AN ENCOUNTER OOF ASTRONAUTS WITH ALIENS..

UFOs and Aliens in Space

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Feature

David Morrison

Skeptical Inquirer Volume 33.1, January / February 2009

Popular UFO claims include alien bases on the Moon and Mars. It is widely (but falsely) reported that Buzz Aldrin saw a UFO on the Apollo 11 flight and that NASA spacecraft discovered a humanoid face and other artifacts on Mars.

Much of the public believes that UFOs are alien spacecraft. This represents a conceptual leap from unidentified lights in the sky or radar bogies that were the UFO stories when I was growing up. Today, “believers” are talking about actual alien contact, with alien bases on the Moon and Mars, and their concerns receive reinforcement from radio, TV, and Internet blogs.

On one level UFOs are real, of course; many people occasionally see objects in the sky that are not immediately identifiable as planes, balloons, planets, stars, or unusual atmospheric phenomena. But the questions I receive from the public (submitted to a NASA Web site) suggest a belief system linking UFOs with alien visitations and abductions spiced up by “conspiracy theories” to hide this information from the public.

If UFOs are alien spacecraft visiting Earth, then it seems reasonable that evidence of alien civilizations might be seen by astronomers or the radio signals from alien spacecraft might be picked up by the sensitive receivers we use to communicate with our own spacecraft. Perhaps astronauts who venture into space would be among the first to make reliable observations of alien spacecraft or artifacts. Perhaps we should look for alien bases on other worlds. Indeed, the Internet carries many stories of such encounters. I will examine some of the evidence cited for alien presence in the solar system.

Astronaut Encounters with Aliens

One allegedly well-documented report stems from an interview in which astronaut Buzz Aldrin describes seeing a UFO during the Apollo 11 mission. In an interview on the Science Channel (left, top), Aldrin stated that he, Neil Armstrong, and Mike Collins saw unidentified objects that appeared to follow their Apollo spacecraft.

To get the story straight, I called Buzz Aldrin, who was happy to explain what happened. He said that his remarks were taken out of context to reverse his meaning. It is true that the Apollo 11 crew spotted an unidentified object moving with the spacecraft as they approached the Moon. After they verified that this mystery object was not Apollo 11’s large rocket upper stage, which was about 6,000 miles away by then, they concluded that they were seeing one of the small panels that had linked the spacecraft to the upper stage (any part of the spacecraft’s rocket upper stage will continue to move alongside the spacecraft, as both are floating in free-fall). These panels were too small to track from Earth and were relatively close to the Apollo spacecraft. Aldrin told me that they chose not to discuss this on the open communications channel since they were concerned that their comments might be misinterpreted. His entire explanation about identifying the panels was cut from the broadcast interview, giving the impression that the Apollo 11 crew had seen a UFO. Aldrin told me that he was angry about the deceptive editing and asked the Science Channel to correct the intentional twisting of his remarks, but they refused. Later, Aldrin explained what happened on CNN’s Larry King Live (left, bottom) but was nearly cut off by the host before he could finish.

With the popularity of YouTube, this same question is addressed to me repeatedly, as in: “Check out this video on YouTube with Buzz Aldrin saying he saw a UFO on Apollo 11. Who is fibbing? NASA or the great American hero, Buzz Aldrin?” My answer was that the fibbing was being done by the producers of the video, who omitted the second half of the interview.

It is instructive to watch this interview to see the ways the story is embellished and ultimately manipulated. Most of the talking is done by the interviewer and not Aldrin, but their comments have been edited to create the illusion of a seamless narrative. Throughout the interview we see a montage of short scenes from Apollo and other missions, including a blurry image through the window taken during a later flight. Only a critical viewer will distinguish what Aldrin said from the narrative by the interviewer or realize that the video clips are unrelated. The end product is clever disinformation, strongly suggesting—without explicitly lying—that Aldrin and his crewmates saw an alien spacecraft.

Many Internet claims of encounters between NASA astronauts and alien spacecraft are based on quotes from “secret communications” between flight crews and Houston. It is true that there are such private conversations, concerning crew health for example. But the Internet stories of overheard conversations are never documented and often attributed to leaks from unnamed NASA workers whose jobs (or even lives) would allegedly be at risk if they were identified. Many of these stories involve the Apollo 11 flight, and they include claims that alien spaceships accompanied the NASA craft during its Moon landing and that a row of alien spacecraft along a crater rim monitored the astronauts’ spacewalk on the lunar surface. (Incidentally, Apollo 11 landed on a flat plain where there were no hills or crater rims to provide such a viewpoint.)

