By November 14th, the strange returns had been continuously showing up for close to a week. With an air defense exercise scheduled for that morning, Day convinced his commanding officer to let him direct aircraft to attempt an intercept of these anomalous radar returns.
Listen to “e173 The Tic Tac UFO Witnesses” on Spreaker.
Article by Tim McMillan November 12, 2019 (popularmechanics.com)
• Popular Mechanics magazine and website recently assembled five former sailors who served with the USS Nimitz carrier group and witnessed first hand the Navy’s November 2004 encounter with ‘tic tac’-shaped UFOs, one hundred miles off of the coast of San Diego. Gary Voorhis, Jason Turner, P.J. Hughes, Ryan Weigelt, and Kevin Day were all featured in the documentary film The Nimitz Encounters.
• In November 2004, Gary Voorhis was a Petty Officer 3rd Class on the USS Princeton guided missile cruiser on a routine training exercise. Voorhis was a six year veteran having served two combat tours. They were getting the “kinks out” of the ship’s new Spy-1 Bravo radar system. Voorhis was told by radar techs that they were getting “ghost tracks” and “clutter” on the radars. As a system technician, Voorhis was concerned about a possible malfunction. The air control systems were re-calibrated. But the ghost tracks were only clearer. Said Voorhis, “Sometimes they’d be at an altitude of 80,000 or 60,000 feet. Other times they’d be around 30,000 feet… Their radar cross sections didn’t match any known aircraft. …No squawk, no “IFF” (Identification Friend or Foe).”
• Kevin Day was the Princeton’s Combat Information Center Operations Specialist Senior Chief. It was his job to protect the airspace around the strike group. Day noticed strange radar tracks near San Clemente Island. But they were appearing in “groups of five to ten at a time and they were pretty closely spaced to each other,” said Day. “[They] were 28,000 feet going a hundred knots tracking south.” Ryan Weigelt remembers Senior Chief Day’s name being called over the comms.
• In the meantime, Voorhis was watching the highly precise radar returns. He would plot the UAP’s position, run up to the bridge, grab a pair of heavily magnified binoculars, and could faintly see the UAPs hovering there in broad daylight. [T]hen all of a sudden,” says Voorhis, “in an instant, they’d dart off to another direction and stop again.” “At night, they’d give off a kind of a phosphorus glow and were a little easier to see than in the day.”
• By November 14th, the strange returns had been continuously showing up for close to a week. With an air defense exercise scheduled for that morning, Day convinced his commanding officer to let him direct aircraft to attempt an intercept of these anomalous radar returns. Squadron Commander David Fravor was sent to engage with what Fravor would later describe as “an elongated egg or a ‘Tic Tac’ shaped” flying object, 46 feet long.
• Voorhis, Day, and the rest of the Princeton listened to the live comm chatter, as the UAPs effortlessly evaded the two fighter jets by demonstrating “an advanced acceleration, aerodynamic, and propulsion capability.” Outmaneuvered, Fravor and his wingman returned to the USS Nimitz. Another F/A-18 was sent to the intercept point. Lieutenant Chad Underwood would record the infamous “tic tac” video which would be released by ‘To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science’ and the New York Times in December 2017.
• While delivering supplies to the ship’s Signal Exploitation Space, former Petty Officer 3rd Class Jason Turner happened to see a video display of the tic tac object which was not part of the brief video released to the public. (see FLIR1 video below) Said Turner, “This thing was going berserk… It made a maneuver, like they were chasing it straight on,… then this thing stopped turning, just gone. In an instant. The video you see now, that’s just a small snippet in the beginning of the whole video. But this thing, it was so much more than what you see in this video.” Weigelt and Voorhis confirmed that the video they watched was far longer – 10 minutes – and clearer than the released version.
• Petty Officer Patrick “PJ” Hughes job on the Nimitz carrier was to secure inside a safe the hard drive data recorders from the airborne early-warning aircraft, the E-2 Hawkeye, which contains the plane’s operational software and recorded data that the aircrew sees during flight. He was unaware that the Hawkeye had encountered the tic tac UFOs. Hughes was visited by his commanding officer and two unknown individuals who ordered him to give them the data recordings for the AEGIS system, and then they left. He was told that the ship’s advanced Combat Engagement Center along with the optical drives with all the radio communications had been wiped clean. Voorhis remarked, “They even told me to erase everything that’s in the shop—even the blank tapes.”
• Weigel reports that the two unknown individuals wearing generic flight suits also visited the USS Princeton, went to the Admirals Quarters and posted a guard at the door. Pilot David Fravor has acknowledged that his squadron’s video tapes of the “Tic Tac” intercept had mysteriously vanished. But he never saw any ‘unidentified’ personnel removing data recorders and conducting an investigation, and he himself was never interviewed. Fravor calls all of that “bullshit”.
• The enlisted witnesses were disappointed to hear Fravor suggest some of their accounts are inaccurate. They all stand by their experiences, and also support Fravor’s account. Paco Chierici, a former F-14 pilot and the person credited with first sharing the news of the Nimitz UAP encounter in a 2015 Fighter Sweep article, had this to say: “The combination of those aviators, the Princeton Aegis Radar operators, and the E-2 crew convinced me beyond a doubt of the veracity of the story.” “I know those people and how that world works. There is no way it could have been fabricated or misinterpreted.”
• Popular Mechanics was able to locate a previously unknown witness who was with the Nimitz carrier group in 2004, but asked to remain anonymous. He says he was an Operations Specialist aboard the USS Princeton. Says this witness, “What really made this incident alarming was when a Blackhawk helicopter landed on our ship and took all our information from the top secret rooms.” “We were all pretty shocked and it was an unspoken rule not to talk about it because we had secret clearances and didn’t want to jeopardize our careers.”
• Since none of the witnesses or pilots involved say they were ever interviewed at the time, it appears the most significant concern for the ‘two unknown individuals’ who showed up after the incident was the ship’s electronic data. Nick Cook, the former aviation editor for Jane’s Defense Weekly, says there are a number of reasons why personnel might have boarded ships and seized electronic data. “It could mean it was sensitive information.” But in Cook’s opinion it is unlikely this was some sort of classified test or exercise. Says Cook, “It would be so against the norm of my experience with how the black world conducts testing.” Cook also says that it’s possible, but not likely, that the “Tic Tac” was some type of classified drone. “I searched for 10 years, and never found any compelling evidence that the type of technology exists.” “In the balance of probabilities, I don’t think it’s ‘ours’.”
• This is a portion of the Executive Summary filed on the Nimitz encounter.
