Tuesday, 30 October 2012
UFO News Links For Tuesday 30th October 2012
The (literally) unbelievable UFO war in Antarctica | ITworld
UFO Wars Being Engaged in Antarctica – International Business Times AU
GAIAM TV: Why UFOs Matter
Martians Invade UConn in ‘War of the Worlds’ on Campus Radio – UConn Advance
Where on earth are all these supposed aliens? – Huddersfield Examiner
UFO Disclosure Countdown Clock: The October 8th Keene, Kentucky UFO Pictures - MUFON Report
The Terrestrial Goes Extraterrestrial – American Surveyor
Video: Pike County UFO Update – Telescope Footage
Manned mission to Mars would threaten Martian life – Zee News
More UFO's Filmed Above The Surface Of The Moon?
Published on 28 Oct 2012 By ufonut1972
Topic: UFO - Today's Guest Chase Kloetzke - Entity in the Cornfield (Video)
Published on 3 Sep 2012 By Topic UFO
Airline Passenger Captures Footage Of UFO Over Hawaii
By UFO Casebook
Originally published on Oct 27, 2012 by looknowtv
A UFO has been captured on a cellphone camera from a plane in October 26, 2012.
Thanks to the anonymous girl who gave me this stunning video to share with the world!
(Editor's Note: This is quite interesting as the object zips across the screen from left to right. The creator of the video applies several color filters to bring out the object more clearly.)
Jean Claude Van Damme Takes On Aliens In ‘UFO’ [Trailer]
By Dusten Carlson
Jean Claude Van Damme is rocking his own mini-comeback among his 80s action film colleagues. His latest outing is a low-budget alien invasion flick, so picture a gritty Van Damme round-housing little green men and you’re halfway there.
“It started with a blackout, all power and communications down. Hours later city sized UFO’s invade the world’s skies. Then the war began… Five friends attempt to navigate their way to survival amidst deteriorating chaos as the world descends into terror and anarchy during an alien invasion and interstellar war.”Okay, so UFO isn’t a comeback film on the same level as The Expendables, it doesn’t boast a great budget, and the plot is all-too familiar. But you know? This one seems uniquely appealing to me.
Probably because it’s not another Universal Soldier. I thought that franchise was over after the second one, but it turns out, they make a new one and put it out on DVD every other year. They bring everyone back to life and it’s just a great, big mess. So good for Jean Claude Van Damme for doing something new. That is all.
Did a UFO fly into Mexico’s Popocatépetl volcano?
On Friday, October 26, Mexican media company Televisa reported capturing video of a UFO entering Mexico’s active volcano Popocatépetl. The incident reportedly occurred on Thursday, October 25, and was recorded by a Televisa-owned camera that monitors the volcano.
The UFO in the video is a brightly illuminated, cigar-shaped object that appears to shoot into the volcano at an incredible rate of speed. Many have likened the object’s physical appearance to the recent UFO over Kentucky. Televisa asked Dr. Margarita Rosado Solis, a member of the International Astronomical Union and a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), to review the video and provide her opinion of the strange object. She concluded that the object does not appear to be a result of re-entering material previously ejected from the volcano. Although the UFO could have been a meteorite, she points out that the camera captured no sound or explosion to indicate a meteorite impact. The absence of a typical fireball appearance and accompanying trail of gases and debris would also seem to rule out the meteorite possibility.
Dr. Margarita Rosado Solis (Credit: UNAM)
However, it is important to note that the true appearance of the object is likely different from what is shown in the video because it was captured by a time-lapse camera. And although the assumption made by Televisa is that this object flew into the volcano, it is impossible to determine if that is actually the case, or if the object went behind the volcano.But then again, the object might not have been there at all.
The UFO has a very defined shadow on its right side, and pixel variations are noticeable around the object. These issues have led some to conclude that the object is either a computer-generated hoax, or a simple glitch in the video. Dr. Margarita Rosado Solis suspects the visible object in the video she was shown was not in the original video.
Saturday, 27 October 2012
Spacing Out! Ep. 25 - A look inside the 2012 Paradigm Symposium (Video)
Published on 26 Oct 2012 by openmindstv
UFO News Links For Saturday 27th October 2012
Ojibwa tale of a ‘Skyman’ visitor may have been alien – Orangeville Banner
5,000-year-old Ancient Language on Verge of Being Decoded | Trending Now - Yahoo! News
Aliens could mean philosophical implications – The Reflector
UFO Resembling 'Fluorescent Bulbs' Spotted in Kentucky - The Epoch...
Why It’s Right To Keep Gary McKinnon Out Of US Hands – Express
Texas Witness Says V-Shaped Object Hovered Over Tree Line
Curious About Life: Interview with Felipe Gomez – Space Daily
Cigar-Shaped UFOs Appear Over Southern US.
Kansas City Witness May Have Explanation For Some Cigar-Shaped UFOs
What was that mysterious object in the sky over Millstadt? – Belleville News Democrat
Paradigm Symposium: The Million-Year Event | Intrepid Blog
Museum hosts things that go bump in the night – Daytona Beach News-Journal
NASA is Photoshopping Mars photos... Why?
I (Think) I Saw a UFO – Artvoice
hidden experience: sychronicity and the UFO abductee
Man snaps pics of UFO near Hecker, IL – WTVR
UFO Disclosure Countdown Clock: `White Tube' UFO Seen Again In Kentucky?