To my knowledge, no NASA astronaut has ever reported seeing a UFO in space, let alone having a confrontation with aliens. However, this is not to say that no astronaut believes that alien visitations to Earth might be happening. Recently there were news reports that Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell believes in the reality of some reports of UFOs. He has attended a number of meetings of UFO believers, and he asserts that some of these reports are true, and that the U.S. government and military are aware of these alien visits. However, Mitchell does not claim to have seen aliens himself. His astronaut colleagues tell me that he has always had an interest in the occult, and he even tried to conduct a parapsychology experiment on the way to and from the Moon. It is easy for a journalist to ignore Mitchell’s caveats about most UFO reports being untrue, or about not encountering an alien himself, to give the impression that he and other astronauts have had frequent encounters with beings from other worlds.

One argument presented to me by several correspondents is that aliens must have warned humans to stay away from their bases on the Moon. Otherwise, why was the Apollo program suddenly terminated with three more missions scheduled and almost ready for launch? (The huge Apollo/Saturn-5 rockets that enthrall visitors to the NASA space parks at Canaveral, Houston, and Huntsville are not mock-ups; they are real hardware built for Apollo 18, 19, and 20.) The conspiracy story attributes our failure to follow up on the Apollo flights to this same interplanetary quarantine and suggests that NASA’s current program to return astronauts to the Moon will be cancelled for the same reason. I admit being baffled by the sudden termination of the Apollo program at the peak of its success, but I accept the official explanation that it was due to the changing political priorities of the Nixon administration, where many looked upon Apollo as a Kennedy-Johnson program.

Mars: The Viking Era

Mars plays a unique role in public consciousness. Just a century ago, this planet was widely thought to be inhabited by intelligent creatures, largely due to astronomical studies and the popular writing of Percival Lowell. The classic science-fiction novel War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells reinforced public curiosity about the possibility of aliens on Mars. But early space missions that showed decisively that Mars was not really very Earth-like—with no canals and an atmosphere only 1 percent the size of ours—damped much of the public’s fascination. Scientific interest has steadily increased, however, and Mars is the planet most visited by spacecraft. The first stage of scientific exploration climaxed in 1976 with two identical Mars landers and orbiters as part of the Viking program. All four Viking spacecraft were fabulously successful, providing a comprehensive survey of the planet together with detailed analysis at two landing sites, including clever experiments to search for evidence of microbial life.

After two decades of post-Viking neglect, NASA initiated a new series of Mars missions with the 1996 Mars Pathfinder, which included a rover about the size of a microwave oven. After two mission failures in 1998, several remarkably successful orbiters and the two famous Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, followed. In addition to high-resolution orbiting cameras, there is also a digital, global topographic map based on laser ranging between the orbiter and the surface. As a result, we have more detailed and quantitative data on martian topography than we do for much of the Earth’s surface.

Naturally, the tens of thousands of high-resolution photos from orbit and on the ground (all publicly available) have been studied for evidence of life and any potential artifacts of a possible ancient civilization. In this respect, the most famous discovery was made by Viking Orbiter 1 in 1977, in a low-resolution (about 40 meters) photo of the ancient Cydonia region of Mars. In the midst of a heavily eroded plain with irregular low mountains or mesas is the Face on Mars, one of the iconic images of the space program.

The Face on Mars, seen under oblique lighting, seems to be an oval humanoid face with eyes, nose, and a mouth. It is about one kilometer across and surrounded by a sort of halo that reminds some of the cloth headpiece worn by Egyptian pharaohs. It was spotted by Viking scientist Toby Owen and released to the press as a joke to show how even on Mars we (humans) could find features that looked vaguely like ourselves. Unfortunately, Viking project scientist Jerry Soffen made an offhand remark to the press that this “face” showed up only under this particular lighting and not in other photos of the same site. The problem was that Viking had not taken other photos of this spot at equal or higher resolution, and the mission ended before this area could be mapped again. Thus began another conspiracy theory: NASA was suppressing confirming photos of the face. When the next NASA mission to photograph Mars (Mars Observer) failed in 1992 shortly before its arrival at the Red Planet, the story began to circulate that this failure was faked and the spacecraft was really in orbit and sending back secret high-resolution images of the face.

The Face on Mars has been vigorously promoted by one energetic entrepreneur: Richard C. Hoagland. A young freelance journalist and one-time museum guide, Hoagland was a part of the large corps of journalists who encamped at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for the Viking landings. Hoagland not only accepted the artificial origin of the face, he went on to develop a detailed “theory” that linked this feature with a number of others in Cydonia that he also interpreted as artificial. These included a set of intersecting low ridges that he called the “city” and several mountains of roughly pyramid shape. (Pyramid-shaped peaks with three or four sides are a rather common product of both ice and wind erosion on Earth.)

