>>20613296

TYB

AFA Appoints New President & CEO

MARCH 22, 2024

Lt. Gen. Burt Field, USAF (Ret.) Brings Vast Experience to Air & Space Forces Association

ARLINGTON, Va.—Retired Lt. Gen. Burt Field has been appointed President & Chief Executive Officer of the Air & Space Forces Association, the nation’s foremost advocate for air and space power as the foundation of U.S. national defense.

“General Field is an outstanding and proven leader, whose extensive military, business, and non-profit volunteer experience make him the right leader to take AFA into its next chapter,” said AFA Chair of the Board Bernie Skoch. “Throughout our extensive interviewing and vetting process, he earned praise for his ability to see the big picture, to care about people, to build teams, and to achieve great things.”

A 1979 graduate of the Air Force Academy, Field was an F-16 pilot and Weapons School graduate—and former Commandant—who served 35 years in uniform. During that time, he commanded at the squadron, wing, and Numbered Air Force levels, including as commander of U.S. Forces Japan and 5th Air Force at Yokota, Japan, completing his service as Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, Plans, and Requirements (A3/5) at Air Force Headquarters.

Following retirement, Field was Vice President for Strategic Planning at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, building on his Pentagon experience and a personal passion for strategy. He has also been active with the Falcon Foundation, which provides prep school scholarships to students whose initial applications to the Air Force Academy fall just shy of qualifying. The program has been highly successful in producing qualified USAFA graduates.

“This is a crucial time in our nation’s history with the emergence of new threats and an ever more complex global environment,” Field said. “I’m excited to build on AFA’s history as a powerful advocate for air and space power and to support our Airmen, Guardians, and their Families in these challenging times.”

Field will assume his new role April 1.

“I’ve been passionate about strategy since I was A3/5 and I’ve enjoyed building on that since,” Field said. “Strategy in most companies is an ‘infinite game,’ as Simon Sinek would say. What do you want to achieve? Do your people have what they need to excel? What capabilities do you have? What capabilities do you need? And how do you execute on that and monitor progress along the way?”

Strategic planning, Field said, yields priorities, objectives, and metrics for performance, all things he will emphasize as AFA’s next President & CEO.

Field succeeds Lt. Gen. Bruce Wright, USAF (Ret.), who led the Association from 2019-2024.

“The Board thanks General Wright for his dedicated service over the past five years,” Skoch said. “His enthusiasm for Airmen, Guardians, and the Department of the Air Force will always be remembered.”

About AFA

The Air & Space Forces Association is an independent, non-profit 501(c)3 association dedicated to advocating for investment and support for the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force, and for supporting Airmen, Guardians, and their Families. Founded in 1946, AFA is the single largest entity of its kind focused on air and space power. With more than 113,000 members and 200 chapters spread around the world, our mission is to promote dominant U.S. Air and Space Forces as the foundation of a strong National Defense; to honor and support Airmen, Guardians, and their Families; and to remember and respect the enduring heritage of the Air and Space Forces.

https://www.afa.org/afa-appoints-new-president-ceo/

'All eyes to the sky': National Geographic and ABC to chronicle epic solar spectacle on April 8 (exclusive video)

Mar 22, 2024

On April 8, North America will experience one of our planet's most incredible celestial spectacles: A total solar eclipse.

In many ways, the April 8 total solar eclipse could be one of the best of the last 100 years. The event will be visible from Mexico, across 15 U.S. states and in parts of northeast Canada. Many areas will see over four minutes of totality — the time in which the sun is completely blocked by the moon from our vantage point on Earth.

To help document the rare event, ABC and National Geographic are airing "Eclipse Across America," a two-hour special beginning at 2 p.m. ET (1800 GMT) on April 8, 2024.

"Eclipse Across America" will offer live coverage from Texas, Illinois, the shores of Lake Eerie in Ohio, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indiana, Niagara Falls, Maine, Vermont and Arkansas, where hundreds of couples are set to tie the knot "under nature's total darkness," according to a trailer released by ABC News. The special will offer reporting from ABC News anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis and National Geographic's Mariana van Zeller, among others.

If you live outside of the path of totality, watching live coverage of the total solar eclipse could be the best way for you to experience the event.

