INDEX OF ARTICLES:
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 AIRCRAFT ANOMALIES
UFO PHOTOGRAPHED ON FLIGHT FROM SAN DIEGO, CALEXICO
NEW YORK PILOT SPOTS UFO
UNKNOWN OBJECTS PHOTOGRAPHED NEAR PLANE
ANCIENT CIVILIZATION / ANCIENT EARTH
STONE BLOCKS MAY BE PART OF EUROPE'S FIRST STEP PYRAMID
PRE-INCAS OF PERU ASTEROIDS / COMETS / NEAR EARTH OBJECTS
ASTEROIDS: TREASURES OF THE PAST AND THREAT TO THE FUTURE
DEFLECTING ASTEROIDS DIFFICULT BUT POSSIBLE CRYPTOZOOLOGY / FLORA & FAUNA ANOMALIES
THE BIRD THAT DEVOURS MEN
MYSTERY UNDERWATER CREATURE
CHUPACABRA SIGHTINGS REPORTED IN CENTRAL RUSSIA GEOLOGY / EARTH
HIGHEST WAVES EVER MEASURED APPEAR NORTH OF SCOTLAND
EMERGING UNDERSEA VOLCANO HAS ‘MOAT OF DEATH’
EARLY CASUALTIES OF GLOBAL WARMING
WORLD WEATHER CHAOS
OCEAN OF TORNADOES STRIKES MID-SOUTH
EARTHQUAKES, VOLCANIC ACTIVITY HIGH
MYSTERY BOOMS ARE BACK MARS
MARS CRATER WITH WATER AND STRUCTURES
A SIGN OF A BASE ON MARS
MARS FACES IN HILLSIDE
MARS STRUCTURES? SPACE / SCIENCE
108 MINUTES THAT CHANGED THE WORLD
EVIDENCE MOUNTS FOR COMPANION STAR TO OUR SUN
THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE: DO WE LIVE IN A DESIGNER SOLAR SYSTEM?
PROFESSOR PREDICTS HUMAN TIME TRAVEL THIS CENTURY UFO / ET
OLD REAL PICTURE POSTCARD SHOWS UFO
SANTILLI CHANGES HIS STORY ON AUTOPSY FILM
GENERAL LOVEKIN SAW ALIEN DEBRIS
NUCLEAR SPECIALISTS TESTIFY TO UFOs MISCELLANEOUS
TIMELY NOTE
ORBS OR TRICKS OF THE LENS?
FALLING ICE PERPLEXES SCIENTISTS
ARE YOU ALLERGIC TO ELECTRICITY?
 UFO PHOTOGRAPHED ON FLIGHT FROM SAN DIEGO, CALEXICO
http://www.ufocasebook.com/calexico2.jpg
http://www.ufocasebook.com/calexico1.jpg
March 23, 2006- A chance UFO was captured on photograph by Germa'n Sanchez during a flight from San Diego Calexico, on board of a small plane. The sighting occurred at 9:40 AM. Mr. Sanchez used a Sony DSC-P92 camera.
The photographs were sent to me by the photographer's brother, Gabriel. I appreciate his valuable collaboration.
A big thanks to Ana Luisa Cid, www.analuisacid.com.
SOURCE: Fotografía y créditos: Germán y Gabriel Sánchez
UFO Casebook online report
UFO Casebook #201 4-17-06
http://www.ufocasebook.com/041706.html
NEW YORK PILOT SPOTS UFO
http://www.nationalufocenter.com/artman/uploads/16737businessjet.jpg La Guardia --While Flying at FL340 (34,000 feet) Westbound on a flight plan from KLGA to KMCI Airport to Kansas City, MCI) performing duties associated with my job as a First Officer, I noticed a very large strobe at my three o'clock position and at an altitude of 20 to 30 thousand feet above us tracking SSW. No object outline was seen. Its apparent speed was slow in a south direction. Object "strobed" once every seven seconds, as it moved in what appeared a straight line. I asked the Captain if he could see what I saw, but from his seating position in the aircraft, and the height of the sighting, he could not, and did not get out of his seat. We turned down the "DU"s...(Data display units) in the aircraft to rule out any reflections from inside the cockpit. I called NY Center and asked them if they had any traffic or military traffic 20 to 30 thousand feet above and behind us and he indicated that he only had a Falcon Jet behind us going north...
"Center" asked other aircraft in our general area, if they could see any other traffic on their TCAS, or visually if they had any other reports. I think we were talking to NY Center, as our position was about 40 NM south of KBGM (Binghampton, NY). As the object passed above and behind us, I was indicating to the Captain where to look out his rear clear view window to see the object. He did not see it, as we were flying Westbound and the object was preceding Southbound.
I think they asked Southwest and American, and possibly United. All Aircraft reported nothing seen. The end of the sighting was 0020 Zulu or about 19:20 hours Eastern Time. I don't believe it was a satellite, since satellites don't have strobes. Air Traffic Controller indicated that he was not surprised at the sighting as he receives them from time to time. I could see no object just a visible strobe. No position lights. I also thought when I first saw the strobe that it could be a distant star going supernovae. Thanks to Peter Davenport NUFORC http://www.nuforc.org/
SOURCE: Filer's Files #16 - 19 April 2006
http://www.nationalufocenter.com/artman/publish/article_72.php
UNKNOWN OBJECTS PHOTOGRAPHED NEAR PLANE Hi B J I send to you this photograph that maybe interesting to you. It was taken in Ajijic, Jalisco near (Chapala lake) on 22/05/05. Two objects (or more) are apparently following the airplane, with one of them very near to the wing. Thanks, Oscar Franco
http://www.ufocasebook.com/ajijicsmall.jpg
http://www.ufocasebook.com/ajijic.jpg
A big thanks to Oscar for sending another nice image to us.
SOURCE: UFO Casebook #202 4-24-06
http://www.ufocasebook.com/042406.html
STONE BLOCKS MAY BE PART OF EUROPE'S FIRST STEP PYRAMID Researchers said on Wednesday they have found geometrically cut stone blocks covering a central Bosnian hill that a hobby archaeologist claims is a pyramid.
Archaeologists and other experts began digging on the sides of the mysterious hill near the central Bosnian town of Visoko last week. On Wednesday, the hill revealed geometrical stone blocks on one side that Semir Osmanagic, 45, a wealthy Bosnian who moved to Houston 15 years ago, to raise £100,000 for the project, claims are the outer layer of the pyramid.
"These are the first uncovered walls of the pyramid," said Osmanagic, who studied Latin-American pyramids for 15 years and who proposed the theory that the 650m mound rising above the small town of Visoko is actually a step pyramid -- the first such found in Europe.
"We can see the surface is perfectly flat. This is the crucial material proof that we are talking pyramids," he said.
The huge stone blocks appear to be cut in cubes and polished.
"It is so obvious that the top of the blocks, the surface is man-made," Osmanagic said. He plans to continue the works throughout the summer, "after which the pyramid will be visible", he said.
The research on the hill, known as Visocica, found that it has perfectly shaped, 45-degree slopes pointing toward the cardinal points, and a flat top. Under layers of dirt, workers discovered a paved entrance plateau, entrances to tunnels and large stone blocks that might be part of a pyramid's outer surface.
Satellite photographs and thermal imaging revealed two other, smaller pyramid-shaped hills in the Visoko valley.
Experts ridicule the notion. “This is total nonsense. It’s impossible. There was no high culture in this region at that time capable of building something on this scale,” said Professor Enver Imamovic, a respected archeologist from Sarajevo.
“Nature simply cannot build such a perfect geometric shape,” Osmanagic says. "The four sides of the Visocica hill have regular slopes of almost exactly 45 degrees, facing north, south, east and west exactly."
Scattered in the hill’s scrubby vegetation are sandstone slabs that look as though they have been polished and cut. Running into the west side is a “causeway” 500 yards long and 40 wide.
And beneath the valley there appears to be a network of tunnels. Yesterday the diggers opened one which, according to local folklore, runs more than two miles to the “pyramid”. They penetrated far enough to find side tunnels. “This is definitely not a natural formation,” declared Nadjia Nukic, a geologist.
There is more, claims Osmanagic, who sports an Indiana Jones-style cowboy hat.
“Radar analysis showed there are tunnels inside and they are perfectly straight and the intersections are at 90 degrees.” Satellite thermal images indicate that the hill cools faster than its surroundings, suggesting that is less dense. There was a curious “resonance” from the hill when the town was shelled during the Bosnian war.
“We’re talking about a huge construction effort here. The size of this pyramid will shock the archaeological world. It’s substantially higher than the Great Pyramid of Egypt,” said Osmanagic, who has spent 15 years researching the pyramids of Central and South America.
“We have discovered tunnels linking the pyramid with other hilltops. We have also found a huge entrance plateau, paved with thousands of handmade sandstone plates. Once the world accepts that we have this huge pyramid we will start trying to answer the questions: who? when? how? and why?”
Osmanagic even claims that two other smaller triangular hills in the valley are pyramids lost to history. He calls them the Pyramids of the Moon and of the Dragon. “I believe there are at least five pyramids in this valley,” he says.
The work will continue for about six months at the site just outside Visoko, about 30km north-west of the capital, Sarajevo. Two experts from Egypt are due to join the team in mid-May.
"It will be a very exciting archaeological spring and summer," Osmanagic said.
SOURCE: Mail and Guardian
http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=269597&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__international_news/
Conspiracy Journal 4/21/06 #362
http://uforeview.tripod.com/conspiracyjournal362.html
PRE-INCAS OF PERU
http://www.nationalufocenter.com/artman/uploads/16ollantaytambovirocochaface.jpg In ancient sites on Earth there are faces similar to those on Mars. Across from the ruins of Ollantaytambo in the Urubamba Valley stands a sacred mountain believed to have the profile of Viracocha, the Inca sun god, carved into the stone. Mysterious The gigantic monoliths are part of what was to be a shrine or temple from ancient times. The legend goes that a white bearded God, Wiracocha, entered the town and blessed the people. They so honored him, that they carved his face in the mountainside, where you can see it today.
