivered or mailed, whichever was best or safest to do.

LISZT: Now, this letter was very important. Can you describe the letter to me?

MERRITT: It was two red lines. They looked like a scientific formula with letters, numbers, and other scientific symbols that would be used, like chemistry symbols. He said, “We possess the knowledge, and we have in our protection,” and he said, “Subjects from Planet X.” I asked him one question, and he didn’t seem to like what I asked him, but I said, “Are these the things in Mexico or Area 51?” He seemed to be offended by the fact that maybe I knew this.

LISZT: Okay, now in this final meeting with Nixon, he’s reading you this letter, he shows you this formula, and he’s now mentioning an alien that they have in protection, and he’s a little annoyed that you mentioned the being was in custody or being held.

MERRITT: Yes. The word he used was “protected,” not “captured,” not “in captivity.” He didn’t use any words that would mean against the will. You know as well as I do that if we had a being like that, yes, it would be in captivity. I don’t think we’d let it walk down the street.

LISZT: You said he mentioned that scientists at Los Alamos had learned to communicate with this being. What did he say about that?

MERRITT: That we had obtained a very vast amount of knowledge, very powerful, to possess this knowledge and was able to learn from it, would be the most powerful nation or government in the entire world and could rule the world.

“Nixon said that Star Trek was antiquated. He laughed and said, ‘Robert, we are so, so far advanced it would take your breath away!’”

- Robert Merritt in a secret 1972 meeting with President Nixon beneath the White House.

The Dark Journalist video lasted 75 minutes but the interesting points are summarized. The real question is: what to make of it? Nixon’s gone and Kissinger never talked about anything like this. Why would Nixon trust Merritt with such a secret and a subject (extraterrestrials) which has nothing to do with anything else in the Watergate scandal nor the Huston Plan, which is still partly classified?

• References:

{  https://www.howandwhys.com/ }

20-12-2023 om 23:56 geschreven door peter  

Ufo-waarnemingen in andere landen

Andere landen zoals Frankrijk (in 2007), of het Verenigd Koninkrijk (in 2011) hebben nationale dossiers over ufo's gedeclassificeerd. Japan kondigde in 2020 zelfs een nieuw actieprotocol aan voor zijn leger in het geval van waarnemingen.

Foto: Albert Antony/Unsplash

Historische waarnemingen

Als we teruggaan in de tijd, zijn er veel momenten rond het ufo-fenomeen die de geschiedenis zijn ingegaan. Laten we eens kijken naar de beroemdste gevallen ...

Kenneth Arnold: de eerste waarneming?

De eerste geregistreerde waarneming van een ufo dateert van 24 juni 1947. De Amerikaanse piloot Kenneth Arnold (in het midden op de foto) aanschouwde wat als de eerste ufo-waarneming kan worden beschouwd. Hoewel er eerdere soortgelijke gevallen werden gemeld, kreeg deze waarneming veel publiciteit en aandacht.

Onregelmatig, helder en snel

Arnold verklaarde dat, terwijl hij op zoek was naar een vermist vliegtuig, hij boven Mount Rainier (Washington) niet minder dan negen objecten met abnormale bewegingen zag die samen in een lijn vlogen. Hij beschreef ze als "extreem heldere objecten", met een "onregelmatige vliegwijze" die zich met "enorme snelheid" verplaatsten.

Vliegende schotels

Het is door deze waarneming dat de mythe van de ovaalvormige ufo is ontstaan en de term 'vliegende schotel' begon te worden gebruikt, aangezien, in zijn eigen woorden, "ze onregelmatig vlogen, als een schotel die in het water werd gegooid".

Een vonk in de wolken

Anderen gaan echter veel verder terug in de tijd. In het Zuid-Amerikaanse Chili werden in de 19e eeuw verschillende vreemde dingen gezien. Zo meldde Maria Graham in haar boek 'Journal of a Residence in Chile' (1822) dat ze een reeks vreemde lichten boven de zee had gezien. Ook zag commandant Buenaventura Martínez Díaz in 1853 dat hij en voorwerp had gezien dat "de wolken doorkruiste in de vorm van een vonk."

Een alien in Talca

En op 15 mei 1861 berichtte de Chileense krant La Esperanza over de dagen van verschrikking die de inwoners van de stad Talca beleefden. Niet vanwege een ufo, maar vanwege de aanwezigheid van een wezen dat van een andere planeet leek te komen.

Foto: Stephen Leopardi/Unsplash

De ufo's van Copiacó

In die Chileense precedenten springen "drie onverklaarbare luchtverschijnselen" het meest in het oog. De krant El Constituente had het over drie waarnemingen in maart, juli en november 1868. Ze waren allemaal in Copiacó, een stad waar vele jaren later, in 2013, nog eens een waarneming werd gemeld.

Duizenden ufo-waarnemingen

Sindsdien zijn er duizenden ufo-waarnemingen gemeld, door strijdkrachten van verschillende landen, vliegtuigpiloten of gewone mensen. Waarnemingen die in veel gevallen een wetenschappelijke verklaring hebben, maar die in andere gevallen verontrustend mysterieus blijven.

Project Blue Book

Van 1948 tot 1969 werd in de Verenigde Staten Project Blue Book gelanceerd, een overheidsinitiatief om ufo's te onderzoeken als een mogelijke bedreiging voor de nationale veiligheid. Dit alles in een tijd waarin de luchtmacht 12.618 waarnemingen rapporteerde, waarvan er vandaag de dag nog 701 ongeïdentificeerd blijven.

Geen bewijs dat ufo's buitenaards waren

Project Blue Book werd in 1969 afgesloten vanwege de hoge kosten. De conclusie van het onderzoek luidde dat de ufo's geen bedreiging vormden voor de nationale veiligheid en dat er geen bewijs was dat het om buitenaardse vaartuigen ging, noch om technologische ontwikkelingen die de moderne wetenschap te boven gaan.

Het Roswell-incident

In 1947, hetzelfde jaar van de waarneming van Kenneth Arnold, vond ook een van de meest legendarische ufo-gebeurtenissen plaats: het Roswell-incident. Een ongeïdentificeerd vliegend object stortte neer in een veld in deze stad in New Mexico, en onmiddellijk daarna volgde een ontmoeting met buitenaardse wezens.

Velen geloven nog steeds dat het een ufo was

De Amerikaanse regering probeerde de commotie rond het Roswell-incident te sussen door te beweren dat het om een weerballon ging en niet om een vliegende schotel, zoals velen aanvankelijk beweerden. Volgens een opiniepeiling van CNN uit 1997 denkt echter bijna twee derde van de Amerikanen nog steeds dat het een ufo was die er was neergestort.

Betrouwbare getuigen?

Er waren vermeende getuigen die toen verklaarden dat ze hadden gezien hoe militairen het ongeïdentificeerde object en de lichamen van de buitenaardse wezens uit het gebied van het incident hadden weggehaald. Toch was er geen echt bewijs.

Ufo-toerisme

Momenteel leeft Roswell van het toerisme van ufo- en alien-liefhebbers uit de hele wereld die blijven zoeken naar antwoorden. De stad heeft zelfs een drukbezocht 'UFO Museum'.

Area 51

En als Roswell een mythische plek is binnen het ufo-fenomeen, dan wat gezegd van Area 51, een gebied midden in de Nevadawoestijn? Velen geloven dat de Amerikaanse regering er zowel ufo's als lichamen van aliens verbergt.

Programma's tegen de Sovjets

In 2013 declasseerde de CIA documenten waarin officieel werd erkend dat Area 51 een geheime militaire basis was waar niets buitenaards werd verborgen, maar dat het werd gebruikt om de luchtbewakingsprogramma's U-2 en OXCART te testen tegen de Sovjets tijdens de Koude Oorlog.

Ufo's en kernwapens

Zeven voormalige leden van de luchtmacht van de Verenigde Staten beweerden in 2010 dat ze tussen de jaren zestig en tachtig ufo's hadden waargenomen in de buurt van kernwapeninstallaties.

Gedeactiveerde raketten

Over een van de waargenomen ufo's zei Robert Salas, een voormalige kapitein van de luchtmacht: "Onze raketten begonnen in wat men een niet-actieve toestand noemt te komen; ze konden niet worden gelanceerd. Ze werden gewoon gedeactiveerd, terwijl dit object om ons heen was."

Buitenaardse interesse in kernwapens

Ufoloog Robert Hastings, die de persconferentie organiseerde waarop deze waarnemingen werden gemeld, zei: "Deze heren geloven dat de planeet wordt bezocht door wezens uit een andere wereld, die geïnteresseerd zijn in de geschiedenis van nucleaire wapens die begon aan het einde van de Tweede Wereldoorlog."

Bevolen om een ufo neer te halen

Op 20 mei 1957 kregen volgens de krant The Times twee Amerikaanse piloten het bevel een ufo neer te halen die boven het Engelse platteland zweefde. Enkele veteranen van het leger, zoals die op de afbeelding, hebben het verhaal publiekelijk verteld.

De ufo die de piloten achtervolgden

Volgens Milton Torres (een van de betrokken piloten) bewoog het object "onregelmatig". Bovendien was het zo groot als "een vliegend vliegdekschip" en "hing het enkele ogenblikken in de lucht voordat het verdween met een geschatte snelheid van 12.000 kilometer per uur."

Een ontvoering in Chili

Door de zaak van korporaal Armando Valdés kwam de Chileense ufologie wereldwijd onder de aandacht. Armando zag in 1977 samen met zeven andere soldaten een ufo. Ze zagen vreemde lichten in de lucht en daarna verdween Armando gedurende 15 minuten.

Hij herinnert zich de ontvoering niet

In een interview met Agence France Presse in november 1978 zei Armando dat hij zes of zeven stappen zette weg van de groep, richting het licht, en dat hij geen idee had wat er daarna gebeurde. Hij zei: "Iets trok me aan. Het was als een interne communicatie met het licht."

Het onverklaarbare verstrijken van de tijd

Korporaal Armando, die zich de vorige dag had geschoren, had een baard van vijf tot zes dagen. Bovendien duidde zijn polshorloge de datum 30 april aan in plaats van 26, en liep de klok 15 minuten achter.

Foto: age barros/Unsplash

Het ufo-incident in Voronezh

Op 27 september 1989 meldde het persbureau TASS dat voetballende jongens in een stadspark in Voronezh (Rusland) een roze gloed in de lucht zagen, een dieprode bal die zweefde, en een alien met drie ogen. De kinderen waren de enige getuigen, maar een politieagent meldde dat hij "een object in de lucht zag vliegen".

De Phoenix Lights

De Phoenix Lights (soms ook wel de 'Lichten boven Phoenix' genoemd) waren een reeks op grote schaal waargenomen ufo's boven Arizona, Nevada en de Mexicaanse staat Sonora, op 13 maart 1997. Er werden verschillende soorten lichten gezien door duizenden mensen.

Een deltavorming schip

Fife Symington, de voormalige gouverneur van Arizona en een voormalig luchtmachtofficier, verklaarde op CNN: "Ik zag een enorm deltavormig schip stilletjes over Squaw Peak vliegen, een bergketen in Phoenix. Het was echt indrukwekkend. Ik was stomverbaasd, omdat ik me naar het westen keerde op zoek naar de Phoenix Lights in de verte."

Waarnemingen van Chileense piloten

In 2007 onthulde het Chileense leger tijdens een bijeenkomst van ufologen in Viña del Mar dat enkele van zijn piloten ufo's hadden waargenomen. Kapitein Rodrigo Bravo omschreef het volgens het persbureau EFE als "spectaculaire ervaringen op verschillende plaatsen".