Search for alien life about to step up a gear – Windsor Star
UFO: Aliens visit International Space Station alleges Analyst : The Canadian National Newspaper
Aliens amoung us? Curious. – Hazard Herald
Scariest Shadow People Encounters
Alien hunting: how to find DNA on Mars – New Scientist
UFO Disclosure Countdown Clock: The October 8th Keene, Kentucky UFO Pictures - MUFON Report
Emerald’s mystery UFO solved: Chinese lanterns to blame – Central Queensland news
Grave of ancient king who laid foundations for Mayan civilisation in 700 B.C. discovered by archaeologists | Mail Online
Meteorite Nazi Buddha Exposed As Likely Fake
Multiple UFOs Videotaped over Dallas
By UFO Casebook
Original video on Oct 21, 2012 by Raul Molinar
Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to wake up. It’s time to acknowledge the scientific fact that UFOs are real.
I mean, just look at this footage from downtown Dallas on October 20. The driver of a car traveling west on I-30 had the good sense to get out his phone or camera and film this shocking, revealing footage of UFOs hovering in the sky. There are obviously mysterious lights there. I only have a few questions:
- Why aren’t more people getting out and looking?
- Were the UFOs just trying to avoid getting hit by the ongoing meteor shower, which was peaking around that time?
- Why isn’t this guy watching the road as he drives?
- Was this a test run for the UFOs’ plan to burn down Big Tex?
That’s not all, though. Similar occurrences happened on the same day elsewhere on the planet, like Mansfield and France (the video title for which quite confidently states that it is a “UFO fleet landing,” because, I mean, obviously). All this according to this website that is connecting all the dots behind the whole thing. “They are trying to tell us something?” Indeed.
I mean, it’s not as if there have ever been UFO pranks or false sightings before.
And it’s definitely not like there’s a very easy way to fake this exact kind of UFO effect with animation/game software. Not at all.
Of course, earlier this month we also started hearing reports of some sort of ultra-giant UFO over Texas, so maybe this is related.
I might spend my entire work day tomorrow getting to the bottom of this. Then again, every time I think of UFOs, I think of this great video featuring Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s views on the matter:
The truth is out there, folks.
Of course UFOs are real. They’re Unidentified Flying Objects. That doesn’t mean they’re alien spaceships.
Curiosity’s detection of methane on Mars could suggest extraterrestrial life
Curiosity, NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory, has been busy exploring the red planet. The recent discovery of shiny particles in the Martian soil excited researchers, but another discovery by Curiosity could steal the spotlight.
Curiosity’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM). (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Curiosity’s on-board Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument recently detected the presence of methane gas on Mars. As Space.com explains, “On one hand, methane can be geological in origin. But then there’s the prospect that the gas is biotic, or caused by living organisms — meaning it could be the gaseous residue of long-extinct microbes or even the output of Martian organisms alive and well today.”
Researchers are understandably enthusiastic about Curiosity’s methane detection, but scientists discovered methane in the planet’s atmosphere back in 2003. In that case, a research team opted for the geological explanation. According to an article published by ScienceDaily in May 2012, researchers were able to show that methane escapes from a meteorite “if it is irradiated with ultraviolet light under Martian conditions.” Therefore, the team concluded that the methane detected in the Martian atmosphere is a result of high-energy UV radiation triggering the release of methane from meteorites.
A Mars dust devil. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UA)
Nancy Atkinson of Universe Today reported another possible explanation for methane on Mars in September 2012–dust devils. A team of researchers, led by Arturo Robledo-Martinez from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Azcapotzalco, Mexico, published a paper in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, detailing their proposal that “the discharges, caused by electrification of dust devils and sand storms, ionize gaseous CO2 and water molecules and their byproducts recombine to produce methane.”
With methane having already been detected in the Martian atmosphere, Curiosity was expected to detect the gas on the planet’s surface. But the variability of the methane Curiosity detected wasn’t expected. The next step is to monitor the methane levels over time to track variation. Chris McKay, space scientist and Mars specialist at NASA’s Ames Research Center, explains that, if the methane levels remain constant, “then this can be reconciled with normal processes and a meteoritic source of organics,” but “if it’s highly variable, then all bets are off.”
Dr Greer's Alleged Alien Remains / Microbiologist Dr. Tyler Kokjohn Remains Unimpressed
Microbiologist Dr. Tyler Kokjohn commented on the latest incredible claims put forth by Dr. Steven Greer, suggesting Greer's lack of verifiable details make his assertions all but impossible to accept at face value. Greer continued his ongoing public discussion concerning an alleged dead extraterrestrial being, this time enhancing the storyline with alleged world authorities involved in its analysis. Kokjohn countered by pointing out Greer's tale is virtually void of any established scientific protocol whatsoever, and informed this writer that supposing any such authorities would jeopardize the validity of such an unprecedented discovery is an insult to intelligence.
Kokjohn further
pointed out that producing X-rays and computed tomography (CT) scans, as Greer
claimed were obtained, requires certain authorization and specific equipment.