The five men share an easy rapport with each other, playfully ribbing one another while also communicating a deep sense of mutual respect. It’s clear they all share the bond of having once served in the armed forces. Yet for Gary Voorhis, Jason Turner, P.J. Hughes, Ryan Weigelt, and Kevin Day—assembled together (right) in a private group chat by Popular Mechanics—something much bigger ties them together beyond simply serving in the U.S. Navy.
These men also share a connection of being witnesses to one of the most compelling UFO cases in modern history: the Nimitz UFO Encounters, an event that the Navy recently confirmed indeed involved “unidentified aerial phenomena.”
Largely overshadowed by a grainy black-and-white video, and a former Topgun fighter pilot eyewitness, these veterans offer new and intriguing details on what occurred with the Navy’s Strike Carrier Group-11 as it sailed roughly 100 miles off the Southern California coast in 2004—details that a former career intelligence agent who investigated the Nimitz Encounter while at the Pentagon can neither confirm, deny, or even discuss with Popular Mechanics.
Ultimately, these five men—the “other” Nimitz witnesses—could be key to understanding an event that a leading aviation defense expert says “likely wasn’t ours.”
So whose was it?
THE INTERCEPT
Stationed on the USS Princeton, a Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser, as the Nimitz carrier group went underway in early November 2004 for a routine training exercise, this would be the last time former Petty Officer 3rd Class Gary Voorhis would set sail aboard a Navy vessel.
Having already done almost six years in the Navy, including two combat tours, Voorhis was ready to transition to life outside the world of passionless grey metal hulls and vast leavening seas.
“The group was going to be deploying in a few months and there was a bunch of new systems, like the Spy-1 Bravo radar,” Voorhis tells Popular Mechanics. “It was really about getting all the kinks out.”
While chatting with some of the Princeton’s radar techs, Voorhis says he heard they were getting “ghost tracks” and “clutter” on the radars. For Voorhis, the Princeton’s only system technician for the state-of-the-art Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) and AEGIS Combat System, news of these systems possibly malfunctioning was especially concerning.
Fearing the ship’s brand new AN/SPY-1B passive radar system was malfunctioning, Voorhis says the air control systems were taken down and recalibrated in an effort to clear out—what’s assumed to be false radar returns.
“Once we finished all the recalibration and brought it back up, the tracks were actually sharper and clearer,” Voorhis says. “Sometimes they’d be at an altitude of 80,000 or 60,000 feet. Other times they’d be around 30,000 feet, going like 100 knots. Their radar cross sections didn’t match any known aircraft; they were 100 percent red. No squawk, no IFF (Identification Friend or Foe).”
Sitting in the Princeton’s Combat Information Center (CIC), Operations Specialist Senior Chief Kevin Day was tasked with the critical role of protecting the airspace around the strike group. “My job was to man the radars and ID everything that flew in the skies,” Day said in the documentary film The Nimitz Encounters.
On or around November 10, 2004, roughly 100 miles off the coast of San Diego, Day began noticing strange radar tracks near the area of San Clemente Island. “The reason why I say they’re weird [is] because they were appearing in groups of five to 10 at a time and they were pretty closely spaced to each other. And there were 28,000 feet going a hundred knots tracking south,” Day said in the documentary.
In another YouTube clip, Ryan Weigelt, the former Leading Petty Officer and power plant specialist for the SH-60B “Seahawk” helicopter, recalled the tone aboard the missile cruise at the time.
“Senior Chief Day, his name, was being called over the comms, no bullshit, every two minutes.” Weigelt said. “I recall hearing something, like a big, real-world scenario was going on, but I just didn’t really understand.”
While Day and the Princeton’s air traffic controllers continued to monitor the strange radar returns, Voorhis says he began to take the opportunity to use the ship’s advanced tracking systems to catch a glimpse of whatever these objects were.
“When they’d show up on radar,” Voorhis says, “I’d get the relative bearing and then run up to the bridge and look through a pair of heavily magnified binoculars in the direction the returns were coming from.” Describing what he saw during the daytime, Voorhis says the objects were too far off to make out any distinguishing features, however, he could clearly see something moving erratically in the distance.
“I couldn’t make out details, but they’d just be hovering there, then all of a sudden, in an instant, they’d dart off to another direction and stop again,” Voorhis says. “At night, they’d give off a kind of a phosphorus glow and were a little easier to see than in the day.”
2:45 minute “FLIR1” video of “Tic Tac” UFO off of San Diego in 2004 (‘To The Stars Academy’ YouTube)
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.
The ‘Hello From Earth’ organizers chose as its communication target a “super-Earth” orbiting the habitable zone of its parent star 20.4 light-years away known as Gliese 581d. The interstellar Tweet was scheduled for August 28, 2009, utilizing three facilities within NASA’s Deep Space Network that together represented the largest and most sensitive scientific telecommunications system in the world.
Many researchers suspect that whenever a UFO turns up on NASA’s live feed from the International Space Station, that they must deliberately cut the feed and blame it on a ‘loss of signal’.
Dave Spinks, a top paranormal and UFO investigator and author who has appeared on the Travel Channel, the History Channel, and Destination America, says you can’t beat West Virginia when it comes to UFO lore.
When former Nevada Senator Harry Reid was the Majority Leader, he was the go-to guy when it came to UFOs. When Bill Clinton was still president, Reid discussed UFOs with him during a White House visit. Reid told George Knapp that the truth behind UFOs was “something (Bill Clinton) was interested in”.
Breakthrough Listen and the Berkeley SETI Research Center recently announced they are partnering with NASA to use its TESS space telescope to assist SETI in its search for exoplanets that may harbor extraterrestrial intelligence. Said Ms Seager, “We are very enthusiastic about joining the Breakthrough Listen SETI search.”
The U.S. Navy has publicly acknowledged that the vehicles observed and recorded by U.S. Navy fighter pilots (off of both the East and West coasts), which are able to maneuver above 80,000 feet; can hover and then instantly accelerate to supersonic and even hypersonic speeds; and use a means of propulsion and control that does not appear to involve combustion, exhaust, rotors, wings or flaps, are indeed ‘unidentified aerial phenomenon’.
Listen to “e172 Hello From Earth: Australia’s First Interstellar Message” on Spreaker.
Article by Wilson da Silva November 13, 2019 (abc.net.au)
• A decade ago, the organizers of Australia’s National Science Week wanted to promote its annual ten day event and they dreamed up the project called ‘Hello From Earth’. The project would be a “Twitter to the stars” where they would collect short personal messages from the public, package them into a single transmission, and send them to the nearest habitable planet beyond our solar system. Now, ten years since the NASA transmission of these goodwill messages, they have passed the halfway mark on their long journey through the cosmos.
