Occasionally, debate will surface on the strange and confusing saga of what has become known as the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit. Supposedly, it was a group within the U.S. Army, a group with a history that dates back decades and that investigated UFO encounters. Certainly, there appears to have been something to it, but precisely how much is anyone’s guess. The story primarily began in 1980 – specifically on September 25. On that day, a Colonel William B. Guild, of the Director of Counterintelligence, Department of the U.S. Army, told ufologist Richard Hall (now deceased): “Please be advised that the IPU of the Science and Technology Branch, Counterintelligence Directorate, Department of the Army, was disestablished during the late 1950’s and never reactivated. All records were surrendered to the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations in conjunction with operation ‘BLUEBOOK.'”

Colonel Guild was sure that the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit files had all been transferred to the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations. The fact is, though, that the AFOSI UFO-themed records stored at the National Archives make no mention – in any way at all – to such IPU papers. So, where, exactly, might the files be? If they even still exist, of course. Four years after Richard Hall made his inquiries (which went nowhere), UFO researcher/writer Bill Steinman decided to get on the trail of the IPU. Steinman, who wrote a controversial 1986 book, UFO Crash at Aztec, received a reply to his inquiry from the Department of the Army. The reply to Steinman came from a Lt. Col. Lance R. Cornine, who wrote:

“As you note in your letter, the so-called Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit (IPU) was disestablished and, as far as we are aware, all records, if any, were transferred to the Air Force in the late 1950’s. The ‘unit’ was formed as an in-house project purely as an interest item for the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence. It was never a ‘unit’ in the military sense, nor was it ever formally organized or reportable, it had no investigative function, mission or authority, and may not even have had any formal records at all. It is only through institutional memory that any recollection exists of this unit. We are therefore unable to answer your questions as to the exact purpose of the unit, exactly when it was disestablished, or who was in command. This last would not apply in any case, as no one was in ‘command’. We have no records or documentation of any kind on this unit.”

Clearly, between 1980 and 1984, things had changed. Whereas Hall had been told that the records had been given to AFOSI, Steinman was advised that there may actually not have been “any formal records at all.” It’s intriguing to note that the Army has a FOI/Privacy Act Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) form which, to this day, provides guidelines for military staff who may have to respond to FOIA requests on the matter of the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit. The form states:

“Periodically this office will receive requests concerning an activity described as the ‘Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit’ and for information on UFOs. When replying to request for UFO’s records our reply should be as follows: ‘This is in response to your letter of [insert date] under the Freedom of Information Act, 5USC 552, requesting information concerning Army intelligence records related to UFO encounter reports. To determine the existence of Army intelligence investigative records responsive to your request, we have conducted an in-depth check of the files and indices maintained by this office. We regret to inform you that there is no record concerning UFOs within this office and the Department of the Army.'”

The document further states: “If asked about the IPU, the reply is as follows: ‘Please be advised that the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit of the Scientific and Technical Branch, Counter Intelligence Directorate, Department of the Army was disestablished during the late 1950’s and never reactivated. All records pertaining to this unit were surrendered to the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations in conjunction with operation ‘Bluebook’. There is no record system maintained within the Department of the Army to catalog, process, index or otherwise evaluate UFO information. We regret that we are unable to be of more assistance concerning this matter.”

Should UFO researchers not buy into all of this and demand more, there are yet even more guidelines to be followed by Army personnel: ““If there is a follow-on request concerning the IPU, our reply should be as follows: ‘As stated in our letter of [insert date] records of Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit no longer are maintained by the Department of the Army.  Once surrendered, the records became the property of the gaining office (U.S. Air Force, Office of Special Investigations) and their disposition would not be monitored by the Army. Consequently, the information you seek is not available through this office.’ If we are questioned further concerning this unit, our reply should be as follows: ‘As stated in our previous letters of [insert date] and [insert date], the Department of the Army is no longer in possession of the records you seek and we cannot locate any information on the unit.  Unfortunately, for that reason alone, we are simply unable to answer your questions.’”

To be sure, a strange matter, indeed.

Bioluminescence in nature is one of the most fascinating aspects of science. Ranging from evolutionary modes used by insects and other creatures to attract mates, to the appearances of unusual atmospheric lights and other illuminations of possible geophysical origin, mysterious light phenomena occurs in a variety of different scientific disciplines.

