THE UFO CHRONICLES


nam et ipsa scientia potestas est
- Knowledge is Power -

     Tonight's edition of the Soo Evening News reports that police responded to a report of an unidentified flying object on Wednesday night in the 1000 block of East 7th Avenue in the Michigan Soo.

The UFO is said to have hovered without noise there almost one hour.

It was very shiny on top, just like the visor on an astronaut's helmet, the newspaper said.

"While police might have dismissed the report had it come from a lone individual, neighbors and other supported the original caller's claims of a strange object hovering in the sky," the Evening News said.

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See Also: The Secret of Project Blue Book

     SHEFFIELD, England (Reuters) -- Last month, the British Ministry of Defence made public a top secret report on UFOs, concluding that three decades of sightings had failed to produce evidence of visiting extraterrestrials.

Case closed for alien aficionados? Not so.

Far from alleviating UFO buffs' suspicions that governments are concealing what they know, the report has intensified them.

"I just e-mailed the MoD explaining my disgust at their latest UFO report," an Internet UFO forum member wrote, saying the Ministry was in denial.

Instead of alien spacecraft, man-made vehicles and natural phenomena, some of them little known, were behind the UFO sightings, according to the report that runs to almost 500 pages.

David Clarke, a journalist and folklorist who used freedom of information laws to gain access to the report, said UFO believers would not accept any explanation for the phenomenon other than the extraterrestrial one.

"They've got the truth, but it's not what they want to hear," he said, speaking in a cafe near Sheffield Hallam University where he teaches journalism.

"They want to hear 'yes, there are aliens' but, because the report says there is no evidence, it's not good enough," said Clarke who has written several books on supernatural beliefs, including UFOs.

"The only thing they can do now is pray that there must be more files that are even more secret than these, being concealed."

Alien hypothesis

Last year, the alien hypothesis gained a prominent supporter in Paul Hellyer, a former Canadian defense minister, who told a conference that UFOs were "as real as the airplanes that fly over your head".

Hellyer told Reuters by telephone from Toronto he had become convinced of the existence of alien visitors from reading a book on the subject last year and that he was disappointed in the conclusions of the report.

"I think it's just one more man-made hurdle to trying to get the truth out," he said.

"Maybe I'm a little too suspicious, but the fact that the report was completed in 2000, just when the Brits were passing the new Freedom of Information Act, might easily have been in the minds of some of the drafters at the time they were writing their conclusions."

Nick Pope, a Defense Ministry official who worked on UFO cases from 1991 to 1994, said the release of the report was an indication of the British government's openness on the subject.

"In Britain, I'm convinced there's no cover-up, there's no conspiracy," he said. Many UFO researchers disagreed with him and believed he was part of the conspiracy since he worked for the government and used to work with UFO cases, he added.

"But I can't win with arguments like that, because whatever I say, they won't believe it."

No proof

Pope has written several books on UFOs. He said he did not rule out aliens as the explanation for UFOs, but added there was no conclusive proof.

In the absence of the "almost cliched landing-on-the-White- House-lawn type scenario," Pope said the existence of aliens could be proved if radio astronomers picked up an intelligent signal or if extraterrestrial metal pieces were discovered.

If there are alien visitors, "the lack of artefacts is a significant mystery", meaning they must either have completely accident-proof vehicles, or have mastered teleportation and be able to scoop up debris, the report said.

To the folklorist Clarke, claims of the discovery of pieces from alien craft and marks on the ground bear a resemblance to tales from the past.

"It's like these fairy stories when people visit fairyland. They're given a gift by the fairies, and when they come back it just dissolves."

Until an alien spacecraft can be publicly examined or a signal from the green men is detected, the final line of the 1951 film "The Thing from Another World" still applies for UFO believers: "Keep watching the skies."

More . . .

See Also: THE CONDIGN REPORT
BRITAIN’S SECRET U.F.O STUDY

     Are UFOs real? Well, it all depends on what you mean by unidentified flying objects. Obviously there are things that seem to fly in the sky that we can't quite make out - but are they Frisbee disks or flying saucers, neurological glitches or interdimensional visitors? Last week we ran an update on the state of "scientific" ufology, and received scores of sighting reports in response. Read on for details on some of the mysterious questions and not-so-mysterious answers.