• The ‘Hello From Earth’ organizers chose as its communication target a “super-Earth” orbiting the habitable zone of its parent star 20.4 light-years away known as Gliese 581d. The interstellar Tweet was scheduled for August 28, 2009, utilizing three facilities within NASA’s Deep Space Network that together represented the largest and most sensitive scientific telecommunications system in the world. They included a transmission facility near Madrid, Spain, another in Barstow, California, and the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex in Australia. The transmission was repeated twice over two hours with a combined power of over 300 billion mobile phones at once.
• “[T]here’s no statute covering interstellar messages, and no-one has jurisdiction over transmissions,” said Paul Davies of Arizona State University who also chaired SETI’s Post-Detection Subcommittee. While there is no permission required to transmit an interstellar message, responding to an extraterrestrial signal requires the approval of the SETI Subcommittee. But even the transmission of signals into space will upset some people who consider it unwise and potentially catastrophic to invite an alien invasion. As humans have been inadvertently transmitting signals into space since the 1930s from television broadcasts to military radar, most scientists don’t object to interstellar texting. Technologically advanced extraterrestrials would already know we’re here.
• In 1974, the Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico was the first to intentionally broadcast an interstellar message to a star 25,000 light years away. There have been 31 such messages sent out to the cosmos. One was sent in 2008 from the facility outside of Madrid to commemorate the 50th anniversary of NASA. It also happened to be the 40th anniversary of the recording of the Beatles song, “Across the Universe”. Hence it was selected for transmission — with approval from Paul McCartney, Yoko Ono, and Apple Records. The song was transmitted to Polaris, “the North Star” 431 light years away.
• NASA approved the ‘Hello from Earth’ proposal just eight days before the start of National Science Week. Organizers quickly built a website and invited people to offer messages for transmission. Australia’s science minister, Kim Carr, submitted the first message: “Hello from Australia on the planet we call Earth. These messages express our people’s dreams for the future. We want to share those dreams with you.” The website was bombarded with visitors from all over the world. In all, 25,880 messages were encoded into a binary signal at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and sent into space. (See a sampling of the messages below)
• NASA insisted on a very high level of decorum in the cosmic messages: nothing remotely suggestive, no risque humor or anything aggressive. When, in 1973, NASA sent a plaque with the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 space probes, it included an illustration of a naked man and woman. NASA received complaints from members of US Congress, and newspapers ran letters objecting to NASA “exporting pornography to the stars”.
• It’s mind-boggling that we sent goodwill messages from a random selection of humans to a potentially habitable planet that might have a technical civilization. The chance that the messages reach an intelligent civilization on the distant exoplanet is highly unlikely, but it’s not zero. If a reply does come, it will arrive decades from now.
• What would you say to an alien civilization on an Earth-like planet far, far away? Here are some of the messages that were sent in August of 2009:
– “Greetings from a girl on Earth who, every so often, looks up at the night sky and waves hello in the hope that someone on another planet is doing the same.” – Sophie of Longmont, Colorado
– “If you come to Earth, look into: music, the beach, ice cream, hugs, family, love, dancing, cheese, trampolines, friendship, books and dreams. Just for a start.” – Tamasin, Richmond, Australia
– “If someone is reading this, I hope that our children will someday have the privilege of meeting one another.” — Tegan Larsen, San Antonio, United States
– “What do you see when you look up into the sky? Do you feel small and lonely, just like us? From now on, I can assure you one thing: you are not alone. Be happy.” – Sergio Camalich, Hermosillo, Mexico
– “Hello Baba, if you are out there I love you and hope you are watching me. I wonder if when you died you went to this planet.” — Liam Oliver, Coogee, Australia
– “All our petty disputes, disagreements and wars fade into insignificance when we consider our tiny world’s place in the cosmos.” — Silvio Zarb, Melbourne, Australia
– “There is only one thing bigger than this vast universe, the desire to discover. I hope I discovered you.” — T.S.M., Skopje, Macedonia
– “My aim of contacting you is to seek your assistance in transferring the sum of thirty-five million US dollars out of Nigeria and into your trusted bank account abroad.” – Hapatikiatwengo, Australia
– “Hi there. Sorry about the Outer Limits; hope you enjoyed I Love Lucy. Have you got all our missing socks? Love, Earth.” — Fred Mason, Roberts Creek, Australia
What would you say to an alien civilisation on an Earth-like planet far, far away?
“Greetings from a girl on Earth who, every so often, looks up at the night sky and waves hello in the hope that someone on another planet is doing the same.”
This message from Sophie of Longmont, Colorado, in the United States, is just one of almost 26,000 sent from Australia to an Earth-like planet 20 light-years away.
It’s been a decade since NASA transmitted these goodwill messages, and this week the transmission passed the halfway mark on its long, lonely journey through the silent cosmos.
The project, called Hello from Earth, began as a science communication campaign to get people excited about Australia’s National Science Week.
Those of us running the annual 10-day event were looking for an idea that would create a buzz on social media.
We decided on a kind of “Twitter to the stars”. We would collect short messages from the public and transmit them to the nearest habitable planet beyond our solar system.
Each message would be short, later packaged into a single transmission and sent using one of NASA’s facilities.
Our target was Gliese 581d, a “super-Earth” orbiting the habitable zone of its parent star.
First detected in 2007, studies in 2009 suggested it could have large oceans.
And since it was 20.4 light-years away, it would help give people a real appreciation of just how big the universe is.
“If you come to Earth, look into: music, the beach, ice cream, hugs, family, love, dancing, cheese, trampolines, friendship, books and dreams. Just for a start.” — Tamasin, Richmond, Australia
‘It might trigger an invasion’
When I suggested the idea, the bureaucrats involved with National Science Week were intrigued, if a little sceptical, but asked me to explore it.
In the months that followed, I had conversations with sometimes quizzical senior CSIRO staff, leading astronomers and US government officials, negotiating terms and agreeing to specifications.
Surprisingly, we didn’t need approval to transmit an interstellar message — but we would have if we wanted to respond to an extraterrestrial signal.
You can understand why: if an extraterrestrial signal is received, you can’t have everyone with a high-gain antenna answering back.
So who speaks for Earth? That turned out to be the SETI Post-Detection Subcommittee, which at the time was chaired by astronomer Paul Davies of Arizona State University, an old friend and former colleague.
“What do you think?” I asked in an overnight phone call after explaining Hello from Earth.
“Will we breach any unwritten rules in the scientific community?”
“Well, there’s no statute covering interstellar messages, and no-one has jurisdiction over transmissions,” Davies said from his home in Tempe, Arizona.
“But it will upset some people.”
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.