Amazing Bioluminescent/Glowing Deep Sea Creatures

There is one particularly curious variety of natural illumination that has been reported over the years in various regions of our oceans. Although its characteristics are obviously suggestive of some unique natural phenomena, it is strange nonetheless, and noteworthy among reports of unexplained nocturnal illuminations.

Such an incident was discussed by N.J. Greig back in an issue of Marine Observer in 1996, where a strange formation of blue lights was observed at sea by a sailing vessel. The incident is described as follows:

“At 1525 UTC whilst in the westbound lane of the Traffic Separation Scheme and shortly after settling on a course of 270°, a small amount of blue phosphorescence was noticed in the sea waves ahead (the swell being very low).

Suddenly, the wind appeared to blow quite strongly, swirling around the vessel and then for as far as the eye could see and all around the vessel, phosphorescent cartwheels of bright-blue light began forming. The bands of light were roughly 30 cm thick while the maximum diameter of the wheels was 15-18 m.

“Their direction of movement seemed random and they were spinning at high speed, some chasing each other, others spinning in opposite directions next to each other.”

Of the incident, P.J. Herring of the Southampton Oceanography Center noted that “In the 200, or so, cases of this phenomenon reported in the last 100 years, never have so many wheels been described so close together, nor has there been any association with wind change. I am very intrigued but at a complete loss to explain how the wheels were produced.”

The incident was cataloged by William R. Corliss, in whose work entire volumes devoted to the study of earthlight phenomena and other forms of natural illumination. In Corliss’s writings, a similar incident that occurred in 1991 bore perhaps even stranger characteristics. The incident occurred on May 6 of that year near the Straits of Hormuz, when crew members aboard the ship Zidona en route to Ruwais observed a flashing of colored lights on the windows of the ship. Initially, they mistook this for being the light from a distant lighthouse reflecting off the glass, but as the light persisted, several individuals made their way to the deck, where they observed strange, colorful light patterns turning in wheel-like fashion in the water around the ship.

According to the record of the account, “They were all about 3 meters in diameter and changed both size and shape while flashing intensely. By (6 PM local time) the effect had completely stopped on the starboard side, and only the pulsating rings were left on the port side and, with these, the intensity of the light reduced until (6:22) when there was nothing more to observe.”

The unusual oceanic “spinning wheels” could be some variety of geophysical phenomena, although other possible solutions might include bioluminescent marine life. Granted, explaining the unusual spinning geometries of these incidents in relation to marine biology is problematic, and in some reports, the illuminations appear to manifest above the water, casting further doubt on bioluminescence as a likely cause.

Many varieties of marine life possess bioluminescent qualities.

Similar incidents involving these unusual oceanic “light wheels” have been reported over the last several decades in the China Sea, as well as the Arabian Sea, the Java Sea, and the Gulf of Aden, among other locales. The light formations take a number of unusual shapes, and have been described as spinning wheels, crescent-shaped patches, and phosphorescent “boomerangs.”

Among similar luminous phenomena, these oceanic lights remain unexplained and rank among the most curious and interesting varieties of unusual natural illuminations that appear in nature.

What is Bioluminescence?

Bioluminescence: Nature's Fireworks!

A meteorite discovered in Russia in 2016 has been analyzed and found to contain a mysterious new mineral that is as hard as diamonds. Did some alien lose the engagement ring he planned to give his girlfriend while traveling through an asteroid belt?

Mineral Harder Than Diamond Found In Meteorite!

The announcement of the discovery was made at the 81st Annual Meeting of The Meteoritical Society 2018 held last week in Moscow. Researchers from the Ural Federal University, Novosibirsk State University and the Geological Institute at the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Science revealed that the meteorite was found in Buryatia, a mountainous republic in southern Siberia, by gold hunters. (Photo here.) Did they unknowingly turn over something worth more than gold?

“Uakitite was observed in small troilite-daubreelite (±schreibersite) inclusions (up to 100 µm) in kamacite and in large troilite-daubreelite nodules (up to 1 cm).”

It’s hard to put a value on it, but the researchers did get the honor of giving the mineral a name once they determined it had never been seen before. The actual amount of the new substance “uakitite” was so minute that they had to use electron diffraction (firing electrons at it to observe the resulting interference pattern) to obtain data on its crystal structure. That helped them determine that the mineral was formed in the meteor in space at temperatures exceeding 1000 degrees centigrade. While it has never been formed on Earth, uakitite is said to be elated to carlsbergite CrN and osbornite TiN.

