Published on 15 Mar 2013 By openmindstv
We recap the 2013 International UFO Congress. We also talk about UFO photos taken by actor Russell Crowe. That, and other space and UFO news on this episode of Spacing Out!
Friday, 15 March 2013
Thank You From The International UFO Congress (D.V.D.'s Now On Sale)
By
Thank you to everyone who participated in the 2013 International UFO Congress. The event was a success thanks to our wonderful speakers, volunteers, vendors, and of course our attendees. We’re back in the office and are already beginning the preperation for next year’s event. The 2014 International UFO Congress will take place February 19-23, 2014 so mark your calendars!
We’d love to hear your feedback on what you liked about the conference, what you would like to see changed and speakers you would like to see present. The survey is short and it is entirely anonymous. Please help us make the conference better by participating in our anonymous 2013 Participant Survey here.Also we encourage you to share your photos from the event with us! You can either email us at contact@ufocongress.com or share them on the International UFO Congress Facebook page! We will be uploading more photos soon and will have a full recap with photos in the June/July issue of Open Minds magazine!
2013 DVDs available and 2011/2012 DVDs now on sale!
If you missed the conference or any speakers or you want to share what you learned with your friends and families you can now purchase DVDs of any and all of the speaker presentations from this year’s event. You can buy the 2013 IUFOC presentations here.
The 2011 and 2012 International UFO Congress DVDs are now on sale for a limited time! Get each DVD for only $10.00 plus shipping. You can get them here: 2011 IUFOC Conference and here: 2012 IUFOC Conference
UFO News Links For Friday 15th March 2013
Rethinking the Great Los Angeles Air Raid of 1942
UFO databases for extraterrestrial seekers – IT World
UFO Digest Newsletter March 14, 2013 - UFODigest
‘Authentic’ UFO Sighting In Yemen? – Albany Tribune
'This was UFOs - I saw them': Mystery surrounds strange contrails ...
Curiosity’s Hunt Turns to Organics – Discovery News
Close Encounter on Cononley Moor
No Alien Life Yet But Many More Earthlike Planets Found – The Inquisitr
Sequestering the poor, UFO phenomena, Wall St. extorts Washington ...
Could WE Probe ET With Interstellar Radar? – Discovery News
Behind The Scenes: Ufology’s Shadow Research Community
Tweed man baffled by suspected UFO in snapshots - Northern Star
Fox Point native to discuss government knowledge of UFOs – Brookfield Elm Grove Now
Shape-Shifting Jesus Described in Ancient Egyptian Text
NASA to reveal what Curiosity discovered in Martian rock – Montreal Gazette
Scott Alan Roberts on 'The Secret History Of The Reptilians'.
‘Out of this World’ Festival Features UFO Experts
By The Coastal Current
The day-long event on Friday, March 15 will run from 9 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Edinburg Conference Center at Renaissance, 118 Paseo Del Prado Road.
Stanton Friedman, a nuclear physicist and internationally recognized advocate of the theory that earth has been visited by extraterrestrials.
Admission to the “Out of This World” lecture series will be $15 per person for general admission and $30 per person for a limited number of reserved seats right in front of the stage. A catered box lunch will also be available for an additional $10. Admission for children under 10 is free when accompanied by an adult.
On Saturday, March 16 the festival continues from 5-10 p.m. at the Edinburg City Hall Courtyard, where there will be an array of UFO related activities, artists and music, as well as creative costume contest.
For more information visit edinburgufo.com or call 956-383-6246.
UFO TV: The Phoenix Lights - Documentary (Video)
The Phoenix Lights (sometimes referred to as the lights over Phoenix) were a series of widely sighted optical phenomena (generally unidentified flying objects) that occurred in the skies over the U.S. states of Arizona and Nevada, and the Mexican state of Sonora on March 13, 1997. A repeat of the lights occurred February 6, 2007, and was filmed by the local Fox News TV station.