Winston Churchill hield ufo-waarnemingen geheim

In 2010 werd via de BBC en na enkele door het Ministerie van Defensie openbaar gemaakte rapporten onthuld dat de voormalige Britse premier Winston Churchill de opdracht gaf om vermeende ufo-waarnemingen door de luchtmacht vijftig jaar lang verborgen zodat er geen paniek zou ontstaan onder de bevolking.

Vernietigd ufo-bewijsmateriaal

Wetenschapper Nick Pope verklaarde aan de BBC dat "Churchill en Eisenhower besloten om de buitengewone waarnemingen van ufo's geheim te houden". Hij merkte ook op dat "het meeste archiefmateriaal uit de jaren vijftig werd vernietigd".

Oumuamua: een asteroïde of een buitenaards ruimteschip?

Oumuamua was een mysterieus object dat in 2017 door het zonnestelsel trok en werd ontdekt en drie dagen lang gevolgd door verschillende telescopen tot het verdween. Het incident veroorzaakte een groot debat in de wereld van de wetenschap. De meesten verzekerden dat het om een zeldzame asteroïde of komeet ging, maar anderen beweerden dat het misschien een enorm buitenaards ruimteschip was.

Kenmerken van het meest controversiële object

Volgens de gemaakte berekeningen was Oumuamua ongeveer 400 meter lang en 40 meter breed, en had het een roodachtig oppervlak. Het meest verrassende kenmerk was dat de baan ervan niet lineair was, maar eerder chaotisch, zeer snel draaiend en met zeer uitgesproken richtingsveranderingen.

Doelbewust gestuurd door aliens?

Volgens astronomen Shmuel Bialy en Abraham Loeb (foto) is Oumuamua mogelijk een volledig operationele sonde die opzettelijk door een buitenaardse beschaving naar de buurt van de aarde is gestuurd.

Een nooit eerder gezien opject

Loeb is een groot verdediger van het feit dat Oumuamua het eerste ontdekte object in het zonnestelsel is dat daarbuiten is ontstaan. Hij herinnerde ons in een interview met de BBC eraan dat het ongewone kenmerken heeft die het tot een nooit eerder gezien zeldzaam object maken.

Buitenaardse bezoeken tijdens de pandemie

De laatste vermeende waarnemingen deden zich voor en namen exponentieel toe tijdens de maandenlange lockdown van de COVID-19-pandemie. Plots was − volgens de getuigenissen op sociale media met foto's en video's − het luchtruim gevuld met ufo's.

Andere gemelde waarnemingen

Om enkele historische waarnemingen te noemen in de wereld: de waarneming op Antarctica (1965); het ufo-incident in Teheran (1976); die van Manises (1979), de Canarische Eilanden (1976-1979) en Ochate (1981), alle drie in Spanje; het Colares-incident in 1977 (Brazilië) ...

Beroemdheden en ufo's

De Republikeinse kandidaat voor het Congres in Miami, Bettina Rodríguez, heeft gezegd dat ze in 2009 werd ontvoerd door aliens. Ook de Argentijnse artiest Andrés Calamaro heeft bevestigd dat hij een ufo zag in de jaren tachtig, toen hij op tournee was met zijn groep Los Plateros.

Zijn we echt alleen in het heelal?

Het ufo-fenomeen is nog steeds zeer interessant en bevat, zoals alle regeringen toegeven, mysteries. Voor veel van deze incidenten is er geen wetenschappelijke verklaring, al kan dat zijn omdat we niet over alle gegevens beschikken. Hoe dan ook: vliegende schotels zijn iconische, literaire en cinematografische elementen.

Foto: Unintended Concept / Unsplas

{ https://thedailydigest.com/belgie/ }

09-12-2023 om 22:28 geschreven door peter  

5,500km Boomerang UAP Passes Sun On Nov 27, 2023, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Nov 27, 2023, 16:46:53
Location of sighting: Earths Sun
Source: Helioviewer.org 

 

I was looking at objects near the sun on Helioviewer. It's a NASA program that is designed for the public and educators to share. I found that in a single frame of the video, there is a huge craft that measures 5,500km across from wing tip to wing tip. Yes you heard me right, it's long and it's a boomerang type UAP shape. As it passes the sun it is unphased by the suns powerful gravity, showing no sign of bending. Also, the UAP seems to be pulling the suns material toward it and creating a stream behind the UAP, much like a ship moving through the ocean and living long lines in its wake from the plankton. A similar shaped UFO was seen by thousands of residence in Phoenix, Arizona on March 13, 1997, where a huge boomerang UFO blocked out the stars in the sky for miles.

 

It's hard to believe that this craft was caught in only one frame, that means it was traveling faster than anything we have on Earth. I looked at the frames:

 

16:36:41 frame before

16:46:53 UAP here ++++

16:56:29 frame after

And I found that there was a ten minute per frame rate. This tells us that the UAP was traveling very fast, not only faster than any rocket today, but faster than any comet or meteor ever recorded. It's traveling at partial light speed, about that of 1/10. Which tells me that not only was it fast, but if object can come close to light speed, there must be those that can travel faster than light speed, which is what makes time travel possible. The speed of the object, size and shape all indicate a massive alien ship passed our sun and was in our solar system on Nov 27th, but NASA of course would never mention it, because they believe the public is not intelligent enough to ever discover or find this info in their data bases. Clearly NASA needs to catch up to my speed, because they are falling far behind. 

Scott C. Waring 

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

30-11-2023 om 23:28 geschreven door peter  

Sightings of UFOs may challenge our entire worldview, but the facts are too compelling to ignore, and they’re not going away. So, it’s time to wash off the sticky stigma and engage in serious discussion about the evidence, and its implications. 

Most UFO sightings are attributable to man-made objects like experimental aircraft or satellites, innocent misidentifications of Venus and other celestial objects, or outright hoaxes. However, we now know that in a minority of cases, there appears to be something else going on: something quite extraordinary and beyond our current comprehension. 

According to the U.S. Department of Defense, there are objects of unknown origin, evidently under intelligent control, which behave in ways that seem to challenge our understanding of physics. These objects don’t just “fly” without any apparent lift surfaces or means of propulsion; according to some military testimony, they would appear to be the fastest technological objects on Earth, capable of accelerating so quickly that they should create sonic booms, superheat the air around them into a glowing plasma, and instantly kill any occupants on board. 

Instead, they silently maneuver with perfect agility through the atmosphere and, according to some eyewitness reports, underwater, as if basic rules of inertia and friction simply don’t apply to them. 

There’s general acknowledgment that these phenomena have been documented in America since at least the late 1940s, and probably much earlier. Hence, many longtime UFO advocates, as well as those newer to the subject, are now asking why it has taken 70 years for government offices to openly regard UFOs as a subject of serious inquiry. This is a question that deserves a lengthy public discussion. 

Today, serious researchers are beginning–sometimes grudgingly–to admit that UFOs (or UAPs if you prefer the rebranded version) are a valid area of study, and pockets of scientific enthusiasm are emerging. After the New York Times made the revelation of a secret Pentagon UFO study their front page story, the Department of Defense subsequently admitted that leaked UFO videos were in fact real (and that it has others it’s not showing us). Since that time, a NASA UFO research initiative headed by Princeton’s former chair of astronomy has been launched, former Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb’s Galileo Project wants to determine if the strange phenomena are extraterrestrial. The Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office is now investigating UFO phenomena across all the branches of the military; the US Navy has revised its protocols to counter stigmas against UFO reporting and encourage sighting reports by pilots (like this one); and there have been briefings in the US Senate and House regarding the more than 650 sightings now being studied by AARO, marking an almost singular point of bipartisanship in a traditionally fractured Congress.

This explosion of interest and influx of expertise, credibility, and funding into UFO research will create a flow of ideas between old-hat UFO researchers and establishment newcomers to the subject. As some scientific communities shift to incorporate the nascently-legitimate subject of UFO research, they may have to accommodate elements of the other’s conceptual frameworks, methodologies, and research agendas, and this will require questioning old assumptions about what sort of evidence actually exists and how to interpret it. Likewise, it is the perfect moment for UFO-interested folks to pause and evaluate their own assumptions about the subject, many of which seem to have been in place since the very beginning of the Flying Saucer craze that in 1947 began simultaneously in both America and Canada. As career researchers and academics (like me) join the conversation, the contours of the conversation itself will inevitably shift–I think for the better. 

HOW I CAME TO THE SUBJECT, AND WHAT I NOTICED AS A NEWCOMER

My own journey down the UFO rabbit hole began one day early in 2019. As I flipped through a catalog from Oxford University Press, one title, in particular, jumped out at me: American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology by Diana Walsh Pasulka, a tenured professor of religion at the University of North Carolina. What surprised me most was that the blurb in the catalog suggested the author thought that it was not merely the UFO believers that were interesting, but that the phenomenon itself was worth serious attention. I promptly ordered a copy, and once it arrived I spent the next few days absorbed in the most bizarre piece of nonfiction I’d ever read. 

The UFO enthusiasts Pasulka spent the most time with–two men she dubbed “James” and “Tyler” to preserve their anonymity–were both experiencers of the phenomenon. However, they weren’t tinfoil-hat-waring obsessives; they were scientists and academics, and not long after her book was published, a prodigious Stanford biomedical scientist named Garry Nolan revealed that he was the man referred to in the text as “James”. Around the same time, members of Reddit, by perusing the Vatican archive visitors’ log for the days Pasulka and “Tyler” visited,  discovered that the latter appears to have been Timothy Taylor, founder of Endius. 

Screenshot from the Vatican Observatory 2017 Annual Report

(Vatican Observatory).

What I found as I slipped into the deep end of the pool of UFO research was that, first, there is no shallow end. It’s deep ends everywhere you go, and once you clear away the debris of obvious hoaxes and non-evidential sightings, every drop in the pool–that is, every case warranting sustained attention–is a little ocean with its own perplexing depths where nothing is what it at first seems to be. The important facts of each case are often so embedded in the commentaries and interpretations that have grown around them that it’s difficult to consider them separately from the belief systems of the UFO community itself.

QUESTIONING COMMON SENSE WITH RELATION  TO UFOS

Like all communities defined by a belief system, over time the most important beliefs become accepted so widely that they eventually feel too obvious even to mention. It’s similar to the way we don’t ever point out that murder isn’t nice; beliefs like these are accepted so widely and deeply that they pass out of consciousness altogether to some deeper place, where they operate out of sight. 

We are born into an atmosphere of these powerful but unspoken beliefs, and we adopt them not by reasoning about the evidence for or against them; rather, we simply accept them as part of the foundation of beliefs that we need in order to do any reasoning at all. If reasoning were a game of chess, these beliefs wouldn’t be pieces in the game or moves made by players: they’d be the board. 

These beliefs–the ones paradoxically so obvious that they’re invisible–are what some people in my field call ideology. The word is sometimes used pejoratively, but the fact is that everyone has an ideology. Questioning a person’s foundational beliefs can be so uncomfortable that it feels like an existential threat, and we respond defensively, even violently. Likewise, if we encounter any idea that flatly contradicts our foundational beliefs, it will seem patently false and absurd. 

And this is exactly what I think the UFO community should do right now, in light of the growth of attention and collaboration regarding the topic. Shaking up the community’s ideology, and pushing at the wobbly bits will help identify areas ripe for creative thought, and will make collaboration more smooth and transparent. We may even surprise ourselves once we all lay our ideological cards on the table.

To us take a few first steps in this direction, I’ve identified four assumptions that seem to me to act as a kind of ideological orthodoxy among experiencers and researchers, and even among everyday people who maintain a quiet interest in the subject. These assumptions, I think, have their roots in our shared experience of Western culture and its worldview with relation to UFOs, from our suspicions toward governments to familiar tropes from science fiction stories to Hollywood’s speculative depictions of our intergalactic neighbors. When it comes to asking serious questions about the unknown, though, we need better foundations than these, and building those foundations starts with deconstructing our current ones.