Listen to “e171 US Government ‘Forces NASA to Cut ISS Feed Whenever UFOs Appear for National Security’” on Spreaker.
Article by Sofie Jackson November 8, 2019 (dailystar.co.uk)
• Stephen Bassett has been campaigning since 1996 for the US government to end the “truth embargo” and declassify its knowledge of extraterrestrials and UFOs. He is the Executive Director of the Paradigm Research Group which lobbies Congress for disclosure of the UFO phenomenon. In an exclusive Daily Star interview, Bassett said that “NASA was formed in 1958 by the Space Act, and by then the government was already well aware of the extraterrestrial presence.” But since the Russians were developing their space agency, the US needed to create a comparable civilian space agency.
• The drafters of the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 realized that the space agency would “very likely” encounter the UFO/ET phenomenon which government insiders were intent on keeping a secret. So they included a clause in the Space Act that should NASA encounter anything that affected national security, they must say and do nothing and turn it over to the Department of Defense. Since the very existence of ET and UFOs is a matter of national security, this effectively prevented NASA from talking about UFOs at all.
• Bassett expressed his sympathy for NASA personnel. NASA’s ‘hands are tied’, said Bassett. “They have been in a really tough spot.” “The (UFO and extraterrestrials) are out there, (NASA) probably sees things, but they can’t address it. It has to go to the Pentagon.” And so NASA has to lie to the public in order to obey the federal law. NASA is a “victim” of the ‘truth embargo’ says Bassett. “I greatly respect NASA, but they are in an impossible position.” “Since 1958, NASA has been between a rock and a hard place.”
• Many researchers suspect that whenever a UFO turns up on NASA’s live feed from the International Space Station, that they must deliberately cut the feed and blame it on a ‘loss of signal’.
• Bassett says that if the existence of aliens were publicly revealed, rendering the government’s truth embargo moot, then NASA would throw a party. This would be a “massive boom” for NASA. By lifting this secretive posture, says Bassett, “interest in space and space research (would) expand and explode. NASA will be the recipient of that.” So the day after the government finally confirms the ET presence, “… they will be throwing some serious parties at various NASA facilities around the country”.
NASA has its “hands tied” and is forced to cut the International Space Station (ISS) live feed when UFOs turn up, according to a campaigner who has studied alleged alien phenomena for years.
Conspiracy theorists have often claimed the US space agency covers up the existence of extraterrestrial life by terminating the live feed from the ISS at the exact time UFOs appear.
This has never been proven and, according to the message that pops up when the feed is cut, it is simply down to a “temporary loss of signal with the International Space Station”.
But Stephen Bassett, who has been relentlessly campaigning since 1996 for the government to declassify its supposed knowledge of aliens, believes NASA’s hands are tied.
He told Daily Star Online: “They have been in a really tough spot and I feel for them and so if they are turning off the video cameras because something is flying by the space station it is not NASA being the bad guy.
“It’s them essentially obeying the law, which is what the National Security Act is, and simply not doing anything which would, quote, endanger the truth embargo because under the act of national security it has to remain.”
Stephen is the Executive Director of the Paradigm Research Group, an organisation set up to end the supposed government-imposed “truth embargo” on extraterrestrial presence on Earth.
This truth embargo, he explained, is what is stopping information on aliens being released to the public and something that NASA is also the victim of.
“I greatly respect NASA but they are in an impossible position,” he continued.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.
Listen to “e170 W.Va. Ground-Zero For UFO Research, Encounters” on Spreaker.
Article by David Sibray November 13, 2019 (wvexplorer.com)
• Dave Spinks, a top paranormal and UFO investigator and author who has appeared on the Travel Channel, the History Channel, and Destination America, says you can’t beat West Virginia when it comes to UFO lore. Spinks will speak on these matters at the Flatwoods Monster Museum in Sutton, WV on Saturday, November 23rd, and will sign copies of his new book, “Real West Virginia UFOs”.
• Spinks says West Virginia has a long association with UFO activity because of its role in the search for extraterrestrial life and because it is the location of many early UFO encounters. “Two of the earliest and most famous encounters in the U.S. were reported here,” Spinks says, referring to legendary encounters involving Mothman and the Flatwoods Monster.
• A former federal law-enforcement officer, Spinks began to collect notes about encounters with UFOs and the paranormal in the 1990s. He left law enforcement in 2011 and became a full-time paranormal investigator, appearing in nationally televised shows and in thousands of news articles and podcasts. Spinks grew up nearby near Birch River and some of the members of his family had attended school with some of the witnesses from Flatwoods. “That’s what started me thinking.”
• In 1952, people reported seeing a spacecraft crashing in the hills south of the town of Flatwoods, WV. On investigation, they encountered its apparent occupant, a super-human being called the Flatwoods Monster, which chased them from the crash site. Spinks also heard tales of Mothman, a winged creature said to haunt the Ohio Valley in the 1960s.
• West Virginia is also the home to the Green Bank Observatory where Frank Drake established the first telescopes used in the SETI program—the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.” Says Spinks, “Here he met with Carl Sagan” to speculate about the possibilities of intelligent (extraterrestrial) life.
A top paranormal investigator says West Virginia has a long association with UFO activity, because of its role in the search for extraterrestrial life and because it is the location of many early alleged UFO encounters.
Dave Spinks, perhaps best known for his appearances on the Travel Channel, the History
Channel, and Destination America, says you can’t beat the Mountain State when it comes to UFO lore.
“Two of the earliest and most famous encounters in the U.S. were reported here,” Spinks says, referring to legendary encounters involving Mothman and the Flatwoods Monster.
“But it was here, too, at Green Bank Observatory that Frank Drake established the first telescopes used in the SETI program—the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.”
“Here he met with Carl Sagan,” Spinks said, referring to the collaboration with scientists who met with the proponent of the Drake Equation, an argument used to speculate about the possibilities of intelligent life off the planet.
A former federal law-enforcement officer, Spinks began to collect notes about encounters with UFOs and the paranormal in the 1990s. However, his inspiration came from his youth spent in the hills near Flatwoods, the site of one of the state’s first encounters.
In 1952, a group of Flatwoods residents reported seeing what they believed was a spacecraft crashing in the hills south of the town. On investigation, they encountered its apparent occupant, a super-human, the Flatwoods Monster, a being that chased them from the alleged crash site.
Spinks grew up nearby near Birch River and some of the members of his family had attended school with some of the witnesses from Flatwoods. “That’s what started me thinking.”
Spinks also heard tales of Mothman, a winged creature said to haunt the Ohio Valley near Point Pleasant in the 1960s, during which West Virginians frequently watched the sky, hoping to catch a glimpse, which some claim to have done.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.
