The (Hoax) Alien Invasion is coming...

Ok Folks,

I admit I've been a bit remiss with my postings again - especially as my last post has been out of date for some time (as the Open Minds website is now up and running fine again).
My apologies - it was down to another run of (tiring and tedious) Govt contract work which finishes at the end of March and which has been taking up quite a bit of my time.

So this post offers three relatively hot news items for one. Enjoy.

Hoax 'Alien Invasion'

A typical camera drone

Anyway, be warned that according to these OpenMinds and Yahoo News articles there is a hoax 'alien invasion' on the horizon.

No it's nothing to do with the laughable 'Project Blue Beam', this appears to be a planned large-scale prank orchestrated by supposed UFO fans who will fly large numbers of remote controlled drones, complete with eerie flashing lights, into the skies on 5th April. Apparently 1st April would be too obvious a date hence the 5th to catch the uninformed unawares.

It will be interesting to see whether this generates any flurry of activity on the web or whether - given some the event's thunder might have been stolen by these articles and others - it just ends up being another '...and finally' item on local news networks. All a bit of fun I guess. And who knows? Maybe the news of the 'fake invasion' is itself just as fake - a social experiment in media manipulation. Guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Are We Alone? - This coming week

It's good to see some elements of the mainstream media giving some extended and sober coverage to one of the great mysteries as the American Science Channel launches it's Are We Alone themed week from tomorrow. Full details on the Science Channel Website

Bruce Dickinson and the 'flying bum'!

Now what have the former Iron Maiden front-man and a 'flying bum' got in common?

Daily Mail picture of the Hybrid Air Vehicle

Well the recent BBC News article and other articles such as this one in the Daily Mail will show you.

Bruce Dickinson - now a successful businessman and pilot, has - along with other investors - re-acquired (from the US military) an advanced 'airship' designed in Britain which, according to the Daily Mail resembles nothing less than a 'flying bum'.

It's a rather crass description for a huge and elegant piece of British hybrid airplane/airship engineering called the HAV (Hybrid Air Vehicle) 304, which I'm sure might get mistaken by some unobservant people for a 'UFO'. Anyway check out the articles for more details.

Open Minds TV site down again?

Okay so for a few days I have been unable to access the Open Minds TV website. Apparently 'the server where this site is located isn't responding.'

Whether I use Firefox or Safari the browser just freezes up on this site only. Other sites no problem.

Disabling internet security has no effect. Perhaps this is just something affecting those of us on this side of the the pond.

I can see search engine results still showing live/recent news articles - and I'd expect a holding page to at least be accessible if the site was down for some new year maintenance.

Is anyone else having the same issue accessing this site?

New Year, New Close Encounters?

Hello Folks,

A Happy New Year to you and I hope you all enjoyed the festive break.

For me the run up and the main event was quite busy hence my absence from posting since November.

Anyhow, the year has started with two interesting UK cases which have apparently only just hit the press, although technically the timing of the events seem to have been July and December of 2013 respectively.

The first (this event appears to have been July 2013 but has only been reported in the Sunday Telegraph on 5 January) was a dramatic near miss between a passenger plane and a 'rugby ball shaped' UFO near Heathrow Airport. The jury's still out on what the object was but the UK's Aviation Airprox investigations unit has been looking into the incident which has been reported by an (understandably) unnamed pilot for an unnamed airline. The Full Telegraph article can be found here.

The Wakefield Express reports a resident in Ossett (a market town within the metropolitan district of the City of Wakefield, West Yorkshire) having filmed a rectangular-shaped UFO hovering over the area on 29 December 2013. Have a look at the brief Express article.

Elsewhere, there has been an intriguing report of a UFO tracked on radar as well as seen by witnesses, which disrupted traffic at Bremen Airport in Germany - a country out of which - interestingly in itself - few UFO reports tend to emanate. See the Huffington Post's article here. According to accounts by air traffic control and local eyewitnesses, the UFO's description includes the apparent airframe and navigation lights of an plane. However, the aerial object in question was seemingly operating without authorisation in German airspace.

Could the mystery 'plane' in fact be:-

a) a huge oversight on the part of Bremen air traffic control (unlikely in my view);

b) evidence of a secret military/intelligence operation for example the continuing practice of extraordinary rendition (more likely although the timing and frequency of the event seems strange for this explanation to hold weight); or

c) something far stranger?

Could we all be carrying alien DNA?

*UPDATE*

 

Having subsequently examined this story more closely, the Kazakhstani scientists would appear to be earnest in their theory concerning 'alien code' being hidden in human DNA - and when one starts to look at what they have to say in detail, it does start to make a strange kind of sense.

To see what I mean, have a look at the following video I've added in here from Paul Davies. Writing in New Scientist, Professor Paul Davies, from the Australian Centre for Astrobiology at Macquarie University in Sydney, also suggests - amongst other theories - that a cosmic greeting card could have been left in the so-called ‘junk DNA’ contained in every human cell.

If you can't view the video on your mobile device try clicking here.

According to an article in the Australian Courier (which in turn links to a six month old Discovery article) scientists in Kazakhstan - of all places - supposedly believe that humanity has alien code written into its DNA and that we might have been created by something 'non-terrestrial', much in the way 'the engineers' created humanity in the recent Ridley Scott movie Prometheus.  

Conspiracy theorists shouldn't start punching the air just yet however.

Still of an 'Engineer' from the Ridley Scott movie Prometheus

No hard evidence in support of this appears to have been submitted yet nor does there appear to have been any scrutiny by the rest of the world's scientific community thus far.