FOUR ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT UFOS WORTH PRODDING

I’ve noticed four basic assumptions prevalent among UFO researchers and enthusiasts, as well as the general public that, as a philosopher, I think deserve some prodding. 

ASSUMPTION ONE: THE SUPREMACY OF ETH

The first culture-wide assumption that, as a philosopher, I think deserves a close look is the one that, at first glance, seems most sensible;  this is the assumption that the most obvious explanation for real UFOs is also the best one: that they’re extraterrestrial craft, under the control of intelligent extraterrestrial beings. This idea, often called the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (or ETH for short), seems to come to mind spontaneously for nearly everyone when they think of UFOs (including me). But, after a lot of reflection, as far as I can tell, it’s not our brains’ automatic first choice because there is really strong evidence that ETH is a  better explanation than any other. Rather, I think it’s our default assumption because most of us don’t think outside the possibilities presented to us in science fiction. 

The consequence is that most of us aren’t even aware that the Extra-Terrestrial Hypothesis (ETH), with its either/or logic of “ if it’s not humans, then it must be ETs”, is certainly not the only plausible explanation for these phenomena. There are other views that deserve serious consideration. One possibility is that there is some natural process that occupies some unknown area of physics, and that can mimic intelligent behavior. This may sound far-fetched, but we already know of other natural phenomena that seem to behave in inexplicably intelligent ways: unintelligent slime molds can solve mazes and can even reproduce maps of Tokyo’s railway system. Similarly, totally blind evolutionary processes produce biological objects that seem like the product of design by intelligence. Perhaps some UFOs are themselves natural phenomena that simply seem to behave with intelligence. This of course leaves the question of how they defy our understanding of physics, but it’s a start. 

Another possibility is that UFOs are a special kind of mental phenomenon that can manifest in visible, external ways. Some Renaissance scientists studying the eye pointed out that it had the same structure as a projector, and reckoned that the eye might sometimes work in reverse, projecting light to create external images, rather than receiving light and turning it into mental images. 

Fig 2. Aerial perspective, by Johann Zahn, Oculus artificialis teledioptricus sive telescopium, 1702, public domain.

We can be confident today that this particular phenomenon isn’t real, but arguably stranger phenomena are now well-established realities. From robots controlled entirely by brain waves to machines that can render our dreams in visible images, technologies are allowing the contents of our minds to have a powerful presence in the world outside our heads. None of this even mentions theories of reality that totally throw into question the distinction between the “internal” and “external” world–ideas like the Simulation Hypothesis and holographic theories of the universe. 

It may also be worth considering whether some of these phenomena could be terrestrial, but nonhuman, in origin. Given that the US military suggests that at least some UFOs can travel underwater, that 70% of the Earth is ocean and that 95% of it is totally unexplored, the idea that these things are from here seems more plausible when we consider just how little of here we’ve actually mapped.. And while it seems unlikely that any intelligent, technological society arose before Homo Sapiens arrived on the scene, if such a civilization had arisen, we might not even be able to tell, because, while the Earth has been habitable for 40-600 million years, the geologic record itself only goes back 1.8 to 2.6 million. Entertaining these possibilities or creating new ones will, however, require abandoning the assumption that ETH is the only real game in town.

Another alternative to the ETH put forward by one of the most credentialed and intellectually rigorous UFO investigators out there, Jacques Vallée, is that reality itself has within it some fundamental mechanism for disrupting our certainty about the world. This mechanism, he theorizes, kicks in at opportune moments to manifest weirdness that is calculated, often humorously, to mystify us into wonder or incomprehension. For Vallée, who calls his theory the “Control System Hypothesis”, reality itself may be a trickster whose purpose is to nudge our collective consciousness in ways that encourage society to develop in particular ways.

As bizarre as this idea sounds, it’s not one that Vallée brought into his research into UFOs, but rather a notion he began to formulate after decades of flying around the world, personally investigating reported encounters and interviewing experiencers. By his own account, he was initially persuaded by the ETH, but case by case, he became convinced that the details simply didn’t add up to an extraterrestrial explanation. He found that, when experiencers were allowed to describe the details of their encounters as they experienced them, rather than simply responding to standard data-collection questions about the size and shape of craft, number, and arrangement of lights, etc., these sane, intelligent experiencers who shunned publicity and sought no personal gain, recalled details that are flatly absurd. The occupants of UFOs disembark for no other apparent reason than to argue with witnesses about what the time is, or to offer bystanders pancakes. Such encounters seem intentionally surreal to Vallée as if they were constructed in order to mystify experiencers with their absurdity. 

Another category of (quasi) encounters with UFOs that is rife with the absurd is the category of reported alien abductions. Abduction reports often describe beings who, despite obviously possessing ultra-sophisticated technology, inflict pseudo-medical “examinations” upon abductees using tools and methods that would be laughable for their medieval silliness if they weren’t so traumatizing for those who report these experiences. 

The bizarre details of abduction encounters make them easy to dismiss out of hand, but it’s probably a mistake to ignore these reports. Pulitzer Prize-winner and then-chair of psychiatry at Harvard, John Mack, spent over a decade conducting hundreds of hours of interviews with self-identified abductees. In the end, he published collaborations with other psychiatrists,  and several related books in which he reached three firm conclusions: 1) the people he interviewed were not crazy, 2) they were not lying, and 3) the only thing they seemed to have in common was the fact that they reported being abducted. Simply put, these sane, otherwise normal people really believed these things had happened to them.

You may, at this point, decide that we have strayed too far from respectable scientific speculation; Mack’s colleagues at Harvard suspected the same of him, and, in an attempt to oust him and formally discredit the incredible conclusions he drew, they descended upon his work with a formal investigation, the first Harvard had ever conducted upon one of its own faculty members. Their investigation alleged that Mack had committed gross professional irresponsibility by  “communicat[ing], in any way whatsoever, to a person who has reported a ‘close encounter’ with an extraterrestrial life form that this experience might well have been real”. For fourteen months the team of Harvard professors pored over piles of Mack’s notes, data, and recorded interviews before they were finally forced to conclude that, despite a few methodological criticisms, there was no basis to deny the credibility of his work. Harvard subsequently declared that Mack–a man who publicly argued for the reality of abduction cases– was, and always had been, a member of Harvard’s faculty in good standing and that his scholarship was worthy of one of the greatest universities in the world.

Mack openly acknowledged  that the abduction phenomenon is “some kind of psychological, spiritual experience” that is “both literally and physically happening”, and speculated that the events were “originating, perhaps, in another dimension.” He never made the surreal absurdities of abduction encounters a focal point of his study, but he left us with good reasons to believe these experiences were genuine–absurdities and all–which means the absurdity at the heart of many UFO and abduction encounters still requires an explanation. Vallée’s hypothesis seems, to a degree, like an attempt to address some of the questions raised by Mack’s research.

A totally different approach to understanding the incredible and sometimes absurd facts of the UFO phenomenon–an approach I call the “missing concepts” view–would be to consider that, if UFOs are the work of other intelligent beings, they are almost certainly the product of beings who have forms of experience, conceptual categories, and kinds of activities, and aims that would be incomprehensibly foreign to us. Our current relationship to the phenomena may then be akin to a race of intelligent, but totally blind aliens who have found and are trying to understand a human-made kaleidoscope. UFO phenomena, in other words, may be conceptually incomprehensible to us both in how they work, and what their basic purpose is. Our mental toolbox may be missing some of the essential concepts that are necessary for describing the phenomena, even at a rudimentary level, the way intelligent beings without a concept of visual experience simply can’t theorize their way to a good explanation of a kaleidoscope. 

Each of these hypotheses—Vallee’s “control system”, the possibility that some are exotic but natural intelligence-mimicking phenomena, that they’re somehow of terrestrial origin, or that UFOs are currently conceptually incomprehensible–all deserve consideration alongside the ETH, and we should be trying to design many other new hypotheses too, along with empirical tests to eliminate them if they don’t fit the evidence. The standard assumption that any legitimate UFOs are extraterrestrial craft shouldn’t simply be discarded, but it should be tested alongside these other hypotheses.

ASSUMPTION TWO: THE UNITY OF THE PHENOMENA OF UFOS

The second assumption that seems to underlie nearly every conversation about UFOs is the belief that these unexplained phenomena are each individual manifestations of a single root phenomenon; that they’re all ultimately the same kind of thing and so, whatever the explanation may be, we only need one explanation. Like all assumptions, this is rarely stated, but I’ve yet to come across anyone who wants to distinguish between types of UFOs for the purpose of attributing unrelated causes to them.

It may be tempting to assume that we should prefer a single explanation for a host of weird phenomena to multiple explanations because in doing so we satisfy Occam’s Razor–the dictum that we should always prefer simpler explanations to more complex ones. But Occam’s Razor is so widely misunderstood, so limited in its useful applicability, and so easily misapplied that it may be best to just avoid trying to satisfy it at all. Point in fact, conspiracy theories are almost always perfectly obedient to Occam’s Razor, because they propose to explain nearly everything as the product of a single cause. After all, positing one Jewish space laser is, in a real sense, a simpler explanation for California’s wildfires than a combination of worldwide climate change factors and specific conditions on the ground in California.

When we’re trying to explain a collection of distinct phenomena spread across space and time, each with its own unique, noteworthy features, the best default assumption is that there are multiple distinct causes at play. The body of documented UFO phenomena includes glowing orbs, military encounters with craft-like objects, accounts of human and humanoid creatures, massive air battles among flying objects of wildly varying descriptions, and celestial apparitions, to name a few. This raises a serious methodological question: how do we draw the boundaries to define UFOs in the first place? How, for instance, are we to distinguish in every case between religious or mystical encounters–like the 1917 events at Fatima, Portugal–and more “normal” UFO encounters, with which they share some important features? This question becomes even more complex when we consider that experiencers can interpret the same details very differently depending on their worldview.

What is needed is for us to develop a rigorous, standardized taxonomy of the different kinds of encounters according to both empirical and subjective elements, and then to consider, for each type, which explanation fits with and explains the data best. There’s no good reason to assume, in the face of so much perplexing evidence, that there’s really only one kind of weird thing going on. 

ASSUMPTION THREE: THE CONSISTENCY OF THE GOVERNMENT

Another idea joined at the hip of nearly every discussion about UFOs is the belief that The Government (usually the US) has probably already solved the mystery, and they’re playing dumb. The reasoning is clear: how could a technological superpower with a military spanning the globe not know what’s behind these phenomena, especially given the serious national security implications of strange objects in our airspace? 

The heart of this suspicion is an assumption that the government–and here it’s more like The Government–is unified enough that it can harbor within itself a kind of secret society that spans its various branches and bureaus and operates effectively, and in secret. However, take a cursory glance at any major government project (and here, again, I am thinking especially of the US Government); whether it’s an interstate system, national healthcare, public education, taxation, natural disaster response, or even passing an annual budget, one will quickly conclude that our governments very often lack the unity required for accomplish even their most fundamental tasks. 

This is just the nature of the beast: a large group comprising various ideologies tasked with pursuing multiple complexes and often competing goals is always at the risk of fracturing from internal stress, at which point it may be unable to accomplish even its day-to-day duties. Any system constantly fighting the tides of such internal stresses is almost certainly incapable of perpetrating a coordinated, decades-long, system-wide coverup of the most important truths humanity has ever known.  If we consider that there are also thousands of dogged and competent journalists sniffing for corruption, ethically motivated insiders ready to blow the whistle, and hundreds of other governments with their own messy innards and competing interests, it is possible, at most, to believe that single incidents–maybe even massively important ones–could be concealed if they fell under the purview of a single office or bureau, but the possibility that large numbers of people across multiple, often-quarrelsome governments have cooperatively succeeded at suppressing monumental truths about our place in the universe for decades seems vanishingly small. 

