Was it a UFO or not?

It was 40 years ago this month when Kecksburg became the center of national attention. Forty years ago, some people say a UFO landed in the small Westmoreland County community.
Saturday, hundreds gathered at the Kecksburg Fire Hall to hear of the events which allegedly occurred there and of any new news which was available after years of study.
From a group of local researchers to UFO enthusiasts, people came from as far away as Boston. They heard historical accounts and the current status of information of the event.

Bill Weaver, of Norvelt, was not only at the 40th anniversary event, he was also an eyewitness to the event when it happened Dec. 9, 1965, at the tender age of 19.
"I was driving down the road and heard on the radio that something had happened," Weaver said. "I was in the area and saw people standing along the road, so I stopped and asked what was going on."
That's when Weaver was told that something landed in the patch of woods jut beyond the road.
After traveling down a farm lane, Weaver pulled his car behind a line of cars that formed there.
"From that vantage point I could look down in and see something partially buried that had come in at an angle," Weaver said. It was beginning to get dark, Weaver said. He said the object was emitting a blue light -- almost like the light from a welder's torch.
"In the meantime, a big white furniture moving truck (arrived) and people got out in what we would call moon suits," Weaver said. "They were carrying a box on a stretcher down to the object."
State police and military personnel showed up and sent the observers away.
"They told me they would confiscate my car if I didn't move it," Weaver said. Those few minutes have led to a lifetime of interest for Weaver into the event that causes disagreement between locals and public officials alike as to what really happened. Some are sure that the acorn-shaped object that appeared to have some type of Egyptian hyroglyphics written on it was in fact a UFO, while others take the more explainable path of the object being a Russian satellite that got off course.
Bill Steiner, a Mt. Pleasant resident, has done considerable research on the event. He attended Saturday's anniversary. He believes the object was a Russian satellite.
"At the time, we were in a big space race with the Russians and I think the best explanation is that it was a Russian satellite that went off course," Steiner said. "People saw it change directions when it came down, and if it were a meteor, it would have come on a straight path with much more force."
He said the acorn shape described is consistent with the heat shield which would have been on the bottom of a satellite at the time, although the one modeled in the Kecksburg incident is much smaller. In addition, Steiner said the writing that a lot of people have mistook for Egyptian hyroglyphics or some alien writing, could in fact have been a type of alphabet known as Russian Cyrilic, which looks much like Egyptian hyroglyphics. He said there also is several explanations as to the secrecy of government officials and the precautions taken at the time.
"It's very possible that they might have been concerned about a plutonium leak, which is one of the deadliest substances known to man," Steiner said. Steiner said if it were a Russian satellite, the military would want the chance to look inside without the Russians finding out that they were in possession of the object.
But Weaver is still open to all possibilities.
"I don't know for certain that it wasn't a UFO," Weaver said. "All I can surmise is that it could have been a Russian rocket or satellite."
Saturday was filled with a variety of other speakers who have researched the event or were a part of the event 40 years ago. Stan Gordon, a local researcher, has conducted an investigation on the incident for the past 40 years. Robert Gatty, a reporter for the Tribune-Review in 1965, described his assignment that night and how he was prevented from approaching the object by numerous Army personnel on the scene. Larry Landsman, director of special projects for the Sci-Fi Channel, discussed the channel's UFO Advocacy Initiative that supported a recent investigation of the Kecksburg case by the Coalition for Freedom of Information. The cable channel also produced two TV documentaries on Kecksburg that aired in 2003.
Leslie Kean, a journalist, spoke on the forensic evidence recently discovered at the crash site and on her interviews with Air Force personnel involved in the search of the alleged UFO. Lee E. Helfrich, an attorney, spoke about the current status of the lawsuit filed against NASA in 2003 to gain access information about the Kecksburg incident.
Former Mt. Pleasant Township supervisor Duane Hutter said he is hoping that one day, everyone will really know what happened.

Did ET stay home, then?

While the low red lights that illuminated the pathway between the lecture hall and the observatory may have seemed like an impromptu landing strip for a UFO, there was no sign of an imminent arrival of little green men at Seething over the weekend.The debate over whether there are other life forms in the solar system and the greater universe was the subject of lectures at Seething Observatory.Organised by Norwich Astronomical Society, more than 50 people turned up on both Friday and Saturday nights to hear a lecture by society chairman Mark Lawrik-Thompson called "Life on Earth and beyond" and posing the question: "UFOs and aliens - real or not?"Mr Lawrik-Thompson explained there was every probability that other life forms exist in the universe, given the size and scale of space and the fact there may be other planets similar to Earth circling stars in distant galaxies.He explored the possibility of there being life on Mars and on moons that orbit the great planets of Saturn and Jupiter."Given the scale of the universe, the chances are that there is life out there.

Whether it is intelligent or not is a different matter," he said.The universe is 13 billion years old and infinite in size, so is it really too much to imagine that we are not the only civilisation that has evolved? he asked.He said that for the past few years Norfolk had been at the centre of a number of UFO sightings. After investigation however, it turned out that 95pc of these sightings could be explained quite rationally, often as common phenomena in the sky.And he added: "I do not know many astronomers who have seen UFOs, because they know what they are looking at in the sky."As evidence that primitive life may exist elsewhere, Mr Lawrik-Thompson pointed to examples on Earth of life forms existing in difficult conditions, such as thousands of feet below the surface of the oceans.He said the lecture, attended by regular club supporters and visitors, was meant to be a look at the science and the search for life in the solar system and the universe.It also looked at probes being sent into space and a new generation of space telescopes.Visitors to the event also had the chance to look through the society's telescopes for views of Mars, the Moon and Saturn.Mr Lawrik-Thompson concluded: "If there is life out there, it is going to be very, very primitive."So, it seems, the UFO landing strip at Seething Observatory is not likely to be called into operation in the near future.

UFO sighting claim - watch the video!

A CROSLAND Moor woman has captured images of a strange object in the skies above Huddersfield. Now she is hoping someone can identify the object, which she saw on Monday afternoon. Teresa Millward, 28, of Crosland Moor, said: "It was very strange and slow-moving. It was shaped a bit like a triangle.
"I watched it travelling into the distance over the town, then it returned and seemed to move sideways."
She added: "I thought it was a hang glider or a balloon, but when it came closer I could see it was neither of those things." Teresa photographed the UFO using a digital camera and recorded its movements on video. Teresa, who is in a wheelchair while recovering from an accident on holiday in New Zealand, described the sighting as "very unnerving".
She said: "I am not a believer in UFOs, but I have no idea what this was.
"I thought I must be hallucinating, until I saw some people outside stopping and pointing at it."
Several Examiner readers reported UFO sightings over Christmas last year.
Click here to watch the video

Mystery of UFO research puzzles scientists

Authorities in Guiyang, capital of Guizhou Province, announced yesterday that they had received 160 million yuan (US$20 million) from a Taiwan-based company to construct a UFO research base. Some people in the city's Baiyun District believe they were visited by aliens in 1994, and with this new research base, they hope to reproduce the mysterious moment, through photos and historical documentation.
On November 30, 1994, more than 27 hectares of masson pines in a forest farm in the district mysteriously fell down. However, nearby plastic shelters stood intact.
An adjacent truck factory reported similar enigmas: steel pipes were strangely broken; a huge truck was found more than 20 metres away from its original place; an employee on the night shift said he had been pulled up in the air by an "unknown" force.
While some thought it was UFOs that did all these strange things, scientists said after a field trip that thunder, lightning and tornados were the probable causes. Wang Fangchen, a biologist who visited the site right after the event, said the city's plan to build a UFO research base is "ridiculous."
"Where do they recruit scientists for the research?" he asked, before adding: "I won't oppose it if they just want to promote local tourism through the programme."
Li Jing, a senior astronomer with the National Astronomical Observatories, echoed the view.
Li said China does not have an official UFO research institute because "it needs scientists of various disciplines."
"It can be an atmospheric phenomenon, or a biological issue, or a physical reaction," Li said.
"People often mistake planes, clouds and insects, as well as strange shadows on photographs, as being UFOs," said Zhou Xiaoqiang, secretary-general with the Beijing UFO Research Association.
"If aliens really came, they would more likely appear before our eyes politely than hide themselves."