If you could see the tiny grains of uakitite, you would find “it has a yellow and transparent phase with metallic lustre” and “a light gray colour with a pinky tint in reflected light.” The Mohs scale of mineral hardness is used to measure hardness by scratching different minerals against each other and placing them in order with softest being 1 and hardest 10. Talc has a Mose hardness of 1, quartz is 7, topaz is 8 and diamond is 10. Uakitite has a Mohs hardness of 9-10, making it about has hard as diamonds.

The gold hunters who found the uakitite-crusted meteorite missed out on naming the mineral but wouldn’t have gotten much for it at the gem store. For that they were born too soon. Meteors have been found to be loaded with rare minerals, both known and unknown. It’s no wonder some space programs are ignoring planetary and moon exploration in favor of asteroid mining.

Somewhere in the stars, an alien guy is trying to convince his fiancé that the diamond ring he picked up on Earth is better than the uakitite one he lost in space.

Russian scientists discovered a new mineral

Ask a kid to name as many three-dimensional geometric shapes as he or she can think of and they’ll probably run out of fingers to count on before they run out of names … even counting two-dimensional mistakes like triangles. Ask them to name the newest 3-D geometric shape, and you’ll likely get a dog-hearing-a-strange-noise stare, followed by a return to texting on the hexahedron in their hand. If they’re the type to talk back and respond with, “Can you?”, the answer is yes … the newest 3-D geometric shape is the scutoid and it can be found in epithelial cells in human skin. Yes, there will be a test.

Scientists discover new geometric shape called the 'scutoid' in cells - fox news

‘Scutoid’ sounds like a mutant android but it’s actually a shape somewhat like a prism with a five-sided pentagon on one end and a six-sided hexagon on the other. The points are able to join via a triangle adjacent to one edge of the hexagon whose non-adjacent point magically reduces the number of edges from six to five. If you’re lost, here’s a picture.

Scutoids (Image credit: University of Seville)

While this all sounds mathematical, the source of the scutoid discovery is actually biological. According to their study published in Nature Communications, researchers at Seville University in Spain and Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, were studying how skin develops on an embryo and trying to determine how the cells are able to conform to the curve of the embryonic body while remaining tightl;y packed together. While it has always been assumed that the cells were shaped like straight-sided columns or bottles that expand on the non-skin side, a computer model showed a better way … and a new shape. Javier Buceta, associate professor of bioengineering at Lehigh and study co-author, explains:

“During the modeling process, the results we saw were weird. Our model predicted that as the curvature of the tissue increases, columns and bottle-shapes were not the only shapes that cells may developed. To our surprise, the additional shape didn’t even have a name in math! One does not normally have the opportunity to name a new shape.”

One would think that if one were given such an opportunity, one would come up with a better name than ‘scutoid’. Being biologists and scientists, they immediately recognized that the shape resembled a Scutellum — the posterior part of an insect thorax – and the scutoid was christened. Someone a little more clever noticed the shape’s convoluted sides and called it a ‘twisted prim’ which is a better name for it and a great name for a band.

Scutellum – 9

Is this a big deal? Yes, says Buceta.

“We have unlocked nature’s solution to achieving efficient epithelial bending.”

In layman’s terms, using the scutoid shape will make it easier to create artificial skin and organs that better match the looks, performance and efficiency of the real thing, especially on a growing body.

Sorry Dr. Buceta. That all sounds great, but scutoid still sounds like more like something the new female Dr. Who will encounter. Or a trick answer on a geometry test.

Scientists sure are good at making us constantly feel like we’re in the opening scenes of a horror movie. The latest case of science toeing the line between being really cool and going too far comes out of Siberia, because of course it does. According to the Siberian Times, Russian scientists have successfully resurrected two roundworms—nematodes— that were frozen in the Siberian permafrost since the Pleistocene era. For context, when these worms were frozen, woolly mammoths were stomping around Siberia. The two nematodes are 32,000 and 40,000 years old, approximately, and now that they’ve woken from their slumber are the two oldest living animals on earth.

         Nematodes (Representational picture) YouTube grab/ The Soil Association Videos                                                                                                                                                           Scientists say that this is a major breakthrough and could pave the way for human cryonics—the ability to freeze a person for long periods of time and bring them back, for applications like long term space travel or the arrogant quest for immortality. According to the scientists:

“Our data demonstrate the ability of multicellular organisms to survive long-term (tens of thousands of years) cryobiosis under the conditions of natural cryoconservation. 

It is obvious that this ability suggests that the Pleistocene nematodes have some adaptive mechanisms that may be of scientific and practical importance for the related fields of science, such as cryomedicine, cryobiology, and astrobiology.”

