Travis Walton reveals new theory on Fire in the Sky Abduction

Posted by: Michael Cline July 2, 2012 0 9047 Views

Travis Walton (Credit: Open Minds/Peter Beste)

One of the most prolific abduction cases in the history of ufology, which happened more than 35 years ago, was that of Travis Walton. His disappearance caused a whirlwind of news reports, controversy, and skepticism.

For his entire adult life, Walton has been carrying this emotional burden and the telling of his story has been, for the most part, a solo journey. Recently, at the 2012 International UFO Congress, two eye witnesses, John Goulette and Steve Pierce, came forward to speak with Walton about the incident. Hearing their stories has educated Walton about what Goulette and Pierce experienced during his abduction, and since then he has also connected with others who have shared similar stories. Making these connections and his own process of maturity has allowed Walton to reexamine his beliefs surrounding the incident.

Recently Walton sat down with Open Minds and during the interview it was apparent he had a certain newfound confidence. Whether it is the result of Walton being joined by his fellow workmen and sharing their stories, or just through the maturity process, it is evident that Walton has become much more comfortable in his own skin.

One can only speculate how someone is personally affected after an experience like this. The truth as to why this happened to Walton will probably never be known for sure. But he continues to press on and uses his new conviction surrounding the incident to broaden his philosophy on life and society.

Exoplanet tally soars above 1,000

Scientists are looking for more rocky worlds that could possibly retain liquid water on their surface

The number of observed exoplanets - worlds circling distant stars - has passed 1,000.

Of these, 12 could be habitable - orbiting at a distance where it is neither "too hot" nor "too cold" for water to be liquid on the surface.

The planets are given away by tiny dips in light as they pass in front of their stars or through gravitational "tugs" on the star from an orbiting world.

These new worlds are listed in the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia.

The tally now stands at 1,010 new exoplanets.

Abel Mendez of the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico, said that although the number has rapidly increased in recent years, due to a lack of funding this figure is much lower than it could be.

"We have more techniques and proven technology to detect more exoplanets, but the limit has been telescopes, especially space telescopes.

"If we had more funding there would be more telescopes and that count would be much larger by now."

The Kepler space telescope, which spotted many of these worlds in recent years, broke down earlier this year. Scientists still have to trawl through more than 3,500 other candidates from this mission so the number could rapidly increase.

In January 2013, astronomers used Kepler's data to estimate that there could be at least 17 billion Earth-sized exoplanets in the Milky Way galaxy. They said that one in six stars could host an Earth-sized planet in close orbit.

Continue reading the main story

Exoplanets

• An exoplanet exists outside our Solar System
• Many of those found so far are large planets believed to resemble Jupiter or Neptune
• The first exoplanet was discovered in 1992, orbiting a pulsar
• A few years later, the planet 51 Pegasi B was found orbiting a star similar to the Sun
• Hundreds of extrasolar planets have been confirmed since, and thousands more "candidates" await confirmation

The number of confirmed planets frequently increases because as scientists analyse the data they are able publish their results online immediately. But as the finds are not yet peer reviewed, the total figure remains subject to change.

"Each night we get a list of astronomy papers where there might be an exoplanet announcement. When we get that we have to review it," explained Prof Mendez.

This exoplanet catalogue is organised by Jean Schneider, an astronomer at the Paris Observatory. For the past 18 years he has catalogued new exoplanets on the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia.

Others in the field, like Prof Mendez, are then able to review and comment on the findings, which makes it "more dynamic" he explained.

"That's why the other catalogues just lag behind. The review is reliable as it's exactly the same as what the journals do." Prof Mendez told BBC News.

Nasa will only accept those announced in an academic journal, so it updates its list far less frequently. Their tally currently stands at 919 confirmed worlds.

Jean Schneider said it was also important to note that there was "no consensus for the definition of a planet" and that past experience had shown that a few objects declared as planets were actually artefacts or low-mass stars.

"Some objects, like some Kepler planets, are declared 'confirmed planets' but have not been published in [referenced] articles. It does not mean that they will not be published later on, but it introduces another fuzziness in the tally," he added.

Even if there was a generally adopted definition, Mr Schneider said that for some objects "there is a large uncertainty on parameters, so that the planetary nature of the object is uncertain".

For Prof Mendez reaching 1,000 marks an important milestone in the quest to understand the history of the evolution of the cosmos.

"I don't just want to know where the exoplanets are, I want to understand the stars, because they are the hosts for the planets. I want to understand the whole galaxy and the distribution of the stars because everything is connected," he explained.

For him, the most exciting discoveries are Earth-like planets which could be habitable.

"We want to know how unique our planet is, that's a big question and we are now closer than ever," he added.

For Mr Schneider the most interesting is the candidate exoplanet around Alpha Centauri, as it is circling a star only four light-years away.

This planet likely has the same mass as Earth but is outside the "habitable zone" as it circles its star far closer than Mercury orbits our Sun.

Forty years ago today, a four-man crew of an Army Reserve helicopter was flying over Mansfield, Ohio, around 11:00 p.m. when they "encountered a near midair collision with an unidentified flying object," according to the official report, signed and submitted by the crew after the incident.

A full explanation for this terrifying UFO close encounter has never been offered, and to this day, the helicopter-UFO incident remains one of the most credible -- and terrifying -- in the history of the subject.

The commander of the helicopter, Maj. Larry Coyne, and his crew, thought at first that the light on the horizon was a radio tower beacon.

"We were flying along at about 2,500 feet when the crew chief on the helicopter observed a red light on the east horizon. He then informed me that the light was closing on the helicopter -- that it was coming at us on a collision course," Coyne told this reporter in 1975.

"I looked to the right and observed that the object became bigger and the light became brighter, and I began to descend the helicopter toward the ground, to get out of the collision course path. We were descending and this object was like a missile locked onto the helicopter, only it came at us on a perpendicular angle, to hit us almost broadside.