When the sun strikes this profile of Viracocha during the winter solstice, the mineral content of the mountain reflects and refracts the rays. The Inca believed that this was a sign verifying the deity of Viracocha. There are indications these ancient sites reflect the Age of Leo - 13,000 = years ago. Thanks to Crystalinks. http://www.crystalinks.com/preinca.html
SOURCE: Filer's Files #16 - 19 April 2006
http://www.nationalufocenter.com/artman/publish/article_72.php
ASTEROIDS: TREASURES OF THE PAST AND THREAT TO THE FUTURE
3 April 2006 If a large asteroid such as the recently identified 2004 VD17 – about 500 m in diameter with a mass of nearly 1000 million tons - collides with the Earth it could spell disaster for much of our planet. As part of ESA’s Near-Earth Object deflecting mission Don Quijote, three teams of European industries are now carrying out studies on how to prevent this.
ESA has been addressing the problem of how to prevent large Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) from colliding with the Earth for some time. In 1996 the Council of Europe called for the Agency to take action as part of a “long-term global strategy for remedies against possible impacts”. Recommendations from other international organizations, including the UN and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), soon followed.
In response to these and other calls, ESA commissioned a number of threat evaluation and mission studies through its General Studies Program (GSP). In July 2004 the preliminary phase was completed when a panel of experts appointed by ESA recommended giving the Don Quijote asteroid-deflecting mission concept maximum priority for implementation.
Now it is time for industry to put forward their best design solutions for the mission. Following an invitation to tender and the subsequent evaluation process, three industrial teams have been awarded a contract to carry out the mission phase-A studies. :
* a team with Alcatel Alenia Space as prime contractor includes subcontractors and consultants from across Europe and Canada; Alcatel Alenia Space developed the Huygens Titan probe and is currently working on the ExoMars mission
* a consortium led by EADS Astrium, which includes Deimos Space from Spain and consultants from several European countries, brings their experience of working on the design of many successful ESA interplanetary missions such as Rosetta, Mars and Venus Express
* a team led by QinetiQ (UK), which includes companies and partners in Sweden and Belgium, draws on their expertise in mini and micro satellites including ESA’s SMART-1 and Proba projects
This month the three teams began work and a critical milestone will take place in October when the studies will be reviewed by ESA with the support of an international panel of experts. The results of this phase will be available next year.
No reason for panic – yet
The risk is still small however, and may decrease even further when new observations are carried out. Still, if this or any other similar-sized object, such as 99942 Apophis, an asteroid that will come close enough to the Earth in 2029 to be visible to the naked eye, collided with our planet the energy released could be equivalent to a significant fraction of the world's nuclear arsenal, resulting in devastation across national borders.
Luckily, impacts with very large asteroids are uncommon, although impacts with smaller asteroids are less unlikely and remote in time. In 1908 an asteroid that exploded over Siberia devastated an unpopulated forest area of more than 2000 km²; had it arrived just a few hours later, Saint Petersburg or London could have been hit instead.
Fossils of the Solar System
Asteroids are a part of our planet’s history. As anyone visiting the Barringer Meteor Crater in Arizona, USA or aiming a small telescope at the Moon can tell, there is plenty of evidence that the Earth and its cosmic neighborhood passed through a period of heavy asteroid bombardment. On the Earth alone the remains of more than 160 impacts have been identified, some as notorious as the Chicxulub crater located in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, believed to be a trace of the asteroid that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
Collisions have shaped the history of our Solar System. Because asteroids and comets are remnants of the turbulent period in which the planets were formed, they are in fact similar to ‘time capsules’ and carry a pristine record of those early days. By studying these objects it is possible to learn more about the evolution of our Solar System as well as ‘hints’ about the origins of life on Earth.
Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is one of these primitive building blocks and will be visited by ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft in 2014, as a part of a very ambitious mission - the first ever to land on a comet. Rosetta will also visit two main belt asteroids (Steins and Lutetia) on its way to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The mission will help us to understand if life on Earth began with the help of materials such as water and organisms brought to our planet by 'comet seeding'.
ESA’s Science program is already looking at future challenges, and its Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 plan has identified an asteroid surface sample return as one of the key developments needed to further our understanding of the history and composition of our Solar System.
Work still in progress
Asteroids and comets are fascinating objects that can give or take life on a planetary scale. Experts around the world are putting all their energy and enthusiasm into deciphering the mysteries they carry within them.
With an early launch provisionally scheduled for 2011, Don Quijote will serve as a ‘technological scout’ not only to mitigate the chance of the Earth being hit by a large NEO but also for the ambitious journeys to explore our solar system that ESA will continue to embark upon. The studies now being carried out by European industry will bring the Don Quijote test mission one step nearer.
Note for editors
Don Quijote is a NEO deflection test mission based entirely on conventional spacecraft technologies. It would comprise two spacecraft - one of them (Hidalgo) impacting an asteroid at a very high relative speed while a second one (Sancho) would arrive earlier at the same asteroid and remain in its vicinity before and after the impact to measure the variation on the asteroid’s orbital parameters, as well as to study the object. Secondary mission goals have also been defined, which would involve the deployment of an autonomous surface package and several other experiments and measurements.
For more information please contact:
Andrés Gálvez, Advanced Concepts and Studies Office
SOURCE: http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMC43NFGLE_index_0.html
DEFLECTING ASTEROIDS DIFFICULT BUT POSSIBLE
by Yury Zaitsev
Moscow, Russia (RIA) Apr 23, 2006 Just what can a little spacecraft do to deflect an asteroid - a lot say some scientists.
Col. Gen. Vladimir Popovkin, commander of the Russian Military Space Forces, told a news conference Friday that the national satellite network lacked a spacecraft capable of preventing an asteroid strike. He also said chances of such a collision were infinitely small, and it was inexpedient to spend huge sums on neutralizing this unlikely threat. Still, the general might be underestimating the scale of the asteroid threat.
Over the last few decades there has been a great deal of debate about the level of danger posed by impacts from asteroids and comets. It appears the world needs to take the threat of asteroid strikes a lot more seriously.
Astronomers have already spotted about 800 asteroids, solid rocky celestial bodies, with a diameter of over 1,000 meters (3,250 feet) moving along circumsolar elliptical orbits. However, there may be as many as 2,000 large asteroids, and some 135,000 rocks with a diameter of 100 meters (325 feet) and more.
It should be noted that asteroid orbits are unstable and tend to change under the influence of gravitational fields of the terrestrial planets - Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.
An asteroid, which flashed past our planet at a distance of 5 million kilometers (3.1 million miles) in November 1996, returned in September 2004 and flew by just 1.5 million kilometers (930,000 miles) from Earth's surface. In March 1989, a 300 meter (975 foot) asteroid crossed the terrestrial orbit and missed the Earth by just six hours. Astronomers spotted the rock only when it was receding into space.
An asteroid measuring over 1,000 meters in diameter is potentially capable of destroying human civilization. Chances of a major asteroid impact in the 21st century are a mere 0.0002 percent, although there is a 2 percent probability of Earth colliding with a 100 meter asteroid before the year 2100.
The blast would equal to 100 Megatons in trinitrotoluol equivalent, and it would kill millions of people if it hit a populous industrial region harboring many hazardous enterprises.
Scientists are quite alarmed, because they register additional asteroids buzzing the Earth. Spaceguard Survey, an international service responsible for detecting and tracking potentially dangerous space objects, has now been established.
Russia established the Space Shield Foundation east of the Urals. The organization involved scientists from the Snezhinsk (Chelyabinsk-70) nuclear center and the Makeev State Rocket Center in Miass. The foundation eventually set up subsidiaries in Novosibirsk and Korolev, outside Moscow.
The Planetary Defense Center, which was established in Russia three years ago, comprises the best defense-industry facilities, aerospace enterprises, in the first place, as well as academic and sectoral research.
Scientists say the best way to cope with the asteroid problem is to register and observe all potentially dangerous space objects. However, it is not enough to spot an asteroid, because most of them have unstable orbits; consequently such asteroids may disappear later on.
Every terrestrial hemisphere must therefore have three or four telescopes with primary mirrors 4 meters to 5 meters in diameter for observing asteroids round the clock. Such observations would make it possible to catalog asteroids with a diameter of less than 1,000 meters.
Many observatories - Russian observatories included - are now working on the asteroid catalog. Scientists claim that it would become possible to warn about impending asteroid strikes 80 to 100 years in advance if 90 percent of asteroids are registered, and in case of regular observations. But long-term asteroid protection remains in the realm of science fiction.
Two scenarios exist for shielding this planet from a dangerous space object. First, any hostile object can be shattered in deep space, before it reaches Earth. Second, its orbit can be changed, so the asteroid steers clear of our planet.
Some scientists think a nuclear device could be detonated on the asteroid's surface or in direct proximity to it, making it possible either to shatter that asteroid, whose fragments may still threaten Earth, or heat up one of its sides and vaporize large segments, thereby changing the asteroid's flight path. Technically speaking, a powerful nuclear explosion can change the orbit of the asteroid several months before it impacts the planet.
Russian scientists suggest using the kinetic energy of asteroids in order to destroy them. This can be accomplished by creating an artificial dust cloud in the asteroid's path. That cloud's particles would interact with the asteroid surface and gouge craters.
The dangerous object would finally disintegrate because the mass of crater particles would be directly proportional to the kinetic energy of colliding bodies. The United States demonstrated this effective method on July 4, 2005, when part of the Deep Impact spacecraft, a copper ball, 65 centimeters (about 3 feet) in diameter and weighing 140 kilograms (300 pounds) hit the comet Tempel 1, an object with a radius of 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) and carved a 200 meter crater.
It would be much harder to build a catapult with the help of robots on the asteroid's surface for launching rocks into space and altering the asteroid's trajectory. A rocket engine on the asteroid's surface likewise could change its flight path. Both options present problems, because of the precision needed to deflect an asteroid correctly.