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See Also: UFO Research: Findings vs. Facts

     On Saturday, March 25, 2006, I presented the final lecture of the day at the Aztec, New Mexico, Annual Crash Anniversary Conference The reality of the March, 1948, crash, about which I had initially been quite skeptical, has become more and more believable thanks primarily to the fine research by Scott Ramsey. I had spoken about Roswell and MJ-12 at some earlier Aztec UFO conferences, but this year the title of my program was “UFOs vs. SETI: Science vs. Pseudo-science.” In my lecture I contrasted the enormous amount of evidence indicating some UFOs are extraterrestrial spacecraft and the total absence of evidence provided by the SETI community to justify both their neglect of the UFO evidence and their strange reasoning that listening for radio signals from ET is somehow a scientific endeavor. A psychologist I once knew would probably explain their behavior as projection on to others of their own failure to provide evidence.

It is not that SETI Specialists don’t mention UFOs. It is that they just about always claim that there is no evidence or no convincing evidence or no physical evidence. One thing is for sure, they don’t reference the solid scientific studies in their books or papers or TV appearances. In Aztec I noted 5 large scale scientific studies which I normally discuss at the beginning of my “Flying Saucers ARE Real” college lectures. I usually ask, after showing a slide of each one and discussing its contents: “How many here have read this volume?”. On a good night I will get 1-2% who have read one of the five.. Once in Phoenix, Arizona, I was very pleased that Judy Varns, an active MUFON member and a civil engineer, had read all five. None of the SETI literature references these studies. Dr. Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute heard my lecture on board the Queen Elizabeth 2 during a cruise in 2003. He hadn’t raised his hand after any of the 5 and in a later debate on Coast to Coast Radio, it was clear that he had “forgotten” all 5. Surprisingly these academic types typically also ignore the dozen or so PhD Theses about UFOs that have been published and also ignore the many papers presented by professional scientists at the annual MUFON symposia and included in the Symposium Proceedings. There are literally hundreds of such papers.

The SS seem to take the approach that absence of evidence in their hands is evidence for absence of such evidence. I quoted a comment from Shostak in a recent article “It is a common canard that the SETI community’s skepticism is simply due to their failure to be open to the idea (UFOs). That’s wrong. Their skepticism is rooted in the lack of good evidence”. It is strange how neither Shostak nor any of the other SETI cultists ever discuss the evidence they say isn’t good.

I quoted Carl Sagan from the enormously successful COSMOS TV series seen by 600 million people in 60 countries. On the Encyclopedia Galactica segment (1980) he stated. “What counts is not what seems plausible, not what we would like to believe, not what one or two witnesses claim, but only what is supported by hard evidence. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. Really?? So why was Carl’s next statement “There must be other civilizations far older and more advanced than ours.” None of the SETI cultists have provided any evidence, no less extraordinary evidence, of any such civilization. Certainly worldwide UFO reports provide evidence of more advanced civilizations. The SETI community ignores this evidence.

I defined cult as “a sect adhering to a common ideology or doctrine when such adherence or devotion is based on fanatical beliefs or dogmas”. Sounds right to me for SETI. Sagan, for example, in Scientific American, in 1984, gave this definition: “SETI is an attempt to use large radio telescopes, sophisticated receivers and modern data analysis to detect hypothetical signals sent our way by advanced civilizations on planets around other stars”. Notice this leaves out Optical SETI which is searching for brief, very powerful, laser signals from other stars. It leaves out evaluation of photographs of UFOs, physical trace cases including reports of beings associated with extraordinary vehicles sitting just above the ground., abductions. It ignores multiple witness visual and radar observations of manufactured objects behaving in ways that Earth-originated flying objects, observed by experts concerned with things flying within the atmosphere, cannot duplicate. It leaves out examination of wreckage from crashed alien saucers. Most astronomers are not well acquainted with evaluation of witness testimony, radar measurements, or pilot observations. Atmospheric Physicists such as the late James E McDonald are well acquainted with such phenomena. Note well: “Hypothetical” signals.