"It looked like we were going to collide with it and we braced for impact, and then I heard the crewmen in the back say, 'Look up!' and I observed this craft stopped directly in front of us -- stopped -- it was hovering, right over the helicopter!" (See main story illustration above)

Watch this video excerpt of the Coyne account from a documentary report. The story continues after the video.

With the unknown object hovering in the air above the helicopter, Coyne and his crew suddenly noticed a light coming out of the aft end of it -- a light that swung 90 degrees and came into their cabin.

"It was a bright green light. And all of the red night lights that we utilize for night navigation were dissolved in this green light -- the whole cabin turned green. It hit all of us directly in the face."

Coyne and his crew knew they were encountering something extraordinary.

"We assumed it was a high-performance fighter, but when it stopped directly in front of us, then all four of us realized that was no high-performance aircraft. This craft, from the angle that we saw it, was cigar-shaped. It had no wings, no vertical or horizontal stabilizer, was approximately 60 feet long, 15-20 feet in height."

What occurred next was like something out of science fiction.

"We were at 1,700 feet," Coyne recalled. "Then this craft began to move slowly to the west away from us. At this time, I was worried we were going to hit the ground, and I looked at my altimeter and our helicopter was at 3,500 feet, climbing 1,000 feet a minute with no changes in the control. We went from 1,700 feet to 3,500 feet in a matter of seconds and never knew it!"

The helicopter topped out at 3,800 feet and the four men felt a bump, "like turbulence, at which time we had control of the aircraft again. I had control and we went back down to 2,500 feet and then continued on to Cleveland," Coyne said.

"As far as the vehicle itself, there's no doubt in our minds what it looked like. A craft that can move at terrific speeds in excess of 1,000 knots, and then stop on a dime, maintains altitude, can change altitude, climb, descend. To encounter a UFO when it approaches your aircraft, you have no idea what it is. I think if it wanted to collide with us, it could have. You can't get away from it -- you don't have that much time to respond!"

Lending credibility to this case were eyewitnesses on the ground who observed the UFO-helicopter encounter. The Army didn't prevent Coyne and his crew from speaking out about their experience. In fact, Coyne was allowed to recount the UFO incident to the United Nations in 1978, as seen below, under the sponsorship of Grenada.

This 1973 UFO incident, while certainly dramatic and terrifying for the helicopter crew involved, is not the only time that conventional aircraft have had encounters with unknown objects.

Many crew members of major airlines have witnessed unusual objects near their aircraft but have been reluctant to tell their stories publicly.

In 1999, Richard Haines, a retired senior research scientist for the NASA-Ames Research Center in California, created the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena, or NARCAP, to give pilots and air traffic controllers a confidential place to report their own unusual sightings of what Haines refers to as unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP.

"We have two objectives: To make flying safer with regard to unidentified and poorly understood phenomena in the atmosphere. And the second objective is to collect, analyze and then report high quality data from the aerospace world on the phenomena, to help us understand them better," Haines, 76, told The Huffington Post.

According to Haines, on an average daily basis, since the creation of NARCAP, he's received six to 12 reports a year. He absolutely believes there are real dangerous or safety issues that come up between pilots and some UAP.

"Based upon analysis of past cases, a potential for a very serious event does exist," Haines said. "We have reviewed a great many encounters in flight where several things can happen. One of them is an electromagnetic effect in close proximity to the phenomenon, where cockpit instrumentation are affected -- it might be a magnetic field, radio interference or even an inertial effect, and that's obviously unsafe. Pilots don't want to be flying airplanes where they can't trust their instruments."

Another area of concern that Haines and his colleagues have found is similar to what Coyne and his helicopter crew experienced in 1973.

"It's where a UAP is near the airplane, perhaps ahead of the plane, and the pilot makes a rapid emergency dive to avoid a perceived collision. That's not very common, but it would have to be reported. It has happened in the past and there are still near-misses that occur which sometimes are associated with a nearby UAP."

Haines has always been impressed with the Coyne helicopter incident.

"It qualifies as a genuine UAP encounter. Multiple witness cases are very important and should command the attention of aviation officials. In the Coyne case, its color, speed and apparent shape -- those are all important physical characteristics that can be related to other pilot sightings.

"I think the Coyne case ranks very, very high in credibility. One reason is Coyne's reputation as a good pilot before this happened. And his courage -- the fact that he was willing to come forward with this very bizarre story and to stand by it says an awful lot. And he would give encouragement to other pilots to do the same.

"If everybody remains silent, we're never going to get to the bottom of this."

Also on HuffPost:

Dr. James E. McDonald's Complete Audio Tape Archives/Recordings

Audio Recordings by:
Dr. James E. McDonald
Senior Physicist, Institute of Atmospheric Physics
University of Arizona – Tucson

Selections from MS 328 Dr. James E. McDonald Papers, University of Arizona Library, Tucson Arizona.
All contents copyright 2005. Arizona Board of Regents.
All rights reserved.

Recorded from the period of 1967 through 1968

110 disc CD-R archive (CDDA files)
18 disc DVD-R data archive of digitized .wav files (Edited Master from Original Recordings)

Recorded, Edited and Transferred by:
Ralph McCarron
March 2002 - February 2006

Wolf Video
email: support@wolfvideo.net
web: www.wolfvideo.net

Coordinated by Ann Druffel and Vince Uhlenkott from a grant provided by the "Fund for UFO Research"

Note: This project took 4 years to complete. I’m self-employed and run my own business from my home. My main business is video editing, video production, CD/DVD-Rom authoring and web design. The project turned out to be a huge undertaking, encompassing many more hours than I initially thought, however I'm happy to have been given the opportunity to have cataloged the amazing life's work (in audio form) of Dr. James E. McDonald's UFO research.

