TYB
Good morning to all, to all a great morning!
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
August 6, 2026
New Sharpest Image of the Sun Uncovers Instability
What does the new sharpest image of our Sun show? Instability. To be clear, a certain kind of interactive process called the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability (KHI). This instability can create waves and swirls when two streams flow past each other – in this case variable streams of solar magnetic plasma. Long hypothesized to occur on the Sun's surface, KHI streaks and swirls were confirmed in just-released dramatic high-resolution images taken recently by the Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii, USA. The featured false-yellow image, actually taken in deep blue, is the highest resolution image yet of the Sun in visible light. It spans about the radius of the Earth, but its finest details are city sized. Visible are several smooth tops of changing solar granules, while the edges of the flower-like structures have been found to harbor multiple KHI swirls. Future research may investigate how the KHI helps move energy, magnetic fields, and may even heat the surrounding solar corona.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B6dDYPCWl4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4SEp7pVtcU
4.5 Very Shallow California Earthquake! Post Solar Eclipse Hurricane Watch! WTF Volcano Season - Thornews and Thorsday frens
Aug 5, 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sue446Du54
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lRsKiqXU4w (MrMBB333: Things just got REALLY weird!! Who would have EVER guessed?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn7HURCQQ78 (Mr Weattherman: Higher Chance of Tropical Development…)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH9nCnOPlqU (EarthMaster: 4.0 and 4.5 Back to back Earthquakes Northern California. Wednesday 8/5)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwE6cefLmts (Stefan Burns: Northern California's Earthquake Problem Just Got Worse…)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIT6gKJZ9OY (On the Pulse with Silki: 8,500 Aftershocks Later, the Philippines Just Moved Again !)
-
solar
https://www.dailymail.com/sciencetech/article-16027909/Scientists-sun-highest-resolution-observations.html
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202608/06/WS6a73e426a310986e2b4693ab.html
-
storms and floods
https://www.weatherbug.com/news/Severe-Weather-Heavy-Rain-Pockets-Across-the-U.S.
https://www.ibtimes.com.au/norfolk-business-owner-jet-ski-flooded-streets-1873670
https://www.azfamily.com/2026/08/06/floodwaters-sweep-through-bisbee-overnight-storms-batter-southern-arizona/
https://www.dailymail.com/sciencetech/article-16033563/emergency-plans-heat-storms-east-coast-nyc.html
https://china.usembassy-china.org.cn/typhoon-season-preparation/
https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/thousands-evacuated-in-northwest-china-after-heavy-rains-flooding
https://www.dimsumdaily.hk/triple-typhoon-threat-as-dolphin-heads-for-okinawa-and-zhejiang-with-kujira-weakening-and-chan-hom-moving-towards-hokkaido/
https://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/2026/08/06/royal-caribbean-cruise-ship-stuck-sea-because-of-powerful-typhoon
-
wildfires
https://www.foxweather.com/lifestyle/wildfire-smoke-impacts-popular-us-national-parks
https://kutv.com/news/wildfire/utah-national-guard-black-hawks-join-fire-fighting-efforts-as-wildfires-spread-in-the-us
https://www.firerescue1.com/uas-uav-and-drones/41-unauthorized-drones-detected-over-wash-wildfire-response-in-4-days
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/06/washington-state-wildfires
https://www.foxweather.com/weather-news/spokane-complex-fire-updates-evacuations-damage
https://calmatters.org/commentary/2026/08/utilities-wildfires-who-pays-california/
https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/fires/article316786425.html
https://www.kcra.com/article/gann-fire-updates-arrest-calaveras-county-august-6/73365645
https://www.sierradailynews.com/local/authorities-arrest-reno-woman-in-dog-valley-wildfire-case/
https://nmfireinfo.com/2026/08/05/evening-update-on-sand-springs-wildfire/
https://watchers.news/2026/08/06/out-of-control-bradley-creek-wildfire-burns-2-852-ha-and-destroys-more-than-200-structures-in-british-columbia-canada/
https://spacedaily.com/n-wildfires-in-siberias-krasnoyarsk-region-nearly-quadrupled-in-four-days-from-16700-hectares-to-62600-and-officials-say-a-moth-infestation-is-the-reason-the-forest-burned-so-easily/
1/2
-
tornadoes
https://www.myheraldreview.com/news/sierravista/tornado-warning-issued-near-sierra-vista/article_403442ed-0bb3-479d-87a7-faf44ddd3172.html
https://www.accuweather.com/en/severe-weather/a-tornado-hit-the-same-house-twice-and-its-not-unprecedented/1918581
https://www.gnlm.com.mm/warning-issued-in-six-regions-states-for-heavy-rainfall-floods-landslides-within-three-days/
https://www.thestar.com.my/aseanplus/aseanplus-news/2026/08/06/laos-issues-warning-as-prolonged-rains-trigger-flooding-landslides-in-several-areas
-
earthquakes
https://www.modbee.com/news/california/earthquakes/article316781854.html
https://gvwire.com/2026/08/05/4-5-magnitude-earthquake-strikes-near-alderpoint-in-northern-california/
https://fox40.com/news/earthquake/trinity-county-earthquakes/
https://weatherboy.com/morning-earthquake-strikes-eastern-tennessee-again/
https://thepeninsulaqatar.com/article/06/08/2026/magnitude-51-earthquake-strikes-kumamoto-in-southern-japan
https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/3363104/artificial-earthquake-conspiracy-theory-sweeps-japan-after-kumamoto-disaster
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20260805/p2g/00m/0sc/044000c
https://themeghalayanexpress.com/5-1-magnitude-earthquake-hits-arunachals-upper-siang/
https://www.the-independent.com/asia/southeast-asia/indonesia-earthquake-halmahera-b3028185.html
https://www.thehawk.in/news/world/63-magnitude-offshore-earthquake-strikes-southern-philippines
-
volcanoes
https://www.newsweek.com/americans-issued-travel-warnings-volcano-typhoon-japan-guatemala-12290428
https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/iceland-volcano-lava-fountains-explained-rep/
https://www.gbnews.com/science/volcano-warning-deadly-vent-reawakens
-
dailys
https://schumannresonance.today/
https://www.tornadohq.com/
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/
https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/earthquakes-volcanoes/news/322876/Volcano-earthquake-report-for-Thursday-6-Aug-2026.html
https://www.spaceweather.gov/
https://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=06&month=08&year=2026
2/2
Summer Star Shower: Watch the Perseids with NASA!
August 5, 2026 3:37PM
The Perseids are back! One of the year’s brightest and most popular meteor showers has been ramping up since early July and will sparkle in the skies through the end of August.
The shower reaches its peak on the night of Aug. 12 into the early morning of Aug. 13, and its visibility should be ideal thanks to the new Moon phase that will keep the skies dark.
True to our blog’s name, we want to watch the skies with you. Join us as we stay up late to catch the show on our sky cameras.
We will be livestreaming a meteor watch party starting at midnight ET on Aug. 13 on YouTube. Throughout the night, we’ll talk to meteor experts, watch live views of the skies, and answer your questions.
We’ll be watching from cameras set up at Marshall Space Flight Center’s ALaMO – the Automated Lunar and Meteor Observatory, which is celebrating 20 years of discovery this year.
We will also share sky views from the International Space Station. During the peak, the shower can produce as many as 50-100 meteors per hour if viewing conditions are right.
The Perseids are among the oldest recorded meteor showers, with observations dating back more than 2,000 years.
They are a favorite annual event because they are reliably active and visible, take place in warmer months, and are known for producing fireballs – exceptionally bright meteors that leave a glowing trail as they streak across the sky.
The Perseids are so named because the meteors appear to radiate from the constellation Perseus, which is visible in the northern sky.
In Greek mythology, Perseus is the warrior who slayed Medusa and rescued Princess Andromeda, whose namesake constellation shares the sky nearby.
But don’t worry too much about finding Perseus to catch a glimpse of shooting stars. Meteors can appear anywhere overhead.
The best way to watch the Perseid meteor shower is to find a location with dark skies, give your eyes 20 to 30 minutes to adjust to the darkness, and simply look up.
Then sit back, be patient, and enjoy one of the year’s premier celestial shows.
https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/watch-the-skies/2026/08/05/summer-star-shower-watch-the-perseids-with-nasa/
https://www.amsmeteors.org/2026/08/viewing-the-perseid-meteor-shower-in-2026/
other space objects
https://www.newsweek.com/nasa-tracking-plane-sized-asteroid-approaching-earth-tomorrow-2-12291066
https://autos.yahoo.com/people-and-culture/articles/meteorite-strikes-cars-rare-happened-232649676.html
Spacewalk Begins for Solar Array Modifications
August 6, 2026
NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Anil Menon began a spacewalk at 8:33 a.m. EDT outside the International Space Station to prepare the 3B power channel for the future installation of new roll-out solar arrays.
