The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
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Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
26-08-2018
Black Knight PROOF? UFOs on ISS feed 'could be mystery alien satellite'
Black Knight PROOF? UFOs on ISS feed 'could be mystery alien satellite'
ALIEN hunters claim these two mysterious objects captured by the space station camera could be the Black Knight.
Live footage from the International Space Station (ISS) appeared to show the apparent structures speed up and change shape.
And conspiracy theorists are convinced the clip shows the Black Knight, a hypothersised extra terrestrial satellite.
The ISS, an artificial satellite in low Earth orbit launched in 1998, is a space research laboratory in which crew members from various nations experiment in areas such biology, physics and astronomy.
However in this instance the two seemingly metallic objects are caught on camera for seven minutes before the camera cuts out.
One YouTube commentator said: “At first I thought lens flare or dust on the lens, but after four minutes they looked more and more like solid 3D objects.
“Very good capture and very interesting.
"Solar guardians?”
Another said: “Looks to me these flares clearly have structure.
“Secret space program.”
YOUTUBE
BLACK KNIGHT: Has the space station camera captured mystery satellite
“Secret space program.”
The objects have been described as simply flares from a camera lens, the Hubble satellite or the Black Knight.
Extraterrestrials control the supposed satellite and it has been orbiting the Earth for 13,000 years, according to wild theories online.
A famous photo in 1998 captured during a space shuttle mission is said to show the Black Knight.
Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera could make intergalactic history this fall. If she wins Tuesday’s primary in Florida she would be in position to become the first person elected to Congress who says she was once abducted by aliens.
That possibility has given immense pleasure to one of Washington D.C.’s most peculiar lobbying shops: the Paradigm Research Group, which advocates for discussing and unveiling “facts surrounding an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race.”
“This is a milestone,” Stephen Bassett, executive director of the group, said of Aguilera’s candidacy. “If she were to win the election, she would be the first open contactee to serve in Congress.”
Aguilera, a Republican, is running in Florida’s 27th Congressional District, a Miami-area seat being vacated by Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. She is not a fringe figure. The Miami Herald endorsed her candidacy recently. But even in doing so, they acknowledged she is a bit “unusual.”
That’s because Aguilera has asserted that as a child, she was taken aboard a UFO by aliens who looked like the Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil. In a series of YouTube videos, Aguilera said the aliens told her “God is a universal energy, not a person,” that the center of the world’s energy is in Africa and that thousands of non-human skulls were discovered in a cave on Malta.
“I stick to my guns when I believe in something,” she told the Associated Press in a recent interview, also claiming that she has been communicating with the extra-terrestrials telepathically after the abduction.
Now a business consultant, Aguilera said she doesn’t want to be defined by the happenstances she said occurred when she was just seven years old. “It has nothing to do with what I have done,” she told the AP.
But for Bassett, this is not a topic from which to shy away. Instead, it represents a watershed moment and the culmination of the work done by his group, which was founded in 1996. He said that Aguilera is part of a larger story about the ultimate lifting of the “truth embargo,” during which time the government will reveal what it has hidden about extraterrestrials. The problem, for now at least, is that everyone is too preoccupied with the ongoing scandals of the White House to pay attention.
“The biggest story in human history is taking place right now, the ultimate end of the truth embargo,” Bassett said. “The Trump hurricane is simply sucking everything up.”
Despite the chance to achieve fuller enlightenment about the scope of our universe —or, at least, the occupants within it—Bassett is, for now, playing it cool. There are no plans to campaign with Aguilera, he said, lest it backfire.
“I don’t want to make anything more difficult for her,” he explained. “It’s one of those things in retrospect that will be seen as a big deal but in the current moment not a big deal"
It’s Time To Finally Elect A UFO Abductee To Congress
It’s Time To Finally Elect A UFO Abductee To Congress
JAZZ SHAW
Florida’s primary is coming up one week from today and the race for the GOP nomination in the 27th district has taken an interesting turn. There are a number of viable candidates in the field and the GOP has held the seat for decades. (The demographics have been shifting of late, however, so the race is seen as being more competitive.) The Miami Herald released their editorial endorsements for each party this weekend. They selected newcomer David Richardson for the Democrats, a seemingly safe choice. But on the Republican side, they picked Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera.
Rodriguez Aguilera also looks like a solid pick at first glance, having experience as a county legislator, a business consultant and a campaign trainer for female candidates. But the Herald was also quick to point out that she’s an “unusual” candidate in that she claims to not only believe in extraterrestrials but to have been abducted by them and taken aboard a spaceship as a child. (Miami Herald)
Media has seizures after Republicans lament the death of Mollie Tibbetts (Update: NY Times changes headline)
The Editorial Board was most impressed by Rodriguez Aguilera, now a business consultant.
We realize that Rodriguez Aguilera is an unusual candidate. Last year, she told the Miami Herald — and several Spanish-language media outlets — that she believes in extra-terrestrials. She says when she was 7, she was taken aboard a spaceship and, throughout her life, she has communicated telepathically with the beings, which remind her of the concrete Christ in Brazil. There you have it.
“This is a non-issue,” she told the Board. We agree. Her bona fides as a former elected official, and now a businesswoman who spends time in other countries training women to run for office are solid.
Rodriguez Aguilera is a strong candidate in the race with plausible conservative ideas. The daughter of a Cuban political prisoner, Rodriguez Aguilera became an activist, volunteering with the Cuban American National Foundation. She said that she was coached by its former leader, Jorge Mas Canosa, who taught her that, “If you don’t have a solution to a problem, don’t raise your hand to complain.”
The Hill has some additional details of the candidate’s testimony regarding her experience with the aliens. From her description, they sound like the “Nordics” which show up in many abductees’ stories rather than the more common “Grays.”
“I went in. There were some round seats that were there, and some quartz rocks that controlled the ship — not like airplanes,” Rodriguez said in the interview. She said she was visited by three large, blonde beings.
In a separate interview with the Herald last year, she said she joins “the majority of Americans who believe that there must be intelligent life in the billions of planets and galaxies in the universe.”
In some ways, it seems nice that the Miami Herald would write off Rodriguez Aguilera’s extraterrestrial experiences as a non-issue and focus on her qualifications and experience. And it’s certainly true that a significant number of Americans believe in the possibility of technologically advanced alien beings visiting the Earth. (Those numbers may have gone up a bit after the government recently released some footage of our Navy pilots chasing what certainly looked like a UFO of some sort.) So if that’s what she believes, why hold it against her?
But at the same time I find myself suspicious of the motives of the editorial board at the Herald. Are they really putting their weight behind Rodriguez Aguilera in the primary because they think she’s the best candidate? Or do they want the GOP to nominate someone who can readily be painted as a kook so they can help flip that seat from red to blue?
Maybe I’m being a bit too suspicious here. Discussions of extraterrestrial phenomena have certainly become more mainstream of late. But I’d still put my money on the newspaper trying to pull a fast one.
Nothing Is Solid & Everything Is Energy – Scientists Explain The World of Quantum Physics
Nothing Is Solid & Everything Is Energy – Scientists Explain The World of Quantum Physics
It has been written about before, over and over again, but cannot be emphasized enough. The world of quantum physics is an eerie one, one that sheds light on the truth about our world in ways that challenge the existing framework of accepted knowledge.
What we perceive as our physical material world, is really not physical or material at all, in fact, it is far from it. This has been proven time and time again by multiple Nobel Prize (among many other scientists around the world) winning physicists, one of them being Niels Bohr, a Danish Physicist who made significant contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory.
“If quantum mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it yet. Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.”
– Niels Bohr
At the turn of the nineteenth century, physicists started to explore the relationship between energy and the structure of matter. In doing so, the belief that a physical, Newtonian material universe that was at the very heart of scientific knowing was dropped, and the realization that matter is nothing but an illusion replaced it. Scientists began to recognize that everything in the Universe is made out of energy.
“Despite the unrivaled empirical success of quantum theory, the very suggestion that it may be literally true as a description of nature is still greeted with cynicism, incomprehension and even anger.”
(T. Folger, “Quantum Shmantum”; Discover 22:37-43, 2001)
Quantum physicists discovered that physical atoms are made up of vortices of energy that are constantly spinning and vibrating, each one radiating its own unique energy signature. Therefore, if we really want to observe ourselves and find out what we are, we are really beings of energy and vibration, radiating our own unique energy signature -this is fact and is what quantum physics has shown us time and time again. We are much more than what we perceive ourselves to be, and it’s time we begin to see ourselves in that light. If you observed the composition of an atom with a microscope you would see a small, invisible tornado-like vortex, with a number of infinitely small energy vortices called quarks and photons. These are what make up the structure of the atom. As you focused in closer and closer on the structure of the atom, you would see nothing, you would observe a physical void. The atom has no physical structure, we have no physical structure, physical things really don’t have any physical structure! Atoms are made out of invisible energy, not tangible matter.
“Get over it, and accept the inarguable conclusion. The universe is immaterial-mental and spiritual” (1)
– Richard Conn Henry, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University (quote taken from “the mental universe)
It’s quite the conundrum, isn’t it? Our experience tells us that our reality is made up of physical material things, and that our world is an independently existing objective one. The revelation that the universe is not an assembly of physical parts, suggested by Newtonian physics, and instead comes from a holistic entanglement of immaterial energy waves stems from the work of Albert Einstein, Max Planck and Werner Heisenberg, among others. (0)
What does it mean that our physical material reality isn’t really physical at all? It could mean a number of things, and concepts such as this cannot be explored if scientists remain within the boundaries of the only perceived world existing, the world we see. As Nikola Tesla supposedly said:
“The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.”
Fortunately, many scientists have already taken the leap, and have already questioned the meaning and implications of what we’ve discovered with quantum physics. One of these potential revelations is that “the observer creates the reality.”
A fundamental conclusion of the new physics also acknowledges that the observer creates the reality. As observers, we are personally involved with the creation of our own reality. Physicists are being forced to admit that the universe is a “mental” construction. Pioneering physicist Sir James Jeans wrote: “The stream of knowledge is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter, we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.