Dozens of UFOs reported over Wales

DOZENS of UFOs that the Ministry of Defence cannot explain have been sighted in Wales in the past three years, the release of confidential papers has revealed.
The MoD confirmed that a green, circular object seen hovering in one position over Mumbles in January 2002 was classed as a UFO. And another bright object seen hovering over West Swansea in January of this year is also being put down as a UFO.
However, Julie Monk of the Ministry of Defence's Directorate of Air Staff made it clear a UFO classification simply meant no rational explanation for a sighting could be found, not that it was extra-terrestrial in origin. MoD figures show 28 reports of UFO sightings in Wales in the past three years cannot be explained. The close encounters include a black object hovering over Rhyl, a flying disc over Newport and a spinning craft with legs spotted in the skies above Rhondda. The figures, released under the Freedom of Information Act, show that there were seven sightings in 2002, eight in 2003, four in 2004 and nine so far this year. Whitehall-based Mrs Monk said, "The MoD examines any reports of UFOs it receives solely to establish whether what was seen might have some defence significance. That is, whether there is any evidence the UK's airspace might have been compromised by an unauthorised aircraft.
"Unless there is evidence of a potential threat to the UK from some external source, and to date no UFO report has revealed such evidence, we do not attempt to identify the precise nature of each sighting."Mrs Monk said rational explanations could be found for such sightings but it would be "an inappropriate use of defence resources" to go into great depth on each report.
Instead, a number of the reports are simply classed as UFOs and a database of sightings in Wales has now been built up from 2002 onwards. Because of the large number of reports before 2002, the MoD says the cost of examining, logging and placing them all on a database would be too expensive. The MoD holds reports of UFOs in Wales going back 25 years. Cardiff-based UFO researcher Chris Fowler said, "There are credible sightings of unidentified objects in the sky.
"Either these are our craft, which means we've got technology far more powerful than the ones most of us know about, or else they're somebody else's. I don't know more than that."
There have been a number of UFO watching groups in Wales including the Welsh Federation of Independent Ufologists. The strangest report given to the federation involved a family travelling by car to the Great Orme on November 10, 1997. They could not account for several "lost" hours when they suddenly became aware of resuming their journey, according to investigator Margaret Fry. She was told of their account by a friend of the family. Margaret says the couple and their children where driving on the Bodfair/Landernog road when they found their car engulfed by a purple triangular craft. The next thing they remember is the purple craft had gone. She said, "But they could not account for considerable hours of time lost.
"The father was having trouble afterwards with a top molar tooth and he had to go to the dentist.
"A black unknown object fell out while he was at the dentist ... but he had no fillings."
There was a raft of "cigar- shaped object" sightings in Pembrokeshire in the 1970s which prompted an RAF inquiry. And in January 1974 there were reports a spacecraft "as big as the Albert Hall" landed in the Berwyn Mountains. Last year, Alison Moore, 26, took footage of a floating disc in the sky above her Trehafod, Rhondda, home. Although astronomer Mark Griffiths said "it could have been Venus" he said the incident deserved further investigation.

X Files Opened: The National Security Agency's UFO Investigations Unearthed

There is one question that persistently circles the community of Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) true-believers: If the government has nothing to hide, UFO fans often ask, then why is it keeping so many UFO records under lock and key?
“Well, it turns out that the government does have something to hide, but it has nothing to do with extraterrestrials,” said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, D.C.
A document has surfaced that had been stamped “Top Secret Umbra”—the codeword for the highest, most sensitive category of communications intelligence.
The once-classified affidavit was originally filed by the National Security Agency (NSA) in a 1980 lawsuit to justify the withholding of records on UFOs. The document is largely declassified—with certain sections cut out, ostensibly to protect employee names, and keep NSA technologies, skills, and foreign connections out of the limelight.
The document—In Camera Affidavit of Eugene F. Yeates: Citizens Against UFO Secrecy v. National Security Agency, October 9, 1980—was released in redacted form on November 3 in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from researcher Michael Ravnitzky and posted on the website of the Federation of American Scientists.

Foreign signals
A read of the document yields insight into how a super-secret agency like the NSA became caught up in the UFO phenomenon.
Created in November 1952, The National Security Agency/Central Security Service is America’s cryptologic organization. It coordinates, directs, and performs highly specialized activities to protect U.S. government information systems and churns out foreign signals intelligence information.
Being a high-tech organization, the NSA is a cutting-edge home for communications and data processing. It is also a center for foreign language analysis and research within the government.
The just-released 1980 document explains that a total of 239 documents related to UFOs were located in NSA files, with 79 of those documents originating with other government agencies. One document is an account by an NSA official attending a UFO symposium. A healthy chunk of these reports were produced between 1958 and 1979.

Deceptive data
The titles of NSA-related UFO documents that are noted in the declassified document are intriguing, such as UFO Hypothesis and Survival Questions.
Another title cited is UFO’s and the Intelligence Community Blind Spot to Surprise or Deceptive Data. In this seven-page, undated, unofficial draft of a monograph authored by an unnamed NSA employee, the author reportedly points out what he considers to be “a serious shortcoming” in the NSA’s communications intelligence (COMINT) interception and reporting procedures. That is, “the inability to respond correctly to surprising information or deliberately deceptive data.”
The unidentified author uses the UFO phenomenon to illustrate his belief that the inability of the U.S. intelligence community to process this type of unusual data adversely affects U.S. intelligence gathering capabilities.
Within the pages of the newly-released affidavit—and between sections of excised copy—it shows NSA intercepted in 1971 communications between two aircraft and a ground controller discussing a “phenomena” in the sky, as well as radar screen observations, labeling what was viewed as “unidentifiable” objects.
Other intercepted and decrypted reports of bright lights, luminous objects, and unidentified aircraft—along with an elongated ball of fire—scooting through the skies over non-U.S. countries are noted too.

Intercept operations
The 21-page affidavit makes clear that release of documents for public scrutiny, for a variety of reasons, “would seriously damage the ability of the United States to gather this vital intelligence information.”
Furthermore, how the NSA works with a network of foreign sources, organizations, and other governments to secure intelligence data would be adversely affected.
The majority of these records, explained NSA official Eugene F. Yeates in the 1980 affidavit, were communications intelligence reports that “are the product of intercept operations directed against foreign government controlled communications systems within their territorial boundaries.”

New insight
According to Aftergood, the newly declassified Yeates affidavit provides new insight into the types of records sought by UFO researchers that have been withheld by NSA.
“Even with all of the deletions, one can get a sense of the enormous scale—and the apparent success—of the worldwide electronic intercept operations conducted by NSA at the height of the Cold War,” Aftergood told SPACE.com.
“Unfortunately it is not clear from the affidavit how the withheld documents might have related to UFOs,” Aftergood said. “There must have been some connection in order for them to be within the scope of the original FOIA request…but I have no idea what it was.”
But for those hungry to show a great government conspiracy is at work and that alien-driven UFOs routinely cruise through our skies, the just brought to light document won’t help you.
“The affidavit does not discount the UFO phenomenon…it simply doesn’t address it one way or the other,” Aftergood concluded.

To view the affidavit, check out: http://www.fas.org/irp/nsa/yeates-ufo.pdf

By Leonard David

Adamski produces faux UFO abduction phenomenon

The history of alien abductions has gone through some strange changes over time. In the 1940s, no one had ever heard of alien abduction. In the 1950s, a group of people claimed they were contacted by aliens and given special knowledge, because aliens were afraid that we were going to ruin our planet with nuclear weapons. In the 1970s and 1980s, people began to claim that they were forcefully kidnapped by aliens and had terrible medical procedures performed on them. This is also the period where people claimed that aliens have always been among mankind, kidnapping people. There's one portion there that the modern UFO enthusiast is quick to gloss over: the role of the "contactees", who claimed to have been contacted by people from space and given advanced technical, medical, or philosophic information with which they were going to save the world.

These people were, each and every one of them, lunatics or con-men. That's why the UFO enthusiast is so quick to try and ignore that they existed; because the modern movement of alien "abductees" has its roots in the contactee movement, which was a load of baloney. The most famous contactee was a man by the name of George Adamski, a Polish immigrant living in California. He claimed, among other things, that while driving with friends, he saw a huge, submarine-shaped flying saucer that he was sure was "looking for him." He got out of his car, went off alone, and met a spaceman named Orthon (a native of Venus) who warned him that humanity was going to really screw itself over if we kept developing atomic weapons. Adamski eventually produced lots of photographs of UFOs, which looked suspiciously like the lids of water coolers that he delivered for a living; this was because they were, in fact, the lids of water coolers he sold for a living tossed into the air and photographed from afar. He also made plaster casts of footprints he claimed were left by the men from Venus, and believe me: they've got some weird footwear. Instead of treads or cleats or whatever you usually find on the bottom of shoes, they contained elaborate artwork. I guess if you're in a spaceship, style is more important than traction.Anyway, Adamski claimed that the first photos of other planets brought back by Soviet satellites were fakes; he'd know because his friends from beyond the sky had taken him to most of the planets in our solar system and let him look around. When he eventually claimed that he wouldn't be in town for a few weeks because he was going to a conference on Saturn, most of his disciples became a little annoyed and he soon lost popularity, though there are still piles of websites singing the praises of his "research".

Adamski had something that, often times, people who report meeting aliens have: a prior interest in meeting aliens. Before he was tasked with his important mission to save mankind from the atomic inferno, he was an author of bad sci-fi books; in fact, in his later books written about the impact space aliens were having on society he just re-writes some of the things he'd mentioned in his first, all-fiction book.But why is a stark-raving madman like Adamski worth knowing about? One of the things that I frequently hear from UFO enthusiasts is that before being kidnapped by space aliens, people usually have never heard about UFOs, or alien 'abductions', so on and so forth. That's a wad of baloney. At the height of his popularity, Adamski's books were best sellers, he was on major TV talk shows, he was even discussed in major magazines, such as Time. (Time, to its' credit, called Adamski the "Crackpot from California.") And Adamski was only one of the contactees; there were hundreds of others, all working as hard as they could to spread their story and gain believers. For most of them, of course, this was the first step to getting something more important: their believers' money. The modern UFO enthusiast would have you believe that the phenomenon of "Alien Abductions" came about in a vacuum: no one had ever heard of flying saucers or alien kidnapping, and then one day space ships appeared and started stealing people and chopping up their cattle. They are quick to dismiss the Contactees as cranks, to downplay their fame at the time, or to ignore them all together. This is not true. Alien abductions did not begin in a vacuum. It was slowly and inexorably blended into the popular culture over a period of some odd hundred years. I've already written until I became blue in the face about how the "gray aliens" (supposedly from Zeta Reticuli and allied with Majestic 12, the true one-world government) were originally developed in the 19th century as part of a ploy to sell more newspapers. Combine this with the Contactees and add a dash of movies, TV shows, or books, and you've got everything you need to fabricate the UFO phenomenon today.Even if you don't believe my assertions that the Contactees were money-hungry loonies, you must see that something strange is going on. In the 1950s aliens abducted people to warn them about the danger of nuclear war, and then took them on fabulous all-expense-paid vacations to other planets. Nowadays, aliens abduct people and steal their genetic materials as part of a top-secret plan to enslave humanity.