Carl compounded his false reasoning with this claim “the search for alien civilizations retains its importance despite the striking failure of the UFO evidence…. There are reliable sightings that are not interesting and interesting sightings that are not reliable, but no interesting and reliable sightings”. This is unequivocally false. In Project Blue Book Special Report 14 the quality distribution shows that, the greater the reliability of a particular case, the MORE likely to be unexplainable. 35% of the Excellent cases could not be identified. “Only” 18% of the poor cases couldn’t be identified. Obviously one saucer landing in the middle of the World Cup would do it. Carl talks of sightings. What about radar visual cases, photographs, physical trace cases that leave behind evidence that can be examined and tested later? .Furthermore, SETI is not the search for alien civilizations, according to Carl’s definition. It is a very restricted search for radio signals. The sending device could originate from a long dead civilization.

Along these same lines, I also noted Dr. Jill Tartar’s comment in February, 2006 “SETI is the only research program looking for life beyond the solar system. It is the way we are going to understand where we are coming from and how we are going to survive as a species.. the search could yield headlines within a few decades.” One expects cultists to have a strong sense of how important they are to the survival of the species. Does anybody really believe that detecting, and interpreting a signal from a distant civilization will help us survive here? Hardly, especially, as noted below, when they think there may be one signal sending civilization within 1000 light years? Descendants of SETI leaders will be asking for help and get an answer 2000 years later…

As if in response to my talk, there was an article by Dr. Shostak in the May issue of Discover Magazine entitled “Drake’s Brave Guess”. He waxed poetic about the Drake Equation, originated 45 years ago by radio astronomer Frank Drake (now co-director of the SETI Institute) which supposedly is a scientific approach to determining the number of civilizations in the galaxy capable of sending radio signals. The idea is that, if we just keep listening, we will make the great discovery that man is not alone in the galaxy. The reasoning is a great example of pseudo-science. The primary reason for the article was the fact that the new Allen Telescope Array with 42 dishes, each 20 feet in diameter, is just going on line at Hat Creek in Northern California.


Eventually there will be many more dishes. He really seems to believe the quaint notion that our best systems are on a par with alien civilizations’ best capabilities apparently assuming they would not have improved in what could easily be the billion years during which such systems have been around. I was using a slide rule 50 years ago. I don’t anymore. A laser printer is not just a better IBM Selectric Typewriter. Atomic bombs are not just bigger 10 ton block busters that were used earlier in WW 2.

Of course Shostak doesn’t mention that Hat Creek can’t tune into Southern sky alien radio transmitters,even assuming they are still transmitting using very old, for them, technology. In the “Zeta Reticuli Incident” by Terence Dickinson, which discusses Marjorie Fish’s very exciting research on the Betty Hill star map, it is noted that many sun like stars in the neighborhood can only be seen from below the equator.

Shostak presents the Sacred Drake equation and then plays dartboard physics to try to come up with values for such things as on what fraction of planets life develops; on what fraction of those intelligence develops; and on what fraction of those the ability to send radio signals develops and perhaps most important, the lifetime of a civilization.. Considering that we have data for some of these factors from one planet around one star in a galaxy of a few hundred Billion stars, one can see that this is just a mite of a stretch, a rather huge extrapolation. The galaxy may be 13 Billion years old and the sun is only about 4.5 billion years old. But Zeta 1 and Zeta 2 Reticuli, just 39 light years away, are a billion years older than the sun and just down the street.


Unlike us, they each have a neighboring sun-like star 1/8th of a light year away. What if a civilization colonizes a number of nearby planets and what if each of those, in turn colonizes others, and on and on?. No consideration of this possibility is taken into account. Shostak assumes 10,000 years for a lifetime. A dynamic colonizing group may last for millions of years.

Shostak reviews how our thoughts of several of the factors have changed. “When Drake and his compatriots plugged their best guesses into the equation, they came up with an answer in the Thousands- meaning that intelligent life is common enough that there should be a technological civilization within about 1000 light years”. I find it impossible to be excited by such false reasoning. This computation of course assumes uniform distribution which is a little like assuming that a 6 foot man can’t drown in a pool whose average depth is only 3’. He can, if he falls in the wrong end. The distribution of major cities in North America is hardly uniform. Shostak thinks Drake had it right in 1961. He does allow “When a technological civilization develops rockets, the colonization of nearby space will likely follow”. Sounds like he means within a solar system. He might have pointed out that nuclear fusion was discovered to be the source of the sun’s energy within a couple of years of the use of the first dish radio telescope. Fusion rockets can provide 10 million times as much energy per particle emitted as can be provided by a chemical rocket. Fusion is also used in H-bombs. But SETI never takes note of the fact that governments have a very strong interest in using the technology of flying saucers for military purposes and, therefore, in covering up what they have learned using our sophisticated tools here. He acts as though SETI people can speak for the planet!!