(R. C. Henry, “The Mental Universe”; Nature 436:29, 2005)
One great example that illustrates the role of consciousness within the physical material world (which we know not to be so physical) is the double slit experiment. This experiment has been used multiple times to explore the role of consciousness in shaping the nature of physical reality. (2)
A double-slit optical system was used to test the possible role of consciousness in the collapse of the quantum wave-function. The ratio of the interference pattern’s double-slit spectral power to its single-slit spectral power was predicted to decrease when attention was focused toward the double-slit as compared to away from it. The study found that factors associated with consciousness, such as meditation, experience, electrocortical markers of focused attention and psychological factors such as openness and absorption, significantly correlated in predicted ways with perturbations in the double-slit interference pattern.(2)
This is just the beginning. I wrote another article earlier this year that has much more, sourced information with regards to the role of consciousness and our physical material world:
The significance of this information is for us to wake up, and realize that we are all energy, radiating our own unique energy signature. Feelings, thoughts and emotions play a vital role, quantum physics helps us see the significance of how we all feel. If all of us are in a peaceful loving state inside, it will no doubt impact the external world around us, and influence how others feel as well.
“If you want to know the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.”
– Nikola Tesla.
Studies have shown that positive emotions and operating from a place of peace within oneself can lead to a very different experience for the person emitting those emotions and for those around them. At our subatomic level, does the vibrational frequency change the manifestation of physical reality? If so, in what way? We know that when an atom changes its state, it absorbs or emits electromagnetic frequencies, which are responsible for changing its state. Do different states of emotion, perception and feelings result in different electromagnetic frequencies? Yes! This has been proven. (3)
HERE is a great video that touches on what I am trying to get across here. We are all connected.
“Space is just a construct that gives the illusion that there are separate objects”
“It’s something that’s interested me from way back when in England as a newspaper reporter. And a good friend of mine, Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon, has told me stories of astronauts coming back to Earth reporting UFOs.”
While he was best known for being friends with the rich and famous, Robin Leach, the host for 11 years of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” was also a UFO believer and a friend of paranormal and UFO expert Lee Speigel, who revealed that side of Leach in a Huffington Post article in 2011. Robin Leach, known for his signature sigh-off, “champagne wishes and caviar dreams,” signed off for good on August 24, 2018, at the age of 76.
“Truth be told, Leach and I actually went UFO hunting one rainy night in 1976 up in Maine after hearing stories of many local citizens spotting strange nocturnal lights in the sky.”
Robin Leach (center) in 2006.
Lee Speigel recounted his UFO adventure with Robin Leach while covering a fundraiser for the Keep Memory Alive center in Las Vegas, which raises awareness and funds to support the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health. Leach was a major fundraiser and a charity auctioneer for the event.
“I haven’t ever really raised the subject with celebrities, probably because they’d think I was weird and mad. But we do know that over the years, everybody from presidents of the United States to major dignitaries around the world, and, certainly, some of our NASA space boys — they have claimed to have seen and photographed unexplained flying objects or phenomena.”
While Robin Leach didn’t broach the UFO subject with celebrities he interviewed on “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” he did interview John Alexander, a retired Army colonel and author of “UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies and Realities”, for Las Vegas Weekly – an interview set up with the help of Speigel. The colonel told Leach about UFO disclosure at the U.S. presidential and world leader level and secrets he’s learned about Roswell and other real and alleged UFO incidents. Needless to say, Leach was characteristically excited.
“I am fascinated with the subject, and you can be certain the next time I run into the retired colonel, we’ll share a glass of fine champagne and maybe a little caviar and talk a little more about the phenomena.”
Robin Leach had reportedly been hospitalized since November when he suffered a stroke in the Mexican resort city of Cabo San Lucas. Tributes are already pouring in from around the world from the rich and famous who knew him. Did he also get a message from space? After what would be his last conversation with Leach, Lee Speigel said Robin wished for this:
“Maybe for my eventual bucket list, we should try for one more UFO encounter trip!”
Champagne wishes, caviar dreams and UFO visits, Robin.
144 aardbevingen in 7 dagen in Peru, Venezuela, Indonesië: experten vrezen voor “superaardbeving”
Mogelijk zware gevolgen voor westkust van Verenigde Staten
144 aardbevingen in 7 dagen in Peru, Venezuela, Indonesië: experten vrezen voor “superaardbeving”
Beelden van na de aardbeving in Lombok.
FOTO: AP
Talloze regio’s in de Pacifische Ring van Vuur zoals Peru, Venezuela en Indonesië kregen op zeven dagen tijd maar liefst 144 aardbevingen te verwerken. Volgens experts is het de voorbode van een “superaardbeving”. Zo’n schok kan een magnitude hebben van maar liefst 8.0 of 9.0 op de schaal van Richter. De gevolgen daarvan kunnen dan ook ongelooflijk zwaar zijn, waarschuwen ze.
In het totaal is er sprake van maar liefst 144 aardbevingen in 7 dagen tijd. En dat maakt seismologen ongerust: zij vrezen immers dat die bevingen een zogenaamde “superaardbeving” triggeren, eentje die nog meer schade kan berokkenen dan de voorgangers. “De tektonische platen blijven immers tegen elkaar schuren, waardoor een grote hoeveelheid spanning zich ophoopt, die dan plots kan vrijkomen in een veel zwaardere schok”, aldus Chris Goldfinger, een gerenommeerd seismoloog aan de Oregon State Universiteit.
Zo’n aardbeving kan een magnitude hebben van maar liefst 8.0 of 9.0 op de schaal van Richter, legt Goldfinger uit. De gevolgen daarvan zijn ongelooflijk zwaar. “In zo’n geval voelen drie minuten aan als een eeuwigheid. Een beving van die duur is echt heel erg lang. We zouden talloze bruggen en snelwegen verliezen, de kustlijn zal moeten worden afgesloten en landschappen zullen nooit meer hetzelfde zijn”, berekende Goldfinger voor zijn eigen woonplaats in Oregon City, Californië.
De regio die valt onder de ‘Ring of Fire’ of de Pacifische Ring van Vuur.FOTO: UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
Volgens de seismoloog is het onmogelijk om precies te voorspellen waar en wanneer de beving zal doorgaan. Wat wel duidelijk is, is dat die “superaardbeving” vooral zou toeslaan in de zogenaamde Pacifische Ring van Vuur, ‘The Ring of Fire’. Die regio loopt van Zuid-Amerika tot Australië en via het westen van de Verenigde Staten naar het oosten van Azië. In dat gebied vindt maar liefst 90 procent van alle geologische activiteit op aarde plaats. Dat wil zeggen dat er niet alleen aardbevingen, maar ook frequent vulkaanuitbarstingen of tsunami’s voorkomen.
Ook kleinere breuken onder hoogspanning
Wat de situatie voor de Verenigde Staten nog gevaarlijker maakt, is het feit dat ook de minder bekende Cascadiabreuk en de San Andreasbreuk ook onder hoogspanning staan.
De San Andreasbreuk zou volgens berekeningen van de Universiteiten van Californië en Arizona eens in de 45 tot 144 jaar een beving veroorzaken, maar dat is ondertussen al geleden van in 1857. “Die rustige seismische periode zonder stevige aardschokken in Californië kan niet blijven duren”, zo waarschuwt seismoloog James Dolan van de Universiteit van Southern California.
Ook de Cascadiabreuklijn loopt van Vancouver in Canada tot het noorden van Californië. Om de ongeveer 230 jaar leidt de spanning op die breuklijn tot een beving. Maar de laatste aardbeving door die breuklijn is intussen al 313 jaar geleden. Toen was er een aardbeving die volgens onderzoekers een tsunami van 10 meter hoog zou veroorzaakt hebben en de Amerikaanse kustlijn 1 tot 2 meter heeft laten zakken.
Niet of, maar wanneer
Volgens experts is de vraag intussen niet meer óf die er zal komen, maar wel wanneer dat zal gebeuren. Zij maken zo veel mogelijk berekeningen om de schok zo goed mogelijk te kunnen inschatten, als het zich voordoet. “Bijna 13.000 mensen kunnen sterven bij zo’n aardbeving en de daaropvolgende tsunami. En nog eens 27.000 mensen zullen gewond raken, een miljoen mensen zal op de vlucht moeten slaan”, zei Kenneth Murphy van FEMA, het Federal Emergency Management Agency van het departement Homeland Security van de Verenigde Staten, eerder al op basis van berekeningen van dat agentschap. “Voor één keer hoop ik dat de wetenschap het niet bij het rechte eind heeft.”
Painting by Mrs. Lincoln LaPaz of a baffling green fireball seen numerous times over the Sandia mountains east of Albuquerque in late 1952. Mrs. LaPaz's husband, head of the University of New Mexico's Institute of Meteoritics, investigated the sightings but couldn't find an explanation. The painting was published in TIME Magazine in November 1951 and in LIFE magazine a few months later, an illustration of the nation's Cold War obsession with UFOs.
On February 29, 1949, the Los Alamos, New Mexico Skyliner newspaper ran a pieceon what it referred to, in typical newspaper parlance, as “flying saucers”—and a possible conspiracy around them:
“Los Alamos now has flying green lights. These will ‘o wisps seen generally about 2 a.m., have alerted the local constabulary and their presence is being talked about in Santa Fe bars. But local wheels deny any official knowledge of the sky phenomena. Each one passes the buck to another.”
The story ended with, “Have you seen a green light lately?”
In fact, a great many had, and would continue to do so—enough to prompt TIMEmagazine, in November 1951, to publish a piece on the phenomenon called “Great Balls of Fire.” What makes the multiple sightings of “flying green lights” in New Mexico in 1948 and onward such a significant chapter in UFO history is exactly that—there were multiple sightings.
That was unnerving enough. But most alarming—particularly to the United States government—was that the sightings were concentrated around the Los Alamos and Sandia atomic-weapons laboratories. And other highly sensitive military installations, including radar stations and fighter-interceptor bases, weren’t far away. That meant the sightings were reported by typically cool-headed pilots, weather observers, scientists, intelligence officers and other defense personnel, and led many to suspect the fireballs were Soviet spy devices.
Like a meteor—but not
On the night of December 5, 1948, two separate plane crews reported having seen a “green ball of fire,” heading west to east. In one of these instances, the fireball raced head-on toward the plane itself, compelling the rattled pilot to swerve the plane out of the way.
One pilot, sometime later, would vividly describe the green fireballs: “Take a soft ball and paint it with some kind of fluorescent paint that will glow a bright green in the dark… Then have someone take the ball out about 100 feet in front of you and about 10 feet above you. Have him throw the ball right at your face, as hard as he can throw it. That’s what a green fireball looks like.”