A similar incident occurred April 21, 2008. This incident was later revealed to be prank--flares attached to helium balloons.Lights of varying descriptions were seen by thousands of people between 19:30 and 22:30 MST, in a space of about 300 miles, from the Nevada line, through Phoenix, to the edge of Tucson. There were two distinct events involved in the incident: a triangular formation of lights seen to pass over the state, and a series of stationary lights seen in the Phoenix area.
The United States Air Force (USAF) identified the second group of lights as flares dropped by A-10 Warthog aircraft which were on training exercises at the Barry Goldwater Range in southwest Arizona. Witnesses claim to have observed a huge carpenter's square-shaped UFO, containing lights or possibly light-emitting engines. Fife Symington, the governor at the time, was one witness to this incident. (Excerpt from en.wikipedia.org)
The 16th Anniversary Of The Phoenix Lights Incident
Dr. Lynne Kitei (Credit: Open Minds)
The Phoenix Lights event of 1997 is considered to be the largest mass UFO sighting in modern history. Phoenix’s CBS affiliate, KPHO, explains that officials at Luke Air Force Base claimed the mysterious lights were flares from military exercises. But it took them months to offer this explanation. And the time at which these exercises were reportedly conducted was hours after witnesses reported seeing the strange lights in the sky.
And now, Phoenix Lights researcher Dr. Lynne Kitei says she recently received air force documents, dated May 1, 1997, stating Luke Air Force Base had no involvement with the lights over Phoenix.
As she has done in previous years, Dr. Kitei will be screening her film The Phoenix Lights Documentary on Sunday, March 17 at 1 p.m. at the Scottsdale Harkins Shea Cinema to mark the anniversary of this still unsolved event.
Here are some of the local Phoenix news stories related to the Phoenix Lights anniversary:
Kardashians Get In On Celebrity UFO Tweets
There was a lot of excitement last week when Russell Crowe tweeted pictures he took in Australia four years ago that he believes are of a UFO. Not to be outdone, last night Kendall Jenner tweeted her own UFO sighting. Her sister, Khloe Kardashian, responded that she believed her, to which Kendall responded, “Khloe I’m tripping out!”
Did Jenner really see a UFO, or is she trying to cash in on the attention Crowe received? It would not be too surprising if she really did see something. Just last month the Mutual UFO Network received over 50 sighting reports in the state of California. We’ll see if she says anything more about the event in the next few days.
Tweeting UFOs seems to more and more popular with celebrities. Besides Crowe and Jenner, Demi Lovato, Billy Ray Cyrus, and Victoria Beckham, are just a few others that have tweeted their UFO sightings.
NASA Confirms Ancient Mars Was Habitable
This image from NASA’s Curiosity rover shows the first sample of powdered rock extracted by the rover’s drill. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
The announcement comes after scientists found sulfur, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorous and carbon in powder drilled out of rocks near an ancient river bed on Mars. These elements are believed to be key ingredients for life. According to NASA, this finding completes one of the rover’s primary missions.
“A fundamental question for this mission is whether Mars could have supported a habitable environment,” said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA’s Mars Exploration Program at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. “From what we know now, the answer is yes.”
Paul Mahaffy, principal investigator of the SAM suite of instruments at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, says, “The range of chemical ingredients we have identified in the sample is impressive, and it suggests pairings such as sulfates and sulfides that indicate a possible chemical energy source for micro-organisms.”
This set of images shows the results from the rock abrasion tool from NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity (left) and the drill from NASA’s Curiosity rover (right). (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/MSSS)
NASA clarified in a tweet, “The discovery by @MarsCuriosity of a chloromethane reported today is not proof of past life on Mars.” However, it does answer the question for NASA, officially, as to whether the environment on Mars has ever been conducive to the existence of life. NASA tweeted, “Gale Crater is the first recognized habitable environment found in the solar system beyond Earth.”
Now that one site has been found to have “conditions once suited for ancient life on Mars,” Curiosity will explore other sites that also show promise for having had environments that could have sustained microbial life.
UFO Movie News Round-Up
By Robbie Graham
Nolan’s
‘Interstellar’ gets a release date
Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros.
