'EXTRATERRESTRIAL' Organic Compounds Found Scientists Say

Security camera still of the fireball in the sky over Toledo, Ohio.

By Andrew Griffin

A fireball that fell to Earth in 2018 contains “pristine extraterrestrial organic compounds” that could help tell us how life formed, scientists say.

The meteor arrived on Earth in January 2018, as a streaking fireball visible across the sky of the US Midwest. Scientists were able to track it using weather radar, and hunters picked the meteorite up from the ground before its chemical makeup was changed by exposure to liquid water.

Now researchers say the material they recovered offers them the ability to explore such rocks as they might appear when they are still in space, but using the equipment they have down on Earth.

They describe their early findings in a new paper published in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science.

"This meteorite is special because it fell onto a frozen lake and was recovered quickly. It was very pristine. We could see the minerals weren't much altered and later found that it contained a rich inventory of extraterrestrial organic compounds," says Philipp Heck, a curator at the Field Museum, associate professor at the University of Chicago, and lead author of the new paper.

"These kinds of organic compounds were likely delivered to the early Earth by meteorites and might have contributed to the ingredients of life."

As the fireball arrived, researchers were able to track the pieces using Nasa technology usually reserved for monitoring the weather.

"Weather radar is meant to detect hail and rain," said Heck. "These pieces of meteorite fell into that size range, and so weather radar helped show the position and velocity of the meteorite. That meant that we were able to find it very quickly."

The first pieces were retrieved by meteorite hunter Robert Ward, who found it on the frozen surface of Strawberry Lake in Michigan. He gave his discovery to the Field Museum, which began the research that culminated in the newly published paper.

That research showed that the meteorite was an H4 chondrite, which represents only 4 per cent of the objects that fall to Earth. But it was even more remarkable because it was picked up so quickly that it remains relatively untouched by the conditions on Earth.

That could help researchers in their quest to understand how the organic compounds that helped life form arrived on Earth. One of the possibilities is that they were brought to the planet by similar meteorites, and so studying such examples could help us understand whether such a story is likely.

"Scientists who study meteorites and space sometimes get asked, do you ever see signs of life? And I always answer, yes, every meteorite is full of life, but terrestrial, Earth life," says Heck.

"As soon as the thing lands, it gets covered with microbes and life from Earth. We have meteorites with lichens growing on them. So the fact that this meteorite was collected so quickly after it fell, and that it landed on ice rather than in the dirt, helped keep it cleaner."

A large black triangle shaped craft about the size of four football fields filled the Pinetown sky

Stock Image

By Shaun Smillie

Something strange had blotted out the stars over Pinetown. Where the stars should have been on this clear night was a large black triangle shaped craft, perhaps three to four football fields in size.

The man who claimed to have seen this strange object ran into his townhouse complex to grab this cell phone and call his girlfriend.

But by the time he returned, the craft was no longer there. When something strange and unexplained is spotted in the sky, it is often Lee Strydom, the Mutual UFO Network SA representative who is called.

This was a good sighting and the witness, who happened to be a friend of Strydom’s, left him a message on his cellphone that night.

“When I got to work the next day, I had this message, he said that he saw something and it was coming in my direction,” Strydom explains, adding that his friend that night changed from being a non UFO believer to a believer.

Others in the town house complex had also seen the strange triangular object, but to Strydom’s frustration none of them wanted to be interviewed. Interestingly flying black triangles spotted at night are not that uncommon in UFO case files.

For decades there have been reports of them from across the world. Just this week someone reported to Mufon of sighting a large dark triangle craft in Penticton, British Columbia, in Canada.

There is even a theory as to what they are, and it has nothing to do with alien visitors. The suspicion is that these triangular craft could be a top secret US surveillance aircraft known as the TR-3A Black Manta.

The flying triangle sighting was an exception for Strydom, who has been the SA Mufon representative for six years. Most sightings that are reported to him are easily explained away.

Many of these sightings have been driven by the new unusual flying objects that over the last decade, or so, have begun cluttering South African skies. Sharing South African airspace these days are hovering drones, weather balloons and the biggest UFO let down of them all -Chinese lanterns.