Once finished, the project ended up being archived on 110 CD-R’s for playback in a car radio, portable CD player or boom box. The original uncompressed (WAV) files were backed up on 18 data DVD-R’s. After this was done I also processed the files to Windows Media Audio (WMA) files and MP3 (MP3) files. The WMA or MP3 files could be used for streaming off a web server for internet playback. Also WMA and MP3 files can be played on most new media players like the iPod or any other current DVD/CD players. The beauty of the WMA and MP3 files is that I was able to compress roughly 81 gigabytes of Dr. James McDonald’s complete archive to fit on one (1) DVD, just being under 4.5 gigabytes.

Where do I start…

In March of 2002, Ann Druffel and Vince Uhlenkott asked me for their help in converting all of Dr. James McDonald’s reel to reel tapes to digital format. At that time my business was a little slow so I said I would help them out. Ann and Vince then supplied me with the whole archive of Dr. McDonald’s reel to reel tapes. They consisted of:

* Eighty Three (83), 1 7/8 ips (inches per second), 3 inch reel to reel tapes, record time 1 hour per side, 2 hours of record time per reel = 166 hours of record time.

* Ten (10) , 3 ¾ ips, 5 inch reel to reel tapes, record time 1 hour per side, 2 hours of record time per reel = 20 hours of record time.

* Twenty (20), 3 ¾ ips, 7 inch reel to reel tapes, record time 2 hours per side, 4 hours of record time per reel = 80 hours of record time. (See Fig. 1).

(Fig. 1)
Collage of Dr. James McDonald’s original audio tapes and notes.

Total record time = 266 hours, just to record the audio into the computer.

The editing time probably quadrupled that.

The recording and editing process consisted of these five steps:

1. Recording all of Dr. James McDonald’s reel to reel archive into the computer as uncompressed (WAV) files.

2. Editing of each reel. (Each reel could contain either 4 to 5 telephone interviews, recordings of symposiums or recordings of television/radio shows). The WAV files would have to be split up into each of their own segments.

3. Processing of limiter and noise/hum reduction to each file depending on how bad the file was recorded. Almost all of his recordings needed this process done to every file.

4. Cataloging and naming of each computer file. (I would have to listen to every file after the recording process and use Ann Druffel’s original notes to make sure names, spellings and dates were correct). I had to figure out an easy way to name the files so they could be organized easily. I wanted each file to correspond with the existing reel to reel tape for a reference. That way, if I looked back to my original WAV files I could tell exactly what reel they came from and what side the recording was from. So a 3 inch reel, tape #27, Side 2 would be named: 3T27S2 and then what the filename was.

Example: 3T27S2 James McDonald Interviews Dr Allen Hynek.wav

This stands for 3 (being a 3 inch reel), T means tape, so 3T means 3 inch tape. 27 means reel #27, S2 means Side 2. If there were four interviews or segments on one side I would split up the files each into their own file and name the file:

Example (segment one would be called): 3T36S101 James McDonald Interviews Paul Hill.wav
Example (segment two would be called): 3T36S102 James McDonald Interviews Lt Col Chase.wav

In these two examples this stands for 3 (being a 3 inch reel), T means tape, so 3T means 3 inch tape. 36 means reel #36, S2 means Side 2. 01 means segment #1. In the second example it would be the same except that 02 would stand for segment #2. So I could tell by looking quickly at this that: 3T36S102 James McDonald Interviews Lt Col Chase.wav was an interview that came from Dr. McDonalds 3 inch reel, tape #36, Side 1, Segment 2.

5. CD burning and labeling of each CD and/or DVD. I had to create a separate label, corresponding to Dr. McDonald’s original reels. (See Fig. 2)

(Fig. 2)
Image of CD-R Tape 7, Side 1 & 2, 7 inch reel, Disc 9.

The files would have to be recorded first. Then audio noise reduction software tools were used to remove hum, crackle, hiss, etc. Some one hour files would take four hours to edit. I would have to do one to four passes on the file just to remove hum and background noise. Since Dr. McDonald wasn’t a recording engineer or an audio expert, the recordings weren’t always recorded in a noise free environment. A couple of times he did interviews in the witness’s car on the way to the location, which is very noisy. I had to deal with removing engine, traffic and wind noises.

This doesn’t include the time it took me to edit the actual files and listen to them to figure out names, dates etc. so I could name each file correctly. Ann Druffel’s original notes on the cataloging of Dr. McDonald’s files helped a lot for referencing names, dates etc. I would also call Rob Swiatek or email Richard Hall from the Fund for UFO Research to help me with names and dates to make sure they were correct. Dr. McDonald would record his voice before most interviews and say the date, time, and location and spell out the name of each witness. And other times there would be nothing recorded before the interview. Sometimes I would have to look up witness’s names and dates of UFO events on the internet. This way I could double check if the dates were correct and the names of the witnesses were spelled correctly. And sometimes, unless it was a famous UFO case, I wouldn’t be able to find anything on the internet about it. So some spellings of people’s names maybe spelled incorrectly. If I wasn’t sure of a name or date I added a question mark next to the name or date. Some witnesses were also unknowns so I would list the person in my notes as, “Dr. James McDonald Interviews Unknown Man”, or “Dr. James McDonald Interviews Frank (Last Name Unknown?)”. If there are words misspelled or incorrect dates, please forgive me. Recording and editing the data was a big enough job in itself.

The first problem in recording the files was that Dr. McDonald’s original 3 inch, 1 7/8 speed reel to reel tape recorder was of no use being an old belt driven unit. Sometimes the audio would play at a correct speed and then slow down, so recording was useless. The audio would sound like Dr. McDonald was talking underwater. So the next thing I did was search on eBay for another recorder. Since the older recorders are pretty cheap ($20 to $50 dollars), I figured I would buy one to see if it would solve my problem. I found a Sony TC-123 reel to reel tape recorder that would play at 1 7/8 ips on eBay for $23.17 with shipping and handling. (See Fig. 3).

(Fig. 3)
Vintage Sony TC-123 reel-to-reel tape recorder.

I tried to use this recorder to record the 3 inch, 1 7/8 ips reel to reel tapes into my computer, but again this machine was old, belt driven and also had playback speed problems. It also had problems with major hum once it was connected to my computer for recording, due to the fact of grounding problems.