I don't know what we did to make them treat us differently, but it must have been amazing.The fact of the matter is that, no matter how much the UFO enthusiast would have you ignore them, Contactees are an important part of the UFO story. It is a well-told story, and an entertaining story, but a story nonetheless. A poll taken before the release of the movie Independence Day showed that 50% of people believe that our government has made some sort of secret pact with space aliens. I'm not sure if this number is accurate, but either way, it's impressive. If all the people that spend so much time believing in this sort of thing were to put their energies towards, say, scientific research, can you imagine the world we'd be living in today? I'm sure we'd already have a cure for cancer and we'd all be flying around in solid gold helicopters. I have the strange feeling that I'm stealing this from a Johnny Cash song, but something seems off. Anyway, don't believe everything the UFO enthusiasts tell you. There's more historical context for the phenomenon than they let on.

Aaron Sakulich

Fireballs spark UFO speculation

Numerous sightings of massive fireballs in the skies over Germany this week have led to an upsurge in reports of UFOs, but scientists believe the cause could be a bizarre annual meteor blitz. According to the Web site of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), such fireballs have been reported elsewhere in the world and may also be due to the fact that the Earth is now orbiting through a swarm of space debris. Many people in Germany have noticed the fireballs, said Werner Walter, an amateur astronomer in Mannheim who runs a Web site on unexplained astronomical phenomena and a hotline for reports on unidentified flying objects (UFO).“The last reported sighting was yesterday at 7:30 p.m. in a corridor near the border of the Netherlands,” he told Reuters in a telephone interview. “This week we have had at least 15 emails and phone calls from people reporting these fireballs,” he said. “Some people said it looks like something out of a science fiction horror film.”In addition to a possible meteor streak, Walter said amateur and professional astronomers were considering the possibility that the blitz was the result of a “falling satellite or UFOs.”

“It is possible that they are UFOs, which are after all things which we cannot explain,” he said. NASA’s science Web site (http://science.nasa.gov) mentions reports of recent fireball sightings in the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, North Ireland and Japan. It includes images of the fireballs, which one man likened to a spotlight. Walter described them as “super-large, coloured fireballs that shoot with the speed of lightning through the sky”.However, the NASA Web site quotes meteor expert David Asher from the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland as saying that people “are probably seeing the Taurid meteor shower”.Taurids are meteors that shoot out of the constellation Taurus, which peaks at the end of October and early November.

- reuters

Fireballs spark UFO speculation

Numerous sightings of massive fireballs in the skies over Germany this week have led to an upsurge in reports of UFOs, but scientists believe the cause could be a bizarre annual meteor blitz. According to the Web site of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), such fireballs have been reported elsewhere in the world and may also be due to the fact that the Earth is now orbiting through a swarm of space debris. Many people in Germany have noticed the fireballs, said Werner Walter, an amateur astronomer in Mannheim who runs a Web site on unexplained astronomical phenomena and a hotline for reports on unidentified flying objects (UFO).“The last reported sighting was yesterday at 7:30 p.m. in a corridor near the border of the Netherlands,” he told Reuters in a telephone interview. “This week we have had at least 15 emails and phone calls from people reporting these fireballs,” he said. “Some people said it looks like something out of a science fiction horror film.”In addition to a possible meteor streak, Walter said amateur and professional astronomers were considering the possibility that the blitz was the result of a “falling satellite or UFOs.”

“It is possible that they are UFOs, which are after all things which we cannot explain,” he said. NASA’s science Web site (http://science.nasa.gov) mentions reports of recent fireball sightings in the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, North Ireland and Japan. It includes images of the fireballs, which one man likened to a spotlight. Walter described them as “super-large, coloured fireballs that shoot with the speed of lightning through the sky”.However, the NASA Web site quotes meteor expert David Asher from the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland as saying that people “are probably seeing the Taurid meteor shower”.Taurids are meteors that shoot out of the constellation Taurus, which peaks at the end of October and early November.

- reuters

Aurora, Texas UFO crashes into nonexistant windmill

The history of UFO cases is pretty straightforward, as much as the UFO enthusiast would like you to believe otherwise. In the 1890s, people began reporting seeing airships that looked like blimps or zeppelins floating above their cities. The vast majority have been shown to be the product of hoaxes or people looking for attention. Unfortunately, time and exaggeration have blown this phenomenon out of proportion.Not much happened for the next few decades, until people started to report seeing flying objects shortly after the second world war. This is when the term 'flying saucer' was coined, and no one really knew what was going on. There were a few "flaps", during which thousands of people saw the objects, that concerned the government to the extent that the Air Force was ordered into investigating. They were afraid that the Soviets could use UFO reports to cause confusion in the critical, early stages of some sort of Russian/American war, so the Air Force bent over backwards to discredit everything even peripherally related to UFOs. Even when they couldn't find an explanation, they really went to town to try and quell the publics' fears. Considering that the Soviets were well-armed and deficient in the morals department, I can hardly blame them. Anything that the Soviets could use to even a tiny advantage over us had to be neutralized. Of course, the UFO enthusiast sees things differently. They would have you believe that it was not crippling fear of the Red Menace that led our government to try and discredit UFO reports; rather, the government is in league with space aliens for some nefarious reason and needs to cover things up. I can also understand and respect this; the American people have a long history of not trusting the government farther than they can throw it. It's healthy to be a little paranoid about a group of people that controls our whole lives and has a giant pile of atomic weapons. On the other hand, thinking that the government is in league with space aliens is based on only the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence. I'd suggest going back to thinking that they're trying to tax you too much.Anyway, during the 1950s a group of people calling themselves Contactees sprung up. They claimed that they'd been contacted by space aliens and given some important information about how to live life without exploding our planet. Usually, they started cults and bilked people out of money. Over time, the contactees disappeared and were replaced by abductees, who spoke of substantially less pleasant contact with life from outer space. Here, for your reading pleasure, are samples of UFO cases that were proven to be hoaxes. I'm not naive enough to think that one can prove all cases to be untrue by proving some of them to be hoaxes, but perhaps after reading them you'll be less likely to believe everything you hear on the internet or in the supermarket checkout line. The place: Aurora, Texas. The date: April, 1897. Several prominent citizens of the town claimed that they had seen a large, blimp-like airship hovering over the town for some amount of time, doing all the creepy things UFOs usually do: changing course rapidly, moving at great speeds and other maneuvering feats that seemed pretty amazing for an era before the airplane had been invented. They further claimed that the airship collided with a windmill, and that the body of a strange alien had been buried in the town cemetery. Mind you, the pilot of this craft could have navigated the non-trivial distances between stars and the barrier between space and atmosphere, but he met his undoing at the hands of a windmill?Upon further investigation, it was revealed that the town never had a windmill anywhere near it. This is Texas we're talking about, not 14th century Belgium. Further, the town's mayor owned the parcel of land where the ship was said to have crashed and had been very upset that the town did not have enough tourists visiting it. Either of these two facts is a fatal blow to the credibility of the case, and yet recently a group of researchers petitioned a judge to let them dig up the graveyard in search of the craft's alien occupant. I can only imagine that the judge shook his head in disbelief as he said no.The first and most famous of the 'abductees' are Betty and Barney Hill. They were more or less the first people to report being abducted by aliens and having terrible medical procedures performed on them. Now that a few decades have elapsed, only the most hardcore of die-hard holdouts continue to think that what Betty and Barney Hill experienced was real. Before the abduction, Betty was known to have an active interest in the occult; afterwards, she led a group of people to an empty field and claimed there was an invisible spacecraft there that only she could see. She also claimed her cat could fly and her husband, to his credit, poached part of his account of the experience from an episode of The Outer Limits. You can read the entire story in an article I wrote a few months ago. And to those of you that did and claim I am somehow dirtying the memory of the now-deceased Hills, let me just say that I am sure they were nice people. I'm sure they were sweeter than a molasses milkshake. I'm just saying they weren't abducted by space monsters. One thing keeps popping up in cases where aliens are seen: sometimes, they are described the same way. People have reported seeing everything from Hitler to giant metal robots with carrots for noses to Bigfoot to normal looking humans inside UFOs, but a lot of them claim to see the small, big-headed, hairless, gray monsters that made Chris Carter a millionaire a hojillion times over. They were described in the Aurora, Texas case and they were described by the Hills. How dare I say that these are hoaxes when the details line up so well?I dare because I know something about history. After the Civil War newspapers began speculating as to what humankind would look like "in the year ten million." Just like today, when a story sold well for one paper, all the others copied it, and this story sold well. The author speculated that, because we would have machines to do all our work, we would become smaller, with giant heads and big black eyes. Starting to sound familiar? Also, we wouldn't have hair and our skin would turn gray. I'm not sure why he said that, but that's what was reported. This description was then printed in every newspaper, written in thousands of books, and appeared in the early 20th century in legions of comic-books. Everyone knows what they look like; I'm not surprised or concerned in the least that so many UFO stories involve such characters.For some people that cannot grasp this fact, they lose their jobs. Supposedly, in 1989 there was a huge crash of a flying saucer in Canada that the military tried covering up. A gentleman, calling himself only "Guardian" contacted the head of a UFO group, MUFON, and told him he had videos and evidence from the crash. This fellow, Bob Oeschler, swallowed the hook, the line, the sinker, and a fair portion of the reel itself. When some friends of his were able to duplicate the 'evidence' from the video using some fireworks and a remote-controlled airplane, it looked like he was in trouble. When they discovered that the 'aliens' shown in the video were twin brothers to a plastic mask that you can buy in any mall or costume store, Oeschler found himself unemployed. This is, as far as I know, the only time that a UFO enthusiast has been censored for being too enthusiastic. Anyway, I could go on and on about this stuff. I'm sure that, since I badmouthed Betty and Barney Hill a little bit back there, I'll be getting a pile of angry emails. To those of you who read this, I challenge you to a public debate at a time and location of your choosing, to which I will arrive armed to the teeth with cold, hard logic and common sense. To the rest of you, stop reading this tripe and apply yourself to something useful, like studying actual science.