Whatever way you choose to watch the eclipse, make sure not to miss it! While Alaska will see a total solar eclipse in 2033, the lower 48 states of the contiguous U.S. will not experience another total solar eclipse until Aug. 23, 2044 when Montana, South Dakota and North Dakota will get to witness another celestial spectacle.

The next year, on Aug. 12, 2045, another total solar eclipse will be visible from California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia and Florida.

"Eclipse Across America" will broadcast on April 8 at 2 p.m. ET on ABC, ABC News Live, National Geographic Channel, Nat Geo WILD, Disney+, Hulu and network social media platforms.

https://www.space.com/national-geographic-eclipse-across-america

>>20613485

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_so-8QQk-4

>>20613485

Massive explosions may be visible on the sun during the April 8 total solar eclipse

Mar 23, 2024

If you're in the path of totality for the April 8 total solar eclipse, you'll experience a brief period of darkness — totality — for a few seconds or minutes. This is the only safe time to look directly at the sun without solar eclipse glasses. If you observe the sun's corona during totality, you may see dark-pink towers and loops of electrically charged plasma stretching many times the diameter of Earth into space. During the last total solar eclipse, in Australia on April 20, 2023, these "prominences" were spectacular — and vast.

These prominences will almost certainly be on show during totality in North America on April 8, because the sun is likely at the peak of its 11-year solar cycle, known as solar maximum.

Prominences can be visible for days — you can look at them anytime you want, if you use a hydrogen alpha telescope — but there are a couple of other rare phenomena you might be able to witness during totality. Here's what solar activity to look for during the total solar eclipse.

One such phenomenon that might be visible is a coronal mass ejection (CME).

"If we get lucky, a CME will present itself as a twisted, spiral-like structure, high in the atmosphere in the sun," Ryan French, a solar physicist at the National Solar Observatory in Boulder, Colorado, and author of "The Sun: Beginner's Guide to Our Local Star (Collins, 2023), told Space.com. A CME is a huge ejection of magnetic field and plasma mass from the sun's corona. It moves fast but looks stationary over a few hours.

"What this does mean, however, is that the same eruption could be seen in Rochester as it was in Dallas, at different stages of the same long-duration eruption," French said.

It will take 100 minutes for the moon's shadow to cross North America, so a CME could go off just before and be visible to everyone under a clear sky.

CMEs can certainly happen during totality. One was imaged on Dec. 14, 2020, during the "Great Patagonian Eclipse" in Chile, when the sun was close to solar minimum.

Solar flares are powerful bursts of radio waves, visible light, X-rays and gamma-rays at the surface of the sun that travel at light speed and take just eight minutes to reach Earth. They often follow a CME.

Although three solar flares that reached X class — the highest-intensity level —went off during one week in February, it's highly unlikely that one will be seen during totality.

"A solar flare is different to a CME — it's located far lower in the sun's atmosphere, closer to the moon's edge, and would be visible for only a few minutes," French said. "These would appear similar to low-altitude prominences, visible as red loops closer to the sun's surface."

However, the timing and position of a solar flare and a CME would have to be just right. "To be visible from Earth, it needs to be located above the sun's edge — so as not to get blocked by the moon — during the few minutes of totality," French said.

We'll see prominences during totality on April 8. "Prominences come in a large range of sizes and are more common during solar maximum," French said. "Sometimes prominences erupt, untethering from the sun's surface and expanding into the solar system."

That would be a spectacular sight, but what eclipse chasers really want to see are "giant eruptive" prominences — preferably detached from the sun's surface and free-floating in the corona.

"The problem with eclipses is that they only last a few minutes, so you can't usually take measurements over time," Amir Caspi, principal scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, told Space.com. "However, the sun is incredibly dynamic; some processes take minutes or even seconds, such as a solar flare or a CME," Caspi said.

Given that it's unlikely that such brief events will occur during totality, there's only one solution: to make totality longer. One way to extend it is to get in a supersonic jet and chase the moon's shadow. Scientists did that in 1973 using Concorde, achieving a 73-minute totality.

The alternative is to film the eclipsed sun for a few minutes from across an entire continent, hoping that someone, somewhere, will catch the beginning or end of an event. That rarely happens, but it will on April 8. That day, totality will arrive in the U.S. in Texas at 1:27 p.m. CDT and leave in Maine at 3:35 pm EDT — a total of 68 minutes.

