The massive 300-foot object came to light as a popular YouTuber was scanning Google Earth, assuming the sighting might vanish into thin air, should Google update the map of the puzzling icy region.
A bizarre unexplained object has been spotted on Google Earth lingering “out-of-place” right in the middle of Antarctica, and fuelling speculation as to where the purported 300 ft. object originated.
The massive dark object appears to bear no similarity to anything else found nearby, YouTuber MrMBB333 who made the discovery, pointed out in a video, further assuming the object reportedly measuring 277 feet across and about 260 feet high, may have surfaced due to melting glaciers in the vicinity. The authenticity of the video and the images of the object cannot be confirmed by anyone other than MrMBB333.
“Something appears to be in the ice and snow down in Antarctica. Looks like it may have been flying at the time it was taken”, the YouTuber uttered intriguingly in his video, further ruling out a number of suppositions:
“It doesn’t appear to be a shadow and it doesn’t appear to be soil”, he said stressing it “doesn’t look like it belongs there” while being “intelligently designed” and capable of emitting heat signals.
He later pointed at another weird sighting registered nearby, as an unknown object appeared to be “floating” in a shadow cast by a massive wall of ice.
“There’s something weird going on down there. There’s a reason why the world’s Government has made Antarctica off limits and only certain people can go to certain areas for scientific research”, one conspiracy theory believer noted, while a second suggested the object was spotted on the unredacted Google Earth application.
“The rest is off limits. Interesting finds on Google Earth people have found. I wouldn’t be surprised when Google updates Google Earth it will not be there”, the commenter said.
Others suggested that the “snow being disturbed in front of the black object” was a curious sight while another claimed it could be well be a “crash landing” or “secret hangar”.
Conspiracy theories mentioned by users appear to vary, as one, for instance, suggested it is nothing else than “Jeffrey Epstein’s escape plane for after he didn’t kill himself”.
“That’s the same shaped symbol what some of your photos what people have been seeing in the sky”, another remarked, while a third took note of the shape:
“That triangle shape you found is casting a shadow”, he posted in the comments.
“It’s so insane there is a whole continent we know 0 about”, another lamented.
The tight-lipped Chinese have only said that the substance is “gel-like” and has an “unusual color.”
(ZH) — After several months hanging out on the dark side of the Moon, China’s Chang’e-4 lunar rover has really stepped in it according to NBC News.
The mission’s rover, Yutu-2, came across a “gel-like” substance on its 8th day – which caused scientists to put a full stop on its planned schedule and try to figure out what exactly the goo is.
ON JULY 28, THE CHANG’E-4 TEAM WAS PREPARING TO POWER YUTU-2 DOWN FOR ITS USUAL MIDDAY “NAP” TO PROTECT THE ROVER FROM HIGH TEMPERATURES AND RADIATION FROM THE SUN HIGH IN THE SKY. A TEAM MEMBER CHECKING IMAGES FROM THE ROVER’S MAIN CAMERA SPOTTED A SMALL CRATER THAT SEEMED TO CONTAIN MATERIAL WITH A COLOR AND LUSTER UNLIKE THAT OF THE SURROUNDING LUNAR SURFACE.
THE DRIVE TEAM, EXCITED BY THE DISCOVERY, CALLED IN THEIR LUNAR SCIENTISTS. TOGETHER, THE TEAMS DECIDED TO POSTPONE YUTU-2’S PLANS TO CONTINUE WEST AND INSTEAD ORDERED THE ROVER TO CHECK OUT THE STRANGE MATERIAL. –NBC NEWS
To analyze the material, Chinese scientists used the Yutu-2’s Visible and Near-Infrared Spectrometer (VNIS), which can study materials based on the way light is scattered or reflected.
Tracks made by Yutu-2 while navigating hazards during lunar day 8. (China Lunar Exploration Project)
The tight-lipped Chinese have only said that the substance is “gel-like” and has an “unusual color.”
So what could it be? NBC News notes that outside researchers have suggested that the ‘goo’ could be “melt glass created from meteorites striking the surface of the moon.”
Lunar goo is far from the first time scientists have been surprised.
APOLLO 17 ASTRONAUT AND GEOLOGIST HARRISON SCHMITT DISCOVERED ORANGE-COLORED SOIL NEAR THE MISSION’S TAURUS-LITTROW LANDING SITE IN 1972, PROMPTING EXCITEMENT FROM BOTH SCHMITT AND HIS MOONWALK COLLEAGUE, GENE CERNAN. LUNAR GEOLOGISTS EVENTUALLY CONCLUDED THAT THE ORANGE SOIL WAS CREATED DURING AN EXPLOSIVE VOLCANIC ERUPTION 3.64 BILLION YEARS AGO. –NBC NEWS
The Chang’e-4 mission left earth in early December 2018, touching down on the moon on January 3. It had covered a total distance of 890 feet by the time they encountered the goo.
In this video I delve into the expansive and complicated history of American UFO research. More precisely, the government sanctioned undertaking known as Project Blue Book. Many hundreds of cases were left unresolved upon the project’s conclusion in 1969. These were dubbed the unknowns. As someone who is largely unfamiliar with UFO history, I explore a select few of these unknowns in order to understand what makes them so mystifying.
This is for the benefit of those that haven’t yet seen the subsurface radar scan of Gobekli Tepe. The above image is from Deitrich et al., Antiquity vol. 86 (2012), freely available on the internet.
The little portion of Gobekli Tepe so far excavated corresponds to the detailed portion of the map, bottom right, which includes the main circular enclosures A to D. As you can see, even Enclosure D, the oldest and largest enclosure yet uncovered, corresponding to the uppermost green circle is small relative to some of the remaining structures.
The structure right in the middle of the plot looks especially interesting – being nearly twice the diameter of enclosure D. Considering the progression of these structures – they seem to get larger as they get older – perhaps this central enclosure is the ‘heart’ of Gobekli Tepe, and will reveal a great deal more about its function and purpose.
But some of the other structures remaining in the ground also look to be massive. Quite possibly, we have only scratched the surface of Gobekli Tepe so far, and the main event remains to be excavated.
The northern Paiutes of Nevada have an ancient oral tradition that they have passed down from generation to generation that usually causes the hearer to pause in bewilderment. The Paiutes state that long ago in ages past they went to war against a ferocious enemy known as the “Si-Te-Cah” or “Saiduka.”
Now, here is where this prehistoric tale becomes fascinating. According to the Paiutes, the Si-Te-Cah were a race of red-haired cannibalistic giants that would literally devour the flesh of their foes! The chronicle states that after three years of blood-weary-battles, a coalition of regional tribes finally unified together to conquer this savage enemy. The allied tribes bravely pushed the Si-Te-Cah back into the depths of a very large cave and quickly covered the entrance with brush piles. A fire was then set ablaze that began to suffocate the giants and any would-be escapees were quickly shot with a fury of fire-piercing arrows. The giant cannibalistic carnivores finally met their grim fate in a blazing cavernous inferno.