Once installed, the arrays will provide additional power to support critical station operations, including its safe and controlled deorbit.
The spacewalk is streaming through a variety of platforms. Learn where to watch online: https://www.nasa.gov/live
Meir is spacewalk crew member 1, wearing a suit with red stripes. Menon is crew member 2, wearing an unmarked suit.
https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/spacestation/2026/08/06/spacewalk-begins-for-solar-array-modifications/
https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/spacestation/2026/08/06/spacewalkers-prepare-to-exit-station-for-solar-array-mod-work/
https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/spacestation/2026/08/05/nasa-astronauts-ready-for-thursday-spacewalk/
https://www.c-span.org/event/public-affairs-event/nasa-conducts-96th-us-spacewalk-at-international-space-station/445786
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNKdYbmPKJ8
moar NASA
https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/missions/2026/08/05/nasa-joins-artemis-iii-orion-modules-rocket-hardware-update/
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/artemis-iii-orion-crew-and-service-models-joined/
https://www.nasa.gov/podcasts/small-steps-giant-leaps/life-support-systems-from-space-station-to-orion/
https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/swift/2026/08/06/link-spacecraft-recovery-progressing-for-nasas-swift-boost/
https://www.nasa.gov/people/neil-mallik/
NASA’s IXPE May Have Proven 90-Year-Old Theory
Aug 05, 2026
A first of its kind measurement of a magnetar may have captured empty space behaving in a way physicists have predicted for 90 years, but never directly observed. The results published Wednesday in Nature.
Fast facts
Magnetars are a special class of neutron stars with ultra-strong magnetic fields, the strongest of any object in the observable universe, around a trillion times stronger than the strongest permanent magnets ever built on Earth.
These super magnetic neutron stars offer glimpses into the physics of intense environments that cannot be found anywhere else.
Neutron stars are the leftover cores of massive stars, formed at the end of their life cycles, that possess more mass than the Sun, condensed down to the size of a city, making them natural laboratories for studying extreme physics.
Scientists using NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) conducted more than 140 hours of observations of the magnetar 1E 1547-5408, between March and April 2025, alongside NASA’s NICER (Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer) and Murriyang, CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope, owned and operated by Australia’s national science agency. This was the first-ever coordinated radio and X-ray polarization measurement of a magnetar.
1E 1547-5408, spinning in a full rotation every 2 seconds, is a unique magnetar that consistently emits bright radio energy and X-ray light, for reasons scientists are still trying to understand.
Observations showed the polarization, or the orientation and level of alignment of the incoming photons, is nearly three times greater than seen in similar sources.
This high level of polarization was surprising, since the geometry of the magnetar’s magnetic fields suggest that the measurements we see should be close to zero at certain points in the star.
Standard surface emission models do not explain this large value either, indicating that another effect must be boosting the polarization.
Enter vacuum birefringence, a 90-year-old theory in the realm of quantum electrodynamics. First proposed in 1936, the theory suggests that the vacuum of space can be altered by extreme magnetic fields, far higher than those humans can create on Earth.
Under such conditions, the vacuum acts like a lens or a prism, filtering light based on the direction it is traveling, therefore enhancing its total polarization. The IXPE mission’s ability to measure X-ray polarization was essential to test this theory.
Simulations performed by the research team support the possibility of vacuum birefringence causing the distinct signal.
Hoa Dinh Thi, a postdoctoral associate at Rice University in Houston and co-lead author of the publication highlighting the results, said, “Our model suggests that reproducing the observed X-ray polarization signatures, while also satisfying the constraints set by radio observations, requires the presence of vacuum birefringence in the neutron star’s environment.
This finding exemplifies how neutron stars enable us to test fundamental physics in environments not replicable in labs on Earth.”
The large polarization measurements from the magnetar give strong support to the theoretical prediction, and could be the first time this effect has been directly observed anywhere.
“This result truly highlights the interdisciplinary power of the field of astrophysics,” said Rachael Stewart, a Ph.D. candidate at George Washington University and lead author of the paper published in Nature.
“The information we obtained from looking at this distant star core also gives us clues about the nature of the fabric of reality as we know it, and I find that to be incredible.”
Further IXPE observations of this source and other magnetars will confirm this signal and potentially reveal other exotic effects of quantum electrodynamics.
https://science.nasa.gov/missions/ixpe/nasas-ixpe-may-have-proven-90-year-old-theory/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10859-z
moar NASA
https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/lucy/2026/08/06/nasas-lucy-begins-camera-tests-ahead-of-2027-trojan-flybys/
https://science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-observatory/how-the-tide-turns-at-the-mouth-of-the-elbe/
https://x.com/NASAglenn/status/2085094810554081652
https://x.com/NASAAdmin/status/2085102953623371796
SpaceX rocket's impact crater on the moon spied by Korean lunar orbiter
August 6, 2026
The final resting place of SpaceX's moon-smashing rocket has been found.
The Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, known as Danuri, has captured imagery of the crater blasted out by the Falcon 9 upper stage that slammed into the moon early on Wednesday morning (Aug. 5).
"Danuri began observations about 30 minutes before the collision and, through orbit control, passed over the impact site multiple times, conducting a total of 8 imaging sessions," officials with the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) said via X this morning (Aug. 6).
"Through this observation, changes in the terrain around the impact site and traces of ejecta spread were confirmed."
"Danuri secured both pre-collision and immediate post-collision footage, enabling analysis of changes caused solely by the collision and providing important research data," they added in the X post, which shared several before-and-after images of the impact site.
The Falcon 9 in question launched on Jan. 15, 2025, sending two private robotic moon landers — Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost and ispace's Resilience — to a high, moon-crossing Earth orbit.
The duo then made their own way to the moon; Blue Ghost landed successfully on March 2 of that year, but Resilience crashed during its touchdown attempt.
The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth shortly after liftoff for recovery and reuse, as such boosters commonly do. Falcon 9 upper stages, by contrast, are expendable.
SpaceX usually disposes of them in Earth's atmosphere, but the upper stage on the Blue Ghost-Resilience mission used almost all of its fuel getting its payloads to their distant destination.
So the 8,800-pound (4,000 kilograms) rocket body remained up there, orbiting Earth — until solar activity and gravitational forces pushed it on a collision course for the moon.
That collision occurred at 2:34 a.m. EDT (0634 GMT) on Wednesday, according to KARI officials — right in line with predictions. Scientists calculated some other parameters ahead of time as well.
For example, the rocket body probably hit the moon at about 5,400 mph (8,690 kph), gouging out a crater up to 89 feet (27 meters) wide.
The new observations by Danuri, as well as future work by other lunar probes, will help verify such predictions.
"The observation data secured by Danuri will be linked with follow-up observations from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and utilized in international collaborative research," KARI officials said in the X post.
It may be that some ground-based telescopes caught the impact as well. Astronomers at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía in Spain believe they captured a video of ejected material blasting off of the lunar surface around the predicted time of impact:
The Falcon 9 upper stage wasn't the first rocket body to slam into the moon. The third stage of a Chinese Long March 3C crashed into the lunar surface on March 4, 2022, for example. And the third stage of NASA's Saturn V rocket gouged out craters during multiple Apollo moon missions.
Danuri is South Korea's first lunar probe. The spacecraft launched on Aug. 4, 2022 atop a Falcon 9 and began circling the moon four months later. It carries six payloads, five of them provided by Korean universities and research organizations.
The sixth is a NASA instrument called ShadowCam, which hunts for signs of water ice in permanently shadowed regions at the lunar poles.
https://www.space.com/astronomy/moon/spacex-rockets-impact-crater-on-the-moon-spied-by-korean-lunar-orbiter-photos
https://x.com/jmmadiedo/status/2085344665562165293
https://x.com/NASA/status/2085101081260904717
Webb opens a Treasure Chest filled with stars
06/08/2026
This NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope Picture of the Month takes us to a fantastical realm within our home galaxy, where piercing starlight and billowing winds sculpt dust clouds into inventive shapes.
This scene is from the Carina Nebula, which lies just 7500 light-years away in the constellation Carina (the Keel).
Spanning roughly 260 light-years, the nebula is home to an incredible collection of objects, including the Cosmic Cliffs revealed in the first-ever Webb image release.
The Carina Nebula is also the nearest high-mass star-forming region that allows astronomers to study the full range of star formation.
This nebula houses some of the most massive stars in our galaxy as well as tens of thousands of protostars, offering a valuable opportunity to understand how stars shape their neighbourhoods.
The feature highlighted in today’s image, aptly called the Treasure Chest, looks right at home in this celestial sculpture garden.
The Treasure Chest is what’s known as a cometary globule. A cometary globule is an isolated cloud of gas and dust with a dense, dark head and a sweeping tail.