Listen to “e169 Senator Reid Encouraged by Newfound Interest in UFOs” on Spreaker.
Article by George Knapp November 4, 2019 (8newsnow.com)
• When former Nevada Senator Harry Reid was the Majority Leader, he was the go-to guy when it came to UFOs. When Bill Clinton was still president, Reid discussed UFOs with him during a White House visit. Reid told George Knapp that the truth behind UFOs was “something (Bill Clinton) was interested in”. In 2016, Hillary Clinton vowed to open up the Pentagon’s UFO files if elected. The Clintons still seek out Reid for his advice on UFOs.
• Reid had similar conversations with other national figures during his years in the Senate, including Senators Ted Stevens and Daniel Inouye, and former astronaut John Glenn. Knapp, a KLAS-TV Channel 8 reporter in Las Vegas (a CBS-affiliate), asked Reid what specifically John Glenn was interested in about UFOs. Reid said that Glenn remained tight-lipped about the subject, but he was “very interested”. “I didn’t want to push him,” said Reid.
• Bigelow Aerospace was the Nevada contractor who spearheaded Reid’s initial government sponsored UFO study. After that contract ended, Reid, along with Senators Stevens and Inouye appropriated funding for a scaled-down Pentagon UFO program in 2007 called Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, or AATIP. In 2010, Lue Elizondo became the point man for AATIP. Now the Pentagon denies that Elizondo ever worked there.
• UFO critics have pounced on the claim that Elizondo never worked for a Pentagon UFO project. Reid says he’s not surprised. Reid says that there is a fringe group who want to control the UFO narrative, the “so-called conspiratorial folks”. “They go online and try to belittle Elizondo and me and anybody else that is trying to (figure out the UFO stuff) in a scientific way,” says Reid. “Elizondo is a man with a great record serving our country and …he’s not backing off. And I appreciate that very much.”
• Although the Pentagon says AATIP ended in 2012, Reid is informed that the program is ongoing, with greater resources than it had before. And the US Navy has announced that it will encourage UFO encounter reports by pilots, indicating that the subject is no longer taboo. The ongoing wave of media interest has even convinced Reid’s most formidable skeptic – his wife who admitted, “[M]aybe you aren’t crazy after all.”
• [Editor’s Note] I’ll bet that the “conspiratorial folks” are even more nervous about how close Harry Reid is with Deep State toadies like Bill and Hillary Clinton.
LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Former Nevada Senator Harry Reid says he’s enthusiastic about reaction to a once-secret study of UFOs that Reid and congressional colleagues authorized more than a decade ago.
The last two years have seen an explosion of interest in UFOs among mainstream media, but there’s been push back from conspiracy enthusiasts, and some military officials.
When Bill and Hillary Clinton came to Las Vegas in May to speak to a large audience on the Las Vegas Strip, their first stop was the Henderson home of former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. It’s the same path followed by many Democratic politicians and presidential candidates who visit Nevada, seeking guidance from the retired, but still-crafty senator.
Reid and the Clinton”s share an interest in a controversial subject — UFOs. As a presidential candidate in 2016, Hillary Clinton vowed to open up the Pentagon’s UFO files. And when Bill Clinton was still president, Reid asked him about UFOs during one White House visit.
George Knapp: “You discussed it with Bill Clinton. Don’t know if we can talk about this?”
Harry Reid: “Yeah, yeah Bill is, one thing about President Clinton, no one ever said he wasn’t smart. He was and is an extremely intelligent man, and this is something he was interested in.”
Reid was cagey about whether the Clintons discussed UFOs during their recent visit, but told us the subject is definitely on the agenda for their next get together. Reid had similar conversations with other national figures during his years in the senate, including Senators Ted Stevens and Daniel Inouye, who lent their support to the creation of a secret Pentagon study of UFOs, as well as senator and former astronaut John Glenn.
Knapp: “Did he ever give you specifics about why?”
Reid: “Nope, nope, but he, I didn’t want to push him, but he was very interested.”
]FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.
Listen to “e168 Finding ET Could Take Long Time – Scientist Reveals Why This is Good” on Spreaker.
Article by Sean Martin November 8, 2019 (express.co.uk)
• Sara Seager is an astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the deputy science director of NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). The TESS space telescope uses an array of wide-field cameras to survey 85 percent of the sky to study the mass, size, density, and orbit of exoplanets, and telltale brightness dips potentially indicating planetary “transits” across its star. By analyzing data from TESS, scientists will determine which distant planets they should focus on in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
• Breakthrough Listen and the Berkeley SETI Research Center recently announced they are partnering with NASA to use its TESS space telescope to assist SETI in its search for exoplanets that may harbor extraterrestrial intelligence (see previous ExoArticle). Said Ms Seager, “We are very enthusiastic about joining the Breakthrough Listen SETI search.”
• Findings such as other earth-like exoplanets, evidence of the past existence of water on Mars, and habitable moons in our solar system suggest conditions for life are not unique to our planet. However, there is yet to be any concrete evidence of the existence of aliens. But scientists believe it will come. But when the discovery of other life in the galaxy does come, it is likely to be a gradual process. Speaking on a panel at the (70th annual) International Astronautical Congress in Washington DC (October 21-25, 2019), Ms Seager stated, “[W]hen alien life is found, it will …[be] a painstaking process where study after study will have to confirm alien existence.” “[N]ot like the little green humanoids arriving here on earth scaring everybody.” “It’s probably going to take a long time,” which will help humanity process the concept of extraterrestrial life. Ms Seager concluded: “Out of all the exoplanet endeavors (in the world) only SETI holds the promise for identifying signs of intelligent life.”
• [Editor’s Note] Let’s see. An astronomer at MIT with the most advanced technology in the world at her disposal, is saying that there is no evidence of the existence of extraterrestrial life beyond this planet. But when it happens, it will be a long and painstaking process of discovery. Sounds suspicious. Ah! Of course. They are being assisted by the Deep State puppet show known as SETI. Now it makes sense. Just more disinformation intended to assure the public that there is no such thing as UFOs and extraterrestrial beings visiting the planet, all evidence to the contrary.
Ms Seager says that the process of discovering extraterrestrial life will be very long. What exactly does she mean? Her line of thought probably goes something like this: First, SETI will one day announce the great discovery of an exoplanet with unmistakable signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. Then we’ll spend fifty years sending signals back and forth. Language “experts” will spend another fifty years formulating some sort of communication with them. Then we’ll decide on a mid-point between our planets where our representatives can meet, and set out for a hundred year journey to that rendezvous. Under this presumption, it would take a thousand years or so before we would be technologically able to visit each other’s planet. Yes, given Newtonian physics and this myopic perspective, it certainly would take a looooong time.
