TYB
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
January 10, 2025
Young Stars, Dark Nebulae
An unassuming region in the constellation Taurus holds these dark and dusty nebulae. Scattered through the scene, stars in multiple star systems are forming within their natal Taurus molecular cloud complex some 450 light-years away. Millions of years young and still going through stellar adolescence, the stars are variable in brightness and in the late phases of their gravitational collapse. Known as T-Tauri class stars they tend to be faint and take on a yellowish hue in the image. One of the brightest T-Tauri stars in Taurus, V773 (aka HD283447) is near the center of the telescopic frame that spans over 1 degree. Toward the top is the dense, dark marking on the sky cataloged as Barnard 209.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
SpaceX Launches
NROL-153 Mission
On Thursday, January 9 at 7:52 p.m. PT, Falcon 9 launched the NROL-153 mission from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
This was the 22nd flight of the first stage booster supporting this mission, which previously launched NROL-87, NROL-85, SARah-1, SWOT, Transporter-8, Transporter-9, NROL-146, Bandwagon-2, and 13 Starlink missions.
https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=nrol-153
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0PohMYcpH8
Starlink Mission
SpaceX is targeting Friday, January 10 for a Falcon 9 launch of 21 Starlink satellites, including 13 with Direct to Cell capabilities, to low-Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
Liftoff is targeted for 11:21 a.m. ET, with backup opportunities available until 2:15 p.m. ET. If needed, additional opportunities are also available Saturday, January 11 starting at 10:00 a.m. ET.
A live webcast of this mission will begin about five minutes prior to liftoff, which you can watch here and on X @SpaceX. You can also watch the webcast on the new X TV app.
This is the 25th flight for the first stage booster supporting this mission, which previously CRS-22, CRS-25, Crew-3, Crew-4, TelkomSat-113BT, Turksat-5B, Koreasat-6A, Eutelsat HOTBIRD-F2, Galileo L13, mPOWER-A, PSN MFS, and 13 Starlink missions.
Following stage separation, the first stage will land on the Just Read the Instructions droneship, which will be stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.
https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=sl-12-12
Firefighters battle to protect NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Mt. Wilson
Jan. 10, 2025 5:36 AM PT
Officials said they are making progress in protecting two key institutions from the Eaton fire.
Don Fregulia, an operations section chief for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, which has joined in the Eaton fire response, said that efforts to protect Mt. Wilson had proved successful and he expected that to remain the case.
“We’re actively engaged there, and so far, no loss to any values at risk at Mt. Wilson,” Fregulia said. “We’re feeling good about what we have to do up there tonight to keep that site secure.”
He said the fire had also spread close to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, but he said that’s a priority and crews were “making good progress there as well.”
However, the higher up the firefight goes in the mountains the greater challenge with winds, he said.
“We get the aircraft up and we get them flying, and then it’s just too dangerous for the pilots and they have to come back down,” he said. “So it’s a constant evaluation, … we’re being successful when we’re able to fly them.”
The Eaton Fire has burned 13,690 acres and roughly 5,000 structures in Altadena and Pasadena. Additional evacuation orders were mandated Thursday afternoon when flames climbed toward Mount Wilson.
Other mandatory evacuations were lifted as city officials notified residents in Glenoaks Canyon and Chevy Chase Canyon that it was safe to return to their homes.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-01-10/firefighters-battle-to-protect-nasas-jet-propulsion-laboratory-mt-wilson
Want me to go backwards today?
Alien life a step closer to being proven after 85 planets discovered outside solar system
UPDATED: 19:57 ET, Tue, Jan 7, 2025
A breakthrough in the search for extraterrestrial life may be on the horizon as astronomers have uncovered 85 potential planets outside our Solar System that could support life.
University researchers delved into NASA data, sifting through a vast sample of 1.4 million stars, to identify dozens of new planets comparable in size to our gas giants, Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune.
NASA regularly monitors the galaxy for additional planets to support life and checks for space debris that could head toward Earth.
Among the 85 exoplanets - planets that orbit stars other than the Sun - 60 are entirely discoveries, boasting temperatures surprisingly similar to those found within our own Solar System.
According to experts, these exoplanetary climates may be cool enough to sustain life, sparking excitement in the scientific community.