As improving technology allowed for higher photo resolution, the “face on Mars” looked less like a face and more like the natural landform it is.

Hoagland set out to study the geometry of this layout, finding coincidences in the angles between the features that further demonstrated (to him) their artificial origin. He published the results from his “research” in a 350-page book called The Monuments of Mars (now in its fifth edition). He also undertook a lecture circuit that climaxed when a naïve public affairs officer at NASA Glenn (then Lewis) Research Center in Cleveland invited him to present a director’s seminar and then offered to put a videotape of this talk on the NASA TV channel. Hoagland also began making regular appearances on Art Bell’s late-night talk show Coast to Coast AM, where he still happily holds forth on the conspiracies of NASA and the U.S. government to keep the truth from the public.

Hoagland’s elaborate interpretation of the “monuments” on Mars represents an amazing flight of imagination. Since the features are in a state of ruin, he concludes that the aliens who built them are no longer present and dates the construction of these huge projects to about half a million years ago. Since the face is (in his opinion) clearly human and directed upward (best seen from above), he concludes that it was built as a message forHomo sapiens, a species that was just emerging on Earth at the time. The story then bifurcates: either these aliens were also visiting Earth at the time and knew about the future rise of humans (analogous to the opening sequences in the book and film 2001, A Space Odyssey), or the monuments themselves were built by an earlier race of humans that had moved from Earth to Mars and left no traces of their tenure on our planet. Yet another option is that Homo sapiens had a martian origin, migrating to Earth when their own planet became uninhabitable (a conclusion that flies in the face of all modern genetic analysis of humans and their primate cousins).

Hoagland’s analysis of the geometric patterns of the alleged monuments convinced him that the entire layout in Cydonia was a technical message to humans, one that included the key to a limitless source of energy. Apparently he has deciphered the message but is not revealing it just yet, other than to say that this energy could be tapped only at latitude 19.5 degrees (north or south) on the Sun as well as Earth and Mars. More recently, Hoagland linked the monuments on Mars with the crop circles appearing on Earth, which also allegedly held the key to unlimited energy, implying that the creators of the city on Mars were also active today on Earth. The fact that Hoagland was able to peddle this bizarre fairy tale for two decades and make a living selling books and videotapes is a testament to his ability as a salesman, if not to his unscientific acumen.

The two-decade post-Viking hiatus from Mars provided plenty of time for Hoagland to market his fantasy. The 1992 failure of Mars Observer, far from ending this story, was twisted by Hoagland into an additional conspiracy theory. The day the failure was announced, a group of his followers demonstrated outside the JPL gates to protest the blanket of secrecy they claimed had been thrown over this mission whose real purpose was to allegedly study the face. In the late 1990s, one of the two most frequently asked questions in letters and emails received by NASA concerned the Face on Mars (the other topic was asteroid impacts).

New Results from Mars

In 1998, a much-improved camera arrived at Mars on the Mars Global Surveyor orbiter. A vocal segment of the public demanded that NASA give high priority to re-photographing the face. NASA wisely argued that this was not a high-priority target but quietly obtained a high-resolution image of the face as soon as the spacecraft orbit permitted it. On April 5, 1998, when the Mars Global Surveyor flew over Cydonia for the first time, Michael Malin and his Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) team snapped a picture ten times sharper than the original Viking photos, revealing a natural landform. However, the new lighting was very different from that of the original Viking photo, and some face proponents refused to believe that this was really the same feature. On April 8, 2001, the MOC captured a photo using the camera’s maximum resolution, better than two meters, which was twenty times higher than the Viking original. This spacecraft also carried another instrument, a laser ranging device, which gradually built up an extremely detailed quantitative topographic map of Mars that did not depend on lighting angles. With these data, it was possible to reconstruct exactly how the mesa would look from any direction. Many details of this story are recounted in the article “Unmasking the Face on Mars”.

Additional images with even higher resolution were obtained in 2007 by the University of Arizona HiRISE camera on the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. With a resolution of 25 cm, these photos showed features as small as a briefcase. Such data eventually convinced almost everyone that the face was simply a mesa surrounded by an apron of eroded debris. NASA’s chief Mars scientist, Jim Garvin, even jokingly plotted a hiking trail that ascended the rugged hill. However, as the true nature of this eroded mesa became undeniable, the suggestion was made that the face had been intentionally destroyed by NASA: the clandestine mission of Mars Observer had been to first photograph the feature in detail, then deface it with a well-aimed nuclear missile.