Pictures jointly announced last week that
writer/director Christopher Nolan's sci-fi epic Interstellar will be will be
released beginning November 7, 2014,
in theaters and IMAX. The film will be co-produced and distributed by the two
studios, with Paramount Pictures on domestic distribution duties and Warner
Bros. Pictures handling International
distribution.
Based on a script by Jonathan Nolan, and inspired by the work of theortical physicist Kip Thorne, Interstellar will be produced by Emma Thomas and Christopher Nolan. Kip Thorne will executive produce. According to Paramount, “the film will depict a heroic interstellar voyage to the furthest reaches of our scientific understanding.”
Jeff Robinov, President, Warner Bros. Pictures Group, said, "Christopher Nolan is truly one of the great auteurs working in film today, and we're extremely proud of our successful and ongoing collaboration with him and Emma Thomas. We are excited to be teaming with Paramount, and look forward to working with the Nolans, and producer Lynda Obst, on this extraordinary new project."
Interstellar was originally being developed by Steven Spielberg, who eventually let the project go due to other film commitments. Whether or not it the film’s heroic explorers will encounter alien life on their travels remains to be seen.
New ‘After Earth’
trailer
Columbia
Pictures has released the new trailer for After Earth, the official synopsis
for which reads as follows:
“A crash landing leaves teenager Kitai Raige (Jaden Smith) and his legendary father Cypher (Will Smith) stranded on Earth, 1,000 years after cataclysmic events forced humanity’s escape. With Cypher critically injured, Kitai must embark on a perilous journey to signal for help, facing uncharted terrain, evolved animal species that now rule the planet, and an unstoppable alien creature that escaped during the crash. Father and son must learn to work together and trust one another if they want any chance of returning home.”
“A crash landing leaves teenager Kitai Raige (Jaden Smith) and his legendary father Cypher (Will Smith) stranded on Earth, 1,000 years after cataclysmic events forced humanity’s escape. With Cypher critically injured, Kitai must embark on a perilous journey to signal for help, facing uncharted terrain, evolved animal species that now rule the planet, and an unstoppable alien creature that escaped during the crash. Father and son must learn to work together and trust one another if they want any chance of returning home.”
After Earth
hits cinemas June 7 this year.
‘Guardians of the
Galaxy’ will be set mainly in space
Marvel Studios
president Kevin Feige has told SFX that the vast majority of the
upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy movie will
take place in space.
“The Thor film and the Guardians of the Galaxy film
certainly are cosmic,” he said. “Guardians and Thor will take the brunt of the
cosmic side of the universe, particularly Guardians, which is 95% in
space...”
Feige also added that while Guardians of the Galaxy is very much
“a standalone film” in the Marvel franchise, “It takes place in the same universe” as The
Avengers, “but the Avengers are not involved with what's happening out
there at this time.” If that makes any sense.
Tarantino
mocks ‘Prometheus’
Ever
wondered what Quentin Tarantino thought of
Prometheus?
No, me neither. But now we know...
While being interviewed by Craig
Ferguson late last year, Tarantino said:
"I
saw Prometheus.
I loved it and I was disappointed at the same time. On one hand I was a little
disappointed about it. On the other hand, it was actually kind of cool to see
such a big deal, serious, science fiction epic by a director like Ridley Scott.
There were parts of it I actually did like and over-all the experience was
really cool having been in it. There was also a lot of dumb stuff in it,
though."
Tarantino then mocked what he called
the “space cobra” scene where the crew’s exobiologist greets a hideous and
clearly deadly alien snake-thing as if it were fluffy puppy before dying a
horrible death. A contender for the dumbest scene of
2012?
An Alien Base in Alaska?
By Nick Redfern
According to Pat Price, the aliens that lived deep inside Mount Hayes were very human looking, differing only in their heart, lungs, blood, and eyes. Ominously, he added that the aliens use “thought transfer for motor control of us.” Price added: “The site has also been responsible for strange activity and malfunction of U.S. and Soviet space objects.”