This extraordinary find was made possible by analyzing data from NASA's TESS mission (Transitioning Exoplanet Survey Satellite), which has been operational since its launch in April 2018.
The newly discovered planets stand out for their relatively cool temperatures, distinguishing them from most exoplanets identified during the initial TESS mission.
Consequently, these planets have a "habitable zone" - situated at just the proper distance from their host stars to harbor liquid water and potentially support life.
These distant worlds are scattered across the vast expanse of space, ranging from 70 trillion to 15 quintillion miles away from Earth.
An international team spearheaded by PhD candidate Faith Hawthorn from The University of Warwick has made strides in exoplanet discovery using the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).
By monitoring the dimming of starlight, termed 'transits,' when celestial bodies cross before stars, they can pinpoint new exoplanets and ascertain their dimensions.
Hawthorn elaborated:
"The space satellite takes brightness from these stars and looks at how the planets passing in front of them causes the brightness to dip.
We can look for that and find planets in this way. I hope from my research we'll not only be able to learn about all the type of planets that are really out there in the milky way but also we'll be able to learn something about how our own solar system came to be, why earth itself is so special. And it would also be nice for humanity to take a field trip one day to an exoplanet."
While TESS typically requires witnessing three transits to confirm an exoplanet's existence and orbit time, Hawthorn's study innovatively focuses on systems with just two transits.
The 85 potential exoplanets discovered have orbital periods ranging from 20 to 700 days, starkly contrasting to the typical 3-10 day orbits of most exoplanets tracked by TESS.
This approach uncovers exoplanets with extended orbital periods, identifying more incredible exoplanets further from their stars.
https://www.the-express.com/news/space-news/159732/alien-life-85-planets-discovered
https://explorersweb.com/exploration-mysteries-black-knight-satellite/
Exploration Mysteries: Black Knight Satellite
January 6, 2025
My grandfather and I had a daily ritual when I came home from school. I breezed through my homework so we could watch National Geographic, the History Channel, or the Discovery Channel.
I called it the Educational Trinity. Those afternoons shaped my fascination with all the strange things in our world.
Glued to the TV one day, I came across a program about UFOs. One particular story stuck with me. In 1998, a photograph was taken from the International Space Station.
It was of a black, oddly shaped object hovering in the eerie, pale glow of Earth’s orbit. What was this object? Was it watching us? Where did it come from? Years later, I may finally have answers.
What happened in 1998?
In December 1998, the Space Shuttle Endeavour flew to the International Space Station. The STS-88 mission was critical for the expansion of the ISS, and the astronauts were supposed to connect the first American module (Node 1) to the station.
While some astronauts worked outside, those inside took photos of Earth. To their surprise, a mysterious object was floating a short distance away. When NASA released the images, the object became a topic of debate on Earth.
Some people assumed it was a UFO monitoring our planet. The dark, angular object was unlike any human-made satellite. It lacked the usual circular or cylindrical shape with panels at the sides.
Rather, this one had odd edges, curves, and no identifiers like flags or model numbers. In certain images, the object appeared to change shape.
The object became known as the Black Knight Satellite. Some conspiracy theorists believe it dates back to Nikola Tesla’s experiments with electricity and radio signals.
Nikola Tesla
Black Knight conspiracy theorists link the object to 1899 when Nikola Tesla conducted experiments in Colorado Springs.
Tesla built the Tesla Experimental Station, where he aimed to study electricity, wireless telegraphy, and the role of air pressure.
While conducting these tests, his receiver picked up on some peculiar signals. In 1899, he reported:
"We’re getting messages from the clouds one hundred miles away, possibly many times that distance…"
Later on, in 1935, he stated:
"In 1899, while experimenting with a wireless receiver of extraordinary sensitivity, I detected faint signals from Mars, our brother planet. I could not interpret the signals, but they seemed to suggest a numerical code, one–two–three–four."
As interesting as these signals sounded, Tesla ran into financial trouble and did not pursue the matter further.
Decades later, in 1927, Norwegian amateur radio operator Jorgen Hals was playing around with his radio equipment.
Upon turning the radio to a certain frequency, the signals bounced back slower than usual (15 seconds as opposed to one-seventh of a second). Why the delay?