I called Vince Uhlenkott and he told me he had a reel to reel tape recorder that could play 3 ¾ ips. So we suggested to use this recorder to start the job and would try to find another player that was able to play 1 7/8 ips and 3 ¾ ips. The problem with this would mean that the job was basically started and recorded in reverse order. This being that Dr. McDonald originally, (at that time) recorded on 3 inch reels. Then when the technology got better he recorded on 5 inch reels and then 7 inch reels. Since we didn’t want to waste any time we started recording the 7 inch reels right away.

After I had recorded 10 or more files I would edit out long pauses, coughs or spaces between the interviews. This way the listener didn’t have to wait for long breaks while listening to the audio. Then limiting and noise/hum removal would be applied so the files would sound clean and wouldn’t have any background noise. I would then take notes on each file, name them, burn a CD and label them. This is a very tedious process as you can see and could only be done, as I mentioned earlier, on my time off.

After some time it got to the point that Vince Uhlenkott’s tape player/recorder started also having playback problems. Since we both knew that we would eventually need another playback machine that could playback 1 7/8 ips speed, Vince told me to go ahead and look on eBay for another one. I was able to eventually find a really clean vintage reel to reel Sony TC-155 player.
(See Fig. 4).

(Fig. 4)
Vintage Sony TC-155 reel to reel tape player.

This one was recently serviced by an audio specialist so I knew it would not have any playback problems for awhile. Over the next few years I recorded the rest of the 7 inch, 5 inch then 3 inch reels. I found that it was easier just to record the whole archive first and then concentrate on editing, noise reduction, cataloging, burning and finally labeling. For anyone technically interested I used Sony’s Sound Forge software to record the WAV files to my hard drive on the PC. Originally I used Sony’s Noise Reduction software to remove noise and hum but as the technology got better I used Bias’s SoundSoap Pro. I found this to be a lot better at removing noise and hum than Sony’s Noise Reduction software. (See Fig. 5)

(Fig. 5)
The editing and noise/hum removal process of Dr. James McDonald’s
audio recordings with Sound Forge and SoundSoap Pro software.

At the end of February of 2006 I finally had the whole project completed, burned and labeled. (See Figures 6 & 7).

(Fig. 6)
The 3-ring binder of the complete 110 CD-R archive of Dr. James McDonald’s audio recordings.

(Fig. 7)
A peek inside the 3-ring binder housing Dr. James McDonald’s audio recordings.

I’m glad that this could finally be completed and I’m sure it will become a huge research tool for the whole UFO community. There a probably references, or info in these interviews that could have been missed by other researchers in the past. Also new info could be gleaned from any of these past UFO cases. I hope eventually that these files will be streamed on the University of Tucson’s website for all UFO researchers to be able to have access to them.

Research by a British scientist has concluded that the legendary Himalayan yeti may in fact be a sub-species of brown bear.

DNA tests on hair samples carried out by Oxford University genetics professor Bryan Sykes found that they matched those from an ancient polar bear.

He subjected the hairs to the most advanced tests available.

He says the most likely explanation for the myth is that the animal is a hybrid of polar bears and brown bears.

Prof Sykes told the BBC that there may be a real biological animal behind the yeti myth.

"I think this bear, which nobody has seen alive,... may still be there and may have quite a lot of polar bear in it," he said.

"It may be some sort of hybrid and if its behaviour is different from normal bears, which is what eyewitnesses report, then I think that may well be the source of the mystery and the source of the legend."

Prof Sykes conducted the DNA tests on hairs from two unidentified animals, one from Ladakh - in northern India on the west of the Himalayas - and the other from Bhutan, 1,285km (800 miles) further east.

The results were then compared with the genomes of other animals that are stored on a database of all published DNA sequences.

Suspected yeti footprints - such as these in Nepal - are regularly photographed

Prof Sykes found that he had a 100% match with a sample from an ancient polar bear jawbone found in Svalbard, Norway, that dates back to between 40,000 and 120,000 years ago - a time when the polar bear and closely related brown bear were separating as different species.

The species are closely related and are known to interbreed where their territories overlap.

The sample from Ladakh came from the mummified remains of a creature shot by a hunter around 40 years ago, while the second sample was in the form of a single hair, found in a bamboo forest by an expedition of filmmakers around 10 years ago.

Prof Sykes said that his results were "completely unexpected" and that more work needed to be done interpreting them.

He said that while they did not mean that "ancient polar bears are wandering around the Himalayas", there could be a sub-species of brown bear in the High Himalayas descended from an ancestor of the polar bear.

"Or it could mean there has been more recent hybridisation between the brown bear and the descendant of the ancient polar bear," he said.

In 2008 scientists in the US examined hairs given to the BBC which some had claimed were from a yeti.

The scientists concluded that in fact the hairs - obtained from the north-east Indian state of Meghalaya - belonged to a species of Himalayan goat known as a Himalayan Goral.

Alien abduction 1973: Calvin Parker Jr. speaks about encounter

PASCAGOULA, Miss. (AP) - Charles Hickson never regretted the notoriety that came his way after he told authorities he encountered an unidentified flying object and its occupants 40 years ago on the banks of the Pascagoula River. Until his death in 2011, Hickson told his story to anyone who would listen.

But Calvin Parker Jr., the other man present for one of the most high-profile UFO cases in American history, has never come to terms with what he still says was a visit with gray, crab-clawed creatures from somewhere else. He says the encounter on Oct. 11, 1973, turned his life upside down.

"This is something I really didn't want to happen," Parker told The Associated Press as the 40th anniversary of the encounter approached.

Parker was unnerved by initial crush of unwelcome attention, with newsmen and UFO enthusiasts overrunning Walker Shipyard, where he and Hickson worked. He tried to dodge the spotlight for decades, moving frequently before returning to Mississippi's Gulf Coast in recent years.