“Si-Te-Cah” is said to be translated as “Tule-Eaters” in the Northern Paiute language. Tule is a species of water plant that grows in marshes across North America and would have grown in “Lake Lahontan,” a Pleistocene lake that once covered much of northwestern Nevada around 12,700 years ago. According to the oral tradition, the giants used the tule to weave rafts in which to navigate the lake, flee surprise attacks from the Paiutes and worst of all – capture the Paiute women who would gather tule near the shore of Humboldt lake. [1]
The Written Account
The legend of the Red haired giants began to rapidly spread in 1883 when Sarah Winnemucca, daughter of Chief Winnemucca, wrote the first known autobiography by a Native American woman called “Life Among the Paiutes: Their Wrongs and Claims.” In her book, Winnemucca discusses a tribe of barbarians that she says were known as the “People-Eaters” who lived along the Humboldt river and who would waylay her people and eat them. She states the following in her memoirs…
My people say that the tribe we exterminated had reddish hair. I have some of their hair, which has been handed down from father to son. I have a dress which has been in our family a great many years, trimmed with this reddish hair. I am going to wear it some time when I lecture. It is called a mourning dress, and no one has such a dress but my family. (2)
Giant stature and red hair would obviously be considered genetic anomalies in the context of this account. So to the skeptics who say the Si-Te-Cah were not actually giants but just a tall enemy tribe, I ask the following questions…
Q. Why did the Si-Te-Cah have red hair & not black hair like the other indigenous tribes of the area?
Q. Why would one of the most influential Paiute families of the region save the red hair of their enemy and carefully pass it down from generation to generation and then trim their most treasured garments with it if it was just the hair from a normal human being?
Comment: The full text of Sarah Winnemucca’s story of the Si-Te-Cah reads as follows:
Among the traditions of our people is one of a small tribe of barbarians who used to live along the Humboldt River. It was many hundred years ago. They used to waylay my people and kill and eat them. They would dig large holes in our trails at night, and if any of our people travelled at night, which they did, for they were afraid of these barbarous people, they would oftentimes fall into these holes. That tribe would even eat their own dead – yes, they would even come and dig up our dead after they were buried, and would carry them off and eat them.
Now and then they would come and make war on my people. They would fight, and as fast as they killed one another on either side, the women would carry off those who were killed. My people say they were very brave. When they were fighting they would jump up in the air after the arrows that went over their heads, and shoot the same arrows back again.
My people took some of them into their families, but they could not make them like themselves. So at last they made war on them. This war lasted a long time. Their number was about twenty-six hundred (2600). The war lasted some three years. My people killed them in great numbers, and what few were left went into the thick bush. My people set the bush on fire. This was right above Humboldt Lake. Then they went to work and made tuly or bulrush boats, and went into Humboldt Lake. They could not live there very long without fire. They were nearly starving.
My people were watching them all round the lake, and would kill them as fast as they would come on land. At last one night they all landed on the east side of the lake, and went into a cave near the mountains. It was a most horrible place, for my people watched at the mouth of the cave, and would kill them as they came out to get water.
My people would ask them if they would be like us, and not eat people like coyotes or beasts. They talked the same language, but they would not give up. At last my people were tired, and they went to work and gathered wood, and began to fill up the mouth of the cave. Then the poor fools began to pull the wood inside till the cave was full.
At last my people set it on fire; at the same time they cried out to them, “Will you give up and be like men, and not eat people like beasts? Say quick – we will put out the fire.” No answer came from them. My people said they thought the cave must be very deep or far into the mountain. They had never seen the cave nor known it was there until then. They called out to them as loud as they could, “Will you give up? Say so, or you will all die.” But no answer came. Then they all left the place.
In ten days some went back to see if the fire had gone out. They went back to my third or fifth great-grandfather and told him they must all be dead, there was such a horrible smell. This tribe was called people-eaters, and after my people had killed them all, the people round us called us Say-do-carah. It means conqueror; it also means “enemy.”
I do not know how we came by the name of Piutes. It is not an Indian word. I think it is misinterpreted. Sometimes we are called Pine-nut eaters, for we are the only tribe that lives in the country where Pine-nuts grow.
My people say that the tribe we exterminated had reddish hair. I have some of their hair, which has been handed down from father to son. I have a dress which has been in our family a great many years, trimmed with this reddish hair. I am going to wear it some time when I lecture. It is called the mourning dress, and no one has such a dress but my family.
About 93 miles northeast of Reno and situated inside an outcrop of limestone that forms part of the Humboldt Mountains, Lovelock Cave sits like an ancient fortress. As I entered this massive cave that is approximately 150′ x 35′ at its widest point, I felt as if I was going back in time. The first thing I noticed was that the entire cave roof was charred black from fire and smoke. But, before I document the incredible discoveries found inside the cave, check out this quick video of my visit to this amazing site a few years ago:
The Artifacts And Specimens
In the autumn of 1911, a group of miners led by David Pugh and James Hart began digging out 250 tons of bat guano to be used as fertilizer when they began to discover countless well-preserved prehistoric artifacts. The University of California was notified and eventually sent out L. L. Loud in the spring of 1912 to conduct archaeological excavations at what is now known today as Lovelock Cave.
Loud obtained over 10,000 artifacts and specimens from the cave. The collection was divided up between the Nevada Historical Society and the University of California. A further excavation was conducted in 1924 by the Heye Foundation who employed M.R. Harrington, who also collaborated with Loud. In their 1929 field guide titled “Lovelock Cave,”
Loud and Harrington mention a few different dates regarding when ancient inhabitants might have first visited Lovelock Cave with the oldest date being around 4000 B.C. However, a mummy found nearby in Spirit Cave, has since been carbon dated at around 10,000 B.C. 1 Unfortunately, Loud did not maintain a comprehensive report of the excavations so all of the detailed information is not available. These archaeologists found artifacts, specimens and remnants of advanced basketry, weaving, pipes, ice picks, nets, balls, knots, darts, horns, weapons, skin, human body parts, zoomorphic stone effigies and more. In their book “Lovelock Cave,” Loud & Harrington make the following statement:
The preservation conditions in Lovelock Cave are unusually favorable, recalling those of Egypt and Peru and being equaled at only a very few sites discovered in North America.
The Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California wrote:
Lovelock Cave, despite years of destruction, is one of the most important sites in the history of North American archaeology.
But, it gets better. The following are some of the most fascinating artifacts and specimens that were uncovered.
The Calendar
A donut-shaped stone with 365 notches carved along the outside and 52 corresponding notches along the inside, which some believe is a calendar.
Eleven duck decoys made of rush and tule were found painted and feathered and are considered to be some of the world’s oldest and most elaborate ever discovered. The original decoys are now preserved at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C.
The Sandals
The sandals found inside Lovelock Cave are not like others from the region. These tule sandals are known as V-Twined-Bag-type sandals, as they are made in the same way as woven bags. There are many reports that a pair of these sandals measured 15 inches long. [2]
The Burnt Arrow Shafts
Loud and Harrington state: “Tending to confirm the Northern Paiute legend of the assault on the cave are the fire-arrow foreshafts… A very large number of arrow fragments were found in the crevices of the rockfall blocking the mouth of the cave, as if they had been shot into it… as if fired by the flaming arrows mentioned in the legend.”
I found several statements by Loud and Harrington that seem to indicate their surprise at finding extremely large arrow shafts. It’s almost as if it’s so hard for them to believe, that they surmise if the arrow shafts were made for different purposes:
Of weapons we found only a large, heavy, pointed foreshaft of greasewood, larger than those commonly used for arrows …
The arrow fragments and foreshafts typical of the upper levels were not found in this one, but instead a single pointed foreshaft so large that it probably belonged to an atlatl dart rather than to an arrow.