Had Hals picked up on something lurking above the Earth? This odd phenomenon is cited as early evidence of the satellite’s existence.
The UFO craze
In the 1950s and 1960s, reports of a satellite of unknown origin circulated. In a 1954 newspaper report titled Artificial Satellites Circling Earth Now, says Ex-Marine, ufologist and former Marine Donald Keyhoe said there were:
"At least one, and possibly two, artificial satellites circling the earth."
Another report stated that unusual radio signals had been detected in Earth’s ionosphere. Supposedly, the signals didn’t match patterns from human-made transmissions.
The U.S. military initially attributed the signals to the Soviet Union or natural space phenomena. However, the Soviets only launched Sputnik 1, their first satellite, in 1957. This led some researchers to suggest an alien satellite was responsible.
In 1958, amateur astronomer Steven Slayton spotted an anomaly close to the Moon. Through his telescope, Slayton saw a fast-moving dark object that he estimated was 10m long and 1,000km from Earth. He saw this object more than once during his night sky observations.
In the 1960s, when the Space Race heated up, reports of strange objects increased. Astronaut John Glenn’s account of three spacecraft following his ship during his first orbital flight is well documented.
In March 1960, several newspapers reported strange activity in Earth’s polar orbit; again, an object of unknown origin. Years later, this was revealed to be a U.S. satellite designed to spy on the Russians.
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Observing Earth for 13,000 years
It wasn’t until the 1970s that the object finally got its name. ‘Black Knight’ comes from a novel by Russian author Alexander Kazantsev.
In his book, The Destruction of Faena, an alien civilization sent a satellite to observe the human race. The satellite had the code name, Black Prince.
One of the most prominent figures associated with the Black Knight theory is Duncan Lunan, a Scottish researcher and writer. In 1973, Lunan published an article in the Fortean Times, a magazine dedicated to anomalous phenomena.
In this article, Lunan analyzed radio signals recorded in 1928 and 1950.
Lunan theorized that the signals were not random. Rather, they were a coded message sent from a satellite orbiting Earth.
He suggested that the signals could be of extraterrestrial origin, although he was careful to point out that they might not necessarily be linked to the Black Knight. In fact, Lunan distanced himself from the Black Knight conspiracy, saying it had “nothing to do with me.”
Lunan studied Long Delayed Echoes (LDEs) and believed they created “star charts and diagrams,” according to an article published by Armagh Observatory and Planetarium. On his website, Lunan states:
"When I tried graphing the signals to see if that would work, to my astonishment I found what appeared to be a readable message, giving Epsilon Boötis (Izar) as the origin star of the spacecraft, and its arrival date as 11,000 BC."
Let’s debunk
Circling back to Tesla and Hals, there could be a natural explanation for their mysterious findings. They could have picked up signals coming from deep-space pulsars. Pulsars are a type of neutron star, remnants of massive stars that have exploded as supernovas. A pulsar rotates rapidly, often several times per second, and its strong magnetic field generates beams of electromagnetic radiation (radio waves, X-rays, or gamma rays) which we can pick up from Earth. Astronomers did not discover pulsars until the late 1960s.
As for the STS-88 mission, as anticlimactic as it sounds, NASA’s official classification of the mystery object is a runaway thermal blanket or piece of space debris. Space debris in low orbit is common, and objects can appear irregular or even resemble artificial structures, especially from a distance.
Respected space journalist James Oberg provided substantial evidence that the object was debris. He points out that the crew on the STS-88 mission were installing a Node, which required a blanket to protect it from the sun.
In their communications with each other on the spacewalk and from inside the space station, the astronauts even state that they lost a thermal blanket. Here is an official transcript between Commander Robert Cabana and Mission Specialist Jerry Ross:
"Cabana: Jerry, one of the thermal covers got away from you."
Ross: How did it do that?
Cabana: Jim saw a tether, I’ll guarantee you. Where did it go?
Ross thought the Black Knight theory preposterous and later said:
"If we see something up there, we will be the first ones to ask questions and to tell people we saw something we didn’t understand.
Conspiracy theories are fun for those working on them, but a waste of valuable brain power."
So, with all this evidence, why hasn’t the story died?