“It’s difficult when you have got sightings where somebody will send you a report and they will say ‘Hey Man, I saw a light in the sky’,” says Strydom. “And I will ask, are there photos or other proof? And there isn’t. But there are so many different things happening in our skies that are natural phenomena, you get ball lightning, that people think are UFOs.”

Then, there are the hoaxes. The photographs of real flying saucers that appear in Strydom’s inbox. Here pranksters throw dinner plates in the air, photograph them and claim they are extra terrestrial vehicles.

Once somebody reported seeing the cartoon character Sponge Bob Square pants running around their garden. But on the odd occasion Strydom receives a report, where he can’t find a scientific answer and sometimes it is just a hunch that something truly unexplained happened.

Take what happened to a couple in the Northern Cape. And this case didn’t involve a UFO or as those in the alien hunting industry now like to call them UAPs, or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.

As was reported to Strydom the couple were driving between two towns when they entered a massive thunderstorm. One of the worst they said they had ever experienced.

“It was at night and it was raining and there was this massive black cloud above them. They passed this road sign that said X town was 15 kilometres away.”

The couple continued driving through the storm for the next ten to 15 minutes. Suddenly the storm cleared and they were at the same road sign that marked that the town was 15 kilometres away. “So they hadn’t moved for 15 minutes, but they were driving. There was a time difference,” explains Strydom.

“This was very interesting because that’s not your typical I saw this light going across the sky. Whether he was lying, I don’t think so. The way he told the story, and how petrified they were afterwards, in my opinion makes it real.”

It suggests, believes Strydom, of possible time travel. The problem, like with many other sightings Strydom has been unable to corroborate the event with other witnesses.

Unlike his friend, who saw the triangle shaped UFO, Strydom is a believer. He said he saw a UFO when he was a child and he has been interested ever since.

“But I am very sceptical when it comes to sightings because most of them are either natural phenomenon or they are man made.” The organisation that Strydom volunteers for has been investigating UFO sightings since 1969. It is the largest non profit organisation of its kind in the world. They have representatives across the world and claim to have specialised teams that investigate possible physical evidence of extraterrestrial craft.

The organisation has however drawn criticism in the past, for promoting pseudo-science and moving away from its original mandate of UFO observations. Officially Strydom is the South African representative for Mufon, but he also handles cases from across Africa and even into the Middle East. One sighting he investigated happened in Israel, during a wedding.

“A woman sent me footage from a wedding, where they noticed something in the sky. When you slow down the footage, you can make out a cigar shaped UFO, then 30 seconds later it was followed by Israeli air force jets,” said Strydom.

That was a good sighting, there was video footage and several witnesses. But most aren’t like that, so for the future Strydom will continue sifting through those reports, weeding out the hoaxes and the explained phenomena. Then, just maybe, there will be one sighting that will prove what Strydom knows: that aliens have been visiting for thousands of years.

'The Phenomenon' takes grounded approach to UFOs with testimonies from government officials

By Amanda Cuda

Marc Barasch knows that, while many people are open to the idea of life on other planets, there's still a lot of doubt around extraterrestrials, unidentified flying objects and the like.

"It sounds like the stuff of science fiction," says Barasch, 71, of Berkeley, Calif. "It's easy for all of us, myself included to say, 'Well, it's a maybe.' "

Marc Barasch, son of the late writer Norman Barasch of Greenwich, has written the script for the new documentary "The Phenomenon."

The movie, which was produced by 1091 Pictures and is available for digital download, contains testimony from astronauts, UFO investigators and also government officials, including former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Christopher Mellon and former Senator Harry Reid.

The film, directed by James Fox, comes on the heels of the Pentagon’s announcement of the establishment of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, which is charged with studying any aerial phenomena that could pose a threat to U.S. security.

In “The Phenomenon,” multiple sources state that UFOs have been under investigation by the military since the 1940s. The movie aims to be a serious examination of UFOs and UFO sightings, says Barasch, the son of the late Norman Barasch, a playwright, comedy writer and longtime Greenwich resident.

Indeed, “The Phenomenon” seems more of a journalistic documentary than a disposable “conspiracy theory” film, right down to the use of actor Peter Coyote — a mainstay of Ken Burns’s longform documentary series — as the movie’s narrator.