Only “a damn fool or an utter ignoramus,” Kokjohn wrote on UFO
UpDates List, would attempt such procedures without conditions of full
biological containment, even if they received clearance to use the equipment
under such extraordinary circumstances.“Who wants to get their CT scan after ET was in there?” Kokjohn asked.
Kokjohn went on to inform us that the lack of opportunity for independent verification makes Greer's claims virtually meaningless from a practical perspective. He added that scientists and professional researchers most certainly know this to be the case. Dr. Kokjohn additionally wrote:
Time for Disclosure
Funding scientific research is always a gamble. If investigators are truly traversing uncharted territory, predicting results and anticipating experimental pitfalls may be almost impossible. How does one maximize the odds an investment in a research project will produce tangible results? Use the 3 Ds - Disclosure and due diligence.
Before any money is allocated, scientists perform a detailed due diligence assessment of the investigator’s skills, the equipment available and work plans. Investigators with a strong track record of experience and publications in the areas they propose to explore, who have the necessary facilities and equipment available for their use and who put forth a clear plan of work will be favored heavily. Investigators are expected to disclose preliminary results that bolster the central research hypothesis and provide all information that will enable their proposals to be evaluated fully. In addition, investigators must stipulate that the research will be conducted following all applicable guidelines and regulations for biosafety and work with human subjects. It is very simple, if you want money, it is up to you to prove you can actually run something besides your mouth and do it safely.
Dr. Greer has offered a pale imitation of the evaluative process used by scientists. He asserts recognized experts are collaborators, he (or someone) holds exciting preliminary data and research is proceeding apace. All good components of strong research, the problem is he does half a job and just quits right there. Failing to disclose the qualifications of key investigators, providing a work plan to judge or allowing not even so much as a glimpse at supporting data stymies any hope for informed, unbiased assessments completely. For a guy who carved a career niche out of demands for disclosure, he appears remarkably reluctant to either acquire full information from his collaborators or provide a full story to the public.
To help those wondering whether to contribute money to his effort, Dr. Greer could disclose some of the data and allow persons unaffiliated with the project or documentary to assess the value of his results thus far. How about revealing the names and qualifications of your expert collaborators? Since they are part of a team that is working on what would be the greatest discovery of our age, wouldn’t they want to have their names front and center? What is their expert opinion of the data? Let’s see the CT data and with it the particulars regarding the equipment that produced the scans and the computational parameters employed for image acquisition. While you are at it, how about the name of the institution supporting this work – you know, the organization that allowed the use of its CT facilities, computers and technicians to acquire and analyze the images. Did anyone (like an Institutional Review Board or Biosafety Committee) express concerns about putting a dead unknown entity inside a specialized piece of rather expensive equipment? Better yet, did anyone ask about how work with a possible entity unknown to science would be conducted in a safe and responsible manner?
Those are pretty easy questions, ones any scientist doing such a project would be able to answer – before any work commenced. Will the doctor follow his own prescription?
Strange Alien-Like Mummy Discovered in Egypt
By TechEBlog
Though not connected to these UFO mysteries, this discovery is puzzling nonetheless. According to Beforeitsnews, "the body of a perfectly preserved, carefully mummified an alien was found buried in an ancient pyramid. A mysterious creature from between 150 and 160 centimeters was found by an archaeologist near Lahun when exploring a small pyramid near the Dynasty doceaba of Senusret II." Continue reading for one more picture, a bonus video, and additional information.
According to Egyptian sources, the alien mummy was discovered by Dr. Viktor Lubek, Czechoslovakian citizen and retired professor of the University of Pennsylvania. Archaeologist located the hidden compartment while conducting an investigation into a small pyramid south of the main pyramid, Senusret II, which contains the queen of the pharaoh. At the site also found some gold and clay mixtures covering the body, and traces of cloth linen like appearance, the skin covering the enigmatic being.
"The truth is, that every expert who has seen the mummy have concluded that it is not of earthly origin," said the source. "There is a sense that this is an alien who somehow ended up advising an Egyptian king." But everyone in the government is moving away from that conclusion that would support the new ideas that the ancient Egyptians had help from aliens in building their extraordinary civilization. "The Egyptians refuse to believe that their heritage came from outer space."
Secret Spying and a Contactee
By Nick Redfern
It was against this background of high-strangeness that many of the Contactees found themselves watched closely and secretly by none other than J. Edgar Hoover’s Federal Bureau of Investigation, the FBI. Indeed, I wrote about many of the now-declassified FBI files on the Contactees in my 2006 book On the Trail of the Saucer Spies. But, just recently – and thanks, specifically, to good mate and fellow Fortean, Greg Bishop – I obtained a copy of the Bureau’s file on a certain friend of the Space Brothers who still provokes controversy years after his death, and whose FBI dossier I had previously not seen: George Hunt Williamson.
It was also in 1954 that the FBI sat up and took notice when Williamson planned to speak at an event in Ohio with yet another Contactee, Truman Bethurum. Beyond any shadow of doubt, the number of people who can claim aliens wrecked their marriages is infinitely small. But, such claims have been made – the most memorable being that of construction-worker Bethurum. His idea of a close encounter was very different to those of other UFO witnesses: his alleged liaisons in the summer of 1952, atop Mormon Mesa, Nevada with Space Captain Aura Rhanes, a supposed citizen of the planet Clarion, ultimately led his outraged wife to file for divorce!