Reemergence in 2017
The conspiracy theory reemerged fairly recently because of an article by writer Daisy Dunne for the MailOnline.
The website shared video footage that supposedly showed someone shooting down the Black Knight satellite.
The footage shows a bright white ball of debris falling from the sky. It took the internet by storm.
Who shot it down? “A secret Illuminati warplane,” according to online conspiracy theorists.
And so, though thoroughly debunked, the Black Knight Satellite continues to fuel wild theories. We must admit, it makes for a great story.
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Antarctica 'pyramid': The strangely symmetrical mountain that sparked a major alien conspiracy theory
January 10, 2025
A mountain that's hidden in a sea of snow in Antarctica looks strikingly like an ancient Egyptian pyramid when viewed from above.
But no human (or alien) hands were needed to build this peak — it was forged through the slow, grinding process of erosion.
The pyramidal mountain, which doesn't have a formal name, became internet-famous in 2016, but scientists likely knew about it before then, Mauri Pelto, a professor of environmental science at Nichols College in Dudley, Massachusetts, previously told Live Science.
A research base for climate scientists sits just south of the mountain in an area called the Patriot Hills, and "you can probably see this mountain from up there," Pelto said.
Antarctica's "pyramid" is about 4,150 feet (1,265 meters) tall, or about one-fifth the height of Denali, the tallest mountain in North America.
It has four steep sides and is located in the southern Ellsworth Mountains — a chain of jagged peaks first spotted during a flight by American aviator Lincoln Ellsworth in 1935, according to a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) research paper published in 2007.
The region is known for holding 500 million-year-old fossils of trilobites and other critters dating to the Cambrian period (541 million to 485.4 million years ago).
The mountain's sides were likely carved and smoothed into a pyramid-like shape by hundreds of millions of years of erosion.
Specifically, the rocks may have been subject to freeze-thaw erosion, which is when water and snow fill small cracks during the day and then freeze at night, Pelto said.
The water expands in the cracks as it freezes, causing the gaps to grow larger under the resulting pressure and eventually causing large chunks of rock to break off of the mountain.
Three of the pyramidal mountain's sides appear to have eroded at the same rate, while the fourth side — the eastern ridge — formed independently, Pelto said.
Freeze-thaw erosion probably forged other pyramidal mountains, too, such as the Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps, Pelto added.
Various conspiracy theories sprung up to explain the shape of Antarctica's pyramid mountain when it went viral in 2016, with theorists contemplating the involvement of a forgotten civilization or aliens from outer space.
But "this is just a mountain that looks like a pyramid," Eric Rignot, a professor of Earth system science at the University of California, Irvine and senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, previously told Live Science.
"Pyramid shapes are not impossible — many peaks partially look like pyramids, but they only have one to two faces like that, rarely four."
https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/antarctica/pyramid-in-antarctica-the-icy-mountain-that-looks-remarkably-like-a-human-made-structure
Elon Musk says that Tesla can drive anywhere, 'even an alien planet'
Jan 9, 2025 3:33 PM CST
Elon Musk says that Tesla can drive anywhere, even an alien planet… and we're totally not kidding around. Check it out in his own words:
The SpaceX, Tesla, and X boss has said that Tesla vehicles and its massive AI network is so good, that the EVs could drive somewhere it's never been before, where no Tesla has ever been before, and it'll still navigate you around with its advanced self-driving technology.
Elon said: "There already are autonomous in some regions - like Waymo has autonomous vehicles with no one in them - but they're limited to a few cities in the U.S. The Tesla solution, which is a much more difficult path to go, but ultimately much more powerful, is a general solution to self-driving".
He continued: "So the Tesla software is purely AI and vision. It doesn't rely on any expensive sensors - no LIDARs, no radars. It doesn't even require knowing the area beforehand.
Like, you could drive someplace it's never been before, and no Tesla's ever been before. It could even be an alien planet, I mean, the car will still work, still drive".
Not just that, but Elon says that Tesla will be 100x safer than human drivers… later this year… whereas sometime in Q2 2025, he feels confident that Tesla will be 10x safer than a human driver.
After that, Tesla will be 100x safer than a human driver, and then the company will get to a point "where it really just won't crash. That's happening this year with Tesla".