Rather notably, despite the controversial nature of this story, we find that the U.S. military took a great deal of interest in tales of UFO activity in Alaska in the formative years of the subject. For example, formerly classified FBI files tell of startling UFO encounters in Alaska in the period 1947-1950.
It was in August 1947 that a highly impressive account of a UFO incident involving two serving members of the military was supplied to the FBI at Anchorage. The report began: “This is to advise that two army officers reported to the Office of the Director of Intelligence Headquarters Alaskan Department, at Fort Richardson, Alaska, that they had witnesses an object passing through the air at a tremendous rate of speed which could not be judged as to miles per hour.”
According to the official report, the UFO was initially sighted by only one of the two officers, but he soon alerted his colleague to the strange sight. “The object appeared to be shaped like a sphere and did not give the impression of being saucer-like or comparable to a disk. The first officer stated that it would be impossible to give minute details concerning the object, but that it appeared to be approximately two or three feet in diameter and did not leave any vapor trail in the sky.”
Experienced officer that he was, in his first attempt to gauge the altitude of the object, and, from a comparison with cloud formations in the area, he determined that whatever the nature of the mystery sphere, it was cruising at a height of more than ten thousand feet. And it should be noted that to be at such a height and still be visible, in all probability the UFO must have exceeded by a wide margin the initial size estimate of “two or three feet.”
When questioned, the second officer gave a substantially similar account, the only marked difference being that, in his opinion, he considered the object to have been approximately ten feet in diameter, and compared it to “half the size of a full moon on an ordinary night.” This discrepancy in size was apparently due to the fact that the second officer believed the UFO was more likely to have been at a height of three-to-four thousand feet, rather than at an altitude of ten thousand feet as had been suggested by his colleague.
The difference of opinion over the altitude and size of the object may or may not have been significant; the important factor, however, was that both officers agreed that some type of anomalous object had most definitely been seen. And as the report concluded: “…the second officer pointed out that one of the remarkable features of this report was that it was definitely traveling against the wind.”
Shortly afterwards, the FBI Office at Anchorage reported to Bureau Director J. Edgar Hoover that: “…we have been able to locate a flyer [who] observed some flying object near Bethel, Alaska in July 1947.” The report to Hoover continued: “[The pilot] related that the occasion of seeing the flying object near Bethel was on a July day when the sky was completely clear of clouds, and it being during the early part, it is daylight the entire night. The time of his sighting [of] this flying object was about 10 PM and the sun had just dropped beyond the horizon. Flying weather was extremely good and he was coming into the Bethel Airport with a DC-3.”
On approaching the airport the pilot was amazed to see to his left an unidentified craft “the size of a C-54 without any fuselage,” which seemed to resemble a “flying wing.” As a result of its unique shape, the pilot was initially unable to determine whether the object was heading towards his aircraft or away from it, and elected to make a 45-degree turn in an attempt to diffuse any possible chance of collision. The FBI noted that the pilot was certain that the craft was free of any external power source, such as a propeller-driven engine, and exhibited no exhaust as it flew by.
The document added: “He called on his radio to the Civil Aeronautics Administration station at Bethel, asking what aircraft was in the vicinity and they had no reports of any aircraft. The object he sighted was some five or ten miles from the airport before his arrival and [he] stated that the path did not go directly across the airport. He, of course, could not tell whether the object was making any noise and stated that it was flying at a thousand foot altitude and estimated travel at 300 miles per hour.
“It was traveling in the direction from Bethel to Nome, which is in a northwesterly direction. He noted no radio interference and is unable to describe the color other than it appeared dark but of definite shape and did not blend into the sky but had a definite, concise outline. [He] clearly observed the object at this time.”
As the 1940s drew to a close and a new decade dawned, the FBI continued to receive and log high-quality UFO reports on a regular basis. Of those, one of the more credible related to a noteworthy series of encounters that occurred in Alaskan airspace over the course of two days in early 1950.