Nowhere in the article is it noted that within that 1000 light years there are over 5 million stars. Only one other advanced civilization? Surely makes us special, doesn’t it?

A quick thought as to why the opposition to UFOs is so strong in the SETI community. If aliens are visiting, than who needs radio telescopes? Buggy whips weren’t of much use once people started driving automobiles. Discover has a comic book style cartoon with a Jill Tartar saying “But Carl, we’ve been listening...and we don’t hear ANYTHING”. The cartoon Carl Sagan replies “Jill, there are BILLIONS and BILLIONS…”. I must agree with Carl. But they aren’t sending old fashioned radio signals. They are sending visitors. That is what the evidence shows.

www.stantonfriedman.com

See Also: UFO Propulsion Systems By Stanton T. Friedman

     I crept down the stone stairs to the pulpit of the paranormal. The rock ledges at Wisemans View overlook the Linville Gorge and provide a breathtaking view of Table Rock and Hawksbill. And, supposedly, of the Brown Mountain Lights, mysterious moving balls of light.

This viewing session was on the occasion of the first Brown Mountain Lights Festival, a weekend gathering of those interested in the lights -- their science, pseudoscience and folklore.

From hope to skepticism

Would we see the lights? I was still the world's greatest expert on the lights who had not actually seen them. My interest goes back many years, when a student of mine fanned the flame of interest. I had hoped there would be some interesting science behind the lights. As the trips to try so see the lights came and went without any sightings, my hopes turned to skepticism. After trip 15, it turned to cynicism. How can some people claim to see them every time they try, yet I had never caught sight of anything truly odd? Something was clearly wrong.The first clue came when my colleague, Lee Hawkins, and I tried remaining silent as others came to look. We found they got excited about what were obviously camper lights. Similar to UFO sightings, about 95 percent of the sightings are of such familiar things as camper fires, flashlights, vehicle lights, planes taking off from the Morganton-Lenoir airport, and, yes, even the stationary street lights of distant Lenoir.

The remaining 5 percent are interesting but not necessarily paranormal -- they are just not yet unexplained. If doctors could diagnose correctly 95 percent of the time, they would be quite happy.

What about that 5 percent? A clue came after I was interviewed by an Associated Press reporter a year ago. The story went out nationwide, and I got many e-mails about sightings of "Earth lights," here and elsewhere. Some were probably bogus, but others stood out as remarkable.

These might be called "close encounters of the third kind," sightings made from only a few feet away. The reports are all similar -- soccer-ball-size glowing spheres of light. This sounded exactly like an enigmatic phenomenon called "ball lightning."

Now I completed the loop from cynicism back to curiosity.

Ball lightning is basically not understood -- we cannot make it in the lab with any repeatability and we cannot even say how it can theoretically exist. How do you make a moving, self-confined ball of glowing gas?

More importantly, how does Mother Nature manage to do it repeatedly in the Gorge area as well as in many other special locations around the planet?

Finally, something scary

The only paranormal effects during our weekend at the festival were actually more frightening than any myths of the lights. I speak of the haunting specter of "Quantum-Touch®."

Long hours of staring into the dark encourages a lot of storytelling. One of the attendees, from Charlotte, told us that one of her jobs is as a "Quantum-Touch®" practitioner. She shows the technique, passing her hands close to our bodies, asking if we feel any effects.

Well, no, you're not touching us.

She bubbles forth about energy fields and other things not in the domain of real science. She gets paid to do this for people, and even can do it remotely, from hundreds or thousands of miles away. It cures cancer, re-forms bones and spruces up roses, too -- check their Web site.

Right.

This would only have been an amusing side note, a meeting of science and pseudoscience at the Gorge, if it were not for what she claimed: Nurses can get continuing education credit for this "training."