ALIEN ABDUCTION REPORTS ARE RISING

A few quick questions: Have you seen beams of light come into your room through a window? Have you ever woken up startled? Do you have chronic sinusitis? Do you have to sleep against a wall? Ever been afraid of your closet? Have ringing in your ears? A fear of doctors? Had the feeling you were going crazy? Are you aware of the cosmos, interested in ecology, the environment, vegetarianism?
Did you answer "yes" to one or more?
The good news is, welcome to the club. The bad news is, according to a study conducted in 2002 by the Roper Center for Public Opinion, these are a few of 58 positive indicators that you might be one of the 3.7 million Americans who say they have been abducted by aliens.
Even better news? There's about to be a bunch more of you.
It seems that you can Google "alien abduction," read big books, do extensive research and still come up with one conclusion: The more TV you watch, the more knowledge you have of the appearance and behavior of abducting aliens. And the more knowledge you have, the more likely you are to be abducted.
Or think you've been abducted. Or are willing to try to convince the rest of us that you've been abducted, experimented on, had your eyes pulled out, your private parts probed and your nose implanted with some kind of thing that only the aliens can find on careful review.
So with the loyal sci-fi audience success of the new alien-themed dramas Threshold on CBS and Invasion on ABC -- last week, they netted 6 million and 3 million viewers, respectively -- the aliens might be coming soon to a back road, bedroom or bus station near you.
Ever since 1966, when Betty and Barney Hill first went public with a tale of aliens sampling their DNA, there has been a virtual epidemic of alien takings.
The abduction of the Hills made big news at the time. In 1961, the couple had reported only seeing bright lights. But in 1966, when they went to a hypnotist, Betty revealed her brave endurance of a painful nose probe and, as if that weren't enough, she gave researchers a star map she'd glimpsed while aboard the ship.
Barney was a little less specific under hypnosis. So the practitioners asked him to draw a picture of his abductors. He did: big bald head, little slanty black eyes, no mouth, skinny. Today, it's a kind of prototype of creatures known by alien experts as "grays."
Thing is, Barney's description was exactly what the aliens had looked like on an episode of The Outer Limits. That episode, "The Bellaro Shield," had aired a little more than a week before Barney drew his picture.

Many believers

According to the Roper poll -- which, it should be noted, was conducted for the Sci-Fi Channel -- "two-thirds of Americans say they think there are other forms of intelligent life in the universe, and nearly half say they think UFOs have visited the earth in some form or that aliens have monitored life on earth. In fact, more than one in three believed that humans have interacted with extraterrestrial life forms."
As to alien kidnappings and probings, "one in five Americans say that abductions have taken place." And among those who believe in abductions, one-third claim to have experienced, or know someone who has experienced, a close encounter.
Elizabeth Loftus, the much-acclaimed psychologist at the University of California-Irvine who successfully debunked the theory of repressed memory, said television "gives visual plausibility to an abduction explanation" for any number of things -- nightmares, moles on our skin, loneliness, sexual abnormalities. People simply want to understand why they are experiencing some abnormal, frightening or confusing things.
In the 1980s, those same symptoms were typically explained away as "suddenly remembered sexual abuse," she said. It depended, she said, on which kind of therapist was consulted.
"If you were steered to a satanic therapist, it was Satan doing it," she said. "If you went to an alien-abductionist therapist, it was the aliens. If you went to a therapist who believed everything stemmed from forgotten child or sexual abuse, bingo, that was it."
Loftus, who has served as an expert witness on many such cases, has proved in the laboratory that such memories can be implanted. The problem in those cases, she says, is that there is no evidence that any of that -- the alien abduction, the sexual abuse, the satanic visitation -- ever occurred. (No doubt, she said, tragic and horrible sexual abuse does occur, but rather than being repressed, it is vividly remembered. The kind that needs to be "suggested" to a patient is something else altogether.)
Susan Clancy, a psychologist at Harvard University, agreed. In her just-published book, Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens, Clancy postulates that increased claims of abduction are "false memories," which are not the same as lies. They are created explanations, maybe even a part "of a larger spiritual quest," she said. "They're looking for answers to something bigger. They are looking for a meaning they don't get from science."
And where do they get the palette?
In the 1950s and '60s, Clancy said, aliens were represented in movies as robots or serpents, but the Outer Limits-Barney Hill drawing won the day. That's who people see. That's who they expect to see.
"Today," Clancy said, "my 2-year-old, who can't tell you the difference between a dog and a cat, can pick out the right alien. TV taught her that."

Eerie coincidences

So where does this leave the famous Stanford, Ky., abduction case -- which many believers cite as the one that can't be explained away -- nearly 30 years after its original telling?
On Jan. 6, 1976, Mona Stafford, Louise Smith and Elaine Thomas, three ordinary rural Kentucky women, reported that they had been driving on U.S. 27, 35 miles from Liberty, their hometown, when their car came under the control of outside forces, they said. A glowing laserlike beam sucked them off the road. Then things kind of went blank.
When the women came to, they said, they found themselves in the car -- but all were missing about 90 minutes of their memories. They called the police the next day. Their story was in all the papers. Polygraphed, they were unshakable.
Coincidentally, The UFO Incident, an NBC-TV movie starring James Earl Jones as Barney Hill and Estelle Parsons as Betty, was first shown Oct. 20, 1975, just 10 weeks before the eerie episode on U.S. 27. In fact, the number of reported UFO abductions after that television movie aired simply mushroomed.
Also, the National Enquirer tabloid had offered a cash prize of $100,000 for definitive proof of extraterrestrial life, but in 1976, the year of the U.S. 27 incident, the prize was bumped to $1 million. In the decade before 1975, there had been 50 abduction-type reports -- about five a year. From 1976 to 1978, the rate was about 50 a year.
Still, the Kentucky case remained famous because the women -- two are now dead and one moved west, where she could talk about the experience and not be ridiculed, she said -- stuck to their story. The academic who hypnotized them and the Lexington police lieutenant who polygraphed the trio are both dead. The Mutual UFO Network investigator who interviewed them is likewise unreachable.
Abduction reports tend to come in waves, almost as if they are the fashion. Why? Because socially, the experience has no downside. Unlike people who are sexually abused or who are victims of satanic rituals, alien abductees tend to be proud and talkative about the experiences. It makes them special. It has done something else, Harvard's Clancy said. Three good decades of TV and movies have made aliens less scary than, say, terrorists. So we embrace them, especially now. ABC and NBC, the networks behind Invasion and Threshold, are counting on it.

Super-conducting Quantum Interference Devices

Super-conducting Quantum Interference Devices (SQUIDs) are tiny sensors that detect and measure very small magnetic fields (or more accurately magnetic flux). Very advanced SQUIDs are now helping scientists track the extraterrestrial UFOs and reverse engineer their technologies. Very advanced Low Temperature SQUIDs (LTS) because of their superior quality and sensitivity, in spite of perceived logistical problems of using liquid Helium cooling (4.2K or -269°C) are being used for UFO detection and observation.
According to defense research scientists, a network of LTS SQUIDs with sophisticated follow through detection and analyzing computation sensors can not only track the invisible extraterrestrial UFOs under electromagnetic flux generated stealth, they also model the behavior, flight patterns, propulsion systems, stealth technology in use, communication devices and techniques and also the intensity of electromagnetic flux the extraterrestrial UFOs are using.
According to some scientists, the UFOs watch us quietly, model our activities and under deep stealth study our technical achievements. Interestingly, the advanced network of SQUIDs are allowing terrestrial technologies to model, observe and reverse engineer the advanced extraterrestrial technologies from the alien UFOs. According to some scientists, the SQUIDs network can form an effective device of modeling electromagnetic flux generated from natural and artificial sources. The network can even create electromagnetic images of the interior of an UFO space craft. That helps in viewing the inside of an UFO through the magnetic imaging eyes..

With SQUIDs the extraterrestrial UFOs understand that they are being watched under an electromagnetic periscope. According to scientists they do not show any reaction as if one day human civilization would have known about their existence any way.