Another method suggests using laser or solar beams to heat up a small asteroid-surface section and to propel it in the required direction. But it would be difficult to deliver a laser unit or a mirror-lens to the asteroid and to ensure the required attitude control for a long time.
An asteroid patrol would prove quite expensive; consequently, it would be expedient to streamline its elements during current space programs, which is being done. The Deep Impact project shows scientists are working in the right direction.
Russia's Lavochkin NPO has suggested the demonstration project Space Patrol for perfecting various asteroid-protection methods and systems. A small spacecraft with a mass of just 200 kilograms, now being developed within this project's framework, would act as navigator or pilot and could liftoff atop converted ballistic missiles such as the Strela and the Rokot.
The European Space Agency also is working on its Don Quijote mission, intended to investigate the possibility of deflecting a dangerous asteroid. A Russian Soyuz-Fregat rocket would launch the Sancho and Hidalgo spacecraft, which would reach the asteroid within six or seven months.
Sancho would be the first to arrive at its destination, taking position in orbit around the asteroid. Hidalgo eventually would slam into it at 10 kilometers per second (22,300 miles per hour). Sancho would then inspect the damaged asteroid and assess its changed trajectory. ESA will select the target asteroid in 2007, and Sancho and Hidalgo are scheduled to lift off in between 2010 and 2015.
Yury Zaitsev is with the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
SOURCE: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Deflecting_Asteroids_
Difficult_But_Possible.html
THE BIRD THAT DEVOURS MEN From the dark recesses of history comes a legend so amazing and terrifying, it’s astonishing that more people don’t know of its existence.
If you live in the St. Louis area, chances are you are familiar with the legend; or may have heard bits and pieces of it here and there. As historians and scientists dig deeper into this legend, more becomes known about a monster from the past that called the St. Louis region its home, and may still call it home today.
Upon exploring the Mississippi River in 1673, Louis Joliet and Father Jacques Marquette noticed the strange likeness of a creature painted and sculpted on the side of the bluffs. The creature was described as “a large creature with horns like a deer, red eyes, a beard like a tiger, a face like a man, body covered with green, red, and black scales and a tail so long it passed around the body, over the head, and between the legs.” The painting depicted a dark secret that, up until now, only the Illinois Indians had known.
Marquette and Joliet
The Illini lived on the banks of the confluence of the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers, surrounded by forests and tall bluffs. The location is now home to the city of Alton, IL. The Chief of this village met with Joliet and Marquette and, when asked, reluctantly told the explorers the two hundred year old tale of the beast they now called the “Piasa Bird” which meant “bird that devours men”.
One night, several braves had returned to the village with a terrifying tale of a monstrous beast that had attacked their scouting party. They explained that the flying monster had swooped from the sky and picked up men and carried them off into the night. Their arrows had merely deflected off of its tough scales as they tried to defend themselves.
For several weeks the village suffered as the creature they were now calling “Piasa” attacked at night, carrying off a victim each time to an unseen fate. The Illini turned to their chief, Ouatoga, to rid them of this menace. After conversing with the Great Spirits, Ouatoga devised a plan. He believed that the creature would be vulnerable under its wings, where the scales did not protect. He had his warriors hide in the forest with poison-tipped arrows, while he offered himself as bait. The Piasa Bird appeared and went directly for the chief. He threw himself to the ground and held on to a tree root as the Piasa Bird tried to carry him off. Immediately, his warriors emerged and shot their arrows into the soft underbelly of the creature. In a scream of agony, it tumbled over the side of the bluffs and disappeared into the river.
Piasa Bird on the Bluffs
In honor of this great victory, they painted the image of the Piasa Bird on the face of the bluffs. Believing that the Piasa Bird had lived in a large cave that was nearby, they warned all villagers to stay away from the cave, as they did not want to awaken any more of these evil spirits. In two hundred years, they had not encountered another menace like this.
Joliet and Marquette scoffed at this tale, attributing it to silly Indian folklore. However, they were both explorers who had spent a great deal of time discovering and documenting new species they encountered in their journeys west. Despite the chief’s warnings, they decided to explore the cave and see if they could find some evidence of this strange species.
They amassed a party of white settlers and an Illini scout named Pow-Ka-Ha-Toh (Sees in the Darkness) who was well known to the villagers as being able to see in the night as if it were daylight. They entered the cave and, armed with torches and muskets, began to work their way into the bluffs. As they explored deeper into the cave, they began to feel the crunch of bones underneath their feet. Further examination revealed them to be the bones of many different animals, some they even believed to be human remains.
Suddenly, a mist and wind swept through the cave, extinguishing their torches. In the darkness they began to hear loud shrieks and screams. Pow-Ka-Ha-Toh told Joliet that he saw many reptilian creatures, about the size of eagles, swarming towards them. Behind these creatures, he saw an enormous reptilian monster and declared it to be the “Piasa Bird”. The party fired a volley into the darkness from their muskets, and then fled towards the mouth of the cave. There was panic and confusion as the men struggled to reach the cave opening; meanwhile screams of men filled the air and were abruptly silenced. Joliet, Marquette, Pow-Ka-Ha-Toh, and one other settler were the only ones to make it out of the cave.
The Battle of Piasa
They returned to the village and Pow-Ka-Ha-Toh told the chief what had happened. The chief, angered that they had awakened the evil spirits, forced them to leave the village. Joliet and Marquette returned to the nearby French outpost of St. Louis and amassed an army of traders, soldiers, and able bodies to help them eliminate what they saw as a threat to trade and settlement opportunities in the region. When they returned to the village, they found it destroyed and deserted. They heard cries and screams in the distance.
A few minutes later, they noticed a dark mass approaching in the northern sky. Hundreds of winged creatures, followed by the enormous Piasa Bird, were descending upon them. The soldiers began firing their muskets, cannons, and ship-mounted artillery into the mass. The creatures began to fall from the sky as they were struck by the ordinance, but still on the mass of creatures came. The solders, with Joliet and Marquette at the lead, fought a pitched battle with the creatures as men and equipment were picked up and thrown about. Bodies were torn apart as the Piasa Bird and its minions swarmed the soldiers.
Slowly the soldiers began to drive the creatures back towards the bluff using torches and bonfires. The creatures appeared to fear the heat of the flames. Several other boats had arrived with more soldiers and weapons to reinforce the makeshift army and join the battle. Under Joliet’s direction, the soldiers fought to force the monsters towards the bluffs and back into the cave where they had discovered them. Joliet figured that he could trap the creatures inside the cave and then seal it shut. Once the creatures were driven back into the cave, fires were set all around the mouth of the cave to keep them at bay. Cannoneers came forward and blasted the cliff face with a volley of cannonballs, creating an avalanche of rock and debris, effectively sealing the cave.
Marquette Piasa Bird Sketch
Upon their return to St. Louis, Joliet and Marquette reported to the governor what had transpired. They agreed that the menace had surely been destroyed and, in the interest of protecting their profits and interests in this new land, decided to keep the story of the Piasa Bird and its kin quiet. Naturally, the story did not stay a secret long. Survivors of the battle spun their tales, and even Marquette’s own journal sported some illustrations of the beast he had first seen painted on the bluffs. Most settlers, however, believed it to be a tall tale, concocted by glory seeking soldiers and crazy Indians and felt no fear in venturing into the region. As years passed, settlers built settlements and outposts all along the river and built the city of Alton where the old Illini village had been. The Piasa Bird and its kin were never seen or reported again. The original painting on the rocks of the Piasa Bird was left there as an amusement for travelers, until it was destroyed during excavation of the bluffs.
Today, historians and scientists seek to unravel the mysteries surrounding these great and terrible creatures. They search to find the line of what is myth and what is reality. Were these creatures dinosaur-like leftovers from a prehistoric time? Were they a new species altogether? Were they large birds given incredible powers by the imaginations of the Indians and early settlers?
Historians find new clues and evidence all of the time, and soon we may know the truth. They have fought to keep the legend alive and have continued to keep a large painting of the Piasa Bird on the bluffs, as an homage to the brave warriors of the past, and in the hopes of new found evidence for the future. But as people turn up missing in the bluffs, and mysterious disappearances on the river mount every year; more people are beginning to believe that the “Piasa Bird”, or its descendants, still dwell in The Great River Bend.
SOURCE: Failed Success
http://www.failedsuccess.com/index.php?/weblog/comments/piasa_bird_legend
Conspiracy Journal 4/14/06 #361
http://uforeview.tripod.com/conspiracyjournal361.html
MYSTERY UNDERWATER CREATURE During the Cold War, the United States Navy erected a vast array of underwater listening devices in order to detect and track Soviet nuclear submarines. These hydrophones were placed at roughly 3,000 mile intervals in the deep layer of water known as the deep sound channel, where cold temperatures and high pressures allow sound waves to propagate great distances. When the Cold War ended, rather than mothballing the Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS), the U.S. Navy lent the Cold War relic to science.
The array has since been used to track many fascinating undersea events, such as whale migrations, earthquakes, ocean currents, volcanic activity , and the shifting of Antarctic ice. But one sound captured by the sensitive SOSUS hydrophones has scientists puzzled. It fits the profile of a living creature, but for a creature to create this sound it would have to be significantly larger than a blue whale, which is believed to be the largest animal ever to have lived.
The unexplainable sound was detected several times during the summer of 1997, originating off the South American southwest coast at about 50° S 100° W. Each time that it was captured the ultra-low frequency sound rose rapidly in frequency over about one minute, and had sufficient amplitude to be heard on multiple sensors from over 3,000 miles away. Perplexed researchers, unable to identify any possible source for the sound, dubbed it "The Bloop."
The sound shares many characteristics with those emanated from biological creatures, in fact it fits those parameters so closely that a large number of researchers are convinced that its origin is animal. But in order for an aquatic animal to emit a sound that can travel over 3,000 miles though Earth's noisy oceans, scientists say that it would need an incredibly large noise-making apparatus, one much bigger than that of the blue whale.