Q. Were these abnormally large shafts made and used by the Si-Te-Cah to battle the Paiutes?
The giant pestle was not discovered during the Loud & Harrington excavations, but was found some time after. Dr. Gene Hattori who is the curator of Anthropology at the Nevada State Museum makes the following shocking statement about the giant pestle… “We recently received a donation of a pestle that was found below the mouth of Lovelock Cave and it is extraordinary large and very heavy… it is much larger than we usually find… it was found below Lovelock Cave and well within the Si-Te-Cah territory. So, this could have been one of the pestles used by the red headed giants and might account for its large size because of the large people that were using it.”
Q. Why is this giant pestle only able to be seen in a private back room at the Nevada State Museum and not on display for public viewing?
It is pretty amazing to me that we now have both of the original archaeologists who first excavated Lovelock Cave, as well as the curator of Anthropology at the Nevada State Museum on record validating the oral tradition of the Paiutes and the written record by Sarah Winnemucca regarding a race of red-haired cannibalistic giants called the “Si-Te-Cah.”
Again in their 1929 book “Lovelock Cave,” archaeologists Loud and Harrington state the following:
The Northern Paiute have accounts of an extinct people living in various localities in Nevada which recall the beliefs in northwestern California regarding an ancient now extinct race of supernatural beings.
Richard J. Dewhurst, Researcher and Emmy award-winning writer & author of the book “The Ancient Giants Who Ruled America,” says the following:
The artifacts themselves prove that an advanced culture did indeed predate the Paiute Indians.
The Humanoid
As I scoured the appendices in the back of Loud and Harrington’s field report, I was shocked to see this photograph of what appears to be a child-like humanoid that had been mummified and wrapped in a woven fur robe. Consider the size of the skull in comparison to the size of the body. Look at the placement of the large eye-sockets along with the smallish face and jaw. [3]
Q. Is this yet another strange genetic anomaly such as the red-hair and gigantic size of the “Si-Te-Cah?”
Based on their oral traditions, the northern Paiutes would be the only people to have actually seen the red-haired giants known as the “Si-Te-Cah” alive in the flesh. However, there are many witnesses who claim to have seen the bones and skulls of these prehistoric cannibalistic carnivores that measured anywhere from 7 feet to 10 feet in length.
The Miners
After centuries of bat guano build-up upon the cave floor, the first people we have on record of being on scene at Lovelock Cave were the guano miners in 1911. Miner James H. Hart testifies to the following:
After some of the best specimens had been destroyed… In the south end of the cave, ‘about twenty feet deep,’ we unearthed some skeletons. In the north-central part of the cave, about four feet deep, was a striking looking body of a man ‘ six feet six inches tall. ‘ His body was mummified and his hair distinctly red… the man was “a giant. [1]
6-6 ft may not be considered a giant, but it is creeping close to the 7ft benchmark. And we do have Hart on record confirming it had red-hair and declaring it “A Giant.” So, along with the length of this skeleton, we should also consider the girth and mass of these bones as well in light of Hart’s comments.
John T. Reid was a mining engineer and an amateur anthropologist from Lovelock, Nevada who could speak the Paiute language. Reid claims to have examined and measured several giant skeletons that were either from Lovelock Cave or the surrounding area. Below is a newspaper article from the “Nevada State Journal” from April 17, 1932 that mentions Reid and a 7-7 foot giant skeleton as well as two of Reid’s encounters with giant bones.
In February, 1931, a Lovelock resident informed Reid of the “weathering out” of a large skeleton on the lake bed near Lovelock Cave. This was excavated with great care and all the bones were recovered. Before removing it, Reid measured it in situ and it proved to be ” 7 feet 7 or 6 inches in height… It had been buried in a shroud and covered with a dark substance, perhaps charcoal.”
The “Lovelock Review-Miner” reported on June 19, 1931 that Lloyd De La Montoya of California had discovered the skeleton of a “giant” on the lake bed near Toy… Reid, John Foster and Thomas J. Chapel set out across the dry flat to the site… the skeleton was recovered… it was deduced that this man had been “nine and one half or possibly ten feet” tall. [2]
The Archaeologists
In their 1929 field report entitled “Lovelock Cave,” archaeologists Loud & Harrington make the following statements about the skeletons and skulls:
It is quite likely that members of the crew excavating the guano took away bones, especially skulls… The best specimen of the adult mummies was boiled and destroyed by a local fraternal lodge, which wanted the skeleton for initiation purposes. Several human mummies and parts of mummies were obtained by the guano crew and the writer…. Much of the hair found on the mummies in the cave is reddish.[3]
Q. Was this “best specimen” of the adult mummies a giant skull? We now have Loud & Harrington confirming that they uncovered mummies with red hair. In the appendices of their book, they also reveal two intriguing photos – one of a humanoid looking child (See here in part 2) and one of this large skull shown here.
The Mummies and Giant Skeletons Discovered Near Lovelock
The “Nevada Review Miner” published an article in it’s 1931 June issue reporting two very large skeletons that were found in the Humboldt dry lake bed near Lovelock Cave. One measured 8.5 feet in length and was described as having been wrapped in a gum-covered fabric similar to Egyptian mummies. The other skeleton was nearly 10-feet long.
This newspaper article dated January 24, 1904 from “The Saint Paul Globe,” documents the discovery of a “Skeleton of a gigantic human being” in Winnemucca, Nevada by workers who were digging in the gravel. A “Dr. Samuels” examined it and pronounced it to be nearly eleven feet in height.
13 miles east of Fallon Nevada is Spirit Cave. In 1940, two very well preserved mummies were found expertly wrapped in highly sophisticated weaving by Sydney & Georgia Wheeler working for the Nevada Sate parks division. The mummies were radio carbon dated to 9,400 years before the present. DNA testing of the mummies by Douglas W. Owsley, division head of physical anthropology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History revealed that the mummies were of Caucasian origin, with a long face and cranium that most closely resembled either Nordic or Ainu ancestry and bore no ancestry relationship to either the Paiute or Shoshone tribes. This groundbreaking news has received barely a glimmer of attention in the outside world. [4]
The Humboldt Museum Witnesses
There are a handful of people who have testified to seeing giant skulls from Lovelock Cave in a storage room at the Humboldt Museum in Winnemuca, Nevada. Two of theses witnesses are Don Monroe and M.K. Davis. Below are a series of statements made by M.K. Davis regarding their experiences:
The Humboldt Museum in Winnemucca Nevada used to keep a series of human skulls in a cabinet in the basement for private viewing. They have now repatriated the skulls and no longer have them. I saw them in 2006 and photographed them in the cabinet. Don Monroe photographed them some 30 odd years ago and they were different. Compare the photos and you can see that not only are some missing but there is an extraordinary mandible that was there in the prior photo but missing from the later one. This mandible has had the teeth filed. Here is the photo that Don Monroe took some 30 plus years ago. Pay attention to the fact that there are more artifacts then and more particularly to the mandible that is arrowed.
“These photos are original prints taken some forty years ago in the basement of the Humboldt museum in Winnemucca, Nevada by Don Monroe. The Museum now denies the existence of this and other skulls. Why??? Notice what appears to be “double rows” of teeth.”