“The goal was to make it unassailable as possible with something that is still unknown, to take something out of the realm of myth into the realm of certainty,” says Barasch, a journalist who has served as an editor at the New Age Journal and Psychology Today. He is also CEO of Green World Ventures, which has worked in Nigeria, Ghana and now focuses in Kenya to develop a regenerative food industry.

Barasch has a long history both with documentary filmmaking and the field of UFOs. His work includes producing “One Child, One Voice,” a 1992 special designed to promote awareness of the Earth Summit in Brazil, and a 1995 episode of the documentary TV series “Secret History” on the alleged crash of an alien spacecraft in Roswell, N.M.

For “The Phenomenon,” Barasch says, he assisted Fox in taking years of footage about UFOs and UFO sightings to shape a narrative not just about UFOs, but the people who saw them, investigated them and knew about them.

The film shows case after case of people credibly describing seeing aircraft more technologically sophisticated than anything produced on Earth.

“These were far, far advanced from anything in our military capability,” Barasch says, adding that the crafts were described as moving as a rate of speed that would obliterate a human pilot.

“We are and have been visited by craft that are not of earthly manufacture,” he says.

The original plan was for the documentary to be released and shown in AMC theaters, Barasch says. But like many film releases, it got scrapped due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The film is now available via digital download, and Barasch says it’s been doing well, thanks in no small part to the news about the formation of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force.

President Donald Trump was even asked about the task force in recent interviews and vowed to look into the matter.

Barasch says he’s proud of “The Phenomenon” not just as a film, but as a step forward in proving that there is life beyond Earth.

“I think this film is a breakthrough,” he says.

For more information about the film, visit 

thephenomenonfilm.com.

This Tiny Bar is Basically the Cheers of Area 51

By Krista Diamond

Where everybody knows your name. Unless it’s classified.

IT’S DUSK AT THE BORDER OF AREA 51 and I’m drinking a White Russian. Behind me, there’s a one-story white building emblazoned with hand-painted lettering: Earthlings welcome. A gray flying saucer dangles unassumingly from the back of a tow truck beside a glowing sign advertising a restaurant, bar, and motel. 

This is the Little A’Le’Inn, the only business in Rachel, Nevada: population 96. It’s a community gathering space, a welcome sight for travelers along the remote stretch of NV-375… oh, and it’s on the edge of a highly classified military installation/alien conspiracy-theory hub. 

“It’s just normal life for me,” says Connie West, who co-owns the Little A’Le’Inn with her mother, Pat. 

That normal life means offering a welcoming place for anyone to grab a drink, a bite, and maybe a rest in one of the on-site trailers. It just so happens that “anyone” includes UFO aficionados, curious naysayers, and workers who may or may not spend their days exploring the mysteries of the cosmos.

SURPRISINGLY, THE LITTLE A’LE’INN wasn’t conceived in an attempt to capitalize on the lure of Area 51. When West’s father purchased the business in 1988, it was simply known as the Rachel Bar and Grill. He intended to change it to the Little Ale Inn, but due to a mishap at the printers ended up with a logo that read the Little A’Le’Inn. A friend pointed out that the accidental punctuation seemed like a play on the word “alien.” 

Coincidentally, noted Area 51 conspiracy theorist Bob Lazar had just made headlines for an interview discussing his alleged employment at the mysterious military base. Lazar claimed to have worked on “Sport Model” flying saucers (he’s currently selling autographed sketches of them on Instagram) at aircraft hangars hidden in the desert mountains. 

The West family ran with it. They started cooking up alien-themed hamburgers, selling t-shirts decorated with flying saucers, and attracting guests from all over the world. Since then, the Little A’Le’Inn has garnered a reputation as a middle-of-nowhere destination for both believers and skeptics. 

“We’ve had people that come in and they are truly looking, as they say, to ‘go home,’” says Connie West. “They are looking for the mothership or a connection.”

The Inn draws a wide array of customers—”I am the only business and I have the only toilet in between Alamo and Tonopah, Connie notes—including workers from Area 51, though she says she doesn’t push any boundaries and prod them with questions. And the inn draws many, many would-be Mulders asking the same question: How do I get to Area 51?