But this planet has been visited by various extraterrestrial groups for hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of years, influencing each stage of life and civilization. A hundred years ago we reached a level of technology that caught the attention of the various ET groups that operate in the background today. With the detonation of the first atomic bomb, both benevolent and negative ET groups began working with world military leaders and governments, and several of them met with President Eisenhower during the 1950’s. The new shadow government killed JFK to prevent him from disclosing all of this to the public, and then set up a secret cultural exchange program between Eben beings from the planet Serpo and American astronauts who went to Serpo in the early 1960’s and returned in the mid-1970’s. The world’s wealthy elite allied themselves with a group of negative ET beings in return for advanced technology that would allow them to create several secret space programs. Mind-controlled Deep State operatives were charged with maintaining this secrecy by any means. Mass mind control is the most common method.
People believe what has been drilled into them since birth. Their cognitive dissonance won’t allow them to contemplate anything except the agreed upon “scientific” narrative, as promulgated by the Deep State education system. Since humans “evolved” unassisted from a primordial soup under unique circumstances, these brain-washed scientists and academics like to point out the tremendously long odds of there being any other intelligent life in the universe. Surely there can only be a minimum of other intelligent beings that also developed by accident and happen to be at our level of technological skill at this same moment in time – if any. And as this universe is so vast, it would be a miracle that the two or three intelligent civilizations in the universe happened to find one another. And if we ever did meet an alien being, it would be so different from humans that we might not be able to effectively communicate with it, or even recognize it. The message from our most educated scientists is that the odds of humans ever finding another extraterrestrial civilization is so impossible, that for the average person its not worth even thinking about. … ‘Move along. There’s nothing to see here. Move along.’
The reality is that our universe is teeming with life. Virtually every star system in the galaxy is home to an extraterrestrial civilization. Here in our particular cluster of 52 stars, most of these civilizations are human-like, according to Corey Goode, and they are all watching and waiting to see if our time has finally come. Will we wake up to this deception that has stolen our reality, and join with our human cousins in the Galactic Federation? Will we overthrow the elite cabal and embark upon a new era of humanity on earth, with instant access to the advanced technologies that can solve our existing societal and environmental problems, and make it possible for us to expand our presence into the galaxy as we are meant to do?
The possibility of extraterrestrial life has intrigued humanity for centuries, but recent discoveries seem to prove that we are edging closer to the discovery. Findings such as Earth-like exoplanets, the past existence of water on Mars and habitable moons in our solar system suggest conditions for life are not unique to our planet. However, there is yet to be any concrete evidence of the existence of aliens, but scientists believe it will come.
But when that discovery does come, it is unlikely to be instantaneous, but rather a gradual process.
Sara Seager, an astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who focuses on detecting exoplanets, said when alien life is found, it will not be how the movies depict it where extraterrestrials invade Earth, but a painstaking process where study after study will have to confirm alien existence.
Speaking on a panel at the International Astronautical Congress in Washington, Ms Seager said: “It’s probably something that’s going to be a slow discovery, not like the little green humanoids arriving here on Earth scaring everybody.
“It’s probably going to take a long time.”
Ms Seager said the slow discovery will help humanity process the concept of extraterrestrial life.
Ms Seager is also NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) deputy science director.
Just a few weeks ago, Breakthrough Listen, an organisation which scans the stars in the hope of finding alien signals, bosses said they will collaborate with scientists on TESS – which looks for planets outside the solar system.
By analysing data from TESS scientists will be able to determine which distant planets they should focus on in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI).
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.
Listen to “e167 The Navy Acknowledges UFOs – Why Aren’t They on Washington’s Radar?” on Spreaker.
Article by Christopher Mellon November 2, 2019 (thehill.com)
• Government paralysis is something we’ve grown accustomed to on domestic matters but, when it affects national security as well, we truly are a nation at risk. Sixty years ago, Americans were shocked when the Soviet Union put Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite, into orbit. Congress promptly acted on Americans’ concerns and spurred “the space race”, culminating in a Moon landing twelve years later.
• The U.S. Navy has publicly acknowledged that the vehicles observed and recorded by U.S. Navy fighter pilots (off of both the East and West coasts), which are able to maneuver above 80,000 feet; can hover and then instantly accelerate to supersonic and even hypersonic speeds; and use a means of propulsion and control that does not appear to involve combustion, exhaust, rotors, wings or flaps, are indeed ‘unidentified aerial phenomenon’.
• This shocking announcement has scarcely been noticed by Congress. To date, there have been congressional oversight committee briefings but no hearings, no funds appropriated to study the phenomenon, not even a request for a report or a threat assessment. It appears that Congress has no problem with being kept in the dark all of these years by the military regarding these UFOs. Is the information too radical to process? Is the U.S. government in denial? It would seem a matter of utmost urgency.
• The writer, former Defense Department and US Senate intelligence staffer Chris Mellon, has interviewed numerous active-duty and retired military personnel who have encountered these UFOs. Without exception they express grave concern for their colleagues and near disbelief that our government is not reacting more vigorously. Policymakers should pay close attention to the experiences of U.S. military personnel, investigate thoroughly, and respond effectively.
• Myriad services and agencies including the National Reconnaissance Office, Defense Intelligence Agency, CIA, Air Force and Navy, FBI and National Security Agency, possess a pool of relevant data on UFOs, says Mellon. But we are not analyzing the vast quantity of data already collected by America’s vast ‘sensor networks’. We simply need to implement a strategy for the centralized collection and analysis of this data.
• We have entered a new frontier. Similar to our forebears who settled the Western half of the continent, we must still confront the unknown. But as President Eisenhower said in a speech he gave in 1958 in Ligonier, Pennsylvania, nineteenth century frontiersmen “were not turned back by terror; they did not succumb to the tensions …encountered beyond the fringes of civilization. They moved ahead as companions in adventure, well-knowing that danger is often the inseparable partner of progress and honor.”
In what could be a precursor to further stunning developments, the U.S. Navy has publicly acknowledged that the advanced aircraft depicted in several recently declassified gun-camera videos are UFOs, or what the Navy prefers to call “Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon” (UAPs). “The Navy designates the objects contained in these videos as unidentified aerial phenomena,” acknowledged Joseph Gradisher, spokesman for the deputy chief of naval operations, referring to the bizarre vehicles that have brazenly operated in restricted U.S. military airspace.
Strangely, this shocking announcement seems to have scarcely been noticed by Congress or the Trump administration. Is the information too jarring and radical to process? Are U.S. government officials in denial? One can only wonder, given the glaring disconnect between the Navy’s announcement and the limited government actions to protect U.S. military personnel and the nation as a whole.