The incident made headlines, sparked a wave of UFO sightings nationwide and became one of the most widely examined cases on record. Skeptics ranged from the deputies who first interviewed the men to an author who sought to poke holes in the story, and Parker himself has had conflicting thoughts about whether he was visited by aliens or demons.

Parker, now 58, was 18 when he went fishing with Hickson on a tranquil Thursday night after work.

As they dangled their lines without much luck, the two said a UFO with blue lights swooped down. They told of a zipping noise made by the object.

Hickson, then 42, said three creatures with leathery gray skin and crab-like claws - he thought they were robots - took them by the forearms and levitated them aboard the craft. He said something that looked like a large floating eye appeared to examine him.

Parker says he was conscious but paralyzed.

"They gave a thorough, I mean a thorough, examination to me just like any doctor would," he said.

And then they were back on the shore, where it all began. The UFO was gone and Parker said they tried to collect themselves. Hickson needed three shots of liquor from a bottle in his car to calm his nerves before deciding to report what happened.

At the Jackson County Sheriff's Department, deputies initially suspected both men were drunk. Then-Capt. Glenn Ryder, who still works for the sheriff's office, said he laughed at the report, but met with the men. Parker and Hickson stuck to their story.

After the formal interview, deputies left Hickson and Parker together in a room with a hidden tape recorder, hoping to catch them in a lie.

"Me and the other investigator got up and left to let them talk, to see if they were going to say, 'Well, we got them fooled,' but they didn't," Ryder said. "They were really concerned."

On the tape, Hickson tells Parker, "It scared me to death too, son. You can't get over it in a lifetime. Jesus Christ have mercy."

"I don't know what happened to them," Ryder said. "I wasn't there with them, but I know you don't fake fear, and they were fearful. They were fearful."

The next afternoon, the story was splashed across the front pages of newspapers in Pascagoula and Gulfport. Overnight, Pascagoula became a magnet for news reporters and UFO investigators.

Widespread interest in UFOs began in the 1940s with an incident at Roswell N.M., in which UFO enthusiasts believe the government got its hands on a crashed UFO and alien bodies. The government spent decades denying it.

In the 1960s, interest flared anew with a series of reports, including the purported alien abduction of New Hampshire couple Betty and Barney Hill in 1961. The widespread attention to the Pascagoula encounter set off a new round of reports.

In south Mississippi, hundreds of reports overwhelmed authorities in the two weeks after the Hickson-Parker encounter.

There were hoaxes and humor too. A Long Beach, Miss., taxi driver told police a being with pincers tapped on his window, a story he admitted days later was fake.

A Mobile, Ala., television station said it would record a UFO appearance predicted by a psychic between Mobile and nearby Pascagoula. Roughly 1,000 cars converged on the spot, where nothing happened.

An Ocean Springs alderman proposed an ordinance making it illegal to operate a UFO at more than twice the speed of light on U.S. 90, the coast's main drag. Mayor Tom Stennis voted against the ordinance, joking he didn't want to discourage tourism.

UFO skeptic Philip Klass believed Hickson and Parker's report was a hoax. In his book "UFOs Explained," he noted Hickson changed some details of his story and claimed a polygraph operator whose test Hickson passed wasn't up to the task. Parker later passed a lie detector test himself.

Hickson would go on to appear on talk shows, give lectures and interviews, and self-publish a book in 1983 titled "UFO Contact at Pascagoula." He reported three more encounters in 1974, and said the aliens communicated to him that they were peaceful.

"The only thing he wanted to do was let everybody know we were not alone," said Eddie Hickson, his son. "He didn't care if you believed him or not. If you wanted to listen, by gum, he'd tell you."

"He could never understand why he was chosen," the younger Hickson added. "But he never once told me that he wished it had never happened. Never."

Parker said the intrusions by curiosity seekers have become less frequent over the years, but have never really let up. "You don't never have no privacy," he said.

Parker married later in 1973 and eventually took oil industry and out-of-state construction jobs to escape the attention.

"By the time you get somewhere and they figure out who you were, I'd just go," he said. "I'd just go find another job somewhere."

Parker attended some UFO conventions, and was once hypnotized by Budd Hopkins, a noted UFO investigator. He briefly tried to capitalize on his story in 1993 by starting a Louisiana company called UFO Investigations where he and partners would produce television segments on the subject.

Parker moved to Moss Point in 2006 and in 2010 suffered a stroke that limited him physically. He's on disability aid now, but sometimes boats by the site of the encounter when he goes fishing. He said that just recently he met a woman at a gas station who already knew who he was.

"I'm always recognized," he said.

There's no historical marker on the river bank noting the encounter, and stores don't sell UFO souvenirs. But local people remember - though often with skepticism and jokes.

For his part, Parker said he's had conflicting thoughts over the years about that night in 1973. At one point, he wasn't even sure the creatures were aliens. They might have been demons, he said.

"I'm a firm believer in God and where there's good, there's bad," Parker said.

Associated Press writer Stacey Plaisance in Pascagoula, Miss., contributed to this story. Jeff Amy reported from Jackson, Miss.

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

In this column I want to examine the changing terminology that’s been applied to strange things seen in the skies over the years, and see if and how this has affected the way in which the subject is viewed.

Since the dawn of time, people have seen strange things in the sky, but setting aside Biblical references to “fiery chariots”, and Twentieth Century terms such as “scareships”, “foo fighters”, “ghost rockets” and “ghost aeroplanes”, our story starts in 1947 with Kenneth Arnold’s sighting of nine strange objects over the Cascade Mountains in Washington State. When describing the motion (not the shape, as is often believed), he said that they moved in an odd, jerky way, “like a saucer skipped across water”. The media adapted this quote into “flying saucer” and a modern mystery acquired a new name.

Things stayed that way until the then Head of Project Blue Book, Edward Ruppelt, decided in around 1951 that a more scientific term was needed - not least because “flying saucer” had become synonymous with disk-shaped craft, whereas people were seeing a great variety of different shapes. He coined the phrase “unidentified flying object”, which was abbreviated to “UFO”, and slowly replaced “flying saucer”.

