UNITED KINGDOM UFO NETWORK (issue 4 Nov) 2/3

Mon, 4 Nov 1996 20:24:55 -0500 (EST)
Source: United Kingdom UFO Network

(Continuing from 1/3)

[U11]******

Source: The Leicester Mail
Date: 17th October 1996
From: RUSHEYMEAD@aol.com

UFO Photo Mystery

We set out to unravel riddle of the film

BY DAY he researches statistics and marketing strategies at Leicester' Charles Keen College, but at night he is busy investigating things far less mathematical.

Eighteen-year-old business studies student Minesh Gupta can regularly be found leaning out of his bedroom window at his home in Moorgate Street, Belgrave, scanning the skies for evidence of alien activity.

He is convinced that there is extraterrestrial life 'out there somewhere', and has spent the last four years researching UFOs and keeping a nightly vigil in search of The Truth about aliens. "I truly believe that UFOs and extraterrestrials are real. If mankind exists, there has to be something else out there in the universe," he said.

Minesh feels that only true UFO believers such as himself can actually see UFOs, and is waiting for the day when he'll come face to face with an alien craft or being.

"That would be the best day of my life," he said. Minesh believes he has come one step closer to the Truth, by capturing what he claims is a UFO on film.

He told the M-Files this week that he spotted the strange phenomenon on one of his late evening look-outs in July.

Armed with binoculars and a camera, he photographed 'two white lights which were moving together up and down in the sky.'

"I'm certain I've photographed a UFO, and I'm going to carry on searching for more evidence of extraterrestrials," he said -regardless of the fact that, like Fox Mulder in cult TV series The X Files, most of his friends think he's weird! Maybe I am crazy, but I know there's something out here," he added. And he's currently craving the ultimate close encounter -being abducted by aliens.

"It would be great to find out what these extraterrestrials are like," he said

* The M-Files is developing Minesh's UFO photograph, and will reveal all next week. v [U12]******

Source: Aberdeen Press & Journal Daily
From: "Tony Morse I.C.E."
Date sent: Fri, 18 Oct 1996

Big Snowball In Sky

Just visited your site for first time. Excellent info, well done. Good to see factual data.

Report in the Aberdeen Press & Journal Daily recently describes how a lady from Falkirk ( Margaret Ross, 63 ) shot a 40 min video of a pulsating bright object in a cloudless sky, 6am Sept 27th. She describes: " looked like big snowball in sky. Its outside edges then becam pointed. Object didn't move, just stayed & pulsated. After 15 mins it blossomed into a half circle shape with four diagonal stripes. Began rotating and returned to its original shape. Then speeded away in direction of Linlithgow" "it didn't frighten me, Iwas just fascinated by it changing shape. The UFO was also witness by a family 2 miles away. This is the second time she has taped strange lights in the sky, none of them explained conventionally. A photograph from the video footage looks like an irregular rock with 5 bright strips of light running parallel from top left to bottom right. Not a "conventional" ufo shape.

This report comes from Scotland's UFO hotspot - the area around Bonnybridge.

[U13]******

Source: The Daily Telegraph (London, UK)
Date: November 01, 1996

Life Was Found On Mars By Britons - And It's Still There

By Roger Highfield - Science Editor

BRITISH scientists can claim to be the first to have found evidence of life on Mars in the wake of sensational new evidence that suggests primitive organisms may still thrive there.

A packed meeting of scientists in London was told yesterday that methane belching bugs may have lived on Mars 600,000 years ago - much more recently than the 3.6 billion years ago suggested by American work that made headlines in August.

The discovery by a team from the Open University, raises hopes that life may still exist in protected regions of our planetary neighbour.

Scientists were told of the "smoking-gun evidence of life on Mars" by Dr Ian Wright, a member of the Open University led by Prof Colin Pillinger, joint organiser of the Royal Society meeting. "It's a staggering result," Dr Wright said afterwards.

The all-important question of who was the first to find evidence of life on the red planet is also challenged by yesterday's evidence, which puts the British years ahead of the American team.

Dr Wright told the meeting that the new analysis supported earlier work by the team that revealed a high proportion of organic material within EETA 79001, a Mars meteorite.

Doubts were cast on this evidence after it was published in the journal "Nature" in 1989.

Yesterday, however, Dr Wright presented new evidence to show that EETA 79001 did indeed contain organic material indigenous to the meteorite and not the result of contamination.

[U14]******

Source: The Herald (Glasgow)
Date: October 14, 1996

Half-Moon 'UFO' Is Tracked On Video For 40 Minutes

Copyright 1996 Caledonian Newspapers Ltd.
Page 7

SPECIALIST investigators believe Stirlingshire woman Margaret Ross has evidence of a UFO sighting.

Mrs Ross, 63, of Falkirk, captured pictures on her video camera from her bedroom window at daybreak on Friday, September 27.

The footage shows a pulsating bright object in a cloudless sky to the south of her home. The snowball-like object is obviously far brighter and bigger than any star in the sky.

Its appearance gradually transforms into a half-moon shape with four diagonal bars of high intensity brightness.

The object is seen on tape for about 40 minutes before it disappears from the sky.

Mrs Ross said: "After about 15 minutes, it blossomed into a half circle shape with four diagonal stripes. It then began rotating and returned to its orginal shape. It then seemed to speed away eastwards in the direction of Linlithgow.

"I don't know what this was but it definitely was not a star, plane, helicopter, or balloon.

"It didn't frighten me. I was just fascinated by the changing shape. I was speechless. I just watched in awe."

Two miles from Mrs Ross's home, the phenomenon was being witnessed by her daughter, Alexis, 42, and her family. She said: "I phoned my mother at 7am and asked her if she had seen anything in the sky. She told me she had it on tape. It's absolutely amazing."

Mr Ron Halliday, of Stirling University, chairman of Scottish Earth Mysteries Research, said last night: "It is one of the best footages I have ever seen from anywhere in the world. Such a length of footage is very unusual.

"Film of alleged phenomena is very rare and usually lasts for a few fleeting seconds.

"It is extremely rare to have film evidence backed up by multiple witnesses.

"At the moment, there is no obvious explanation as to what Mrs Ross captured on video."

Mr Kenny Higgins, chairman of Scottish Research into Unidentified Flying Objects, said: "I have never seen anything resembling the shape in the sky that Mrs Ross has captured. It is as good a piece of evidence of a UFO in Scotland as I've ever seen."

For years, there have been hundreds of reported sightings of strange phenomena in the skies around Bonnybridge, Denny, and Falkirk.

[U15]******

Source: Press Association Newsfile
Date: October 24, 1996

UFO Film Footage 'Best Ever'

BYLINE: Aine Harrington, PA News

A UFO researcher is studying video footage of an unexplained object in the sky, described as the "best and clearest" ever film of a mystery sighting ever recorded in Scotland.

The footage was taken last week by a couple who saw an object low in the sky above Camelon, in Falkirk - just a few miles from Bonnybridge, which is reputed to be Scotland's capital for mystery UFO sightings.

Ron Halliday, a UFO researcher at the University of Stirling, said: "It is the best and clearest video footage I have every seen and I have examined a lot. "It was taken in daylight against clear blue sky and you get a very good view of the object. "One of the witnesses is sending me a copy of the video for anyalsis today. I will then examine it frame by frame and get a better idea of what the object is."

The video footage was taken by Barry McDonald, 27, and his girlfriend Jane Adamson, 23, at around 6.30pm last Wednesday. The couple were travelling from their home in the Falkirk area when they spotted something in the sky. Mr McDonald, who was driving the car, braked to get a better view of it. And Ms Adamson, who is due to have a baby next week, said: "We just couldn't believe it. I got such a fright, I couldn't speak."

The couple said that when they first saw the object it looked like an orange-coloured football and then changed to a flat saucer shape before disappearing. The couple watched the object for about 15 minutes until Mr McDonald remembered he had a camcorder in the boot of his car. But by the time they set up the equipment they only managed to capture a minute or so of footage. In total the couple watched the object for 20 minutes.

Ms Adamson said: "After it disappeared I didn't know what to think or say. At first we were afraid to tell anyone in case they thought we were lunatics." But the couple contacted Mr Halliday and let him look at the video evidence. "I can't think of an explanation for the footage other than it is a UFO, because whatever else it is, it is definitely unidentified," he said. And Ms Adamson said: "I believe there is something there but I'm not sure what it is."

[U16]******

Source: The People
Date: October 27, 1996

Terrified Tourists In UFO Blitz!; UFO Sighting Reported In Killarney

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 11
BYLINE: Ian Brandes

A group of terrified British holidaymakers have filed a weird close-encounter report to UFO investigators.

The party were travelling towards Killarney in the early hours when mysterious white lights appeared.

Their tranquil ride in County Kerry turned to terror as the lights swooped and buzzed their Toyota Previa car.

The driver of the group - two adult couples and a 15-year-old boy from Middle Wallop, Hants - said: "It was an oval group of white lights, rotating in a clockwise direction.

"The lights appeared on both sides of the vehicle, moving rapidly on at least three occasions at high speed."

His wife, who also wants to remain anonymous, added: "I saw strange beams, pulsating in half circles and then a circle of rotating white lights came up from the horizon before disappearing at speed."

In their statement to investigators from the UK-based UFO Quest International, the distressed tourists told how:

THEIR strange ordeal lasted between 10 and 15 minutes before the lights shot away - doing another weird dance in the air, some miles away.

THERE were no buildings, vehicles or artificial lights in the area.

THEY all spotted a "strange white shape" behind forest undergrowth as the episode continued.

The Quest report observed: "The night was fine and dry and visibility, helped by a new moon, was perfect.

"Both couples are well used to military aircraft as they live just four miles from an English RAF base."

Investigators are now seeking more information on the sighting, reported at the end of July.

[U17]******

Source: The Sunday Times: Review.
Date: October 27, 1996

UFOs Disappear In A Flash Of Light

A new theory banishes spacemen but offers earthlings a new energy source, finds Penny Wark.

It takes a brave man to debunk the enthusiasm for spotting little green men because, as yet, there is not much money in it. Conversely, follow the tried and tested extra-terrestrial route and UFO spotters everywhere will dig into their anorak pockets to buy your evidence.

Paul Devereux is one of the brave heretics. He is a researcher with the International Consciousness Research Laboratories in New York and believes that many so-called UFO sightings have a rational explanation relating to fault lines within the earth. The blazing lights which fascinate ufologists are actually earth lights, or flashes of energy which erupt from the earth as a result of geophysical processes, he explains. If he is right, the truth is not out there, as X Files aficionados would have it, but has been here all along.

Devereux's theory, to be aired next Sunday in Channel 4's Equinox programme, Identified Flying Objects, is based on a study of earth lights reported over North Wales in 1904-05 which, when plotted on a map, matched fault lines and preceded an earthquake. Another study has made the same link, more recently, in Washington state in America. If earth lights precede earthquakes, surely they could be used to predict earthquakes, so Devereux reasons. Furthermore, he suggests, earth lights have enormous potential as sources of energy.

"It is rather like asking in 1495 what uses might be found for lightning," he said. "We have none, but we do now rely on electricity. What might come out of earth lights could be whole new technologies and new ways of looking at the world." Is his supposedly rational explanation for UFO sightings as wild as the rumours of flying saucers themselves? Although the Equinox programme takes his theory seriously, those he most seeks to convince are inclined to dismiss him as a peddler of more UFO bunkum. So far only Japanese scientists have reacted positively by investing in researching the potential energy force.

For other scientists, seeing is not necessarily believing. "When I first wrote about earth lights I was condemned by scientists who said I should not be looking at it because it was associated with UFOs, and ufologists tore into me because I was reductionist and knocked down their alien theories," Devereux said. "It's disappointing that today we have a situation where the only people who pay any attention to these things are people who believe in alien spaceships and because of that a lot of scientists won't touch the subject. One hopes bolder scientists will be prepared to take a risk and become involved in the research this subject needs."