As for why the FBI took so much interest in the Bethurum/Williamson gig, the answer is very simple. The government was already keeping tabs on Bethurum, for one particularly interesting reason: he had made certain statements linking his experiences with Aura Rhanes to matters of a communist nature. In Bethurum’s own words:
“Two or three fellows who had sons in Korea and who read a lot in the newspapers about the Communist underground in this country, were convinced in their own minds that I was, if making contact with anyone at all, making it with enemy agents. They even went so far as to tell me belligerently that they intended to get guns and follow me nights, and if they caught up me having intercourse with any people from planes, airships of any kind, they’d blast me and those people too.”
And, as an amusing aside, it also led the FBI to refer to Aura Rhanes in its files as a “ravishing woman commandant”! Even the Bureau, it seems, was infected by Aura’s hotness!
Next on the cards for the FBI was a development that occurred in March 1955. Hoover’s agents noted in secret memoranda that, along with one Henry Maday, Williamson had then-recently established The Flying Saucer Council of America, which – the FBI also noted – was championing and promoting a new documentary-style film on flying saucers titled We’ve Seen the Saucers.
More alarming to officialdom: Williamson had apparently got his hands on priceless film-footage of UFO activity that appeared in the film. Reportedly, the footage showed “the astounding sighting at White Sands, New Mexico when two saucers trailed an experimental rocket to an altitude of one-hundred ten miles above the earth, and then speed off at the incredible speed of 7,200 mph.”
Of this matter, the FBI carefully recorded that the film at issue “was procured in California by Ric Williamson,” one of the man’s several pseudonyms.
Also in 1955, the FBI noted in its file on Williamson: “…according to an article in the Detroit Times on March 10, 1949, Ray L. Dimmick, a Los Angeles businessman, had seen a wreckage of a flying saucer which he said crashed near Mexico City. Dimmick reportedly inspected the wrecked saucer at a secret military installation at Mexico City and was escorted there by Mexican business associates. Dimmick described the saucer as being forty-six feet in diameter. He reported that Mexican officials and some scientists believed it was from Mars or another planet. He was reportedly told by Mexican officials that the Saucer was piloted by a strange type of man twenty-three inches tall. He said the pilot was killed in the crash. Dimmick stated that military and government officials from the United States inspected the Saucer.”
The FBI then immediately thereafter turned its attentions to Williamson and matters of a crashed UFO nature: “Ric Williamson and Henry Maday while in Saginaw, Michigan, prior to conducting a Flying Saucer Council program, met a prominent photographer of Saginaw, who stated that his son had revealed to him the following: The photographer’s son was stationed at Wright-Patterson Air Base about the time of the incident described in the March 10, 1949 Detroit Times above and while at Wright-Patterson Air Base, a huge semi-truck came to the Air Base with heavily canopied material jutting out, of immense size.”
Echoing the claims that Wright-Patterson AFB is home to the legendary Hangar 18 – a supposed secret storage-area on-base where crashed UFO materials are held – the FBI noted of the “canopied material” that: “…no one seemed to know anything about it except that it was driven to a far hangar where no windows or accessible doors could be discerned.”
As far as the declassified files are concerned, the next entry in the FBI’s dossier on George Hunt Williamson dates from 1962. Its subject matter: the possibility that Williamson had been involved in the smuggling into the United States of priceless Mexican artifacts of an historic and archaeological significance.
For a while the FBI deeply pondered on whether or not they should get further involved in the pursuit of a potential crime that had occurred outside of its jurisdiction and in another country – Mexico – but finally dropped the matter; rather fortunately, it must be said, for Williamson. There is one particularly curious aspect of this particular affair: a number of the relevant documents are heavily censored according to category B1 of the Freedom of Information Act. Intriguingly, B1 covers nothing less than matters that may have a potential effect on US national security.
Williamson might have overstepped the line to a degree with his Indiana Jones-style escapades in Mexico in 1962, but they hardly seem like matters that would have had a bearing on issues relative to the national security of the United States. Unless, of course, there are additional files on Williamson that the FBI has still yet to declassify, and which remain behind closed doors for reasons tantalizing and unknown.
And there, so far as we can tell at least, ends the FBI’s surveillance of George Hunt Williamson. Enigmatic, controversial and shrouded in mystery until the very end, he died in 1986, a figure by then largely forgotten by, or completely unknown to, the UFO research community of the day. But, maybe, not forgotten by the FBI.
And if you want to find out more about what the FBI thought of the man himself, you can do so in a new edition of Williamson’s book, Road in the Sky, which has just been republished by Timothy Green Beckley and which includes a 22-page article from me on this strange saga of Space Brother-based spying in the early years of the Cold War…
Tuesday, 23 October 2012
UFO News Links For Tuesday 23rd October 2012
Mystery as Scots couple capture spooky green figure on camera at Aberdeenshire home – Scottish Daily Record
Robbie Williams prefers UFO-spotting to ghouls - TruthDive
UFO Sightings Report: E.T. Hexagon Base on the Moon? – International Business Times AU
Dr. Greer Reseaches Possible ET Body
Paul Kurtz, UFO Debunker, Skeptic And Secular Humanist, Dies At 86 – International Business Times
Silent Black Triangle Over Colorado Might Be
Curiosity’s new bright, shiny object is actually Martian – CNET
UFO hacker Gary McKinnon was helped by MP Grant Shapps ‘behind the scenes’ – Welwyn Hatfield Times
The Truth is Down Here – Cornwall Community News
All Aboard, Starship Destined for Alpha Centauri!