When a crew of intelligence officers, led by Dr. Lincoln LaPaz, head of the University of New Mexico’s Institute of Meteoritics, plotted the fireball’s flight path and scoured the area a meteorite would have hit, they found nothing—no meteor fragments, no debris, no craters, no evidence of fire.
The inexplicable sightings continued in the area, with sightings on December 6th, 7th, 8th, 11th, 13th, 14th, 20th and 28th. December 20th proved a turning point, literally, and a particularly alarming one for those clinging to the theory that these were meteors: The balls of fire descended from the heavens at a 45-degree angle, then abruptly leveled off into a gravity-defying horizontal flight path. And, as LaPaz would note in a letter to the district commanding officer of the United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations, “none of the green fireballs has a train of sparks of a dust cloud…”
In the years since, there have been reports of green-fireball sightings around the world, from Alberta, Canada to South Africa. In June 2018, a green fireball made an impressive appearance at a concert performance in the Netherlands by the Foo Fighters (coincidentally, the band named for the U.S. pilots’ term for UFOs during World War II). And according to the International Meteor Organization there were more than 170 reported sightings of the fireballs that night, in at least five European countries. The band’s reaction, according to their official Twitter account: “The sky IS a neighborhood.”
An alternate form of lightning?
The phenomenon came to the attention of the Australian physicist Dr. Stephen Hughes in 2006, when several green fireballs were spotted in the sky in Queensland and New Zealand. “I came to the conclusion that there was something a bit strange going on,” he says.
Hughes went on to write a paper that theorized a possible connection between green fireballs and the well-documented, but still ultimately little-understood, phenomenon of ball lightning—mysterious hovering orbs of electricity that have only been taken seriously by science since the 1960s, well after the New Mexico sightings.
There is still no conclusive theory of what ball lightning is, but hypotheses include antimatter, light bubbles, microwave interference, retinal after-images, electromagnetic knots, even primordial black holes.
Dr. Hughes’ own theory of ball lightning, which he believes fits the description of the New Mexico fireballs: electrified air. “It occurred to me, sometimes when something shoots through the atmosphere, like a meteor, it could be creating a conductive pathway from the ionosphere—a whole ocean of plasma above the Earth—down to the ground. The air becomes electrified.”
The phosphorescent green color, Dr. Hughes says, is due to ionized oxygen, which also accounts for the striking greens of the aurora borealis, also known as the Northern lights.
The Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where nuclear weapons were being designed for the Manhattan Project during WWII. Numerous green fireball sightings were reported in the vicinity of this and several other highly sensitive military and weapons-development sites.
(Credit: Jeffrey Markowitz/Getty Images)
Cold War spy craft…or extraterrestrial probes?
This potential explanation could not have occurred to those on the ground in New Mexico in 1948. After interviewing more than a hundred witnesses, Dr. LaPaz went on to advise the military and the Atomic Energy Commission of his opinion that the fireballs were likely either top-secret “unconventional defensive devices” being tested by the U.S.—or Soviet spying devices.
When Edward J. Ruppelt, director of the U.S. Air Force Project Blue Book UFO investigations, visited the Los Alamos National Laboratory in early 1952 to interview scientists and technicians, he noted that they became particularly animated when the idea of interplanetary vehicles was suggested.
“They had been doing a lot of thinking about this, they said, and they had a theory,” wrote Ruppelt in The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects (1953). They thought the fireballs were actually extraterrestrial probes “projected into our atmosphere from a ‘spaceship’ hovering several hundred miles above the Earth.”
Officially, government investigators concluded that the green fireballs were some kind of never-before-seen natural phenomenon. Interest in, and investigation into, the fireballs dropped off at the outbreak of the Korean War.
“Writing these off as natural phenomena did not solve the problem,” says UFO researcher Jan Aldrich, who believes the green fireballs were related to aerial phenomena spotted in Fort Hood, Texas, in 1949. “It just pushed it under the table.”
Nuclear fallout debris?
But that hasn’t stopped UFO researchers from speculating more recently.
In his 2008 book UFO and Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites, Robert Hastings, drawing on declassified official documents, suggests that the fireball trajectories align with those of fallout-debris clouds associated with top-secret atomic testing.
But according to Dr. Hughes, there’s another reason to suspect those green fireballs were buoyant balls of plasma: All those unpredictable movements, which suggest their paths may have been following electric field lines above the Earth.
“Personally, I think that the erratic change in direction is reasonably conclusive proof that the phenomenon is electrical in nature,” says Dr. Hughes, citing the more familiar sharp angles of a lightning bolt streaking through the sky.
“If the ball lightning phenomenon was a solid mass, there would be enormous inertia, making it very difficult to explain the source of energy for such extreme acceleration. In the case of a plasma ball, an internal energy source is not required—in the same way that a bolt of lightning does not need some kind of electrical rocket motor to rapidly change direction on the way to the ground or between clouds.”
Still, at this stage, it’s hard to shake the sense that equating the green fireballs with ball lightning is tantamount to explaining a mystery with another mystery.
“I’m a believer in the sense I believe that UFOs exist,” says Dr. Hughes, who finds the name apt: “They are unidentified flying objects. I just don’t think there are little green men at the controls.
Magnets, how do they work? Modern day philosophers Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J of the Insane Clown Posse were mercilessly mocked for that line back when their song “Miracles” came out in 2010. Yeah, that song is about as goofy as it gets, but here’s the thing: we don’t actually know how magnetism works. We know what makes certain elements magnetic, we know how to magnetize objects, we can measure the strength of a magnetic field, and we can accurately predict what magnets will do, but as to why and how the magnetic force attracts and repels objects, the best answer we have so far is “it just does.” Case in point: the famous scientist Richard Feynman was asked why magnets attract and repel each other and responded with a tirade about broken hips, drunk husbands, and why ice is slippery for 8 minutes, in order to explain why the only reasonable answer is “it just does.”
Magnetism is a constant part of our daily lives in more ways than just hanging things on refrigerators. In fact, if it weren’t for magnetism, we wouldn’t even be here. The magnetic field of the earth, likely generated by the spinning molten metal core of the planet, ripples out from the poles and acts as a shield that protects the earth from solar winds and cosmic rays which would otherwise scorch all life on earth. So magnetism keeps us alive and we’re incapable of understanding it. That’s slightly unsettling, but even more unsettling is that we’re constantly realizing we know even less than we thought, even on a predictive level. We’ve known for some time that it’s possible for the magnetic poles to reverse. This was discovered in 1906 when rocks were discovered that were magnetized in the opposite direction of what was expected. Since then, we’ve assumed that this process occurs rarely and slowly. However, a new study has found that magnetic field reversals can occur much quicker than previously thought.
Depiction of the earth’s magnetic field.
Geophysicist Andrew Roberts and a team from the Australian National University studied a 107 thousand-year-old stalagmitefound in a cave in China, made up of large quantities of magnetite that provided a detailed look at the magnetic history of earth for the last 107 thousand years. They found that there have been periods of magnetic pole reversal, where north became south and south became north, that lasted for only a few centuries. According to Roberts, this suggests that the process of the reversal was incredibly fast:
“The record provides important insights into ancient magnetic field behaviour, which has turned out to vary much more rapidly than previously thought.”
Which means that there might not be much warning should the magnetic field decide to flip again, an event which, by the way, we’re overdue for. Should the magnetic field flip, it could cause a catastrophic failure of much of the technology that makes modern society work. It seems that the magnetic field reversals occur when the magnetic field is weakened. Although it is currently still strong, it does seem like the magnetic field is in a period of weakening.
The northern lights are the result of our magnetic field protecting us from our murderous sun.
It’s good that scientists are discovering more about yet another global threat, but really, even if they could predict it, is a pole reversal happens that fast, what could we really do about it? Would we pull our satellites out of the sky and re-calibrate them? Would we make emergency updates to our infrastructure? The amount of pot holes I hit yesterday suggests we’d probably just shrug and say “well, it is what it is.”
One of the most famous lines from the classic TV sitcom “The Honeymooners” involves Ralph Kramden, played by Jackie Gleason, telling his wife Alice, played by Audrey Meadows, where she will end up after he performs an act of domestic violence – a line and act that would not be acceptable today, even though Ralph always calmed down and somewhat apologized with the line, “Baby, you’re the greatest.” That “moon” quote may have been a hidden sign of Gleason’s lifelong interest in UFOs – an interest that showed itself publicly in his two-building home built in in 1959 that looked like a flying saucer “Mother Ship” and a “Spaceship” – Gleason’s nicknames for the mysterious structures. If you’re interested, the property is up for sale for the unearthly price of $12 million. Is it worth it?
“How sweet it is! Deep in the heart of Cortland Manor is the enchanted 8 acre estate of the Great Jackie Gleason & his Famous Round House! Built in 1959 a compound exemplifies the comedian’s style & flamboyant persona. There are 3 buildings on the property and 2 inground pools. Drive up the long wooded property & welcome to the Studio affectionately known as the Mother Ship. 2bedrm 2 full bath 50 sq ft in Diameter is completely round. Walk into this magnificent spherical foyer, private library & centerpiece of a marble spiral staircase to 3rd level. Go back in time down the ramp to a smiling Jackie w his cigarette & playing his baby grand. Marilyn Monroe leaning over the strings smiling as Frank Sinatra is crooning by the 14 person bar. It has 2 bars & 3 pit Italian marble fireplace & cardroom. Master bedrm has special 8ft in diameter round bed w/overhead tv. Master bath is huge w/round shower & 10+ heads. 100 yards from “Mother” is a cottage aka “Space Ship.”
The realtor.com listing mentions the price of the New York property but not much on why Jackie Gleason was one of the earliest celebrity ufologists. Despite a fear of flying, Gleason developed a fascination with UFOs and flying saucers, possibly as part of his attraction to parapsychology, witchcraft, extrasensory perception, reincarnation, mental telepathy, clairvoyance and all things paranormal. An avid reader, Gleason amassed a vast library (over 1,700 titles) of paranormal books and materials which now reside in the University of Miami library and are catalogued at LibraryThing. Gleason appeared regularly on a paranormal-themed overnight radio show hosted by John Nebel, where he revealed his skepticism by offering $1 million to anyone who could offer physical proof of aliens visiting Earth.
To the moon!