The Citizen Continental-America Telescopic Eclipse (CATE 2024) project, which Caspi leads, is an attempt to make a continuous 60-minute 3D movie of the sun's corona in polarized light, using 35 teams of three or four citizen scientists. Each will use standardized cameras and setups and hope to get lucky with the sun.

https://www.space.com/massive-eruptions-visible-sun-during-total-eclipse-2024-what-to-look-for

https://www.space.com/quantum-tornado-black-hole-physics-simulation-absolute-zero

'Quantum tornado' allows scientists to mimic a black hole on Earth

Mar 22, 2024

Thanks to immense gravitational forces, the regions around black holes are violent and turbulent environments driven by physics that cannot be found anywhere else in the universe. In fact, black holes are so influential that, when they rotate, they drag the very fabric of space along with them. In other words, near a black hole, nothing stands still. Nothing at all.

Clearly, black holes can't be dragged down to Earth, so these effects can be studied in the lab — but a research team, led by University of Nottingham scientists, has done the next best thing. The researchers created, for the first time, a swirling "quantum vortex" in a helium superfluid chilled to ultracold temperatures. This apparatus essentially mimics a black hole right on our planet.

This is because the quantum tornado generated tiny waves on the surface of the superfluid, which is a material capable of displaying frictionless flow (or incredibly low viscosity) and other exotic behaviors observed at temperatures near absolute zero. These are behaviors that mimic conditions found near rotating black holes.

"Using superfluid helium has allowed us to study tiny surface waves in greater detail and accuracy than with our previous experiments in water," Patrik Svancara, team leader and a researcher at the University of Nottingham, said in a statement. "As the viscosity of superfluid helium is extremely small, we were able to meticulously investigate their interaction with the superfluid tornado and compare the findings with our own theoretical projections."

To understand how a superfluid vortex could resemble a black hole, it is vital to remember what Einstein's 1915 theory of general relativity tells us about black holes. General relativity suggests that space and time are a single entity called spacetime, and that gravity arises when objects of mass cause spacetime to curve.

Black holes aren't actually objects, but are regions of spacetime created by an infinitely dense and compact mass — a central singularity where the very laws of physics break down. The outer boundary of these spacetime regions is called the event horizon, and it represents the point at which not even light is fast enough to match the black hole's escape velocity.

Black holes only have three known characteristics: Electric charge, mass and angular momentum, or "spin." A rotating black hole, or a "Kerr black hole," with angular momentum also drags the fabric of spacetime around with it in the direction of its rotation, an effect known as "frame dragging," or the Lense-Thirring effect after the scientists who first proposed it.

1/2

>>20613617

Considering how the Lense-Thirring effect and forces matter around a Kerr black hole into constant motion, it makes sense that a vortex in a fluid, or maybe a tornado in the atmosphere, would be very loosely analogous to such a region of spacetime. But, what's key with the team's black-hole-simulation vortex is that it isn't found in any old fluid. It was made in a superfluid chilled to absolute zero.

To conduct their experiment, the team constructed a bespoke cryogenic system capable of holding several liters of helium and chilling it to temperatures below minus 456 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 271 degrees Celsius). This is around 3 to 4 degrees above absolute zero, equal to minus 459.76 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 273.15 degrees Celsius). Absolute zero is theoretically the coldest possible temperature. At absolute zero, all atomic movement would cease.

At the temperatures achieved by the experiment, liquid helium develops quantum properties that would usually hinder the formation of giant vortices. This system showed how this can't really be worked around; the team ultimately built a quantum tornado in the ultracold superfluid using a multitude of smaller parts.

"Superfluid helium contains tiny objects called quantum vortices, which tend to spread apart from each other," Svancara continued. "In our set-up, we've managed to confine tens of thousands of these quanta in a compact object resembling a small tornado, achieving a vortex flow with record-breaking strength in the realm of quantum fluids."

Svancara and colleagues found fascinating parallels between the quantum tornado and the way the gravity of black holes influences spacetime. The team hopes that the experiment will open up a way to simulate quantum physics more broadly within curved spacetime generally, and even around black-hole curved spacetime.