Three related UFO sightings: 1946, 1952, 1964 – then what?
The Disturbing World Of Alien Abduction And Mind Control
When a UFO is not a UFO
Man Photographs 'UFO' Floating In The Clouds Moments Before Ten Dead Birds Land In Garden
UFO fest captures attention – San Antonio Express
Remote Controlled (RC) Alien ORB Is Dissected and Reviewed – SBWire
When It Comes To UFOs, Why Do Debunkers Do That Debunking Thing They Do?
XCOM: Enemy Unknown - More Bad Aliens from The Games Industry
By Thomas Visco
Pros: Accessible, engaging turn-based action. Open-ended gameplay allows for limitless play time.
Cons: This game is extremely difficult — newcomers to strategy games, be warned. Camera angles can be unwieldy at times.
A good video game makes your heart race. Graphics, sound and atmosphere all play a role in the excitement. But truly great games don’t excite you in a superficial way. Instead, they worry you, making you fret every decision in the game.
And no contemporary game makes you reconsider every decision like “XCOM: Enemy Unknown,” a new release developed by Firaxis Games.
Firaxis’ new game builds off the success of its spiritual predecessor, “UFO: Enemy Unknown,” which was developed by MicroProse and released in 1994. “UFO” is a classic in the turn-based strategy genre — a game that relies on a turn system for players to make their moves around the game world.
Today, “UFO” is universally regarded as one of the top 10 games of all time. One of the founding games of its genre, “UFO” succeeded as a turn-based tactics game because of its keen sense of risk and reward. This equation of risk and reward revolves around time units, a limited resource players use to move their squad around the game. Once a player runs out of time units, no more actions can be taken in the turn, and the squad is at the mercy of the opponent until the end of the turn. How many time units to save or spend — how much risk to take — is the central point of this game.
Like its predecessor, “XCOM: Enemy Unknown” capitalizes on this basic equation. “XCOM” centers its plot on a fictional alien invasion in the not-so-distant future. The player is cast as a nameless, faceless commander of a special operations group intent on defending Earth from extraterrestrial invaders. This group receives its funding from a council of 16 countries.
The game is separated into two parts — base management and missions. At the start of the game, the council of countries gives the player a basic base to manage. It is the player’s job to deal with alien encounters in such a way that the panic level in each of these countries does not pass a certain threshold. Failure to do so triggers panicking countries to withdraw funding. Panic level is just one of a host of issues to micromanage at the base.
While this backdrop isn’t especially compelling, players have never flocked to the turn-based tactics genre for the stories. What matters is the gameplay. Base management is not the selling point of this game, but the pleasant user interface and straightforward objectives it provides ensures that players’ main focus can be their missions.
Accordingly, the fun of “XCOM” takes place out on missions, not at the base. These missions operate on the turn system, the core game mechanic in “XCOM.” Each turn, you have the opportunity to move your squad around the map, fire their weapons at opponents, or use items to aid your squad.
What follows is a series of difficult decisions about which of these actions to take. Placing your team around the map foolishly will lead to a quick and deadly finale for your “XCOM” experience. But taking risks with your squad — say, exposing them to an opponent’s line of sight — may lead to a greater reward, such as luring the enemy into a trap. No matter what, after your turn is complete the computer opponent’s turn unfolds without any opportunity for you to rectify mistakes, so the game forces you to think deliberately about every decision.
And think you will. “XCOM” is nothing short of excruciatingly difficult, and the challenge forces players to learn constantly from past mistakes. While frustrating at times — particularly when your whole squad is wiped out due to a single error — the game is fair. Although you may lose often, it is always evident where your mistake was and how to fix it in later missions.
The turn-based tactical goodness of “XCOM” is a delightful reimagining of the classic “UFO.” The graphics and sound are stellar for a game in this genre, capturing the sci-fi setting of the game while not being too unbelievable. While it might be frustrating at times, the game keeps you coming back for its addictive risk-reward system. Overall, “XCOM” is an action-heavy jaunt through turn-based tactics and a definitive classic of the genre.
UFO Sightings Pose Danger to Aviation
Flying saucers and other unidentified flying objects can distract pilots and cause accidents.
Between about 8 and 10 o'clock on the night of March 13, 1997, hundreds of people near Phoenix reported spotting mysterious clusters of lights in the sky. A number of witnesses said that many of them seemed to come from a brightly lit, V-shaped craft, the size of at least several football fields.
"It was astonishing, and a little frightening," one local resident said. School administrator Susan Watson still remembers watching with her children as the massive object she describes as a "floating" city passed silently over their home. Air National Guard spokesmen later suggested the witnesses may have seen military flares that were dropped that night, while some proposed that observers were confused by aircraft flying in formation. But these explanations left many unsatisfied, particularly one witness who, for a decade, was reluctant to acknowledge he had also seen the vehicle: Fife Symington III, Arizona's governor at the time.
"I'm a pilot, familiar with most aircraft," Symington now says, "and what I saw is nothing like I've had any knowledge of."