Theories abound as to the source of the Bloop. If it is the vocalization of a living organism, it is one which makes its home in the dark, cold depths of the ocean. Some have suggested that giant squids could be responsible for the sound, but that is unlikely considering that no known species of cephalopod have the gas-filled sac necessary to reach such great volumes. Indeed science has not recorded any animals –living or extinct– with nearly enough size to house the organs needed to produce the level of output demonstrated by the Bloop… so unless this mystery creature uses some unknown mechanism to generate sound, it is presumed to be an incredibly massive organism.
Further study of the Bloop is hampered by the fact that it has not been heard since the summer of '97. It is almost certain that unseen creatures still lurk in the deep and dark oceans, creatures which are strange and fascinating. Such an unknown animal may have uttered these sounds while lingering at an unusually shallow depth. Unless researchers encounter the sound again, there is little chance that we'll have any explanation more concrete than scientific speculation. But given its unusual properties and strong indications of a large biological origin, it makes for a compelling mystery.
SOURCE: Damn Interesting
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=517#more-517
Conspiracy Journal 4/28/06 #363
http://uforeview.tripod.com/conspiracyjournal363.html
CHUPACABRA SIGHTINGS REPORTED IN CENTRAL RUSSIA For the first time in history, the mysterious Puerto-Rican Chupacabra vampire has been spotted in Russia.
Reports of a beast that kills animals and sucks on their blood came from a village in Central Russia back in March 2005, when a farm had 32 turkeys killed overnight. The beast left the corpses bloodless, the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily said.
Then reports came from neighboring villages, where more than 30 sheep and goats fell victim to the vampire. Again, the blood had been drained from corpses but the flesh remained intact. All the slaughtered animals had similar puncture wounds on their necks, different from the marks that wolves, dogs or lynx leave on their victims.
Finally, eyewitness descriptions match the traditional description of the Chupacabra, said to resemble a kangaroo and a dog with huge teeth.
"I heard the sheep bleating loudly, and when I approached the barn I saw a black shadow, like a big dog standing on its hind legs. It leaped like a kangaroo — when it spotted me it ran away," says Yerbulat Isbasov, 18, who guards sheep in the village of Gavrilovka.
Yerbulat saw the beast again in a few days’ time, and described it as a 1.2 meter high animal with a hump on its back. Alfia Makasheva saw a whole pack of vampires in her yard.
"One was a huge reddish thing, another was dark grey, and they were being followed by a pack of pups. In the middle of the yard the red one turned its head and got up on the hind legs, as if it was thinking."
When Dmitry Madinovsky from Orenburg heard about the beast, he suggested it could be the legendary Chupacabra, and set off to look for it. In the woods near the Sakmara river he discovered two rows of tracks that could belong to an animal of some 35 kilos in weight. The tracks were of five-toed paws with claws and webbed fingers, and a tail that dragged between them. Zoologists could not identify the animal from photos of the prints.
"It is definitely a Chupakabra! Small front and big hind legs," Madinovsky says. "The animal first walked on all fours, near the water it got up on its hind legs, raised its tail and leapt away like a kangaroo."
This May Madinovsky and the Urals Anomaly Monitoring Station experts are determined to track the animal down.
SOURCE: MosNews http://www.mosnews.com/news/2006/04/27/chupacabra.shtml
Conspiracy Journal 4/28/06 #363
http://uforeview.tripod.com/conspiracyjournal363.html
HIGHEST WAVES EVER MEASURED APPEAR NORTH OF SCOTLAND
03-Apr-2006 Waves so huge 'they shouldn't even exist' hammered the research vessel Discovery off the coast of Scotland for 12 hours. The largest of the waves was a ninety foot monster, and the average wave measured seventy feet in height. The waves came with a Force 9 gale (45-50 MPH) but could not be explained solely by the power of the wind.
Storms had been predicted for February 8, but not record high waves. Scientists believe that they formed because of a "resonance effect" between wind and water, that developed when the water mass began moving at the same speed as the wind.
These waves were different from the more familiar freak waves that can appear without warning on relatively mild seas. The tallest such wave ever recorded was 76 feet. These waves were not only much higher, they persisted for hours.
SOURCE: http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/?id=5206 ~AND~
MONSTER WAVES - VESSEL MEASURES RECORD OCEAN SWELLS
By Markus Becker March 31, 2006 A British research team has observed some of the biggest sea swells ever measured. A whole series of giant waves hammered into their ship that were so big, according to computer models used to set safety standards for ships and oil rigs, they shouldn't even exist.
When the RRS Discovery set out to sea, the crew was expecting stormy weather. Meteorologists had predicted a violent storm, and the scientists -- a team from Britain's National Oceanography Center -- wanted to observe it from up close. What they ended up experiencing went far beyond anything they could have imagined -- and could have cost them their lives.
Near the island of Rockall, 250 kilometers (155 miles) west of Scotland, enormous waves came racing toward the vessel. When they checked their measuring instruments later, the scientists discovered that the tallest of these monster waves had hit nearly 30 meters (98 feet) at wind force 9. And it didn't come alone. "We were shaken up these waves for 12 hours," said Naomi Holliday, the leader of the expedition. Entire sets of giant waves hammered the ship.
After the adrenaline levels of the scientists had fallen somewhat, astonishment spread among the crew. The standard computer programs had predicted stormy weather for February 8, 2000, but not such a tempest. Even more astonishing, the giant waves had not appeared individually, but in a group. Previously waves of such size were assumed to only appeared alone.
What Holliday characterized as a "dangerous situation" has turned out to be a spate of luck. The Discovery's crew witnessed the largest waves ever measured by a scientific instrument on the open sea, according to an article the scientists have only now published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Biggest waves ever measured
With a height of up to 29.1 meters (95 feet) from trough to crest, the single waves are the highest ever measured. In terms of so-called significant wave height, they established a new record, according to the scientists: 18.5 meters (61 feet). Significant wave height is the median height of a wave's upper third. It corresponds roughly to the sea swell that experienced sailors can estimate with the naked eye.
More important than the record, however, is how the waves were born. "They were not caused by very strong winds," Holliday told SPIEGEL ONLINE. The strongest phase of the storm had already been over for a day when the largest water masses hit the RRS Discovery.
The scientists think a so-called resonance effect was responsible for the monstrous waves: waves and wind traveled across the Atlantic at practically the same speed. The storm was able to pump energy into the waves efficiently for a long time, building them up to giant size. According to the article published by Holliday and her team, the rapid increase in wave height at the beginning of the event supports this hypothesis.
Trouble for sailors and shipbuilders?
The new data may spell trouble for sailors and shipbuilders, the British scientists believe. Their research results suggest that giant waves may be much more common than previously believed. "Of course we can't make general claims about all the world's seas on the basis of the specific event we observed," Holliday said. "But computer simulation can do this for us."
According to Holliday, plugging the new data into the standard formulas shows that existing computer simulations are slightly off the mark -- at least as far as the formation of giant waves is concerned. "The waves we observed were not predicted by the computer simulation," Holliday explained. That has implications for the construction of ships and oil rigs. "The safety standards are partly based on the computer simulations."
Why was the difference between simulation and reality not noticed earlier? Because of the relative scarcity of measuring buoys and ships collecting scientific data, according to Holliday: "Direct wave height measurements are extremely rare." Cargo ships tend to avoid powerful storms, and oil rigs are so few and far between they hardly ever encounter giant waves.
For this reason alone, the measurements taken by the British research expedition are "spectacular," confirmed Wolfgang Rosenthal, a marine weather expert at a Geesthacht research institute associated with Germany's GKKS ship-building society. Waves of the sort observed by Holliday's team had already been analyzed theoretically, but the only practical knowledge about them came from vague reports. The new measurements confirm the theories that have been developed. "Nothing like this has ever been documented before," Rosenthal said.
Not freak waves
The significant wave height of 18.5 meters (61 feet) is particularly interesting, according to Rosenthal. "The giant 29 meter (95 feet) waves fit well with this statistically," Rosenthal said. He explains that the giant waves observed at Rockall are not the same as the notorious "freak waves" that appear out of nowhere during relatively mild weather, destroying even large vessels. Only those waves are considered freak waves whose overall height is at least twice their significant wave height. When the significant wave height is in the region of 18.5 meters (61 feet), giant waves roughly 30 meters (98 feet) tall become possible -- as they did near Rockall in 2000, and as Holliday and her colleagues were able to find out for themselves.
But Rosenthal doubts that the new data will have a significant effect on security standards in shipbuilding. "A single case doesn't render the existing computer simulations obsolete," he said. Nonetheless, questions about the accuracy of computer simulations have been raised for some time with regard to sea swells under extreme weather conditions. Rosenthal explained that this is partly a result of the weak measurements obtained by means of satellite-based radar. "The stronger the wind gets, the weaker and harder to measure the radar signal reflected by the waves," he said.
Holliday -- whose team includes an expert for computer simulations of sea swells -- is convinced her measurements will contribute to an improvement in computer models. "The existing models strongly underestimate maximal wave heights," she said. "The people in charge of simulations are going to have to find out what they're doing wrong."
SOURCE: http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,408953,00.html
EMERGING UNDERSEA VOLCANO HAS ‘MOAT OF DEATH’
By Ker Than, LiveScience Staff Writer
12 April 2006 An undersea volcano in the Pacific is growing from its summit and could breach the ocean surface within a few decades, a new study reveals. In the meantime, it is creating a thriving environment for some sea creatures but a death trap for others.
Researchers used submersible vehicles and other technology to explore Vailulu'u Seamount, an active volcano lying off the coast of the Samoan archipelago. They found that the volcano had sprouted a new 1,000-foot cone at its summit since it was last explored 5 year ago.
Toothpaste and pillows
Dubbed Nafanua, the cone is made from large pillow lava, a type of rock that forms when hot magma spewed by underwater volcanoes or cracks in the Earth comes into contact with water and congeals into large blobs, or "pillows."