We would be better off avoiding attributing such awesome power and competence to our governments, and instead, adopt a more nuanced conception of governments that sees them not as unified wholes, but as loose collections of bureaus that cooperate or share information with one another when it serves their individual interests, but often operate with disregard or outright antagonism toward one another. A more accurate picture of the situation would then emerge, one in which the UFO phenomenon is a very large jigsaw puzzle of which each government likely only possesses a few pieces, which are then scattered across that government’s chain of island-like bureaus and offices, which are not particularly cooperative with each other, and so may not even acknowledge that they have any of the pieces, or that the puzzle is even real.

ASSUMPTION FOUR: THE INEVITABILITY OF DISCLOSURE

There is, however, a growing acknowledgment that the puzzle of UFOs is “real”, and this appears, at least for some within the UFO community, to confirm a long-held belief so important it verges on the prophetic: the belief that many of those in power –usually government officials– already know what is really behind these phenomena, and that a day of Disclosure is coming when the weight of the evidence and public concern about UFOs will become so great that it breaks down the wall of silence. On that day, the government will admit it has known for a long time that UFOs are real and that they’re not terrestrial in origin. 

Disclosure is usually conceived as the end result of a grass-roots effort: there will come a moment when the UFO community accumulates enough of its own evidence and public demand for the truth grows strong enough. Then the veil will fall and the government will come clean to the public about what it knows and the world will simply believe because the truth will be so unambiguous that no interpretation is required to understand it. 

The fourth assumption I want to interrogate concerns this supposedly-inevitable result of disclosure. The deluge of government revelations is expected by many to be a watershed moment that brings about the global realization that we are not alone in the universe and that we can no longer pretend to occupy its center. This will be a moment of enlightenment that unites humanity with a shared truth that transcends our differences.  The utopian vision of disclosure is founded upon a single essential, but hidden, assumption: that there is a kind of evidence so powerful that when it is presented to any sane, reasonable person, they will be convinced and draw the same conclusion. In this case, it is the belief that there’s some kind of evidence that, upon revelation, would overwhelmingly convince the global public that we’re not alone in the universe.

There is, however, no such evidence. In fact, there never could be.

This may seem like an odd claim, and maybe you feel inclined to reply, “Look, I guarantee that if a fleet of UFOs showed up at the White House, the whole world would believe”. But this would only prove that clear evidence doesn’t compel belief the way we tend to think, because, as it turns out, sightings of UFOs have already been reported at the White House on multiple occasions. Similar cases, like the time a UFO forced Chicago’s O’Hare airport to shut down one of its terminals, led to the launch of an investigation by a civilian aviation safety organization in 2006. But events like these just didn’t seem to move the needle of public belief, perhaps because the public is committed to a version of reality that leaves little room to take seriously the hard evidence for phenomena that we don’t already have an explanation for. The result is that we shrug, assume there’s some non-weird explanation we’re missing, and go on with our business. 

This is just the very nature of evidence though, regardless of whether it’s everyday people or professional scientists; evidence is never absolutely compelling. Here I am importing a concept from the philosophy of science called “underdetermination.” For philosophers of science, it is a well-known adage that theories are always underdetermined by the evidence. This means that, while a set of evidence might strongly support one theory, there will always be an array of other, totally different theories that could account equally well for that same set of evidence. It follows that, no matter how concrete or well-documented the evidence may be, evidence cannot ever conclusively compel us to accept any particular theory over all of the others.

To illustrate, consider a theory that you almost certainly hold. You don’t believe minotaurs are real. That is, you deny Minotaur Theory (a belief in minotaurs, which we’ll call MT)  in favor of No Minotaur Theory (NMT). Now, try to imagine some set of evidence that, if it were shown to you, would  force you to abandon NMT and accept MT. You might say that, if a minotaur walked into the room you’re in right now and said “Hi. I’m a minotaur”, you’d give up NMT and accept MT. Maybe you would, but would you have to? Is there no other option?  Couldn’t you hold on to NMT, and instead believe that something very serious had gone wrong in your brain? Or that you’d been the unwitting victim of a Darren Brown TV special? Or that someone had dosed your coffee with a potent hallucinogen? Or that you’ve died and gone to some very confusing hell? 

As with minotaurs, so it is with UFOs, and everything else. While you might be able to specify the evidence that would convince you to conclude, say, that extraterrestrials are behind some UFO phenomena, there is simply no possible set of evidence that would persuade every rational person, regardless of their belief system, to accept the same conclusion

• Michael is a member of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies. In his leisure time he enjoys the company of his partner and his cats, and indulging in the exploration of strange, rare, and old books. You can follow him on Twitter @michaelglawson, reach out to him via email at michaelglawson[at]me[dot]com, or find his work at linktr.ee/michaelglawson.

{ https://thedebrief.org/category/uap/ }

30-11-2023 om 01:11 geschreven door peter  

‘Wouldn’t Want To Panic The Population’: Tucker Blasts US Government Over Lack Of Transparency On UFOs

“And then this question, the most pressing of all, has the U.S. government communicated directly with the beings that piloted these craft? Have American officials ever entered into any sort of agreement with them? And if so, what are the terms of that agreement? These are not random questions, they are informed questions. And at this point, Americans have a moral right to know the answers,” Carlson stated. 

Burchett was later brought on by the Twitter host to discuss the lack of transparency from the federal government, with Carlson honing in on why the government would allegedly want to hide information in the first place. The Tennessee representative discussed how power, influence, money, and corruption could be the root of the cause, noting that he believes the slow release of information is “intentional.”

Burchett has notably been outspoken regarding issues surrounding UFO sightings and their possible technological capabilities. The Tennessee lawmaker made some hefty claims over the summer on a podcast about the capabilities that he believes UFOs and aliens have, emphasizing that there are some things “we do not control in our military airspace.”

RELATED

{ https://dailycaller.com/ }

29-11-2023 om 18:07 geschreven door peter  

Imagine you were just elected President of the United States. During one of your first classified briefings, you learn that the US military has recovered advanced extraterrestrial technology. You are told we’ve made only modest headway in understanding how this technology works, where it is from, or why these intelligently controlled machines are here. What would you do in that circumstance?

As President, your top priority is to keep the American people safe from all threats, both foreign and domestic. Hundreds of millions of people, including tens of millions of children, place their faith in you. Are you going to hold a press conference revealing that aliens are visiting planet Earth, but we don’t know where they’re coming from, why they are here, or whether we can defend ourselves from them?

It is hard for me to imagine any of the politicians I’ve worked for over the years leaping at that opportunity. The sudden, unexpected confirmation of an ET presence on Earth would not only unsettle but inevitably terrify millions—if not billions—of people. And for what purpose? What chance would you have as President of moving forward on other vital issues on your agenda, given the tumult that would result? What reason is there to believe the net effect for society would be positive rather than negative?

These are questions that need to be addressed by those advocating the release of information confirming an extraterrestrial presence on Earth. Such information has the potential to be a genuine Pandora’s box, and it is, therefore, vital we think this through carefully before proceeding.

This is a pressing issue, as various committees and members of Congress are seeking to determine whether the US government has incontrovertible proof of an extraterrestrial presence on Earth. Such a revelation would undoubtedly be the most shocking, profound, and transformative discovery in human history. Yet, despite the gravity of the issue, Congress has been proceeding without holding any hearings or requesting any studies to assess the impact of this potential bombshell. It appears that our legislators are failing to heed the maxim, “Don’t ask the question if you aren’t prepared for the answer.”

Strangely, there is little discussion of this critical issue among proponents of disclosure in the UAP community. Perhaps advocates of disclosure simply assume that truth and transparency are always for the better. Although I applaud the sentiment, the issue is not so simple for government officials bearing the weighty responsibility of governing. I therefore thought I would offer some thoughts from the standpoint of a former national security official because national security concerns are inescapably central to this discussion.

The first question that arises is, “How can we make a fair determination about the potential risks and benefits of disclosure without access to all the facts?” Suppose the US government recovered extraterrestrial technology decades ago. In that case, there has inevitably been some progress in assessing it and, hopefully, some insights gleaned regarding the nature and intent of its designers. However, no credible individuals purporting to have access to such information have provided any details. One of the only things we can say with certainty is that unless ETs prove to be angelic, which is not what our military is reporting, disclosure would undeniably frighten, if not terrify, large segments of the population.

Moreover, what if disclosure precipitated a change in the behavior of an alien civilization, given that they no longer had an incentive to remain elusive and clandestine? What is the risk potential that disclosure might cause some governments to overreact, precipitating fearful and aggressive interactions? If these risks are substantial, does it still make sense to release such disruptive information?

When I first became publicly involved in the UAP topic, the alleged recovery of ET technology was not an issue. My immediate goal was to alert policymakers to a dangerous intelligence failure, namely, the fact of serious and recurring intrusions into restricted DoD airspace by strange, unidentified aircraft. It was shocking to learn our vaunted multi-billion-dollar intelligence system was paralyzed by ineffable stigma, as effectively as any electromagnetic warfare (EW) weapon, placing US personnel and the nation at risk. This situation reminded me of both Pearl Harbor, where vital warning information was not forwarded up the chain of command, as well as 9/11, when intelligence agencies failed to share vital information that could have saved the lives of thousands of innocent civilians. Having survived the attack on the Pentagon myself, this was not a purely theoretical consideration.

Admittedly, I was also hoping to generate enough Congressional pressure to compel the DoD and the Intelligence Community to use their vast capabilities to study UAP. Knowing our technical intelligence systems well, I was tantalized by the prospect of what we might learn if these sometimes mind-boggling capabilities were brought to bear on the UAP mystery. Therefore, it was also an opportunity to potentially solve this fascinating and profound mystery.

At the time, the ET issue was present but remained unspoken for good reason; if we had approached Congress with an explicit focus on aliens, we would have quickly been shown to the exit. Many legislators were privately curious about UAP, but we needed to focus on the national security angle to provide a politically viable justification for engaging on the UAP issue. Nevertheless, as time passed and new information became available, Congressional interest expanded to include credible allegations of recovered extraterrestrial materials.

I confess I was partly responsible for this change of emphasis because I brought physicist Eric Davis to Capitol Hill to meet with oversight committee staff in October of 2019. This was, to my knowledge, the first time a Congressional oversight committee had been provided credible information on the issue of allegedly recovered non-human technology from an individual with knowledge of such operations. Later, I played a role in helping bring other witnesses forward, including whistleblower David Grusch. In doing so, I was forced to wrestle with the same simple but critical question that guides everyone in the national security community: “What is in the nation’s best interest?”

Eventually, members of Congress began to realize that the alleged recovery of off-world materials was a serious issue. Consequently, they enacted a provision requiring the All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which reports jointly to the Deputy Secretary of Defense and the Deputy Director of National Intelligence, to investigate this sensational allegation. Congress understandably did so without deciding in advance whether to make the report’s findings public. Although it is true that some key members of Congress, such as Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN), have expressed support for releasing the facts, whatever they prove to be.

However, it is not clear how many of their colleagues agree. It is also conceivable their views might change if confronted by disturbing revelations in the event such allegations prove to be true. For example, Senator Gillibrand has young children, and it is conceivable that if sufficiently alarming information emerges, she might reconsider her admirable desire to share as much information as possible with the public.

At this point, it already seems clear that AARO will report that it found no credible evidence the US government has recovered alien technology or knows of any extraterrestrial activity. However, I don’t think this finding by AARO will satisfy key members of Congress or the public. This is entirely understandable because asking AARO to investigate this issue is roughly comparable to asking the Intelligence Community to investigate the Iran-Contra Affair. AARO has a clear conflict of interest in that it must protect this explosive information if directed to do so. Alternatively, AARO could also be denied access to the information. The only way for Congress to assure itself of the truth is to continue pressing ahead with its own investigation, as advocated by members of both parties in the House of Representatives.

