In some ways, the Voynich Manuscript is one of the most mysterious texts known to historians. The text is filled with fantastic, surreal imagery depicting plants, astronomical drawings, strange creatures, and a variety of dreamlike scenes. The origin of the text is unknown, but radiocarbon dating of the vellum it was written on puts its date of creation somewhere in the early 15th century. The book has changed hands numerous times throughout the centuries, passing from alchemists to rare booksellers and even to the King of Hungary. Today the Voynich manuscript resides in Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The 240-page manuscript is written in an unknown language and script and has so far proven undecipherable even by the world’s most skilled cryptographers.

The manuscript is also full of these strange scenes of “nymphs.”

Every year or two, however, someone claims to have deciphered at least part of the manuscript, with most of the clues suggesting it was some type of pharmacopoeia or botany manual. Of course, one could surmise as much just by looking at the pictures. Just this week, however, a pair of Canadian artificial intelligence researchers claims to have developed an AI algorithm capable of deciphering the entire manuscript. Has the mystery of the Voynich manuscript finally been solved?

Curiously, many of the plants depicted in the manuscript resemble no known plants or flowers. Known on Earth, anyway.

Well, not exactly. But we might be getting close. The University of Alberta’s Greg Kondrak and Bradley Hauer claim to have developed an AI algorithm capable of deducing the language a text was written in with 97% accuracy. According to their algorithm, the Voynich manuscript was likely written in Hebrew and then encrypted using a substitution cipher in which letters are shifted, and the vowels have been removed from words. Kondrak and Hauer’s algorithm found that the first sentence of the text translates as “She made recommendations to the priest, man of the house and me and people.” In its analysis of the first 72 words of the manuscript, the algorithm has identified “farmer,” “light,” “air” and “fire” as the four most common words, with “covfefe” coming in a close fifth.

I knows gobbledygook when I sees it.

While this development is being hailed as a breakthrough in the quest to decipher the Voynich manuscript, the researchers themselves note that their work is far from complete and that hours and hours of human research are still needed to interpret the syntax and meaning behind the words. Will we ever really decipher the Voynich manuscript? What if it was written in gibberish and filled with curious images as a hoax or practical joke? Personally, I find that to be the most likely of all scenarios. And how hilarious would that be, writing a book of nonsense that gets pored over by learned men for centuries? If that’s the case, the author was a comic genius.

The idea that an alien spacecraft might have exploded in the sky above Tunguska, Russia on June 30, 1908 is certainly provocative and intriguing. There is, however, one issue that some proponents of this particular theory are not at all keen to highlight. Namely, that its origins can be found not within the worlds of science or high-level government secrecy, but firmly within the realm of sci-fi. It was in 1946 that Russian author Alexander Petrovich Kazantsev wrote a story that was directly inspired by a personal trip he had made during the previous year to see the atomic devastation and destruction that was wrought at the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

David Darling notes: “Kazantsev developed the idea that a nuclear-powered spacecraft from Mars on a visit to collect fresh water from Lake Baikal, had exploded, showering the area in radioactivity.” There’s very little doubt at all that Kazantsev’s novel “helped” to nurture the idea that something of an extraterrestrial nature came to grief over Tunguska on that fateful day.

Similarly, in his debut novel of 1951 titled The Astronauts, sci-fi author Stanislaw Lem utilized the specific scenario of an alien spacecraft exploding over Tunguska as its central, overriding theme. Nearly a decade later, The Astronauts was adapted into a movie titled First Spaceship on Venus. In the big-screen version of the story, Russian scientists stumble upon a “magnetic recording device” at the site of the Tunguska blast. They soon determine that the object which exploded was nothing less than a reconnaissance vessel from the planet Venus. A translation of the recording device reveals that the vessel contained the entire Venusian population, who were coming to Earth with the specific intent of occupying our world. Their goal – and their entire race, too – is brought to an abrupt end, however, with the disastrous destruction of their huge craft.

And the fact that Tunguska continues to play a major role in the world of sci-fi only ensures that the fine line between fact and fiction becomes even more blurry and indistinct. For example, Donald R. Bensen’s 1978 novel And Having Writ used the Tunguska story as a springboard for an amusing tale about stranded aliens who are forced to manipulate the technology of early 20th Century Earth, as part of an attempt to rebuild their stricken craft. And the novels just keep on coming.