Thousands of unidentified flying objects are reported each year by the public. The fascination with UFOs has become a fixture of contemporary culture and a staple for science fiction writers and supermarket tabloids. But in response to the central question—are they alien spacecraft?—most officials and academics dismiss the idea of extraterrestrial visitations as unlikely in the extreme.
Yet an increasing number of researchers and public officials say the subject of UFOs is long overdue for more serious treatment. They're a "mystery that science needs to engage in," argues journalist Leslie Kean, who spent over a decade interviewing former military officers, government officials, scientists, and eyewitnesses while accessing previously classified government records for her 2010 book UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On the Record.
Generally, a UFO is defined as a phenomenon in the sky—be it a light, solid object, or a combination of these—whose true nature or source can't be determined. Those who study UFOs say that some 95 percent of sightings can later be explained as ordinary man-made objects or naturally occurring phenomena, from flares and military aircraft to weather oddities or reflections of the planet Venus. But that still leaves about 5 percent that seem to defy rational explanation.
"The bottom line is we don't know what they are," says Kean, a former broadcast radio producer and veteran investigative journalist who has contributed to publications like the Boston Globe, the International Herald Tribune, and The Nation.
The public's fascination with UFOs is a modern expression of an age-old enchantment with remarkable events in the skies, notes Albert Harrison, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California–Davis and author of the 2007 book Starstruck: Cosmic Visions in Science, Religion, and Folklore.
"Signs from the gods, omens, and portents have been replaced by space-age visitors that have remarkable god-like qualities and power," he says.
It wasn't until after World War II that interest in space-age visitors—and UFOs—really seemed to take off, and then it did so in a spectacular way. On June 24, 1947, salesman Kenneth Arnold was flying his private plane near Mount Rainier in Washington when he spotted a chain of nine, brightly lit objects moving at incredible speed near the mountain's peak. Arnold described each of them moving "like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water," ushering the phrase "flying saucer" into common parlance. As with many such sightings, various explanations were offered—a mirage or meteors, for example—but in the eyes of many people the mystery was never resolved.
Public interest in UFOs continued to grow in the 1950s and '60s as the idea of manned spaceflight to other worlds led many people to imagine what—or who—might be traveling the other way. As reports of UFOs proliferated, media coverage seemed to inspire even more reports. Concerned about potential threats to national security, the government began to investigate. Its most notable program, the Air Force's Project Blue Book, began in 1947 and involved the analysis of some 12,600 UFO reports over two decades, most of which were categorized as misidentified natural or man-made objects, such as weather balloons or high-speed aircraft. By the end of 1969, the Air Force declared that none posed a threat or involved an extraterrestrial vehicle. The project's leaders did acknowledge, however, that they could not come up with an explanation for about 700 of the incidents.
That margin of mystery continues to thrill diehard believers around the world, many of whom have organized into groups dedicated to studying UFOs and cataloguing and tracking sightings. The Mutual UFO Network, for example, boasts about 3,000 members in all 50 states and more than a dozen countries. MUFON receives about 500 reports of UFO sightings a month, and some 1,000 volunteers investigate what they see as the most credible ones by interviewing witnesses and collecting photos, radar data, and other evidence.
A big challenge for amateur and professional researchers is the large number of sensational reports that later prove to be hoaxes. In 2009, local television stations reported witness sightings of strange red lights moving through the evening sky around Morristown, N.J., on several days in January and February. As coverage spread nationally, the History Channel series UFO Hunters featured the story. In early April, however, two local men admitted they had created the floating lights by attaching flares to helium balloons, to poke fun at UFO investigators and to demonstrate how unreliable eyewitness accounts are. The mysterious crop circles that have for centuries inexplicably appeared in fields around the world are often held out by some UFO buffs as markings left by alien craft. But skeptics scoff, saying they could easily have been man-made. Such stories frustrate serious researchers. "It really gets hard to separate the wheat from the chaff," acknowledges Bruce Maccabee, a former U.S. Navy research physicist and MUFON state director.
In fact, many scientists and skeptics don't feel that systematically studying UFOs is a valuable endeavor.
"I just don't think the evidence is very good," says Seth Shostak, senior astronomer with the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute, a research organization based in Mountain View, Calif.
But Kean is convinced that there are enough puzzling cases for officials to give the subject a fresh look. In 1999, she was given a report produced by a group of French military officers, scientists, engineers, and others examining a spate of seemingly unexplained UFO sightings across the world. She was struck by the credibility of the investigators, who concluded there was a need for more careful analysis of these "unknown flying machines" that appeared "guided by a natural or artificial intelligence." The report inspired her to review once-classified government documents and incident reports from several countries (including the United States) as well as relevant photos, radar data, and material from private sources. She also interviewed official UFO investigators for several foreign governments along with military and civilian pilots, some of whom offered firsthand accounts reported in her book.
"These are people that you have to take seriously," Kean says.
Former United Airlines pilot Neil Daniels was one witness who shared his story with Kean. On March 12, 1977, Daniels was piloting a DC-10 on a routine flight from San Francisco to Boston. The aircraft was operating on autopilot when it suddenly started to turn left. Looking through the cockpit window, he and several other members of the United crew saw a brilliantly lit ball, roughly the size of their own plane, about 1,000 yards away. Daniels then noticed three of his compasses were pointing in different directions. After a few minutes, the glowing ball flew off at high speed. "Whatever it was, it wasn't an airplane," said Daniels, who passed away in May at his home in Los Altos, Calif. Air traffic controllers later reported they had not noticed any unusual radar traffic in the area, and the incident wasn't investigated further.