“When we first observed clear signatures of black hole physics in our initial analog experiment back in 2017, it was a breakthrough moment for understanding some of the bizarre phenomena that are often challenging, if not impossible, to study otherwise," Silke Weinfurtner, leader of the Black Hole Laboratory where this experiment was developed and conducted, explained in the statement.

"Now," Weinfurtner continued, "with our more sophisticated experiment, we have taken this research to the next level, which could eventually lead us to predict how quantum fields behave in curved spacetimes around astrophysical black holes.”

The team's research was published on Wednesday (March 20) in the journal Nature.

2/2

Mapped: More than 1,500 UFO sightings over UK in 4 years - see the close encounters where you live

UPDATED16:09, 23 MAR 2024

Nearly 2,000 UFOs have been spotted over the UK in the last four years - and our map reveals the locations most likely to be visited by aliens. It has been an interesting time for UFO enthusiasts.

Last year American fighter jets shot down an unexplained flying object - which was later identified as a Chinese balloon, suspected to be on a spying mission - as well as three other objects in or near American airspace. Then whistle-blower Major David Grusch, a former Air Force intelligence officer, set the internet on fire when he claimed the US was concealing a long-standing programme that retrieves and reverse-engineers unidentified flying objects.

The intrigue has continued into 2024, with Ukrainian troops recording a huge disc-shaped object over the battlefield of Donetsk. Closer to home a hiker came upon a mysterious monolith on a hilltop in Powys, which he initially assumed was “some sort of UFO”, but has since left some speculating it may have been planted by aliens.

However, despite increasing speculation about alien visitors online and in the media, the skies above the UK have been relatively quiet in the last year. In its annual report, the research group UFO Identified documented 395 sightings in the UK in 2023 - a 20% drop from 497 sightings in 2022 and lower than in 2021 (413) and 2020 (484).

However, that adds up to 1,789 sightings in four years. Information was taken from social media, newspaper reports, and over 50 Freedom of Information requests, as well as from reports made directly to UFO spotter groups around the UK.

According to the report, people in the North West had the best chance of seeing a UFO last year, with 41 sightings across the region. This was followed by the South East (40) and then the South West (39).

That is broadly similar to the location of sightings in 2022 and 2021. Over the four years UFO Identified has documented the phenomenon, the highest number of sightings have been seen in the South East (233), followed by the North West (218) and then the South West (193).

The lowest number of sightings have been reported in Northern Ireland (30). This was followed by the North East of England (63).

You can see the UFO encounters documented where you live using in the last four years using our interactive map.

Sightings documented last year include:

Around 40 orbs were seen moving in a “cross formation” over Greater Manchester, led by one very bright orb.

Multiple orbs were also seen over Mildenhall in Suffolk, also led by one “abnormally bright” object. But these UFOs appeared to disrupt car radios.

A “flying saucer illuminated by varying red glowing spheres” was seen over Worksop in Nottinghamshire

A dark and silent “squashed triangle” was seen gliding over Point Clear in Essex

Up to 15 bright lights pursued by two fighter jets and an Apache helicopter

While flying saucers and other unexplained phenomena were most likely to be spotted in the North West or the South East, the data shows that the best time to see a UFO last year was on a Monday evening between 9pm and 10pm. The most common sighting was a “star-like” UFO, followed by an orb - with several different witnesses reporting clusters of orbs in the skies across different locations.

The vast majority of sightings were of far-off objects in the sky, but there were 27 “Close Encounters of the First Kind”, more than double the previous year. These are reports of UFOs seen up close, at a distance of no more than 500ft away.

There were also two “Close Encounters of the Second Kind” which is when a UFO sighting appears to cause a physical effect, such as a car malfunction, a ground impression, or a reaction in animals.mBut there were no “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” - which is when an extra-terrestrial is seen piloting or on board a UFO.

Ash Ellis of UFO Identified said: “Overall, it’s disappointing to see such a big decrease in reports this year, especially after the bumper year of 2022. This time last year we were hoping that a reduction in the stigma surrounding the topic would lead to more reports being filed, but this clearly hasn’t been the case.

“Hopefully, as we and other groups around the country continue giving people space and a platform to talk about their experiences that will help more people come forward and be confident to stand up and tell their story.

