'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?

Mr. Gary Heseltine World Exclusive Interview

By Mac's UFO News

03.16.19

Intro / Studio/ Capel Green Trailer No. 3 / Interview with Mr. Gary Heseltine - UFO Truth Magazine - PRUFOS (Police Report UFO Sightings) - Book - RFI Research & Capel Green - Larry Warren controversy - State of UK Ufology - Capel Green Outcome - Chinese Disclosure Initiative - Contact Protocol - Conference - Bob Lazar review / UFO's In The News - FMR. Sen. Harry Reid - Robert Bigelow - Anomolous Acute & Subacute Field Effects - Dr. Hal Puthoff / Nick Pope - DIA Document Disclosure / Item Of Interest - Aliens At The Pentagon / Studio / Credits

The Phenomenon UFO Documentary - Interview

Jim Norton and Sam Roberts Show. Faction Talk Sirius XM

An interview with James Fox and Christopher Mellon about their new UFO documentary 'The Phenomenon'. They discuss whether aliens have really made it to Earth.

Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Made Bold UFO Claim In His Final Interview

By Ed Mazza

Lt. Col. Robert Friend was in charge of Project Blue Book, the military's famous UFO study.

A retired Air Force official in charge of one of its most famous UFO research efforts said before his death last year that the effort may have been scuttled not because it was fruitless, but just the opposite. 

In a clip from the new documentary “The Phenomenon,” Lt. Col. Robert Friend pointed to the sudden closure of Project Blue Book in 1969. 

“Which would suggest what?” he asked before answering his own question: “That they knew what it was.”   

James Fox, the film’s director added: “Or didn’t know what it was.”

But Friend, who led Project Blue Book from 1958-1963, persisted. 

“Also the other way,” Friend replied with a telling grin. “That they did know what it was.”  

Officially, the project was shuttered despite some 700 open cases because it “no longer can be justified either on the ground of national security or in the interest of science.” 

But Friend, who died last year at the age of 99, suggested in his last interview that the shutdown could have been for another reason:

Friend, who was one of the Tuskegee Airmen during WWII and the only Black leader of Project Blue Book, heading it during the civil rights movement, was originally skeptical of claims that aliens had ever made the long trip to Earth. 

“Do I believe that we have been visited? No, I don’t believe that,” he told HuffPost in 2012. “And the reason I don’t believe it is because I can’t conceive of any of the ways in which we could overcome some of these things: How much food would you have to take with you on a trip for 22 years through space? How much fuel would you need? How much oxygen or other things to sustain life do you have to have?”

However, Friend also called for more study and said he believes there could be life elsewhere.

“I think that anytime there’s a possibility of scientific pay dirt from studying these phenomena, that yes, it would be much better if the government or some other agency was to take on these things and to pursue the scientific aspects of it,” he said. 

More recent revelations indicate that the U.S. government’s interest in UFOs didn’t end with Project Blue Book but have continued in other forms, much of which is detailed in “The Phenomenon.” 

Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said in the film that the federal government has been covering up UFOs and that most of the evidence “hasn’t seen the light of day.” 

“The Phenomenon” is currently available via VOD.

Lawrence Frank ‘Larry’ Chesto, 84, investigator with Mutual UFO Network

By WY Daily

Lawrence Frank “Larry” Chesto, 84, passed away in his sleep Monday, Oct. 19, 2020, at York Convalescent Center.

Mr. Chesto, or, “Larry,” as he preferred to be called, was a decorated veteran who served in the Vietnam War with 20 years of service in the U.S. Air Force.

After military retirement, he went on to a second decades-long career as the director of Telecommunications Systems, Industry Activities, at Aeronautical Radio Inc. (ARINC) in Annapolis, Maryland. To honor his work, his name is inscribed on the National Air and Space Museum’s Wall of Honor.

Larry was born Aug. 8, 1936, in Danbury, Connecticut. He attended Bethel High School in Bethel, Connecticut, and graduated from the University of Connecticut (UCONN), later getting a master’s degree from Shippensburg University, Shippensburg, Pennsylvania. He was a devout Catholic, and member of the Knights of Columbus. He most recently attended St. Olaf’s Church, Williamsburg.

Larry was very proud of his Italian heritage and studied his genealogy extensively. He contributed a story about his grandmother, Francesca Margotta Cestone, for author Mario Toglia’s books about connections from Calitri, Italy. Larry had always had a passion for exploration and outer space. His early retirement was spent as an investigator for the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), a U.S.-based non-profit organization composed of civilian volunteers who study reported UFO sightings. His hobbies also included fixing and rewiring practically everything, as well as travelling.