Meanwhile, Richard Hoagland was moving on and generating new claims, some even more bizarre than those associated with the face. The Wikipedia article on Hoagland mentions his assertions that “Rocks on Mars containing biological fossils were purposely destroyed by NASA’s rover Opportunity. Numerous objects surrounding the landing sites of the Mars Exploration Rovers are in fact pieces of martian machinery. There are large semitransparent structures constructed of glass on the lunar surface, visible in some Apollo photography. There is a clandestine space program, using antigravity technology reverse-engineered from lunar artifacts and communicated by secret societies. Federal agencies such as FEMA and NASA are linked to Freemasonry.”

Hoagland held a press conference at the National Press Club on October 30, 2007, to “review NASA’s 50 years of cover-ups and hidden solar system data.” His accusations against NASA appeared in more detail in his book with Mike Bara, Dark Mission: The Secret History of NASA. He was also by then in his crop circle phase, promoting new sources of energy revealed to him in the crop circles. And he is still a regular guest onCoast to Coast AM, where he has the title of science advisor.

Humans have a natural tendency to see anthropomorphic features in natural shapes such as clouds and mountains. As thousands of new photos of the martian surface were streaming back from the rovers, some of these tendencies were bound to pop up. One of the funniest is an image of a tiny eroded rock only a few centimeters long that looks rather like the famous “little mermaid” statue in Copenhagen Harbor. This too has been hailed as a real photo of a Martian. The continuing torrent of spacecraft images from current missions to Saturn and Mercury as well as Mars will probably generate new advocates for aliens in space. Fortunately, the vast majority of people are happy to accept these images as wonderful products of our space age exploration of the solar system and not as a new episode in the great alien cover-up.

David Morrison

David Morrison is a long-time NASA senior scientist and Committee for Skeptical Inquiry fellow. He now divides his time between the SETI Institute and the NASA Lunar Science Institute. He hosts the "Ask an Astrobiologist" column at NASA's website.

VERY INTERESTING#MYSTERIES OF ALIENS#Top 10 Ancient Aliens Mysteries

Top 10 Ancient Aliens Mysteries

Ancient aliens is the idea that aliens visited earth in the past. The idea of ancient aliens is not a new one either. Imagination is one of the most powerful tools in humanity’s evolutionary struggle for survival. As a race, we are hardwired to consider important concepts, such as the creation of life on Earth and the history of people on this planet. At some point, we are all presented with various explanations and theories regarding the expansion of human life on Earth. In the long history of mankind, the majority of these concepts have followed religious teachings, and the power of a spiritual God or Gods. In modern times, many people have come to challenge these claims.

The idea of evolution has been used to describe the gradual change of traits that living organisms undergo over time, which is related to the environment, but it doesn’t explain how the biological cells of human’s first ancestor were spawned. Because of the fact that everyone is interested in the creation of life on Earth, and concurrently we have been taught to believe in the power of religion and the impossibility of alien life, the idea that this article will be examining is controversial. It will be based around some concepts that have been labeled absurd by the scientific community, but let your imagination go, and have some fun with the list.

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Ancient Aliens

The idea surrounding ancient aliens is a basic one. It states that the human population was influenced by a group of extraterrestrials that visited Earth in the past. The ancient aliens were directly involved in the evolution of primates, including humans. It has been suggested that this was accomplished by way of genetic engineering, cross-breeding, or a combination of both, ultimately helping in the development of human cultures, technologies and religion. The idea first gained widespread exposure with the 1968 publication of Chariots of the Gods by Erich von Däniken, but the concept has been around since the middle of the 19th century. A common variant of the idea includes proposals that deities from most, if not all, religions, including angels and demons, are actually extraterrestrials whose advanced technologies were taken by people as evidence of a divine status.

This concept is related to the religious practice of a cargo cult, which can be seen in modern day pre-industrial tribal societies. Especially during World War II, when indigenous people were contacted by soldiers with advanced equipment, such as guns and tanks. The cults subsequently attempted to obtain wealth through magic and religious rituals and practices. The ancient alien theory states that extraterrestrials purposely tricked the human population into believing they were Gods, creating religion to help people evolve more efficiently. The Fermi paradox is the apparent contradiction between high estimates of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations and the lack of evidence for, or contact with, such civilizations.

It has been proposed that, with the current age of the universe and its vast number of stars, if the Earth was typical, extraterrestrial life should be common. In response to this paradox, the zoo hypothesis has been suggested. It states that aliens generally avoid making their presence known to humanity, or avoid exerting an influence on development, somewhat akin to zookeepers observing animals in a zoo, or experimental scientists observing a study of life. Adherents of the hypothesis feel that the Earth and humans are being secretly surveyed using equipment located on Earth, or elsewhere in the Solar System. Charles Fort’s unpublished 1915 manuscript, novel X, describes how Martian beings or Martian events control life on Earth. Fort ultimately burnt the manuscript, but one surviving quote from it is “The Earth is a farm. We are someone else’s property.”