In that regard, I want to challenge the recurring assertion that the UAP issue is primarily for scientists, not politicians or government officials. Although UAP deserves serious attention from the scientific community, as NASA itself recently acknowledged, national security considerations are inevitably paramount.

I say that partly because we are not dealing (at least not exclusively) with remote signals from deep space or an intangible interdimensional intelligence that seeks to subtly influence human affairs. For all we know, something along those lines could be happening, and it is a fascinating proposition, but what current intelligence collected by the US indicates is that our military is encountering intelligently controlled, solid objects invading restricted military airspace, sometimes even flying in formation, on an almost daily basis. Many of these objects are emitting radiation in the 1-3 and 8-12 gigahertz range. Multiple credible reports indicate that UAP has rendered segments of our nuclear deterrent inoperable; in other cases, they are jamming radars on fighter aircraft. We also have multiple cases of near-mid-air collisions and cases involving serious injuries to military and civilian personnel. Therefore, as much as we need and want scientific investigations, the government cannot be permitted to divest itself of the UAP issue.

Similarly, the government does not have the luxury of limiting itself to pristine scientific information. This is one of the areas in which I differ with Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, the current Director of AARO, who claims there is no “credible” evidence of UAP demonstrating capabilities or doing things that violate our understanding of science. To my mind, the USS Nimitz (CVN-68) aviators, radar operators, and technicians who encountered an anomalous craft during training exercises off the California coast in 2004 are eminently credible. The Intelligence Community prefers rigorous scientific information whenever possible. Still, it would be untenable—if not suicidal—for either the Intelligence or Law Enforcement communities to limit themselves to pristine, scientifically repeatable sensor data. We rarely have the luxury of having sensor information when facing the intentions of foreign leaders or the precise capabilities of adversary military forces. Hence, the Intelligence Community does its best with what it has in those circumstances, including reliance on human intelligence reporting.

Therefore, by its own standards, the Intelligence Community should consider the accounts of the Nimitz aviators and radar operators as highly credible evidence of intelligently controlled craft doing things we cannot emulate and simply don’t understand. For example, the “Tic Tac” UAP they encountered accelerated to supersonic speeds without producing a sonic boom; it overcame g-forces that would destroy anything built by man, and there was no evidence of the electrically charged plasma we would normally expect to see on manmade aircraft moving at hypersonic velocities. I realize the inherent limitations of human reporting. Still, I also see no reason to suddenly change the normal rules and standards the Intelligence Community relies on in cases that involve evaluating UAP.

I’m raising these issues to provide a reminder that the paramount question about UAP, both for government policymakers and the public, will undoubtedly be whether UAP poses an existential threat. I’m thrilled to be supporting investigations of UAP signatures, propulsion systems, metamaterials, and UAP effects on humans, but national security, rather than science, will be at the forefront in the minds of government officials assessing the potential costs and benefits of disclosure. In sum, we can’t dodge the national security issue when making the case for disclosure; we must address it head-on.

Admittedly, nothing as potentially ontologically shocking as UAP disclosure has probably ever occurred, certainly not in modern times. However, there are still some interesting historical precedents we can examine.

Consider the Sputnik issue that arose in 1957. Sputnik was merely a small satellite emitting tracking signals, not a weapons system. Yet the mere fact America was lagging behind the Soviet Union in space and missile technology immediately became a major political issue, reminiscent of the furor over the more recent Chinese spy balloon incident. It was not long before Congress and the White House responded, and the space race got underway. Thankfully, what began as a military competition with the Soviet Union eventually turned into a collaborative space exploration effort involving the Russians and many other nations. So, in that case, the initial fright and concern, which was a national security issue, ultimately led to major scientific and technological breakthroughs and laudable international cooperation. I would like to believe the UAP issue can follow that same path from national security to science.

Admittedly, other examples are tragic. When we look at the first contact between more technologically advanced civilizations and indigenous peoples, the consequences often proved catastrophic for the less technologically advanced. In part, this was due to the spread of lethal diseases for which indigenous peoples had no immunity. But it was much more than that; contact often proved psychologically and culturally devastating, as the leadership and cherished religious and cultural beliefs of many indigenous groups were eradicated without being replaced by a viable substitute. We all need psychological and cultural maps to navigate reality. For many indigenous people, those maps were destroyed but not replaced, leaving behind a devastating psychological and spiritual void that millions of people are still contending with as they seek to reconcile Western secular views with their traditional beliefs.

Note the difference between these two cases. In the case of Sputnik, we have an awareness of a potential threat; in the second instance, we have an actual invasion and occupation. So, a key question for us to ask ourselves (again, a national security issue) is whether disclosure might provoke hostilities. That seems highly unlikely; so, although the Sputnik case is far less shocking and provocative than disclosure would be, it may be a more appropriate model than the tragic cases involving European contact with pre-industrial indigenous societies.

I believe that a graduated process of disclosure would avert a crisis atmosphere while prompting new investments in technology, scientific research, and a rash of collaborative international meetings and initiatives. Processing this unsettling information would certainly take time, but danger and fear of the unknown have always been inherent in the human condition, and people would, as always, adapt. For example, few Americans are losing sleep over the fact they live in cities targeted by Chinese and Russian thermonuclear weapons. Similarly, if some UAP proves to be extraterrestrial, people would still get out of bed the next day, go through their morning wake-up rituals, and head to school or work.

Although it would be a much more disturbing provocation than Sputnik, I believe the inevitable ontological shock would eventually prove highly beneficial, stimulating immense creativity, investment, and research. Moreover, and most importantly, it could have a profound, positive, and desperately needed impact on mankind and international relations.

Earlier this year, I penned an article for Politico titled, “If the US Government has UFO Crash Materials It is Time to Reveal Them.” In the article, I made several points, including the following:

1. 1. Democracy requires transparency.
   2. The American people own any materials recovered by our government.
   3. The public can handle disclosure.
   4. The government cannot forever stifle the truth, so it is better to get ahead of it.
   5. Secrecy stifles Science.
   6. There is no evidence of an imminent threat.
   7. If there is a threat, we need to know so we can prepare.

Finally, I argued that disclosure could transform international tensions, catalyzing desperately needed international collaboration. I’d like to expand on this last point as it is both the most important point and the least obvious.

In my view, both domestically and internationally, we are presently on an extremely dangerous trajectory that requires urgent intervention. Disclosure would undoubtedly alter the trajectory of our species, but almost certainly for the better.

It is obvious that our nation, our species, and the environment are in serious and growing jeopardy. If this were solely my view, it would be easy to dismiss, but unfortunately, that is not the case. I don’t have the time here to list all my concerns, nor all the ways our society is presently financing its own downfall through perverse incentives that have developed over many decades, nor is there space here to do justice to the growing dangers we face abroad. Hence, rather than attempt to make the case myself, I’ll offer the perspective of two renowned analysts of world affairs.

Ray Dalio is the ingenious billionaire who established the world’s largest hedge fund. Yuval Hariri is a dazzling Cambridge-trained historian and author. Their perspectives are as different as their occupations, but their analyses are complimentary and equally sobering.

Mr. Dalio’s views are available to us through his fascinating book Principles for Dealing with a Changing World Order. His argument, supported by myriad graphs and piles of data, is that the evolution of human societies runs in discernable cycles. It appears he has handsomely profited from understanding these cycles. In short, when a nation or civilization becomes debt-ridden and over-extended, wealthy but complacent, with massive disparities in wealth, dangerous internal fractures and civil strife emerge.

Today, the US is more deeply indebted than at any time since WWII, and the debt is rapidly growing even as interest rates rise, making repayment of this mountain of debt far more difficult. When interest on debt crowds out productive investments, the economy suffers. Eventually, economic hardship and disputes over how to share the pain of deficit reductions occur, leading to polarization and instability.

When this instability and economic stagnation occur simultaneously with challenges from a rising foreign power, as is the case with China today, history shows that war and disaster for the declining power usually follow. Regrettably, military confrontation between the US and China is a real and growing risk, especially in the South China Sea and Taiwan. Dangerous encounters between US and allied nations and Chinese forces are occurring with disturbing and growing frequency. Meanwhile, President Xi is moving China in the direction of North Korea, a state where an ambitious and intolerant dictator with near godlike status imposes his views at every level of society from the classroom to the boardroom. A fanatically nationalistic 1.5-billion-person version of North Korea, replete with AI security systems controlling Orwellian surveillance capabilities, is a daunting prospect.

For all these reasons, I share Mr. Dalio’s concerns about the prospect of tectonic and possibly catastrophic change occurring in the years immediately ahead. As Dalio states:

“The most reliable signs of an escalation to civil war are 1) the rules being disregarded; 2) both sides emotionally attacking each other; 3) blood being spilled.”

It’s not hard to see the relevance of these factors given the riots and demonstrations of recent years, the assault on the nation’s Capital, and the incredible partisan hatred gripping the nation, making it impossible to pass desperately needed legislation. To my knowledge, the US has never before failed to pass a defense bill at a time when the US military is under fire and already stretched to its limits supporting friends and allies. This growing crisis of government legitimacy is toxic and only getting worse; meanwhile, there are no efforts in sight to correct the massive fiscal imbalances that are undermining our children’s future.

Mr. Dalio also observes that when change comes, it is generally swift, devastating, and unanticipated. This conservative businessman sees a shocking 30% risk of civil war in America with what he characterizes as the “next big risk point” occurring around the time of the next Presidential election.

Dr. Harrari offers a very different perspective, one that focuses primarily on global existential challenges facing our species. He states:

“Each of these problems – nuclear war, ecological collapse, and technological disruption – is enough to threaten the future of human civilization. But taken together, they add up to an unprecedented existential crisis, especially because they are likely to reinforce and compound one another.”

Harrari later adds:

“If despite these common threats humans choose to privilege their particular national loyalties above everything else, the results may be far worse than in 1914 or 1939.”

Thankfully, there is a potential solution. As Dr. Harari further observes:

“A common enemy is the best catalyst for forging a coming identity…”

Suppose a common threat is the best recipe to achieve a desperately needed common bond. What could be more helpful or consistent with our long-term prosperity and survival than learning that one or more advanced civilizations are visiting our planet? It would be a shock, to be sure, and many would initially be frightened or even terrified—whether or not for good reason—but that fear would quickly subside if little change occurred in UAP activity. Regardless, we need a jolt to reframe international perspectives in order to manage issues such as AI, global warming, and WMD effectively.

Much as NASA recently demonstrated the ability to alter the trajectory of an asteroid, in the event we detect one on a collision course with Earth, we need a powerful ontological jolt to promote the collaboration required to manage these common global threats. This is why, in addition to democratic principles, I support UAP transparency and believe our nation and species would hugely benefit from an awareness that we are not alone.

And on the chance that a threat does exist, aren’t we better off knowing so we can take appropriate action? When has ignorance ever been a good national security strategy?

In conclusion, I’d like to cite a third figure quite different either from Mr. Dalio or Dr. Harriri: a former US President who had an extraordinary personal UAP sighting. Whether Ronald Reagan was prescient or speaking from an awareness of secret government information remains to be seen, but his statement to the UN General Assembly in 1987 is most apt:

“In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask you, is not an alien force already among us? What could be more alien to the universal aspirations of our peoples than war and the threat of war?”

For all the reasons above, I hope our elected officials will seek and reveal the truth of what our government knows about UAP. We need and deserve the truth, however unsettling it may be, and the sooner we are made aware, the better. 