Chekhov’s Journey, written by Ian Watson in 1983, presents a scenario in which the playwright Anton Chekhov has personal knowledge of the Tunguska event – which turns out to have been caused by futuristic Russian time-travelers. Two years later, Bruce Sterling and Rudy Rucker’s story Storming the Cosmos depicted a top secret Soviet reconnaissance mission journeying to Tunguska and finding advanced technology that is then incorporated into the Soviet space program.

In the world of sci-fi themed comic-books the situation is much the same, too: in the Marvel Comics spin-off of the 1987 movie Predator that starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Tunguska explosion is shrouded in mystery, but is attributed to either an attempt by the Predators to hide their existence from the Human Race by vaporizing their malfunctioning craft high in the atmosphere; or by the military and governments of either Russian or America who are firmly determined to prevent the infinitely advanced technology falling into the hands of the scientific elite of each other’s respective nations.

And perhaps inevitably, even The X-Files got into the act, too, with a two-part story (titled “Tunguska” and “Terma”), in which Mulder and his long-time arch-foe, Alex Krycek, are forced to work together. They journey to Tunguska, where they learn that materials recovered at the crash-site contain a deadly substance known as “Black Oil” that contains a microbial life form capable of infecting, and controlling, any and all living creatures on Earth.

All of this is good entertainment for those who like sci-fi (a subject that, ironically, I have no interest in; I much prefer violent horror movies and whodunnits). But, for those who hang on to the idea (the hope, perhaps…?) that aliens met their deaths over Russia in 1908, we should not forget how those early days of sci-fi most assuredly had a bearing on what people thought about the still-controversial affair.

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In December 2017, the US government broke its almost-fifty-year silence on the UFO issue through its proxy-acknowledgement of a Top-Secret Pentagon UFO project called the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program. The conclusions of the project, which ran from 2008 to 2012 at a cost of $22 million (and which continues quietly to this day), were that “aircraft” of apparently unearthly origin are routinely penetrating America’s airspace.

These aircraft, according the former head of the Pentagon project, Louis Elizondo, exhibit flight characteristics that defy the laws of our known physics. They do not belong to the United States of America, nor, apparently, to any other nation on Earth. Moreover, it emerged that the Pentagon has recovered “alloys” from UFOs which are currently being stored and studied behind lock-and-key in Las Vegas, Nevada with the oversight of billionaire aerospace industrialist Robert Bigelow.

The implications are startling, and the media are fast recognizing as legitimate a subject that for so long has served as little more than tabloid fodder. It is now (almost) official: UFOs are not only real, but potentially representative of non-terrestrial technologies. 2018 looks set to be a very big year for the UFO.

But we should proceed with our wits about us. Since 1947, US government engagement with the UFO phenomenon has been characterized almost exclusively by deception; by disinformation and perception management campaigns in service of agendas that remain as murky as ever.

Do the Pentagon’s recent UFO “disclosures” signal an imminent end to the to the decades of secrecy? Have the powers that be had a radical change of heart? Are they finally ready to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about their knowledge of the UFO enigma? If you’ve answered “yes” to any of those questions, it may be your belief speaking, rather than your logic.

Greg Bishop understands better than most that things are rarely, if ever, as they seem when it comes to UFOs and the US military/intelligence community. His book, Project Beta: The Story of Paul Bennewitz, National Security, and the Creation of a Modern UFO Myth, tells the story of a sophisticated government campaign of disinformation perpetrated against one unsuspecting U.S. citizen, the effects of which rippled out across the UFO subculture and eventually reached the shores of pop-culture, significantly shaping our beliefs about flying saucers and the nature and agendas their potential occupants.

Here, Greg shares with me his thoughts on the recent Pentagon “disclosures,” and how we might better seek to solve the UFO riddle by removing government from the equation altogether and focusing instead on democratized, grassroots research.

RG: Summarise for us the disturbing case of Paul Bennewitz.

GB: In 1979, Paul Bennewitz was living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, right on the border of Kirtland Air Force Base, which was home to many secret programs. He noticed strange lights moving in non-aircraft-like ways on the Base at night, and decided to tell the Air Force.