“These photos were taken by Don Monroe back in the 1970’s and recently discovered among his things that were boxed up. Don Monroe has been adamant that there were large skulls there then, that are now missing. This seems to support his claim. I hope that this serves to clear up whether these larger skulls did exist at the Humboldt Museum. Right now they emphatically deny that such skulls were ever there. They obviously were.” [5]
Notice how large the reddish looking skull in the middle is in comparison to the other skulls.
The photograph at the top of this blog post as well as the next one below appear to be taken by another witness at the Humboldt museum by the name of “Donn Quijote.” I first saw his pictures and read his testimony in an archaeological blog forum. His story and photographs seem to closely corroborate what M.K. Davis and others have said:
I was lucky enough to be shown these skulls before they were told to keep them from the public. This was in Nov 2008. Having read about the skulls on the internet, and I was making a trip to California, I stopped by the museum in Winnemucca to see if there really were giant skulls. I looked through the museum and saw artifacts from the Lovelock Cave were they were supposed to have been found, but didn’t see any human remains.
My wife & I then asked the curator there, a lady in her 80’s or so, where the giant skulls were. She got a big smile on her face and asked me to follow her. She led us back into a storage room and opened up a cabinet with the remains of 4 large skulls. She said that people from all over the world come there to ask her about those skulls.
I asked why they weren’t on display and she said it was because they did not want them to be taken away by any claim from the Indians, and also that Nevada state does not deem them authentic. But according to accounts of Indians themselves, they are not even the same race. I asked her if it was true if there were large red headed mummies taken from the cave, and she said that they were and that she had seen them, but they were taken to UC Berkeley… [6]
Notice the same large reddish skull that was photographed by Don Monroe decades earlier appears to be pictured here in 2008.
In their 1929 field report “Lovelock Cave,” archaeologists Loud & Harrington seem to make a cryptic statement regarding their findings:
The lot from which each specimen came is recorded in the catalogue of specimens in the University of California Museum of Anthropology, but except where the fact seems pertinent to some problem it is not presented in the following account. [7]
Q. Does this statement indicate that any giant skeletons and skulls they might have uncovered were considered a “problem (Pre-Indian Caucasian culture)” to main-stream scientific thought and were therefore not recorded in their catalogs and furthermore not put on display for public viewing?
Richard J. Dewhurst, Researcher and Emmy award-winning writer and author of the book “The Ancient Giants Who Ruled America,” says the following:
Recently it has been confirmed that four of the ancient skulls unearthed at Lovelock Cave are, in fact, in the possession of the Humboldt Museum in Winnemucca, Nevada. According to Barbara Powell, who is the director of the collection, the museum is prohibited by the state of Nevada from putting the skulls on public display because “The state does not recognize their legitimacy.” They are instead kept in the storage room and shown to visitors from all over the world only by request. In addition, Powell said that additional bones and artifacts were transferred to the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of anthropology in Berkeley, California, where they are kept but also never put on display. What is significant to note is that the scientific community has assiduously scrubbed all references to the six-to-eight-foot-tall, red-haired skeletons found at the site. As will be seen, this repeated effort to clear the historical record of all references to a pre-Indian Caucasian culture in the United States can be seen as working in harmony with the NAGPRA policies of the federal government, which works on agendas based on political correctness and not objective science. [8]
Explorer, author and co-creator of “The Watchers” film series, L.A. Marzulli makes the following statement:
The question is why would men of science deliberately engage in this? And, I believe I have an answer. If skeletons exist, and by all of the overwhelming evidence both from the written record found in newspapers and accounts from scientists, as well as the oral traditions from Native Americans, they pose a direct threat to the pervading world view, Darwinism. [9]
The Pieces of the Puzzle
To bring this 3 part investigative series to a conclusion, let me lay out all the pieces of the puzzle for you one last time:
We have the Paiute oral tradition of red-haired giants who they burned alive inside a cave.
We have the written account from Sarah Winnemucca about the red-haired “People Eaters” and her most treasured dress passed down from generation to generation trimmed with this red hair.
We have Lovelock Cave that is charred black from fire and burnt arrow shafts found inside of it.
We have testimony from the archaeologists and the curator of anthropology at the Nevada State Museum of the advanced artifacts, extra large weapon shafts and giant pestles found in and around the cave.
We have photographs of the humanoid looking mummy and the large skull found inside the cave.
We have the archaeologists on record saying that the mummies found inside the cave had red hair.
We have the testimony of the miners and the newspapers reports of several 7 to 10 foot skeletons that were unearthed.
We have the mummies found nearby in Spirit cave carbon dated at 9,500 B.C. and DNA tests that prove they were not Paiutes but of Caucasian origin.
We have the photographs and testimonies from the Humboldt museum witnesses all telling the same story.
We have the Vice President of the Humboldt museum stating that the museum is prohibited by the state of Nevada from putting the skulls on public display.
Q. So did the Red-Haired Giants of Lovelock cave actually exist? I’ll let you decide…
Across the entire MENA region and other parts of the world, there are rumored to be a number of archeological anomalies that hints to the existence of an advanced prehuman civilization that flourished long before modern civilization as we know it began. These anomalies come in the form of gateways and are said to not only have the ability to open a bridge to other worlds, but also parallel realities. The question is, how much of this is true?
The enigmatic 3,000-year-old vignette from the Djedkhonsuiefankh funerary papyrus found on display in the Cairo Museum illustrates an uncanny scene: a disc-shaped object, depicted as being extremely bright, with a landing gear deployed on top of a Sphinx.
Could this really be an alien UFO?
Alien hunters believe this is the ultimate evidence there is a deep connection between Ancient Egypt and otherworldly beings.
The object seen on top of the Sphinx is unlike any other “boat“ seen in ancient Egyptian mythology.
In fact, it’s unlike anything previously seen in their iconography or symbolism.
There are similar depictions of alleged flying machines at the temple of Seti I, but these have been debunked as being the result of palimpsest.
The curious object seen in the vignette from the Djedkhonsuiefankh funerary papyrus was painted by the ancients as a Disc that radiates extremely bright light, and when you take a look at modern-day depictions of UFOs, it kinda looks exactly how people would describe a UFO today.
This ancient papyrus—you can see it here—is featured in a study titled: Cosmic Space and Archetypal Time, Depictions of the sky-goddess Nut in three royal tombs of the New Kingdom and the relation to the Milky Way, by Amanda-Alice Maravelia.
And if we take a close look at the ancient manuscript, it’s clear that it is a disc-shaped object which has a radiating dome on top. It is depicted as having ‘landed’ on the Sphinx, with three leg-like tripods seen protruding from the object.
But what makes the Sphinx so special? And what if this really is a UFO—and not a plant or some sort of bug?
Yup, could be a plant-flower, or even some sort of but? Right? What if there is another explanation as to what the object is? I meant just because it looks like a disc-shaped object that’s landed on the Sphinx, doesn’t mean it is one…
The truth is that the origin of the Sphinx is unknown and that doesn’t really help much when you see a papyrus like this one.
The degree of erosion that we see on it suggests it dates back to 10,000 BC. It’s an ancient monument whose secrets have remained hidden for thousands of years.
It is reported that researchers have found passages into hidden chambers beneath the Sphinx and some even venture out and say that the Sphinx may hold the truth behind our very existence.
It is rightfully referred to as one of the most mysterious monuments on the surface of the planet.