Yikes! What did your nurse not take, instead getting this voodoo training?

Science's responsibility

Science has a responsibility to investigate claims of the paranormal, like the Brown Mountain Lights. The point? Not to spoil it by explaining it -- the rainbow is just as beautiful after you know its physics, perhaps even more so. But rather to see what clues about our universe lie in new phenomena.

We also need to debunk pseudoscience that has not been subjected to double-blind clinical trials. Validation comes through publication in peer-reviewed journals, not book reviews in The New York Times.

I hope I'll soon finally see the lights. And, I hope that those who were headed to experience some voodoo treatment or training will also see the light.

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See Also: Strange Lights Could Have Been a UFO

     Wife of Mr. Mariusz [a Pole living in UK] took this photo during their holliday in Mallorca in June 2006.“On one photo taken during our stay in Mallorca I noiced a small object. It looks quite strange so I decided to look inside of the case.” - Mr Mariusz said. He wanted to know what the object was is very curious about results of its analysis.

* Special Thanks To Piotr Cielebias
* Source: http://nol-polishufojournal.blogspot.com

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See Also: SPAIN: UFO FLOTILLA PHOTOGRAPHED OVER SPAIN?

     South Africa's Unidentified Flying Objects Resource (Saufor) will host its second annual Unbind Your Mind UFO conference in celebration of World UFO Day on July 1 in Cape Town.

The conference will reveal a timeline of UFO (unidentified flying object) events in South Africa and topics will include, amongst others: identified flying objects; how to report a UFO; UFO witnesses and hallucinations; UFOs as a gateway to a higher knowledge; and important current international developments.

Cristo Louw, founder of Saufor, said in a statement on Monday: "The time is ripe for the South African public to be informed about the true nature of the UFO issue."

Saufor's mission, he said, is to bring South Africa out of the "UFOlogical" Dark Age.

Saufor said in the statement: "The whole UFO debacle and the related conspiracies of government cover-ups, extraterrestrial visitations and an international, underground secret-government cabal pulling ... strings from behind the scenes is probably the most-important issue facing humanity at this point in our global evolution.

"According to international researchers, it all boils down to keeping the status quo, because when the public finds out that alternative methods for generating free energy, derived from advanced extraterrestrial technologies, are revealed as not only possible, but have been in use for many years, the oil industry and all parts of world economy dependent on it will have to be seriously revised.

"And no more power outages in South Africa!"

The conference will be held at the University of Cape Town's middle campus and starts at 10.30am. The cost per person is R75.

More . . .

www.saufor.com

     Mr Gilbert, of Montrose Close, Grantham, discovered a mysterious dot on one of the digital pictures he took of the flypast.

He said the dot has a flat top and a red rim around it only visible when he zooms in on it on his computer.

Ray, who claims to have seen a UFO last year when he was travelling to Lincoln, said: "I took more photos of the flypast but this is the only one with a dot on it.

"When I saw it a chill went down my back and everyone I've told says I should inform the Ministry of Defence. I know it's a UFO and I'm wondering if anyone else saw the same thing."

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See Also: YOUTH RECORDS UFO OVER MEXICO CITY

     Astronomer and engineering physicist Tarter, co-founder of the California-based Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute, has been ET-hunting for more than 25 years, and is credited with moving the search from the lunatic fringe to the mainstream.

Tarter, due in Dunedin this week as a keynote speaker at the New Zealand International Science Festival, was named by Time magazine in 2004 as one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th centur. Jodie Foster's character in the movie Contact is said to be largely based on Tarter.

As a member of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, Tarter regularly studies so-called UFO sightings, and says she's not yet seen credible evidence of alien life.

Kaikoura's "balls of light" sighted in 1978 created worldwide attention - but were later attributed to Japanese squid boats.

Tarter will tell New Zealand audiences about her institute's new and future use of sensitive radio and optical telescopes to scan the universe for ET transmissions.

So how do we know our technology is going to be on the same wavelength?

"A very good question. But if the appropriate technology is something we haven't yet invented we can't exactly use it."

The best we have are radio waves which can travel across the galaxy without being absorbed by the dust between the stars. Any communication, of course, will be a one-way street - given that any message takes 100,000 years to cross the galaxy.

"It's probably not going to be a snappy conversation," she agrees.