These clouds often somewhat resemble comets, but the Treasure Chest looks distinctly like a wooden chest with its lid wide open.
However, this chest doesn’t contain jewels or gold coins, but instead a compact cluster of young stars. These stars are responsible for the otherworldly glow coming from within the Treasure Chest, revealed by Webb’s sensitive Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam).
Researchers estimate that the Treasure Chest’s cluster contains about 70 stars, the most massive of which is a rare O-type star roughly 19 times as massive as the Sun.
The star cluster is likely around 1.3 million years old, though earlier estimates found it to be as young as just 100 000 years old. Because of its youth, the cluster is still deeply embedded within the dusty clouds of the Treasure Chest.
The individual stars in the cluster are wrapped up in dust as well; astronomers have found evidence that many of these stars are surrounded by circumstellar discs.
Over time, the brilliant starlight from these young stars will dissipate the surrounding cloud and reveal the entire cluster.
The key to the Treasure Chest’s sculptural shape lies outside this image: just 39 light-years to the northwest, as measured on the sky, sits Eta Carinae, the most luminous object in the entire Carina Nebula.
Eta Carinae is a star system containing at least two stars, one of which is 100 times as massive as the Sun. This star alone is about 5 million times as luminous as the Sun.
Adding to this intense radiation is the nearby star cluster Trumpler 16, which also contains several extremely hot massive stars.
With Webb, astronomers have carried out an observing programme (#5408; PI: Reiter) dedicated to studying how young stars in the Carina Nebula collect gas from their surroundings and expel it through outflows.
https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2026/08/Webb_opens_a_Treasure_Chest_filled_with_stars
extra ESA
https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Videos/2026/08/ExoMars_stretches_out_its_legs
https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Meteorological_missions/meteosat_third_generation/The_team_behind_Europe_s_latest_weather_satellite
https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Videos/2026/08/FLEX_for_revealing_vegetation_fluorescence
Smoke plume from Greek wildfires seen by Sentinel-3
04/08/2026
Hot, dry and windy conditions have seen numerous wildfires break out in the last few days in the region of Viotia, northwest of Athens, Greece.
This image, captured on 2 August 2026 by the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission, reveals the scale of the cloud of smoke from the wildfires. The smoke plume can be seen drifting southward and stretching across large areas of the Mediterranean Sea.
In response to the wildfires, the Copernicus Emergency Mapping Service was activated. The service uses satellite observations to help civil protection authorities and, in cases of disaster, the international humanitarian community, respond to emergencies.
On the same day, Copernicus Sentinel-2 captured a closer view of the affected area showing the active fire front.
From orbit, Earth-observing satellites offer a unique way of tracking the spread of fires and the extent of smoke plumes, as well as supporting emergency crews battling the blazes on the ground.
https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2026/08/Smoke_plume_from_Greek_wildfires_seen_by_Sentinel-3
moar extra ESA
https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Total_solar_eclipse_how_to_watch_live_from_home
https://www.esa.int/Education/Educational_Satellites/Testing_GraviTE_for_its_journey_to_the_ISS
https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/FutureEO/Space_for_our_climate/Europe_s_forests_losing_more_biomass_since_2018
Zaporozhye nuclear power plant staff wounded by Ukrainian landmines – Rosatom CEO
6 Aug, 2026 11:49 | Updated 6 Aug, 2026 12:50
Kiev’s drones have been dropping mines in the area for the last four months, Aleksey Likhachev has said
Four employees of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) have been wounded by Ukrainian landmines since the start of the week, the CEO of Russian state atomic energy corporation Rosatom has said.
Europe’s largest nuclear power plant and the adjacent city of Energodar have been targeted by Ukraine on multiple occasions with artillery and drones since Russia took control of the facility in March 2022.
Two victims of landmines have been hospitalized in critical condition, with one of them requiring a leg amputation, Rosatom CEO Aleksey Likhachev told journalists on Thursday. Two others were lucky to escape with light wounds, he added.
Ukrainian forces began remotely mining the area near the ZNPP and Energodar where its employees reside four months ago, the nuclear chief said.
“Every night, drones drop ‘Lepestok’ (Petal) mines onto the main road leading into the city as well as onto routes used by personnel to reach the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant and key intersections,” Likhachev stated.
The Rosatom chief described the attacks as “another attempt by the authorities in Kiev to drive residents out of Energodar and make the routine operations of the nuclear power plant impossible.”
The mines used by Ukraine were apparently Soviet-era PFM-1 anti-personnel munitions. The small butterfly-shaped devices got their nickname due to their typical green or brown color, so as to be camouflaged among the grass and foliage.
‘Lepestok’ mines are typically scattered in large quantities, either by aircraft or artillery. Designed to maim rather than kill, they are capable of blowing off or disfiguring a victim’s foot.
The PFM-1 is banned under the 1997 Ottawa Convention, to which Ukraine is a party, due to posing an increased threat to civilians.
In July, a Ukrainian drone hit a ZNPP service vehicle on the edge of the plant’s industrial site, killing its chief engineer, Aleksandr Yakovlev, and his driver. At the time, Likhachev called the strike a “deliberate terrorist act.”
According to the Rosatom CEO, more than a dozen employees of the plant have been killed and many others wounded in Ukrainian attacks over the past three months. Kiev’s actions pose the “real danger of a massive nuclear incident” affecting parts of Russia, Ukraine, and the EU, he warned.
Moscow has repeatedly criticized the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has experts deployed at the ZNPP, for acknowledging the attacks on the facility but stopping short of blaming Ukraine for them.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharov previously said that “what is required of the agency’s leadership isn’t verbal gymnastics or false political correctness, but clear assessments and concrete steps aimed at preventing the spread of threats to nuclear security.”
https://www.rt.com/russia/643929-zaporozhye-nuclear-landmines-ukraine/
extra RT
https://www.rt.com/russia/643940-ukraine-air-force-corruption/
https://www.rt.com/russia/643926-zaluzhny-nato-tools-ineffective/
https://www.rt.com/russia/643915-russian-drone-make-bombing/
https://www.rt.com/russia/643859-russia-strike-ukraine-ports/
Ukrainian Drones Strike Oil Refineries in Yaroslavl and Bashkortostan
August 6, 2026
Ukraine said Thursday that it carried out drone attacks against two major oil refineries in Russia’s Yaroslavl region and the republic of Bashkortostan, while authorities in the Tver region reported damage to a warehouse operated by online retail giant Wildberries.
In a post on X, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said his military struck the Slavneft-Yanos refinery in Yaroslavl and the Bashneft-Novoil refinery in Ufa. Zelensky referred to the strikes as “long-range sanctions.”
“Our responses to Russian aggression in the Black Sea were also successful. In particular, two military patrol boats and shadow fleet vessels were struck,” Zelensky added.
Telegram news channels published eyewitness video showing smoke rising over Slavneft-Yanos in Yaroslavl following the sounds of explosions.
A joint venture between Rosneft and Gazprom Neft, the facility ranks among Russia’s five largest oil refineries, with an annual processing capacity of around 15 million metric tons.
Yaroslavl region Governor Mikhail Yevrayev, without mentioning the fire at Slavneft-Yanos, claimed air defense forces repelled “the largest-ever enemy drone attack” over the region.
He said 92 Ukrainian drones were intercepted, with at least four people injured and several homes, apartment buildings and vehicles damaged.
Ukraine’s military claims to have struck Slavneft-Yanos twice already in July.
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2026/08/06/ukrainian-drones-strike-oil-refineries-in-yaroslavl-and-bashkortostan-a93425
other Russia and Ukraine
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/81825
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/39980027/putin-jet-europe-russian-drone-airport/
https://united24media.com/world/germany-probes-suspected-sabotage-after-explosive-drone-appears-beside-ukraines-antonov-aircraft-21441
https://kyivindependent.com/drone-targeted-ukrainian-cargo-plane-carrying-ammunition-at-german-airport-media-reports/
https://militarnyi.com/en/news/russia-may-attack-baltics-ukrainian-drones/
https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/colombian-cartels-are-sending-fighters-to-1786018070.html
https://united24media.com/war-in-ukraine/black-sea-shipping-rates-quadruple-as-ukrainain-drone-attacks-threaten-russian-ports-21424
https://united24media.com/war-in-ukraine/russian-drone-and-bomb-attacks-injure-three-damage-school-and-homes-in-zaporizhzhia-region-21422
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/81808
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/2026-08-06/live-updates-904716
other Israel
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/idf-says-it-struck-hezbollah-weapons-depots-other-sites-in-south-lebanon/
https://www.jfeed.com/news-israel/idf-lebanon-strikes-ceasefire-collapse
https://vinnews.com/2026/08/06/thousands-of-hezbollah-terrorist-facilities-uncovered-in-southern-lebanon-villages-idf-says/
https://www.jns.org/news/israel-news/idf-chief-in-gaza-weve-changed-the-security-reality
https://www.jfeed.com/news-israel/idf-syria-operations-golan
https://www.jpost.com/defense-and-tech/article-904752
https://www.ynetnews.com/article/rjyjvrw8fx
Live Updates: US blocks wider Israeli attack on Hezbollah, two IDF reservists killed in southern Lebanon blast
August 6, 2026
Trump says Iran talks "working out quite well" • IDF dismantles Hezbollah sites in southern Lebanon • Houthis claim to have attacked Saudi oil tankers
August 6, 8:27 PM
Third day of Israel-Lebanon peace talks in Rome 'productive,' State Department says
The Israel-Lebanon peace talks in Rome concluded their third day, with talks being "productive on the technical and expert levels," a State Department official told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.