This is a frozen nematode.

Russian scientists at the Institute of Physico-Chemical and Biological Problems of Soil Science, working in collaboration with scientists at Princeton University in the U.S., collected samples of frozen nematodes from the Yakutia region of Siberia, the coldest part of Russia. This is close to the proposed “Pleistocene Park” which would recreate the habitat of woolly mammoths. All in all 300 samples of frozen nematodes were taken. Only two were actually brought back to life, so don’t go taking a nap in the walk-in freezer just yet.

According to the research once the worms were defrosted in petri dishes, they began showing signs of life, moving and eating food, as if they hadn’t just slept for all of recorded history.

If you’ve spent at least a decade or two on this planet you’ve heard of cryonics or cryogenic freezing. The plot of the show Futurama is based on a 21st century man accidentally freezing himself and getting defrosted in the far future. Then there’s the persistent—and likely false—rumor of Walt Disney having his body frozen so he might get resurrected when they found a cure for cancer.

This is not Walt Disney.

Cryonics holds a lot of promise to a lot of people. Apart from the medical applications, the other use is in space travel. Assuming we don’t develop faster than light travel, the only way to get a space exploration team farther into deep space than the human lifespan will allow is to freeze them. The basic premise is this: it should be possible to lower a persons body temperature enough so that there is no deterioration, even after centuries (or millennia) spent frozen. The second part is harder: bringing them back. Thawing out two worms is definitely a far cry from freezing the crew of a space ship and bringing them back a century a century or more later in the middle of deep space, but at least it’s a start.

Unless these worms keep eating and growing until they’re the size of school buses and then we have that problem to deal with. Be careful when you jump into sci-fi territory, people, you never know which version of the future you’re going to get.

Tales of what have infamously become known as “black helicopters” abound in the field of conspiracy-theorizing. Two of the biggest questions surrounding the phenomenon are: (a) who has the technology and power to fly such craft; and (b) from where do they operate? There are good reasons to believe that at least a part of the phenomenon had its origins at none other than Area 51 – the world’s most well-known “secret base.” Even elements of the government are puzzled by the controversy. Indeed, thanks to the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, more than a few files have surface that are focused on these mysterious craft.

TOP SECRET US Stealth HELICOPTER UH 60 Black Hawk revealed in Operation Neptune Spear

Official documentation on the encounters has surfaced from the Air Force, the FBI, and the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD). One particular document, titled Suspicious Unknown Air Activity, provides the following: “Since 28 Oct 75 numerous reports of suspicious objects have been received at the NORAD CC. Reliable military personnel at Loring AFB Maine, Wurtsmith AFB, Michigan, Malmstrom AFB, MT, Minot AFB, ND, and Canadian forces station Falconbridge, Ontario Canada have visually sighted suspicious objects. Objects at Loring and Wurtsmith were characterized to be helicopters[italics mine]. Missile site personnel, security alert teams and air defense personnel at Malmstrom, Montana report an object which sounded like a jet. FAA advised there were no jet aircraft in the vicinity. Malmstrom search and height finder radars carried the object between 9500 ft. and 15,000 ft. at a speed of seven knots.”

Of particular note is Unidentified Helicopter Sighted at Low Level Over Loring AFB, a file that adds further weight to the theory that there had been major, serious invasions of secure facilities – facilities that appeared to be not so secure, after all. Consider the following: “On 28 Oct 75, Lewis…advised that the a/c [aircraft] was first observed by Clifton W. Blakeslee, Sgt. [deleted] and William J. Long, SSgt., both assigned to the 42 SPS, who were on duty at the storage area. The initial sighting took place at approximately 1345. The a/c was observed approximately 1,000 meters north of LAFB. The a/c was subsequently observed by Lewis and others intermittently for the next hour and a half. Subsequent to the sighting by Long and Blakeslee, the a/c did not come nearer to the northern perimeter of LAFB than approximately 3 miles. Lewis observed a flashing white strobe light and red navigation lights on the a/c. The operator of the a/c either turned the lights off periodically or the a/c flew below a point from which the lights could be observed. The a/c disappeared from view and did not reappear. A search of the vicinity of the northern perimeter of LAFB by 42 SPS personnel met with negative results.”

In 1995, the U.S. magazine, Aviation Week and Space Technology, published an article (Vol. 142, No. 6) which, in part, stated that, “…the U.S. military has been working for years on at least two helicopter projects. The more recent is [the] development of a light, very quiet helicopter [italics mine] with a mast-mounted sight.”