Forwarded to the FBI by an official U.S. Navy source, the confidential three-page intelligence report paints a startling picture of multiple UFO encounters involving the military. Titled “Unidentified Phenomena in Vicinity of Kodiak, Alaska,” it concerns “a report of sightings of unidentified airborne objects, by various naval personnel, on 22 and 23 January 1950.”
The author of the report noted: “…at 220240W January Lt. Smith, USN, patrol plane commander of P2V3 No. 4 of Patrol Squadron One reported an unidentified radar contact 20 miles north of the Naval Air Station, Kodiak, Alaska. When this contact was first made, Lt. Smith was flying the Kodiak Security Patrol. At 0243W, 8 minutes later a radar contact was made on an object 10 miles southeast of NAS Kodiak. Lt. Smith checked with the control tower to determine known traffic in the area, and was informed that there was none. During this period, the radar operator, Gaskey, ALC, USN, reported intermittent radar interference of a type never before experienced. Contact was lost at this time, but intermittent interference continued.”
Smith and Gaskey were not the only two to report that unidentified vehicles had intruded into Alaskan airspace. At the time of these encounters, the USS Tilbrook was anchored in the vicinity of “buoy 19” in the nearby man ship channel. On board the Tilbrook was a seaman named Morgan (first name unknown) who was standing watch. At some point between 0200 and 0300 hours, Morgan reported that a “very fast moving red light, which appeared to be of exhaust nature seemed to come from the southeast, moved clockwise in a large circle in the direction of, and around Kodiak and returned out in a generally southeast direction.”
Perhaps not quite believing what he was seeing, Morgan alerted one of his shipmates, Carver, to the strange spectacle, and both watched as the UFO made a “return flight.” According to the testimony of Morgan and Carver: “The object was in sight for an estimated 30 seconds. No odor or sound was detected, and the object was described to have the appearance of a ball of fire about one foot in diameter.”
The report then records yet another encounter with the mystery visitor: “At 220440W, conducting routine Kodiak security patrol, Lt. Smith reported a visual sighting of an unidentified airborne object at a range of 5 miles, on the starboard bow. This object showed indications of great speed on the radar scope. The trailing edge of the blip gave a tail like indication.”
Lieutenant Smith quickly advised the rest of the crew of the PV23 No. 24 that the UFO was in sight, and all watched fascinated as the strange vehicle soared overhead at a speed estimated to have been around 1,800 mph. Smith climbed to intercept the UFO and vainly tried to circle it. Needless to say, its high speed and remarkable maneuverability ensured that Smith’s actions was futile. However, neither Lieutenant Smith nor his crew was quite prepared for what happened next.
“Subsequently the object seemed to be opening the range,” the official report reads, “and Smith attempted to close the range. The UFO was observed to open out somewhat, then to turn to the left and come up on Smith’s quarter. Smith considered this to be a highly threatening gesture and turned out all lights in the aircraft. Four minutes later the object disappeared from view in a southeasterly direction.”
At 0435 hours on the following day, Lieutenants Barco and Causer of Patrol Squadron One were conducting the Kodiak Security Patrol when they, too, sighted an unidentified aerial vehicle. At the time of their encounter the aircraft in which the officers were flying was approximately 62 miles south of Kodiak. For ten minutes, Barco and Causer, along with the pilot, Captain Paulson, watched stunned as the mysterious object twisted and turned in the Alaskan sky. An assessment of these reports read thus:
“1. To Lt. Smith and crew it appeared as two orange lights rotating about a common center, “like two jet aircraft making slow rolls in tight formation.” It had a wide speed range. 2. To Morgan and Carver, it appeared as a reddish orange ball of fire about one foot in diameter, traveling at a high rate of speed. 3. To Causer, Barco and Paulson, it appeared to be a pulsating orange yellow projectile shaped flame, with regular periods of pulsation on 3 to 5 seconds. Later, as the object increased the range, the pulsations appeared to increase to on 7 or 8 seconds and off 7 to 8 seconds.”