“Despite the reduced number of reports, we continue to see the same trends across different datasets. Whether that's the area in which sightings are being made, to the time of day, and the described shape of UFO’s, and so on, these have all been consistent over the past four years.

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/mapped-more-1500-ufo-sightings-28873997

https://www.meer.com/en/79059-mh370-ufo-encounter-mystery-videos

MH370: UFO encounter mystery videos

23 MARCH 2024

Planes go up, planes go down. What planes don't do is just vanish off the face of the Earth.

(Jeff Wise, aviation journalist and key contributor for the Netflix limited docuseries MH370: The Plane That Disappeared)

On March 8th, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, a Boeing 777, took off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia en route to Beijing, China. Less than an hour after takeoff, it vanished from radar screens and lost all communication with air traffic control. Despite an extensive multinational search effort covering vast areas of the Indian Ocean, the wreckage of MH370 remained elusive for an extended period. The aircraft’s disappearance, along with the 239 people on board, including passengers and crew, led to an array of theories and speculations, including hijacking, mechanical failure, and pilot suicide. What happened to the aircraft and the 239 people on board remains a mystery.

The mysterious YouTube videos (August 2014)

Later in 2014, three mysterious videos appeared on YouTube from user ‘RegicideAnon’. The videos appeared to show classified video footage of an aircraft being harassed by three orb-like UFOs. One of the videos purportedly comes from a satellite capable of videoing from multiple angles for a 3-D type of effect. Another video seems to come from a military drone, and a third is of unknown origin. At the end of the satellite and drone videos, the most shocking and controversial segment happens. In a flash, the aircraft and the UFOs disappear.

User ‘RegicideAnon’ was rumored to have Air Force connections, and at some point, after uploading the videos, virtually all traces of the user’s YouTube account were deleted. The only access to the original videos is in the website archives. Because the videos did not readily remain on YouTube, they were forgotten about until March 8, 2023.

MH370: The Plane That Disappeared (March 8th, 2023)

On the 9th anniversary of the MH370 disappearance, Netflix released a limited series re-examining the mystery. While no definitive conclusions were reached, the documentary brought attention to the old ‘RegicideAnon’ videos again. People began to speculate that the mysterious videos might show what happened to MH370, and online sleuths started to analyze the videos.

One was Reddit user ‘aryelbcn’, who detailed lengthy breakdowns of the videos. Another Reddit user, IcySlide7698, provided a key breakdown of ‘the flash’ shown in two of the videos. Their research seemed to indicate that the flash portions of the videos used virtual effects elements from a 1990s CD-ROM. This CD-ROM is potentially the same that many television shows and movies of the time obtained their pyro-special effects, such as explosions. This is why low-budget productions at the time often featured the same special effects.

However, there are researchers that report findings they say prove the mystery videos are not only 100% real, but that they are a glimpse at the truth of the MH370 tragedy. One such researcher is Ashton Forbes, who goes by the Twitter (X) handle of @JustXAshton. He has organized a group called MH370x, which says, “For those who know the MH370 videos are real and to prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt.”

Searching for an expert

For this article and our podcast, All Things Unexplained, we reached out to various aviation experts around the United States. The search for an expert started with the following premise: if any portion of the mystery videos is fake, it is the flash (as seems to be the case, as noted earlier) and/or the UFOs. If any portion of the mystery videos is authentic, it is likely to be the aircraft itself. This also raises an important point, which has yet to be resolved. If the aircraft portion of the video is fake, then it is either computer-generated imagery (CGI), perhaps from a flight simulation, or it is repurposed footage from something else. However, as of this writing, no duplicate CGI or footage has been shown to exist.

1/2

>>20613802

>1/2

1/3

We discovered in our search for an aviation expert that people are very hesitant to offer scientific analysis of this very controversial topic. The disappearance of MH370 is a real-life tragedy that has affected numerous individuals and families. We write this article with the utmost love, respect, prayer, and hope for everyone involved. Polarizing topics such as the UFO phenomenon and MH370 require an honest pursuit of truth.