When the massive monument was found for the first time, it was covered—up to its head—by sand. For centuries, most visitors and researchers who visited the area believed this was all that existed.
However, French engineer Emile Baraize was convinced that much more lies beneath the surface than even archaeologists were aware of, the reason why he commissioned an excavation to uncover the rest of the Sphinx. Finally, after 11 years of extensive digging, Baraize and his team unearthed a massive body resembling a lion, reintroducing the massive monument to the world in its full splendor. It is the largest monolithic sculpture on Earth.
Curiously, in addition to the above-mentioned papyrus which “illustrates” the disc-shaped object, there is another ancient manuscript considered as the ultimate evidence of alien contact in ancient Egypt.
Called the Tulli Papyrus, the ancient manuscript details an incredible scene.
The translation of the text according to R. Cedric Leonard states:
“In the year 22, of the third month of winter, sixth hour of the day […] among the scribes of the House of Life it was found that a strange Fiery Disk was coming in the sky. It had no head. The breath of its mouth emitted a foul odor. Its body was one rod in length and one rod in width. It had no voice. It came toward His Majesty’s house. Their heart became confused through it, and they fell upon their bellies. They [went] to the king, to report it. His Majesty [ordered that] the scrolls [located] in the House of Life be consulted. His Majesty meditated on all these events which were now going on.
After several days had passed, they became more numerous in the sky than ever. They shined in the sky more than the brightness of the sun, and extended to the limits of the four supports of heaven […] Powerful was the position of the Fiery Disks.
The army of the King looked on, with His Majesty in their midst. It was after the evening meal when the Disks ascended even higher in the sky to the south. Fish and other volatiles rained down from the sky: a marvel never before known since the foundation of the country. And His Majesty caused incense to be brought to appease the heart of Amun-Re, the god of the Two Lands. And it was [ordered] that the event [be recorded for] His Majesty in the Annals of the House of Life [to be remembered] forever.”
Could it be that the enigmatic disk-shaped object on top of the Sphinx is one of those strange Fiery Disk’s mentioned in the Tulli Papyrus?
Stone circles conjure up a lost world of mysterious ceremonies, druid astronomers, pagan dances and inquisitive antiquarians. The most famous is Stonehenge in Wiltshire, UK, but it is also the most unusual in that it has lintels and trilithons in its design.
Most stone circles are not so glamorous, but given that over one thousand of them dated to between 3500 BC and 1500 BC have been found in the British Isles alone, their construction was evidently an important part of our ancient culture.
Stonehenge is also known for its summer solstice sunrise, and research over the last 60 years has shown that many other circles not only use sky and landscape alignments to mark astronomical events, but also share geometrical forms and measurement systems.
Whoever made these magnificent structures had a deep understanding of engineering, surveying, geometry, metrology, acoustics and astronomy. And they were not an isolated group of builders — as we will see, stone circle building was once a global endeavour.
Gobekli Tepe: Stone Circle Genesis
6,500 years before Stonehenge was constructed, a vast megalithic complex was flourishing near present day Şanliurfa, southeast Turkey. Göbekli Tepe is at least 12,000 years old and its preserved stone circles are the oldest in the world. The ones so far uncovered exhibit impressive degrees of technical and artistic skill.
Like Stonehenge, the monoliths were erected in circular arrangements, and oriented to particular areas of the sky. The world’s first stone circle complex is rewriting history books.
Göbekli Tepe consists of T-shaped pillars up to 20 ft. tall, many decorated with animal reliefs (scorpions, boars, lions, etc) and abstract human forms wearing belts inscribed with enigmatic ‘H’ and ‘U’ shapes.
The taller stones rest in shallow nests on bedrock with small supportive dry-stone walls built in between them. In some enclosures, two central pillars orient towards a holed stone, the largest and oldest of which is 65ft wide.
An enormous 24 ft.-long limestone pillar still sits in the nearby quarry. Over some 3,000 years the circles were filled in with rubble to create mounds, and other circular and oval enclosures built on top. Then, at around 8000 BC, the entire complex was carefully reconstructed and covered up. Interestingly, the oldest rings are not only the largest, but also the most sophisticated.
Like later sites around the world, astronomical alignments are evident. Figures depicted on the Vulture Stone may be the earliest representations of zodiacal and other constellations (including Cygnus). Our earliest surviving buildings therefore seem to be an early observatory built to track precession, the 25,800-year cycle of the pole stars.
Acoustics and Ellipses
It has been noted that the enclosures at Göbekli Tepe are roughly 4 to 3 ratio ellipses. Early stone ellipses seem to have been constructed using Pythagorean triangles and at least 30 examples have been recorded in Britain including Forvie Sands in Aberdeenshire, Postbridge in Devon, and Daviot in the Highlands of Scotland.
The great megalithic ring and mound of Msoura in Morocco is also an ellipse that we will discuss shortly. The 4/3 ratio is the harmonic fourth, one of the great harmonies of acoustics. In his book The Cygnus Key, Andrew Collins suggests the enclosures were designed with this in mind. I
British Stone Circle in Morocco
In Morocco, a remote ring called Msoura sits near Asilah near the northwest coast. Located about 18 miles from the Phoneician ruins of Lixus, it is a huge ellipse of 168 surviving stones of an original 175, the tallest of which is 17ft (5m). Its major axis is 195ft (59.29m) wide by 185ft (56.18m).
A massive, part-excavated tumulus was a later addition that sits in its centre. It encodes similar geometry and metrology to many British stone circles.
“Msoura, incredibly, appears to have been constructed either by the same culture that erected the megalithic sites in France, Britain and Ireland or by one that was intimately connected with them.” II
Cup-Marks
Unusual cup-marks on the bedrock and on top of some of the oldest pillars at Göbekli Tepe prefigure British cup-marks by thousands of years. This is a tradition that is found throughout the Fertile Crescent, all over the British Isles and in Atlantic Europe.
I recently investigated two American examples, both of which are petroglyph sites in Nevada; the 7,000 BC Grimes Point site and the 12,800 BC Winnemucca site. These are called cupules, which are concave depressions in the rock. Their presence at Göbekli Tepe has triggered many questions, not only as to what their purpose was, but how they relate to those found all over the world.
“…that the cup and ring markings were a method of recording, of writing, and that they may indicate, once we can read them, what a particular stone was for. We have seen the cup and ring markings on the stone at Temple Wood, and that’s on the main stone but we can’t interpret them … yet.” III
He created diagrams and carried out an analysis of over 50 of the cup and ring markings from which he determined a length he termed the Megalithic Inch (MI). IV
David Cowan, author of Ancient Energies of the Earth, believes they were created to manipulate natural telluric currents, to enhance fertility and link one cup-mark site up with another. V
Whatever their purpose, the cup and ring markings are one of the many mysteries of stone circles.
Stone Circles of the Bible
The submerged site of Atlit Yam near Haifa in Israel dates to between 6900 and 6300 BC and is the earliest known evidence for an agro-pastoral-marine subsistence system on the Levantine coast. A stone semicircle containing seven half-ton monoliths was discovered at 8m-12m deep.
The stones have cup marks carved into them and surround a freshwater spring. There is even a potential orientation to the Summer Solstice, and possible alignments to other stars, but these are yet to be fully researched due to their location underwater.