Any information encoded in a signal will be "probably repetitive" and thought out by civilisations who have made contact among themselves long before we came into the picture.

Tarter has no notion about what ETs might look like, other than that they won't be microscopic. "Metres are a good scale -you have to be able to build the equipment and transmit. But beyond that, all bets are off. I don't know whether we're talking about big blue women or little green men or purple octopuses. Anything is possible."

The common depiction of aliens as green and antennaed probably "goes back into the old part of the brain which feared snakes and reptiles", she says.

During our conversation, Tarter's cellphone cuts out three times. Technology may have to improve significantly to get across the galaxy if it can't get across the world.

"Maybe cellphones aren't going to be what we need, that's for sure," she says.

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See Also: ". . . SETI is Starting to Look a Bit of a Joke. That Much is Clear. . . ."

     I had lunch here the other day with an alien.

He was small, orange, had a big bald head and oval bug eyes. He also didn't have much to say, probably because he was a life-sized inflatable plastic toy.

But our ersatz E.T. did attract a lot of attention from visitors to this remote desert locale, a center of alleged UFO activity. That reputation comes because Rachel is situated sort of near the super-secret Area 51, the reputed U.S. military testing ground for captured alien spaceships and other hush-hush gizmos.

Trouble is, you can't really get close to Area 51 and its Groom Lake locale. Base borders are well patrolled and trespassers are warned that guards are authorized to use deadly force.

Rachel lies on the state-named Extraterrestrial Highway, 27 miles from Area 51. There's nothing here but a UFO-themed restaurant cum gift shop named Little A'Le'Inn. That's where I met my alien lunch-mate.

The Little A'Le'Inn does a roaring business serving lunch to tour groups and other visitors who drive over from Las Vegas, 2 ½ hours away. Most of us dined on Alien Burgers, then browsed among racks of UFO-themed doodads such as mugs, key chains, T-shirts and, fittingly, saucers.

We even ran into a local UFO guru, Chuck Clark, who just happened to come by when our group was visiting. Of course, he also just happened to carry with him copies of his for-sale handbook on Area 51.

According to Clark, Area 51 is not a total mystery. His handbook reproduces photos of the Area 51 base made from satellites and other vantage points, showing its very long runway (30,000 feet) and dozens of hangars and support buildings.

''JANET'' FLIGHTS

Actually, he said, there are regular flights to Area 51 on ''Janet'' aircraft. The ''Janets'' are a fleet of government-operated 737s that shuttle workers from Las Vegas to Area 51 and probably also to other sensitive sites. Painted white with a red stripe, the planes are often seen at Las Vegas' McCarran airport.

As for the occasional mysterious sightings in the area, many explanations have been offered. Clark himself describes a pulsating light he saw in the vicinity of the Area 51 base that he thought was a flare until it suddenly moved at a speed he calculated at 9,000 to 14,000 miles an hour.

But most other sightings, he says, can be attributed to such things as flares, satellites,

meteors, stars and planets, military operations, jet engine afterburners, rockets and missiles, weather balloons, vehicle lights and airborne debris.

Another UFO observer attributes the strange glowing orbs to government testing of particle beams, a sort of sub-atomic plasma.

Still, Clark says UFOs could be from another dimension, could carry time travelers or be extraterrestrial spaceships.

That's the stuff UFO seekers like to hear, but chances of casual tourists seeing something outworldly here are virtually nil, particularly if they are day visitors.

Other than at Rachel, our tour group saw little relating to UFOs. We stopped for a photo op at the ''black mailbox,'' a notorious site for UFO-sighting that since has been replaced with a white mailbox. We paused to shoot pictures of the green Extraterrestrial Highway sign the state of Nevada erected on Highway 375.

STOP OR WE'LL SHOOT

And we drove to a spot on that highway where a gaggle of signs prohibit further travel.

On a ridge above those signs, which warn of ''deadly force,'' armed personnel stand guard from a pair of white SUVs.

That's about it for anyone venturing into this UFO country. Commercial Area 51 tours from Las Vegas, which go to Rachel, require a full day and cost around $195. But you can drive out to Rachel on your own. Just bring a full tank of gasoline, lots of water and an open mind.