Courtesy : SQUIDs

28 reports of UFO sightings in Wales

THE Ministry of Defence has investigated 28 official reports of UFO sightings in Wales in the past three years. The close encounters include a black object hovering over Rhyl, a flying disc over Newport and a spinning craft with legs spotted in the skies above the Valleys.
The figures, released under the Freedom of Information Act, show that there were seven sightings in 2002, eight in 2003, four in 2004 and nine so far this year.

An MoD spokesman said it would be a waste of money to investigate the sightings fully, but believed there were "rational explanations" for them. A THIRD of Welsh children with Asbos can't understand the restrictions on their behaviour because they suffer from learning difficulties, it has been claimed. Research by the British Institute for Brain Injured Children (Bibic) suggests 55 of Wales' 166 Asbo holders have mental problems which mean they can't understand. Bibic spokeswoman Pam Knight said, "We have got a situation where a third of these youths might not understand the terms of the Asbos".

Friday Phenomena: UFO Sightings

By definition, UFOs are just unidentified things in the sky, not necessarily alien aircraft. One Las Vegas man has captured a curious array of photos and videos of weird stuff he's seen flying over his house. He shared his material with the I-Team's George Knapp.
UFO witness, "The first thing I started seeing were odd-shaped things that changed colors and just darted across the screen at phenomenal speeds."
Have you ever wanted to see an honest to goodness UFO? This Las Vegas man sees them all the time. He worries about being labeled a UFO wacko, so we agreed to hide his identity. Call him Bob. "I started seeing them at night, and they're balls of light, not aircraft or jets," he explained.
Bob lives in a central Las Vegas neighborhood and for the past two years has been seeing and photographing weird objects in the skies over his home. He started with still photos, and then switched to video to record the movements of things like this opaque pretzel shaped.
Bob continued, "They started making aerial maneuvers and then a dead stop, and then start up again, like they were searching for -- they were like ants."
The objects appear at different times and at different points. Few of Bob's neighbors seem to have noticed the aerial ballet above their rooftops. Raul has an extra advantage with 20/10 vision, he says, which allows him to pick out objects in the sky that others might overlook.
It's hard to believe that no one else noticed this tandem of dark spheres that danced around on a recent afternoon. One looked like a big plastic bag caught in the wind, but it stayed up there -- way up there -- for more than an hour. They aren't satellites because satellites don't stay put for 4 hours as this one did.
Colonel John Alexander said, "UFOs are real. What are they? That's the question."
Col. Alexander, an author and retired Army intelligence officer who worked in highly classified military research programs, watched some of Bob's footage. "That one looks like the one they show down in New Zealand."
But he isn't sure what he is seeing. He doubts they are anything from, say, Area 51. "It's quite possible that things might fly in this area. However, they would not be extremely sensitive things. You don't test advanced technology where it's going to be available over major metropolitan areas. That's what they do out in the desert."
This is a computer-enhanced freeze-frame of an odd object. On video, the three-orbed thing looks a lot like balloons tied together, but these orbs seem to be tumbling over each other in flight, and the object has a twin. If they are moving with the wind, why do they move in different directions?
Bob said, "You can't have two craft with wind draft coming down and then almost colliding, the one almost bending over. If you slow it down, it bends over. It's like they're interacting. This one is stationary and this one is jamming up. Man, look at that separation."
Within seconds the two objects put a huge distance between themselves. Maybe they're balloons, maybe not. This one was frozen in the sky for a while, and then zipped behind the clouds -- very un-balloon-like behavior. Bob is convinced there's a lot of stuff in the sky that we can't recognize, but we can see them if we try.

Bible misused as scientific support for UFO theories

<- This French coin depecits a modern-day misinterpretation of the wheel described in the book of Ezekiel.

There are a number of things about which I specifically refuse to write, no matter how often I am requested to do so. Why trying to convince others to think clearly and not believe everything they read on the internet makes people think I'm going to launch some sort of 1,200 word attack on religion is beyond me; I am afraid that those that think my devotion to science and reason prohibits an appreciation or respect for religion are about to realize it's not that kind of party. In fact, just to spite them, I'm going to launch a 1,200 word attack on UFO nuts trying to pervert religion to serve their needs.I speak, of course, of the book of the bible written by the prophet Ezekiel. The bible has some odd things in it, especially towards the end, but this book is almost flabbergastingly confusing. In it, Ezekiel sees an enormous thing appear, which then orders him to go and tell the Israelites to get their act together. However, this enormous thing is so bizarre that UFO enthusiasts constantly use it as "evidence" that aliens visited our ancestors in antiquity, or that our religions were founded by space people. The beginning of the book of Ezekiel starts with Ezekiel by a river in modern-day Iraq; while standing there, a wind emerges from the north (symbolic of a mystical, hidden origin) and carries to him four creatures. The creatures are in the shapes of men, but each has four wings, and each is accompanied by a wheel (more on that in a moment.) The men zip around, and each has four faces, one on each side of his head. The first is of a man, the second an eagle, the third a bull, and the fourth is that of a lion. The UFO enthusiast would have you believe that this description is in error, and that Ezekiel was actually seeing alien beings looking out at him through portholes in the exterior of a spaceship.

It takes sadly little thought to realize this is not the case. The descriptions of men with four wings matches the descriptions given elsewhere in the bible for Cherubim, those that stand between God and mankind. Simply put, they looked like angels, except for the having four faces. Each of the faces is of the most powerful animal of a certain region: the eagle is master of the skies, the lion is master of the wild, the bull is master of the domesticated animals, and humans are the master of all earthly things.

With each of these flying creatures comes a "wheel within a wheel" whose outer rim is covered in eyes. Many lunatics, such as Erich Von Daniken, claim that these wheels are actually the lower extremities of a spaceship that, hypothetically, would look like some sort of boat/helicopter/tank. These people explain that the eyes are actually portholes or lights, and that the first wheel is the classic description of a flying saucer. But, going back to the bible, we see that this is a ridiculous assumption; the 'wheels' are said to be made of precious, clear gemstones. Sure sounds like a crappy material to make a UFO out of to me. What's more, most people think of something like a cart wheel when they read this description and assume that there were spokes involved, which they later insist could be the rotor blades of a helicopter. Actually, wheels at the time were mostly flat, round discs bisected by large axles, which more than explains what he meant by "a wheel within a wheel."

Add to that the fact that the wheels are obvious of divine origin, exemplified by the fact that they're covered in eyes, and we're looking at a description of something suspiciously similar to a round column with a flat base. You know, like most of the furniture that would have been in the Jewish templesSo, what we have so far: something that's reminiscent of furniture and four angels. Up until this point, unless you ignore the fact that Ezekiel says the four angels were living beings and not helicopters, hovercraft, or spaceships, the UFO enthusiast has a pretty good argument in his favor.

That's why he will never mention the next part of the story. After sighting this combination furniture-angel thing, Ezekiel sees that there is a figure riding on top of it, and that figure commands him to go unto the Israelites and tell them to get back on the straight and narrow, so to speak. In a number of places in the bible, God is said to reside on a throne perched ontop of four of his best angels, a fact that was well-known at the time. Kings of various earthly countries had their thrones carved into the shape of four angels, to signify that God was on their side, and this description is always used to refer to God. Furthermore, the being addresses Ezekiel in a manner reserved for God (by calling him "son of man".) Just to put the final nail in the lunatic-built UFO coffin, Ezekiel admits that he knows exactly what he's looking at, when he says "such is the glory and appearance of the Lord." For a guy that's being harassed by people from outer space, theoretically, he takes it fairly matter-of-factly.

The rest of the book of Ezekiel is about Ezekiel going to the Israelites and telling them to stop doing all those fun things that anger the divine. The description of the "space ship" is just the first page or so; it goes on for pages and pages and pages about how one shouldn't wear makeup or eat oysters and such. The simple fact is that to us, the story seems bizarre and nightmarish, because we've come to think of angels as fat naked babies. It hasn't been that way forever, and at the time the bible was written, an Israelite would have heard the story and known exactly what the deal was: that higher powers were getting irritated with those on earth.When people try to use the bible to prove that science is wrong, I get angry.

But I get even angrier yet when I hear that lunatics are trying to use the bible to prove that flying space people are the basis of all codes of moral and ethical conduct. As always, I ask you: which is more likely? That denizens of a distant world conquered the challenge of interstellar flight, came down and scared the hell out of a guy 2500 years ago, or that Ezekiel decided to get his people back into shape by using common, every day descriptions of holy matters that, due to time and the complexity of the Hebrew language, now seem insane to us? If you had to finish that sentence before answering it, shame on you. The correct answer is ALWAYS the answer that doesn't involve monsters from beyond the moon. As a bit of final miscellaneous, there's a coin that was minted in the 1640s that shows Ezekiel's vision, though the UFO enthusiast would try to convince you it's actually a space-faring vessel. It looks to me like a flying donut.

Even 400 years ago, the time and traditions had changed a lot since Ezekiel's vision. The Frenchman who minted the thing had to try and interpret the story from his modern viewpoint, and, just like us, he got it wrong, just like us. Well, the portion of us that believe in spacemen, anway. Be seeing you.