Incredibly exciting news, even for those out there with Elon Derangement Syndrome… you can hate the man, but he's pushing the world forward so incredibly quick, and it's incredibly exciting to see happen in real-time.
https://www.tweaktown.com/news/102514/elon-musk-says-that-tesla-can-drive-anywhere-even-an-alien-planet/index.html
https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1877215189885464762
Scientists propose new method to detect alien civilizations via black holes
January 8, 2025
Of all the unanswered questions in modern science, perhaps the most talked about is whether we are alone in the universe.
A new paper looks at another way we might be able to detect advanced civilizations, and at its center is the need for energy.
The more advanced a civilization becomes, the greater their need for energy and one of the most efficient ways, according to current theories, is to harness the energy from an actively feeding black hole.
The paper suggests a civilization feeding matter into a black hole could harvest energy from it; more excitingly perhaps, the process could be detectable within 17,000 light years.
The search for intelligent life beyond Earth has been of fascination to scientists, philosophers and even inspired artists over the centuries.
With hundreds of millions of stars in our galaxy and billions of other galaxies across the cosmos, it seems the odds are in our favor of finding some other civilizations out there.
The discovery of thousands of exoplanets in recent decades adds to the excitement, so researchers have directed radio telescopes and space probes in the search for aliens.
SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, has been scanning the sky looking for unusual patterns or messages that could reveal an advanced civilization, but despite the effort, there is a distinct lack of success.
A different approach is to search for advanced civilizations based upon their energy signatures. It's an innovative idea that seeks to identify civilizations based upon artificial patterns in the electromagnetic spectrum.
We have certainly seen how human energy demand has increased as we have become more advanced, and so theoretically, any more advanced civilizations would need to harness energy on a scale far in excess of what we currently use.
It may be that civilizations use giant megastructures like Dyson spheres to harness energy from stars and it'
In a paper authored by Shant Baghram and published in The Astrophysical Journal, the team began by categorizing civilizations on the Kardashev Scale.
It categorizes advanced civilizations by measuring their technological advancement based upon the amount of energy they are capable of harnessing and using.
They also propose an alternate scale based upon the Kardashev scale and the distance a civilization is able to explore space, suggesting the more advanced can explore further from their host planet.
As a paper based purely on a theoretical model, they take the advanced civilization's category and explore the idea that they may use Dyson spheres around primordial black holes as an energy source.
The team also propose observational techniques that may be employed to detect such structures using infrared and sub-millimeter signatures.
They do assert, however, that telescopes like ALMA (the Atacama Large Millimeter/Sub-millimeter Array) is well placed to make observations and even to detect signatures and maybe even megastructures at distances of approximately 5.4 kiloparsecs.
https://phys.org/news/2025-01-scientists-method-alien-civilizations-black.html
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ad9b10
KEK
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/jan/10/how-to-talk-to-a-friend-about-conspiracy-theory-theories-uap-ufo-leading-questions
Moment private jet crew spot stunning spherical UFO in night skies over Florida
10:04 EST, 10 January 2025
A flight attendant caught on camera a mysterious spherical object flying above the plane she was working on, thousands of feet above the Bahamas.
Cassandra Martin, a flight attendant for private air service Surjet, was flying with two pilots in an empty jet on December 23 when Miami air traffic control alerted them to a 'foreign object' as they were flying back to Fort Lauderdale.
The eerie footage showed a rounded blur of white light that faded into a green color, with a circular halo surrounding the object.
'All of a sudden, I heard traffic control say, "We have a foreign object, can you please identify",' Martin said.
'I looked to the left, and pilot saw three objects, I only saw one, and I grabbed my phone, I just pressed it to the window to see if I could get a video of what the object was.'
'I don't know what it was, and it turned slightly green, almost kind of like it had an electric field around it of some sort, and it stayed with us for about 45 minutes and then we didn't see it again, and we were about 43-, 45,000 feet and it was way above us,' she added.
Martin added that the object moved around in zigzag patterns. The height the object and the aircraft were flying at, however, is too high for a drone to operate, NBC 6 reported.
'I think we were astonished, and it was something that you really can't explain but I don't have the qualifications to know what that is,' Martin said, recalling the conversation she had with the pilots on board.