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See Also: Happenings at The Little Aleinn

      In keeping with the tradition of celebrating UFOs, aliens and mysterious crashes, the city of Roswell will host its 12th annual UFO Festival from Thursday to July 3. Taking a day trip to the nationally known festival could quench anyone’s desire for everything extraterrestrial.

Some history

The festival is known for attracting people from all parts of the world. In the past, Roswell has seen 15,000 to 20,000 tourists over the course of the celebration. Those who follow the “Roswell Incident” believe a UFO crashed in July of 1947 and was covered up by military intelligence officials. The incident has been the basis for a television movie, television series and book series.

Events

Those who partake in the festival will have the chance to attend lectures on topics such as abductions, UFOs and the famous crash itself. There will also be a show at the Goddard Planetarium called “Stonehenge, UFOs and Beyond,” and a play by the Roswell Little Theater called “Jocelyn’s World.”
Other events scheduled to take place are an alien costume contest, a light parade and a street dance and concerts by Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, Mark Chesnutt and Tejano artist Michael Salgado.

Vendors and booths will be set up along Main Street.

Food vendors will be located in the Roswell UFO Museum parking lot. All vendors will open at 10 a.m. The Roswell UFO Museum will have regular hours. All lectures will be in the museum starting at 5:30 p.m.

Admission

Most of the events for the festival are free. General admission tickets for the concerts are priced at $20 and VIP tickets are $40. Portales residents can purchase these tickets at the Portales National Bank. The lectures, planetarium shows and the plays will all be free to attend.

How to get there

From Portales take U.S. 70 west to Roswell, merging onto U.S. 285 south exit A, into the business district of Roswell. Take Main Street all the way to the festival.

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See Also: Roswell Festival Offers UFO Evidence, Theology, Music & Fun!

     Photo taken with a cellphone by Narciso Delgado Cabello from the Salinas Huito sector of Arequipa (Peru) on Saturday, June 17, 2006 at 8:00 hrs.

According to a report from the “Correo de Arequipa” newspaper submitted by Dr. Anthony Choy, the objects were seen for some seconds and appeared just as a couple photographed Arequipa’s tutelary volcanos – the Misti and the Chachani.

Silvana Chamba, Narciso Delgado’s companion, says that she was also able to see the possible UFOs over the volcanic summit. The witness is a memebr of the Regional Civil Defense Committee and took the photo with a Sagem X-7 cell phone.


To researcher Anthony Choy, this evidence is significant, since a similar photo was taken last week in the vicinity of the Ubinas Volcano, belonging to the same volcanic system as the Chachani, the difference being that the latter is presently dormant.

Credits:

Dr. Anthony Choy

Diario “Correo de Arequipa”

Julio Berlanga, Enigmas Perú.

Fotografía © Narciso Delgado Cabello

* Source: Ana Luisa Cid (IHU)

* Translation (c) 2006. Scott Corrales
Institute of Hispanic Ufology (IHU)

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See Also: PERU: UFOs OVER HUARAL

     CLOVIS. N.M. -- Thirty years after UFOs were reportedly sighted hovering in the skies over Clovis, another photograph of the event has surfaced.

A UFO researcher announced this week he has a fuzzy photo of a tubular-shaped craft that dangled above the eastern New Mexico city on Jan. 21, 1976.

Canadian Brian Vike of HBCC UFO Research said a former Eastern New Mexico University journalism student turned the previously unpublished picture over to him about a week ago. Vike identified the student only as Bruce.

According to Vike, Bruce was threatened in 2004 after discussing the events on a radio show but still wants people to know about the photo. Bruce shot the photo at 4:30 a.m. from the roof of the Hotel Clovis, according to the HBCC Web site.

Vike is looking for other witnesses to the event. To contact him through his Web site, log on to krqe.com and click on the As Seen On KRQE link.

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See Also: Merle Haggard’s Third Annual 'UFO Music Fest' Will Be On July 3rd

     For decades now, eyes and sky have met to witness the buzzing of our world by Unidentified Flying Objects, termed UFOs or simply flying saucers. Extraterrestrials have come a long way to purportedly share the friendly skies with us.

UFOs and alien visitors are part of our culture—a far-out phenomenon when judged against those "low life" wonders Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster.