His difficulty is that however logical and plausible his argument, it holds no water unless you accept the existence of earth lights. Wary of falling into the anorak bracket them selves, American top brass reject it. To them, lights in the sky are the preserve of nerds and dogmatic fantasists. All of which Devereux acknowledges.

"Ufology is a belief system, rather like a religious cult," he said. "In America the suggestion that UFOs are anything but alien craft is almost impossible to get across because the UFO notion is so ingrained in mythology."

The biggest stumbling block to accepting the alien theory is, of course, the idea that the 5m UFOs observed throughout the world since 1945 were all aircraft engaged on an intergalactic journey. Psychologists would rather latch on to the cultural references thrown up by sightings.

Given that reports of visitations mirror contemporary culture - 500 years ago lights in the sky were regarded as dragons, and only when mechanised travel was developed did people start to see airships - might not the phenomenon be no more than a cultural joke?

Nice theory, said Jenny Randles, a professional UFO researcher, but she clings to the notion that nobody has proved that one, either. "I would be delighted if we could establish that what is happening is a combination of natural phenomena like earth lights, hallucinations and a mass global psychosis based on a desire to believe in aliens, but there is no evidence to support the last point.

To prove it we would need to know that people who claim to have been kidnapped by aliens have difficulty separating dreams from reality. They do not."

The sceptical view is summed up by a sighting recorded by three experienced American pilots on the ground in Concord, California. They saw a silent and silvery craft the size of a 707, travelling at jet altitude and manoeuvring like no earthly craft. Only when it moved between them and some trees did they recognise it as a weed seed. What they saw was just a piece of fluff.

[U18]******

Source: Eastern Daily Press
Date: Monday, October 28, 1996

Maybe It Was The Boston Stump

Searchers said last night that the cause of an explosion in the sky, leading to an air and sea search off north Scotland, may never be known.

A major operation was launched off the Butt of Lewis on Saturday night after 12 people reported seeing a mystery object falling out of the sky.

An RAF Nimrod nd helicopter were out again at first light yesterday while a sea search continued.

The search was called off at lunchtime.

A spokesman at RAF Kinloss said: "This is a mystery and it may have to remain so. We have no idea what it was."

"No aircraft are missing, no meteor debris is believed responsible, and a firework has been ruled out."

World News
---------------


[W1]******

From: UK.UFO.NW backbone correspondent Lloyd Bayliss (Wales)
Lloyd Bayliss

Meteorite Life and the Cydonia Web Page

The following article is taken from an excellent Web site based on the Cydonia area on Mars where the now famous 'Mars Face' and other unusual rock formations etc have been found. This particular article has been taken from the Update page for October. If you are interested in the Cydonia story, I would well recommend a visit to this Web site.

The address is as follows :-

http://www.navisoft.com/cydonia/cydonia.htm (for the main Cydonia page)

http://www.navisoft.com/cydonia/update.htm (for the monthly update page)

Lloyd Bayliss

---

Reprinted with the full permission of Joe Schembrie.
e-mail : 71732.1225@compuserve.com

October 1996 / No. 10 . A monthly review of science, religion, and politics. Written by Joe Schembrie / Copyright 1996 Cydonia Books, Inc.

Another Time, Another Meteorite

NASA's announcement that it had discovered traces of organic material inside a meteorite believed to have come from Mars attracted world-wide attention in the first week of August, 1996. If the evidence was genuine, if the meteorite was not contaminated by terrestrial life, if there was not another explanation for the organic material found inside, then surely, many said, it was the first time that the existence of extraterrestrial life had been verified by qualified scientists in a real laboratory.

Or was it?