Even when government officials do try to examine a UFO sighting, they can be stymied by elusive—or vanishing—evidence. In Kean's book, a pilot in the shah-era Iranian air force describes a UFO encounter that Kean also found referenced in U.S. intelligence files. On Sept. 18, 1976, civilians and military officials at an air base near Tehran spotted a large diamond-shaped object with pulsating colored lights flying over the city in the late evening. Two fighter planes, including one piloted by the major who recounted the event, were scrambled to intercept the craft, which was also picked up on radar and described as being about the size of a 707 tanker jet. The major reported that, as he approached, the UFO seemed to emit a projectile. Believing it was a missile, the officer tried to return fire, but his weapons wouldn't respond. Though he said the "missile" appeared to land on the ground below, no evidence of it was found. The larger craft disappeared from the sky in an instant. A U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency review later that year called the incident "a classic which meets all the criteria necessary for a valid study of a UFO phenomenon."
Kean points out that countries like France and Chile maintain official government agencies to handle this kind of investigation, but the United States does not. The Federal Aviation Administration simply advises pilots to report any incidents to private UFO groups or to local authorities if they believe property or people are threatened. This official lack of interest is a concern, Kean says, because of the potential dangers posed by some incidents.
In one case, on Nov. 7, 2006, a dozen or so United Airlines workers at Chicago O'Hare International Airport spotted a gray metallic-looking disk apparently hovering for several minutes above an airport gate before shooting upward and vanishing, leaving a hole in the cloud cover. The witnesses, including mechanics, pilots, and supervisors, shared their accounts with the Chicago Tribune, which covered the story. The FAA suggested they had seen a "weather phenomenon" and didn't formally investigate, Kean says, despite the potential intrusion of an unknown craft in the airspace of one of the nation's busiest airports.
"The FAA's mission does not involve the investigation of UFOs," says agency spokesman Tony Molinaro, adding, "Our employees didn't see anything unusual and nothing caused any operational problems that day."
In fact, many experts are more concerned about the hazards these sightings pose to aviation than about the potential for alien involvement. When flight crews are distracted by what's going on "outside the window," they are focused on that and "not flying the airplane anymore," says Richard Haines, a former senior research scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center who is now chief scientist of the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena, a private research group focused on flight safety related to unidentified aerial phenomena. Kean agrees, particularly since pilots have reported encountering some of the more bizarre sights in the sky, including metallic disks, massive cigar-shaped craft, green spheres, and highly agile objects that seem to stop, accelerate, and turn in response to a pursuing pilot's maneuvers.
Haines believes only about 5 to 10 percent of incidents ever get reported, in part because professional pilots fear ridicule and potential damage to their careers.
"I really think we need to make it permissible to study these things without risking your reputation," says John Alexander, a retired U.S. Army colonel and author of the 2011 book UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities. As to the bigger issue of what actually is behind the largely unexplained incidents, or the possibility of extraterrestrial involvement, the debate is unlikely to be settled anytime soon.
Cigar-shaped UFO over the skies of Arlington, TEXAS (Video)
Published on 21 Oct 2012 by MegaUfoChannel
"I captured this object at a park near my house in September of this year, it is very similar to what I record at the volcano Popocatepetl in Mexico."
UFO Base Filmed on the Moon?
There are many mysteries in the solar system, but one of the most enduring legends is that there is a UFO base on the moon. Could this be true?
Well, another bizarre video has popped up online, showing what some folks believe is a six-sided building right there on the surface of the moon. The video is pretty shocking. At first, the anomaly looks like just another boulder, but when the camera zooms in, it definitely takes the shape of a hexagonal structure.
What's really strange is that the structure slightly resembles the shape of the bizarre alien object discovered at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. You can view the approximately one-minute video here.
Ever since Neil Armstrong first stepped onto the moon,
there have been all types of conspiracy theories about what does on up there.
Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin both reported seeing UFOs, but NASA may have
instructed the two astronauts to keep their mouths shut.Of course, the moon is the perfect staging site for a UFO invasion of earth, or to research the living habits of the human race.
Mystery Object In Sky Captivates Locals
An unidentified flying object, as photographed through a high-powered telescope, was reportedly seen in several areas of Pike County on Tuesday afternoon. Photo courtesy Allen Epling
Kentucky State Police Trooper Shaun Little told the News-Express that KSP Post 9 in Pikeville received five calls on Tuesday reporting the object in the sky. The object was visible from several areas, including the South Williamson area and Elkhorn City in Pike County, as well as Jenkins in Letcher County. It was also spotted and photographed in Virgie.
Disclosure through Disney in 2013?
By Robbie Graham
Earlier this year, Silver Screen Saucers asked: “Could it be that Disney is producing a dramatization of the flying saucer fever that swept America in 1952?” That question was prompted by the enigmatic title 1952 – a “top secret” Disney production quietly announced by the House of Mouse back in June of 2011. We were told that a script was being penned by Damon Lindelof (Prometheus, Cowboys and Aliens), and nothing more. We subsequently learned that Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles) had signed on to co-write and direct.