The two sides are "a lot closer on what needs to be done to advance and expand the pilot zone process," the source stated.
August 6, 8:22 PM
Several killed in explosion in city outside Syria's Damascus, state-run TV reports
Several people were killed or wounded in an explosion in a city on the outskirts of Syria's capital Damascus, the state-run Ekhbariya TV reported on Thursday.
A security source told the channel that the blast in the city of Jaramana was caused by an explosive device planted on a vehicle, citing preliminary information.
August 6, 7:46 PM
Iran war teaches importance of Gulf cooperation with Europe for maritime security, ISPI says
Insecurity caused by the Houthis in the Red Sea, followed by disruptions caused by the Iran war in the Strait of Hormuz, has had a direct impact on Europe.
Iran’s attacks on Gulf nations and its disruption of maritime security should encourage closer cooperation between Europe and the Gulf, according to a report published on Wednesday by the Italian Institute for International Political Studies in partnership with the Gulf Research Center.
As demonstrated by fluctuating oil prices, Gulf security and stability have global consequences. Insecurity caused by the Houthis in the Red Sea, followed by disruptions caused by the Iran war in the Strait of Hormuz, has had a direct impact on Europe through rising insurance costs, higher shipping costs and delays to cargo movements.
To address these challenges, the institute said Gulf and European partners should consider establishing a permanent maritime coordination framework. It would connect naval forces, coast guards, port authorities, customs agencies and commercial shipping operators to develop common protocols for preventing risks and reducing disruption.
August 6, 6:20 PM
Israel may suffer from same missile shortage as US, giving Iran leverage, fmr. Navy head Marom says
Marom expressed concern that Israel may ultimately have to strike Iran on its own because Washington is unwilling to act while Tehran exploits the delay to advance its nuclear and missile programs.
Israel is suffering from a similar interceptor shortage as the United States, former Israeli Navy commander Maj.-Gen. (res.) Eliezer Marom claimed in a 103FM interview on Wednesday.
“When it comes to Arrow missiles, we have fewer than we would like, and production capacity is very limited. As a result, a very large share of the interceptions were carried out by THAAD systems and SM-3 missiles launched from US Navy ships," he said.
"We're only fighting Iran. What happens tomorrow morning if we have to fight China, should it decide to invade Taiwan? That would be an entirely different war. This issue requires a thorough investigation."
1/2
August 6, 6:19 PM
Proposed Hormuz passage deal not feasible for shipping industry, sources say
Under the latest proposal, Tehran would be able to intervene if necessary with any inbound traffic, while outbound traffic would follow a route between Iran and Oman.
A proposed deal between Iran and Oman that would give Tehran control over ships entering the Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz is not easily workable due to US sanctions and restrictive insurance clauses on any payments, four industry sources said.
Until US-Israeli airstrikes at the end of February unleashed war in Iran, the narrow waterway between the Gulf and the Indian Ocean was the main route for about a fifth of world oil supplies and other vital goods. It was freely open to all ships with no fees.
Control of the strait has been the biggest sticking point in efforts to end the conflict.
August 6, 4:42 PM
As Iran war drags on, Americans are bracing for more chaos in Middle East, poll finds
Five months into the US war with Iran, Americans who expect the Middle East to slide toward chaos outnumber those who see the war bringing more stability by three to one, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll.
The six-day poll concluded on Monday, as US President Donald Trump again backed away from threatened "massive attacks" on Iran, underscoring uncertainty surrounding a conflict he initially predicted would bring a swift victory.
Fifty percent of poll respondents sai they thought US military action in Iran would destabilize the Middle East over the next year, about three times the 17% who said the war would lead to more stability in the region. Another 16% said stability would stay about the same and 17% said they were unsure or didn't answer the question.
August 6, 4:42 PM
Hamas terrorists push Palestinians to kill Israeli-backed militia members, Gazans tell ‘Post'
The call to assassinate figures in the armed militias follows the announcement of a roadmap for advancing to the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire.
Hamas urges Palestinians to target leading figures in the Israeli-backed armed groups in the Gaza Strip.
The terror organization’s special security unit, Rada Force, which is responsible for addressing internal threats – specifically suspected collaborators with Israel – stated that the solution to dismantling what it described as “collaborator gangs” is to eliminate their top members.
“We say to all members of the collaborator gangs that assassinating senior collaborators in these groups will be your salvation before us and before your people,” the Rada Force said in a statement.
August 6, 4:42 PM
Two Israelis attacked after accidentally entering Jenin
Two Israelis were rescued by the IDF after accidentally driving into the Palestinian city of Jenin, the IDF announced on Thursday.
Locals threw a rock at the Israelis' car, video of the event showed, although no injuries were reported.
The Israelis were able to leave the city on their own and reported the incident to the IDF, whose forces entered Jenin and shut down businesses in the area in order to conduct an investigation.
August 6, 2:52 PM
US blocks wider Israeli attack on Hezbollah after deadly Lebanon blast, saving peace talks - report
Separately, Walla reported on Thursday that upon learning of the deadly incident in southern Lebanon, Defense Minister Israel Katz questioned why soldiers entered the booby-trapped building.
The United States intervened to limit Israel's response to a deadly incident in southern Lebanon in which two IDF reservists were killed in an explosion near Majdal Zoun, Lebanese outlet Nidaa Al-Watan reported on Thursday.
Citing Lebanese political and official sources, the outlet reported that Washington moved to contain a potential escalation between Israel and Hezbollah that could have derailed ceasefire negotiations in Rome.
According to the report, Israel sought to launch a wider attack on Hezbollah following the Majdal Zoun incident, which occurred on Wednesday afternoon, but the proposed response was blocked by the United States.
August 6, 2:27 PM
Ashkelon couple indicted for allegedly spying for Iran
Tamerlan Amshukov, 26, and Alina Kushnirenko, 24, were indicted on Thursday for allegedly carrying out intelligence-gathering missions for Iranian agents in exchange for cryptocurrency.
The couple allegedly photographed sensitive sites, including Eilat Port and Mount Herzl, and surveilled the homes of security personnel.
Amshukov was charged with contact with a foreign agent, while both were charged with delivering information useful to the enemy.
2/2
Navy Removes Head of Drone Programs After 8 Months, PAE Maritime Head Miller Now Leading PAE RAS
August 5, 2026 8:07 PM
The Navy’s portfolio acquisition executive for robotics and autonomous systems – the first job the service created as part of a broader acquisition overhaul last year – was removed from the position on Wednesday, fewer than eight months after stepping into the role.
Rebecca Gassler assumed the helm of the Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Robotic and Autonomous Systems (PAE RAS) upon its creation in December. Chris Miller, the head of PAE Maritime, will step into the PAE RAS job on an acting basis, according to a service news release.
The Navy also announced the creation of a new job called direct reporting portfolio manager for robotic and autonomous systems, or DRPM RAS, who will answer to Bill Toti. Toti is performing the duties of the Under Secretary of the Navy. Miller will also serve as the DRPM RAS in an acting capacity.
“This marks a decisive step toward correcting years of fragmented requirements, resourcing, and acquisition practices that dispersed accountability, complicated industry engagement, and slowed delivery to the warfighter,” reads the service statement.
“The organization is designed to operate in concert with the Department of War’s DRPM for unmanned offensive and defensive systems (UxS).”
Miller has been serving in the PAE Maritime job that former Navy Secretary John Phelan created earlier this year as part of a department-wide reorganization of the acquisition jobs.
Rear Adm. Casey Moton will now take Miller’s place as the head of PAE Maritime, three sources familiar with the transition told USNI News. It’s unclear if the move will be permanent. Moton has been serving as the deputy PAE Maritime for aircraft carriers.
The Navy in December chose Gassler to serve as the Navy’s first PAE RAS, overseeing the service’s new acquisition office to quickly purchase more drones. Gassler reported to the assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition.
