NEWS
BRAZIL TO BUILD UFO LANDING STATION
Brazil is seeking to cement its reputation as a UFO hotspot, reported in the New Scientist in 1996, by being the first country to build a flying saucer landing station. The 'saucerport' will be at Barra da Gracas, in the wetlands of the Pantanal, where sightings of UFOs are numerous. "I'm duing humanity a service", says councillor Valdon Vardac, the man behind the plan.
UK PRESS TOLD NOT TO REPORT BLACK TRIANGLE UFOs
UFO Magazine Says Media Got "D-Noticed" On Mystery Aircraft
A top BBC executive, the former producer of a popular BBC science program, said that
the black triangle "craft" first witnessed by hundreds in the Hudson Valley region of the
United States [mid 1980s], then by thousands in Belgium (1989-90) and more in Britain,
has been "heavily D-Noticed" by the government. For this reason the BBC will not be
reporting on the enigmatic craft, no matter how many witness reports they receive.
GLUFON is contacting the British Ministry of Defence regarding this.
OFFICIAL FLAP OVER HUGE BRITISH UFO SIGHTING
Earl Frederick Howe, the UK's Defence Minister, startled Britons on Sunday, November
10, 1996, when he revealed to a newspaper the existence of top-secret UFO files compiled
by the Royal Air Force (RAF). Lord Howe reportedly stated that all RAF station
commanders are under orders to submit a report on each UFO they encounter.
"So far as the existence of extraterrestrial lifeforms is concerned, we remain open-
minded," he is alleged to have written.
The stunning revelation came after a debate in Parliament over last month's UFO incident
at Skegness. Two UFOs were seen by Lincolnshire police and tracked for six hours by
RAF radar as they hovered over a large bay called The Wash. Martin Redmond, MP
(Member of Parliament) for the Don Valley, said he is trying "to break MoD's (Ministry of
Defence's) veil of secrecy over flying saucers," adding that he was "concerned that a UFO
with a red-and-green rotating light" had compromised British airspace and "appeared over
East Anglia last month."
"It's incredible that no aircraft were marshalled when a (radar) target was picked up so
close to the coast," Redmond wrote to Defence Secretary Michael Portillo. "This raises
questions as to the way we police the UK Air Defence Region." Another MoD official,
Nicholas Soames, was asked how many UFOs the RAF had reported during 1996. Soames
reportedly told the British press that this information "would cost too much to obtain."
SAUDI PILOT REPORTS 'FLARE' NEAR TWA CRASH SITE
On Dec 11, a Saudi Arabian Airlines pilot flying in the area where Trans World Airlines
Flight 800 exploded reported seeing a "green flare" in the sky that authorities could not
identify. The FBI said it was investigating the report.
JET FIGHTER SEEN TRACKING UFOs OVER MISSOURI
On Monday, December 9 at 6:45 pm, a father and daughter in Ash Grove, Missouri
(population 1,157) spotted "a bright orange ball of light" about 10 degrees above the
horizon. The UFO "hovered for several minutes, then vanished."
Further action took place in the city of Springfield (population 133,000) between 6 p.m.
and 8 p.m. There, a number of unusual lighted objects were seen to hover and move
slowly over the city by several witnesses. At 7:15 p.m., a very luminous orange ball of
light was observed just above the horizon, moving slowly upward. Then it suddenly
vanished.
Five minutes later, "a jet fighter shot across the southern sky at approximately 300 miles
per hour at a very low altitude of a couple thousand feet," according to a witness, who
said he saw the jet "bank sharply and fly toward the spot where the orange sphere had
vanished."
FACTS of Comet Hale-Bopp
On November 19, Comet Hale-Bopp was in the following position:
Right Ascension Declination Elong. Magnitude
17h 52.9m -01.54 37ev 4.0
The last time Comet Hale-Bopp was visible from Earth was in 2600BC. Around this time, the Bronze Age began in Crete and Pharaoh Zoser of Egypt's Old Kingdom built the first step pyramid. The Comet will return again in the year 4600.
Travelling at almost 100,000 mph Hale-Bopp's approach to the Sun causes the comet's surface to vaporise, giving off huge quantities of gas and dust which form a brightly shining sphere (coma) around the nucleus and seperate gas and dust tails. The nucleus of Hale-Bopp is 25-60 miles across and made up of layers of dust and ice. The core is possibly made of silicate dust. The gas given off forms a thin, straight tail, pushed away from the Sun by the charged particles of the solar wind. The dust also forms a tail, in this case its a wide and yellowish colour which is deflected by photons in sunlight and curved because the comet is in motion.
On March 22, the comet will be at its closest approach to Earth (123 million miles). On 1 April the comet reaches its nearest point to the Sun (85 million miles). The comet will appear brightest on this date, so everyone check it out, its a truly once-in-a-lifetime sight.
Strange Spheres, Alien Artifact?
Grooved Sphere from South Africa (Precambrian)
(from "Forbidden Archealogy", by Michael A. Cremo and Richard L. Thompson, First edition, revised 1996, ISBN 0-89213-294-9, pp 813-814
Over the past several decades, South African miners have found hundreds of metallic spheres, at least one of which has three parallel grooves running around its equator (Figure A2.9). The spheres are of two types -- "one of solid bluish metal with white flecks, and another which is a hollow ball filled with a white spongy center" (Jimison 1982). Roelf Marx, curator of the museum of Klerksdorp, South Africa, where some of the spheres are housed, said: "The spheres are a complete mystery. They look man-made, yet at the time in Earth's history when they came to rest in this rock no intelligent life existed. They're nothing like I have ever seen before" (Jimison 1982).
We wrote to Roelf Marx for further information about the spheres. He replied in a letter dated September 12, 1984: "There is nothing scientific published about the globes, but the facts are: They are found in pyrophyllite, which is mined near the little town of Ottosdal in the Western Transvaal. This pyrophyllite is a quite soft secondary mineral with a count of only 3 on the Mohs' scale and was formed by sedimentation about 2.8 billion years ago. On the other hand the globes, which have a fibrous structure on the inside with a shell around it, are very hard and cannot be scratched, even by steel." The Moh's scale of hardness is named after Friedrich Mosh, who chose ten minerals as reference points for comparative hardness, with talc the softest (1) and diamond the hardest (10).
In his letter to us, Marx said that A. Bisschoff, a professor of geology at the University of Potchefstroom, told him that the spheres were "limonite concretions." Limonite is a kind of iron ore. A concretion is a compact, rounded rock mass formed by localized cementation around a nucleus.
One problem with the hypothesis that the objects are limonite concretions concerns their hardness. As noted above, the metallic spheres cannot be scratched with a steel point, indicating they are extremely hard. But standard references on minerals state that limonite registers only 4 to 5.5 on the Moh's scale, indicating a relatively low degree of hardness (Kourmisky 1977). Furthermore, limonite concretions usually occur in groups, like masses of soap bubbles stuck together. They do not, it seems, normally appear isolated and perfectly round, as is the case with the objects in question. Neither do they appear with parallel grooves encircling them.
For the purposes of this study, it is the sphere with the three parallel grooves around its equator that most concerns us. Even if it is conceded that the sphere itself is a limonite concretion, one still must account for the three parallel grooves. In the absence of satisfactory natural explanation, the evidence is somewhat mysterioius, leaving open the possibility that the South African grooved sphere -- found in a mineral deposit 2.8 billion years old -- was made by an intelligent being.
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