"Imagine a replica volcano on your tabletop and somebody squirting toothpaste out from underneath," said study team member Hubert Staudigel from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California.
"If you keep squirting toothpaste from this one place, the squirts will overlie one another. Depending on their viscosity, the squirts will have a very flat slope or just stay in place and pile on top of each other," Staudigel told LiveScience.
Moat of death
Nafanua, which is still about 2,300 feet below sea level, is creating new niches for undersea creatures as it creeps slowly towards the ocean surface. Near its summit, eels swarm around warm hydrothermal vents and feed on shrimp carried their way by volcanic currents.
The inside of the Nafanua, however, is deadly. The same currents that provide the eels with food also deposit sea creatures into a cavity of turbid and toxic waters, creating what the researchers call a "moat of death." The bodies of fish, squid and crustaceans rot within this moat and bright red bristle worms feed on the bacteria that slough off their carcasses.
The finding was detailed in this week's issue of the journal for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
SOURCE: http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/060412_growing_volcano.html
EARLY CASUALTIES OF GLOBAL WARMING
07-Apr-2006 Tuvalu is drowning. The island nation, which is located in the Pacific ocean between Hawaii and Australia, may be the first casualty of global warming.
In the US, we’ve had protest marches about proposed laws that would punish and try to keep out immigrants from Mexico and South America. As global warming causes the oceans to rise, low-lying islands like the nine islands that make up Tuvalu will probably become uninhabitable sometime in the near future.
Where will these people go? Many of them are now leaving, landing on the shores of Australia and New Zealand with few skills and their possessions in a bag, like the poor farmers from Oklahoma who fled to California during the Depression.
The Bering Sea, a 700,000 square mile area in the Pacific near Alaska, is also showing the effects of global warming. Scientists have theorized that during the last ice age, Asians entered the American continent by crossing over the frozen Bering Strait and became our Native Americans.
The environment around the Bering Sea has changed from Arctic to sub-Arctic conditions. This change has made it impossible for the animals that once lived on nearby islands to survive, while encouraging the invasion of species from regions in the south.
SOURCE: http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/?id=5214
WORLD WEATHER CHAOS
4-Apr-2006 Weather across the world has been violent, with unusual events in Hawaii and Europe, and exceptionally destructive storms in the U.S. At least 27 people died overnight in the Midwest because of tornadoes. Over the past month, the state of Hawai'i has received record rainfall. A dam burst on the island of Kauai, causing seven deaths, and a deluge on Oahu resulted in flooding and the closing of Waikiki Beach due to sewage overflow. Extensive flooding is taking place in Europe, and Germany was stunned on March 27 when a tornado struck Hamburg, killing two people and wreaking havoc.
On Sunday, March 12, two significant tornadoes struck Springfield, Ill., followed a few days later by a blizzard that smothered the damaged community in snow. Then, on Sunday night, a second group of tornadoes hit Springfield, destroying a trailer park.
In Hutchinson, Kansas, upwards of 18 fires broke out after a tornado passed through the community on March 29. Initially, it was thought that downed power lines caused the fires. The matter remains under investigation.
This latest round of storms comes after a million acres were burned in the Texas Panhandle and parts of Oklahoma in the worst fires ever recorded in the region, leaving 11 people dead. They were followed just a few days later by rainfall in some burned areas of 'biblical' proportions.
Global warming models predict extreme weather, and most climatologists believe that we are in the preliminary phases of a period that could see the worst weather ever known to man. In recent months, it has been discovered that greenhouse gasses carbon dioxide and methane are building up in the atmosphere far more quickly than even the most dire global warming models predicted, and the speed of world warming cannot be explained.
SOURCE: http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/?id=5209
OCEAN OF TORNADOES STRIKES MID-SOUTH
10-Apr-2006 As predicted in last week's Unknowncountry.com newsletter, the second violent weather system in a week developed on Thursday and Friday. The newsletter warned that it could strike Kansas, but the fast moving front did not develop storms until it reached Tennessee. It tore through that state on Friday. Lives were lost, homes destroyed and records shattered as 52 tornadoes touched down in a 24 hour period. Then the storm system extended into Georgia on Saturday, and caused more death and destruction there.
Since the beginning of the tornado season three weeks ago, over 400 twisters have touched down across the Midwestern and mid-southern U.S., about four times the normal rate. In addition, there has been extensive damage caused by hundreds of hailstorms and fierce wind events throughout the region.
The storms are more violent than normal because the Gulf of Mexico did not cool over the winter, and is at present at record temperatures for this time of year. The reason that this has happened is that global warming gasses are not allowing heat to radiate out into space during the winter, causing it to remain in the water instead.
When cold, dry air from the arctic collides over the middle of North America with the unusually humid, warm air from the Gulf, exceptionally violent storms are the result.
This is the second direct and completely indisputable global warming effect the United States is experiencing. The first began in 2004, when hurricanes began to become even more frequent and powerful than predicted by cyclic models.
Ultra violent weather will continue to be a feature of life in the world, particularly the United States east of the Rockies and Europe, until the arctic becomes so warm that it no longer generates cold fronts. After that time, which will take place within the next ten years, air circulation will slow, and 'hotspots,' or areas rendered unlivable for weeks and months at a time due to air pollution and heat, will become the new environmental problem.
Whitley Strieber comments, "the conditions that might cause a gigantic storm such as the one depicted in my novel Superstorm are present now. However, when we were writing the book, we did not anticipate that the buildup of greenhouse gasses would be so fast or so aggressive. It could be that warming will unfold so fast that an absence of air circulation will be the greater problem in the immediate future. But for the next few years, large areas of the world, primarily in North American and Europe, will continue to suffer devastation from violent weather."
SOURCE: http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/?id=5215
EARTHQUAKES, VOLCANIC ACTIVITY HIGH
21-Apr-2006 In the past week, there has been widespread earthquake activity, including a powerful quake that struck an isolated part of the Kamchatka Peninsula, and three volcanoes have become active at the same time.
The Kamchatka quake, centered near the small community of Koriakya, registered 7.7 on the Richter Scale. It took place on April 21, and did not cause any known damage.
There have been clusters of smaller quakes in the Ionian Sea, including one that registered 5.5 on the Richter Scale off the island of Patmos on April 19.
Along the Pacific Rim, there has been earthquake activity from Alaska, across the Aleutians and down to the southern tip of New Zealand.
Earthquakes are common in all of these areas, but the extent of activity at this time is less usual. While there is no evidence that a great earthquake is impending anywhere, a similar pattern developed before the great quake of December 21, 2003 in the Indian Ocean, which was preceded by an 8.9 quake south of Australia and a similar pattern of activity around the Pacific Rim.
Three volcanoes have also become active this week, Lascar in Chile, Merape in Indonesia and Ubinas in Peru. Lascar is the most active volcano in the northern Chilean Andes. Merapi, one of Indonesia's most active volcanoes, is in one of the world's most densely populated areas. Ubinas is Peru's most active volcano.
All three have generated significant eruptive events in recent days, and as of April 21, residents were being warned to remain 5 miles from Merapi.
There will be a lunar syzygy with the new moon on April 27. In a syzygy, the earth, moon and sun are in direct alignment. While the United States Geological Survey says that there is no evidence that lunar syzygy affects earthquakes and volcanic activity, some researchers disagree.
SOURCE: http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/?id=5229
MYSTERY BOOMS ARE BACK
16-Apr-2006 Dramatic booming noises have been heard in at least two American cities in recent weeks, in San Diego on April 4 and Buffalo on April 12. Unusual cloud formations were photographed in San Diego in 2004. The clouds appeared very suddenly over the Miramar Marine Air Station, and did not seem to observers to function like thunderheads. "Nothing seemed natural about this cloud," reports photographer David Hurst. "It hovered above the ground and wasn't anvil-shaped. There was nothing wispy around the edges. Although it became mushroom-shaped, the head seemed more on the thin side than billowy." The booms that rocked San Diego and Buffalo did not appear to be sonic booms, and some residents in San Diego assumed that the sounds were earthquake related. Buffalo police reported hundreds of calls about the sound there, which was extremely unusual and dramatic, and woke residents up after midnight. Mystery booms have been heard in San Diego before.
There has never been earthquake activity in Buffalo, and NOAA reported that there were no earthquakes in San Diego on April 4.
The booms could be caused by methane explosions on the ocean floor, but some meteorologists theorize they may be the result of unusually cold air in the stratosphere colliding with warm surface air when weather conditions are too dry to generate storms. Like the large blocks of ice that occasionally fall from the sky, they could therefore a product of global warming.
Or they could be the result of something more ominous: Subscribers can listen to weatherman Scott Stevens discuss the possible uses of scalar, or weather weapons on Dreamland last March 4.
SOURCE: http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/?id=5223 ~AND~
WHAT'S BEHIND MYSTERIOUS BOOMS?
Phenomena produce theories, but no answers Life can serve up a good mystery every once in a while. Weird things happen that defy explanation, that make us wonder how much we really know about the world. Something of the sort happened in San Diego County shortly before 9 a.m. Tuesday, April 4, and so far no one has come forward with an explanation.
"My garage door is double steel and it weighs about 500 lbs. It was rattling back and forth like a leaf in the wind for about 3 or 4 seconds." – e-mail from University City resident on April 4 disturbance.
Whatever it was, it caused a woman's bed to shake in Lakeside. It created waves in a backyard pool in Carmel Valley. It set off car alarms in Kearny Mesa and rattled windows from Mission Beach to Poway to Vista. At various spots throughout the county, people reported a rumbling sound or a booming noise.
Scientists insist it wasn't an earthquake. The Federal Aviation Administration has no record of any planes producing a sonic boom by breaking the sound barrier. Camp Pendleton officials say no activities on the Marine base could have created such a disturbance. There were no large explosions in San Diego County that day, and no meteor fireballs were reported in the sky that
morning.
