On this month's Oddities in the News:
The US Military admits to the existance of UFOs
IN THE ODDITIES ARCHIVES
Wild Animal Pets
Flinstone House
Fluffy the Cat
Artificial Intelligence Newscaster
Harvard University UFO
Loch Ness
The Navy is Tracking UFO Sightings
June 1, 2019, Military.com -- The Navy caused a bit of a sensation this spring when it implemented a formal process for pilots to report unexplained aerial phenomena -- what most people call UFOs -- after being accused in the past of not taking such reports seriously.
No one doubts that the pilots are seeing something, but psychologists and specialists in aviation medicine say there are plenty of reasonable explanations for such sightings other than extraterrestrial beings.
That does not mean scientists doubt the existence of life elsewhere in the universe. On the contrary, they say there is a good chance we are not alone. That is the view of astronomers who search for other planets that might have water -- an essential substance for life as we know it -- and geologists who study the conditions on Earth when life arose more than 3.5 billion years ago.
The modern quest for signs of extraterrestrial life is said to have been launched about 1950, when Nobel Prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi posed a provocative question to some colleagues at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
"Where is everybody?" he asked.
Others at the table immediately understood what he meant. Given the sheer size of the Milky Way and the billions of years that have elapsed since its formation, surely there must be someone else out there. Why are we so special?
A decade later, astronomer Frank Drake expanded Fermi's observation into something called the Drake equation, which seeks to calculate the probability that other advanced civilizations exist in the galaxy. Among the variables it includes are the rate at which stars are formed, the estimated fraction of those stars that have orbiting planets, and the still-smaller fraction with conditions that might harbor an ecosystem.
See more HERE
Are UFOs a Threat to National Security? This Ex-U.S. Official Thinks They Warrant Investigation
The History Channel -- Throughout his distinguished government career, Chris Mellon has been keenly focused on the prospect of unconventional national threats. Now he works with a civilian group called To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science, trying to prod the U.S. defense and intelligence communities to investigate reports of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs—also known as UFOs) that maneuver in ways that have no known precedent.
He’s inspired, he says, by the growing number of such sightings in sensitive military contexts—reported by highly trained, highly credible witnesses and corroborated by some of the world’s most sophisticated technology, including several infrared videos shot from fighter jets. He doesn’t claim to know what these unusual crafts might be, nor does he assume they bring “aliens” from afar. To him, they signal a potential high-level strategic threat of unknown origin—one the nation would be foolish to ignore.
Chris Mellon wonders:
"From a national security standpoint of course, you’re paid to be paranoid, to think about risk. So you do inevitably wonder: Why are these things currently in these locations at these times? Have we been technologically leapfrogged? Could it be the Russians or Chinese—or something else? And what else may be going on?
"There are unexplained craft that are violating our airspace with unknown intentions and some have extraordinary capabilities. And until we get some answers to the questions about the technology involved and the capability, the intentions, we shouldn't rest easy."
See more HERE
Military Pilots are Coming Foward to Officially Report UFO Sightings
New York Post -- The unidentified flying objects look like white Tic Tacs, or spinning tops flying against the wind — and Navy pilots keep reporting their presence over U.S. airspace. In interviews with the New York Times, five more pilots have come forward describing their experiences with UFOs flying off the Eastern seaboard from Virginia to Florida between 2014 and 2015.
One ten-year veteran, Lieutenant Ryan Graves, claimed that he saw UFOs almost daily, and that the objects could reach hypersonic speeds and heights of up to 30,000 feet without any visible engine or plumes of infrared exhaust. Graves, who reported his experience to the Pentagon and Congress, said, “These things would be out there all day,” and that, “with the speeds we observed, 12 hours in the air is 11 hours longer than we’d expect.”
In late 2014, a pilot of a Super Hornet reported a near-collision with a UFO when an object that looked like a “sphere encasing a cube” zipped between two fighter jets flying roughly 100 feet from each other. Another pilot, Lieutenant Danny Accoin, could identify a flying object’s presence on his radar, missile system, and infrared camera but was not able to actually see it in his helmet camera. “I knew I had it, I knew it was not a false hit,” Accoin said. But still, “I could not pick it up visually.”
As the Times reports, pilot sightings of UFOs have increased since “their 1980s-era radar was upgraded to a more advanced system. As one fighter jet after another got the new radar, pilots began picking up the objects, but ignoring what they thought were false radar tracks.”