By: Aaron Sakulich

Thai lanterns clue to UFO sightings

MYSTERIOUS lights spotted over Hainault in August could have been explained this week - after a similar sighting in Essex on Thursday. Drivers on the M25 near Great Dunmow pulled over on the hard shoulder in dismay when they saw 30 orange lights hovering above the road. They were described as looking like they were hanging from the sky by a thread, at about the height a firework would reach.The Ministry of Defence said no military exercises were going on, air traffic controllers said nothing showed up on their radar - leaving puzzled motorists none the wiser.But on Sunday it emerged that the lights were illuminated Thai lanterns released over Leez Priory for a wedding.Debbie Mead, from the priory, said they are now popular at weddings. But Michelle Fitzgibbons, of Romford, who first reported the sighting over Hainault to the Ilford Recorder said she was sure that the lanterns didn't explain what she saw. And Ann Hosie, who lives on the Limes Farm estate in Chigwell, is also adamant the lights were something else.
She said this week: "There's not a chance whatsoever - they were the size of footballs but the speed they moved over was nothing like lanterns. " I would not have said it could have been that at all.

Tehran Dogfight - UFO Encounter

'For the first time, General Parviz Jafari, one of the Iranian Air Force pilots who actually flew the chase mission, describes one of the most credible of all UFO encounters, the famed “Tehran Dogfight.” He give us his firsthand account of personally chasing this UFO across the skies over Tehran. This interview, conducted by Whitley Strieber and Dr. Roger Leir, is a worldwide first. No pilot who participated in the dogfight has ever come forward before.

'Listen as General Jafari describes from firsthand experience what the UFO looked like, and how it felt to chase it, and experience the bizarre events that transpired in the cockpit of his jet. There have been few other firsthand reports like this from pilots, and this is by far the most frank, the most complete and convincing such report ever recorded.'

Listen to the stream :-

http://vista.streamguys.com/strieber/102205.wma

Did life start in Mars as recent as last year?

Something strange is happening in Mars. As terrestrial probes and optical scanning devices monitor Mars, the red planet is showing signs of life. According to scientists something strange is occurring since last year in Mars. The planet is all on a sudden showing signs of life. New data showing that patterns of water and methane in Mars'' atmosphere overlap may have important implications for the idea that the planet could harbor life. But where did this life come from after we all concluded years back that Mars has no atmosphere and is for all practical purposes really dead.
The finding comes from the Mars Express probe in orbit around the Red Planet. If microbes were making methane seen in Mars'' atmosphere, they would rely on water, so the association between the two has excited some researchers. But where did this life come from all on a sudden after we all concluded years back that Mars has no atmosphere and is for all practical purposes really dead?
The geothermal activity from underground heat sources on Mars generates methane through the oxidation of iron contained in hot basaltic rocks. The process, known as serpentisation, releases hydrogen that combines with carbon to form methane. Some project scientists speculate that geothermal heat beneath Mars causes ice and other material to move towards the surface: the so-called "ice table" hypothesis. Researchers have speculated that microbial life may exist in liquid water below this ice table. It has been suggested that the organisms are methanogens, microbes that produce methane as a waste product of their life process.
Some scientists believe either extraterrestrial civilization has started experiments to confuse terrestrial probes or human hand is behind implanting some strange life related activities, which will soon show that life is there, is Mars. Of course the third possibilities are that life related activities were overlooked in Mars for a long time.

Courtesy: http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/5074.asp

Existence of extra dimensions – finally the truth is coming out!

Finally scientists are experimenting to prove the existence of extra dimensions. They 'see'' the extra dimensions through particles interacting with the gravitons that do still live in all 9 dimensions, but the effects of the gravitons living in these extra dimensions are so small that actually there are extremely large extra dimensions without terrestrial technologies 'seeing'' them through gravitational forces.
Actually, these extra dimensions are as large as a tenth of a millimeter without us being able to seem them at this moment. Experiments are now being done that would allow us to see extra dimensions that are as big as a tenth of a millimeter, but since they involve the very weak gravitational force, the experiments are technically very involved.
The world would be thrilled when we finally see deviations in the gravitational force due to the existence of extra dimensions. The whole thrust of this discovery comes from the Open-String Theory of modern Physics and the concept of Branes. We find that the open strings are now restricted to live on objects called Branes. The open strings cannot freely move everywhere in space, but their endpoints are confined to move on these Branes.
The branes that we find can have dimension 0 (points), 1 (stringlike branes), 2 (membranes), 3 (volumes, like the space we live in), and even higher dimensions, up to nine, since otherwise they wouldn''t fit into our nine-dimensional space anymore. These are new objects in string theory, and they allow for amazing new possibilities.
Assume that we have a Brane that is three-dimensional, just like our space. Then we would have gauge fields living on the Brane, in three spatial dimensions. That Brane could look exactly like our world. In other words, our world is a three-dimensional Brane. And since, say, the photon only lives on the Brane, all the other six dimensions is literally dark. Indeed, no photons, or light, would come from these other dimensions, and no light would leak into these dimensions, since the photons (gauge fields) can only live on the Brane.

Courtesy: http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/5061.asp

Exhibit out to show truth about UFOs

It's all there in black and white -- at least for those who believe in such things.In the summer of 1947, a UFO allegedly crashed near Roswell.For those who believe in UFOs, it was the undeniable proof of the existence of Unidentified Flying Objects, which was subsequently covered up by the government.And for those who don't believe, it was all an elaborate misunderstanding.El Pasoans can judge for themselves by visiting the Roswell Exhibit, on display through Oct. 31 at the Art Junction, 500 W. Paisano.

"A lot of people ask me 'Do you believe?' and I tell them to look at the faces of the people involved and read their testimony and to make up their own minds," said Albert Acosta of the El Paso Natural History Museum who worked with the UFO museum in Roswell to create the traveling exhibit.

The exhibit features large canvas photographs, sculptures and replica artifacts.The exhibit shows different items that document when the crash was called a UFO crash by the government to subsequent claims by the government that it was not a UFO but debris from a weather balloon.Also included in the exhibit are a cast of the alien prop used in the Showtime movie "Roswell," as well as toys inspired by the UFO phenomenon.

"I think of it as American mythology," said Marty Martin, who is co-director of the El Paso Natural History Museum with Acosta. "It is a popular subject, like paleontology."The exhibit has drawn inquiries elsewhere in the country after record-breaking attendance at the Southwest Florida Museum of History in Fort Myers, Fla., where it was previously displayed.

"As a result of the show in Florida, we've been contacted with inquiries about the exhibit possibly being displayed at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and the Strategic Air and Space Museum for the 60th anniversary of the Roswell crash in 2007," Martin said.Michael Alford, president of the El Paso Art Association, which is hosting the exhibition, said his organization is happy to have an exhibit that fascinates so many people."Either you are sold and believe in UFOs or you don't," Alford said. "There is no gray area. It's unique for us to host it because as artists, we use our imaginations every day.

With this exhibit, we ask people to open their minds."Alford said that with Halloween coming up, it allows the imagination of people to run wild, making visiting the exhibit more fun and exciting.One portion of the exhibit shows how UFOs are neither a recent nor strictly American phenomenon.

"Here in this painting of the Virgin Mary with child, there is a shepherd and a dog in the background drawing your attention to what the artist really wanted you to see," Martin said, pointing to the oval-shaped flying disc in the sky blown up to a larger size next to the complete replica painting from the Middle Ages.Liz Gaidry recently visited the exhibit."I thought it was very, very interesting, from the newspaper clippings to the radio broadcast," Gaidry said. "Whether there are UFOs or not, it's a great mystery.

Some days I think this is probably true. Then when my logical mind takes over, I think it isn't true. It depends on which day you ask me."Though Acosta doesn't outright say he believes in UFOs, he said he understands why it might be necessary for those in power to not want us to know that UFOs and aliens exist."Can you imagine what would happen to the economy? What would happen to our religious beliefs? What would happen if each of us realized we are a progeny of something else? What would that do to the world?" Acosta asked.