What was it, then?
Maybe it was the same thing that caused a strange disturbance in Mississippi on April 7, when the locals heard a loud boom that rattled windows all over Jackson County, throwing emergency workers "into a tizzy," said Butch Loper, Jackson County's civil defense director. Authorities in that state still don't have a clue as to the cause.
Nor, to this day, can anyone explain what was behind similar episodes in Maine two months ago, or Alabama three months ago, or North Carolina four months ago. In each of those cases – as well as in other incidents around the nation over the years – residents reported hearing windows rattle and feeling floors shake even though no earthquake was detected.
There's almost certainly a simple, unromantic, "Aha!"-type explanation for each of these odd occurrences, something that everyone has overlooked for whatever combination of reasons.
But who knows?
Maybe we're not being told everything. Maybe the Earth still does things that present-day humanity doesn't understand.
The morning of April 4 was cloudy in San Diego County, with rain in some areas and temperatures in the low to mid-60s. In Lakeside, Judi Mitchell, an emergency medical technician who works the night shift at a hospital, had returned to her home on Lakeshore Drive and was just about to fall asleep. It was 9 a.m., give or take a few minutes.
Suddenly, the earth started to vibrate. "The windows shook; my bed moved," she said. "It moved my bookcase."
The rattling lasted a few seconds. Mitchell, 44, has lived in East County all her life and considers herself an expert at judging the size of an earthquake. She quickly guessed this one was a 4.5 on the Richter scale.
But to the astonishment of everyone, a quake wasn't the culprit. Within hours, both the U.S. Geological Survey in Pasadena and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla issued statements saying no earthquake had been detected. Last week, USGS spokeswoman Stephanie Hanna said the agency stands by its initial conclusion.
"No, it wasn't an earthquake," she said. "We haven't changed our minds about that."
By noon on the day of the incident, The San Diego Union-Tribune was being inundated with e-mails from people wondering what could have caused the strange tremors.
"My garage door is double steel and it weighs about 500 lbs.," a man in University City wrote. "It was rattling back and forth like a leaf in the wind for about 3 or 4 seconds."
A Mission Beach resident compared the sensation to "somewhere in between an explosion and an earthquake." A woman in Carmel Valley noted that the rattling was very distressing to her cats.
In recent days, the Union-Tribune has tried to get to the bottom of this mystery. Our efforts haven't met with much success.
Was it a sonic boom? If so, it didn't come from any aircraft at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station, Maj. Jason Johnston said. And it didn't come from any Navy planes in San Diego, said Cmdr. Jack Hanzlik, a Coronado-based spokesman for the Naval Air Forces.
"There were no Navy aircraft operating in this area during that time capable of flying at transonic speed," he said.
Officials with the California National Guard and several Air Force bases also insisted their planes weren't the culprit, as did a Colorado-based spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command. If a plane had been traveling over San Diego County at supersonic speeds, the Federal Aviation Administration would have picked it up on radar, said Cheryl Jones, the FAA's San Diego-based liaison to the Marine Corps.
Jones checked with FAA control centers in Palmdale and San Diego, which monitor 180,000 square miles covering Southern California, southern Nevada and western Arizona. The agency has no records of any plane, military or civilian, breaking the sound barrier on the morning of April 4, she said.
Under federal law, Jones added, the military can fly at supersonic speeds only in certain restricted areas, three of which exist in Southern California. One is 150 miles to the north of San Diego, the second is 220 miles to the east and the third is 27 miles off the coast. The odds of a plane in any of those areas creating a sonic boom that could be felt all over San Diego County are virtually nonexistent, she said.
Could some sort of rocket be the cause? A spokeswoman at Vandenberg Air Force Base, 60 miles north of Santa Barbara, said the base didn't launch any rockets that day. Neither did NASA, a spokesman for that agency said.
Was it a meteor? Unlikely, said Ed Beshore, a researcher at the University of Arizona's NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey, which monitors asteroids and other heavenly objects.
Every few months, a meteor enters Earth's atmosphere and produces an "airburst" that can cause a disturbance on the ground, Beshore said. In one recent case, an airburst over the Mediterranean Sea broke the windows on a ship, he said. In the most extreme incident ever recorded, a 1908 airburst over Siberia flattened trees for thousands of miles.
But an airburst powerful enough to cause tremors all over San Diego County would have been noticed by scientists, Beshore said. And the American Meteor Society reported no fireball sightings over California on April 4.
A spokeswoman for Camp Pendleton scoffed at speculation that some sort of Marine mortar training exercise at the base might have caused the countywide rumbling. "It was not us," 2nd Lt. Lori Miller stated flatly. Miller was home in Vista on the morning of April 4 when her windows began to rattle. There is no possible way, she said, that a Pendleton training exercise could have caused a sensation like that.
Two months before the San Diego incident, Robert Higgins, the emergency management director of Somerset County, Maine, was confronted with a nearly identical set of puzzling circumstances. In February, panicked residents in a 15-mile radius reported feeling earthquake-like tremors. Authorities quickly ruled out an earthquake, explosion or industrial accident.
"I've called it the mystery of Somerset County," Higgins said in a telephone interview last week. He still hasn't figured out the cause. "I'm not done with it," Higgins said. "I don't forget."
Then there was the incident in Mobile, Ala., on Jan. 19, when residents in two counties reported hearing what sounded like an explosion and feeling "quake-like tremors," according to news reports. To this day, no one is certain of the cause. By process of elimination, authorities have settled on the sonic-boom theory, even though no branch of the military has owned up to it.
There have been other similar unexplained events over the past few years. Something of the sort happened in Wilmington, N.C., on Dec. 20, 2005; Winston-Salem, N.C., on March 5, 2005; Charleston, S.C., on Aug. 1, 2003; and Pensacola, Fla., on Jan. 13, 2003.
"The large boom that shook walls and windows from Century to Milton on Monday remains a mystery, and probably will stay that way," a reporter for the Pensacola News Journal wrote after the Jan. 13 episode.
On those occasions when a logical explanation is wanting, it's sometimes necessary to consult that archive of wisdom otherwise known as the Internet. Among bloggers and Web-based conspiracy theorists, one of the leading explanations for the San Diego disturbance is that the military is
testing a top-secret spy plane called the Aurora, which supposedly can travel several times the speed of sound.
"Sir, I've never even heard of that plane before," an Air Force spokeswoman in Virginia responded when asked about the possibility.
Even UFO experts are baffled by what happened in San Diego. Asked whether a flying saucer might have caused such an event, Peter Davenport of the Seattle-based National UFO Reporting Center said, "Probably not."
"UFOs almost never generate sonic booms or shock waves," he added. "They accelerate so rapidly that they leave a vacuum in the sky, much the way lightning does."
What happened in San Diego on April 4 seems destined to remain one of life's little mysteries, as inexplicable as those Bigfoot sightings in the Pacific Northwest. Mitchell, the Lakeside hospital worker, remains convinced that an earthquake was the culprit, regardless of what the experts say. The tremors were too strong, she said, too violent to be anything else.
"The earth actually moved," she said. "You could feel it. If it moved my bed, it moved the earth."
If anyone out there has any answers, would you please be kind enough to share them with the rest of us? A lot of folks are really curious.
SOURCE: The Union-Tribune
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/northcounty/20060423-9999-1n23bigboom.html
Conspiracy Journal 4/28/06 #363
http://uforeview.tripod.com/conspiracyjournal363.html
MARS CRATER WITH WATER AND STRUCTURES
http://www.nationalufocenter.com/artman/uploads/14marsicecrater.jpg ESA's Mars Express obtained this perspective view on 2 February 2005, during orbit 1343 with a ground resolution of approximately 15 meters per pixel. It shows an unnamed impact crater located on Vastitas Borealis, a broad plain that covers much of Mars's far northern latitudes, at approximately 70.5° North and 103° East. The crater is 35 kilometers wide and has a maximum depth of approximately 2 kilometers beneath the crater rim. The circular patch of bright material located at the center of the crater is residual water ice. The colors are very close to natural, but the vertical relief is exaggerated three times. The view is looking east.
http://www.nationalufocenter.com/artman/uploads/14crateryice.jpg
Images by European Space Agency's Mars Express: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum).
http://www.esa.int/esa-mmg/mmg.pl?b=b&type=I&mission=Mars%20Express&start=4
SOURCE: Filer's Files #14 - 5 April 2006
http://www.nationalufocenter.com/artman/publish/article_69.php
A SIGN OF A BASE ON MARS
http://www.nationalufocenter.com/artman/uploads/16marstobiastriangleand_y.jpg Steve Tobias a veteran of the United States Air Force, engineer, and UFO Researcher writes, "Below is the declarative proof from NASA's own photos from earlier missions to Mars that tells the world, there is a sign of a Base on Mars." There is evidence of intelligent design on Mars, symmetrical patterns on the surface of Mars are there. Symmetry (definition) 1: balanced proportions ; also : beauty of form arising from balanced proportions 2: the property of being symmetrical ; especially : correspondence in size, shape, and relative position of parts on opposite sides of a dividing line or median plane or about a center or axis -- compare BILATERAL SYMMETRY , RADIAL SYMMETRY 3: a rigid motion of a geometric figure that determines a one-to-one mapping onto itself. The image shows an encampment between two wind barrier plateaus. There is evidence of artificial design, and the site has uniform objects of construction.
Also NASA wants to wait six months before showing the people any more photos of Mars using its newly orbiting highly advanced High Resolution Orbiter (HiRise) that went in to orbit around Mars in late March 2006. Thanks to Steve Tobias
SOURCE: Filer's Files #16 - 19 April 2006
http://www.nationalufocenter.com/artman/publish/article_72.php
MARS FACES IN HILLSIDE
http://www.nationalufocenter.com/artman/uploads/16marsfacelowerrightwithy.jpg Norman Bryden writes, "Its not easy to find any two images close to each other that overlap the similar regions of interest on Mars. The photographs are scattered all about. Not everyone sees the same things in the images and are not required to. A 19 inch or larger monitor is often required to see detail. Such is the case of this following photograph taken by the NASA/JPL Mars Global Surveyor.