One of those who had uncovered certain, classified data on this particular Nevada-based program was a conspiracy-theorist named Jim Keith, who died in 1999. The issue of the silent helicopters was one which particularly intrigued Keith. After all, helicopters are known for their deep, thump-thump sound. So, to encounter a helicopter that is near-silent – or, perhaps, even completely silent – would be amazing, indeed. In pursuing the tales of the silent copters, Keith found himself repeatedly pointed in the direction of Nevada. By now, you know the specific stretch of Nevada.

In February of 1995, the Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper ran an article titled “Ex-Worker Describes Stealth Copter.” It was written by a journalist named Susan Greene. Commenting on all of this, Keith said: “According to statements of a former worker at Groom Lake Air Force Base, a black budget stealth helicopter was being tested at this facility as early as 1990. The code name for the helicopter was ‘T.E.K,’ which stood for ‘Test and Evaluation Project K.’”

Keith continued as follows: “The former worker at Groom Lake reported that the chopper was olive drab, riveted, and angular, with gull wing doors. An account in the Vegas paper quotes experts as saying, ‘Light, quiet and stealthy helicopters could be used for clandestine ‘Rambo-type missions,’ quick-in, quick-out assignments without being noticed.”

Of course, the mysterious helicopters were seen long before the 1990s; something which suggests the programs operating out of Groom Lake have been going on for decades – and not just since the 1990s.

Time is weird. It’s a concept notoriously impossible define without circular logic. The operating definition of time in physics is simply “what a clock reads.” That’s it. Yet, we have ideas about time that are held as fundamental truths. The arrow of time is one, that’s the idea that time only moves in one direction. Simple enough right? Here’s another one: cause and effect, thing’s cause things to happen. Also pretty simple and just kind of self evident.  Causality is one of the first concepts that infants learn, and it’s baked into everything we do. But for how basic and integral to our whole reality time is, we don’t really understand it or have a better definition than “what a clock reads.” Sometimes, discoveries are made that seem to fly in the face of our supposed understanding of time. That’s what happened this week, when a paper titled Cause and Effect in a Quantum World was published in the journal Physical Review X. According to the paper, quantum computers can ignore cause and effect when modeling systems, a discovery which may fundamentally alter our understanding and relationship with time itself.

OK, so two things need to be addressed before this makes sense. Just kidding, we’re talking about time and quantum physics. It’s not going to make sense, but we’re going to try anyway.

The first is cause and effect. Due to our ability to understand cause and effect we can predict things and model possible futures. If you see a person walking around with their shoes untied, you might make a prediction that they’re going to fall on their face. You could very well be right. Untied shoelaces cause a person to trip which causes the person to fall on their face. Computers can make these predictions too. However, it doesn’t work the other way. It’s exponentially harder and requires a great deal more memory and processing power, for both humans and computers, to model systems based on information interpreted in the wrong order. If you’re given the statement: “a person has fallen on their face” it’s a lot harder to figure out why. Another way to say it is: it’s easier to understand a movie if you watch it from beginning to end than if you watch it in reverse. This is called causal asymmetry and it seems like a basic idea.

The second is that the physical laws of nature don’t actually require time to move in one direction. We just sort of assume the arrow of time moves in one direction does because of our experience and perception. Addressing the question of why it takes so much more processing power and memory to figure out a cause from an effect than it does the other way around, paper co-author Mile Gu asks:

“When the physics does not impose any direction on time, where does causal asymmetry — the memory overhead needed to reverse cause and effect — come from?”

This guy thinks he’s late, but time is an illusion so he should probably just go home and take a nap.

To try to answer that question, scientists decided to force quantum computers to model systems backwards, essentially making them watch a movie in reverse and figure out how it all fits together. What they found is pretty ridiculous: quantum computers entirely ignore causal asymmetry when reading data in reverse. Cause and effect has no bearing on their ability to figure out systems. In fact, quantum computers model systems in reverse-time more efficiently than classical computers model systems in forward-time. Jayne Thompson, one of the co-authors of the paper explains the “profound implications” of this discovery:

“The most exciting thing for us is the possible connection with the arrow of time. If causal asymmetry is only found in classical models, it suggests our perception of cause and effect, and thus time, can emerge from enforcing a classical explanation on events in a fundamentally quantum world.”

So basically, we keep getting stumped by our need to make the universe conform to our preconceived notions of how things work, and time is still weird.