Mexico: More on the Popocatepetl "Cylinder"

Source: ABC.COM.PY
http://www.abc.com.py/ciencia/mexico-ovni-en-crater-de-montana-471502.html
Date: 10.31.12

Mexico: UFO in a Mountain Crater?

MEXICO (ANSA News Agency) An alleged elongated object entered the crater of the Popocatepetl Volcano, 65 kilometers distant from the Mexican capital, causing astonishment and confusion among experts and the public alike.

On October 25 at 20:45 local time, a camera from the TELEVISA TV network that monitors activity in the giant volcano captured the image and immediately unleashed a firestorm of discussions. The object's measurements would have been 1 kilometer long by 200 meters wide, flying at a speed greater than that of an airliner, according to scientific estimates.

However, the majority of experts, like astronomer Julieta Fierro, a renowned science popularizer, took a more skeptical stance. Fierro believes that it cannot be said for sure if the object fell within the crater or if it is in fact "a galaxy 20,000 million light years away. It could be something incredibly distant moving behind the Earth," she said.

A similar opinion was voiced by William Lee, a member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences, who said it was "a video error, given that there was no visible interaction between the object and the atmosphere and gases emanating from the volcano."

Raul Rivera of the Servicio Meteorologico Nacional (National Weather Service) said it was "an object whose composition is simply unknown to us."

[A note from Prof. Ana Luisa Cid: "Regarding the story of the cylindrical UFO in the volcano, it is worth noting that it was recorded by the TELEVISA camera (not the same as the one used by CENAPRED). I am pointing this out because some researchers have published erroneous reports, thinking it is the same camera with the same specifications. They further compound their error by saying CENAPRED takes photos every 30 seconds and then joins them to form a time lapse. The truth is that "CENAPRED used an Pelco brand remotely controlled analog camera. It is a video camera that takes pictures every 2 seconds approximately before placing them on the Internet." This information was directly provided to me by Ing. Gilberto Castelán, responsible for monitoring maintenance and instrumentation.")

(Translation (c) 2012 S. Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Guillermo Gimenez and Ana Luisa Cid)

Spirit of the Radio: Broadcasts from the Unknown

Spirit of the Radio: Broadcasts from the Unknown
By Scott Corrales
(C) 2003

[Prologue: A few nights ago I heard Clyde Lewis of the Ground Zero radio program playing some fascinating clips of "paranormal radio broadcasts" received in the UK during the 70s and in Florida, possibly around the same time. YouTube has given us a number of purported alien radio transmissions as well. This brought to mind an article I wrote in 2003 bearing the title "Spirit of the Radio", which also approached this intriguing phenomenon. Given the electromagnetic nature of the medium, one can easily imagine ultraterrestrial creatures availing themselves of it to mystify human audiences. The technology with which such transmissions could be made in the 1970s was non-existent (or perhaps available only to the military) and we wonder to this day who or what may have been behind it all...]

Deejays Spinning Saucers

Throughout the Seventies and early Eighties, WBMJ-AM "Radio Rock" was the undisputed leader of popular music in San Juan, Puerto Rico, playing an eclectic mix of rock, disco, country and salsa tunes for both local listeners and members of the armed forces stationed in the San Juan region. The station's slogan, "broadcasting from the fabulous Cloud Room at the Vista Bahía Hotel" caused listeners to involuntarily cast their eyes toward the towering building from which both the music and the deejays' chatter emerged.

April 1975 had been a month of considerable UFO activity over the island, tied in with the depredations of the enigmatic creature known to the media as the "Moca Vampire" for its activities in that town of the island's western half; sightings had become commonplace over the San Juan metro area, which had nearly a million inhabitants at the time. With a view commanding San Juan Bay and most of the metropolitan area, disc jockey Willy López was able to see stunning sunrises and sunsets from the aptly-named Cloud Room, but nothing had prepared him for what he was about to see on April 6, 1975.

At ten forty-five in the evening, López was cueing up the next round of songs when he was startled by three loud, solid knocks on the large glass windowpane leading out to a narrow terrace which could only be accessed from within the Radio Rock offices. The deejay reportedly saw a "luminous figure" running along the terrace. Plucking up the courage to part a curtain and look outside, López saw a glowing yellow-white object suspended in the only a few feet over a nearby cooling tower. The object was saucer-shaped and he estimated its diameter at approximately forty feet; it appeared to balance itself gently over the cooling tower and its unearthly luminosity remained constant. