Empire of the Odd

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Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev makes a crack about aliens, and conspiracists promptly lose their minds

As a skeptic and an astronomer, I’m sometimes asked what it would take for me to believe in UFOs (in this case, meaning alien spaceships). I usually say, “One landing on my front lawn.” But what don’t convince me are blurry photos and unreliable eyewitness testimony.

Unfortunately, the media make my job a lot harder. I’ve seen local news reports and TV shows identifying all kinds of things as a UFO, including Venus, Jupiter, and once even bits of seed fluff from trees.

But sometimes I see a report so silly it leaves me a little awestruck. Such was the case recently, when several folks sent me notes about a report that aired on Fox affiliate KDVR in Denver. On Nov. 8, 2012, the station aired a UFO segment that was truly a thing of wonder. Watch for

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Britain’s UFO watchers will debate the future of research into extra-terrestrial activity as alien sightings take a downward spiral.

The occurrence of “significant UFO events” has dropped notably over the past two decades, according to an organisation involved in UFO research.

The Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena (Assap) has said this trend has become so extreme that the UFO debate now focuses on only a handful of events, including claims that a flying saucer crashed at Roswell in New Mexico in the 1940s.

Assap has also noted a change in the nature of reported sightings.

“Even when reputed physical evidence surfaces it takes novel and extreme forms, including cattle mutilations, alien implants and alien autopsies,” promotional literature for the conference on Assap’s website said.

The statement added that over the past 30 years classical sightings have been largely displaced by claims of UFO abductions, often recovered via hypnosis.

Conspiracy theories
“In 1972 UFO crashes were unknown or disregarded,” said Assap. “In 2012 they effectively dominate the subject.”

Assap added that the subject has become “significantly influenced by conspiracy theories whose implications take UFOlogy into extreme and alarming directions”.

The organisation is concerned that the debate has been polarised between those who firmly believe UFOs are extra terrestrials and fear that there is a cover-up over their presence and those who have declared the “death of the UFO”.

UFO enthusiasts concerns about the future of the discipline will be disussed at a meeting on 17 November.

But Nick Pope, who ran the MoD’s UFO desk from 1991 to 1994 and now researches UFO sightings privately, told the Sunday Telegraph that there is a future for the subject: “There’s a quantity versus quality issue here.

“So many UFO sightings these days are attributable to Chinese lanterns that more interesting sightings are sometimes overlooked.”

It’s life Jim, but not as we know it, Channel 4 News Science Editor, Tom Clarke, explains why UFO watchers should not give up hope just yet.

It is perhaps inevitable that ‘traditional’ UFO enthusiasts would have to abandon the faith. The little green men in flying saucers and unexplained lights in the sky just have not stood up to scrutiny. The same advances in science and technology that made them seem plausible have failed to confirm they exist.

But to me it seems a shame that the UFO hunters may be giving up at a time when we are closer than ever to finding life in other worlds.

Rather than hearing cries from distant aliens, radio telescopes found equally incredible messages from beaming pulsars and the faint echoes of the big bang itself.

In 1992 the idea of planets beyond our solar system – so called extrasolar planets – was purely theoretical. But now astronomers are now finding real lost worlds almost everywhere they look. As of the beginning of this week 843 planets in 665 planetary systems have been discovered… and counting.

Few of these planets are suitable for life as we know it, but many are close. Just last month an Earth-sized planet was discovered orbiting our nearest neighbouring star Alpha Centuri. And statistically, the odds of a world similar to ours aren’t bad at all.

Based on data from NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler telescope there could be 500 million Earth-like planets in our galaxy alone.

Estimates of the number of galaxies in the universe vary quite a bit, but we are talking hundreds of billions – you get the general idea. What’s more, the chemicals that make up the likely building-blocks of carbon-based life are being found in the furthest reaches of space.

This summer, Danish scientists discovered sugar molecules just floating in space around a star 400 light years away. And now too, we have unprecedented power to reach out and find life directly.

This week the Mars curiosity rover began the rather odd task of sniffing for methane on the surface of Mars. Detecting it could indicate the presence of belching bacterial life-forms within the soil.

So far, not a whiff. But the truth is out there.

Article Tags Channel 4 News, Sci/Tech, Tom Clarke, UK, United States, World

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Is a UFO war underway between extraterrestrials and naval forces? That’s the shocking claim being made by a former US military contractor and scientist named John Kettler who alleges there is a UFO war raging in the waters off Antarctica, according to information made available on Oct. 26, 2012 by the Exopolitics Institute News Service.

John Kettler’s biography indicates that he is the son of a defense engineer who worked as a military analyst for Hughes (Raytheon) and Rockwell (Boeing). He even earned a primary research credit in the documentary “The Panama Deception.” Kettler maintains his own website John Kettler Investigates where he posts updates on the so-called UFO war like this one: ” … UFOs, coming from underwater bases in two oceans so far, have already forced the commitment of hundreds of warships, many from Asian navies, in an effort to deal with an extremely aggressive Reptoid foe. Also, our people at sea are being preyed upon by the nightmare made flesh–interdimensional predators still being characterized.”

Video: Video featured by John Kettler on his website
Indeed, the allegation that a UFO war is taking place off Antarctica is a bold claim that has even some of the most die-hard UFO enthusiasts in disbelief. A poll by Current.com shows 29% of responders felt the story of a UFO war being waged in Antarctica was “bull [expletive deleted].” However, a whopping 25% of those polled believed the story was “fact,” and another 25% chose “possible.” The “devil” got 13% of the votes while the military got 0%.

One commenter on Current.com named Trut took a rational and logical approach to the difficulties involved in battling extraterrestrials, but he doesn’t seem to doubt the existence of a UFO war in Antarctica: “If the ufos [sic] are indeed flying at 25000 miles an hour what chance do the earthlings have to defeat these extraterrestrials? None. We don’t have rockets that go that fast and bullets aren’t that fast either. Maybe they could make an explosion in front of where they expect the ufo [sic] to go but highly unlikely.”

Not everyone is so accepting of John Kettler’s claims. According to the Exopolitics Institute News Service, ” … there is good reason to conclude that Kettler’s … claims are part of a psychological warfare operation that may be related to planning for a false flag alien event.”

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[[[VIA http://www.examiner.com/article/ufo-war-being-waged-antarctica-claims-scientist]]]

Congressman Paul Broun (R-Ga.) said last week that evolution and the big bang theory are “lies straight from the pit of Hell.”

“God’s word is true. I’ve come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the big bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell,” said Broun, who is an MD. “It’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior.”

He continued:

“You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I’ve found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I don’t believe that the earth’s but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says.”

According to NBC News, Broun’s comments were part of a larger speech given at the 2012 Sportsman’s Banquet at Liberty Baptist Church in Hartwell, Georgia on September 27th. A clip of the video was distributed by the The Bridge Project, a liberal watchdog group.

Broun is a high-ranking member of the House Science Committee, of which Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) is also a member.

Akin made headlines last month for suggesting that women don’t get pregnant from “legitimate rape” because their bodies have “ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

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UFO ALIEN INVASION IN 2013 – DOOMSDAY PREDICTION – UFO NEWS – Is Richard Atkins FOR REAL?

 September 2nd, 2012  VinMan

Frequent guest Stanton Friedman appeared during the second half of Coast to Coast AM on Tuesday, August 28, 2012. Friedman is a nuclear physicist and a pioneer in many areas of UFO research, including Roswell, Majestic 12, and the Betty and Barney Hill alien abduction case.

Stanton Friedman is always a lively guest and last night’s show was no exception. He briefly touched on the Aztec Incident and some research he’d done for his new book, “The Aztec Incident: Recovery at Hart Canyon,” and then he and George Noory got right down to business.

Friedman has been interested in UFOs since 1958. He is the original civilian investigator of the Roswell Incident and co-authored “Crash at Corona: The U.S. Military Retrieval and Cover-Up of a Ufo.” When George asked Friedman what he thought was going on in the UFO field these days, Friedman said he sees four major concerns:

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