That was a mistake. He also had a keen interest in the UFO subject and no filters at all, so he was happy to ride his beliefs to their illogical conclusions. Instead of handing him a cease and desist order, the Powers That Be decided it would be more profitable to string him along, hoping in the process to learn how he had figured out much of a coded message transmission system that had been painstakingly developed (as he was a very skilled electrical engineer) and who he was talking to as well as who was trying to talk to him. They hoped that this would reveal foreign agents and infiltrators.

Later, they began to feed him disinformation, but he believed it because he thought that he was working closely with the Air Force to warn everyone about an alien invasion. For the most part, Bennewitz provided his own narratives and details, but when the Air Force (and possibly other agencies) realized that he was becoming dangerously unstable, they did nothing to disabuse him of these harmful ideas. Concerned for his well-being, in 1988 his family placed him in a mental health facility. He recovered fairly quickly and generally stayed out of the UFO arena for the rest of his life.

RG: To what extent did the disinformation campaigns of the 1970s/80s influence the UFO subculture during those decades? Are we still feeling the effects today?

GB: I think they mainly served to keep people away from secret programs and to keep chasing their own tails. I do not think that they were perpetrated to keep researchers away from any great secret. As I see it, the main effect today is that UFO fans place far too much emphasis on the government coverup angle, which may have been at least part of the point from the beginning.

RG: What if any parallels do you see between DeLonge’s ‘To the Stars’ initiative and historical perception-management efforts?

GB: To me, it has the earmarks of an operation that is designed to direct attention away from something, rather than to reveal anything of substance. The fact that the government knows something about the subject and has been studying it for many years should come as no surprise to those interested in UFOs. I don’t think that the wider culture (especially younger people) were surprised either. The more salient point is that there is some acknowledgment of it by both the media and some places in academia because the story was published in a paper of record, even though I see it as essentially a publicity release disguised as a news story.

RG: Would you care to speculate as to possible agendas behind this recent release of information?

GB: Generally, when the intelligence community decides to move in some particular direction, it is designed to achieve more than one goal. One possible effect was mentioned in the last answer: Media outlets and academics seem to no longer see UFOs as a subject for automatic ridicule. This may serve to bring more intelligent thought to bear on the issue, which may stimulate original approaches and research with practical applications. Another reason may be to direct attention away from less obvious issues, as well as a way to “smack the hornet’s nest” and see who might react.

RG: The recent “revelations” about the Pentagon UFO program… should we be excited or concerned? Why?

GB: I think we should do neither. I believe we should watch quietly and unemotionally, but with close interest. Reacting to the news is most likely part of the agenda of those who released it.

RG: What are your thoughts on “Disclosure” in general? Is this something the UFO community should be pursuing—truth through government—or should we be following different lines of enquiry entirely in our quest to unravel the UFO enigma?

GB: I find it troubling that those who least trust the power structure are more than willing to accept a story when it agrees with their preconceptions. That is when we should be the most discerning and vigilant. It is also interesting that the recent “revelations” are closely following the myth and agenda around the UFO subject that has existed in the culture since at least the mid-1990s, with antecedents from long before that.

We are fully capable of studying UFOs ourselves with no help or encouragement from the authorities. In fact, the very nature of the phenomenon is so antithetical to a top-down approach that we should actively democratize the process in order to throw the widest possible net at the issue and increase understanding of both UFOs and more importantly, our methods of experiencing, reporting, remembering, and studying its effects. There are many wise and creative individuals who have already made distinct and important contributions, but their work is not often reducible to simple sound bites. Anyone with an internet connection or a library card can access these lines of inquiry for themselves and perhaps contribute in their own way to further understanding. Finally, we should abandon the idea that there is a single “answer” to the enigma, as any goal-oriented quest seems to be doomed by the ambivalent character of the subject under study.

Greg Bishop’s most recent book is It Defies Language! Essays on UFOs and Other Weirdness. He is the host of Radio Misterioso, which can be heard live at radiomisterioso.com, with podcasts available for download. Interviews with fringe-topic researchers and weird music are the usual fare.

Last December, UFO enthusiasts around the world received quite a Christmas present: the apparent confirmation of a secretive Pentagon UFO program served up before the public by one of the most venerable American newspapers, the New York Times.

Details about the program remain somewhat scant, the man formerly in charge of the study group, Luis Elizondo, said shortly after the release that, “In my opinion, if this was a court of law, we have reached the point of ‘beyond reasonable doubt.’”

