Extraordinary claims. Ordinary investigations.

Full documentary “UFOs Are Here!”, featuring: Steven Spielberg, Stan Deyo, Jacques Vallee, Prof. Allen Hynek, Stanton Friedman, Margaret Mead, Ken Arnold, Betty Hill, Rev. William Gill, Klaus Nobel, RAAF Sqdn Ldr White, Ray Palmer and Colin Cameron.

Produced in 1977, it’s very interesting to listen their opinions thirty years later. Most of them are also deceased now. Rev. Gill, for instance, passed aways a few weeks ago, so it only adds to the value of these interviews.

At that time, president Carter, who had previously reported a UFO, was promising greater things for ufology. And Spielberg was about to release “Close Encounters”.

This is the same documentary from which I excerpted some clips and commented some time ago, I didn’t know it was available in full on the internet.

[via Anomaly TV]

“Space fireworks” (Uchuu-hanabi) lit the head of Japanese people this Sunday, glowing as bright as the moon. At least for a few moments, it is.

Part of an experiment to study the atmosphere conducted by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Hokkaido University and Kochi University of Technology, the three luminous orbs were composed of clouds of lithium vapor released into the ionosphere by a rocket. The red glow was caused by sunlight striking the lithium vapor clouds as they disperse. “In the first few seconds after each lithium release, the light should become as large and bright as the moon,” says team member Masayuki Yamamoto, a professor at Kochi University of Technology.

You can check some pictures on the official JAXA page, or on 2-channeru. As it is, unfortunately it wasn’t seen by everyone, because the weather was cloudy.

This experiment reminds of several episodes in ufology. For instance, there was the case of a chemical trail left by a rocket launch, believed by some to be the face of Jesus, but debunked by late ufologist James McDonald and which even made into the cover of Science. There countless instances where missile launches were mistaken for UFO cases. The case of Canary Islands is of notice, as much was made of it.

Outside ufology, this experiment also bring to mind the bizarre tests of nuclear weapons in space. Yes, you read that well, both Americans and Russians exploded nuclear devices in space. Though not very widely known, there’s an excellent documentary about these, with exclusive footage of the spectacular and dangerous shows: Nukes in Space: The Rainbow Bombs. You can watch one of the tests, Starfish Prime, here.

[news of the Japan test via Pink Tentacle]

Seen above, a shot of Billy Meier’s “weddingcake” craft, allegedly an extraterrestrial device. A strange appendage is circled in blue. What could it possibly be?

According to The Billy Meier case: more conclusive “smoking gun” proof of deception, that’s just the handle of a garbage can lid that can be found on Meier’s farm:

Read the full analysis for much more details. But maybe the best part is the “explanation” given by Meier (or his aliens) for why the lower part of an alleged alien craft looks exactly like a garbage can lid, complete with a handle. From Meier’s 254th Contact Report, November 28, 1995:

Ptaah: “. . . As far back as the 1920s we worked with flying devices you have named the ‘Wedding Cake Ship,’ … we endeavored to transmit all of the necessary data regarding the vehicles’ shape to terrestrial scientists, in the form of telepathic impulses, to assist them in developing flying disks on Earth … We thoroughly investigated the entire situation and discovered that the old, newly re-emerged drawings were used for the design and production of these receptacle covers. … This, then, is how the shape of the container covers came about, which, as I mentioned earlier, strikingly resemble the lower rim section and undercarriage on our flying devices.”

It’s more ridiculous than his excuses as to why his photos of the pretty Pleiadian girls were exactly like dancers from the Dean Martin show. Photographing an American show on TV and claiming it was a real contact with aliens is also not much different from photographing a book illustration and claiming it was from a time travel trip. Click the image below to check “SpaceTimeNews” comparison:

But I digress. Knowing how Meier created his alien ship, and having a photograph of an enthusiast on his farm proudly holding a garbage can lid (probably assuming it was obviously different, which it is not), tempted me to use some Photoshop skills to correctly scale the Weddingcake craft. The result:

Once again, I recommend the reading of The Billy Meier case: more conclusive “smoking gun” proof of deception for more on Meier’s garbage affair. Also, please note the man above is not Meier, and the actual model created over the garbage lid is not golden, but silver. The montage is just to show scale. And get some laughs from all of this.

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Still trying to separate fact from fiction? How about an online education? There are plenty of online college courses to help you figure things out. There are even grants for education to help with the finances.

According to physicist Robert A. Freitas, Jr., There Is No Fermi Paradox:

Less than 10% of the Earth’s surface, 1% of the Moon, 0.1% of Mars, and 10^-7% of Venus (total 5 x 10⁷ km²) has been surveyed to 1- to 10-m visible resolution. This leaves 99.96% of Solar System surface area (1.3 x 10¹¹ km²) unexamined for likely artifacts. Interplanetary spacecraft and ground-based telescopes have photographed portions of some planets and asteroids down to 20-km resolution, plus a few tracts on some outer planet moons to 1-10 km. Objects buried or submerged are undetectable with current instrumentation. Large artificial habitats in the asteroid belt (Papagiannis, 1978) would appear visually indistinguishable from natural objects, especially since the belt population itself is poorly cataloged. The assertion that a resident artifact would alert us to its presence is an unwarranted, unsupportable, and untenable assumption.

Very reasonable. In my humble opinion, assuming a galactic civilization would be noticed is not that unwarranted, unsupportable nor untenable, but it’s indeed necessary to remind just how limited our search for extraterrestrial intelligence has been so far.

We can only discard with some confidence civilizations of Type III. But there may still be some Type II civilizations out there, and possibly countless of Type I. We would still not be noticing them. The Fermi Paradox assumes at least one civilization should have evolved to Type III by now.

We are still Type 0! Nada!

“Presenting factual, plausible and sometimes near impossible prodigious, curious and eccentric human beings who stands as examples of the sheer variety of humankind”. It’s The Human Marvels website.

Shown above, Dutch Fakir Mirin Dajo. In 1947, at the Corso Theatre in Zurich, he allowed an assistant to plunge a fencing foil right through his body. The foil appeared to have pierced several vital organs and yet, the fakir remained relatively unharmed. Needless to say, people were shocked, amazed and terrified by what they saw.

The doctors could find no evidence of trickery but many still refused to believe what they saw. Mirin Dajo agreed to an x-ray with the foil in place. The resulting image confirmed the legitimacy of his abilities.

It is important to note that his unique skill may have resulted in his demise on May 26, 1948. An autopsy revealed that Dajo died of an aortic rupture.