No one collected the prize, including President Richard Nixon, who is part of possibly the most famous celebrity UFO/alien legend in history. Gleason was a supporter, friend and golf buddy of Nixon, so it’s no surprise they were together in Florida on the night of February 19, 1973. According to the most popular telling of the tale, Nixon ditched his Secret Service detail and drove to Homestead Air Force Base, where they somehow walked in and saw what Gleason described as:
“There were a number of labs we passed through first before we entered a section where Nixon pointed out what he said was the wreckage from a flying saucer, enclosed in several large cases. Next, we went into an inner chamber and there were six or eight of what looked like glass-topped Coke freezers. Inside them were the mangled remains of what I took to be children.”
Gleason allegedly told only his wife (soon to be ex-wife), Beverly, who allegedly promised not to tell and then allegedly told the story anyway to Esquire magazine in 1974. While that story doesn’t seem to exist, another one allegedly told by Beverly appeared in 1983 in the National Enquirer. Gleason allegedly told his version of the story to UFO author Larry Warren shortly before his death in 1987. That’s an “allegedly” because it comes not from Warren but from another ufologist, Timothy Green Beckley. Skepticism abounds in the tale, from the president evading Secret Service agents to the many “alleged” tellings of the story with no concrete evidence. What is concrete is the foundation under the beautiful 7,450 sq ft “Mothership” built for Gleason by a ship builder, who constructed it in an airplane hangar before moving it to Cortland. The round building has no right angles but does have a curved kitchen and a marble spiral staircase. The guest house looks even more flying-saucer-ish (see a photo gallery of both here). While the original construction cost is not listed, Gleason sold the property in 1976 for $150,000, (about $660,000 today)
Not aliens — the June Taylor dancers.
And yes, Richard Nixon “flew” in Gleason’s Mother Ship, along with Frank Sinatra and other celebrities. Did they talk about what ‘allegedly’ happened one night in 1973 at Florida? That depends on how much booze was consumed. If Nixon asked Gleason if he told anyone, Jackie probably said, “You’re a riot, a regular riot!” or “I’ve got a BIG MOUTH!” or “Homina-homina-homina!”
Expert says Humans are Aliens—and we were brought to Earth hundreds of thousands of years ago
Expert says Humans are Aliens—and we were brought to Earth hundreds of thousands of years ago
What if Humans are the aliens we’ve been looking for all along? According to experts, humans were most likely crossbred with another species, perhaps from the star system Alpha Centauri –which is one of the closest solar systems to Earth—in the distant past, giving birth to modern humans.
Tell Al-Uhaymir modern-day Iraq, where the ancient Sumerian city of Kish used to be, archaeologists found one of the oldest ancient documents on the planet, the tablet of Kish which is believed to date back to the year 3500 BC.
The Sumerian king list states that Kish was the first city to have kings following the deluge, beginning with Jushur.
Jushur’s successor is called Kullassina-bel, but this is actually a sentence in Akkadian meaning “All of them were lord”. Thus, some scholars have suggested that this may have been intended to signify the absence of a central authority in Kish for a time.
This ancient document is believed to precede the cuneiform writing of the Sumerians, and the Egyptian hieroglyphs for almost one hundred years.
Developing the ability to express thoughts through written language is one of the first ways in which man differed from the animal kingdom.
Five thousand years since, humans have developed electricity, divided the atom, developed computers, and led man to the moon. We have achieved things that other species have still not.
No other species on earth can attribute such unique achievements in such a short period of time. Interestingly, compared to other species of the earth, our ‘evolution’ is relatively short.
It has been a short period of time, most likely a few million years since the first hominid walked on Earth. Precisely this is one of the biggest scientific questions of all times: Why have only our species emerged to this truly advanced technological intelligence?
Evidently, there is nothing more advanced than humans on planet Earth.
While there are different ‘intelligent’ species on Earth, none of them makes use of technology like us.
Just imagine for a second, if for some reason, mankind had to return to the jungle, and survive there. Many experts agree that most of them would not survive for a very long period of time.
Many scientists agree that humans, in addition to their intelligence, are not very capable to occupy a wide range of environments. In other words, we are very limited when it comes to our planet.
In addition to our fascinating intelligence, biologists have also noticed contrasts between human physiology and that of other animals on earth. Many scientists agree that compared to other species on earth, humans are rather strange. For example, a baby horse when born is able to walk and function almost independently, but this a human baby cannot do, which makes us quite helpless. In other words, we are born before being neurologically ready for life.
Many researchers agree that there are many vulnerabilities that accompany our intelligence.
Humans on earth eventually became bipeds, which freed up our superior extremities allowing us to manipulate objects, create tools and much more. But for all this, experts believe that our species has paid an expensive price. Lumbar pain a sign that according to many experts could tell us a lot about our species. Curiously, other animals on Earth do NOT have this problem. It’s as if only humans are affected by some of these problems.
So what does all of this mean? According to one expert, it means that we are the aliens we’ve we been looking for all along.
A new theory proposed by Dr. Ellis Silver states that there are several tell-tale signs present in the human race that suggest human beings did not evolve ALONGSIDE other lifeforms on Earth.
The book called ‘Humans are not from Earth: a scientific evaluation of the evidence’ is basically a resume of theories for and mostly against man’s evolution on Earth. In the book, leading environmentalist and ecologist Dr. Ellis Silver goes through an evaluation of thirteen leading hypothesis and seventeen factors which suggest HUMANS ARE NOT FROM EARTH.
Mankind is supposedly the most highly developed species on the planet, yet is surprisingly unsuited and ill-equipped for Earth’s environment: harmed by sunlight, a strong dislike for naturally occurring foods, ridiculously high rates of chronic disease, and more said Dr. Ellis in an interview.
According to Dr. Ellis, humans might suffer from back pain because our species initially evolved on another planet with a lower gravity, adding to the mysteries, Dr. Ellis also indicates that it is strange that newborns have large heads and make it difficult for mothers to give birth, which can result in fatalities for both mother and child.
So where do we come from? According to Dr. Ellis, Neanderthals were most likely crossbred with another species, perhaps from the star system Alpha Centauri –which is one of the closest solar systems to Earth— in the distant past, giving birth to modern humans.
According to Dr. Ellis, there are millions of people around the globe who ‘feel’ that they do not belong on Earth.
Dr. Ellis explains: “This suggests (to me at least) that mankind may have evolved on a different planet, and we may have been brought here as a highly developed species. One reason for this … is that the Earth might be a prison planet since we seem to be a naturally violent species and we’re here until we learn to behave ourselves.”
Dr. Ellis concludes that mankind did not evolve from that particular strain of life, but evolved elsewhere and was transported to Earth (as fully evolved Homo sapiens) between 60,000 and 200,000 years ago.
Furthermore, as noted by Robert Sepher, according to modern DNA sequencing, it is demonstrated that humanity as we know it, isn’t just ONE single ‘race’ that descended from the same ancestor in Africa, but a hybridized species, with a far more enigmatic truth behind it all.
Many questions have been raised in the discussion about Rh negative blood. If mankind did, in fact, evolve from a mutual ancient African ancestor, theories state that everyone’s blood would be compatible, but regrettably, this is not the case. This raises numerous questions that science alone has not been able to fully answer. Where did Rh-negative blood come from? And why is it that a Rh-negative mother carrying Rh positive children tries rejecting her own offspring? Is it possible that this can be explained by a rather controversial theory? A theory which suggests that humanity isn’t in fact one race, but a hybridized species.
The book was written by Robert Sepehr, Species with Amnesia: Our Forbidden History tells us more about the enigmatic blood type Rh-negative. Not only does Species with Amnesia suggest mankind is, in fact, a hybridized species, the author suggests that highly advanced civilizations have been on Earth before us, just to be destroyed by some great global catastrophe, as mysteriously, history tells us.
Sepehr argues that for each race that has died out, another has taken its place, with a selected few holding on to the memories and sacred knowledge of the past race. In our vanity, we think we have discovered some of the great truths of science and technology, but we are in fact only just beginning to rediscover the profound wisdom of past civilizations. In many ways, we are like an awakening Species with Amnesia, yearning to reclaim our forgotten past. –
The Basque people of Spain and France have the highest percentage of Rh-negative blood. About 30% have (rr) Rh negative and about 60% carry one (r) negative gene.
“There are 612 primate species and subspecies recognized by the International Union for Conversation of Nature (IUCN), and not one has Rh-negative blood”.
WASHINGTON — Thin ribbons of purple and white light that sometimes appear in the night sky were dubbed a new type of aurora when brought to scientists’ attention in 2016. But new research suggests these mysterious streams of light are not an aurora at all but an entirely new celestial phenomenon.
Amateur photographers had captured the new phenomenon, called STEVE, on film for decades. But the scientific community only got wind of STEVE in 2016. When scientists first looked at images of STEVE, they realized the lights were slightly different than light from typical auroras but were not sure what underlying mechanism was causing them.
Alberta Aurora Chasers capture STEVE, the new-to-science upper atmospheric phenomenon, on the evening of April 10, 2018 in Prince George, British Columbia, Canada. Fellow Aurora Chaser Robert Downie kneels in the foreground while photographer Ryan Sault captures the narrow ribbon of white-purple hues overhead. The vibrant green aurora is seen in the distant north, located to the right in the photo. In this issue, Gallardo-Lacourt et al. use a ground based all-sky imager and in situ satellite data to study the origin of STEVE. Their results demonstrate that STEVE is different than aurora since the observation is characterized by the absence of particle precipitation. Credit: Ryan Sault.
In a new study, researchers analyzed a STEVE event in March 2008 to see whether it was produced in a similar manner as the aurora, which happens when showers of charged rain down into Earth’s upper atmosphere. The study’s results suggest STEVE is produced by a different atmospheric process than the aurora, making it an entirely new type of optical phenomenon.
“Our main conclusion is that STEVE is not an aurora,” said Bea Gallardo-Lacourt, a space physicist at the University of Calgary in Canada and lead author of the new study in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union. “So right now, we know very little about it. And that’s the cool thing, because this has been known by photographers for decades. But for the scientists, it’s completely unknown.”
The study authors have dubbed STEVE a kind of “skyglow,” or glowing light in the night sky, that is distinct from the aurora. Studying STEVE can help scientists better understand the upper atmosphere and the processes generating light in the sky, according to the authors.
“This is really interesting because we haven’t figured it out and when you get a new problem, it’s always exciting,” said Joe Borovsky, a space physicist at the Space Science Institute in Los Alamos, New Mexico who was not connected to the new study. “It’s like you think you know everything and it turns out you don’t.”