We were stuck with “UFO” for a long time – and still are, for the most part. The problem with this is that in pop culture, the term “UFO” has become synonymous with “alien spacecraft”, leading to nonsensical questions such as “Do you believe in UFOs?”, when what people actually mean is “Do you believe that some UFOs are extraterrestrial vehicles”?

This was a problem at the UK Ministry of Defense, when – for example – we wanted to secure funding for a highly-classified intelligence study into the phenomenon. Given competing demands on the defense budget, we were unlikely to get financial approval for any study into “UFOs”. So we changed the terminology to “unidentified aerial phenomena”, which we abbreviated to “UAP”. The strategy worked and the study was funded. It evolved into what the UFO community now knows as “Project Condign”.

The closure of the UK MoD’s UFO project and the declassification and release of the huge archive of its files inadvertently led to the introduction of yet more terminology. The fact that the MoD axed the UFO project obviously didn’t stop people seeing UFOs, and while reports from the public could be ignored, if a military pilot sees a UFO that’s tracked on radar, clearly the chain of command won’t ignore it. And if a commercial aircraft has a near-collision with a UFO, clearly the UK’s Airprox Board won’t ignore that either. It’s just that such things will be looked at on a case-by-case basis, outside of any formally-constituted investigative program.

This new situation created a problem, because any investigation of such incidents might be regarded as contradicting the government’s “We no longer investigate UFOs” line, which is now routinely parroted to any journalist or member of the public who asks about the subject. So pilots tend to get around this by using phrases such as “unusual aircraft”, “unconventional helicopter”, and other variations on the theme. 

Aside from helping to preserve the integrity of the “We no longer investigate UFOs” line, this new terminology has other advantages. Firstly, it encourages more pilots to make reports, because the stigma of reporting a “UFO” (with the fear of being ridiculed, disbelieved or having one’s active flying status questioned) is no longer an issue. “Unusual aircraft” carries with it the subtle implication that what was seen was a new spy plane or drone, which is perfectly acceptable for pilots to see. The other great advantage of the new phrases is that they avoid creating a Freedom of Information Act liability, as people tend to ask questions in terms of “UFOs”, and not “unusual aircraft”. It’s not clear to what extent this constitutes a deliberate policy (a deliberate attempt to subvert the Freedom of Information Act is illegal), as opposed to a case of “unintended benefits”. 

Whatever the truth of the matter, it shows how the words and phrases that we use are important. Any graduate of psychology, media studies, politics and a host of other disciplines knows how thinking and language are inextricably bound together. The terminology we use can be deliberately chosen to provoke a reaction – positive or negative. One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter. So it is with UFOs. Phrases like “flying saucer” and “little green men” may have been acceptable decades ago, but now seem so old fashioned that they make the subject seem ridiculous. Even “UFO” has sufficient stigma to discourage most politicians and mainstream media outlets from wanting to be associated with the subject. Some people know this and use this knowledge deliberately to disparage the subject and those who study it.

However, the UFO community might ultimately profit from all this. Finding out more about the words and phrases that pilots and air traffic controllers use to describe UFOs will enable Freedom of Information Act requests to be better targeted. Adopting more scientific-sounding terms like “UAP” might enable ufologists to make their case more effectively. And being aware when someone is deliberately using archaic terminology to disparage the subject should enable the UFO community to be better aware of when it’s under attack, and thus better able to fight back.

Nick Pope is a former employee of the UK Ministry of Defense. From 1991 to 1994 he ran the British Government's UFO project and has recently been involved in a five-year program to declassify and release the entire archive of these UFO files. Nick Pope held a number of other fascinating posts in the course of his 21-year government career, which culminated in his serving as an acting Deputy Director in the Directorate of Defense Security. He now works as a broadcaster and journalist, covering subjects including space, fringe science, defense and intelligence.

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Military magazine highlights Iranian air force encounters with UFOs

Posted by: Jason McClellan September 30, 2013 4 Comments 4512 Views

The Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF) has reportedly used F-14A Tomcats to intercept UFOs for decades.

Cover of Combat Aircraft Monthly. (Credit: Key Publishing)

An article in the October 2013 issue of the military aviation magazine Combat Aircraft Monthly details the history of the Tomcat aircraft in the IRIAF. Near the end of the article, a section titled “UFO hunters” describes that F-14s have been used by the air force during the last twenty years to “intercept foreign and unknown aircraft.”

The article explains that, when Iran’s nuclear program was revealed, the U.S. used unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to gather reconnaissance from nuclear facilities in the fall of 2004. IRIAF reportedly had four F-4 and four F-14 interceptors standing by, twenty-four hours a day, because of this UAV presence. Other F-4s and F-14s were kept on alert, and some were even flown every night to monitor the area’s airspace. But some of the unidentified craft they encountered were anything but ordinary.

UFOs were spotted multiple times by both ground radar and airborne radar. According to Combat Aircraft Monthly, Iranian sources described that the UFOs “displayed astonishing flight characteristics, including an ability to fly outside the atmosphere, attain a maximum cruise speed of Mach 10, and a minimum speed of zero, with the ability to hover over the target.” These craft also reportedly emitted high levels of magnetic energy that disrupted navigation systems and jammed radars.

The article details one of these encounters where equipment was affected by a UFO:

In one case over Arak in November 2004, the crew of an F-14A armed with two AIM-9Js and two AIM-7E-4s spotted a luminous object flying near the heavy water plant of the Arak site. When the beam of the jet’s AN/AWG-9 radar “painted” the object, both the RIO and pilot saw that the radar scope was disrupted, probably due to the high magnetic energy of the object increasing the power of the reflected radar waves. The pilot described the object as being spherical, with something like a green afterburner creating a considerable amount of turbulence behind it. The Tomcat crew achieved a lock-on when it was flying a linear and constant flight path. Once the pilot selected an AIM-7E-4 to launch against it, the object increased its speed and then disappeared like a meteor.