Leonard Martinez may be reached at lmartinez@elpasotimes.com; 546-6152

Lights in the sky

The truth is out there -- and it may be as close as your own backyard.
Two months ago, on July 14 at 11:45 p.m., Nova Williams was sitting with her dog on the backyard patio of her family's Toronto home when she saw a shooting star flash past her head.
Only it wasn't a shooting star.
Williams said she took a closer look and described what she saw as a glowing object shaped like "a boomerang upside down" zooming east to west over Kingston Rd. at about the same altitude as would fly a small single-engine aircraft.
But unlike a Cessna, this object made no sound. Williams, 35, said it sped up and slowed down in one fluid motion, then stopped suddenly and hovered.
Moments later, it moved south -- without turning -- toward Lake Ontario, then returned and flew out of sight, she said.
"There was no engine sound. It was an eerie quiet," said Williams, who quickly sketched what she saw on a computer paint program. "I thought it was kind of neat. It didn't frighten me because I had seen something like it before."
---
Every year, in every corner of this country, hundreds of Canadians like Williams are seeing and reporting mysterious objects in the night sky.
Glowing orange orbs. Delta-shaped wings. Silent cigar-shaped craft. Saucers and balls of coloured lights that hover, then move too quickly -- and in too many directions -- to be conventional aircraft, they claim. Even the fiercest of cynics would be hard-pressed to dismiss some of the UFO reports filed since 2000 with a variety of federal agencies and obtained by the Sun. They include bizarre sightings by RCMP officers, air traffic controllers and dozens of military and commercial pilots -- even the pilot of an aircraft carrying the prime minister during a flight over Alberta in March 2004.
Officially, Transport Canada and the department of national defence say they have no interest in UFO sightings, which they pass on to Chris Rutkowski, a lone astronomer and volunteer in Winnipeg who receives one or two reports a day. Hundreds more are reported independently to the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC), a Seattle-based organization that receives, records and attempts to corroborate eyewitness accounts. Others are sent to Canadian UFO researcher Brian Vike of HBCC UFO Research, which has a comprehensive website that includes photos, video footage, audio interviews of witnesses and a breakdown of reports by province.
It's a global phenomenon that, according to these reports, has repeatedly touched our own backyards. In the last three months, more than 40 UFOs have been spotted in Ontario, including:
- Whitby, Aug. 12: A bright white shape like a "teardrop" raced up into the sky at 1 a.m.
- Vaughan, July 13: An orange disc, its light fading in and out, hovering over the IKEA store on Hwy. 7.
- St. Catharines, July 5: Five friends camping in a park near the city claim they saw six saucer-like objects at 2 a.m. One of the objects reportedly dropped to within three metres of the ground and "emitted four pulses" of blinding light. The anonymous witness who reported the incident to NUFORC noted, "Three of my four friends made it clear that they never wanted to speak of the event again."
- Toronto, July 3: A V-shaped formation of more than 20 glowing oval objects flying over an apartment building at 919 Dufferin St.
Rutkowski, who describes himself as an "open-minded skeptic," said the majority of UFO sightings he receives can be explained away as satellites, aircraft or helicopters, the international space station, search lights, astronomical anomalies like meteorites and meteorological phenomenon such as ball lightning. For instance, a "very bright light falling from (the) sky" reported by the pilot of the PM's aircraft and a number of other airliners in March 2004 was likely a meteorite. But each year, there are a "handful to two dozen" well-documented sightings in Canada that simply can't be explained, Rutkowski said, noting he's never seen a UFO himself.
Science, he added, has a done itself a great disservice by ignoring a phenomenon that thousands of people around the world claim they have witnessed.
"If it's not a physical phenomenon, it's at the very least a social or psychological phenomenon and it should be investigated by science," Rutkowski said.
"It's very good to approach this with an open mind, as long as it's not so open your brain falls out."
Some of the most compelling reports obtained by the Sun were filed by people whose jobs entail sober thought and rational observation skills, such as pilots and police officers:
- The pilot of a Cessna Citation 560 twin-engine executive jet reported a "very large stationary metallic object beside the moon at a very high altitude" to air traffic control in Toronto on April 28, 2003. Several other pilots reported the same object, as the report notes: "(Aircraft) reporting was flying between Buffalo, N.Y., and London, Ont., and saw it for 30 min, and was flying at an altitude of 43,000, said (sic) the object was much higher. The shift supervisor at Toronto airport telephoned this in; he also said that several other (aircraft) reported same UFO."
- The pilot of Air Canada Flight 1185 flying over Saskatchewan in December 2001 reported a UFO to air traffic control in Winnipeg. The report, which was submitted to the Canadian Air Defence Sector, noted: "The (aircraft) pilot observed strobes and flashing lights which he estimated to be (7,600-9,000 metres) above him ... The co-pilot of the (aircraft) flight observed same. Pilot noted that it did not look like a satellite."
- An officer with the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary watched for about an hour and a half as two white objects moved north to south over Seal Cove in the Conception Bay area of the province on Aug. 3, 2001.
- On Sept. 8, 2004, the pilot of an Air Canada flight from Vancouver to Saskatoon reported a UFO "heading south at high speed -- passed directly overhead."
But, even the best-trained eyes can be fooled.
Cpl. Ed Anderson and then-Const. Jeff Johnston were based at the RCMP Pangnirtung detachment in Nunavut on Jan. 9, 2001, when they were called by a resident to check out a red light hovering in the sky over the remote northern hamlet on Cumberland Sound.
Armed with cameras and binoculars, the officers watched the mysterious object for more than 20 minutes.
In their separate incident reports, the officers described a stationary object that faded in and out "almost as though it was slowly rotating in the sky." After about 10 or 15 minutes, the light lowered until it was hovering above the ice, its light reflected in the snow.
"It appeared to be like a cylinder-type shape. The light then disappeared and was not seen again," Johnston noted in his report. "At this point, writer has no idea what the object was ... It was definitely a strange occurrence and at this time remains unexplained and unidentified."
Reached by the Sun in Moncton, Johnston said he and his partner reported their observations to several agencies, including Norad. They were told the object was likely a satellite that appeared odd because they were positioned so far north.
The officers were satisfied with the explanation several nights later when they saw the same object in the same location.
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But for others, like Nova Williams, there is no earthly explanation for what they see in the heavens.
An airshow enthusiast, a former volunteer auxiliary officer with Toronto Police, and until recently, an employee of a provincial professional association, Williams said she is certain that what she saw is not from this world.
The Scarborough woman's July encounter was not her first: In the early 1980s, when she was 12 or 13, she and her father were stargazing in the same backyard when they saw three similar objects flying in a V formation, she said.
Several times throughout that week, Williams said her family saw "tonnes of disc-shaped objects darting in and out of each other without losing speed" in the sky over their house. Her aunt was "terrified" and has refused to speak of it since, she said.
Another unexplained encounter involved a bright beam of light from the sky that filled the family's living room about six years ago while she and her mother were watching late-night TV.
As strange as it all sounds, Williams is not afraid to speak out about her experiences.
But when she recently asked her neighbours if they had seen the same objects, she was met with an awkward silence before they changed the subject.
"I think people are very narrow-minded," she said. "If they start thinking about it, it frightens them. So they don't think about it at all."

SETI: We'll Find 'Alien' by 2027

But now technological advances have opened the way for scientists to check millions of previously unknown star systems, dramatically increasing the chances of finding intelligent life in outer space in the next 25 years, the world's largest private extraterrestrial agency believes.
"We're looking for needles in the haystack that is our galaxy, but there could be thousands of needles out there," said Seth Shostak, the senior astronomer at SETI, California's nonprofit Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute.

"If that's the case, with the number of new star systems we now hope to check, we should find one of those in the next 25 years."
But Shostak, visiting Australia to attend a conference on extraterrestrial research, said detecting alien life, like the big-eyed alien in the film E.T., was only the start.
"Even if we detect life out there, we'll still know nothing about what form of life we have detected and I doubt they'll be able -- or want -- to communicate with us," Shostak said.
Since it was founded in 1984, the SETI Institute has monitored radio signals, hoping to pick up a transmission from outer space. Its Project Phoenix conducts two annual three-week sessions on a radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico. Project Phoenix, widely seen as the inspiration for the 1997 film Contact starring Jodie Foster, which depicted a search for life beyond Earth, is the privately funded successor to an original NASA program that was cancelled in 1993 amid much skepticism by Congress. But the search has been slow. About 500 of 1,000 targeted stars have been examined -- and no extraterrestrial transmissions have been detected.
"We do get signals all the time but when checked out they have all been human made ... and are not from E.T.," Shostak said. "More AT&T." He said the privately funded institute was developing a $26 million telescope, scheduled to begin operating in 2005, that can search the stars for signals at least 100 times faster.
The Allen Telescope Array, named after sponsor and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, is a network of more than 350, 20-foot satellite dishes with a collecting area exceeding that of a 338-foot telescope. The Allen Array, to be built at the Hat Creek Observatory about 290 miles northeast of San Francisco, will also expand SETI's stellar reconnaissance to 100,000 or even 1 million nearby stars, searching 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Shostak said he is convinced there is intelligent life out there -- but don't expect to find a lovable, boggle-eyed E.T. He said if any aliens share the same carbon-based organic chemistry as humans, they would probably have a central processing system, eyes, a mouth or two, legs and some form of reproduction. But Shostak thinks any intelligent extraterrestrial life will have gone light years beyond the intelligence of man.
"What we are more likely to hear will be so far beyond our own level that it might not be biological anymore but some artificial form of life," he said. "Don't expect a blobby, squishy alien to be on the end of the line."

Google tracks UFO sightings with new map

Using their Google Maps API (or application program interface), Google has launched a map of UFO sightings at http://www.ufomaps.com/. The interactive map is dotted with "flying saucer" icons indicating where UFOs have been sighted. Clicking on the icon pulls up a short summary of the sighting, with an additional link to a more detailed report.

Thte data is from the National UFO Reporting Center.

The Google initiative is not the only site to use maps to chart UFO activity.

http://www.larryhatch.net/is a detailed effort to graph UFO activity ffrom the past 50 years or ealier, and as a sizable set of graphs, charts, histograms and other data.

http://www.ufodisclosure.com/tracks alleged UFO flight corridors and patterns near Bisbee, Arizona.

While not offering maps, another serious effort of research is at http://www.ufoinfo.com/.

Enjoy the skies!