And after all those years, as the saying goes, UFOs remain a riddle inside a mystery wrapped in an enigma. Why so? For one, the field is fraught with hucksterism. It's also replete with blurry photos and awful video. But then there are also well-intentioned and puzzled witnesses [See Top 10 Alien Encounters Debunked].

Scientifically speaking, are UFOs worth keeping an eye on?

Unusual properties

There have been advances in the field of UFO research, said Ted Roe, Executive Director of the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP), based in Vallejo, California.

"The capture of optical spectra from mobile, unpredictable luminosities is one of those innovations. More work to be done here but [there are] some good results already."

NARCAP was established in 2000 and is dedicated to the advancement of aviation safety issues as they apply to, what they term Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP).

Roe said that a decade from now, researchers should have even better instrumentation at their disposal and better data on UAP of several varieties. His forecast is that scientific rigor will prevail, demonstrating that there are "stable, mobile, unusual, poorly documented phenomena with quite unusual properties manifesting within our atmosphere," he told SPACE.com.

Paradigm shifting

NARCAP has made the case that some of these phenomena have unusual electromagnetic properties. Therefore, they could disrupt microprocessors and adversely effect avionic systems, Roe explained, and that for those reasons and others UAP should be considered a hazard to safe aviation.

"It is likely that either conclusion will fly in the face of the general assertion that UAP are not real and that there are no undocumented phenomena in our atmosphere," Roe continued. That should open the door, he said, to the realization that there's no good reason to discard outright the possibility that extraterrestrial visitation has occurred and may be occurring.

"Physics is leading to new and potentially paradigm shifting understandings about the nature of our universe and its physical properties," Roe said. "These understandings may point the way towards an acceptance of the probability of interstellar travel and communication by spacefaring races."

Sacred cows to the slaughter

As UFO debunker Robert Sheaffer's web site proclaims, he's "skeptical to the max." He is a fellow of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal and a well-known writer on the UFO scene.

Being an equal-opportunity debunker, Sheaffer notes that he refutes whatever nonsense, in his judgment, "stands in the greatest need of refuting, no matter from what source it may come, no matter how privileged, esteemed, or sacrosanct … sacred cows, after all, make the best hamburger."

Sheaffer told SPACE.com, in regards to the cottage industry of UFO promoters, there's a reason there are still so many snake-oil sellers.

"It's because nobody, anywhere, has any actual facts concerning alleged UFOs, just claims. That allows con-men to thrive peddling their yarns," Sheaffer said. "UFO believers are convinced that the existence of UFOs will be revealed 'any day now'. But it's like Charlie Brown and the football: No matter how many times Lucy pulls the football away—or the promised 'disclosure' fails to happen—they're dead-certain that the next time will be their moment of glory."

Trash from the past

"I would have to say that we're stuck in neutral," said Kevin Randle, a leading expert and writer on UFOs and is known as a dogged researcher of the phenomena. There's no real new research, he said, and that's "because we have to revisit the trash of the past."

Randle points to yesteryear stories, one stretching back in time to a supposed 1897 airship crash in Aurora, Texas, long proven to be a hoax by two con men—yet continues to surface in UFO circles.

Then there's the celebrated Thomas Mantell saga, a pilot that lost his life chasing a UFO in 1948. There are those that contend he was killed by a blue beam from a UFO, Randle said "even though we have known for years that the UFO was a balloon and he violated regulations by climbing above 14,000 feet without oxygen equipment. I mean, we know this, and yet there are those who believe that Mantell was killed by aliens."

Randle's advice is to the point: "We need to begin to apply rigorous standards of research … stop accepting what we wish to believe even when the evidence is poor, and begin thinking ahead."

Paucity of physical evidence

"I've no doubt that UFOs are here to stay," said Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. "I'm just not convinced that alien craft are here to stay … or for that matter, even here for brief visits. "First, despite a torrent of sightings for more than a half-century, I can't think of a single, major science museum that has alien artifacts on display," Shostak said. "Contrast this paucity of physical evidence with what the American Indians could have shown you fifty years after Christopher Columbus first violated their sea-space. They could have shown you all sorts of stuff—including lots of smallpox-infested brethren—as proof that they were being 'visited,'" he said.

When it comes to extraterrestrial visitors in the 21st century, the evi