There are structures and what looks to be faces carved into the hillsides, some masked and some not. There are what look like a large number of dwellings, boxes, and other artifacts of intelligent geometry. There are many areas that look very much to be intelligently modified. Just to the right of center there are very light markings that form the letter C, that looks kind of like the shape of a clamp. A pole seems to be held by a large statue carving of a man. On the other end of the staff or possible device is the shape of a shark's fin. This almost looks like some type of futuristic device, weapon, or symbolic staff.
http://www.nationalufocenter.com/artman/uploads/16yfaces.jpg
The man's right arm on the left side in this image is bizarrely wrapped around the device like that of a snake. Above this staff is the face of a court jester or other exaggerated features, or possible that of a mask of some sort. You can see a pronounced chin, a large light colored nose and brows looking slightly to the left in this section. His hair or head dress curls around down on both sides of his head. This figure is reminiscent of the Mayan culture here on Earth. I especially like this photograph because I can relate to what kind of species may once have been, or currently is on Mars. This is a rare glimpse of a face with such details that it is difficult to dismiss as any random formation. There are so many points that look intelligently modified, that I think this is a good example of what type of intelligent species there may be on Mars.
The cliff sides here and on the full image are riddled with what looks like intelligently carved terraces and openings. If you enlarge and resize the full image you can see many things more clearly. Thanks to Norman Bryden. Link http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/ab1_m04/nonmaps/M0100047.gif
SOURCE: Filer's Files #16 - 19 April 2006
http://www.nationalufocenter.com/artman/publish/article_72.php
MARS STRUCTURES ADVANCED BASE?
http://www.nationalufocenter.com/artman/uploads/17marscomplexcippacphoto5.jpg
Steve Tobias writes, "Here is the photo from Mars that looks like some kind of an advanced base." It is either Secret Alternative Three base of human origin or it is an alien base. (Use Google to read up on the conspiracy theory alternative three ) The aliens don't have to be living on Mars as born there or evolved there. They are still aliens no matter where they are originally from. If it is an earth international government secret installation we need to know the truth. Please help to spread this all over the world. I am a citizen of the USA and ex-military, and have been a UFO researcher since 1991. Thank you for your help in processing this information. Below is the link at the NASA web site.... then after that is the enlarged and more contrast added photo showing the base.... in the darker soil region. Sincerely, Steve Tobias : Click here: MOC wide-angle image S02-00645 http://www.nationalufocenter.com/artman/publish/
SUSPENSION BRIDGE AND STRUCTURES
http://www.nationalufocenter.com/artman/uploads/17marstemplefalseccolor_.jpg
Norman Bryden writes, "This is a new section from a Mars Global Surveyor image I have discovered, enlarged, resampled and slightly adjusted the color, brightness and contrast to help see the structures. I have found a series of what looks like elevated roads, ramps, bridges and structures in the full image. In the section below from the full image you can download from the links, there is what looks to be a suspension bridge. You can see the span of the bridge over the cavern in the center of the image. On both sides you can make out the raised somewhat triangular shaped structures that support the bridge span. This looks like an intelligently constructed structure by a Martian race of beings, and is further evidence that Mars is inhabited. Thanks to Norman Bryden Link to NASA http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/m07_m12/nonmaps/M11/M1102707.gif
MOC narrow-angle image M11-02707 Mesas buttes and rugged crater floor terrain in Terra Tyrrhena24.43°S Latitude 279.37°W Longitude Scaled pixel width: 2.80 meters.
http://www.surfingtheapocalypse.net/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=129887
HIRISE IMAGES SHOW SYMBOLS
High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE)
I'm excited about the potential of the new HIRISE satellite because its photos are much clearer and sharper than previous satellite data. Image AEB_000001_0000_Color was taken by HiRISE on March 24, 2006. The image is centered at 33.65 degrees south latitude, 305.07 degrees east longitude. It is oriented such that north is 7 degrees to the left of up. The range to the target was 2,493 kilometers (1,549 miles). Objects as small as 7.5 meters (24.6 feet) are resolved.
Editors Note: Various symbols similar to our letters are found at key points on Mars, usually within a crater. They appear as directions for landings. Each week we bring the reader examples that suggest evidence of artificial design on Mars. Note the similarity to Nasca symbols in Peru in photo below.
SOURCE: Filer's Files #17 Apr 26, 2006
http://www.nationalufocenter.com/artman/publish/article_75.php
108 MINUTES THAT CHANGED THE WORLD
by Andrei Kislyakov, RIA Novosti political commentator
Moscow, Russia (RIA) Apr 12, 2006 On April 12, 1961, all ears were turned to radios as Union Radio director Yuri Levitan, in his famous voice that became a symbol of Soviet victories, said: "the Soviet Union has orbited Earth's ever-first satellite vehicle, the Vostok, with a man onboard. The Vostok is piloted by Major Yury Alekseyevich Gagarin, a citizen of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics."
Thus TASS, the official Soviet news agency, announced forty-five years ago what even today, in an era when space flights are treated as something useful and necessary but no longer fascinating, still sends powerful echoes throughout Earth's space history.
This is what people all over the world know. What they hardly know is that the backside of the ever-first manned space operation was probably as dramatic as anything that stands on the cutting edge of progress.
For thousands of people, those first 108 minutes in space, marked by Gagarin's triumphal if ostensibly business-as-usual "Off we go" when the launch vehicle lifted off, meant 24/7 work for years, unprecedented pressure, unexpected casualties, and enormous sacrifice.
Before
Despite the fact the Soviet Chief Designers' Board upheld a proposal from Sergei Korolyov, the head of the Soviet space program at the time, to begin the design of what was termed then as a "manned satellite" in November 1958, top Soviet leaders were unable to look beyond the post-WWII political posture.
While agreeing with their American rivals that one man in space was worth a hundred armor divisions or a dozen ballistic missiles on the ground, they still funded the latter heavily and seemed to treat the former as superfluous.
This suggested that a manned program could only be approved if submitted in one package with a military effort. A turning point where military, political, and scientific interests came together (God save America, space designers were joking) came rather fast as NASA, then existent for less than a year, successfully recovered space images from its Discovery satellite.
Seen - and for a good reason - as a fresh opportunity for unrivaled intelligence, the announcement spurred the Soviet leadership to pay more attention to space. In May 1959, the government gave Korolyov a top-secret order to begin the design of an automatic spy satellite.
Feeling a moment of truth for his Big Dream, Korolyov went through circles of red tape, bravely putting at stake his reputation and prominent position in Soviet society, to make sure that the order included one additional paragraph: "...and a satellite designed for a manned flight." These seven small words would soon change the world.
This was a crucial move for times when nobody actually new anything about how space affects human beings. The medical community was as divided about this as they were confused: some looked at a space mission as at something similar to high-altitude aircraft piloting, others warned humans could go simply mad in a null-gravity environment.
The first experiment with dogs in less than a year, July 28, 1960, ended in a disaster. The 8K72 with Chaika and Lisichka onboard lifted off well but exploded after 23 seconds. The death of two mongrels (well-bred dogs, ironically, turned out not to be sturdy and intelligent enough for space flights) later led to the concept of a safe re-entry capsule, which on August 19 of the same year safely brought Belka and Strelka, the two dog pilots of the 1K No. 2 mission, back home from the orbit.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin was again agitated by alarming news from overseas. Russian intelligence found that the U.S. was able to accomplish a Mercury suborbital manned mission as early as in 1961, which encouraged Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to sign his "Document 10/11," an October 11, 1960 order, that gave manned space projects the highest priority.
With the successful Belka/Strelka mission under the belt, a manned flight was planned as early as December 1960. Just another dog flight, and it will be the off-we-go time, Soviet engineers thought. If only they knew what a horrible tragedy was to delay the triumph for half a year. Compared to what happened at the Baikonur Space Center on October 24, the two unsuccessful automatic missions to Mars in late September, deplorable as they were, would seem child's play.
On that day, Baikonur was preparing a new intercontinental ballistic missile for a test launch. After fuelling, a specialist found a minor fault in one of the engines. An "all fuel out" command was requested but the commander-in-chief of the missile force Marshal Mitrofan Nedelin, in fear of retribution for what could be labeled as the "disruption of a strategic mission" and in defiance of strictest instructions from the designer Mikhail Yangel, ordered to begin repairs while the highly aggressive fuel and oxidizer were still in tanks.
Dozens of engineers rushed to the missile, climbing by the mobile service towers at the necessary level. Nedelin was sitting on a stool 20 meters away from the launch platform, anxiously giving orders. When the 30-minute countdown began, the onboard command device - hardly anyone will ever be able to tell why - started the second-stage engine.
Dozens of people evaporated in the white-hot gas jet in a matter of seconds. The commander himself was identified by a Hero of the Soviet Union Medal found at the scene. The tragedy was one of those in which most affected people don't escape alive - 126 were killed and 50 injured or heavily burnt.
Five weeks later, the otherwise successful December 1 Pchyolka/Mushka re-entry was mispositioned in the high atmosphere due to a failure in the retropack. The capsule with, militarily speaking, "top-secret equipment" was going to land outside of the U.S.S.R. Some officer at a control center underground pushed the self-destruct button, hopefully not knowing what he was doing - smashing the capsule, killing both dogs, and driving the last nail into a plan to make a manned mission before 1961.
Off We Go
There are thousands of accounts on the opening of the space era, which came five months later, on April 12, 1961. Some are credible, to an extent. However, as it went with most of Soviet space activity, few people were aware of what was going on behind the scenes.
The liftoff and orbiting were successful enough - terrible jolts, deafening noise, and suffocating g-load did not count, as the cosmonaut had been trained to withstand them on Earth - but the first flight is always different. Engineers warned that an ink pen would not work without gravity but who could think that the lead pencil would fly somewhere so that Gagarin could not find it; the tape recorder stopped; the downlink turned out to have so much room for improvement that waving hands into the viewport seemed a better solution. And then the chief danger surfaced.