Defense expert Bryan Bender, who works with a nonprofit advocacy group Americans for Safe Aerospace, said:
'I think the video is compelling, so you know, this video and this testimony rhymes a lot with a number of cases we heard from military pilots going back even 10 or 15 years and that is these orbs.
'In some cases, they called them Tic Tacs, they were more oblong in shape but flying at very high altitudes but also being able to maneuver in ways that don't seem to make a lot of sense to us, at least we know physics.
'And so, the question is, are these foreign adversaries that have made some breakthrough, or is it something else, and of course, that something else could be many things.'
Bender added that the Pentagon had an office to investigate such sightings, and said it is imperative for national security and aviation safety that they find out what these unidentified anomalies are, NBC 6 reported.
'Was it a little bit eerie? Yes, because again, we were pretty high up and whatever we saw was even higher than us,' Martin said.
'It had capabilities just to zigzag and change color, so that was a little daunting, to the say the least, but you know, it's also something fascinating that I was able to see and capture with my phone.'
The sighting comes after a mysterious 'orange UFO orb' was seen flying over military base Fort Campbell along the Tennessee-Kentucky border on New Year's Day.
An anonymous user on Reddit captured footage of a mystifying 'bright orange light' hovering relatively low as it traveled over the military base.
The user, who witnessed the perplexing 'celestial' event alongside their father, who is a seasoned Army veteran, said that they 'couldn't explain' what they were seeing in the skies above.
'My dad, a former soldier with nearly 30 years of Army experience and extensive knowledge of the aircrafts that fly over his house, said he couldn’t explain what he saw - this was unlike anything he’d encountered before,' the post reads.
Around 12:10am on January 1, the Redditor, who was visiting family in a city just outside Nashville, tried to capture the object 'as quickly as possible,' snapping a near 35-second clip of the glowing orb.
'Just after midnight, my dad was outside watching fireworks when he noticed a bright orange light flying relatively low and maintaining a steady, consistent speed as it traveled from the northwest - where both Fort Campbell and the local airport are located,' the user claimed.
The curious onlookers were mystified at the unidentified flying object as it did not appear to have any additional lights as they suspect most drones do.
'My friend, dad, and I watched the object together and were surprised it had no additional lights, as one might expect on a drone,' the post adds.
'Initially, I thought it might be a hobbyist drone capturing footage of the fireworks for the New Year, but the apparent distance it was flying has made me second-guess that assumption.'
As more sightings are being reported across the country, many to the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC), they continue to fuel public interest and speculation about the nature of these unidentified aerial phenomena.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14270831/private-jet-crew-spherical-ufo-night-skies-fort-lauderdale.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdTJyMYI7cI
https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/5077295-some-of-these-mysterious-drones-are-indeed-ufos-and-should-be-taken-seriously/
Some of these mysterious ‘drones’ are indeed UFOs and should be taken seriously
01/10/25 7:00 AM ET
In recent years, mysterious “drones” have hovered with impunity above sensitive government facilities, spurring urgent briefings at the White House and at the highest levels of the British government.
Not only can the objects involved in these incursions evade detection and sophisticated countermeasures, they also demonstrate an array of extraordinary flight characteristics.
To be sure, some recent drone incidents are likely espionage or intimidation operations.
But until conventional drone technology is conclusively linked to the most brazen incursions, these craft must be considered UFOs — or, as Congress and the government now prefer, “unidentified anomalous phenomena.”
The UFO designation is particularly appropriate considering that several well-documented and equally perplexing incidents over sensitive nuclear facilities in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and 1970s bear a remarkable resemblance to the recent incidents.
For 17 nights in late 2023, for example, between one and two dozen brightly-lit objects flew at any one time over Langley Air Force Base in Virginia.
Beyond forcing the cancellation of nighttime training missions and the transfer of highly advanced fighter jets to another base, the incidents left the military so perplexed that it tasked a special NASA aircraft equipped with sophisticated cameras to investigate the objects.
Somehow, despite nightly incursions stretching over weeks, no verified imagery of the “drones” has emerged beyond a video showing numerous blinking lights in the sky.