Larry was preceded in death by three wives, all whom succumbed to cancer. Carol Chesto (nee Ward), mother of surviving daughters, Dorney Chesto Ruck and Moira Parham; Linda Chesto (nee Smith), mother of surviving daughter, Shawna Chesto; Marcy Chesto (previously Fentress), mother of surviving stepsons, James Fentress and Martin Fentress. He is also survived by four grandchildren, Asher, Caleb, and Max Ruck and Olivia LeDoux; and two brothers, Anthony Chesto and Edmund Chesto. He will be remembered as a loving husband, father, brother, friend and will be greatly missed.

The family requests that in lieu of flowers, donations be sent to support the American Cancer Society or the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America should anyone choose. There will be a memorial service held at a time and date to be determined. His ashes will be interred in Arlington National Cemetery.

Share online condolences with the family at Nelsen Funeral Home.

A Guy Filming a UFO Sighting Accidentally Crashed Into a Pole [VIDEO]

By Anna Blake

The truth may be out there, but you've got to be careful when you're looking for it.

A guy in China recently posted a four-second video on TikTok of what he believed was a semi-truck transporting a UFO down the road.

But he was so distracted by filming the UFO . . . he crashed into a pole. There's no word on how he's doing.

The time dozens of Korean service members claimed a UFO made them sick

By Jessica Evans

As a group of American soldiers were preparing to bombard a nearby village about 60 miles north of Seoul, the unit saw a strange vision up in the hills – jack lanterns wafting across the mountain.

Or at least, that's the story Pvt. First Class Francis P. Wall and the rest of his regiment told. Even more mysterious is what Wall and his buddies say happened after – a pulsing, attacking light that came with lingering and debilitating physical symptoms.

The year was 1951, and the US was 12 months into the Korean War. Stationed near Chorwon, PFC Wall and his buddies were completely unprepared for what happened to them in the Korean hills.

As they watched, an alien craft made its way toward the village. Artillery started to explode. Wall recalls that the object would get right into the center of an artillery airburst but never seemed to show any signs of damage. Later, Wall confirmed that the object could maneuver through sharp turns and seemed to have out of this world navigational capabilities.

Then all of a sudden, the object turned toward Wall and his unit. It changed colors from orange to a pulsating blue-green light, one so bright that it was almost difficult to look at. Wall asked his commander for permission to fire from his M1 rifle, but as the bullets hit the craft, they only made a metallic ding sound before falling to the ground. The object started to shuttle, sprint from side to side and flash its lights on and off.

What happens next is even harder to believe. Wall says he and his unit were attacked by some form of a ray that "emitted in pulses, in waves that you could visually see only when it was aiming directly at you. That is to say, like a searchlight sweeps around and the segments of light … you would see it coming at you." Walls told this to John P. Timmerman at the Center for UFO Studies during a 1987 interview.

Wall recalled a burning tingling sensation sweep over his entire body. Everyone in his unit rushed into underground bunkers and looked through the windows as the craft hovered above them. Then it shot off at a 45-degree angle. All of a sudden, just as quickly as it appeared, it was gone.

Three days later, the entire company was evacuated. When they finally received medical treatment, all were found to have dysentery and a very high white-blood-cell count. To Richard F. Haines, a UFO researcher, and former NASA scientists, the results sounded like symptoms of radiation poisoning.

So what happened to Wall and his buddies?

After the Korean War ended, dozens of service members reported seeing similar unidentified flying objects. The craft often looked like flying saucers. At first, many historians believed the sightings to be Soviet experiments based on German technology and foreign research. But after the fall of the Soviet Union, that theory was debunked, as several years of Soviet sightings were revealed.

From 1952 until 1986, the Air Force ran Project Blue Book, a study into unidentified flying objects and their threat to national security. When the project ended, the Air Force announced they'd discovered nothing unusual. But for Wall and others like him, they aren't so sure. If the craft had really been Soviet experiments, as so many suggested, then they would have appeared in other conflicts besides the Korean War. And since the sightings recorded by members of the Soviet Union so closely resembled that which Will witnessed, many wonder if it wasn't something else entirely.

Even though the vast majority of all UFO sightings turn out to be ordinary phenomena like clouds or human crats, there's still no conclusive evidence about what Wall saw. Without testimony from the others in Wall's unit, there's no way to corroborate what he saw, making it even more impossible to determine just what happened that day in the Korean hills.