Further inland, dating to between 3000 and 4000 BC, is Rujm el-Hiri – (also known as Gilgal Refaim) – a huge series of concentric circles in the Golan Heights of Israel. It again has an opening in the outer circle that aligns to the Summer Solstice, as well as a burial chamber in the centre with many dolmens in the immediate area.
Once again, the tradition of cup-marks is present at the site. The cup-mark phenomenon continues throughout Europe, some famous examples of which are at Clava Cairns, a bronze-age site in Southern Scotland.
In the Hebrew Bible, there are 39 mentions of Gilgal, a ‘circle of standing stones’. In one account, having miraculously crossed the river Jordan, Joshua orders the Israelites to take twelve large stones from the river bed, one for each tribe, and place them at Gilgal ‘in memory’. Gilgal has been identified with the village of Jiljilia, about 8m north of Bethel.
Armenian Stonehenge
Armenia is the unlikely location of one of the oldest and most impressive circles. Called Zorats Karer or Karenish by local people, and widely known as Armenia’s Stonehenge, Karahunge has 223 standing stones that vary between 2ft and 9ft tall and weigh up to 10 tons.
Although no cup-marks have been found, eighty stones have circular holes drilled through them, 37 of which are still standing. Its name translates as ‘speaking stones’ and researchers have noted that the holes create sound when the wind is strong. 17 of the stones align to sunrise or sunset at the solstices and equinoxes, and 14 to lunar extremes.
Russian prehistorian Professor Paris Herouni, using telescopic methods and the rules of precession, analysed a prominent holed stone oriented north that aligns with Deneb, the brightest star of Cygnus, in c. 5,500 BC.
Early Circles in Portugal
Near Evora is the 8,000-year-old Cromeleque dos Almendres with its rounded granite stones and nearby dolmens. From this 92-stone circle the midwinter sun rises above the 8ft Menhir do Almendres, 1km to the southeast. Again, some of the stones have cup-marks on them.
The site was built in several phases beginning in c. 6000 BC and continuing up to c. 4000 BC.
South American Circles
The ‘Stonehenge of the Amazon’ is located on a hilltop near Calçoene, Amapa, Brazil. Here, 127 blocks of granite, up to 11 ft tall, are spaced at regular intervals around the hill, like a crown. The 100 ft circle is thought to have been constructed by the Amapán people between the 1st and 10th century AD. It has a winter solstice sunrise alignment.
Sillustani, near Lake Titicaca in Peru, is well known for its huge hilltop funerary towers called ‘Chulpas’. On the plains below are several astronomically-aligned stone circles built by the Kolla (a pre-Inca culture) between 100 AD and 1600 AD.
The largest, at 34 ft, is Intiwatana which translates as “to moor the sun”, and traditions in the area say that these were astronomical circles. Once again, cup-marks have been found here, as well as spiral patterns in the rocks.
However, the huge cupules seem to be mortice and tenon joints that linked the stones together, although ‘bosses’ or ‘protrusions’ are a tradition that is found all over Peru, including at Machu Picchu and Cusco. In fact, cultures such as the ancient Egyptians also had ‘protrusions’ like this on some of their megalithic structures and pyramids.
Further anomalies connect ancient Peruvian sites with Stonehenge. Two monoliths–one of the massive upright sarsens in the main Stonehenge circle and another fallen one–fashion a particular type of ‘scoop’ mark, as though the stone has been softened and an ice cream scoop has taken some of the stone away.
Stonehenge monolith with ‘scoop’ marks
Block from Ollantaytambo with similar ‘scoop’ marks
Finally, on the eastern face of the same upright sarsen, a ‘protrusion’ that is badly weathered is of a similar style to those of South America! Coincidence? Possibly. But it would not surprise me if we are looking at ancient cultures that were connected at some point in prehistory.
Coming Full Circle
It goes without saying that these direct similarities between ancient stone circle sites are worthy of further investigation. With so few of them left to study and so few written records of them, it is only the big unmovable stones and the way they have been placed in relation to their respective landscapes that could hold the key to understanding our prehistoric ancestors.
The power of the ancients has come full circle. The prehistoric stone circles represent a golden age of astronomy, mystery and technological prowess, and with the current wave of Megalithomania sweeping the planet, no doubt more will be built, leaving archaeologists and antiquarians of the future as baffled as we are now!
The demise of nine hikers who died while crossing the Ural Mountains in 1959 remains a big mystery. It even inspired a recent Hollywood thriller, ‘The Devil’s Pass’. See the site in new drone footage.
The demise of nine hikers who died while crossing the Ural Mountains in 1959 remains a big mystery. It even inspired a recent Hollywood thriller, ‘The Devil’s Pass’. See the site in new drone footage.
The group led by Igor Dyatlov went into the mountains and did not survive the night, freezing to death. The circumstances of the tragedy, like the fact that the group apparently chose to separate amid a fierce blizzard, sparked much speculation over what actually happened. Was it Soviet military assassins covering up their secrets? Could it have been an attack by a group of convicts that escaped from prison, the local population, or even something extraterrestrial? Did the authorities cover it up?
On the anniversary of the high-profile case, Russian prosecutors took a trip to the desolate mountain pass, which is now named after the leader of the group, to see if any more evidence can be uncovered – and see if their predecessors were wrong six decades ago when they ruled there was no foul play involved.
For weeks, Americans all over the country have been rattled by extremely loud booming sounds that seem to have no explanation, and they are often accompanied by “mysterious flashes of light”. These strange booms are shaking homes and rattling windows, and some witnesses say that they sound like cannons being fired. And even though the “mystery booms” and accompanying flashes of light have been captured on camera all across the nation, so far the authorities do not have a reasonable explanation for why they are happening. Unfortunately, it does not appear that this strange phenomenon is going to go away any time soon. In fact, the Sun is reporting that the frequency of these “mystery booms” appears “to have gathered pace over the past week”…
MYSTERY booming sounds have been shaking houses and terrifying residents after “flashes of light” were spotted across America.
Experts have been left baffled by a spate of seismic booms from Arizona to New York that appear to have gathered pace over the past week.
Over this last weekend, this mystery started to get much more national attention after an incident in Rhode Island on Saturday was followed by one in New York City on Sunday…
On Saturday, loud bangs were reported in Rhode Island, where Jeremy Braza’s doorbell captured a video and audio of a loud noise over a three minute period.
“The whole house shook,” he told TurnTo10.com. “It woke my wife up, woke up all my children.”
The following night an explosion was heard in New York, accompanied by a mysterious flash in the sky.
“What the heck was that boom or explosion in park slope Brooklyn?”, asked Matt Wasowski on Twitter.
But of course this is not just an east coast phenomenon. For example, a “loud boom” that was reported in Tennessee on January 31st was heard across three separate counties…
It began on January 31 when residents of three separate counties in Tennessee reported hearing a loud boom around 11:30 a.m. Local chemical plants were contacted but reported nothing anomalous. Authorities in Bradley, McInn, and Polk counties are still investigating what could have caused such a powerful noise.
That same day, local news in North Carolina reported that people in Wake and Franklin counties have been calling law enforcement agencies to report unexplained loud blasts and booms that keep them awake at night. Two homeowners even reported that the booms are so powerful that they have briefly lost power as a result of the tremors. So far, the Wake County Sheriff’s Office has been unable to pinpoint the source of the booms.