The final comment on the encounters reads: “In view of the fact that no weather balloons were known to have been released within a reasonable time before the sightings, it appears that the object or objects were not balloons. If not balloons the objects must be regarded as phenomena (possibly meteorites), the exact nature of which could not be determined by this office.”
The “meteorite” theory for this series of encounters is particularly puzzling. It goes without saying that meteorites do not stay in sight for “an estimated 30 seconds,” meteorites do
not close in on military aircraft in what is deemed to be a “highly threatening gesture,” and they do not appear as “two orange lights rotating about a common center.”
In other words, it seems safe to conclude that genuinely anomalous phenomena were indeed witnessed by experienced military personnel at Kodiak, Alaska in January 1950.
Does any of this prove that there really is an alien base deep within Alaska’s Mount Hayes, as Pat Price suggested? No, of course not. But, in view of all the above, perhaps it’s time someone took a closer look at Price’s claims. You know: just in case…
North Country Roswell: A 1947 Report of UFOs over Canada
By Micah Hanks
The object, according to Haut’s statement, had crashed landed at a ranch near the town of Roswell, owned by a local foreman named Mac Brazel. At very least, this had been the initial story, for later that same day Roger Ramey, Commanding General of the Eighth Air Force, had changed the official story, and now insisted that the object retrieved by the 509th had merely been a “weather balloon.” The claim would exist in infamy within UFO circles, and for years afterward, serious ufologists and conspiracy theorists would continue to ask whether the story of meteorological balloons recovered at Brazel’s ranch withstood the evidence provided by other witnesses to the bizarre events at Roswell, New Mexico, which seemed to indicate an encounter with something not of this world.
And all the while, though the Roswell incident would represent, along with pilot Kenneth Arnold’s encounter with strange flying objects over Mount Rainier one month earlier, a new era of clandestine avionics known as Ufology, there were similar reports emanating from Canada around the same time that, while less popular, would nonetheless manage to still raise a few eyebrows even today.
On July 3, 1947, just days before the report of the alleged object that crashed in New Mexico, the following report of an “unidentified flying object” was brought to the attention of the commanding officer of a local RCAF base, as compiled by Air Commodore W.W. Brown (whose signature appears near the bottom of the original memo). The information was supplied by the Summerside Detachment of the RCMP, and confirmed by the Summerside reporter for the area Charlottetown Guardian. The memo reads as follows:
Brenton Clark, a farmer in the vicinity of Augustive Cove, saw an object at approximately 10,000 ft east of his position moving southward at high speed. The time was approximately 17:45 hrs AST 3 Jul 47. It maintained level flight for some distance and then apparently dived earthward leaving a trail (apparently a vapor trail) behind it. After the object had disappeared the trail remained for some time. The object was round shaped and at the estimated distance appeared to be the “size of an apple”. It appeared to resemble a shooting star and there was a considerable reflection of light.
The above report was confirmed by a local reporter who advised that he was informed by James Harris, a farmer in the vicinity of Summerside PEI, that he (Harris) and his hred man, Herman Linkletter, had seen an object in the same general position at the same time. It was moving southwestward and there was such a brilliant reflection from it that its shape was indiscernible. It was visible for approximately ten seconds.
Click to enlarge
The object, while reminiscent of a falling star, is described here as being circular in shape, according to one witness account. All those who witnessed the craft said it left a vapor trail, and that the object was visible for only a few seconds, with the vapor trail remaining apparent behind it in the air for much longer. All parties stated that the object seemed to reflect daylight as it traveled. But perhaps most compelling of all had been the fact that the object–whatever it had been–seemed to move parallel to the ground for a time, and then shoot off in the direction of the ground after that. While we can’t assume that the craft had crashed like it’s anomalous vehicular cousin allegedly did at Roswell a few days later, it certainly makes the multiple witness report detailed above a bit more compelling (and in fact, there were other official Canadian UFO reports around the same time, such as this one, though it seems likely in the latter instance that the craft had likely been a meteor).
So what was the mystery object seen over Canada only days before the alleged crash of an object, reported by Air Force officials at Roswell, New Mexico as a “flying disc” just a few days later?