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Angels and Demons

The idea of ancient alien as astronauts has spawned a UFO religion named Raëlism. The Raelian Movement teaches that life on Earth was scientifically created by a species of extraterrestrials, which they call the Elohim. Members of the Elohim appeared human and were mistaken for angels, cherubim or gods. The Bible is full of accounts of angels and demons. The text mentions millions of angels and their experiences on Earth and in the heavens. In Christian tradition, demons are similar to angels. They are spiritual, immutable and immortal. The individual demon owns a specific knowledge, sometimes on only one subject. The apocryphal Book of Enoch recounts that a group of 200 rebellious angels, or Watchers, left heaven and came down to Earth to marry human women and have children with them.

The Quran depicts a story of angels that are given minds of their own, found in verse [2:34]. One of the angels was Iblis (Satan/Lucifer), who rebelled and was therefore banished on earth to create mischief amongst mankind. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, angels were all created as good beings, but some decided to become evil. It was written that angels do not need faith as they already have the knowledge of celestial things, which means that their action constitutes unforgivable sin. The idea of alien intervention on Earth can be found in the modern religious philosophy of Thelema. Thelema was developed by the early 20th century British writer, Aleister Crowley.

Crowley’s system of Thelema begins with The Book of the Law, which he claims was a direct dictation from an entity named Aiwass. Crowley later identified Aiwass as his own Holy Guardian Angel. The religion is founded upon the idea that the 20th century marked the beginning of the Aeon of Horus, in which a new ethical code would be followed; “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” The famed American rocket propulsion researcher, Jack Parsons, was one of the first Americans to take a keen interest in the writings of Aleister Crowley. Parsons research into rocket propulsion was some of the earliest in United States history. His pioneering work in the development of solid fuel, and the invention of Jet-fuel Assisted Take Off units for aircraft was of great importance to the start of humanity’s space age. The work of Parsons and his peers helped people usher in the age of space travel. Jack Parsons was largely self-educated.

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Men in Black

The extraterrestrial hypothesis is the theory that some unidentified flying objects (UFOs) are best explained as being extraterrestrial life or non-human aliens from other planets. The idea sounds simple to modern day humans, but it a relatively new concept that originated out of the saucer sightings and close encounters of the 1940s-1960s. Thousands of UFO sightings have been reported in the last 50 years, and one of the emerging themes in these events is the Men in Black. The Men in Black are men, or aliens, dressed in black suits who have been reported to harass or threaten UFO witnesses to keep them quiet about what they have seen. In most cases, the men claim to be government agents, but it is often suggested that they may be ancient aliens themselves.

People who have reported an encounter with the Men in Black often describe them as men of short stature with a deeply tanned and dark complexion. According to the accounts, Men in Black always seem to have detailed information on the person they contact, as if the individual had been under surveillance for a long period of time. They have been described as seeming confused by the nature of everyday items such as pens, eating utensils or food, as well as using outdated slang. Those who have encountered them say they produce identification, but when verification is later sought, the people described do not exist or have been dead for some time. Another defining characteristic of the Men in Black is wide grins and disconcerting giggles.

The phenomenon has been frequently reported since the 1950s and 1960s, but some researchers, including John Keel and others, have suggested similarities between the Men in Black reports and earlier demonic accounts. Keel suggests that the beings are a modern-day manifestation of the same phenomena that was earlier interpreted as the devil, or encounters with fairies. The term “the black man” has been used for centuries in reference to the Devil. In history, the Black Man was often reported as meeting with the accused and having sexual intercourse with them. Old Scratch or Mr. Scratch is another folk name for The Devil that is used in the local legends of New England and pre-Civil War America.

During the Middle Ages, the black man was not a person with African features, but rather a man colored black and dressed in black. In modern times, another phenomenon known as the Grinning Man has become associated with the Men in Black, and various reports of paranormal activity. These creatures are larger and characterized by a wide grinning face. In most cases, people describe a strange sensation of not being able to focus in on the Grinning Man. It has been suggested that the smile is an attempt by the aliens to conform to society and keep humans feeling safe, but in all reports the figure is described as extremely creepy. In the Half-Life series of first-person shooter video games, there is a mysterious character named G-Man that parallels some of the Men in Black descriptions.