In southern France, in the year 1864, a meteorite shower known as 'Orgueil' was observed to fall and within hours several stones were retrieved by scientific observers. One sample rested secure in a museum collection until the mid-twentieth century, when it sparked a lively if brief controversy over the possibility that it bore life from another world. The NASA meteorite, christened ALH84001, which formed the basis of more recent claims of extraterrestrial life, carried mere traces of organic material; Orgueil had several types of 'organized elements,' including pollen spores and even fragments of plants! Ironically, it was this inarguable wealth of biomaterial that compelled NASA-funded scientists to ultimately brand the Orgueil discovery as a bizarre nineteenth-century hoax -- and even more ironically, these same evolutionary scientists concluded that the doctored evidence had been part of a conspiracy directed against creationism!

But what really happened? And is there evidence to support the NASA-scientist version of events?

In 1961, an article appeared in the scientific journal, Nature, which described the investigation into the biological diversity of an Orgueil meteorite. Written by Dr. George Claus of New York University, and Professor Bartholomew Nagy of Fordham University, the article was entitled, "A Microbiological Examination of Some Carbonaceous Chondrites" (Nature, November 18, 1961). Carbonaceous chondrites are a type of meteorite which contains water and a few percent of organic matter. They have thin 'fusion crusts,' about a millimeter thick, and their interiors have not been heated above 200 degrees centrigrade. If you were going to search for extraterrestrial life transported to Earth via meteorites, your search would logically begin with carbonaceous chondrites.

In the pages of their article, Nagy and Claus showed photographs and sketches of several types of what they called 'organized elements,' frequently spherical in shape and covered with spikes, spines, and appendages -- familiar forms in the microscopic world of single-celled organisms. They concluded: "We are of the opinion that these observations suggest that the organized elements may be microfossils indigenous to the meteorite." Their announcement touched off a controversy that soon attracted the interest of scientists around the world.

Drs. Edward Anders and Frank W. Fitch, both of the University of Chicago, and both working under a NASA grant, took up the task of critiquing the Orgueil discovery. In Science magazine (December 28, 1962), they reported on their findings. First, they said, independent samples of the Orgueil meteorite failed to produce the quantity or complexity of the 'organized elements' that Nagy and Claus claimed for their sample. Then they obtained a sample from Nagy and Claus, and did indeed verify that the complex structures were present. However, they stressed that the high population counts cited by Nagy and Claus applied only to the more primitive structures; the more complex ones were quite sparse. They concluded the simple particles were probably mineral rather than microfossil, while the complex particles were contaminants. "The particles of the first class [simple] are in a morphological no-man'sland," they wrote, "and to establish their possible biological origin, new techniques and new criteria will have to be developed. As for particles of the second class [complex], proof must be given that they are not terrestrial contaminants. This, like all negative proof, may be very difficult to obtain, unless present techniques are improved very greatly."

In fact, how can you obtain such proof at all? Isn't there always going to be doubt that terrestrial contamination occured?

Fitch and Anders were not done with their criticism. In the June 7, 1963 edition of Science, they wrote: "Ragweed pollen stained by the Gridley method becomes distorted so that it resembles Claus and Nagy's Type 5 organized element, a particle found in a Gridley-stained preparation of the Orgueil carbonaceous chondrite." That is, Claus and Nagy's original work had identified several types of 'organized elements' in their meteorite that might possibly be microfossils. At the time of their first article, Fitch and Anders had found terrestrial analogues for all the shapes but one, Type 5. Now they had found that terrestrial pollen resembled the Type 5 structure when prepared for microscopic examination by the same staining process. (Cellular samples are stained by laboratory scientists to make otherwise transparent structures become visible for observation.)

However, this was not sufficient to dampen interest. In Scientific American (March 1963), Dr. Brian Mason of the American Museum of Natural History, in his article 'Organic Matter from Space,' opined: "While the reality of extraterrestrial life or the remains thereof in the carbonaceous meteorites is still in doubt, this should not obscure the great significance of the organic compounds they contain." Carbonaceous chondrites bear complex organic molecules that typically on Earth are produced almost exclusively by biological processes -- and the notion that all carbonaceous meteorites were entirely composed of contaminants was clearly ridiculous. Moreover, one scientist cultured some Orgueil samples and detected microorganism growth after several months! The meteorite was holding its own against both the advocates of contamination and those who held the organized elements were merely 'carbonaceous snowflakes.'