• Christopher Mellon spent nearly 20 years in the U.S. Intelligence Community, including serving as the Minority Staff Director of the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. He actively participates in Harvard’s Galileo Project and, in his free time, works to raise awareness regarding the UAP issue and its implications for national security. Follow him online at his official website and on X: @ChrisKMellon.

• A version of this essay was originally presented at The Sol Foundation’s first annual symposium, held at Stanford University November 17-18, 2023.

{ https://thedebrief.org/category/science/ }

22-11-2023 om 23:38 geschreven door peter  

During the summer of 1954, the United States Air Forcewas on high alert. A pair of mysterious objects had been located in orbit between 400 and 600 miles from Earth, and now officials were in a state of confusion as to what they might represent. Could they be non-terrestrial objects of natural origin, or could they be something else entirely?

A more concerning possibility also lurked in the minds of officials at the time: what if the objects were manmade, and possibly of Soviet origin?

Dr. Lincoln La Paz, then the head of the Extra-Terrestrial Bodies Institute at the University of New Mexico, had been in constant communication with the Air Force about their unusual new problem. For weeks, he shot back and forth between the Palomar Observatory in California and the missile test center at White Sands, New Mexico, until it was finally determined by the astronomer that the objects were indeed natural: they were only meteors.

The story received tremendous attention after it first appeared in Aviation Week, and just days later, a source close to the Army Office of Ordnance Research assured the New York Times that no satellites deemed to be of artificial origin had been detected yet, adding about La Paz’s meteors that “there was absolutely no connection between the reported satellites and flying saucer reports.”

The search for objects in Earth’s orbit had been virgin territory in 1954, and the events in the fall of that year were only a foreshadowing of the kind of public fear yet to come. Once the Soviets actually did launch Sputnik 1 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the early days of October 1957, concerns about a technological gap among Western nations escalated into a full-blown crisis.

The world would never be the same. In the aftermath of the “Sputnik crisis,” the United States accelerated its space-bound efforts, eventually placing its own satellites into orbit, followed by successful manned space missions and, eventually, humans landing on the Moon in July 1969. Today, on any clear night one can look at the night sky and see tiny points of light moving silently along in their positions in orbit, representing objects that range from satellites and the International Space Station, to tiny reflective bits of debris from past space missions that have accumulated in Earth’s orbit steadily over time.

In addition to the satellites we have placed into orbit around our own planet, humans have also sent several spacecraft to further locales, some of which we have positioned around nearby planets like Mars. It seems logical to assume that if there were any intelligent extraterrestrials out there, they might do the same.

This brings to mind an interesting question for modern astronomers: what if aliens have surveilled our planet, either in the past, or even in the present day? If so, how might we detect evidence of their technologies?

(Credit: NASA)

With the amount of debris that clutters the space around our planet today, it would prove difficult to locate any prospective alien probes that may be watching us. Based on current European Space Agency data, there are 5,800 functioning satellites in orbit, with nearly 31,590 debris objects that have been logged and continuously tracked by Space Surveillance Networks.

However, not all objects in orbit around our planet are being tracked. According to current statistical models, smaller space objects between 1 mm and 10 cm could number greater than 131 million.

In short, the orbital area around our planet has become a very cluttered place since the dawn of the Space Age, making it increasingly difficult to search for any possible outliers that might represent evidence of non-terrestrial technological artifacts that might be observing our planet.

That’s why one group of researchers, led by Beatriz Villarroel of the Nordic Institute of Theoretical Physics and Stockholm University, has undertaken a citizen science effort to search for evidence of such non-terrestrial artifacts in what some might consider an unusual place: data that has already been publicly available for decades.

Prior to the launch of manmade satellites like Sputnik 1 in the late 1950s, Earth’s skies were free of the clutter that hinders modern searches for prospective non-terrestrial objects. According to Villarroel and her team, one way to overcome this problem is by scanning earlier photographic plate projects such as the First Palomar Sky Survey (POSS-1), which is the focus of the Vanishing & Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations (VASCO) project.

“We expect the project to yield many interesting findings over time,” reads a statement on the website of the VASCO Network, “maybe even some anomalous objects and events — could aliens be responsible for any of those?”

In the May issue of Acta Astronautica, Villarroel and several colleagues published a paper, “A glint in the eye: Photographic plate archive searches for non-terrestrial artefacts,” which elaborates on how potentially anomalous non-terrestrial objects might be located.

“We show that even the small pieces of reflective debris in orbit around the Earth can be identified through searches for multiple transients in old photographic plate material exposed before the launch of the first human satellite in 1957,” the researchers state in the paper’s abstract. According to Villarroel and her coauthors, images depicting what they identify as “simultaneous transients” may hold the key to detecting evidence of non-terrestrial artifacts that may have been lurking in Earth’s orbit since the days prior to Sputnik.

Beatriz Villarroel of the Nordic Institute of Theoretical Physics and Stockholm University

(Image Credit: Karl Nordlund/Stockholm University)

“About 80% of the very fast bright flashes (glints) in our sky are the result of artificial objects with highly reflective, flat surfaces,” Villarroel recently told The Debrief. These objects, many of them relatively small according to Villarroel, may be found in geosynchronous orbit around the Earth.

“A fast glint like this will look like a star in an image,” Villarroel says, “and sometimes one can see several glints from the same object in an image (or from different ones). Space debris and satellites in geosynchronous orbits can leave multiple glints in an image.

“Multiple glints in sky images is, therefore, a typical signature of artificial objects,” Villarroel says. By looking at some of the earliest photographic plates collected by 20th-century astronomers, the VASCO team thinks they could easily discern the presence of any reflective objects in geosynchronous orbits (GEO) since they would appear as short lines in these photographs, the length of which can be used as an indicator of their speed and position in orbit (satellites at higher GEO altitudes produce fast, transient glints that result from the light they reflect from the Sun).

Of particular interest to Villarroel and her colleagues are the appearances of multiple glints, which may indicate a single object tumbling through space producing a series of flashes as its surfaces reflect sunlight, or possibly even the presence of several objects.

“We propose to look for multiple glints in image data before Sputnik I,” Villarroel told The Debrief. “If such signatures are found in a time when there were no high-altitude satellites, that could imply the presence of Non-Terrestrial Artifacts (NTAs) in orbits around the Earth.”

Although surveying photographic data from pre-satellite times offers obvious benefits to the search for non-terrestrial artifacts, there are challenges for modern researchers using this approach, since multiple glints in older sky survey imagery could be accounted for by a number of other things. These could include defects in the images that produce the appearance of star-like objects which, in fact, may simply be photographic artifacts.

“If one finds multiple glints in an image, we cannot know for sure that the observation is real as some defects might possibly look star-like,” Villarroel says. “And it is difficult to access the original photographic plates to examine the ‘stars’ under a microscope.”

One simple way that Villarroel and her colleagues have proposed to help narrow down any likely anomalies is to search or instances where they appear in a single line.

“The main proposal of the paper is, therefore, to look for an even clearer signature, which is to search for these multiple glints-events that on top of everything, also are aligned along a line,” Villarroel told The Debrief. Unlike plate defects, which could most often be expected to appear randomly across the image, Villarroel says that genuine glints of light detected by cameras, possibly produced by debris or satellites of unknown origin, would produce consistent glints of light along a line in an image.

Villarroel says there are several sources of imagery that astronomers can use for such surveys, many of which are freely available. However, an added benefit of conducting multiple surveys could be that the presence of any anomalies detected in one photographic plate collection, if thereafter found in a separate set of images, could help confirm the presence of a genuine anomaly.

“Many observatories have their photographic plate collections,” Villarroel says. “Finding similar examples of ‘multiple transients’ in other image data sets could help to confirm the effect. Also, we have predicted some shapes and glinting patterns in our recent preprint that one can use to search for the predicted objects in modern datasets.”

Along with her efforts with the Vasco Network, Villarroel is a research team member of The Galileo Project, a scientific effort led by astronomer Avi Loeb aimed at detecting extraterrestrial technological signatures produced by Extraterrestrial Technological Civilizations (ETCs).

“The Galileo project is excellently suited for these searches,” Villarroel told The Debrief.

With decades of imagery now in hand, modern advances in computer imaging and artificial intelligence could prove to be instrumental in helping astronomers make a breakthrough in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Considering some of the early observations by Lincoln La Paz and other astronomers at the dawn of the Space Age, it would indeed be ironic if it were ever proven that evidence of extraterrestrial technologies had been lurking much closer to home than most would have ever expected.

When asked about some of the intriguing observations that preceded the earliest launch of artificial satellites in 1957, Villarroel says cases from decades ago might indeed be worthy of renewed attention from modern astronomers, especially if the current efforts to analyze photographic plate collections ever turns up anything odd.

“These historical examples would be very interesting for us to look at through the VASCO glasses,” Villarroel says.

• Micah Hanks is Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. Follow his work at micahhanks.com and on Twitter: @MicahHanks. 

{ https://thedebrief.org/category/science/ }  

22-11-2023 om 01:05 geschreven door peter  

Alex Dietrich (Ret.) served as one of the nation’s first female strike-fighter aviators as a F/A-18 pilot from 2001-2020. 

Yesterday, the President held a press conference on the issue of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) due to a flurry of recent activity. 

The nation was captivated by a suspected Chinese reconnaissance balloon floated across the continental United States. This incident prompted NORAD and other U.S. agencies to adjust their radar scans. The filter changes have exposed more unidentified objects, and another three were shot down over the weekend. These events highlight a longstanding domain awareness gap confronting our collective consciousness on three fronts: military defense, aviation safety, and scientific inquiry. 

Officials have since disclosed that the Chinese military had previously breached U.S. airspace on at least four other occasions. We are now aware of these earlier incursions due to political and popular pressure to investigate and disclose UAP activity. 

I started asking the same questions nearly 20 years ago in an F/A-18F flying off the coast of California. My colleagues and I encountered something we could not explain: an anomalous flying object in broad daylight against a clear blue sky and calm waters. Our carrier strike group had been watching anomalous hits on the radar for days. Once airborne, we were vectored and asked to investigate. We merged and visually acquired the object, a matte white oblong shape with no apparent flight control surfaces, visible means of propulsion, or smoke trail. Yet it outmaneuvered us with ease. We communicated in real-time via radio and then debriefed the intelligence team and chain of command back aboard the ship. Another F/A-18F launched and managed to capture video of the object with its forward-looking infrared (FLIR). A screenshot of that video has since become an iconic symbol of UAP encounters.

The Nimitz encounter is one of many. Pilots and credible eyewitnesses on the ground for years have reported and verified objects with unknown provenance and exotic capabilities. It would be irresponsible to suggest that any or all of these reports represent the same tech or are of the same origin. They are, by definition, unidentified. But we do know that collectively these anomalies expose a blindspot in our ability to sense them in the first place, track them in real time, and predict where they might pop up next. 

Are UFOs real? Yes. Are they a foreign adversary? Maybe. Are they extraterrestrial in nature? It’s possible. Should we keep investigating? Absolutely.

There are many potential answers to the UAP mystery, and those answers are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Truth is persistent. Whatever is happening here, it will be revealed. How quickly depends on our collective commitment to authorize and resource appropriate agencies who can effectively leverage sensor technology, capture crowdsourced reporting, and mine the collective data.    

Despite persistent snickering, anytime the topic of UFOs is broached, NASA has managed to convene a committee of respected high-ranking representatives from the DoD, FAA, and academic institutions for an ongoing UAP study.

The Pentagon’s commitment has evolved from the small Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification (AATIP) program into the robust All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). Private industry is rising to the occasion with rapid innovation and agile solutions.

Alex Dietrich in the early 2000s in service with Strike Fighter Squadron 41 (VFA-41) also known as the “Black Aces”

(Credit: Alex Dietrich).