According to Glen VanHerck, the recently retired commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command, “our most advanced” aircraft attempted to identify the objects with “extremely limited results.”
Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) and committee member Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) expressed “disappointment” and “shock,” respectively, at the lack of answers regarding the incidents following a year of investigation.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), a key member of both the intelligence and armed services committees, stated that the government does not know “what technology [the objects] are using.”
According to Gillibrand, the craft in the Langley incursions involved a “type of technology that our radar did not detect them arriving.” Moreover, government documents indicate that all counter-drone technology deployed against the objects “failed.”
Gen. Mark Kelly, a decorated Air Force pilot and the commander of Air Combat Command, observed the incursions personally, likening the brightly illuminated objects moving across the night sky to a science fiction film: “Close Encounters at Langley.”
Would an adversary expose its ultra-stealthy technology so dramatically and consistently in full view of the U.S. military? If so, to what end?
What kind of craft, despite displaying bright flashing lights and flying in formation, can operate with complete impunity — avoiding radar and visual detection while resisting counter-drone technology — above a key military base?
Alarmingly, identical incursions occurred for several nights in November over sensitive American military bases in the U.K. According to witnesses, dozens of brightly-lit objects “hovered” and exhibited extreme performance characteristics while evading detection and multiple advanced counter-drone systems.
Notably, the incidents began over RAF Lakenheath, which was the site of one of the most puzzling historical UFO incidents.
The base is also slated to host U.S. nuclear weapons once again, raising an array of urgent national security concerns.
Similarly, over the course of several weeks in late 2019 and early 2020, swarms of brightly-illuminated objects alarmed residents by hovering over nuclear missile facilities and harassing livestock in Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska and Kansas.
Government documents paint an extraordinary picture of the incidents. On multiple occasions, law enforcement officers observed several smaller objects circling a large, stationary “mothership.”
In one notable instance, a Nebraska sheriff’s deputy reported “observing 30 to 50 [objects] flying independently of each other with a larger ‘mothership’ hovering for hours.”
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In another incident, a Kansas Highway Patrol officer observed a large object that “stayed relatively stationary” while “10 to 15 drones … flew all kinds of patterns around that stationary drone.”
One of the “drones” then passed 200 feet over the officer but, somehow, “made absolutely no sound at all, even though the wind was calm.”
Several other law enforcement officials noted that the objects made no sound while flying for several hours in “adverse weather conditions,” including “hovering” in winds of “30 mph with 40+ mph gusts.”
A briefing document prepared for the then-head of the Federal Aviation Administration noted that sheriffs from several Colorado counties reported that the objects flew for “several hours at a time in less than optimum flying conditions (high winds and storm-like conditions)” — unique capabilities wholly inconsistent with conventional drone technology.
Critically, an FAA spokesman who flew in from Los Angeles to assist with the investigation declined to confirm that the objects were drones.
Similarly, FAA Administrator Steve Dickson noted that “Not too long ago we would have called these ‘UFO’s.’” His chief of staff responded, “Yep! Now everything is a drone!”
Earlier in 2019, dozens of unknown “drones” swarmed numerous U.S. Navy warships off the coast of Southern California.
Over the course of several months, mysterious, brightly-illuminated objects hovered and maneuvered around the vessels, prompting a sweeping investigation.
Some of the more perplexing incidents took place well over 100 miles off the coast of San Diego.
Imagery released publicly via the Freedom of Information Act shows indistinct, seemingly round objects.
However, in July 2019, sailors aboard the USS Omaha recorded an intriguing video as nearly a dozen mysterious “drones” swarmed their ship 120 miles off the coast.
In the perplexing footage, a spherical object moves against strong winds before descending slowly into the ocean.
The following day, sailors aboard the USS Paul Hamilton observed an object descending (“splashing”) into the Pacific Ocean some 160 miles off the coast.
That object was part of a larger group of “drones” that subsequently departed on a heading towards Mexico’s Guadulupe Island, where local fishermen have been baffled by spheres that fly into the ocean.
Any spherical object lacking wings or visible means of propulsion — yet capable of moving against strong winds and descending slowly into the sea — is no ordinary drone.