Then, in January 1965, Scientific American announced the matter was closed. "Faked Life from Other Worlds," read the caption, and the words beneath delineated the latest findings of Fitch and Anders: "A fragment of a meteorite that fell in southwest France more than a century ago has proved on recent inspection to be ingeniously doctored with terrestrial organic material."

Confident words, but the actual statements of Fitch and Anders and their associates, presented in Science (November 27, 1964), were far more tenative. Upon examination, they said, a new Orgueil meteorite sample revealed fragments of actual plants and coal. Coal was not extensively used in southern France at the time of the Orgueil fall. Normally one would take this to mean that environmental contamination was unlikely. Instead, Fitch and Anders maintained that this was proof that someone had gone out of their way to deliberately contaminate the meteorite!

They strongly discounted the possibility that the contamination was accidental. And the following passage sounds more than somewhat sarcastic:

. . . we have not been able to establish with certainty whether the contamination was inadvertant or deliberate. Inadvertent contamination requires that someone picked up a partly disintegrated stone along with some plant and coal fragments and some glue, but very little soil. He must then have moistened the specimen, enough to render it plastic, but not enough to cause loss of epsomite, and molded it back into shape. He must have taken some pains with the job to produce such a remarkably good imitation of fusion crust.

Hidden behind these words is the admission that if this isn't a hoax, undertaken shortly after the meteorite fell, then indeed the new evidence indicates the meteorite must have carried plant life from another world!

But what was the motive of the hoaxer? The January 1965 Scientific American article states:

While the investigators [Fitch and Anders] were speculating on possible motivation for so elaborate a hoax, Walter Sullivan of The New York Times pointed out to them that the Orgueil fall had occured only five weeks after [Louis] Pasteur had delivered his stormy and widely reported defense of divine creation as the only possible initiator of life. With this coincidence in mind, Anders and his associates envision the hoaxer as an opponent of Pasteur's stand who knew that the chemical composition of legitimate carbonaceous chondrites had already suggested the possibility of extraterrestrial life . . . .

So, very well, the hoaxer was an evolutionist, seeking to discredit a creationist. The writers are throwing a bone to scientific creationism -- or is it a red herring? Scientific American admits: "The attempted hoax fell flat, Edward Anders of the University of Chicago and his associates report in Science; instead of attracting attention, the doctored meteorite remained unexamined for 98 years."

v Which kind of argues that there was no hoaxer and no hoax, does it not?

Fitch and Anders and their associates present convoluted evidence for a hoax, and offer a convoluted motive as well. They argue that the fusion crust of their particular stone is different from any other carbonaceous chondrite, but those differences -- indicating low heating -- could just as well explain why plant particles survived the ride in this one meteorite. Their assertion that glue was used to bind up the meteorite after willful contamination is based on a chart of chemical constituents that shows marginal agreement with the constituents found in animal glue. Moreover, they themselves acknowledge, "We have no reason to believe that the Orgueil meteorite samples in which Nagy et al. claimed to have found evidence of extraterrestrial life (biogenic hydrocarbons and 'organized elements') were similarly altered and contaminated." And to rule out a more recent hoax, they add: " . . . all recent claims for extraterrestrial life in meteorites were based on hydrocarbons and microstructures. A hoax excluding these two, but including coal, plant fragments, and proteins makes little sense in the present controversy, though it might have made a good deal of sense in a similar controversy a century ago."

Orgueil was not the only meteorite fall in which organized elements were found, but these are not mentioned. The samples examined by Nagy and Claus were from a different stone than the one where the coal and plant fragments were found.

And there is still the nagging question: "What if those plant fragments did come from space?"

If so, then thirty-five years ago we came upon the discovery of extraterrestrial life. But it was too much to contemplate; cognitive dissonance set in. And so we accepted the most tenuous dismissal that it was all a hoax. And so the matter has been forgotten.

Is it time now to recall?

(Continuing in part 3/3)


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