The article also mentions a 2012 incident where an F-14 was scrambled to intercept an incoming UFO, but seconds after taking off, the F-14 exploded.

NASA’s X-43A. (Credit: NASA)

Other attempted engagements by the F-4s and F-14s proved futile, so the IRIAF reportedly ordered an end to flying missions against these “luminous objects.” Both Iran and Russia allegedly investigated these extraordinary UAVs. But following two years of research, the Iranian Army settled with the conclusion that the craft were simply U.S. intelligence drones.

No currently known aircraft has the ability to perform like the UFOs observed in Iran. NASA’s X-43A Scramjet set a new world speed record for a jet-powered aircraft–Mach 9.6, or nearly 7,000 mph–in 2004. But it does not have the capability to hover. It is a natural assumption that the U.S. military has secret aircraft and technology that is yet to be publicly acknowledged. But until such incredible technology is revealed, it is impossible to conclusively write off the UAVs in Iran as U.S. drones.

Thanks to Pedro from Miami, FL for sending the Combat Aircraft Monthly article to me.

Russia Unprepared to Deal With Space Alien Invasion – Official

KRASNOZNAMENSK (Moscow region), October 2 (RIA Novosti) – A Russian military space official admitted Wednesday that the country will be powerless to act should Earth become the target of an interplanetary incursion.

Sergei Berezhnoy, an aide to the head of the Titov Space Control Center, said that Russian aerospace defense authorities have not been tasked with preparing for the contingency of an alien attack.

“There are enough problems on Earth and in near-Earth space,” Berezhnoy said in response to a reporter’s question.

The planet’s space powers are in any event limited in their scope of action for building up military capabilities beyond the Earth’s confines. Under the terms of the 1976 Outer Space Treaty, to which Russia is a signatory, states cannot place weapons of mass destruction in orbit, although conventional weapons are allowed.

The Titov Space Control Center, which is run by the Russian Aerospace Defense Forces, is the country’s primary military and commercial satellite control facility.

The facility currently operates about 80 percent of Russian orbital spacecraft.

The most embarrassing news interview ever

This must be the most cringe-inducing interview by a senior journalist I’ve ever seen.

It’s conducted by Kirsty Wark, one of the BBC’s top presenters, and takes places on Newsnight, the BBC’s flagship nightly current affairs programme.

It truly makes me more ashamed of the “profession” of journalism than I already was – and I didn’t think that was possible.

Throughout the interview, Wark abandons even the pretence of doing what journalism is supposed to be about: interrogating the centres of power and holding them to account.

Instead Wark mimics adversarial journalism by interrogating the US journalist Glenn Greenwald about his role in the NSA leaks, as though she’s a novice MI5 recruit. To do this she has to parrot British government misinformation and fire at him questions so childish even she seems to realise half way through them how embarrassing they are.

This is actually how most Newsnight interviews run: creating the theatre of conflict between journalist and interviewee that conceals the real issues rather than revealing them. If one wanted to produce news that looked honest while actually being deeply dishonest this is exactly how one would do it.

The reason that the charade is exposed in this case is because the interviewee, Greenwald, is another journalist, and a far better one than Wark. So every time she relays an MI5 talking point, he can point out that she’s not doing the work of a journalist, even by the official definition she is supposed to believe in.

Anyway, watch it and weep…

Tagged as: BBC, media criticism

Star Trek 'holodeck' in the living room?

With "immersive media" taking content well beyond the TV screen, new technology is attempting to move virtual reality towards something even closer to real life.

Whether it be a cave, an igloo or a theatre, virtual reality is getting the immersive experience, with sight, sound and smell.

Full 360-degree screens are now capable of taking audiences to a whole new place. The companies pioneering this technology are hoping it will be close to a literal experience.

In a specially designed room, images are projected in every angle, even on to the ceiling so that those viewing are drawn into the illusion more fully than just looking at a screen.

Current applications are wide-ranging but include education about space travel, military training and acting as a tour guide around such sights as the pyramids. There is also a huge potential for gaming.

Flight simulators have offered a similar idea for a while but a true simulation cockpit costs about $20m (£13m) to purchase. It's still quite a way from the home for most.

"When it's done well it's an incredibly immersive experience, profoundly immersive," says Martin Howe, vice-president of tech company Global Immersion.

"It's like being there. In technology terms, it's just a giant computer... a super computer.

"We're just at the start... we can put anything on the screen."

But with screens already being the way a vast majority of people consume their information, what is so different about this?

Visuals are wherever the person looks and even peripheral vision in a system like this is seen as incredibly important.

"Imagine if you went through the world with sight blinders on and could only see what's in front of you - how much of the world would you see?" says Mike Hancock, of Mechdyne which produces the Cave system.

"If you just have that flat screen, then you're blinding your peripheral vision so you don't get the information you would usually get, which your brain processes whether you know it or not."

The thinking behind bigger screens operating in every angle is to suspend disbelief for the time the people seeing it are there.

This would mean the psychological response is very similar to how it would be in real life.

"The minute they are in a situation where they have got visuals all around them, they feel like they are in that environment which is obviously far removed from just looking at a flat screen in a normal room," says Colin Yellowley, MD of Igloo Vision.

The Igloo is a steel-tubed framework covered in PVC and a 360-degree screen powered by five HD projectors.

It offers large-scale simulation and a screen that draws you into the experience because there is no chance to look away.

But people are still in a room without the ability to truly interact with their surroundings in a natural way?

Firefighters using the system for training use a joystick to look around the environment rather than physically moving through it.

But the benefits for them and other organisations using the devices are heralded as an important progression.

"What it does is it brings things into a more realistic perspective," says Neale Smiles, business director of military training company H4 Global.

"They can do things such as dangerous missions, bring things very close to your own position - all of the things that they are not allowed to do in peacetime using live munitions."