Actual photographs taken by US Military Pilots
My personal opinion (Jeani Rector): "I neither believe nor disbelieve. But it is a phenomenon that should definitely be explored for answers."
The Horror Zine asks: Was Fox Mulder right? Find out what Harvard University thinks about UFOs HERE
And how about the famous Los Angeles UFO sighting in 1942? Learn about it HERE
The 5 Most Credible Modern UFO Sightings
1. The Lights Above the New Jersey Turnpike (2001)
It takes a lot for motorists to stop alongside a highway to look toward the sky, but on July 14, 2001, drivers on the New Jersey Turnpike did just that. For around 15 minutes just after midnight, they marveled at the sight of strange orange-and-yellow lights in a V formation over the Arthur Kill Waterway between Staten Island, New York, and Carteret, New Jersey. Carteret Police Department’s Lt. Daniel Tarrant was one of the witnesses, as well as other metro-area residents from the Throgs Neck Bridge on Long Island and Fort Lee, New Jersey near the George Washington Bridge.
Air-traffic controllers initially denied that any airplanes, military jets or space flights could have caused the mysterious lights, but a group known as the New York Strange Phenomena Investigators (NY-SPI) claimed to receive FAA radar data that corroborated the UFO sightings from that night.
2. The USS Nimitz Encounter (2004)
On November 14, 2004, the USS Princeton, part of the USS Nimitz carrier strike group, noted an unknown craft on radar 100 miles off the coast of San Diego. For two weeks, the crew had been tracking objects that appeared at 80,000 feet and then plummeted to hover right above the Pacific Ocean.
When two FA-18F fighter jets from the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz arrived in the area, they first saw what appeared to be churning water, with a shadow of an oval shape underneath the surface. Then, in a few moments, a white Tic Tac-shaped object appeared above the water. It had no visible markings to indicate an engine, wings or windows, and infrared monitors didn't reveal any exhaust. Black Aces Commander David Fravor and Lt. Commander Jim Slaight of Strike Fighter Squadron 41 attempted to intercept the craft, but it accelerated away, re-appearing on radar 60 miles away. It moved three times the speed of sound and more than twice the speed of the fighter jets.
3. O’Hare International Airport Saucer (2006)
Flight 446 was getting ready to fly to North Carolina from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, when a United Airlines employee on the tarmac noticed a dark grey metallic craft hovering over gate C17. That day, November 7, 2006, a total of 12 United employees—and a few witnesses outside the airport—spotted the saucer-shaped craft around 4:15 p.m.
The witnesses say it hovered for about five minutes before shooting upward, where it broke a hole in the clouds—enough that pilots and mechanics could see the blue sky. The news report became the most-read story on The Chicago Tribune’s website to that date and made international news. However, because the UFO was not seen on radar, the FAA called it a “weather phenomenon” and declined to investigate.
4. The Stephenville Sightings (2008)
The small town of Stephenville, Texas, 100 miles southwest of Dallas, is mostly known for its dairy farms, but in the evening of January 8, 2008, dozens of its residents viewed something unique in the sky. Citizens reported seeing white lights above Highway 67, first in a single horizontal arc and then in vertical parallel lines. Local pilot Steve Allen estimated that the strobe lights “spanned about a mile long and a half mile wide,” traveling about 3,000 miles per hour. No sound was reported.
Witnesses believed the event was reminiscent of the Phoenix Lights sightings of 1997. While the U.S. Air Force revealed weeks later that F-16s were flying in the Brownwood Military Operating Areas (just southwest of Stephenville), many townspeople didn’t buy that explanation, believing that what they saw was too technologically advanced for current human abilities.
5. East Coast GO FAST Video (2015)
Leaked in 2017 along with the news of the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, was a video that revealed an encounter between an F/A-18 Super Hornet and an unidentified flying vehicle. Seen along the East Coast on a Raytheon Advanced Targeting Forward-Looking Infrared (ATFLIR) Pod, the craft was similar to that spotted off San Diego in 2004: a fast-moving white oval about 45-feet-long without wings or exhaust plume.
The pilots tracked the object at 25,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean as it flew away and simultaneously rotated on its axis. No explanation ever emerged.
The above is from The History Channel