Gassler, as the PAE RAS, oversaw nearly 50 unmanned programs across the Navy and Marine Corps, including the Medium Unmanned Surface Vehicle program for which the Navy has altered the acquisition framework twice in the last several years.
The most recent selection of seven concepts for prototyping resulted in two competitors suing the Navy, accusing the service of not following its own selection criteria.
The Navy has said it wants to test the MUSV prototypes by the end of September as part of the Navy’s $5 billion drone effort funded by the Fiscal Year 2027 Reconciliation Act.
Gassler previously worked on Project Overmatch – an opaque Navy endeavor trying to connect systems and platforms to a battle network that can share targeting data across the joint force – over the last few years, according to her LinkedIn.
She did not immediately respond to a request for comment in a message left by USNI News on Wednesday.
The creation of the DRPM RAS job within the Navy comes after the Trump administration stood up direct reporting portfolio managers for high-profile acquisition programs like submarines and the Golden Dome ballistic missile defense program.
Those DRPMs report directly to Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg.
In late June the Pentagon created another DRPM for unmanned systems to oversee tens of billions of dollars in drone programs across the Defense Department, USNI News reported at the time. This person also answers directly to Feinberg.
The memo calling for the new DRPM unmanned position notably excluded the Navy’s MUSV program from the office’s oversight.
https://news.usni.org/2026/08/05/navy-removes-head-of-drone-programs-after-8-months-pae-maritime-head-miller-now-leading-pae-ras
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2026/08/06/navy-removes-the-head-of-its-drone-program-just-8-months-into-her-tenure/
extra US drones
https://news.clearancejobs.com/2026/08/06/u-s-army-soldier-developed-custom-drone-detection-device/
Billionaire allegedly handed Trump exact words to announce alien life, says report
17:06 6 Aug 2026 GMT+1
Interest in extraterrestrial life has never really gone away, but it's more than a little ironic that Steven Spielberg's Disclosure Day was released that same year that President Donald Trump vowed to release all of the US government's files on alien life.
Whether you believe in UFOs, UAPs, and little green dudes in saucers or not, it's a hot topic of conversation at the White House.
This has even spilled over to prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi as people gamble their hard-earned money on whether 2026 is the year we'll get official confirmation that aliens are out there in space.
One aerospace billionaire and noted UFO researcher is preparing for the big day and has apparently briefed President Donald Trump on what he should say if aliens reveal themselves to us or are discovered by us.
It wasn't long ago that UFO 'experts' were adamant that President Barack Obama's alien chatter was cuing a government announcement.
Donald Trump briefed on 'Disclosure Day'
Speaking to KLAS 8 News Now, Robert Bigelow says he's given the President of the United States a specific statement to read to journalists on the tarmac outside Air Force One if the moment arises.
Supposed to be simply thrown out to the press before the POTUS refuses to elaborate further and steps onto his presidential jet, the singular sentence reads: "A non-human, intelligent presence has been on Earth for a very long time, using spacecraft and with performances completely beyond our capabilities and our human physics."
Bigelow reiterates that Trump should say the words once, somewhere without a podium or a lot of press, and avoid answering any questions.
To be honest, this sounds a little questionable, as the Commander-in-Chief confirming aliens exist would presumably throw the world into chaos.
The UFO advisor apparently met Trump in the Oval Office earlier this year, but aside from claiming the meeting ran well over its allotted time, Bigelow refused to reveal what was said or how the president reacted when he was told about the disclosure sentence.
Speaking to KLAS 8 News Now, Bigelow promoted his own carefully crafted words and explained: “What this is is disclosure, and it's actually confirmation, and the two are welded together."
Previously, daughter-in-law Lara Trump said the president had already 'prepared' a speech in the event alien life was confirmed.
Elsewhere, filmmaker Mark Christopher Lee backed up similar claims that Trump has a disclosure speech written and ready. Should we be bracing ourselves for a world-changing event?
An alien announcement is supposedly on the way
Speaking to The Daily Mail on August 4, Lee said an announcement is coming, "Potentially within the next 48 hours."
As those 48 hours have now passed, and our own real life Disclosure Day hasn't happened, it seems Lee is a little off with his timings.
Despite White House officials telling the outlet there is no planned presidential speech on extraterrestrials, Lee suggests this kind of address would be a simple 'soft disclosure', possibly discussing UFO incidents or lifeforms of non-human origin.
Lee also said that this soft disclosure could refer back to historic UFO cases and call for more general transparency.
In terms of Bigelow's briefing, Lee backed up the wording and said: "My sources have always indicated there would be significant pushback from certain private and institutional interests, so I expect the final version to be carefully worded."
The Daily Mail found no evidence of Lee's claims and pointed to previous ones where he was wrong.
Lee suggested that Trump could deliver this mythical address at July 8's NATO summit and honor the 79th anniversary of the Roswell UFO incident. Again, that date came and went without incident.
Trump himself has spoken out about his thoughts on aliens, telling Logan Paul in 2024, "Am I a believer, no, I probably can't say I am. But I have met with people, that are serious people, that say there are some really strange things they see flying around out there."
Believer or not, there are those out there who clearly think Donald Trump needs to prepare to make an alien announcement.
https://www.uniladtech.com/science/space/exact-words-trump-say-announce-alien-life-bigelow-366593-20260806
https://usaherald.com/bigelow-says-he-handed-trump-the-exact-words-for-alien-disclosure-so-why-hasnt-the-president-said-them/
https://www.liberationtimes.com/home/ufo-history-is-being-shaped-in-washington-no-one-knows-how-this-ends
https://www.liberationtimes.com/home/on-the-brink-ufo-disclosure-speech-believed-to-have-been-prepared-for-trump-amid-expanding-white-house-push
https://x.com/Thekingofufos/status/2084697717738029494
https://x.com/Thekingofufos/status/2084970007545405755
https://www.unhidden.org/disclosure-support/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0N33jb7Bhk
https://time.com/article/2026/08/06/america-taking-extraterrestrials-seriously/
America Is Finally Taking Extraterrestrials Seriously
Aug 6, 2026 5:00 AM PT
There was nothing much happening in Jerome and Benno Leuer’s yard in Hamel, Minn. on August 11, 1948.
It was noontime in the thick of summer and the boys, 10 and 8, were idly playing when, as they later described it, something overhead caught their eyes. They looked up and their jaws dropped.
Roughly 12 ft. up in the air was a dull gray, circular object, about 1 ft. thick and 2 ft. in diameter, slowly descending between them. They stood transfixed as the object settled onto the ground, making a clattering sound like metal hitting metal.
The object rested there a moment, and then began emitting a high-pitched whistle that, to the boys, sounded like a teakettle. It spun in place once, then shot 20 ft. into the air, hovered for a moment, and ascended to 30 ft., maneuvering around tree branches and telephone wires in its path. Finally, it jetted out of sight.
Jerome and Benno ran inside and told their parents what they had seen. Their father notified the only authority he could think of: R.R. Sheridan, the local postmaster.
Sheridan, in turn, called the FBI field office in St. Paul. To the family’s surprise, the bureau sent an agent. He interviewed the boys and inspected the yard.
“The spot where the alleged ‘flying saucer’ had landed was approximately 2 ft. in diameter and appeared as though a heavy object had landed there or had touched down,” read the statement in the official report.
“The ground was dented and protruding rocks had been leveled.”
The boys grew up and moved on.
Nothing came of their mysterious sighting, but the government preserved the report all the same, filing it away in a cache of documents it had already begun keeping, of both civilian and military accounts of flying, hovering, blinking objects that appeared in the skies, skittering about, sometimes touching down, and then vanishing back the way they came, just as Jerome’s and Benno’s object had. For 78 years, the boys’ story—and hundreds of others like it—had languished in storage.
Until May 8, 2026, when President Donald Trump began a serial release of four tranches of more than 450 official reports going back to the middle of the last century, ordering that they be posted on a Department of Defense website and made available for public perusal.
After decades of secrecy, stigma, and sometimes silliness—like the conspiratorial tales about recovered spacecraft and alien remains at a place known as Area 51 in Roswell, N.M.—the government has at long last begun taking things seriously.
What used to be called UFOs and now go by the more decorous handle of UAPs—or unidentified anomalous phenomena—are being given the full investigatory treatment.
Congressional hearings into the origins of the sightings were held in 2022 and 2023. In 2022, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) was established “to detect, identify and attribute objects of interest.”
In December 2023, then President Joe Biden signed into law the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act, requiring the collection, review, and public disclosure of all sightings and encounters.
On June 12, capturing the global hunger for answers to the UAP mystery, director Steven Spielberg—who has long had a sort of seismographic sense of the popular mood—released his latest film, Disclosure Day, in which a government cover-up of extraterrestrial visitations is exposed.