Auroras are produced when electrons and protons from Earth’s magnetosphere, the region around Earth dominated by its magnetic field, rain down into the ionosphere, a region of charged particles in the upper atmosphere. When these electrons and protons become excited, they emit light of varying colors, most often green, red and blue.
A group of amateur auroral photographers brought STEVE to scientists’ attention in 2016. A Facebook ground called the Alberta Aurora Chasers had occasionally noticed bright, thin streams of white and purple light running east to west in the Canadian night sky when they photographed the aurora.
Auroras are visible every night if viewing conditions are right, but the thin light ribbons of STEVE were only visible a few times per year. The light from STEVE was also showing up closer to the equator than the aurora, which can only be seen at high latitudes.
The photographers first thought the light ribbons were created by excited protons, but protons can only be photographed with special equipment. The light protons produce falls out of the range of wavelengths picked up by normal cameras.
The aurora chasers dubbed the light ribbon occurrences “Steve,” a reference to the 2006 film Over the Hedge. When researchers presented data about the unusual lights at a 2016 scientific conference, a fellow space physicist proposed converting the name into the backronym STEVE, which stands for Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement, and the researchers adopted it.
Where does STEVE come from?
Scientists then started using data from satellites and images from ground-based observatories to try to understand what was causing the unusual light streaks. The first scientific study published on STEVE found a stream of fast-moving ions and super-hot electrons passing through the ionosphere right where STEVE was observed. The researchers suspected these particles were connected to STEVE somehow but were unsure whether they were responsible for producing it.
After that first study, of which Gallardo-Lacourt was a co-author, the researchers wanted to find out if STEVE’s light is produced by particles raining down into the ionosphere, as typically happens with the aurora, or by some other process. In the new study, Gallardo-Lacourt and her colleagues analyzed a STEVE event that happened over eastern Canada on March 28, 2008, using images from ground-based cameras that record auroras over North America.
They coupled the images with data from NOAA’s Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellite 17 (POES-17), which happened to pass directly over the ground-based cameras during the STEVE event. The satellite is equipped with an instrument that can measure charged particles precipitating into the ionosphere.
The study’s results suggest STEVE is an entirely new phenomenon distinct from typical auroras. The POES-17 satellite detected no charged particles raining down to the ionosphere during the STEVE event, which means it is likely produced by an entirely different mechanism, according to the authors.
The researchers said STEVE is a new kind of optical phenomenon they call “skyglow.” Their next step is to see whether the streams of fast ions and hot electrons in the ionosphere are creating STEVE’s light, or if the light is produced higher up in the atmosphere.
Steve the aurora is not as cool as astronomers thought he was
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In the middle of the barren Nevada desert, there's a dusty unmarked road that leads to the front gate of Area 51. It's protected by little more than a chain link fence, a boom gate, and intimidating trespassing signs. One would think that America's much mythicized top secret military base would be under closer guard, but make no mistake. They are watching.
Beyond the gate, cameras see every angle. On the distant hilltop, there's a white pickup truck with a tinted windshield peering down on everything below. Locals says the base knows every desert tortoise and jackrabbit that hops the fence. Others claim there are embedded sensors in the approaching road.
What exactly goes on inside of Area 51 has led to decades of wild speculation. There are, of course, the alien conspiracies that galactic visitors are tucked away somewhere inside. One of the more colorful rumors insists the infamous 1947 Roswell crash was actually a Soviet aircraft piloted by mutated midgets and the wreckage remains on the grounds of Area 51. Some even believe that the U.S. government filmed the 1969 moon landing in one of the base's hangars.
For all the myths and legends, what's true is that Area 51 is real and still very active. There may not be aliens or a moon landing movie set inside those fences, but something is going on and only a select few are privy to what's happening further down that closely-monitored wind-swept Nevada road. "The forbidden aspect of Area 51 is what makes people want to know what's there," says aerospace historian and author Peter Merlin who's been researching Area 51 for more than three decades.
"And there sure is still a lot going on there."
The U-2 high altitude reconnaissance aircraft, in the late 1950s.
GETTY IMAGESU.S. AIR FORCE
The Origins of a Mystery
The beginning of Area 51 is directly related to the development of the U-2 reconnaissance aircraft. After World War II, the Soviet Union lowered the Iron Curtain around themselves and the rest of the Eastern bloc, creating a near intelligence blackout to the rest of the world. When the Soviets backed North Korea's invasion of South Korea in June 1950, it became increasingly clear that the Kremlin would aggressively expand its influence. America worried about the USSR's technology, intentions, and ability to launch a surprise attack—only a decade removed from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
In the early 1950s, U.S. Navy and Air Force sent low-flying aircraft on reconnaissance missions over the USSR, but they were at constant risk of being shot down. In November 1954, President Eisenhower approved the secret development of a high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft called the U-2 program. One of the first orders of business was to track down a remote, covert location for training and testing. They found it in the southern Nevada desert near a salt flat known as Groom Lake, which had once been a World War II aerial gunnery range for Army Air Corps pilots.
Known by its map designation as Area 51, this middle-of-nowhere site became a new top-secret military base. To convince workers to come, Kelly Johnson, one of the leading engineers of the U-2 project, gave it a more enticing name: Paradise Ranch.
Many of these sightings were observed by commercial airline pilots who had never seen an aircraft fly at such high altitudes as the U-2. Whereas today's airliners can soar as high as 45,000 feet, in the mid-1950s airlines flew at altitudes between 10,000 and 20,000 feet. Known military aircraft could get to 40,000 feet, and some believed manned flight couldn't go any higher than that. The U-2, flying at altitudes in excess of 60,000 feet, would've looked completely alien.
Kelly Johnson, left, and Francis Gary Powers with U-2 aircraft behind. Powers was eventually shot down in the USSR in 1960.
U.S. AIR FORCE
Naturally, Air Force officials knew the majority of these unexplained sightings were U-2 tests, but they were not allowed to reveal these details to the public. So, "natural phenomena" or "high-altitude weather research" became go-to explanations for UFO sightings, including in 1960 when Gary Powers' U-2 was shot down over Russia.
What's also interesting about the most recent 2013 report is that it confirms Area 51's existence. While the 1998 version does have significant redactions when referencing the name and location of the U-2 test site, the nearly un-redacted version from 2013 reveals much more, including multiple references to Area 51, Groom Lake, and even a map of the area.
"This Is Earth Technology"
U-2 operations halted in the late 1950s, but other top secret military aircrafts continued tests at Area 51. Over the years, the A-12 and numerous stealth aircrafts like Bird of Prey, F-117A, and TACIT BLUE have all been developed and tested in the Nevada desert. More declassified documents reveal Area 51's role in "Project Have Doughnut,"a 1970s attempt to study covertly obtained Soviet MiGs.
"THIS IS EARTH TECHNOLOGY. YOU GOT FOLKS CLAIMING IT'S EXTRATERRESTRIAL WHEN IT'S REALLY GOOD OLD AMERICAN KNOW-HOW."
"They flew them [over Area 51]..and pitted our own fighters against them to develop tactics," says Merlin, "They learned that you can't out-turn it, but you can outrun it. And it's still going on today.... Now, instead of seeing MiG-17s and 21s, there's MiG-29s and SU-27s."
The flights are ongoing. In September 2017, an Air Force Lt. Col. was killed under mysterious circumstances when his plane crashed in Nevada and the Pentagon would not immediately ID the aircraft. It seems he was most likely flying a foreign jet obtained by the United States.
Even so, the alien conspiracies gained ground in 1989 when Bob Lazar claimed in an interview on Las Vegas local news that he'd seen aliens and had helped to reverse-engineer alien spacecrafts while working at the base. Many have disregarded this as fiction and are even offended at the notion, including Merlin, who has spent years talking with former Area 51 engineers and employees angered by all the fuss about E.T.
"Some are even mad because they worked on these things and built these amazing planes," Merlin says. "This is Earth technology. You got folks claiming it's extraterrestrial when it's really good old American know-how."
Area 51 on July 20, 2016.
GETTY IMAGES
The Truth Is Out There
Today, Area 51 is still very much in use. According to Google Earth, new construction and expansions are continuously happening. On most early mornings, eagle-eyed visitors can spot strange lights in the sky moving up and down. No, it's not a UFO. It's actually the semi-secret contract commuter airline using the call-sign "Janet" that transports workers from Las Vegas's McCarran Airport to the base.
As for what's happening these days in America's most secretive military base, few know for sure. Merlin has some educated guesses, including improved stealth technology, advanced weapons, electronic warfare systems and, in particular, unmanned aerial vehicles. Chris Pocock, noted U-2 historian and author of several books about the matter, told Popular Mechanics he thinks classified aircraft, more exotic forms of radio communication, directed energy weapons, and lasers are currently under development at the base.
While the lore around Area 51 may be nothing more than imaginative fiction, that won't stop people from gawking just beyond those chain link fences. "At the most basic level, anytime you have something secret or forbidden, it's human nature," says Merlin. "You want to find out what it is."
To Area 51's west, there's the Alien Cathouse which is advertised as the only alien-themed brothel in the world. Geocaching also attracts visitors here since the highway is considered a "mega-trial" with over 2,000 geocaches hidden in the area.
Then there's the actual base. While getting inside is not in the cards for most, curious civilians can actually drive up to front and back gates. Locals will direct you, and the website Dreamland Resort is a great resource full of maps, driving directions, and first-hand accounts.
However, one should be careful when planning a trek to Area 51. It's the desert, after all, so bring plenty of water, snacks, and have proper weather gear—for the hot days and the cold nights. Phone service and GPS probably won't work, so have printouts and actual maps. Gas stations are few and far in between, so carry spare fuel and tires.
Also, remember the government doesn't really want you peering into Area 51. Both Merlin and Pocock confirmed that they have been closely observed or even intimidated by guards and security (including an F-16 fly-by). Do not trespass under any circumstances or arrests and heavy fines await you.
What if you were a prisoner in your own world and daily life? Imagine if, despite the seeming appearance of a normal, modern lifestyle around you, you were actually being held captive by certain powers that be; an inmate within invisible walls possessing no iron bars or chains, but which relied instead on surveillance and sentries to corral and confine its detainees?
Imagine now that you no longer wished to remain here. As you seek ways to escape, what if the powers in control effectively worked stifle your every attempt… perhaps even presenting a ruse when necessary to help you think you were closer to freedom than you actually were?