Enigma Labs is on the leading edge with a mechanism to systematically capture and analyze reporting at scale.

Congress has also made an impressive bipartisan push on the issue, with Senators Gillibrand (D-NY), Rubio (R-FL), Warner (D-VA), Graham (R-SC), Heinrich (D-NM), Blunt (R-MO), and Representative Gallagher (R-WI) speaking out to break the taboo and push agencies to cooperate and take UAP seriously. 

The partnership between multiple objective parties, systematic data collection, and careful analytical methods will move us toward reporting and listening, away from ridicule and stigma. We can move the needle away from the unknown and toward the known. 

Be vigilant. Stay curious. Look up. We have barely tasted the sky. 

• Lieutenant Commander Alex Dietrich (Ret.) served as one of the nation’s first female strike-fighter aviators as a F/A-18 pilot from 2001-2020. She logged more than 1,250 flight hours, 375 carrier-arrested landings, and was awarded a Combat Air Medal for 206 combat missions flown in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). She was also awarded a Bronze Star medal for a boots-on-ground deployment to Afghanistan in 2010. She has since taught leadership, ethics, and critical thinking at the George Washington University, U.S. Naval Academy, and now serves on the faculty of the University of Colorado School of Engineering in Boulder. Dietrich is an advocate for Legacy Flight Academy, a foundation that promotes diversity in aviation, and Wings for Val, supporting women in aviation.

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{ https://thedebrief.org/ }

20-11-2023 om 23:42 geschreven door peter  

“That is a great question. I love that question,” Sean Kirkpatrick says in an interview.

By LARA SELIGMAN

Sean Kirkpatrick is not done talking about UFOs.

For nearly 18 months, he’s been the first head of the Pentagon’s fledgling office tasked with investigating what the government calls “unidentified anomalous phenomena,” which military pilots have increasingly reported seeing in the skies.

The whistleblowers are an interesting bit. We’ve had greater than 30 people now come in to talk to us. We have investigated every single one of them, every single story, every lead that provided any substantive evidence for us to go after.

David Grusch is a unique instance in that he has refused to come and share any of that information. We still can’t get him to come in. I’ve got five different people who have gone to talk to him to get him to come in. And the answers have always been everything from “We’re not cleared” to “It would jeopardize his whistleblower protections” to “Why can’t we just go get the information that he shared from the IG?” It’s every excuse that I have heard, why not to come in. And that’s been a challenge because now here we are, we’re about to put out Volume One of the historical review, which I believe captures most all of the people that he’s spoken with, but I can’t say that 100 percent because I can’t hear what he thinks he has. If he has evidence, I need to know what that is.

{ https://www.politico.com/ }

14-11-2023 om 18:46 geschreven door peter  

Pentagon UFO boss says strange sightings are either 'aliens' or a foreign power - and he hopes it's extraterrestrials

• 'If we don't prove it's aliens,' Pentagon UFO chief Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick said, 'then what we're finding is evidence of other people doing stuff in our backyard'
• Kirkpatrick - formerly a laser physicist for the CIA - added, 'that's not good'
• READ MORE: New analysis of 200ft 'saucer-shaped object' spotted over the Andes Mountains in 2010 finds it is 'a genuine UFO,' not 'a camera artifact'

By MATTHEW PHELAN FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

According to the director of the Pentagon's UFO investigation office, 'the best thing that could come out of this job is to prove that there are aliens.' 

The alternative to what would be a literally Earth-changing discovery of extraterrestrial life exploring our own planet would be that a rival foreign power could be 'doing stuff in our backyard,' he said. 

Dr. Kirkpatrick added: 'And that's not good.'

The longtime laser and materials physicist and head of the Pentagon's UFO-chasing All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) delivered this bracing assessment as news broke of his impending retirement from government service. 

Dr. Kirkpatrick's 18-month tenure as AARO's first ever director has been laced with controversy, as expected for a mandate once relegated to the scientific fringe. 

While some UFO whistleblowers now accuse Kirkpatrick of fostering an 'atmosphere of disinterest,' others have suggested his superiors are holding AARO's efforts back even though a few have described 'really positive' experiences with the office.

According to the director of the Pentagon 's UFO investigation office, physicist Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, 'the best thing that could come out of this job is to prove that there are aliens.' Last July, Kirkpatrick described his national security mandate as helping avoid 'technical surprise'

'I'm ready to move on,' Kirkpatrick told Politico Tuesday, upon official confirmation of his retirement. 'I have accomplished everything I said I was going to do.' 

Dr. Kirkpatrick added that there remains lingering tasks he hopes to have finished — including AARO's congressionally directed 'Historical Record Report' on UFOs, which is due to Congress in June 2024, over six months after Kirkpatrick's departure. 

At a press conference this past Halloween, Kirkpatrick announced a new secure reporting mechanism designed to help AARO investigate claims of alleged highly secretive and potentially illegal US government UFO programs.

'The reporting mechanism is for current or former US government employees, service members, or contractors with direct knowledge of alleged US government programs or activities related to UAP [UFOs] dating back to 1945,' he said.

In its annual UAP (i.e. UFO) report, published this past October, the Pentagon's  All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office stated that, 'None of these UAP reports have been positively attributed to foreign activities'

Ever since UFOs exploded back into public consciousness with a series of New York Times exposes in December 2017, government officials, scientists and devotees have reframed the mysteries as unidentified aerial, or anomalous, phenomena: 'UAP.'

The new name hopes to add caution and reduce preconceived notions as to the true nature these airborne mysteries. 

When asked at the Halloween press conference whether AARO has reached out to officials from adversarial foreign nations in an effort to pool UAP data, Dr. Kirkpatrick replied that the concept was a non-starter from a national security standpoint.

'We certainly have not reached out to any adversaries, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which they're adversaries,' Kirkpatrick said.

While AARO's annual UAP report released this October found that 'none' of its hundreds of military UFO cases 'have been positively attributed to foreign activities,' Kirkpatrick expressed concern over telling, but less concrete, evidence.

'I am worried from a national security perspective,' Kirkpatrick told CNN in advance of the report's release.

'There are some indicators that may be attributed to foreign activity, and we are investigating those very hard,' he said.

Last summer, the AARO chief, who once worked on optical and laser physics projects for America's intelligence gathering agencies, including the CIA, described AARO's national security mandate to ABC News as avoiding 'technical surprise.'

To judge from AARO's own presentations to Congress and NASA's UAP advisory panel, the office has zeroed-in on a series of troubling cases involving so-called 'metallic orb' UAP.

This time last year, a classified 22-page report, compiled by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), described hundreds of unresolved cases, some involving 'orbs' caught on drone cameras that were then seen 'suddenly bolting off the screen.'

Some non-government groups, including OSINT specialists Bellingcat, have offered prosaic explanations for one of these 'orbs' — but Kirkpatrick has openly speculated in a paper with Harvard physicist Dr. Avi Loeb that these UAP could be alien probes. 

Despite serious concerns from AARO's soon-to-be-departing director that the solution the UAP mystery might prove to be advanced tech flown by a foreign power, evidence exists that these 'metallic orbs' predate even the Cold War era.

One 1944 Newsweek article, titled 'The Silver Sphere Puzzle,' explored similar cases of flying orbs during WWII, as did a report from the Associated Press headlined 'Balls of Silver Seen Over Reich Intrigue Science.'

Then too, journalists and investigators suspected it was a wartime anti-radar device from one of America's then-adversarial nations, Nazi Germany.

'It could be that those floating silver balls encountered by American airmen over the Reich are another German attempt to create interference for radio communications,' the AP's wartime radio editor wrote.

'The most common misconception is that [the possible phenomena] are all the same thing and they're all extraterrestrial,' as Kirkpatrick told ABC News last July, 'and neither of those are true.'

Have YOU seen one? The Pentagon reveals what the most commonly reported UFO looks like

Ever since the first sighting more than 75 years ago, popular culture has usually depicted a UFO as a flying saucer emitting a powerful halo of light.

But that could finally change following the official release of information from the Pentagon about the mysterious aerial phenomena. 

The new Department of Defense document reveals characteristics of the typical UFO, including the colour and the shape, velocity, and flight level 

Based on clues from reported sightings, the typical UFO has a round shape, usually described as spherical or an orb, with a white or silver colour, often translucent. 

It also has a size of between 3 and 13 feet (1 to 4 metres) and usually travels through the air at a height just below commercial passenger planes. 

The Pentagon has also released a hotspot map that reveals the location of reported UFO sightings, including Japan and the Middle East. 

Read more here. 

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

11-11-2023 om 21:28 geschreven door peter  

The UFO Movie They Don’t Want You to See

Documentary review: It's a master class in critical thinking.

{  https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl }

03-11-2023 om 01:05 geschreven door peter  

UAP Makes Three Changes In Direction Near Sun, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Oct 27, 08:30:07

Location of sighting: Earths Sun

Sun camera: LASCO C3

 

I sent a message to NASA on X platform (formerly Twitter) today asking them if they can explain this unusual object. I wrote...Hey @NASA @NASAJPL @NASAKennedy Whats up with this UAP changing directions three times in the span of a few seconds on Sun imager LASCO C3? Can you give us a zoom in image of this craft? UFO Sighting News. In space, an object that doesn't have any propulsion system or external forces acting upon it will generally continue to move in a straight line at a constant velocity, following Newton's first law of motion (the law of inertia). This means that without any propulsion or external influences, it will not change its direction on its own.

 

If they answer I will let you know. But this UAP makes three course corrections in a few seconds time. That means it's intelligently controlled. Therefore, it's an alien ship. 

Scott C. Waring

 

 

 

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

29-10-2023 om 22:40 geschreven door peter  

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

28-10-2023 om 22:23 geschreven door peter  

1. The first of sever

al sightings occurred in the early hours of December 26, 1980

It is now almost 40 years since the UFO incident at Rendlesham forest. Understandably, the facts are murky as contradictory accounts have emerged in the years since the incident took place.

It all started on December 26, 1980, when U.S. military personnel spotted strange lights above Rendlesham Forest in Suffolk, United Kingdom.

2. The sightings took place near RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge in Rendlesham Forest

RAF Bentwaters was an airbase used by the United States Air Force (USAF) during the Cold War until 1993.

Sections of the U.S. Air Force were stationed at the airbase when the incident occurred, including eyewitnesses that, to this day, claim they saw an extraterrestrial craft in the forest in the month of December 1980.

3. It is one of the few officially documented UFO sightings where witnesses claim to have seen a craft land

Nick Pope, who was a Ministry of Defence employee from 1985 to 2006, and who wrote a book titled 'Encounter in Rendlesham Forest: The Inside Story of the World's Best Documented UFO Incident', described the incident with the following words:

“This was not some vague ‘lights in the sky’ sighting – the UFO actually landed.”

4. U.S. Air Force officer John Burroughs described agitated animals and red and blue lights near a farmhouse

One of the men asked to investigate the strange blue, red, orange, and white lights coming from the forest was, John Burroughs. In a witness statement, published in 1981, he said:

"The woods lit up and you could hear the farm animals making a lot of noises... You could see the lights down by a farmer’s house [on the forest's edge]... We climbed over the fence and started walking toward the red and blue lights and they just disappeared."

5. Officer Jim Penniston's witness account describes a craft made from "smooth, opaque, black glass"

USAF officer Jim Penniston, who was with Burroughs during the incident, described seeing a craft covered in hieroglyphic-like characters. He said the following:

“I estimated it to be about three meters tall and about three meters wide at the base. No landing gear was apparent, but it seemed like she was on fixed legs. I moved a little closer... I walked around the craft, and finally, I walked right up to the craft. I noticed the fabric of the shell was more like a smooth, opaque, black glass.”