After several failed attempts to garner help with the videos in their entirety, we edited the videos, so they did not show the most contentious portion: the flash disappearance. That is when an aviation expert agreed to help, though they requested anonymity. For the analysis, we gave them no background on the videos or us. We simply asked them to tell us what they see in the videos, with as much specificity as possible. They were asked to analyze the aircraft in the video, without any mention of the UFOs. The results were shocking.

The analysis

Military consultant: it should be noted here that before finding an aviation expert, we had the opportunity to show the videos to a military advisor, who will go by Simon. Their attention peaked during the ‘drone video’, and they noticed something we had not seen commented on anywhere else: the drone is in the contrails of the aircraft. In their opinion, this was a military operation because of the drone’s presence and proximity to the aircraft.

Aviation expert: the aviation expert’s analysis began with the aircraft.

The aircraft exhibited some improbable movements.

The tight turn of the aircraft is from a perspective other than a normal ‘looking up’.

The turn was greater than the standard rate of 2 minutes for a 360-degree turn.

At first, they thought the aircraft was an Antonov An-225 due to its Y-shaped tail. This craft is a strategic airlift cargo aircraft designed and produced by the Antonov Design Bureau in the Soviet Union. It was initially developed during the 1980s as an enlarged derivative of the An-124 for transporting Buran-class orbiters, which was the designation for the entire Soviet/Russian spaceplane project.

After lengthier inspection, they determined the aircraft was a Boeing or an Airbus, with Boeing being more likely.

The aviation expert believed the videos show potentially classified military testing:

The event was recorded from at least two different angles, suggesting the military knew about it before the testing.

This would make the aircraft military, not commercial. Contenders for the aircraft include either a Boeing 737, 757, or 767, each of which has military variants.

Note: Malaysian Airlines MH370 was a commercial Boeing 777.

The aviation expert analyzed the three ‘devices’ in the videos (remember, the aviation expert was not given any details of UFOs or UAPs).) According to the expert, the videos appear to show an experimental test with some sort of new military technology:

The three ‘devices’ could be next-generation guided weapons.

The three ‘devices’ do not appear to be a final product but are more likely to be a scaled-down beta version of certain systems.

Some of the videos show some sort of very distinct exhaust trail being emitted from the three ‘devices’.

The three ‘devices’ probably blend existing technology with new technology.

They appear to be testing a design for finely adjusting trajectory, speed, and distance from the tracked object (in this case, the aircraft).

Conclusions

2/3

>>20613809

The aviation expert concluded with a stunning analysis. Why would such technology be valuable in a military operational setting?

The devices could represent a fire-and-return weapon system.

The devices could represent a NextGen air-to-air offensive weapon system.

The devices could represent observation technology to intercept, track, and follow rogue or unknown military or civilian flights.

The devices could represent enhanced weapons that have a ‘loiter’ time. This would allow visual confirmation of an enemy target prior to impact and detonation.

After pondering all the evidence, combined with our aviation expert’s analysis, we are left with an eerily similar question that seems to permeate all UAP/UFO discussions: How much is the government hiding from us? The secrecy, mystery, and confusion accompanying the videos have the same feel as events such as Roswell, figures like Bob Lazar, and locations akin to Skinwalker Ranch. Are each of these entities connected to a world beyond our own? Or are they all related to our government’s ever-developing weapon systems?

Is our government hiding signs of other intelligent beings or our advanced technology? Given what we know about the plane in the YouTube videos, is it possible that the inclusion of a CGI flash at the end of the video was a tactic used by our own government as a disinformation tool? If the videos are leaked footage of top-secret military technology, it would be conceivable that the government could attempt to discredit the video to protect our advancements. Is the government hiding information about extraterrestrial existence to prevent mass chaos, or is our government deceiving us and our adversaries about their advancements to protect national security? In either case, are they right to do so? The insights revealed by expert analysis of the MH370 mystery videos support the complexity of UFO – UAP disclosure. There are many factions at play here, some known, some unknown. Each faction has its own motives, and each faction might be propped up by an unknown number of other parties. It’s a true UFO rabbit hole whose secrets could be under the utmost of protection.

Commenting on the ‘gatekeepers’ responsible for the latest AARO (All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office) report on UFOs, Australian journalist Ross Coulthart said, “…these are dangerous times, these are desperate people, they are concealing crimes, evil crimes.”