The movie grossed $94 million worldwide on its opening weekend alone. At about the same time, the White House established the UAP Science Advisory Council, a body led by Harvard astrophysicist and cosmologist Avi Loeb to study the national-security risks posed by UAPs.
“I was tasked to create a panel for the White House, AARO, the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI, and related agencies, so that all of these organizations are in contact [about UAPs],” says Loeb.
“It’s clear, based on much better sensors that we have, that there are objects the intelligence agencies and the Pentagon do not, cannot figure out.”
It’s not just for the government, academia, and Hollywood to do that figuring. Last year, the nonprofit Disclosure Foundation, led by former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Christopher Mellon, was launched with the aim of encouraging the release of UAP reports, promoting scientific investigation of sightings, supporting whistle-blowers, and formulating policy related to UAPs. On June 25 of this year the group convened a Capitol Hill forum in the Kennedy Caucus Room of the Russell Senate Office Building.
1/5
The daylong event featured political figures including Representatives Eric Burlison (Republican, Missouri), Anna Paulina Luna (Republican, Florida), André Carson (Democrat, Indiana), and Suhas Subramanyam (Democrat, Virginia), and Senator Mike Rounds (Republican, South Dakota).
Loeb was present, as were other well-lettered experts discussing the technological, national-security, economic, psychological, and even religious implications of UAPs.
The speakers acknowledged that in some respects they were there at their peril, since publicly discussing flying saucers still carries reputational risk.
“You’re black, you’re Muslim, you represent a district in Indiana,” Carson said of himself, “and now you want to talk about UAPs?”
But it’s a measure of the growing public interest in the phenomena and the mounting evidence that something is out there that more and more serious people are willing to take that risk. Even former President Barack Obama weighed in on the topic.
In a February interview, Obama was asked if extra-terrestrial life exists, and he responded, “They’re real,” hastening to add, “But I haven’t seen them. They’re not being kept at Area 51.
There’s no underground facility—unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the President of the United States.”
Obama added that he based his belief in the likelihood of extraterrestrial beings in part on the fact that “statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there.”
That’s a point a lot of believers make, especially since NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope and other space-based and Earth-based observatories have discovered thousands of exoplanets—or planets orbiting other stars—leading astronomers to conclude that virtually every one of the trillions of stars in the sky has at least one world circling it.
As with all things in a loud, messy, pluralistic democracy, public opinion plays a role here too—and Americans are clearly ready for action.
According to a poll conducted by the Disclosure Foundation just weeks before the Capitol Hill forum, 84% of respondents want more information from the government on UAPs, 69% believe UAPs are real, 59% support hearings and transparency laws, and just 21% trust the federal government to be telling the complete truth. The responses are bipartisan. A statistically meaningless 1% separates the whopping 89% of Republicans and 88% of Democrats who say they want more information on UAPs.
“You could be a single-issue candidate running in the U.S.,” says Jordan Flowers, the Disclosure Foundation’s executive director. “That single issue could be [UAP] transparency, and you could get elected just based on that.”
Unlike other single issues like taxation, immigration, or climate, which unfold indefinitely over decades, UAP transparency has a fixed end point.
The government will tell all it knows, the sightings will be investigated, and their origins will be determined to be terrestrial—highly advanced military or other assets—or, epochally, extraterrestrial.
“My null hypothesis would be that these are human-made objects being operated by adversarial nations, near strategic assets of the U.S.,” says Loeb. And if they’re not? If they do come from … elsewhere? “That will be the biggest discovery ever made by humanity.”
A Question of Security
The U.S. Senate doesn’t lend out the Kennedy Caucus Room to just anybody.
Opened in 1909, the room is a prepossessing place, with carved marble walls measuring 74 ft. long, 54 ft. wide, and 35 ft. high—climbing to an ornate ceiling decorated with gilded rosettes and acanthus leaves.
The doors of the room open onto the Russell Building’s vaulted, marble rotunda, which rises three stories high.
The caucus room has seen a lot of history: it was the site of hearings on the sinking of the Titanic, the Teapot Dome scandal, Pearl Harbor, the Vietnam War, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and more.
Both John and Robert Kennedy announced their presidential runs there. It was thus no small thing that the Disclosure Foundation was cleared to use the space to hold its June 25 summit. The 300-plus people in attendance took the event exceedingly seriously.
Despite the once flaky, fringey, fantastical topic under discussion, the vibe was clearly not Burning Man, Comic Con, or South by Southwest. One attendee was decked out in a T-shirt featuring a bug-eyed alien playing electric guitar, but for everyone else in the room, business attire was the order of the day.
“Today, experts that rarely occupy the same room—physicists, historians, economists, intelligence professionals, educators, journalists, and policymakers—are gathered here in this room,” said Mellon in his opening remarks, “to discuss a subject that was, until very recently, untouchable.”
2/5
Of all of the panels that appeared throughout the day, it was a morning session on the security and defense implications of UAPs that had the most gravity.
The panelists discussed the repeated sightings of UAPs both by naval pilots and personnel at military bases, raising concern about the permeability of armed American airspace.
If the objects’ origins were indeed found to be extraterrestrial, the technology of the alien species far eclipses any flying machines human beings have ever developed. If they are terrestrial—built and flown by rival nations—they signal an arms race that we are already losing.
Retired naval Lieutenant Ryan Graves had his first encounter with UAPs off the East Coast of the U.S. 14 years ago and more in the two years that followed.
“We came back from a deployment in 2012 and began to upgrade our radar systems,” he told TIME, “and we immediately saw objects in our working area that we were not expecting.
There were usually anywhere between three and six objects within the airspace off the coast of Virginia Beach. Sometimes [they were] completely stationary at very high winds, sometimes flying at 250 to 350 knots [288 to 402 m.p.h.].”
The objects, Graves said, were 5 to 15 ft. in diameter, and appeared to be a gray or black cube inside a clear sphere.
They gave off no exhaust and flew in such a way—diving and soaring and suddenly changing direction—that any human passenger would be subject to potentially deadly g-forces.
Sometimes they flew so close to the Navy jets that the pilots were required to file hazard reports so that other planes operating in the vicinity could be warned.
“They would be outside doing these behaviors all day,” Graves says. “It might appear that these objects are using magical physics we don’t understand.”
As part of the pilots’ routine rotation, they later shifted their operations to the waters off Jacksonville, Fla. They got no peace there either. The UAPs, says Graves, “were either already down there or they had followed us down, because we had over a dozen incidents.”
The naval flyers’ Virginia and Florida encounters are by no means the only experience the military has had with UAPs. One of the most compelling is the so-called Tic Tac incident, which occurred off the coast of California in 2004.
During an otherwise routine deployment that year, radar personnel repeatedly noticed the reflection of a skittering airborne object they could not explain—looping and diving, climbing and then dropping from an altitude of 80,000 ft. to 20,000 ft.
To crack the mystery, a team of flyers was scrambled into the sky. Once aloft, they discovered what they estimated to be a 45-ft.-long flying machine that bore a striking resemblance to a Tic Tac breath mint.
“All four of us looked down and saw a Tic Tac object moving very abruptly over the water,” said pilot David Fravor in a 2023 appearance before a congressional committee. “There were no rotors, no rotor wash, or any sign of visible control surfaces like wings. As we pulled nose onto the object within about a half-mile of it, it rapidly accelerated and disappeared.” Cockpit video preserved the encounter.
Military assets on the ground have been harassed too. For 17 straight nights in December 2024, Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Va. was swarmed by objects that appeared overhead 45 minutes after sundown and repeatedly flew over the base.
According to one eyewitness—former astronaut Scott Kelly, who in 2022 was tapped to serve on a NASA UAP study team—the objects appeared to be 20 ft. long, flying at an altitude of 3,000 to 4,000 ft., at a speed of 100 m.p.h.
The incursions became serious enough that Langley canceled nighttime training flights and moved its F-22 jets to another air base.
More dramatic was a reported sighting by six federal law-enforcement officers in October 2023, near what the official memorandum described as “a sensitive national security site in the western United States.”
For two consecutive days, just at dusk, the witnesses reported observing “a luminous ‘mother orb’ appear[ing] to produce smaller red orbs, one after another, multiple times over a period of several hours. The ‘red orbs’ reportedly persisted for several seconds before disappearing.”
“It is clear that we have lost control of our airspace. Full stop,” says Flowers. “Whether this is some form of human intelligence, or whether it’s something else, I am not creative enough to say.”
“Many of these things are certainly not drones,” says Luis Elizondo, a former intelligence officer with the government’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). “They are advanced technology from somewhere. If you’re scrambling jets off Langley, you’ve got a problem.”
Not everyone is persuaded by the reports. “Great claims require great evidence,” says Jon Kosloski, director of AARO, “and the evidence just isn’t there yet.”