This is not just in vision. Military services have asked for smell and sound to play a key part in the training, from recreating the smell of vomit or blood to the noise of a helicopter landing close by.

It certainly is quite a way from a textbook and a white board.

This technology is even creeping towards finding its way into the home. At the recent CES conference, Microsoft showed off a proof-of-concept video that expands games beyond the television screen.

Called the IllumiRoom, bullets fly through the room, environments appear off screen using projections and a Kinect motion sensor monitors the position of the user.

"[It] blur[s] the lines between on-screen content and the environment we live in allowing us to combine our virtual and physical worlds," wrote Microsoft.

Rumours have emerged online that this could be somehow related to the new XBox console announcement. Microsoft will not say any more until further details emerge in April.

In other developments, the team behind Project Holodeck, dedicated to recreating the experience of virtual reality, have begun demonstrating devices they are working on.

But can any of this really change the way most will watch content?

Holograms can be created already but not to the level where they are lifelike

"It did seem like a distraction," said IGN technology writer Melissa Grey.

"On video games forums, I asked whether people would use this and the overwhelming answer was 'no'.

"The human mind can only cope with so much visually before it starts to become overwhelmed.

"Immersive medias are the eventual big picture, but whether or not existing technologies are a stepping stone towards that, I don't know."

If immersive media is the big picture, how far can this technology go?

"Our vision is to build a holodeck one day," says Howe.

"It involves a number of technologies that don't exist yet so it's great - there's a lot of head room.

"It is a long way away but increasingly, that's the direction these technologies are heading in."

UFOs - scientific research

Scientists create never-before-seen form of matter

Harvard and MIT scientists are challenging the conventional wisdom about light, and they didn't need to go to a galaxy far, far away to do it.

Working with colleagues at the Harvard-MIT Center for Ultracold Atoms, a group led by Harvard Professor of Physics Mikhail Lukin and MIT Professor of Physics Vladan Vuletic have managed to coax photons into binding together to form molecules – a state of matter that, until recently, had been purely theoretical. The work is described in a September 25 paper in Nature.

The discovery, Lukin said, runs contrary to decades of accepted wisdom about the nature of light. Photons have long been described as massless particles which don't interact with each other – shine two laser beams at each other, he said, and they simply pass through one another.

"Photonic molecules," however, behave less like traditional lasers and more like something you might find in science fiction – the light saber.

"Most of the properties of light we know about originate from the fact that photons are massless, and that they do not interact with each other," Lukin said. "What we have done is create a special type of medium in which photons interact with each other so strongly that they begin to act as though they have mass, and they bind together to form molecules. This type of photonic bound state has been discussed theoretically for quite a while, but until now it hadn't been observed.

"It's not an in-apt analogy to compare this to light sabers," Lukin added. "When these photons interact with each other, they're pushing against and deflect each other. The physics of what's happening in these molecules is similar to what we see in the movies."

To get the normally-massless photons to bind to each other, Lukin and colleagues, including Harvard post-doctoral fellow Ofer Fisterberg, former Harvard doctoral student Alexey Gorshkov and MIT graduate students Thibault Peyronel and Qiu Liang couldn't rely on something like the Force – they instead turned to a set of more extreme conditions.

Researchers began by pumped rubidium atoms into a vacuum chamber, then used lasers to cool the cloud of atoms to just a few degrees above absolute zero. Using extremely weak laser pulses, they then fired single photons into the cloud of atoms.

As the photons enter the cloud of cold atoms, Lukin said, its energy excites atoms along its path, causing the photon to slow dramatically. As the photon moves through the cloud, that energy is handed off from atom to atom, and eventually exits the cloud with the photon.

"When the photon exits the medium, its identity is preserved," Lukin said. "It's the same effect we see with refraction of light in a water glass. The light enters the water, it hands off part of its energy to the medium, and inside it exists as light and matter coupled together, but when it exits, it's still light. The process that takes place is the same it's just a bit more extreme – the light is slowed considerably, and a lot more energy is given away than during refraction."

When Lukin and colleagues fired two photons into the cloud, they were surprised to see them exit together, as a single molecule.

The reason they form the never-before-seen molecules?

An effect called a Rydberg blockade, Lukin said, which states that when an atom is excited, nearby atoms cannot be excited to the same degree. In practice, the effect means that as two photons enter the atomic cloud, the first excites an atom, but must move forward before the second photon can excite nearby atoms.

The result, he said, is that the two photons push and pull each other through the cloud as their energy is handed off from one atom to the next.

"It's a photonic interaction that's mediated by the atomic interaction," Lukin said. "That makes these two photons behave like a molecule, and when they exit the medium they're much more likely to do so together than as single photons."

While the effect is unusual, it does have some practical applications as well.

"We do this for fun, and because we're pushing the frontiers of science," Lukin said. "But it feeds into the bigger picture of what we're doing because photons remain the best possible means to carry quantum information. The handicap, though, has been that photons don't interact with each other."

To build a quantum computer, he explained, researchers need to build a system that can preserve quantum information, and process it using quantum logic operations. The challenge, however, is that quantum logic requires interactions between individual quanta so that quantum systems can be switched to perform information processing.

"What we demonstrate with this process allows us to do that," Lukin said. "Before we make a useful, practical quantum switch or photonic logic gate we have to improve the performance, so it's still at the proof-of-concept level, but this is an important step. The physical principles we've established here are important."

The system could even be useful in classical computing, Lukin said, considering the power-dissipation challenges chip-makers now face. A number of companies – including IBM – have worked to develop systems that rely on optical routers that convert light signals into electrical signals, but those systems face their own hurdles.

Lukin also suggested that the system might one day even be used to create complex three-dimensional structures – such as crystals – wholly out of light.

"What it will be useful for we don't know yet, but it's a new state of matter, so we are hopeful that new applications may emerge as we continue to investigate these photonic molecules' properties," he said.

Explore further: MIT researchers build an all-optical transistor

More information: Paper: dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature12512