Latest UFO is spotted hovering over Birch Hill homes

A NOISY UFO woke Birch Hill residents in the early hours of Monday morning when it zoomed over the sleeping suburb. The craft spent half-an-hour hovering above houses in Jevington before zipping towards South Hill Park, according to witnesses. Susan Mallia, who called the Midweek to see if anyone else reported the strange sight, said: "I have never seen anything like that before. It looked like a pile of scaffolding with lights, red, blue and orange ones.
"It also had a big spotlight that was moving around. I don't think it was a helicopter because it sounded like a vacuum cleaner or a generator.
"Perhaps it was a weather balloon. It was very noisy, and it would have woken everyone in the area. It woke me at 2.30am and my husband and I watched it for half and hour.
"Just as he went to get his camera it headed off to South Hill Park and was out of sight -- but we could still hear it."
Midweek's sister paper the Bracknell News was invaded with calls of an extra-terrestrial nature over the summer as UFOs flocked to observe the town. Nowhere in Bracknell Forest was left out of the spacemen's tour, with the paper reporting sightings at the Coppid Beech Hotel (July 7), Birch Hill (July 14), Crown Wood (July 19), Binfield and College Town (July 28) and another in Binfield (August 30).
The News also interviewed local man Terry Walters, who claims he was operated on by aliens in the 1960s and has alsoexorcised a borough councillor's home. Since then alien visitors seemed to have flown south for the winter, but it appears they are once again spying on the town's residents.

Communicating with Extraterrestrial alien UFOs using 5-D gravity waves – a secret no Government reveal

According to some scientists, worldwide communication is taking place on a regular basis with extraterrestrial UFOs. The technology involves 5-D gravity waves.
In his general theory of relativity, Dr Albert Einstein found a solution that modeled an entirely new type of wave: the gravity wave. General relativity describes the force of gravity as a geometric warping in space-time; if the warping were to take the shape of a wave, then this would be a gravity wave.
While electromagnetic waves occupy three special dimensions (as well as time), gravity waves exist in five, making them hyperdimensional in nature. Gravity wave detectors show strange communication with other worlds. While terrestrial communication technologies focus on electromagnetic characteristics, advanced alien civilizations communicate with gravity waves which are five dimensional.
Einstein stated that these waves probably travelled at the same speed as light, 300,000 km/s, which means that nothing is gained in using gravity waves over their electromagnetic counterpart.
The mainstream physics for some reason have done little with Gravity waves. Governments have done little to reveal the technology, harness it and make it available for technological advancements. However, it exists in many people’s back yards and individually these individuals reveal the existence of strange commun9cation between different parts of the earth and the very advanced extraterrestrial civilizations, UFOs and UFO bases in the cosmos.
Officially there has been no detection of these waves; however, the design of such gravity detectors has been based on general relativity theory. There are some who have developed their own theories and so their own detector technology. They also claim to have detected transmissions from other worlds.
The aliens using the gravity waves for communication makes many believe that these are very advanced aliens in the 5-D Hyperspace in which our physical Universe floats.

The biggest secret projects - UFO Reverse Engineering

Scientists always wonder what is the ultimate stealth in warfare? It is similar to answering what is the best magic of making something disappear!
Defense scientists and researchers have wondered what is the next stage after conventional radar evading stealth has worked its way. The problem is that as countries invent stealth technologies, others countries are busy breaking the stealth apart.
It is almost a cat and mouse game between the thief and the cop.
Now scientists realize the best stealth is to make an object really disappear. That is what the extraterrestrial UFOs have been doing for thousands of years evading all possible terrestrial technologies. What extraterrestrial UFOs from advanced aliens in the cosmos or Hyperspace do is to transform the materials from real to virtual mode in the 3-D Physical Universe. Particles can exist in 5-dimensions, which is real in Hyperspace or in 3-D, which is real in Physical Hyperspace. Switching particles between 3-D to 5-D and vice versa is what makes the ultimate stealth possible.
The advanced alien technologies of switching back and forth between 3-D and 5-D is not easy to attain using the realm of terrestrial particle physics. However the large massive super accelerating particle colliders are providing the first clues to the advanced technologies of switching particles between real and virtual mode in out 3-D Physical universe.
Some secret projects are on in many countries trying to create the ultimate stealth and break the conventional radar evading stealth. Defense Research Scientists all over the world are breaking the barrier of virtual particles in many countries. The race is on to find the ultimate stealth. Classified defense projects are focusing on creation of particles that can be switched between virtual and real modes using very advanced classified particle physics. Some papers are available on these technologies but they are vague and contain little information. Some sources say, some countries are spending countless billions on these technologies and the outcome is as serious as nuclear bombs.

Puerto Rico farming town to build UFO landing strip

LAJAS, Puerto Rico - People in this sleepy hamlet are so sure they have been receiving other-worldly visitors, they want to build a UFO landing strip to welcome them.A bright green sign along a lonely country road in southwestern Puerto Rico proudly displays a silhouette of a flying saucer and two words: "Extraterrestrial Route."Most Puerto Ricans laughed when a horse farmer installed the sign on his property at the request of Reynaldo Rios, a local elementary school teacher who says he's been communicating with alien visitors to this U.S. territory since he was a child.Rios, a 39-year-old with a goatee and a shock of dark hair, won't be ignored. With the blessing of a local government desperate for tourist dollars, he's dedicated himself to building the UFO landing strip."I can't say exactly when they will come, but I know it will happen," Rios said. "I want to keep believing in my dreams."Lajas Mayor Marcos Irizarry's support for the idea has provoked outrage among islanders who complained it would be a waste of money at a time when the government is encouraging thousands of employees to shorten their work week to cope with a staggering fiscal deficit."What nonsense," said Luis Arocho, 47, sipping coffee with friends in a cafe in historic Old San Juan. "This country is in crisis, and since politicians are incapable of creating jobs, they create fantasies."Irizarry quickly clarified that his municipal government would not invest in the project. Instead, he has promised to help Rios get the proper building permits.The mayor insists his goal is to attract tourists to his small town.But he is also among Lajans who believe they have seen UFOs in the area."It's a very mysterious place," said Irizarry, who says he once saw red lights zigzagging above the hills. "A lot of people have seen things."Francisco Negron, the farmer who put up the sign and allows UFO watchers to gather at his ranch, volunteered his property for the landing strip. He and Rios estimate the project could cost up to US$100,000 and are looking for funds from private companies.Negron, a soft-spoken grandfather, has already applied for a permit to build a road to Indian Hill, the chosen site for the strip. Negron and others believe a UFO crashed on the hill in 1997. They claim they heard a boom and saw the hill go up in flames.Rios, who leads a group called "UFO International" that holds nighttime vigils to search for signs of alien life, lets Negron worry about details like investment costs and permits while he envisions the design. The landing strip would be 80-feet (24-meters) long and have pyramids as control towers because aliens are attracted to the shape.The mayor hopes that UFO enthusiasts will flock to Lajas as they have to Roswell, New Mexico, the site of a supposed UFO crash in the 1940s. Hundreds of visitors have already come to check out the Extraterrestrial Route since the sign went up, Irizarry said.Puerto Rico is already known for its Arecibo Observatory and its 1,000-foot (304-meter) parabolic receiver that astronomers really do use to search for extraterrestrial life. The huge dish, in northern Puerto Rico, made a cameo appearance in the 1997 film "Contact," starring Jodi Foster as an astronomer who picks up a signal from extratraterrestrials.But it's a little-known aerostat off the Extraterrestrial Route that inspires UFO lore in Lajas. The U.S. military uses the aerostat, a tethered blimp with a radar system, to detect low-flying drug smuggling planes.But many Lajans don't believe that. Even Irizarry has suggested that the aerostat's true purpose is to detect UFOs.A paved road leading to the blimp curves out of sight between two hills. Two signs warn against trespassing. Rios claims he was once briefly detained while trying to see the aerostat.The school teacher says he first encountered aliens at 13. He says white lights burst into his bedroom, entered his body and cured him of a back injury he had received during a basketball game.In Lajas, people who have grown up hearing reports of UFO sightings seem more open to his scheme."If we have the technology to reach the moon, there could be others who have the technology to come here," said Ronaldo Barea, 26, a sandwich shop owner.

What you need to view an extraterrestrial UFO?

Scientists and defense researchers are observing the UFOs for many decades trying to reverse engineer every bit of their technologies. The biggest question for the common folks in every country is what can they do to see UFOs like those in defense research communities do?

The answer really lies in understanding why you cannot see an extraterrestrial UFO. The alien civilizations are of four types. Type IV is the most advanced and they apply virtual particles as stealth. They are very difficult to see. However the type II UFOs are visible with terrestrial technologies provided you understand how these lesser advanced aliens use stealth. But think about this – why is it that you cannot see what is in your own eyes? Why do you have to visit an eye doctor who can see your retina and so on?
The answer lies in the fact that your eyes are not designed to see it. There can be a vision system that is designed to see 360 degrees around it and in that case you will be able to see inside your body provided there is some light from somewhere. Another example will be – why do you need an Infra Red camera for night vision. The answer lies to the fact that certain technical devices have technological limitations. We cannot see through electromagnetic flux. Our terrestrial devices cannot penetrate the stealth associated with electromagnetic flux. We cannot under, at least as yet, the concept of bending time and space. We cannot understand the concept that Gravity is a wave and not force. Our terrestrial technologies are far behind what is required to see and understand the extraterrestrials. It is not really scientific or for that matter logical to think that just because we cannot see, something does not exist. Hundreds and thousands of years back, people did not agree to the concept that earth is spherical (sort of) and that earth revolves around Sun and not vice versa. They could only believe what they could see. But that does not make the science and reality change. Someday may be fifty to hundred years later we will have the technology to see through advanced stealth. We will be able to bend space and time. We will be able to travel trough a black hole into a parallel Universe. Most interestingly, we will at that time decide to create our own colony in a distant planet. And we will use all our means to let that civilization grow, protect them and so on without revealing our identity, existence and even present around them. And we can bet you they will see some glimpse of us and call us alien extraterrestrials!