But yesterday (Oct. 17) saw some
intriguing (and confusing) developments when Vulture reported the
following:
Despite its title, 1952 is largely set in the present day.
Its
plot will focus on aliens visiting Earth for the first time.
The
film will also reportedly follow a man in his late 40s through this alien
ordeal.
Lindelof and Bird
are aiming to re-create the magic of Close Encounters of the Third
Kind.
1952
co-writer Damon Lindelof
Vulture also reported on the movie’s
mysterious back-story, which goes like this: last spring, Disney’s head of production, Sean Bailey, arranged for screenwriter
Lindelof to be given access to “one of the studio’s odder curiosities: a
banker’s box of files and documents that had been left moldering in Walt
Disney’s personal development lab, WED Enterprises, which later became the
studio’s vaunted Imagineering department.”
According to Vulture’s “spies”, the box was
originally labelled with the title of Disney’s 1965 comedy That Darn Cat!, which had been
crossed out and in its place was written “1952.” Apparently, inside the box was
a “collection of documents and primary source materials that, when looked at all
together, indicated that someone had been working on a project (movie? Theme
park ride?) about alien contact."
The identity of this “someone” from
Disney’s bygone era working on a project about alien contact has not been
specified. As it turns out, though, we may already know... the name “Ward
Kimball” springs to mind.
While at a MUFON symposium in 1979,
Oscar-winning Disney animator and Imagineer Ward Kimball (the man behind Jiminy
Cricket, The Mad Hatter and Pinocchio) claimed that the United States Air Force
(USAF) had approached Walt Disney himself during the 1950s to request his
cooperation on a documentary about UFOs that would help acclimate the American
public to the reality of extraterrestrials. According to Kimball, in exchange
for Disney’s cooperation, the USAF offered to furnish the production with
genuine UFO footage. Kimball claimed that Disney accepted the deal and – ever
faithful to Uncle Sam – began work immediately on the USAF project. It wasn’t
long, however, before the USAF reneged on its offer of UFO footage. When Kimball
challenged the USAF Colonel overseeing the project he was told that "there was
indeed plenty of UFO footage, but that neither Kimball, nor anyone else was
going to get access to it." The project was then abandoned and eventually
forgotten by all but the few who had worked on it.
Walt
Disney's most trusted animators - his "nine old men" - included Ward Kimball
(pictured far left, front).
(pictured far left, front).
So, could Disney’s mysterious 1952 be a 21 Century revival of its
aborted 1950s UFO acclimation project? Based on the information thus far presented, there
would certainly appear to be a connection... but hold on there, because here’s
where it gets confusing...
Within hours of publishing his
inside scoop on 1952, Vulture’s Claude Brodesser-Akner posted the following correction to his
report:
“Apparently I misunderstood my source for this story, who contacted me
after it was posted to clarify that while it is true that 1952 is very much in the
spirit of Close Encounters (and
centers around a Roy Neary-like protagonist), it is not in fact about an alien
encounter. My apologies for the erroneous plot
description.”
Roy Neary
(Richard Dreyfuss) making first contact in
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Hmmm. So when the unnamed source
told Vulture: “It
will be set largely in the present day and it is about aliens making contact
here on Earth,” and that the aborted Disney project that inspired it was “about
alien contact,” apparently this was just a miscommunication. And yet it is just like Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Hmmm. Could it be that Vulture’s
source (almost certainly an official viral ‘leaker’ for Disney) spilled one too
many beans in his revelation of the movie’s alien aspect, has been reprimanded
by the studio and has subsequently issued a rather implausible
“correction”?
It’s hard to say for sure, but given
the past UFO-themed credits of screenwriter Damon Lindelof, and in light of
Disney’s longstanding fascination with the UFO
enigma – not to mention the strong UFO-related connotations of the 1952 title – my money is still
firmly on this movie being about aliens.
In terms of the movie’s marketing, Vulture also reported the
following:
“The collaborators are planning an
elaborate, very J.J. Abrams–like advanced marketing campaign that will start
before filming even begins. The idea is to stage a treasure hunt for intrigued
moviegoers that will gradually reveal clues about and build intrigue for the
film right up until its release, and which may or may not be related to the
contents of the box.”
Perhaps, then, the “box” is just a
viral marketing device vaguely inspired by Kimball’s story? Or perhaps it is, as
the source originally stated, a real box with real photos and documentation that
have directly inspired a new and highly secretive Disney project? Perhaps the
box is a remnant of the aborted Disney UFO documentary?
Indulging the latter assumption for a
moment – that this new movie will feature real photos and/or footage of UFOs and
perhaps even their occupants – what would be the point? If presented in a
fictional context (as apparently it would be), said material would immediately
be fictionalized by way of its presentation in a “science-fiction” movie. Also,
in today’s world of photorealistic CGI and Performance Capture technologies,
debates surrounding “real” and “faked” footage would be very difficult to
resolve. We could be looking at genuine alien landing footage from any time
during the modern UFO era and automatically assume it to be
CGI.
So again I’ll say, “hmmm.” Intriguing
stuff, for sure, but until Disney hits us with more info on 1952, I’ll quit with the
speculation. Watch this space...
1952 is scheduled for release in
2013.