In such a circumstance, one might surmise that the careful control of people’s actions—perhaps through things like punishment, or even deadly force—could serve as a far stronger form of imprisonment than an actual fortified location with thick walls and barred windows.
It’s an interesting thought experiment: the idea that imprisonment can take many forms, or even that imprisonment could occur with or without one even knowing it. Here, of course, the question arises as to whether we today, living in a free society as we do, are nonetheless effectively “prisoners” in some fashion or another.
This was the premise of what is arguably among the most well-regarded science fiction series of classic television, The Prisoner, harkening back to the late-1960s era where, thanks largely to Ian Fleming’s immortal character, spy dramas were very much en vogue.
The Prisoner starred Patrick McGoohan in the role of a stoic and at times tempestuous former secret agent who, upon angrily quitting his job, finds himself a captive within a small coastal community somewhere in Europe. In this new place, known colloquially as “The Village,” each person is known by a number rather than by a name; here, the lyrics of the 1948 American country music song by Jimmy Skinner, “Doin’ My Time,” come to mind, where Skinner sang, “Lord, they call me by a number, not a name.”
Beginning in September 1967, this most unusual program appeared on televisions in Britain and Canada, combining elements of a James Bond-like spy thriller with science fiction by employing advanced surveillance technologies and balloon-like robotic sentries which helped enforce authority in the “Village.” Over the course of 17 episodes, the program saw McGoohan’s character—known to other Villagers as “Number Six”—engaged in repeated and increasingly elaborate attempts to escape from his strange prison with no walls. His primary antagonists are a variety of characters who take the role of “Number Two” over time, engaging in efforts to psychologically “break” Number Six with the intended goal of finding out why he resigned.
Patrick McGoohan in his role as “Number Six” on The Prisoner (fair use).
Number Six, in essence, represents the Individualist; he is a free-thinker that has been thrust into a collectivist world, where good behavior and complacency is rewarded. Add to that the obviously Orwellian elements of surveillance and control, and what we now find in The Prisoner is a sharp cultural commentary that is designed to make us think as much as it was intended to entertain.
Plenty of commentaries have been offered about the series and its influence, perhaps most notably in books like Chris Gregory’s Be Seeing You…: Decoding The Prisoner (University of Luton Press, 1997). Gregory analyzes the series on almost every level conceivable, from the mythological to the political and sociological, arguing fundamentally that like Orwell’s 1984, the inevitable encroachments of civil liberties that occur as government grows has, over time, made The Prisoner all the more relevant, and hence its lasting appeal.
As human beings, we think of things in terms of matters relevant to us, and which are of existential importance to our wellbeing. However, if we were to expand on the themes incorporated in The Prisoner and carry them further into the realm of science fiction, we might entertain the notion that living on planet Earth is, in its own way a sort of benign “imprisonment.” What if, for instance, we were to eventually learn that alien beings existed that were well aware of humankind’s aspirations to colonize planets like Mars, and explore distant worlds not only with remote probes… but eventually in person as well?
The idea that there could be cosmic forces at work which make it difficult for us to get off-planet may not be entirely science fiction, nor does it have to include alien oppressors in order to make sense. Last year, a video by Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell on YouTube called, “Why Earth Is A Prison and How To Escape It” makes some fascinating arguments for why humans are, essentially, imprisoned here.
It’s because we owe the universe a debt… a 4.5 billion-year-old debt:
As the video explains, every atom in our being as individuals was once a part of some greater event in the formation of the cosmos. Planetary formation is no small task, and for humans to ever be able to leave this world, the energetic requirements for doing so are essentially the same as that which formed the Earth. Hence, we build machines which have energetic potential that is great enough, at very least, to overcome gravity (rockets, in other words), which aid us in escaping our world and exploring space.
In The Prisoner, Number Six commits a great deal of energy (although perhaps not quite as much as a rocket produces) in an effort to escape his confinement at a coastal resort. It’s not a bad place to live, altogether, and while his captors are bent on interrogating him by various means in order to learn why he resigned from his previous work in espionage in the first place, his complacency is encouraged along the way, which would ensure that he would live well in The Village, so long as he cooperates.
The idea that humanity is similarly “imprisoned” here on Earth by cosmic forces like gravity is an interesting one, in the sense that we share a potential for having a good life here, which may not necessarily require getting off-world in order to ensure humanity’s survival. To the contrary, the late Stephen Hawking and others have argued that, in fact, space exploration might actually become requisite for human survival at some point, even if that’s not the case in the immediate sense. They argue this because of the finite nature of resources on a planet where, as science improves the quality of life for many, as well as the length of time humans spend here, there is an ever-increasing necessity for greater resources; at some point, population growth and lifespan could meet well exceed production levels, and beyond this “point of diminishing returns” one might speculate that inevitable problems would arise. Whether this would constitute war, famine, or other perils resulting from scarcity is anyone’s guess, although it’s beyond the scope of the present argument.
On the other hand, some might see the above views as being alarmist to an extent, and while there are obvious untapped resources that outer space might afford us, this doesn’t necessarily mean that we are running completely out of resources here on Earth. In fact, pushes toward the implementation of renewable energy sources on Earth, and more resourceful ways of managing commodities (in addition to finding new, as-yet-untapped sources for them altogether) might prove very beneficial for future humans. Getting along with the other villagers and staying where we are, in other words, might actually require less energy than the trouble we can expect to meet while trying to escape.
Of course, the amount of energy it took for our ancestors to push outward from habitable regions in the ancient past, which led to the exploration and eventual settlement of distant lands also required tremendous energy and hardship. Maybe the acceptance of a stable environment (barring instances where natural disasters or other hardships might have forced ancient humans toward migrations) simply isn’t as appealing as the quest for adventure, and the fulfillment of indulging our curiosities.
It seems likely, then, that humans will follow in the footsteps of our ancestors, and eventually escape our earthly “prison.” And much like Number Six with his repeated failed attempts to liberate himself from The Village, we’ll probably do so at whatever cost is necessary, despite the hardships or the amount of energy required.
And we do this because to face such hardships is the greatest expression of our freedom: our ability to act in accordance with our own will, and to proclaim loudly that we are not merely things or simple bundles of cosmic stardust, helplessly watching our fate play out before us. Or, to put it as McGoohan’s character famously retorted to his captors, I am not a number… I am a free man!
We are humans, after all, and going great lengths to achieve the seemingly impossible appears to be in our nature.
Flying Saucers to Mind Control: 22 Declassified Military & CIA Secrets - PART II
Flying Saucers to Mind Control: 22 Declassified Military & CIA Secrets -PART II
Credit: Central Intelligence Agency
12. Oleg Penkovsky
Oleg Penkovsky was a high-ranking Soviet military intelligence officer who worked as a spy for the United States and Great Britain during the Cold War. Best known for his role in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, Penkovsky supplied the U.S. government with valuable details about the capabilities of Soviet missiles that had been installed in Cuba.
The spy was eventually sniffed out by his fellow Soviet intelligence officers, charged with treason and executed in 1963. However, there are some people who believe that Penkovsky was just a decoy who may have relayed false information about Soviet arms capabilities to U.S. intelligence agents. Some point to declassified documents outlining the intelligence provided by Penkovsky as proof that the spy's loyalty was really to the Soviet Union.
Credit: Central Intelligence Agency
13. Acoustic Kitty
A report from 1967 shows that the CIA spent millions of dollars in an attempt to train domesticated cats to spy on the Soviet Union. Yes, you read that correctly. Nicknamed Acoustic Kitty, the program involved implanting electronic spying equipment into live cats and then training them to "eavesdrop" on unsuspecting Cold War rivals.
If you don't believe this ridiculous program existed, you can read more about it in this memorandum published by the National Security Archive.
Credit: U.S. Air Force
14. Greenland's Lost Bomb
In 1968, a U.S. B-52 bomber carrying four hydrogen bombs on a routine (but secret) mission crashed near Thule Air Base in Greenland. In the aftermath of the crash, American and Danish officials launched a project to clean up radioactive debris and collect the scattered pieces of the nuclear bombs. However, for years later, news reports out of Denmark and the U.S. questioned whether all four bombs had really been located. [Photos: Top-Secret, Cold War-Era Military Base in Greenland]
In 2008, the BBC published an article based on declassified documents regarding the Thule accident, asserting that one of the four hydrogen bombs was never recovered from the crash site. This claim by a respected publication led the Danish prime minister to request a new investigation of the declassified documents used for the BBC report. That investigation, led by Danish scholar Svend Aage Christensen, found that the BBC's report was not based on any new declassified information (it drew from information that had previously been declassified) and that all four weapons had, in fact, been destroyed during the crash in 1968, according to the National Security Archive.
Credit: U.S. Army
15. Project Horizon
Before the civilian space organization NASA put the first astronaut on the moon in 1969, at least two U.S. military organizations drew up plans for establishing strategic lunar military outposts. In 1959, the U.S. Army drew up a proposal for a "manned military" base on the moon. That proposal, which was submitted by the Army's chief of research and development, was dubbed Project Horizon and would "develop and protect potential United States interest on the moon," according to declassified documents.
Another program, this one developed by the U.S. Air Force, sought to establish a "Lunar Based Earth Bombardment System" that met specific military requirements. Another Air Force study, this one submitted in 1959, involved detonating a nuclear weapon on the moon. The study was spearheaded by Leonard Reiffel, then a physicist at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and also included contributions from the astrophysicist Carl Sagan. In a 2010 interview with The New York Times, Reifell said that the "foremost intent [of the nuclear detonation] was to impress the world with the prowess of the United States."
Credit: Creative Commons license
16. Mapimi Silent Zone
A declassified document could help clear up some urban legends at one of Mexico's most bizarre tourist traps. The so-called Mapimí Silent Zone is a small stretch of desert in Durango, Mexico, where, according to local legend, radio waves cannot be transmitted. Often compared to the Bermuda Triangle, Mapimí is frequented by tourists looking for a paranormal adventure.
But the real reason that Mapimí is an interesting location has nothing to do with aliens or paranormal energy — it has to do with a big mistake by the U.S. Air Force. In 1970, an ATHENA V-123-D rocket carrying two small vials of cobalt 57 (a radioactive isotope that is sometimes used in salted bombs) crashed in the Durango desert. The rocket was supposed to land in New Mexico, according to documents declassified in 2013. Local legends may have sprung up as a result of this Air Force flop.