A few days later, “strange explosion-like sounds” were being reported by numerous residents in New Orleans…
The mystery surrounding the strange explosion-like sounds heard by residents in the metro area continues to grow. Late Monday night, several were heard in Lakeview, one of which was caught on camera by Eyewitness News.
A story that began in Mid-City, has taken crews to Harahan, River Ridge and Wagaman. Now we go to Lakeview, where late Monday night, the mysterious ‘booms’ were heard again.
Are you starting to see a pattern?
Large booming sounds are being reported all over the nation, and often those large booming sounds are being accompanied by massive flashes of light. But in every case, the authorities have absolutely no idea what is causing this to happen.
And in case you were wondering if this was just happening in the eastern half of the country, here is a little taste of what has been going on in Tucson, Arizona…
Faye DeHoff wrote, “first it was a major rattle…like a huge truck about to plow into my home…then the boom..that shook my windows…I was sure some of them were broken but they didn’t…my dog jumped up! I’m at River & Campbell.”
Ray C. Merrill wrote, “Oracle and Roger, it was shaking pretty good, and long enough for me to watch the blinds dance around, then get up and walk to the doorway, and it was still shaking.”
There was a similar sensation last week on Thursday, Jan 31 at 8:51 a.m. The same phenomenon; a rumble causing homes to shake and windows to rattle. I felt this one too on the northwest side and once again, so did so many others on Facebook all across Tucson and surrounding areas.
Some news reports are referring to these strange sounds as “seismic booms”, but there are no corresponding seismic events to back up that claim.
At this point we have a complete and total mystery on our hands. On YouTube, Jason A has done a great job of compiling news reports about these “mystery booms” from all over America, and you can watch his video right here.
We have entered a period of time when we should expect the unexpected. Things are strange and they are going to get a whole lot stranger. We aren’t always going to be able to explain what is happening, but without a doubt our planet is becoming increasingly unstable, and that growing instability is going to cause great chaos in the months and years ahead.I wish that I knew what was causing all of these “mystery booms”, but I don’t. Thankfully they don’t appear to be causing any serious damage, and hopefully that won’t change.
Let’s just hope that all of this “shaking” is not leading up to something much bigger, because it isn’t going to take much to push America into a state of utter chaos right now.
For thousands of years human civilization has documented objects in the sky. With the advent of instant video sharing, we’ve seen hundreds, perhaps thousands of cases of unidentified flying objects. Scientists and governments have discounted the vast majority of these instances as meteors, asteroids, man-made rocket tests or weather balloons.
But on October 19, 2017, a Canadian astronomer saw an anomaly floating through our solar system that can’t be so easily dismissed.
The object, dubbed “Oumuamua,” is the first ever object detected by humans that originated outside of our own solar system. Moreover, what makes Oumuamua even more intriguing is that as it rounded the sun it accelerated in such a way that our known laws of physics simply can’t explain it.
That is, unless the object has its own propulsion system, which would in turn suggest that it is not naturally occurring, but rather, deliberately built by an advanced civilization.
The claim sounds like an Ancient Aliens conspiracy theory, until you realize that the scientists behind the theory is none other than Avi Loeb, Chairman of Harvard University’s Astronomy department and founding director of The Black Hole Initiative. And while most scientists would never risk their careers over wild and outlandish claims, Loeb says he has enough tenure to not be concerned about it. That and he believes his analysis is accurate.
According to Loeb, the acceleration data sourced from the Hubble Space telescope is indicative of an object that has been, “deliberately sent to the inner solar system,” and he believes it could be a reconnaissance spaceship.
What does it feel like to sit next to colleagues in a university lunchroom a day after publishing an article arguing that Oumuamua may actually be a reconnaissance spaceship?
Loeb: “The article I published was written, in part, on the basis of conversations I had with colleagues whom I respect scientifically. Scientists of senior status said themselves that this object was peculiar but were apprehensive about making their thoughts public. I don’t understand that. After all, academic tenure is intended to give scientists the freedom to take risks without having to worry about their jobs. Unfortunately, most scientists achieve tenure – and go on tending to their image.”
…
“It was only under consecutive observation for six days, from October 25 to 31 – namely, a week after its discovery. At first they said, Okay, it’s a comet – but no comet tail was visible. Comets are made of ice, which evaporates as the comet approaches the sun. But we didn’t see a trail of gas or dust in Oumuamua. So the thinking was that it must be an asteroid – simply a chunk of stone. But the object rotated on its axis for eight hours, and during that time its brightness changed by a factor of 10, whereas the brightness of all the asteroids that we’re familiar with changes, at most, by a factor of three. If we assume that the light reflection is constant, that means its length is at least 10 times greater than its thickness.”
…
The biggest surprise came last June, when new data from the Hubble Space Telescope showed that the mysterious object had accelerated during its visit to the inner solar system in 2017 – an acceleration that is not explained by the sun’s force of gravity.
…
We have no way of knowing whether it’s active technology, or a spaceship that is no longer operative and is continuing to float in space. But if Oumuamua was created together with a whole population of similar objects that were launched randomly, the fact that we discovered it means that its creators launched a quadrillion probes like it to every star in the Milky Way. Of course, the randomness is significantly reduced if we assume that Oumuamua was a reconnaissance mission that was deliberately sent to the inner solar system – namely, to the habitable region where life would be feasible. But we need to remember that humanity didn’t broadcast anything tens of thousands of years ago, when the object was still in interstellar space. They didn’t know there was intelligent life here. Which is why I think it’s just a fishing expedition.”
The object Oumuamua is long gone and we may never know what it really was.
What we do know is that we’ve seen similar cigar-shaped objects appear in the skies over Earth throughout history.
On April 14, 1561 the town of Nuremberg, Germany was abuzz with contemporary news reports highlighting a celestial phenomenon directly overhead. According to witnesses, there was some sort of aerial battle involving various types of alien aircraft.
The event was documented in local newspapers:
Here is a brief description of the events of the day translated from the news report above:
These all started to fight among themselves, so that the globes, which were first in the sun, flew out to the ones standing on both sides, thereafter, the globes standing outside the sun, in the small and large rods, flew into the sun. Besides the globes flew back and forth among themselves and fought vehemently with each other for over an hour. And when the conflict in and again out of the sun was most intense, they became fatigued to such an extent that they all, as said above, fell from the sun down upon the earth ‘as if they all burned’ and they then wasted away on the earth with immense smoke. After all this there was something like a black spear, very long and thick, sighted; the shaft pointed to the east, the point pointed west. Whatever such signs mean, God alone knows.
While hard to believe, consider the shape of the object identified in October of 2017 and compare it to the images above.
If nothing else, it’s curiously coincidental.
Another example of a cigar-shaped or rod-type object was observed as recently as 2010, when it shut down a Chinese airport. The incident was actually reported on by ABC News:
The origins of these objects may never be known, but more evidence of the existence of an advanced alien species begins to emerge. Some have even suggested that governments around the world may be actively working with them and utilizing advanced technologies.
For now, it’s all very hush-hush. but perhaps one day the people of the world will witness direct contact with an alien species not of this planet.
An animation shows the random appearance of fast radio bursts (FRBs) across the sky. Astronomers recently discovered 13 of the mysterious signals, including one that repeated from the same location over several months.