6. Indentations on the ground and high radiation levels were recorded the next day

The morning after the incident witnessed by Burroughs and Penniston, indentations on the forest floor were spotted, as well as damage to the trees in the area where the lights had been seen.

Radiation levels recorded at the site of the indentations were also reported to be unusually high.

7. Colonel Halt recorded a running commentary during the second UFO sighting at Rendlesham Forest

On December 27 1980, two nights after the first reported incident, United States Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt was ready. Known as a pragmatic character, Halt set out to disprove the wild theories doing the rounds at the RAF bases. When more lights were spotted, he took his tape recorder and joined a military patrol group.

The resulting audiotape has since been declassified by the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence. It is now public domain, and can be listened to here:

During the recording, in which he mentions objects and lights in the sky, as well as a red orb floating near the ground, Colonel Halt says:

“It looks like an eye winking at you... Here he comes from the South, he's coming towards us now... Now we're observing what appears to be a beam coming down to the ground. This is unreal."

The recording is considered today to be one of the most valuable pieces of evidence from the Rendlesham Forest incident.

8. Burroughs and Penniston, the first two witnesses, suffered Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

In the Encounter in Rendlesham Forest book, Penniston wrote: “I left the forest a different man… I was in awe of the technology and yes, a knowing that it was not an aircraft which could have been manufactured in 1980 or even now.”

Both Penniston and Burroughs have since suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, The Telegraph reported in 2015. In recent years, Penniston has claimed that the craft telepathically transmitted binary code into his brain.

9. Numerous eyewitness statements emerged following the incident

Burroughs, Penniston, and Col. Halt have been the most vocal in saying they believe what they saw was extraterrestrial in origin, but they are not the only eyewitnesses. 

Sgt. Adrian Bustinza, a security police commander who investigated the incident at the time, said: “When I arrived [at the scene], it was going in and out through the trees and at one stage it was hovering.”

10. Some eyewitnesses claim not to have seen any UFO

Another witness, Ed Cabansag, described seeing, "a glowing near the beacon light, but as we got closer we found it to be a lit-up farmhouse. We got to a vantage point where we could determine that what we were chasing was only a beacon light off in the distance."

The Ministry of Defence has claimed that the lights came from the nearby Orfordness lighthouse — more on this in section 16. It also stated that the event posed no threat to national security, and was, therefore, never investigated as a security matter. 

11. In 1983, a U.K. newspaper ran a front-page story which stated, "UFO LANDS IN SUFFOLK, And that's OFFICIAL"

In the following years, as accounts about the Rendlesham Forest incident were released, the press started to respond to the growing public interest around the events

In 1983, the News of the World ran a front-page story which proclaimed: "UFO LANDS IN SUFFOLK, And that's OFFICIAL."

12. Statements from radar operators have recently corroborated Colonel Halt's claims

As recently as 2015, the then-75-year-old Col. Halt announced that he had obtained written statements from radar operators at RAF Bentwaters and nearby Wattisham airfield that an unknown object was, in fact, tracked at the time of the incident.

As per the BBC, Halt claimed they had not wanted to come forward until after they had retired from their military roles.

"I have confirmation that (Bentwaters radar operators)... saw the object go across their 60 mile (96km) scope in two or three seconds, thousands of miles an hour, he came back across their scope again, stopped near the water tower, they watched it and observed it go into the forest where we were," said Col. Halt. 

13. Today, there is a 'UFO Trail' set out for forest trekkers

In 2005, due to the public interest in the UFO incident, the Forestry Commission used Lottery proceeds to create a trail in Rendlesham Forest. They called it the "UFO Trail".

In 2014, the Forestry Service commissioned an artist to create a sculpture, that was placed at the end of the trail, based on drawings made by eyewitnesses of the UFO.

14. In 2015, a dog walker posted a fresh video of UFO footage from Rendlesham Forest

There have been more incidents of unexplained lights and UFOs in the United Kingdom and Rendlesham Forest since 1980.

Only five years ago, a dog walker posted the above video of bright moving unidentified lights in the sky above Rendlesham Forest, filmed alongside an RAF helicopter.

15. There is a story about incredibly futuristic technology secretly installed at RAF Bentwaters

Daniel Simpson, director of The Rendlesham UFO Incident, a fictionalized account of the story filmed on location in Rendlesham Forest, told The Telegraph the following story:

"I recently heard a very interesting story of a guy that went up to the Bentwaters airbase and, because it’s privately owned, some of those buildings are rented out to people. A company up there wanted to have their internet sorted out and this guy dug down and – he was a telecom guy – he came back and he was sheet white. He couldn’t believe it.

"He said he’d just come across these cables, two-foot down, and they were cables delivering such a powerful internet connection – but they were cables from 1980... They were from 1980 and yet they were so in advance of what we’ve even got now. I’m told that all the time what we get [technologically] is much behind what they [the military] actually know."

16. Recent claims suggest the Rendlesham Forest incident was a 'revenge' hoax by the SAS

In December 2018, Dr. David Clarke, a British UFO researcher, reported a claim that the incident was set up by the SAS as a revenge plot on the USAF. According to the story, in August 1980, the SAS parachuted into RAF Woodbridge to test security at the site.

The USAF detected and captured the SAS troops, who were subsequently interrogated, beaten up, and reportedly even called "unidentified aliens." As a form of revenge, the SAS devised their own prank version of an alien event.

"....as December approached, lights and colored flares were rigged in the woods. Black helium balloons were also coupled to remote-controlled kites to carry suspended materials into the sky, activated by radio-controls," The Telegraph explains in an article about the purported hoax.

17. One original proponent now believes it was an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) that was seen at the site

Jenny Randles was one of the first journalists to report on the incident. She also co-authored the first book on the case in 1984, Sky Crash: A Cosmic Conspiracy. 

In 2010, Randles suggested that a UAP, an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena of unknown origin, might be responsible for what eyewitnesses experienced.

"Whilst some puzzles remain, we can probably say that no unearthly craft were seen in Rendlesham Forest," she explained. "We can also argue with confidence that the main focus of the events was a series of misperceptions of everyday things encountered in less than everyday circumstances."

18. Some UFO skeptics believe the sightings were caused by a meteor and atmospheric distortions

As science writer and UFO skeptic Ian Ridpath explains, on the night of the incident, the British Astronomical Association Meteor Section reported that "an exceptionally brilliant meteor, termed a fireball by astronomers, was seen over southern England. It is shown that this fireball is most likely what they saw and that nothing landed in Rendlesham Forest."

Some skeptics have also suggested the lights seen in the sky may have been bright stars distorted by atmospheric and optical effects, a common source of UFO reports.

19. Others have suggested the sightings may have been caused by the nearby Orfordness lighthouse 

According to the witness statements from 26 December, the flashing light seen from the forest lay in the same direction as the nearby Orfordness Lighthouse. Timings on Halt's audiotape also suggest that the light he saw flashed every five seconds — the same flash rate as the lighthouse.

As Daniel Simpson countered to The Telegraph, “the lighthouse theory is rubbish. Lighthouses don’t fly down into forests, split up into five different lights and zap off into space at Mach-3. They don’t move through the trees and get mistaken by up to 20 witnesses from the United States Air Force.” 

20. There have been suggestions of a government cover-up

Colonel Halt, who recorded the audiotape commentary during the second incident, has gone on record saying that he believes what he saw was of extraterrestrial origin and that the incident was covered up by the U.K. and U.S. governments.

The Ministry of Defence, meanwhile, is adamant that the Rendlesham Forest incident was of no threat to national security, and therefore, hadn't merited a full investigation.

21. Details continue to emerge as "Britain's Roswell" earns iconic status

Academic David Clarke argues that Rendlesham Forest, which now has an iconic status amongst UFO enthusiasts, is passing into legend. And it's not about to be put to rest — new witnesses have emerged as recently as 2016 and 2019, one of which describes a glowing "reddish ball", and a new documentary called Capel Green is in the works. 

With a lack of any satisfying conclusive evidence on either side, skeptics and proponents will continue to debate the matter, and compare it to the Roswell UFO incident in 1947. What do you believe?

25-10-2023 om 18:49 geschreven door peter  

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

25-10-2023 om 18:14 geschreven door peter  

From the Fukushima Daichi nuclear plant after a disaster to a U.S. missile base, UFOs have a concerning affinity for nuclear-based sites.

By Nathaniel Janowitz

The Enmyoin Temple in the Fukushima prefecture of Japan is now known colloquially by a different name, said its Chief Monk, Tomonori Izumi: “The Miracle Temple.”

“I don’t know if it was some god or some powerful being in a UFO, but I believe that some invisible power really did come to save us,” said Izumi.

On March 11 2011, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant was the site of one of the worst nuclear disasters ever after an earthquake and subsequent tsunami caused its electrical grid to fail. The simultaneous disasters laid waste to much of the surrounding area, but “miraculously, the temple was untouched.”

“The UFO's came after the explosion. There were so many of them. I was shocked,” said the monk in the fourth episode of the VICE Studio’s Netflix docuseries series Encounters: “Lights Over Fukushima.”

“Radioactive energy was leaking everywhere. I believe the UFOs came to readjust the flood of radioactive energy in order to save us. That's my theory, anyway,” said Izumi.

Just like after the Fukushima disaster, UFO’s have been documented repeatedly around places where humans have spawned nuclear activity. There are “very clear connections” between UFO sightings and nuclear sights “going back decades,” said author Dr. Jensine Andresen.

“My personal view on the basis of over 30 years of very extensive research is that there is an advanced extraterrestrial presence operating basically here on Earth and in the oceans,” she said.

Andresen cited declassified U.S. government reports from agencies like the FBI and CIA about UFO sightings near nuclear sites, saying she had looked at 39 different accounts between the 1940s and 1990s.

“It goes back to the 1930s when the science and research was being done to understand fission. But then it really heats up in the 1940s, in particular, right after the detonation of the two atomic bombs in Japan in 1945. Then it is decisive, it’s conclusive. You see one after another event occurring in proximity specifically to sites associated with nuclear weapons,” said Andresen.

There are numerous cases, she said, listing sightings near Kirtland Air Force Base, Sandia National Laboratories, and other places “where nuclear weapons were stored.”

Another well-known case took place at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana in March of 1967. Robert Salas, who worked as a missile launch officer controlling ten nuclear tipped missiles at the time, alleged one day after he received reports from other officers of strange UFO sightings, his missiles were shut down and became “unlaunchable.” He later learned that ten weapons at another nearby site were also shut down “under similar circumstances, very similar circumstances where UFOs were sighted over the launch facilities.” More recently, Salas said that he had briefed the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), a unit tasked with resolving credible UFO sightings, on the event. 

Andresen said one of the clearest examples of these sorts of activities around nuclear facilities was the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine.

“There was a lot of UFO activity reported there also. At the height of the fire in Chernobyl, the reading was 3000 milliroentgens, which is a unit of ionizing radiation. And right at the height of the fire, many people observed a UFO come, stayed for 3 minutes, shown a light right at Unit 4 and departed,” she said. “They took another reading and it had apparently dropped to 800. Just in a few minutes. That seems like a very conscious attempt to remediate the danger caused by the malfunction there.”

Like the Chief Monk of the Miracle Temple, Andresen also believes that these extraterrestrial beings are trying to help us avoid our own self destruction via nuclear catastrophes.

“I think this is an intelligence that recognizes the depth of human creativity and wants to preserve it. I think this intelligence cares about us. I think this intelligence does not want us to go extinct. That's what I think is really being communicated,” she said. “’We're right here with you. Just open your hearts. Open your minds. We'd like to help you. And, you know, let's get to know one another.’ I think that's really what the message is.”

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23-10-2023 om 20:33 geschreven door peter