3/5
Kelly does not minimize the security risk posed by rogue objects but does not think they have to have an exotic origin. “In science, eyewitness testimony is kind of opinion; it’s not data,” he says. “I have never seen anything that couldn’t be explained.”
Kelly points to a sighting he made during his days as a military pilot when he was flying a Tomcat jet off the coast of Virginia. In the midst of the maneuvers, the pilot in the back seat of the plane suddenly announced, “We just passed something. It looks like a UFO.”
“What?” Kelly asked.
“Yeah, maybe it was like an alien spaceship or something. It looked really weird.”
Kelly banked the jet around in the opposite direction, looking for an object through his wind screen, and indeed saw it in the distance, though it wasn’t showing up on radar.
He drew closer and closer until he was on an intercept course, and the bogey at last resolved itself. “It was Bart Simpson,” Kelly says. “It was a balloon.”
Are We Ready For Extraterrestrial Disclosure?
If UAPs are ever confirmed to have an extraterrestrial origin it will represent what Carlos Eire, professor of history and religious studies at Yale University and a speaker at the Disclosure Forum, calls a “rupture” in human civilization.
“A rupture is something after which nothing is the same,” he says. “It’s similar to the rupture that occurred for the natives of North and South America when Europeans showed up.”
Clinical psychologist Jennice Vilhauer, a member of the advisory boards of both Loeb’s UAP Council and the Disclosure Foundation, spoke at the June 25 event, and her words were sobering. “If this news were to come out tomorrow,” she says, “we’re entirely unprepared.”
An emotional contagion like panic is always possible, but Vilhauer does not think most people would react that way even to such paradigm-shifting news as nonhuman intelligence.
“There are certain communities that would look at this through a catastrophic lens, like an end-times event,” she says. “But I don’t see this being something that would spread across the entire population.”
That doesn’t mean that there would not be a psychic impact. A lot, she says, would depend on whether alien life was perceived as either benevolent, indifferent, or hostile.
Even a microbe could be hostile if it posed a risk of infection—a peril about which humans have always been mindful.
During the first three moon-landing missions, returning astronauts were required to spend three weeks in medical quarantine against the chance that they picked up alien germs—a practical impossibility since no microorganisms could survive on the dry, airless moon.
Also playing a role would be the question of what Vilhauer calls personal relevance—whether the news of nonhuman life affected any one person directly. The greatest emotional reaction would occur in people who perceive a high threat level and high personal relevance; the least effect would be in people who see low threat and low personal relevance. “Disclosure alone would be a huge, unprecedented event,” Vilhauer says. “Those two things together—personal relevance and threat—could create a really negative response.”
Mental health will not be the only thing that’s affected by UAP disclosure; spiritual health will be too. As long ago as the 1970s, divinity scholars established the concept of exotheology—a branch of Christian thought that includes the possibility of life in the cosmos.
That can come in handy now. Eire believes that the three leading monotheistic religions—Christianity, Judaism, and Islam—will have the most work to do coming to terms with nonhuman intelligence.
That’s because all three of them share the idea that there is one God, and that he created everything including human beings. Our species, we like to think, is his crowning creation—a belief that will be harder to hold onto if a cosmic species comes along that’s better, smarter, fitter than us.
“The book of Genesis, which is shared in different ways by Jews, Christians, and Muslims, poses this very troubling story about human origins,” says Eire.
Christianity, Eire believes, will have a special hurdle to overcome in adjusting to the idea of off-Earth life because of its teaching that God became human.
On the other hand, all three mono-theistic religions do have some practice with the idea of intelligent, nonhuman life. “Jews, Christians, and Muslims accept as a given that human beings are not alone in God’s creation,” says Eire. “There have always been angels.”
4/6
The puzzle of how to marry theology and extraterrestrial life predates the current surge in UAP disclosures.
In 2014, Brother Guy Consolmagno, then the director of the Vatican Observatory, coauthored the cheeky book Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial?…and Other Questions From the Astronomer’s In-Box at the Vatican Observatory.
When someone posed the baptism question to him directly, he famously answered “Only if she asked.”
The Likelihood of Extraterrestrial Life
Questions about UAPs and the life-forms that may or may not have sent them our way may turn in part on faith, but they also turn on physics.
While exobiologists continue to explore the possibility of microbial life on Mars and on ocean moons like Jupiter’s Europa and Saturn’s Enceladus, it is well accepted that our solar system has just one world with advanced, intelligent life, and that’s ours.
That means looking for exceptional beings farther afield.
The closest star system to Earth is Proxima Centauri, a tidy 4.25 light-years—or 25 trillion miles—distant. Getting from there to here would in theory take at least 4.25 years, and only if you’re traveling at the speed of light—which Albert Einstein long ago proved can’t be done.
Other star systems lie thousands and billions of light-years away, meaning that traveling the trans-Earth distance could take almost as long as the age of the universe itself.
Still, plenty of academics don’t rule out the possibility of alien visitors from the stars.
“I would put the estimate of the chances that we’ve been visited—and I would define that as an exploration through our solar system, leading to them being aware that Earth has life and civilization—at maybe something like 50%,” says Jack Singal, professor of physics at the University of Richmond.
He puts the odds that any of the claimed UFO or UAP sightings over the past century have actually been one of those visitations at a much lower 5%. “I think there’s just enough mundane explanations for these things,” he says.
Jonathan Miller, a program engineer for MIT’s department of mechanical engineering and the director of an academic program called Confronting Unknowns, which explores the question of UAPs, does not go as far as Singal, but he is open to the possibility that other civilizations are not as constrained by Einsteinian physics as we think they’d be. “There are the physics of traveling from point A to point B,” he says. “But there may be alternative ways to sort of bridge that gap. There’s probably an iceberg of possibilities [to explain UAPs] below the waterline.”
Some of those explanations may be straightforward—at least compared with extraterrestrials.
If it’s possible that some rival power has developed advanced technology that can perform the acrobatics the UAPs do, it’s equally possible that the U.S. has as well and that witnesses are simply observing domestic hardware.
The military is nothing if not secretive, and all of this work could be done in the dark—much the way the Manhattan Project, which developed the world’s first nuclear weapons, operated silently, invisibly, from June 1942 to August 1947.
It’s possible too that there is something even more prosaic than earthly or alien space technology at play.
Miller speaks admiringly of the “mark one eyeballs of a well-trained pilot” as perhaps the most reliable sensor system on any plane—better than radar, infrared, or motion sensors.
But those eyeballs can be fooled—especially given the thermal, chemical, and physical complexity of the atmosphere in which the UAPs are being seen and reported.
5/6
“The atmosphere is a crazy place,” says Singal. “You can see double, triple rainbows. You can go to some Arctic regions and see the sun appear several times at several different angles in the sky.
You can have tornadoes that pick up and throw a car or impale a cow on a tree. Could it make a black triangle move across the sky for 10 seconds? I would say it could.”
“You get a lot of reports from naval officers, more so than from the Air Force,” says Kelly. “That’s because the Navy flies over water and it’s an environment that is very subject to optical illusions.”
Witnesses, of course, swear by the evidence of their eyes, and sightings like those of Graves and his fellow pilots, which involved large objects moving at close proximity between two naval jets, are hard to dismiss as just the hallucinatory interplay of light and air.
“We came within 50 ft. of the lead aircraft,” says Graves. “I think some of what we were seeing were true UAPs. What I mean by that is that these were true airborne assets that were physical in nature, that were exhibiting capabilities beyond our state of the art.”
The community of people who believe accounts like these and want to get to the bottom of them is growing.
In addition to chairing the UAP Science Advisory Council, Loeb is co-directing the Harvard-based Galileo Project, which scans the skies looking for hints of extraterrestrial technology.
Galileo relies on three Earth-based telescopes—in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Nevada—using infrared, visible, and radio sensors to track moving objects that seem to deviate from the performance of earthly technology.
In 2018, Loeb and his colleague Shmuel Bialy, then a post-doctorate researcher, made headlines with a paper in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, in which they entertained the idea that the cigar-shaped interstellar comet Oumuamua “may be a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilization.”
In 2017, the object flew into our solar system, whipped around the sun like a comet, and flew back out. On that departing leg of the journey, it accelerated when it should have been slowing down due to the gravitational pull of the sun.
That suggested some propulsion system was at work. It is possible, Loeb and Bialy wrote, that the object is “floating in interstellar space as a debris from an advanced technological equipment.”
Other astronomers dismiss that idea, arguing that Oumuamua was pushed either by solar wind, the storm of charged particles forever streaming from the sun, or by solar radiation pressure, the gentle force imparted by electromagnetic energy when it contacts an object.
The object has since soared back into deep space, taking the possibility of any answers with it.
Congress is staying on the UAP case—in its own dilatory way. In 2024, lawmakers took up the UAP Transparency Act, which would mandate declassification of all documents related to UAPs.