The vehicles observed and recorded by U.S. Navy fighter pilots seem impervious to altitude or the elements; they are able to maneuver above 80,000 feet; they can hover and then instantly accelerate to supersonic and even hypersonic speeds; they have very low radar cross-sections and use a means of propulsion and control that does not appear to involve combustion, exhaust, rotors, wings or flaps.
Since the Navy asserts these are not U.S. aircraft, we are confronted by the daunting prospect that a potential adversary of the United States has achieved the ability to render our most sophisticated aircraft and air defense systems obsolete. Much like the Japanese reacting to the appearance of Admiral Perry’s steam-powered fleet in Tokyo Bay in the 1850s, it would seem a matter of utmost urgency to determine who is operating these craft, how they work and the intentions of those commanding them.
I’ve interviewed numerous active-duty and retired military personnel who have encountered these mysterious vehicles. Without exception they express grave concern for their colleagues and near disbelief that our government is not reacting more vigorously.
This situation is not altogether unprecedented. Some 60 years ago Americans were shocked when the Soviet Union orbited Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite. Sputnik garnered sustained front-page coverage, however, and Congress promptly acted on Americans’ concerns by approving increased space and defense expenditures and enhanced education programs for math and science. The concerns roused by Sputnik spurred America to enter “the space race.” The nation rallied to the cause and the commitment paid off when astronaut Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon a mere 12 years later.
Consider by contrast our government’s tepid response to the latest news about UAPs. Some congressional oversight committees have asked for and received briefings, but none has held a hearing, either open or closed; none has appropriated funds for collection or analysis; none has even asked for a report or a threat assessment. Nor have Congress members expressed concern over apparently being kept in the dark on this issue for years by the executive branch, a situation that changed only after a small private organization — To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences, which I advise on national security affairs — made Department of Defense gun-camera footage available to the press and to Congress.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.
Listen to “e166 Do We Need a Special Language to Talk to Extraterrestrials?” on Spreaker.
November 5, 2019 (wired.com)
• In May 2018, from a radar facility in Tromsø, Norway, ‘Sónar Calling’ trained its antennas on a potentially habitable exoplanet located 12 light years from Earth called GJ237b. Sónar Calling is an interstellar messaging project by the nonprofit METI International, or ‘Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence’ which began in 2017 (as the sister organization to SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence).
• The Sónar Calling messaging project has sent two transmissions to potential cosmic cousins. Both messages, each sent over the course of three days, have consisted of a selection of short songs and a primer on how to interpret the contents. The second broadcast was notable for sending an extraterrestrial language devised by physicists Yvan Dutil and Stephane Dumas in the late 1990s.
• Dutil and Dumas’ “language” is based on a communication system known as “Lincos”, a mathematical format developed by Dutch mathematician Hans Freudenthal in 1960. The ‘primer’ begins by introducing ET to numerals and basic arithmetic, and then progresses to more complex topics like human biology and the planets in our solar system. This mathematical language has been sent into space twice before in 1999 and 2003.
• Many mathematicians believe that math is a constant in the fabric of reality. Math isn’t something that humans created so much as it is something that the human mind discovered. Still, Lincos rests on the assumption that an ET is “human-like in its mental state”. If ET does in fact think like a human, does that alien also have some kind of human-like language? Early artificial intelligence researcher Marvin Minsky argues that ET is likely to have language because language is an ideal solution to fundamental problems faced by any intelligent species including constraints on time, energy, and resources.
• A deeper question is whether ET’s language will be similar to our own. Noam Chomsky has argued that universal grammar is a structure common to all human languages on earth. Brain imaging studies have shown that the structure of human language manifests in our neural brain activity. So if extraterrestrials do have a language similar to earth languages, it might imply that they also have a functionally equivalent neurobiology.
• Astrobiologist Charles Cockell compares the likelihood of biological similarities between humans and extraterrestrial beings with the similarities between humans and other animals here in earth. Cellular life arises from the same four nucleotides to create the structure of an eye or a wing. Universal biological similarities puts constraints on the trajectory of evolution tempered with adaptations to conditions on their home world. It is therefore reasonable to assume that extraterrestrial evolution might arrive at similar solutions to common issues, such as evolving a brain capable of recursive languages.
• If that’s the case, then the best way to communicate may not be designing artificial languages, but sending ET a set of encyclopedias. If ET has developed its own artificial intelligence, it could potentially decipher the structure of a natural language message. Aliens will still need some kind of language to connect some language symbols to their meaning. But as on earth, the best way to start an interstellar conversation might simply be by saying “hello.”
• [Editor’s Note] A lot of assumptions were made to get to the theory that extraterrestrial beings may have similar language skills, and therefore similar neurobiology as humans on earth. This strikes me as a lot of scientific gibberish meant to assure the average mind-controlled human that smart scientists are working day and night to unlock the mystery of whether there may be other intelligent extraterrestrial life in the universe. What other organization commonly uses this modality…. hmmm… oh yes! SETI. This sounds a lot like what SETI does to make people believe they are earnestly searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, when they and their Deep State handlers know for a fact that intelligent extraterrestrials exist all around us and regularly interact with our elite. According to these ‘deep thinkers’, a major obstacle is how we might communicate with these advanced beings. Have they ever heard of telepathy which requires no spoken language, and which virtually everyone who has had an encounter with an alien being has reported?
In May 2018, a radar facility in Tromsø, Norway, trained its antennas on GJ237b, a potentially habitable exoplanet located 12 light years from Earth. Over the course of three days, the radar broadcast a message toward the planet in the hopes that there might be something, or someone, there to receive it. Each message consisted of a selection of short songs and a primer on how to interpret the contents.
This was the second iteration of Sónar Calling GJ273b, an interstellar messaging project by the nonprofit METI International that began in 2017. Although both transmissions were billed as a “music lesson for aliens,” the second broadcast was notable for rehabilitating an extraterrestrial language developed by the physicists Yvan Dutil and Stephane Dumas in the late 1990s.
This custom symbolic system begins by introducing ET to numerals, and then progresses to more complex topics like human biology and the planets in our solar system. An earlier version of the language was first sent into space in 1999 and again in 2003 as part of the Cosmic Call messages—a crowd-sourced interstellar messaging project that marked the first serious attempt at interstellar communication since Carl Sagan and Frank Drake sent the Arecibo message into space 25 years earlier.
All of these formal messaging attempts have taken basically the same approach: Teach numerals and basic arithmetic first. But as some recent insights in neurolinguistics suggest, it might not be the best way to greet our alien neighbors.