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Modern Technical Advancement

During WWII, the term foo fighter was used by Allied aircraft pilots to describe the various UFOs and mysterious aerial phenomena seen in the skies over both the European and Pacific Theater of Operations. In the wake of the war, the world entered an era of substantial achievement and technical advancement. One such example is the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, which is a United States aircraft that was developed in the early 1960s. The SR-71 Blackbird is a strategic reconnaissance aircraft that currently holds the air speed record. In 1903, Wilbur Wright set the aircraft speed record going 6.82 mph (10.98 km/h). In 1976, the SR-71 Blackbird went 2,193.2 mph (3,529.6 km/h). The craft was manned by Eldon W. Joersz during the record flight, but is highly capable of taking off and landing unassisted.

In modern times, organizations have been developed, such as the Disclosure Project, which have alleged the existence of a world government cover-up of information relating to unidentified flying objects and alien encounters. People argue that the technical advancements humans have experienced since WWII have been achieved with the help of extraterrestrial life and equipment. Proponents of the ancient aliens theory have suggested that the development of nuclear weapons sparked an increased interest in humanity’s evolutionary path, ultimately leading to an era of mass abductions and close encounters. Some others point to the current global climate disruption and apocalypse predictions, identifying them as a precursor for the secret extraterrestrial involvement and intervention on Earth, ensuring the survival of life.

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Angel Hair

Angel hair is a substance that is said to be dispersed from UFOs as they fly overhead. It has been described as being like a cobweb or a jelly. Angel hair has been reported at sightings of the Virgin Mary. This fact has intrigued ancient alien believers, and has been used as a possible indication of extraterrestrial influence at reported sightings of the Virgin Mary and Jesus. Historical reports of angel hair show that the substance disintegrates, or evaporates, within a short time of forming. One publicized theory of UFO believers is that the substance is “ionized air sleeting off an electromagnetic field” that surrounds a craft. The most reported incident of angel hair occurred in Oloron, France, in 1952. The event was characterized by a large amount of unexplained aircraft sightings.

On November 2, 1959, in the Portuguese city of Évora, angel hair was collected and analyzed by armed forces technicians and scientists of the University of Lisbon. Conclusions stated that the substance was so advanced that it could be a single-celled organism of some kind, a vegetable product, not animal. People have connected references in the Bible to the phenomenon of angel hair. Pixie dust is said to be related. Beginning in the 14th century, humans began to mention a gelatinous substance named star jelly. Star jelly is described as a translucent or grayish white gelatin, which tends to evaporate shortly after falling. In the past, the substance was connected with meteor showers. Angel grass is a related phenomenon that occurs when short metallic threads fall to the ground in intertwined loosed masses. However, angel grass is an explained occurrence and comes from certain military aircraft. It is a type of Chaff, used as a radar counter-measure.

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Greys

Greys are a proposed alien species that is most widely associated with the alien abduction phenomenon. It has been alleged that Greys are intelligent extraterrestrials who visit Earth and secretly perform medical experiments on humans. Paranormal claims surrounding the Greys are different in many ways, including their nature, moral dispositions, intentions and physical appearances, some having a different skin color. A composite description derived from overlap claims would have Greys as small bodied, sexless beings with smooth grey skin, an enlarged head and large eyes. They are described as humanoid beings that possess reduced forms of, or a completely lack of, external human organs such as noses, ears or sex organs.

Their bodies are usually depicted as being elongated, having a small chest, and lacking in muscular definition. According to a 1995 study among reports of alien encounters, Greys make up approximately 50% in Australia, 43% in the United States, 90% in Canada, 67% in Brazil, 20% in Continental Europe, and around 12% in Great Britain. It has been proposed that the home planet of these beings is located in the Zeta Reticuli star system. Greys are therefore sometimes known as Zeta Reticulans. People have reported two distinct groups of Greys, with one being much taller. This had led to the suggestion that the smaller Greys are not biologically alive, but instead an artificially constructed robot or cyborg servant.

People have described the Greys as staring into their eyes when conducting mental procedures. This staring, which is performed directly in your face, is claimed to induce hallucinogenic states or directly provoke different emotions. According to English reproductive biologist Jack Cohen, the typical image of a Grey, given that it would have evolved on a world with different environmental and ecological conditions from Earth, is too physiologically similar to a human to be credible as an alien species. This brings us to the theory that these extraterrestrial beings had some influence on the evolution of life on Earth in the distant past, or that they are an ancient race of humans that was forced to abandon Earth, but still watches over the planet.

4

Animal Mutilation

Cattle mutilation is a term that has been adopted to describe the apparent killing, and then mutilation, of cattle under unusual or anomalous circumstances. Sheep and horses have also been mutilated, and the phenomenon is not specific to cattle. A hallmark of these incidents is the surgical nature of the mutilation. The creatures are often found completely drained of blood, with missing internal organs. There is no obvious point of entry, and the surgically precise removal of the animal’s reproductive organs and anal coring is consistent. Another strange occurrence surrounding the mutilations is that the animal’s bodies are found dumped in an area where there are no marks or tracks leading to or from the carcass, even when the body is found in soft ground or mud. The surgical-type wounds observed appear to be made by intense heat and a very sharp/precise instrument.