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Trump makes bold prediction about mysterious New Jersey drone cover-up and vows to release report on Day One
Updated: 10:34 EST, 10 January 2025
President-elect Donald Trump confirmed Thursday he would reveal the truth about the mysterious flocks of drones spotted in the sky over New Jersey and other American locations.
Trump was asked about the sightings by reporters on Thursday evening as the president-elect met with American governors at his club at Mar-a-Lago.
'I'm going to give you a report on drones about one day into the administration because I think it's ridiculous that they're not telling you about what's going on with the drones,' Trump replied.
Reports of mysterious lights in the sky around the Christmas holiday prompted widespread speculation about their origin, but government officials were evasive about the truth.
Trump confirmed he personally spotted drones over his own property in Bedminster, New Jersey.
Governors at the meeting with Trump expressed their frustrations with the drone issue, noting that federal government officials were not helpful.
Virginia governor Glenn Younkin, confirmed the drone problem was also affecting his state, noting that it was the home to the largest naval base in the world at Quantico.
'Now for two years running we've had drone incursion over secure airspace and we still don't know why and I think that's absolutely unacceptable,'
Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry added there were also drones flying over nuclear reactors in his state.
'We brought that to the attention of the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) and we've been asking the FAA to give these states the ability to mitigate these drones and it's sitting on some bureaucrats desk and that's real,' Landry said.
Even Wyoming governor Mark Gordon said there were Drones flying over infrastructure in his state and that it was 'incredibly frustrating.'
'Not only do we have no way of knowing what it is but nobody knows how to deal with them,' he said.
Trump said he believed the drones could be attached to national defense actions by the government, but suggested there was no reason to keep it secret from the American public.
'Nobody knows why , they don't want to talk about it, that could be us sending drones, I hope that's the case, us doing it and doing research and maybe they don't want to talk about it from that standpoint,' he said.
The president-elect confirmed he would make sure he had answers after he was officially inaugurated as president.
'I hope it's not an enemy but we're going to find out on the 21st, the day after, you have to give me a little time for the inauguration but shortly thereafter we'll give you a report on it we'll tell you exactly what it is,' he said.
'They know and it's very strange that they aren't talking about it.'
For weeks, Trump has tried to reassure the public over the drone sightings that raised widespread speculation and unfounded theories about their origin, ranging from the government's frantic attempt to find a missing nuclear weapon from Ukraine, to a possible Iranian sponsored attempt to terrorize the United States.
In December, Trump made the assertion that the government knew what the unexplained arial activity was and urged President Joe Biden to reveal the truth.
'For some reason they don't want to comment. And I think they'd be better off saying. Our military knows, and our president knows… and for some reason [they] want to keep people in suspense,' he said during a press conference
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14271159/trump-drones-new-jersey-cover-report-release.html
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5078647-donald-trump-administration-mysterious-drones-response/
Legendary NASCAR Driver Claims He Saw A UFO During Flight
Jan 9, 2025 7:00 PM EST
Former NASCAR driver Mark Martin saw a lot of things during his racing career and he swears he saw a UFO once.
Martin raced in both the NASCAR Cup Series and the Xfinity Series and compiled 40 Cup Series wins and 49 Xfinity Series wins during his career.
He also finished with 453 top tens in the Cup Series and 152 top tens in the Xfinity Series.
He was a great driver but still thinks he saw a UFO while he was in the air.
“We were coming home, just me and my pilot in my jet. We were coming back from one of the northeast races. Either Loudon or, couldn’t be Pocono.
I don’t know if it was Loudon or if it was Dover, or where it was.
We were coming home, it was late though, that’s the thing I don’t understand, but it was dark," Martin said to Chase Holden, (first transcribed by On3).
Martin adds that it was pitch black out and he sees a solid white light while keeping it in his eye. He also added that he kept checking for it and it kept getting closer and closer to him before he got nervous that he was going to hit it.
He was with his co-pilot, Jason, and Jason put a camera on the windshield to try and take a picture of it because he also saw it. This story came from the 90s so while it was a long time ago, Martin still fully remembers it.
He is convinced that he saw the UFO while he was in the air and it's a story that he'll continue to tell to anyone who asks about it.
https://thespun.com/nascar/legendary-nascar-driver-claims-he-saw-a-ufo-during-flight