The spacecraft turned out to be orbited much higher than planned. Under the emergency scenario (if automatic deceleration failed), the Vostok was to spiral down to the Earth slowly within a week because all re-entry calculations were based on the 247-km (154 miles) apogee altitude, typical for previous unmanned missions.
Accordingly, all life support systems had a week's reserve. Gagarin's apogee was 50 miles higher (327 km), and, if anything went wrong, he would have to spend minimum 15 days in space, dying of thirst and lack of oxygen.
Small lies that led to big confusion
On the technical side, it all went smoothly. The return capsule re-entered as planned. Gagarin successfully ejected and parachuted safely from 1,500 m, opening the first great chapter in the space history of mankind.
It was because of ideology that he was to wake up as a national hero, the first man in space -- and be labeled as a space liar for the rest of his life.
Soviet ideologists could not dream of going into space. They hardly knew what a space rocket was. But what they claimed to know well enough was that a picture of a parachute touchdown was derogatory for what they termed as the Great Soviet Space Breakthrough. And they immediately closed down all information relating to Gagarin's landing, ordering him to lie that he had landed inside the capsule.
The truth came out in 1964, as the Soviet media reported that the three-man Voskhod crew was the first mission ever to return inside the capsule. The rest of the world caught on to this, turning the how-did-you-land-Mr.-Gagarin question into an Earth's first cosmonaut's worst nightmare.
This was where the Soviet besieged-fortress paranoia made real damage. All space issues declared a top state secret, rumors unsurprisingly became the main source of information. Across the world, this led to sometimes funny but often embarrassing speculations. Gagarin's space mission, unfortunately, followed into the well-oiled groove of spinning public gossip around great accomplishments. One huge rumor about the Soviet space story was that the military had allegedly covered up the names of dozens of pilots who died in failed launch attempts.
In fact, it began long before the Vostok flight. In December 1959, Continental, an Italian news agency, cited a well-known Czech communist accusing the Soviets of covering up a series of failed space launches in November 1957-June 1959, which allegedly claimed three lives. This one, though, followed many other "world sensations" -- like a report about the explosion of a Soviet ready-to-launch moon-headed spacecraft at a mystery Siberian space center of Sputnikgrad (I wish I knew where it was!) - into the dustbin of history.
Another example proving that, whatever other professional skills, Western media could at least be credited with vivid imagination, came in October 1959, after the Soviet magazine Ogonyok published photos of test pilots Belokonev, Kachur, Grachev, Zavadsky, and Mikhailov. Something - maybe it was the pilots' gear - misled the Associated Press into believing that the people in the photos were future cosmonauts. They turned out so addicted to the idea that, when none of the five names had surfaced in the media until the Gagarin flight, AP reported the five to be dead and even invented a bloodcurdling story for each "victim of the Soviet space machine."
Khrushchev who, frankly, rather liked to show off, poured more oil into the flames by warning the Americans of something they had never seen before. Hearing his boastful promises and backed by CIA reports and by evidence from an escaped Russian naval officer, the Americans were anticipating something in the space department on September 27, 1960. TASS remained tight-lipped through the day, though, which immediately raised rumors of another tragedy - and another dead pilot.
What really happened was that two Molniya launch vehicles with the first 1M automatic Mars exploration station onboard exploded in flight, a failure turned into a lesson that ultimately led to the Gagarin success.
Indeed, the Vostok mission was far from a black-and-white enterprise. It has many shadows, some of which we still know little about. But like spent fuel tanks falling off from the advancing rocket, the peelings of rumors and speculations are being left behind. Now, looking at fading 50-year-old images, we can hear Levitan's confident and accomplished voice reverberating in our minds: "The satellite vehicle has begun free orbital revolution around the Earth..."
And this is what counts.
SOURCE: RIA Novosti
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/108_Minutes_That_Changed_The_World.html
EVIDENCE MOUNTS FOR COMPANION STAR TO OUR SUN
by Staff Writers
Newport Beach CA (SPX) Apr 25, 2006 The Binary Research Institute (BRI) has found that orbital characteristics of the recently discovered planetoid, "Sedna", demonstrate the possibility that our sun might be part of a binary star system. A binary star system consists of two stars gravitationally bound orbiting a common center of mass. Once thought to be highly unusual, such systems are now considered to be common in the Milky Way galaxy.
Walter Cruttenden at BRI, Professor Richard Muller at UC Berkeley, Dr. Daniel Whitmire of the University of Louisiana, amongst several others, have long speculated on the possibility that our sun might have an as yet undiscovered companion. Most of the evidence has been statistical rather than physical.
The recent discovery of Sedna, a small planet like object first detected by Cal Tech astronomer Dr. Michael Brown, provides what could be indirect physical evidence of a solar companion. Matching the recent findings by Dr. Brown, showing that Sedna moves in a highly unusual elliptical orbit, Cruttenden has determined that Sedna moves in resonance with previously published orbital data for a hypothetical companion star.
In the May 2006 issue of Discover, Dr. Brown stated: "Sedna shouldn't be there. There's no way to put Sedna where it is. It never comes close enough to be affected by the sun, but it never goes far enough away from the sun to be affected by other stars... Sedna is stuck, frozen in place; there's no way to move it, basically there's no way to put it there – unless it formed there. But it's in a very elliptical orbit like that. It simply can't be there. There's no possible way - except it is. So how, then?"
"I'm thinking it was placed there in the earliest history of the solar system. I'm thinking it could have gotten there if there used to be stars a lot closer than they are now and those stars affected Sedna on the outer part of its orbit and then later on moved away. So I call Sedna a fossil record of the earliest solar system. Eventually, when other fossil records are found, Sedna will help tell us how the sun formed and the number of stars that were close to the sun when it formed."
Walter Cruttenden agrees that Sedna's highly elliptical orbit is very unusual, but noted that the orbit period of 12,000 years is in neat resonance with the expected orbit periodicity of a companion star as outlined in several prior papers. Consequently, Cruttenden believes that Sedna's unusual orbit is something indicative of the current solar system configuration, not merely a historical record.
"It is hard to imagine that Sedna would retain its highly elliptical orbit pattern since the beginning of the solar system billions of years ago. Because eccentricity would likely fade with time, it is logical to assume Sedna is telling us something about current, albeit unexpected solar system forces, most probably a companion star".
Outside of a few popular articles, and Cruttenden's book "Lost Star of Myth and Time", which outlines historical references and the modern search for the elusive companion, the possibility of a binary partner star to our sun has been left to the halls of academia. But with Dr. Brown's recent discoveries of Sedna and Xena, (now confirmed to be larger than Pluto), and timing observations like Cruttenden's, the search for a companion star may be gaining momentum.
SOURCE: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Evidence_Mounts
_For_Companion_Star_To_Our_Sun.html
THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE: DO WE LIVE IN A DESIGNER SOLAR SYSTEM? NASA: Mover of Worlds.
The genesis for this journal entry originates back in 2001 when a group of scientists with connections to NASA calculated that moving a planet into a radically different orbit was far easier than we ever imagined. Excerpts from a BBC webpage article on this story:
"Mankind will soon have the ability to move the Earth into a new orbit, say a team of astronomers. The planetary maneuver may more than double the time life can survive on our planet, they believe.
Our Sun will increase its brightness in the next billion years or so, and if the Earth stays in its present orbit it will be fried and all life eliminated.
Using the well-understood "gravitational sling shot" technique that has been employed to send space probes to the outer planets, the researchers now think a large asteroid could be used to reposition the Earth to maintain a benign global climate ..."
... "Our initial analysis shows that the general problem of long-term planetary engineering is almost alarmingly feasible," they say.
All that is required is for a large asteroid, about 100 km (62 miles) across, to fly past the Earth transferring some of its orbital energy to our planet. The asteroid would then move out to encounter Jupiter where it would acquire more energy that it could impart to the Earth on a subsequent encounter. Humans would have many thousands of years to select the appropriate asteroid and develop the necessary technology to deflect the giant rock in the direction of Earth ... Perhaps, the authors suggest, many moons and planets could be moved into more favorable positions in the Solar System where their climates might support life ..."
The full BBC story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1154784.stm
It is surprising that something as small as an asteroid has enough leverage to move something as big as the Earth. The leverage principle also applies to asteroids themselves. As the reader may be aware scientists have suggested - if there is enough warning - that the best way to deal with an asteroid on collision course with the Earth is to attach an ion propulsion rocket to it. Over the course of a few years the small leverage of the ion engine will move the dangerous asteroid onto a radically different and safer orbit. This observation suggests that human space capabilities are within only a hundred years of being able to move the Earth!
Has it Been Done Before?
The main purpose of this website is to look into any evidence for past habitation of the Solar System by a spacefaring civilization. So the rest of this Occasional Journal entry will be investigating the rather wild possibility that the orbital characteristics of some or all of the bodies in our Solar System have been artificially re-engineered long before the emergence of human civilization. Hence the title of this journal entry: "Thinking the Unthinkable: Do we live in a designer solar system?".
SOURCE: Article continued at http://www.bob-wonderland.supanet.com/journal_9.htm
PROFESSOR PREDICTS HUMAN TIME TRAVEL THIS CENTURY With a brilliant idea and equations based on Einstein’s relativity theories, Ronald Mallett from the University of Connecticut has devised an experiment to observe a time traveling neutron in a circulating light beam. While his team still needs funding for the project, Mallett calculates that the possibility of time travel using this method could be verified within a decade.
Black holes, wormholes, and cosmic strings – each of these phenomena has been proposed as a method for time travel, but none seem feasible, for (at least) one major reason. Although theoretically they could distort space-time, they all require an unthinkably gigantic amount of mass.
Mallett, a U Conn Physics Professor for 30 years, considered an alternative to these time travel methods based on Einstein’s famou |