The world’s first interstellar communication system, the lingua cosmica, or Lincos, set the tone for all subsequent attempts by placing
basic math at its core. Designed by the Dutch mathematician Hans Freudenthal in 1960, Lincos inspired several other mathematicians and scientists to try their hand at designing extraterrestrial languages. Each system is ultimately an attempt at solving a remarkably complex problem: How do you communicate with an intelligent entity you know nothing about?
The question gets at the nature of intelligence itself. Humans are the only species on Earth endowed with advanced mathematical ability and a fully fledged faculty of language, but are these hallmarks of intelligence or human idiosyncrasies? Is there an aspect of intelligence that is truly universal?
Scientists and mathematicians have grappled with these questions for centuries. As the Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner once observed, mathematics is “unreasonably effective” at describing the natural universe, which has led a significant contingent of mathematicians to conclude that math is baked into the fabric of reality. From this perspective, mathematics isn’t something produced by the human mind so much as something the human mind discovers.
Most interstellar communication systems were designed around this conclusion. The goal isn’t to teach ETs about addition and subtraction—presumably they know as much if they can build a telescope to receive the message. Instead, these systems teach ETs about the way we code numbers as symbols. Then they can build up to more complex ideas.
It’s an elegant solution to a difficult problem, but Lincos still rests on the assumption that an ET is “human-like in its mental state,” as Freudenthal once conceded. But if ET does in fact think like a human, does that alien also have some kind of human-like language?
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.
Listen to “e165 This Town Prohibits WiFi for Sake of Tapping Extraterrestrials” on Spreaker.
October 30, 2019 (sputniknews.com)
• Since 1958, Green Bank, West Virginia has been home to the United States’ first national astronomy hub, the Green Bank Observatory. The world’s largest steerable radio telescope, the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, has located black holes, gravitational waves, and pulsars to name a few cosmic anomalies. In September, GBT researchers detected the most massive neutron star ever captured by telescopic lenses.
• Green Bank is also where the ‘Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence” (or “SETI”) began in 1960 with Project Ozma, a state-funded effort to listen for signals from potential extraterrestrial intelligences. SETI’s work is still ongoing at Green Bank.
• The 8,500 residents living in surrounding Pocahontas County are prevented by law from emitting any radio frequency interference (or RFIs) by their home electronic devices and appliances, to avoid data interference with Green Bank’s astronomical studies. Anti-RFI legislation dates back to a 1956 Act that says it’s “illegal to operate or cause to be operated any electrical equipment within a two-mile radius of… any radio astronomy facility”.
• Frequencies emitted by astronomical phenomena are simil
ar to ordinary WiFi connections at 2.4 GHz. Staff at the observatory are charged with pinpointing local RFI hotspots that could potentially harm its research. RFI technician Chuck Niday drives around the county looking for unauthorized radio waves. In today’s era of high-tech gadgets and smart homes, unauthorized RFIs are becoming ubiquitous. Popular Mechanics quoted Niday as saying “We got tons of WiFi around here. It’s kind of don’t ask, don’t tell”. Niday notes that there is little that could be done about it – apart from the locations being properly mapped for further study, as observatory staffers don’t have the power to strip residents of their WiFi spots.
• Green Bank’s site director Dr Karen O’Neil says, “The GBT is the most sensitive telescope in the world”. O’Neil admits that it is challenging to keep track of new RFI-causing WiFi connections. But being such a rural area, RFI interference is not nearly as ubiquitous as in other more densely populated areas. Says O’Neil, “If we ever lose the GBT, we will lose ability to dig deep into the universe.”
Green Bank, West Virginia is a key location for past and present-day cosmic research, as it’s been home to the iconic Green Bank Observatory ever since it first
opened in 1958 as the United States’ first national astronomy hub.
Here, operational telescopes, including the world’s largest steerable radio telescope, the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, or GBT, have found black holes, gravitational waves, pulsars, and whatnot. Also, it is where just last month, local researchers detected the most massive neutron star ever captured by telescopic lenses.
And it doesn’t stop here: Green Bank is also where the comprehensive study and search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) kicked off. In 1960, Frank Drake started Project Ozma here, the first US state-funded effort to listen for extraterrestrial intelligence and intercept signals, if there are any. Besides, the town is the place where he wrote his famed equation about the possibility of worlds other than ours.
SETI work is still ongoing at Green Bank, with a gigantic trove of one million gigabytes of related data filed over the last three years having been released to the public.
However, there is a nuance, if not a setback that comes with the continuous scientific progress in the area.
This part of the larger Pocahontas County, with a population of only 8,500 people, has long lived under binding anti-radio frequency interference (RFI) legislation, which forbids any devices or appliances at home or beyond that would emit RFIs – as these may ruin research, experts claim.
One of the past legislative acts that still applies there is the Virginia’s Radio Astronomy Zoning Act of 1956 that says it’s “illegal to operate or cause to be operated any electrical equipment within a two-mile radius of… any radio astronomy facility”.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.
Many mathematicians believe that math is a constant in the fabric of reality. Math isn’t something that humans created so much as it is something that the human mind discovered. Still, Lincos rests on the assumption that an ET is “human-like in its mental state”. If ET does in fact think like a human, does that alien also have some kind of human-like language?
Since 1958, Green Bank, West Virginia has been home to the United States’ first national astronomy hub, the Green Bank Observatory. The world’s largest steerable radio telescope, the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, has located black holes, gravitational waves, and pulsars to name a few cosmic anomalies. In September, GBT researchers detected the most massive neutron star ever captured by telescopic lenses.
In the early morning of October 30th 1969, just before dawn on a clear night, John Cudby, the security officer at the Waipukurau Aerodrome in Central Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand was making his rounds at the airport. He was alerted by his dog to a “humming” similar to a vacuum cleaner. Then he saw three lights hovering about 70 feet above the ground
So Officer Godfrey underwent hypnosis where he recalled being struck by a beam of light which floated him into the craft. Inside the spaceship, he was bathed in an intense white light. A human-like being named Joseph, wearing Biblical clothing, questioned him.
The small central Argentinian town of Capilla Del Monte is surrounded by mountains. The locals there believe that deep beneath the mountains is a large UFO base called “Erks”. Famous throughout southern South America, the town has been labeled “the spiritual capital of the country”.
After trailing the light for some time, several local police officers decided to meet at the top of Sand Mountain where they could get a better look at the UFO flying over Dekalb County. They watched it fly away southwest over the valley.
Turner goes on to describe the UFO…
There’s a new school of thought that if the human species intends to become a space-faring civilization, it will not only require advancements in propulsion technology’ (i.e.: ‘warp drive’, ‘anti-gravity’ and ‘ ion propulsion’ for example), but enhancements in human physiology as well.