Often flesh will be removed to the bone in an exact manner and location, such as around the jaw exposing the mandible. The first largely reported case of mutilation occurred near Alamosa, Colorado, in 1967. The event involved a horse named Lady, who was discovered with her head and neck skinned. The cuts on the horse were very precise and no blood was found. According to Lady’s owner, there was a strong medicinal odor in the air that surrounded the corpse. At the scene, fifteen tapering, circular exhaust marks were punched into the ground. This evidence was discovered over an area of some 5000 square yards. Similar to other cases of animal mutilation, the area surrounding Lady showed an increase in radiation levels. By the mid 1970s, mutilated cattle were reported in 15 US states and in many other areas all over the world.

Many of the accounts include unexplained lights, sounds and UFOs. It has been noted that mutilated cattle are avoided by large scavengers, such as coyotes, wolves, foxes, dogs, skunks, badgers and bobcats for several days after death. Similarly, domestic animals are reported to be visibly agitated and fearful of the carcass. According to Dr. Howard Burgess, nearly 90% of mutilated cattle are between four and five years old. Laboratory reports carried out on some of these animals have shown unusually high or low levels of vitamins or minerals in tissue samples, and the presence of chemicals not normally found in animals.

In one case involving a 1978 mutilated cow in New Mexico, samples from the animal’s liver were found to be completely devoid of copper and to contain four times the normal level of zinc, potassium and phosphorus. As you would suspect, a government cover-up has been offered as an explanation for the deaths. This is often fueled by the reported presence of black helicopters near mutilation sites. Various hypotheses have been written, suggesting that cattle mutilations have been committed by aliens who are gathering genetic material for unknown purposes. Proponents of the ancient alien theory suggest that, as cows make up a significant part of the global human diet, a study is being carried out on this element of the human food chain.

3

Spaceship Moon Theory

Over the years, it has been scientifically observed that the Earth’s Moon holds some strange characteristics. The Moon is the 5th largest natural satellite in the Solar System. It is believed to have been created by a giant impact between the young Earth and a Mars-sized body. After examination, it has been noted that the Moon is apparently in the wrong orbit for its size, according to its current assumed density. Astronomy data indicates that the internal regions of the Moon are less dense than the outer, giving rise to the inevitable speculation that it could be hollow. Some of these claims come from the fact that when meteors strike the Moon, it rings like a bell. More specifically, when the Apollo crew, on November 20, 1969, released the lunar module, after returning to the orbiter, the module impact with the Moon caused their seismic equipment to register a continuous reverberation like a bell for more than an hour.

In July of 1970, members of the then Soviet Academy of Sciences, Michael Vasin and Alexander Shcherbakov, proposed the Spaceship Moon Theory. The pseudoscientific theory claims that the Earth’s moon may actually be an alien spacecraft. Vasin and Shcherbakov’s thesis was that the Moon is a hollowed-out planetoid created by unknown beings with technology far superior to any on Earth. Huge machines would have been used to melt rock and form large cavities within the Moon. The Moon would, therefore, consist of a hull-like inner shell and an outer shell made from metallic rocky slag. The “Spaceship Moon” was then placed into orbit around the Earth. Proponents of this theory point to the increased reports and pictures of UFOs taken by NASA on their missions to the moon. It has been found that asteroids and meteors not only create shallow craters on the Moon’s surface, but produce a convex floor to the crater instead of concave as expected, supporting the idea of a rigid shell.

The moon is far older than previously expected, maybe even older than the Earth or the Sun. The oldest age for the Earth is estimated to be 4.6 billion years old, while Moon rocks were dated at 5.3 billion years. The chemical composition of the dust upon which the rocks sit is remarkably different from the rocks themselves. This indicates that the lunar surface may have been moved from somewhere else and placed on the Moon. Some of the Moon’s craters originated internally, yet there is no indication that the Moon was ever hot enough to produce volcanic eruptions. Hundreds of moonquakes are recorded each year that cannot be attributed to meteor strikes. Some of the quakes seem to follow a specific schedule.

The moon’s crust is much harder than originally presumed. When NASA was recorded drilling down a few inches into the Moon’s surface, it appeared that metal shavings were visible. Earth’s moon is the only natural satellite in the Solar System that has a stationary, near-perfect circular orbit. How does one explain the coincidence that the moon is just the right distance, coupled with just the right diameter, to completely cover the sun during an eclipse? Professional astronomers have been gradually discouraged from investigating a phenomenon that has been reported on the Moon for 1,000 years. It is short-lived light, color, or other changes in the appearance of the lunar surface, referred to as Transient Lunar Phenomena.