Credit: U.S. Navy
17. Iran Flight 655
In 1988, a U.S. warship in the Persian Gulf shot down an Iranian civilian aircraft en route to Dubai, killing all 290 passengers on board. Navy personnel incorrectly identified the civilian plane as an Iranian fighter jet before launching the missile that took down the flight, according to declassified documents.
The U.S. reached a settlement with Iran in 1996 in which it agreed to pay $61.8 million to compensate families of the Iranian victims. However, the U.S. government never issued an apology. The Pentagon conducted a now-declassified official investigation into the incident in 1988 and did not find fault with the naval officers who brought down Flight 655.
However, in the wake of the investigation by the Department of Defense, several journalists pointed out discrepancies between the official report and later accounts of what occurred. For example, the flight was originally said to have deviated from its standard route, but this was later found to be false. The report also states that the warship was operating in international waters at the time of the missile launch, when it was in fact operating in Iranian territorial waters.
Credit: CIA
18. Kidnapping of the Lunik
Sometimes, declassified documents read like a scene out of a James Bond film. That's the case with this document, titled "The Kidnapping of the Lunik." It tells the story of a CIA-led mission to "borrow" a Soviet lunar satellite for just one night.
The so-called kidnapping occurred in the early 1960s, at the height of the U.S.-Soviet space race. To make it clear that they were winning this race, the Soviets launched a multinational exhibition of their Lunik satellite, the first spacecraft to reach the vicinity of the Earth's moon. [Top 10 Soviet and Russian Space Missions]
One night, undercover CIA agents convinced the truck driver who transported the satellite from city to city to get some rest at a nearby hotel and leave the satellite in their care, the documents revealed. They then "borrowed" the Soviet orbiter — taking it apart and photographing its components before putting it back on the truck. There was no indication that the Soviets knew what had happened that fateful night, according to the declassified documents.
Credit: U.S. Navy
19. USS Liberty
In 1967, in the midst of the Six-Day War (a conflict between Israel and its neighboring Arab states), Israeli aircraft attacked the USS Liberty, a ship gathering intelligence for the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). Thirty-four Americans were killed in the attack and 171 more were injured. But was the attack intentional?
Many people believe that the Israeli government meant to open fire on the so-called "spy ship" to prevent it from intercepting sensitive information about upcoming battles, according to the declassified NSA report. But official investigations by both U.S. and Israeli agencies concluded that the attack was not deliberate, with pilots confirming that they believed the USS Liberty to be an enemy ship. This declassified NSA reportexplains the agency's position on the contentious issue.
Credit: SF photo | Shutterstock.com
20. FBI Surveillance Planes
In 2015, the AP broke the news of an FBI surveillance program that uses small aircraft to spy on suspects on the ground. The planes carry video and cellphone surveillance technology and are registered to fictitious companies. When the AP released its report in June 2015, the planes had been observed above more than 30 cities in 11 U.S. states in a 30-day period.
While the FBI told the AP that its aerial surveillance program is not a secret, details about what information the planes collect is highly censored in publicly available documents, according to the AP. The report also states that the FBI operates these planes without judicial approval. One document, obtained by the National Security Archive, shows the names and addresses of the fictitious companies that operate the planes. NSA expert and historian Matthew M. Aid also created a list of the aircraft that are used in this FBI "air force."
Credit: Public Domain
21. Operation Crossroads
In July 2016, the National Security Archive posted declassified documents, films and photographs that show U.S. tests of atomic bombs in the Bikini Atoll in 1946. Dubbed Operation Crossroads, the tests marked the first atomic explosions since the bombings of Japan during World War II in August 1945. [In Photos: Dive to USS Independence Wreck]
While much is publicly known about the tests, the declassified documents shed new light on how the tests affected people of Bikini Atoll, who were forced to relocate. They also offer a view of the objections raised by scientists and military officials before the bombings, as well as the rationale behind the decision to carry out the tests despite these objections.
Credit: Central Intelligence Agency
22. Doctor Zhivago
During the Cold War, the CIA played a role in distributing the book "Doctor Zhivago" throughout the Soviet Union. The book by Russian writer Boris Pasternak was banned by the Soviets, according to a Washington Post article, because it displayed an open-minded view of the Bolshevik Revolution and its protagonist, a doctor-poet, was staunchly individualistic.
Seeing the book's potential as a propaganda tool, the CIA worked with its allies in Dutch Intelligence to deliver about 1,000 copies of the book into Soviet hands, according to documents declassified in 2014. The books were distributed to visiting Soviets at the World's Fair in Brussels in 1958 with help from the Vatican, according to the National Security Archive.
Bound in unmarked blue linen and wrapped in brown paper, the books made their way into the Soviet Union, where the CIA hoped they would stir up anti-communist sentiment among disgruntled citizens. The CIA also smuggled other banned books into the Soviet Union, including James Joyce's "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" and Vladimir Nabokov's "Pnin."
Seeing a dragon in a patch of clouds, or a face in the moon, are examples of what’s called pareidolia. Look here for photos to test your own ability to see things that aren’t there.
Maybe you’ve seen the proverbial bunny in a patch of clouds, or a clown’s face in a mud splatter on the side of your car? Seeing recognizable objects or patterns in otherwise random or unrelated objects or patterns is called pareidolia. It’s a form of apophenia, which is a more general term for the human tendency to seek patterns in random information. Everyone experiences it from time to time. Seeing the famous man in the moon is a classic example from astronomy. The ability to experience pareidolia is more developed in some people and less in others. Look at the photos below to learn more and test your own ability to see things that aren’t there.
A woman’s face in the clouds, floating above the sea, as captured from Saquarema, Brazil, by Helio C. Vital.
Can you see a bird in flight in this photo? It is a a photo of the aurora borealis taken near Fairbanks, Alaska. by Dave Bachrach. Used with permission.
Erwan Mirabeau shot this rock formation in Ebihens, France. It’s reminiscent of a green haired man, known in the area as an Apache.
The “face of Jesus” in this photo is actually a child with a bonnet, and the hair is vegetation in the background. Anonymous Swedish photograph from the late nineteenth century via Wikimedia Commons.
Sometimes the ability to see objects in photos, where no such objects exist, has results that are not simply beautiful or intriguing, but downright bizarre. For example, consider the old photo above from an anonymous Swedish photographer of the 19th century.
In the image above, many viewers will immediately see the image of a bearded man with wavy hair, which could be interpreted as Jesus, near the left center of the image. In fact, however, the face is just a phenomenon of light, shadow and placement. The “face of Jesus” is actually a child with a bonnet, and the hair is vegetation in the background.
You have probably have seen claims of images of Jesus in a piece of toast, or the Madonna in the misshapen form of a gourd. Although intrinsically meaningless, such images are sometimes striking. More often, though, the similarity to known persons, animals or objects is a bit more subtle.
Pareidolia of dog on closet door by Chad Johns. Photo used with permission.
Ty Lawrence in Las Vegas, Nevada contributed this photo. We posted it at EarthSky Facebook and asked people what it looked like to them. We got many answers. Puppy. Dragon. Dog. Map of the Mediterranean Sea. But most people said “bird.” Thanks, Ty!
What can you see in the folds of this tissue? Many people will not see anything. It depends, in part, on the innate ability to see patterns, and in part on the natural inclinations and interests of the viewer. In some cases the image will immediately pop out, while for some folks it will come after a little close examination, and others may not be able to see it at all.
Here’s a close-up. Do you see the head of a Dachshund? Don’t worry if you cannot, but for many the ears, eyes and snout will seem obvious.
To a certain extent, the definition of pareidolia can be used to describe how the ancients connected the dots and came up with the patterns we know as constellations. It does not take a great deal of imagination to see a lion in Leo, a scorpion in Scorpius, or a mighty hunter in Orion. To be honest, many other constellations, such as Cancer the Crab or Capricornus the Sea Goat, stretch the pattern recognition idea a bit far, making the naming process more one of contrivance than of pareidolia.
Staying in the realm of astronomy for a bit, many have seen a face or a rabbit in the moon or any of a variety of other figures on the face of the moon for ages. Nowadays, technology has given us close-ups of other planets that serve as fodder for the pareidolia monster.
Here is the so-called “face on Mars” as originally captured in a 1976 image from the Viking 1 orbiter. Click here to see how subsequent spacecraft revealed the “face” to be simply a play of light and shadows.
Glass tunnels or “ice worms” on Mars? In fact, these Martian canyons contain crescent-shaped sand dunes, which are formed when the wind is predominantly from one direction.
For example, some self-appointed experts have stated that the image above – which is an enlargement of a small section of image M0400291 from the Mars Global Surveyor – shows large glass tunnels on Mars, or even evidence for ice worms on the red planet. What the image above really shows is a convergence of deep canyons on the planet Mars. At the bottom of these canyons are crescent-shaped sand dunes, which are formed when the wind is predominantly from one direction. Such dunes are common in desert areas of the Earth and are known as barchans.
People have found many imaginary images in this photo of the atomic cloud over Nagasaki – August 9, 1945 – from Koyagi-jima by Hiromichi Matsuda.
Although deliberately manipulated (“photoshopped”) photos are very easily made today and cannot be ruled out for many pareidolia images, hoaxes are considerably less likely in older images. Consider the old Swedish image above in which the “face” of Jesus is actually a baby with a bonnet. Or consider the image above from the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum, shot by Hiromichi Matsuda, showing the mushroom cloud over the city just 20 minutes after detonation.
With just a casual glance, most people will notice nothing in the bomb cloud other than the expected shape. But for someone with an eye for pareidolic images, several things can pop out. Let’s consider just one, that the head of an apparently sleeping woman with 1940s-style hair, facing the right from just left of the top center area of the cloud.
Go ahead, try to see the lady’s face before you look farther down. Truth be told, there are a number of things to be seen in this image, but the point to make is that these are all purely coincidental. There is absolutely no reason to believe that any of the images have any meaning whatsoever except the meaning that an active and creative mind may give them. They are not symbols or signs from the spirit world. They are not warnings about the future or indications of the waywardness of our ways. They are simply the result of coincidental patterns that the human mind chooses to interpret in particular ways.
It goes without saying, I hope, that this just happens to be a photo from the tragic bombing of Nagasaki, but has nothing else to do with Nagasaki or even with the atomic bomb. Similar patterns can be found in many many other images and natural formations.
In some ways, the pareidolic images we discover tend to indicate things about which we are most interested, whether they be people, puppies or planes. Finding such “embedded” images can fun and interesting, almost a hobby for some. But for some they can also fuel obsessiveness and paranoia. Enjoy finding your own pareidolic images, but keep in mind that what you are seeing is not really there, but in your mind.