The bill has not yet become law, and its potential impact has been partly mooted by the White House going ahead and releasing the four tranches of documents on its own.
For now, UAPs remain a riddle. They may be real, they may be illusion, they may simply be artifacts of human desire—something we see because we want to see them.
A universe with other life-forms, after all, is a lot less lonely than one in which we are the only world with lights in the windows. The eyewitnesses, of course, would differ—knowing what they saw, believing what they saw, and remaining, in some cases, transformed by what they saw.
In time—if the proof is found, if biological intelligence is discovered in the void—we may all be transformed the same way.
END
https://thedebrief.org/new-research-suggests-extraordinary-experiences-are-more-common-and-more-meaningful-than-expected/
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0353126
New Research Suggests Extraordinary Experiences Are More Common—and More Meaningful—Than Expected
August 6, 2026
Throughout recorded history, humans have experienced events that challenge their understanding of reality. These include purported out-of-body and near-death experiences, anomalous events or perceptions, and even profound spiritual awakenings.
Depending on an individual’s culture, belief system, or worldview, these experiences may be interpreted as mythical, psychological, pathological, or even deeply spiritual.
However, a new study by Ronald Fischer of the Instituto D’Or de Pesquisa e Ensino in São Paulo, Brazil, and colleagues suggests that these types of experiences may be more universal than previously thought.
Published in PLOS ONE, the research team took a deeper look into how people understand or personally interpret “nonordinary experiences,” what those factors might include, and how they could be seen as distress or personal growth.
The Study
The researchers examined how thousands of people interpreted unusual experiences.
For example, one person might view an out-of-body or near-death experience as evidence of a spiritual awakening, while another might interpret the same event as a neurological phenomenon or the result of normal brain chemistry.
Similarly, hearing voices may be regarded as a symptom of mental illness in some cultures, while others interpret it as a spiritual or supernatural experience. The study argues that both perspectives can be valid, depending on the individual’s cultural and personal framework.
“Experiences like sensing a presence, having a vision, or feeling as though you are observing yourself from outside your own body are far more common in the general population than clinical diagnosis rates would suggest,” Fischer said in a statement.
“We observed that most people in our sample of over 5000 participants who report them are not unwell, and most describe them as neutral or positive — both at the time they occur and also when looking back and reflecting on that experience.”
The research team first reviewed and validated the Inventory of Nonordinary Experiences.
They then developed a questionnaire designed to assess both the universal and cultural influences shaping participants’ interpretations of these events.
1/2
After refining the survey based on feedback from 160 Brazilian participants, the researchers administered the final 47-question questionnaire to 5,117 individuals representing the general population.
“Previous research has often failed to differentiate the experience and how people make sense of such diverse and challenging experiences,” Fischer explained.
“Our work stands out in that we squarely focus on where and when these experiences happened and how people tried to make sense of them.”
“By clearly separating the context, the experience and the meaning-making processes, the patterns we observe challenge various assumptions that have guided previous theory, research but also clinical practice,” he added.
Among the findings, 20% of participants reported that their nonordinary experience had a negative impact, while 25% said it caused suffering or discomfort. However, 51% reported that their experience ultimately produced positive long-term effects.
The researchers also found that 39% of participants experienced these events while alone, and approximately 57% reported being awake and alert at the time.
While some participants attributed their experiences to random chance, most reported having at least some degree of perceived control over the experience.
“For many people, such experiences can be meaningful and lead to personal growth and insight,” Fischer says.
“Highlighting these possible positive outcomes is important to help people make sense of them and help to normalize them. Importantly, we hope our work can help to remove stigma by focusing on the diverse ways that people experience and make sense of them.”
“However, we would also stress that if people feel that these experiences interfere with their daily activities, then they should talk to a professional or seek help from somebody that they trust,” Fischer adds.
Overall, the survey challenges the assumption that anomalous experiences should primarily be viewed through the lens of mental illness.
“What struck us was the mismatch. These experiences share features with symptoms used to define psychosis and dissociation yet are frequently observed in a general-population sample,” said Pedro Fortes, a Researcher at the Instituto D’Or de Pesquisa e Ensino (IDOR).
“Our prevalence study suggests they most often arrive in entirely ordinary moments, when we’re awake, alert, and by ourselves, and are commonly remembered as meaningful rather than frightening.”
Jorge Moll, neurologist and neuroscientist at the Instituto D’Or de Pesquisa e Ensino (IDOR), adds that “How a person interprets an unusual experience matters more than the experience itself in determining whether it becomes a source of distress or of meaning.”
“That has direct consequences for how clinicians and families respond when someone describes something extraordinary,” Moll concluded.
2/2
“A Top Government Official Told Me Aliens Run Everything!” - Dylan Borland UNLEASHED
Aug 5, 2026
Our American Alchemist this week is Dylan Borland, a former 1N1 geospatial intelligence specialist for the United States Air Force.
There are reports of cell phone footage inside the US government of black triangle UFOs, filmed from under a hundred feet away.
Footage clear enough to end the debate about evidence overnight. The whistleblower saying so stood beneath one himself, and his conclusion under oath is that the craft was not human made and not ours.
Dylan Borland (@TheDylanBorland) was an Air Force geospatial intelligence analyst whose literal job was identifying aircraft from sensor data; one morning at Langley Air Force Base he watched a hundred-foot black triangle hover silently over him, its hull wrapped in a golden transparent plasma that moved like a lava lamp. The air filled with static and the smell of a lightning storm, his phone overheated in his pocket, and the craft shot from a hover to thirty thousand feet in roughly two seconds. The man trained to identify anything in the sky could not identify it.
AARO, the Pentagon's own UFO office, gave the game away. It logged his sighting as unclassified while burying everything else he described inside a special access program, and that's the tell: a secret American aircraft would have made the sighting itself classified, and they didn't classify it.
The craft was never ours. Borland says the same office then falsified his file, sending the intelligence community's top oversight body a report he never signed, the basis for a treason accusation that carries the death penalty.
After Dylan's sightings, while working at BAE systems (often-mentioned as one of the inheritors of non-human technology in books like Imminent), Dylan came into contact with personnel cleared to a broader legacy UFO program.
And from there, he went on an intensive search: combing through all material he could about UFOs, non-human intelligence and programs related to both.
Then came the reprisals: his clearance was strangled through paperwork tricks; a VA program strapped him to a polygraph while air horns blasted every time he miscounted backward from a hundred.
Borland says they have other ways of making you doubt your own mind, from government documents describing the ability to implant false memories without drugs to a VA doctor who quietly admitted to him she was CIA.
At the center of it is Project Rubik's Cube, a program Borland is legally barred from even acknowledging. Involved in the program is an apparent "pyramid-shaped power source" of non-human origin, apparently more sensitive than the UFO craft itself.
Langley's most secret airspace has been penetrated at will before Borland's sighting. For seventeen straight nights in late 2023, swarms of drones nobody could identify flew over the base while the Pentagon publicly admitted it had no idea what they were and no way to stop them.
Borland, who was working counter-WMD intelligence at the time, says the swarms weren't wandering, they made straight for the two most sensitive targets on the base: the hangars holding the Air Force's stealth fighters, and the NASA facilities next door.
The cover-up is still running. For years, employees at NASA's Langley facilities had tagged photos of labyrinths and hieroglyph-like markings on Google Maps, and one by one those images are being scrubbed off the internet.
What Borland walked away believing is bigger than any single UFO sighting: that our own government no longer thinks humans are the ones in charge.
Full conversation live now. Big thanks to the legends Jeremy Corbell (@JeremyCorbell) and George Knapp (@g_knapp) for breaking this story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4gYHs84BIc
https://x.com/AlchemyAmerican/status/2085096938572058987
extra disclosure dejour
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeRp3Kn8S_U (Michael Salla Midweek Review: Trump speech coming about crashed UFOs and Non-Human Intelligence)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBpjK0-WRmw (Shemane Nugent: Jon Pounders Isn't Afraid To Answer This???)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2MhVA-tgJE (Q Is for QUANTUM… and Kim Clement's Big E)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hkvJeCdnl8 (Zohar ANCIENT HISTORY: Alternative 4: Why I Chose Not To Go To Mars | Laura Eisenhower)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHpsdIHpLUE (Diary of a CEO: Neil deGrasse Tyson: The Whistleblowers Were Right About Aliens)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K8gKuXz34E (Facts Matter with Roman Balmakov: After CIA Director Woolsey Dies, his Wife Reveals Havana Syndrome Diagnosis)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qnp_1Sf54h8 (The Strangest Area 51 Call-In Night Art Bell Ever Aired | Art Bell Coast to Coast AM)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiS5ex52Kww (Paul Wallis: The Disturbing Truth About Who Really Controls Humanity)