Finally, as the 10-year anniversary of the MH370 tragedy is upon us, the enigma surrounding its disappearance persists, compounded by the emergence of mystery videos, new theories, and new searches. While they all reignite speculation and reflection, they also serve as poignant reminders of the enduring grief and unanswered questions faced by the families of the passengers and crew. Let our thoughts and prayers remain with those affected, and may we continue to pursue the truth with unwavering resolve and compassion.

3/3

Lovelock Cave: Where Legends Of Redheaded Giant Cannibals Refuse To Die

Mar 20, 2024

Strange rumors were buried beneath the centuries of bat feces at Nevada’s Lovelock Cave. When two miners started to remove layers upon layers of guano around one century ago, they inadvertently unearthed an old Native American legend of cannibalistic red-haired giants.

Rest assured, the legend of Lovelock Cave is just that: a legend. No evidence of ferocious ginger giants has ever been discovered here, nor any other long-lost cavern. Nevertheless, the story of Lovelock's rediscovery is still a fascinating one.

Lovelock Cave is located in a remote part of northwestern Nevada close to the Humboldt State Wildlife Management Area, around 32 kilometers (20 miles) outside the town of Lovelock. Just like many other rock shelters in the region, the cave had been used by humans for thousands of years – and, judging by the archeological relics found here, it likely held some significance to the Native American culture that lived in the region.

The artifacts within the cave started to come to light in 1911 when two miners, James Hart and David Pugh, filed a mineral claim and started mining for bat guano there.

Guano, if you didn't know, is the excrement of seabirds and bats, and is rich in nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium. Since these are the key nutrients needed for plant growth, the excrement makes for excellent fertilizers and was once a highly lucrative material to harvest.

However, the pair of gold diggers found something much more interesting than bat poop. Upon digging through over 1.8 meters (6 feet) of guano, they came across numerous archeological artifacts, many of which appeared to be millennia old.

Llewellyn Lemont Loud, an archaeologist from the University of California’s Museum of Anthropology, was alerted to the discovery and began excavations in the spring of 1912. In total, Loud discovered around 10,000 archaeological specimens. However, his methods were pretty slapdash by modern standards and the thousands of finds only received one paragraph of description in his report.

He returned to the cave in 1924 with Mark Raymond Harrington, and they discovered some of the cave's most fascinating relics: a cache of eleven duck decoys fashioned out of real duck skin and feathers.

It is not clear when exactly, but a massive amount of human remains were discovered in this series of early digs, including several skeletons and whole bones. For even foggier reasons, people started to circulate reports that one of the skeletons stood over 231 centimeters (7 feet, 7 inches) tall and was unearthed with a distinct mop of orange hair.

“One of his great finds was a skeleton, found about twenty miles southerly of Lovelock, Nevada, showing that the body of which it was a framework, was exactly seven feet, seven inches tall. It is one of the ‘giant men’ of an ancient race of which skeletons were unearthed in Central Nevada,” reads a 1935 biography of John T. Reid, a mining engineer who worked in Lovelock.

Somehow, it appears the reports of mysterious skeletons became conflated with a myth of the Northern Paiute people that speaks of an ancient tribe of redheaded giants. The jumbo humans were said to belong to a legendary tribe known as "Si-Te-Cah" who fought against the Northern Paiutes in distant times, but were eventually banished from the region.

Rumors of redheaded figures might not have been totally off the wall. In her book Fossil Legends of the First American, historian Adrienne Mayor explains hair pigment can often turn a rusty, red color after death if it's exposed to certain conditions.

However, she believes other parts of the tale may be more nefarious. Mayor writes that legends of giants may have been drummed up by local entrepreneurs looking to attract tourists to the area. Furthermore, the area already had an abundance of large bones belonging to prehistoric megafauna, like mammoths and cave bears, which could have been confused for a large human to the eyes of a layperson.

Tales of the legendary giants are still going strong in the 21st century. A quick Google search will provide you with a long list of articles flirting with the idea of Lovelock Cave’s freakishly tall inhabitants. Just remember for next time: giants have never existed and never will (and no, the Vatican didn’t tell us to write that).

https://www.iflscience.com/lovelock-cave-where-legends-of-redheaded-giant-cannibals-refuse-to-die-73458