Nagasaki image annotated.
Now, if you did not successfully see the lady in the Nagasaki image, see the annotated image, above. (Can you also see the puppy in her hair?)
Bottom line: Seeing recognizable objects or phenomena in otherwise random or unrelated objects or patterns is called pareidolia. It’s a form of apophenia, which is a more general terms for seeing apparently meaningful connections between unrelated patterns, data or phenomena.
If you’ve got loads of experience in top-secret missions and an affinity for UFOs, then a job opportunity has arrived that may be impossible to pass up.
“Janet Airlines,” the unofficial name of the classified fleet for the US Air Force, is looking for a pilot to join their secretive ranks at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas.
The planes, which don’t carry any company logos and are painted white with a horizontal red band along the side, transport military and contract employees to restricted sites, including the infamous Area 51 and the TonoPah Test Range in Nevada.
They are referred to as “Janet” because that is the call sign they use while flying over civilian airspace — it’s believed to stand for “Just Another Non-Existent Terminal.”
A job opening has been posted on the website of private defense contractor AECOM for a First Officer based in Vegas. Although it doesn’t go into specifics about where they will be flying, the demands for those applying are high.
The posting calls for the applicants to “have a minimum of 3,000 fixed wing flying hours in-seat with 300 in-seat hours within the last 5 years.” The advert also says applicants “must qualify for and maintain a TS government security clearance and associated work location access.”
In January, AECOM also posted a job opportunity for flight attendants.
Founded in 1972, the “Janet” fleet as of 2015 consisted of six Boeing 737-600s, as well as five smaller executive turboprops, according to Jalopnik.
The CIA only acknowledged the existence of Area 51 back in 2013 thanks to declassified documents.
George Washington University’s National Security Archive obtained a CIA history of the U-2 spy plane program through a public records request and released it five years ago.
Things have gotten so bad for the far left CNN that they are now being beaten in prime time by the History Channel’s Ancient Aliens show. People would rather hear theories about aliens creating the human race than listen to Anderson Cooper talk. That’s got to sting.
History Channel’s ‘Ancient Aliens’ Outperforms CNN in Primetime
CNN tanked in the cable ratings between August 6 and August 12, losing out to Fox News, MSNBC, and even the History Channel show Ancient Aliens, according to the latest data from Nielsen Media Research.
CNN’s competitors, Fox News and MSNBC, defeated CNN handily in the ratings war this week. Fox News took the number one slot for primetime viewership at 2.18 million viewers, and MSNBC came in second with 1.75 million viewers…
they shut down big names on social media; especially ones that call out false flags. Aside from Alex Jones, they also nuked a bunch of libertarians and other accounts that you didn't notice because the mainstream media is focused on Jones.
they have a terror training camp teaching kids to do school shootings; all under FBI surveillance for a number of months. The sheriffs went into the camp against FBI orders, otherwise, we would have never heard of it.
they need a big false flag before midterms to distract from FBI/DOJ corruption, crashing currencies in emerging markets, and to take the guns.
I'm afraid they are going for their 'big move' soon. This may be the calm before the storm.
What in the world is going on at the New York Times? Did you happen to catch its latest pass at UFOs? They’ve shrunk from breaking the biggest related story in memory back in December to dribbling out the sort of featherweight beginners blog fare that appeared on Aug. 3. How does this happen? Who’s running the show?
All appearances aside, De Void really doesn’t like to rant. It’s usually juvenile and rarely cathartic. Plus it never changes anything. But this, this, this thing that ran in the Times two weeks ago belongs in a truly special category of regression, like four-legged tadpoles deciding they’d rather revert to gills than take their chances on lungs and land. Normally you see formula writing of this caliber farmed out to Newsweek interns, or maybe to poor overworked Wiki-trolling legacy-media newbies pressured to generate quick traffic in off-peak hours.
Questionable judgment can sometimes be amusing — but not always/
CREDIT: blog.amirkhella.com
Eight months ago, the Times startled the world by exposing the Pentagon’s $22M UFO research initiative, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. But despite intense reader interest in the 2004 Nimitz incident, in which at least one UFO was videotaped by a Top Gun F-18 pilot who was thoroughly outmaneuvered, the Times hasn’t done a lick of followup.
But suddenly, on Aug. 3, from out of nowhere, without any news peg whatsoever, with no anniversary date that ends in a 0 or a 5, or any additional eyewitnesses or supporting documentation, the Times decided to dust off a moldy oldie from 1952. It’s one of the most famous cases, involving UFOs that buzzed the nation’s capital on consecutive weekends in July that year. Perhaps feeling the need to justify recapping this old story, reporter Laura M. Holson tossed in a few quasi-newsy cultural references in the third graph, e.g., Gillian “X-Files” Anderson’s upcoming role in a UFO movie next month, and a planned reboot of the “Men In Black” franchise.
The only new voice Holson brings to light is the 68-year-old daughter of a commercial pilot who saw UFOs during one of those summer night incursions in ‘52. Too young to remember the event, Faith McClory tells the Times “My sister has memories of men (reporters) coming to our home. People were enthralled with the flying saucers.”
Her sister. Fascinating. Do go on.
“It should be noted,” the Times tells readers, “that the term U.F.O., as used by the government, does not mean extraterrestrials from outer space. It means any object in the sky that has not been identified.” Whoa, wait, what? It doesn’t mean Martians? Since, like, when? “When asked recently about the 1952 Washington sightings, Ann Stefanek, chief of media operations for the Air Force, wrote in an email that” – now this should be interesting, a PIO who probably wasn’t even born in 1952, I wonder what she’ll say – “the objects had posed no threat to national security.
OK, yo, hold up. What’s with the periods between U.F.O.? Is this another formalistic brand quirk like using a proper salutation before each and every surname reference, no matter how undeserving or grotesque? Before boiling Mr. Doe’s flayed skull in acid, Mr. Dahmer cued up Air Supply’s “All Out of Love” and contemplated refreshing his spice rack. Does anyone else but the Times put periods between UFO? It’s distracting. It’s so distracting I haven’t finished my rant yet. Back to it:
“The events in Washington were not the first unexplained encounter report. Debris from what observers called a ‘flying disc’ had been spotted in Roswell, N.M., five years earlier, which Army officials said was from a ‘weather balloon.’” Wow! Interesting! I wonder if anybody claimed to have picked up any of that Roswell stuff. Hm. “By 1952, though, a number of sightings of U.F.O.s were being reported across the country and the nation was on edge.”
OK, look, I can’t hang with this anymore. The thing ends with how the USAF’s official explanation of the July ’52 phenomena was temperature inversions, a hand-rinse that’s only been out there for 66 years. And this article – “A Radar Blip, a Flash of Light: How U.F.O.s ‘Exploded’ Into Public View” – ran under the Times’ heading “Science.” Even as the Times continues to ignore the continuing expansion of the story it set into motion.
The Times’ reluctance to revisit its game-changing coup got even weirder yesterday with its publication of yet another “U.F.O.” story, dateline Los Angeles, titled “They’ve ‘Seen Things.’” It’s about a guy named Robert Bingham who has attracted a considerable following for his alleged ability to “summon” UFOs into view. Not insignificantly, this piece actually references its own reporting into the Nimitz incident, but steers well clear of updating that story. Otherwise, this is just another garden-variety piece on “believers.”
So to reiterate: Who’s calling the shots on UFO coverage back in New York? Was the inclusion of the Times’ scoop on the Nimitz incident in Tuesday’s profile of Bingham a reporter’s dog whistle for management to get its s*%# together? If the Times has had a change of heart on going deep with UFOs, why bother with the sort of innocuous filler it ran on Aug. 3, or a personality piece that won’t move anybody’s bar on standards of evidence? When it comes to shepherding material with this amount of public interest from the fringe to the mainstream, the Times’ news judgement is looking more incoherent by the month.
Thousands of new documents from Project MKUltra, the Central Intelligence Agency’s mid-century mind control program, will soon be released. The new records include 4,358 undisclosed pages regarding MKUltra’s “behavior modification” efforts.
John Greenewald, founder of The Black Vault, a site specializing in declassified government records obtained via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, first uploaded MKUltra documents in 2004—tens of thousands of pages, spread over four CD-ROMs. The document index alone is 85 pages.
Still, the trove of MKUltra material available on The Black Vault represent only a small fraction of the material from the sprawling, multi-decade program, with the majority lost to history after CIA Director Richard Helms ordered all MKUltra files destroyed in 1973. This makes the new documents crucial to expanding our narrow perspective on the CIA’s actions from the operation’s beginnings in 1953 through the cover-up twenty years later.
Project MKUltra was an illegal program of human experimentation undertaken by the CIA to discover methods, both pharmacological and psychological, for controlling the human mind, particularly in interrogation settings. Amphetamines, MDMA, scopolamine, cannabis, salvia, sodium pentothal, psilocybin and LSD were administered to thousands of unsuspecting people, throughout the United States and Canada. Others were subject to sensory deprivation, psychological abuse and rape, including the sexual abuse of children.
Frank Olson, a biological warfare scientist working with the CIA, plummeted to his death a little over a week after his supervisor covertly dosed him with LSD. Though his death was considered a suicide, the Netflix documentary miniseries Wormwood convincingly argues he was instead assassinated by the CIA after threatening to disclose his work, particularly the United States’ alleged use of biological weapons in the Korean War.
More than 80 colleges, prisons, pharma companies and hospitals collaborated in the program, including renowned psychiatrist Donald Ewen Cameron, who served president of the American Psychiatric Association and the World Psychiatric Association. The destruction of decades of documentation and subsequent CIA stonewalling has made Project MKUltra a central element of numerous conspiracy theories.
The existence of the previously unknown MKUltra pages was discovered in 2016, when a Black Vault user, Oscar Diggs, discovered irregularities in the collection the CIA disclosed to Greenewald. Diggs created a list of missing records and pages described in the index. The CIA refused to fill in the gaps in their original FOIA disclosure, claiming that extant MKUltra documents pertaining to “behavioral modification” were not the same as those pertaining to “mind control.” Greenewald is currently crowdfunding to cover the fees imposed by the CIA for the remaining 4,358 pages.
“We shouldn’t be afraid to ask questions.” Greenewald told Motherboard. “Even though the government lies, documents do not.”
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