Could it be that someone in Kazakhstan is trying to raise the country's profile on the world map for being associated with something other than Borat?

Or could it just be an old April fool's joke - just look at the date of the original Discovery article...

UFOs over the UK both real(?) and staged

Still here folks. Just currently diverting more of my energy to searching for a decent part-time job or contract at the moment.

Real?

Anyway, you might have noticed a recent spate of sightings across the UK in recent weeks, including a ball of scintillating light captured on video over Cumbria; a vaguely 'disc-shaped' object photographed by a motorist in West Yorkshire (possibly a tax-disc holder as suggested by some keen-eyed observers!) and a green ball of light witnessed and photographed over Gloucestershire.

One incident that particularly struck me however, is the image captured by a former Royal Navy Aeronautical Engineer - see the Open Minds article. What's compelling to me is the calibre of the witness and the very interesting close up of one of the images captured - quite obviously a 'disc'.

Interesting too to note that none of the above sightings really correlate in any way, in that the phenomena - which may yet be revealed to have earthly explanations - are all visually different.

Staged

Finally - wouldn't you know it - yet another crashed 'UFO' is discovered in a school playground.

This time the event staged by North Harringay Primary School for its pupils, managed to feature in a national newspaper - The Independent (article here). More evidence, if needed, that the Department of Education appears to be endorsing a curriculum that includes a rather strangely-themed series of managed events in schools around the country...

Professional Pilots' Rumour Network - Compare and contrast

Whilst conducting internet research for another post I plan to publish, I came across some (now quite old) posts on the following forum - Professional Pilots Rumour Network (PPRUNE) - a site that hosts anonymous online chatter between current and former civil/commercial aviation pilots and other aviation personnel.

A number of these posts can be said to be typical of the ridicule that anyone interested in the UFO/UAP subject attracts from those claiming to represent the 'voice of reason' in the aviation community. One classic example is this post where the mere utterance of the dreaded acronym 'UFO' leads to very toxic responses. I personally find the level of arrogance displayed and cavalier attitude demonstrated on this forum, towards the subject and those merely discussing it, to be of some concern - but not unexpected.

That's because, if one was to conduct an opinion poll in the UK today on whether regular air travellers would feel safe sitting in a plane known to be piloted by someone who claimed to have seen a UFO (despite the initials standing for Unidentified Flying Object - the 'alien' stigma attached to these letters remains), then I imagine at the very least 50 per cent of those polled would say 'no'. Coupled with the point that all pilots and civil aviation personnel generally would know their career would quickly be over if they publicly insisted on having seen a UFO (whether it had an earthly explanation or not), it's not really surprising to see why this general attitude persists to this day.

What's really interesting however, is this very rare post which demonstrates that there are pilots out there who have had some strange experiences and - quite boldly in my view - are prepared to discuss this to a limited extent on the very same forum.

Another poster in this chain does, however, offer a very valid word of caution which I have quoted below:

"...Of all the witnesses, two west country policeman are perhaps the most memorable: they had become quite famous after spending most of an evening chasing a mystery object that hovered in front of their patrol car, darting from side to side and sometimes approaching very close as they hurtled along at 90mph. I remember them being distinctly disenchanted when shown astronomical tables that placed Venus right in front of them on the straight bits of road.  

These fine officers, and most other witnesses had fallen foul of two properties of the human eye: 

Firstly, it's extreme sensitivity - the ability to easily see a 3W torch bulb suspended on a hill top 6 mi away for instance. Unfortunately, the eye is not calibrated, and a pin point source has an apparent brightness linked to the surrounding environment. That is how Venus can be described by witnesses as 'dazzling' and so on.

Secondly, once denied normal visual cues in low light situations, the eye can begin rapid involuntary movements. This makes distant light sources (eg stars, planets, satellites and aircraft) appear to 'dart' about the sky.

Just note how many UFO stories involve 'dazzling' objects that 'dart' about!
I am not suggesting that all sightings can be explained in this way. But very many can. And there are important lessons for professional observers like Pilots and Policemen. The eye can certainly deceive and the more 'expert' the witness, the more extreme the mis-interpretation of visual cues can become. That's just because we all share the same physiology and no amount of training can change that, whatever any given individual might think. 

PS
I never really gave up on the UFO idea. The astonishing and continuing discovery of hundreds of extra-solar planets in the last few years gives the whole subject new momentum. But 'investigating' the anecdotes of witnesses is a hard road that rapidly becomes impassible if any kind of objective test is applied to the data. The subject was IMHO best discussed many years ago by Prof RV Jones, the man who 'discovered' the V2 rocket. His account is here"

[the link referred to at the end of this quote seems to have changed so interested parties will need to search for "Prof RV Jones"] 


These last comments give me pause for thought about my own recent sighting described in my previous post - in that it is possible that what I saw could also have been an exceptionally bright daytime celestial object - but I guess I'll never know for sure.


Should by any remote chance, any of those pilots have read this post (the latter and earnest ones only please - captain-flashheart-and-his-laugh-I-nearly-did crew of online abusers need not apply!), I would very much be interested in hearing their full accounts - anonymously of course.

Please email: Jonathan Niven at ufoscrutiny@gmail.com

As far as I'm aware, it's a shame that non-U.S. aviation personnel probably can't contact NARCAP to record their accounts.

The role and function of NARCAP can be found on its website and is self-explanatory. But this site is U.S. in origin and (tellingly) there is no such equivalent body or site in the UK for example, which means BUFORA would be the next best place for such reports in this country.