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Miracle of the Sun

Starting in May of 1917, something happened to three shepherd children in the town of Fátima, Portugal. The events have become known as Our Lady of Fátima. Starting on May 1, 1917, the children began to describe seeing a woman “brighter than the sun, shedding rays of light clearer and stronger than a crystal ball, pierced by the burning rays of the sun.” The being was reported to have appeared to the children on the 13th day of six consecutive months in 1917, starting on May 13. According to ten year old Lúcia Santo, in the course of her encounters, the woman confided to the children three secrets, now known as the Three Secrets of Fátima. Thousands of people flocked to Fátima and Aljustrel in the ensuing months, drawn by reports of visions and miracles. On three separate occasions before the Miracle of the Sun, the children reported that the Lady had promised to them that she would, on October 13, 1917, reveal her identity and provide a miracle “so that all may believe.”

On October 13, 1917, the Miracle of the Sun was witnessed and reported by 50,000 to 100,000 people in the Cova da Iria fields near Fátima, Portugal. The people in attendance had assembled to observe the publicized event. According to many statements, after a downfall of rain, the dark clouds broke and the sun appeared as an opaque, spinning disc in the sky. It was said to be significantly duller than normal, and to cast multicolored lights across the Earth, the people and the surrounding clouds. The sun was then reported to have careened towards the earth in a zigzag pattern. It was said that the people’s previously wet clothes became “suddenly and completely dry,” as well as the wet and muddy ground that had been previously soaked because of the rain. According to the reports, the event lasted approximately ten minutes.

The Miracle of the Sun was marked by a large amount of angel hair over the land. On July 13, 1917, the lady is said to have entrusted the children with three secrets. These secrets have been highly controversial in the Catholic Church, and have been revealed to the public at different time periods, with the final one coming out in 2000. The First Secret was allegedly a vision of Hell. The Second Secret was a statement that World War I would end and goes on to predict World War II. The second half of the secret includes information about Russia and requests that it become consecrated to the Immaculate Heart. It should be noted that the Second Secret wasn’t revealed until 1941, after World War II had already began.

The majority of the controversy is with the Third Secret. It was revealed in 2000 and includes information about the persecution of Christians in the 20th century that culminated in the failed assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II. However, historical references to the Third Secret indicate something else entirely, with information regarding Apocalypse, a great apostasy, and satanic infiltration of the Catholic Church. If you are unfamiliar, apostasy is the formal disaffiliation from, or abandonment of, a religion by a person, basically, criticism of a person’s former religion. In 1980, John Paul II was quoted on the Third Secret. “It should be sufficient for all Christians to know this much. If there is a message, it is said that the oceans will flood entire sections of the Earth and from one moment to the other, millions of people will perish.”

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Solway Firth Spaceman

Val Camonica, Italy, is one of the largest valleys of the central Alps, in eastern Lombardy. It is the location of a set of ancient paintings that are believed to depict forgotten deities. The pictures resemble modern day astronauts, despite being painted around 10,000 BC. I can see the resemblance to a space suit, but I am more impressed with the modern day photographic evidence that was captured by the Solway Firth Spaceman photograph. On May 23, 1964, Jim Templeton, a firefighter from Carlisle, Cumberland, took three pictures of his five-year-old daughter while on a day trip to Burgh Marsh, situated near Burgh by Sands and overlooking the Solway Firth in Cumbria, England.

The only other people reported on the marshes that day were a couple of old ladies, and although cows and sheep would have normally been plentiful, they were huddled together at the far end of the marsh. In the second image captured by Templeton, a white figure can be seen in what looks like a space suit. Templeton insists that he did not see the figure until after his photographs were developed, and analysts at Kodak confirmed that the photograph was genuine. To this day, the picture remains unexplained and a source of international fascination. When the picture was taken, in 1964, human space suits were in their extreme infancy. It has been suggested by some people that the figure is merely someone with their back to the camera, perhaps wearing a hat or helmet.

Upon the national release of the photograph, Jim Templeton claimed that he was visited by two men who, he says, came from Her Majesty’s Government. The men tried to make Templeton admit that he had photographed a person, but he refused. In the same time frame that the picture was taken, a Blue Streak missile launch at the Woomera Test Range, using Cumbrian-built weaponry, was aborted because of two large men who were witnessed on the firing range. The technicians reported that the figures resembled the Solway Firth Spaceman. Ufologists have used the photograph as evidence that extraterrestrial life has influenced the modern day space program, including space suits.