Credit: NRAO Outreach/T. Jarrett (IPAC/Caltech); B. Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF
Don’t look now, but Earth is being bombarded with mysterious, invisible light. Among the typical array of radio signals and microwaves cast out by distant stars, black holes and other celestial bodies, there exists a brand of intergalactic light that consistently boggles scientists’ minds — and their instruments. These signals are known as fast radio bursts (FRBs). These ultrastrong, ultrabright radio signals last only a few milliseconds and are thought to originate from billions of light-years away, though their precise source is unknown. (Aliens have not been ruled out.)
The mystery is partially owed to a lack of data; since astronomers first discovered FRBs in 2007, only about 60 have been observed. Now, those numbers are growing fast. According to two new papers published today (Jan. 9) in the journal Nature, scientists working at the CHIME (Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment) radio telescope in the hills of British Columbia have detected 13 new FRBs in just a two-month span. Among these newly captured signals are seven bursts that registered at 400 megahertz — the lowest FRB frequency detected so far — and, for only the second time ever, an FRB that flashed repeatedly, six times in a row. [Stephen Hawking‘s Most Far-Out Ideas About Black Holes]
“Until now, there was only one known repeating FRB,” Ingrid Stairs, a member of the CHIME team and an astrophysicist at the University of British Columbia, said in a statement. “With more repeaters and more sources available for study, we may be able to understand these cosmic puzzles — where they’re from and what causes them.”
CHIME radio telescope (seen at night here) recently detected rare, low-frequency bursts of energy from deep in the universe. Astronomers are eagerly searching for an explanation.
Credit: Courtesy Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME)
An artist’s concept of the distant Planet X, which — if confirmed — could be shaping the orbits of smaller extremely distant outer solar system objects like 2015 TG387. (Roberto Molar Candanosa and Scott Sheppard, courtesy of Carnegie Institution for Science)
Researchers have discovered a dwarf planet far beyond the orbit of Pluto they believe strengthens the case for a large planet at the outer reaches of our solar system.
The newly found object is called 2015 TG387 or “The Goblin,” because of its letters and the fact it was first seen near Halloween.
It was discovered about 80 astronomical units (AU) from the sun — one AU is equivalent to the distance from the sun to Earth or about 150 million km. But that’s almost as close as it gets: its orbit can take the dwarf planet as far away as 2,300 AU, making it the most distant object known to science.
In a paper published in The Astronomical Journal on Tuesday, researchers suggest that its strange orbit, along with that of two other distant objects — Sedna and 2012 VP113 — supports the idea of a planet about seven times bigger than Earth that has yet to be detected at the outer edge of our solar system.
2015 TG387 is seen here, centre, in this animation. The images were taken with the Subaru 8-metre telescope in Hawaii, about 3 hours apart. (Scott Sheppard)
The existence of a Planet X — more recently referred to as Planet 9 — has been theorized since the early 1800s. First, it was used to explain the perturbations in Uranus’s orbit, which ended up being Neptune. Later, it was proposed to explain Neptune’s orbit. Though Pluto was discovered in 1930, it wasn’t large enough to account for any gravitational influences.
In the 1990s, more precise measurements of the outer planets were taken by the Voyager spacecraft and the existence of Planet X was put to rest.
But not quite.
Fast forward to 2003, when CalTech astronomer Mike Brown and colleagues discovered Sedna, a small object beyond Pluto (which eventually lead to the “demotion” of Pluto from planet to dwarf planet). Sedna is a planet smaller than Mercury.
Questions were raised about the nature of its orbit that didn’t seem to align with what astronomers observed with other planets
Fortuitous discovery
2015 TG387 was first discovered in October, 2015, using the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii. The closest it gets to Earth is about 65 AU. While 2012 VP113 and Sedna come closer, they don’t trek as far out.
The dwarf planet — only 300 kilometres in diameter — is believed to have an orbital period of 40,000 years. The orbit takes it beyond the Kuiper Belt, an area past Neptune where small icy worlds are found.
The fact that its orbit is so long means its discovery was somewhat fortuitous: with current instruments it would be detectable only one per cent of the time.
A comparison of 2015 TG387 at 65 AU with the solar system’s known planets. Saturn can be seen at 10 AU. Earth sits at 1 AU, as the measurement is defined as the distance between the sun and our home planet. (Roberto Molar Candanosa and Scott Sheppard, courtesy of Carnegie Institution for Science)
So why can astronomers find dwarf planets and not something that could be seven times larger than Earth?
“We think the big object is … between 500 to 1,000 astronomical units away. And we think it’s at its most distant point on its elongated orbit, so it’s very far away,” said Scott Sheppard, co-author of the paper in The Astronomical Journal and astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science.
“Whereas these smaller objects have elongated orbits as well, but we’re finding them at their closest approach to the sun, so they’d be brighter and be seen by reflected sunlight.”
The findings support a theory for a large planet whose orbit could be between 50,000 and 100,000 years.
“It’s basically exactly what we would predict,” said Brown, who was not involved in this paper. However, in 2016, he encouraged other astronomers to hunt for Planet 9.
“At this point, the Planet 9 hypothesis explains the alignment of these distant objects, these weird 90-degree twisted objects, a strange alignment of close objects,” Brown said. “I must say it all fits together really well.”
There are two leading theories for how this planet could have ended up out there: either it was captured by gravity as it passed our solar system or it formed in the inner solar system and was flung out when it came too close to Jupiter or Saturn. The latter theory draws more backing from astronomers.
“This is another piece of the puzzle,” said study co-author Chad Trujillo. “It’s not like we know exactly where this planet is. But the more objects we find that point to the planet, the more data we have, the more likely we are to find it.”
Confidence in Planet 9
The jury’s still out on declaring with 100 per cent certainty that Planet 9 is lurking out there.
Brown, however, is confident that it exists and its discovery is on our doorstep.
“I am eternally optimistic,” Brown said. “I would not be surprised if we find it this year.”
This image compares the orbits of the new extreme dwarf planet 2015 TG387 with the orbits of other planets in the solar system. (Roberto Molar Candanosa and Scott Sheppard, courtesy of Carnegie Institution for Science)
Trujillo is a little more cautious, even when it comes to the chance it exists at all.
He believes that there’s a 25 per cent chance that a giant planet can explain it all. He uses the example of famed French astronomical mathematician Urbain LeVerrier who, after the discovery of Uranus in 1781, theorized a giant planet could explain Uranus’s perturbations. He was right (it was Neptune). But later, he theorized there was a planet within the orbit of Mercury (given the nickname Vulcan). He was wrong.
“He was right once and he was wrong once, and this was one of the greatest mathematicians of all time for astronomy, and he was only at 50 per cent,” Trujillo said. “If we can do 25 per cent, that’s good.”
Sheppard seems to be in the middle of these dwarf planet hunters.
“I would say we’re at the 80 to 90 per cent level; it’s not a guaranteed thing,” Sheppard said. “But there are a lot of things pointing to it existing out there.
“The hunt continues.”
About the Author
Nicole Mortillaro
Senior Reporter, Science
Nicole has an avid interest in all things science. As an amateur astronomer, Nicole can be found looking up at the night sky appreciating the marvels of our universe. She is the editor of the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and the author of several books.
“Our citizens should know the urgent facts…but they don’t because our media serves imperial, not popular interests. They lie, deceive, connive and suppress what everyone needs to know, substituting managed news misinformation and rubbish for hard truths…”—Oliver Stone
Tales from the Conspiratum 