“I hate to use the term UFO,” Elizondo told the Telegraph. “But that’s what we’re looking at. I think it’s pretty clear this is not us, and it’s not anyone else, so no one has to ask questions where they’re from.”

Elizondo’s claims, which were thoroughly vetted by the NYT, were accompanied by a pair of videos purporting to show unidentified objects that were observed and filmed by the U.S. government. These videos were released and highly publicized by former Blink 182 guitarist Tom DeLonge’s To The Stars Acadamy (TTSA), of which Elizondo is a member.

Elizondo’s involvement in relation to UFO studies, while highly publicized following the NYT piece in December, was actually first announced back in October of last year, coinciding with a public statement that was live-streamed online by DeLonge with the formal launch of the TTSA. According to the group’s website, “For nearly the last decade, Luis also ran a sensitive aerospace threat identification program focusing on unidentified aerial technologies.” In other words, Elizondo’s involvement with the former Pentagon UFO project had already been disclosed well in advance of the NYT article.

Despite the vetting of the journalists like Leslie Kean and the NYT staff, now the government UFO footage released by TTSA has fallen under the critical eye of online skeptics, some of whom call into question the veracity of the videos, and the identity of the objects they showcase.

While some online have made the claim that one of the earlier photos released by TTSA is little more than a party balloon, the primary argument deals with one of two pieces of footage released coinciding with the December NYT article. According to Mick West, administrator for the skeptic website Metabunk.org, the footage alleged to be a UFO in what is popularly referred to as the “GIMBAL” footage is probably just a plane (note: this is not to be confused with a second video, featuring an object that has been likened to a bus-sized craft shaped like a “giant tic-tac”).

Posting at the Metabunk online forum, West wrote, “I’m thinking the black shape around the object is some kind of IR flare/glare. We know that the shape of a very bright IR source, like the engine of a plane, can be much bigger than the object itself.”

“If people try to describe this as some kind of ‘aura’ or ‘field’,” West wrote, discussing a halo-like haze that appears around the object in one of the Pentagon videos, “then they obviously have not done their homework.”

Admittedly, the nearly featureless objects shown in the Pentagon footage obtained by Elizondo leaves a lot to the imagination. However, there may be problems with the “it’s probably just a plane” argument. While West should be commended for attempting to narrow down what the object in the footage might have been, any conventional aircraft that had been operating nearby at the time of filming would presumably have had a transponder, making it easily identifiable; also, radar systems would likely have had little trouble detecting such an aircraft. Hence, it seems logical to presume that if the object in the video had displayed these conventional characteristics, it would not have been of interest to the pilots who were filming it (who initially described it as resembling a drone) in the first place.

While some estimates held that the object in the GIMBAL video had been as much as 120 miles away, according to an update on the Metabunk thread that appeared on December 24th, “Preliminary analysis of the angular motion of the clouds suggests that it’s a smaller object around 15 miles away.” Even at the longer distance, the object might have been able to be tracked on radar; while 100 miles is generally considered the “useful range” for most radar involving airplane traffic, if an object were as much as 150 miles away, it could still be tracked if it were flying at a minimum altitude of 15,000 feet (to account for potential obstruction by the curvature of the Earth itself at this distance). For more on this, see the table linked below for calculating minimum altitude and distance for radar.

There are other considerations as far as radar goes, but generally speaking, we can probably conclude based on the analysis provided by West and others that the “mystery object” was well within 120 miles at the time it was being filmed, and possibly as close as 15 miles away. It stands to reason that if this was a conventional object (i.e. a passenger plane), that it should have been fairly easily determinable at the time the footage was made.

One of the problems with the footage, of course, is that there is little to go off of. While there is a fair amount of technical data that can be ascertained from the GIMBAL footage, further details about the location, and other circumstances that might offer context, are not readily available. Hence, much is left open to interpretation, and arguments arise in the midst of ambiguity.

At the end of the day, the footage is still intriguing, even if the circumstances prevent it from being truly compelling. While we cannot fully discern what the object is in the video at this time, it is a bold leap in judgment to decry it as a hoax (which, we should note, Mick West has never said, instead merely pointing out that he believes that the object is a plane). Further answers about the Pentagon’s program are beholden somewhat to pending FOIA requests; for now, we can only anticipate whether additional information will be forthcoming–either from the Pentagon, or the DeLonge-Elizondo camp–and whether it will be any more conclusive than the last batch.

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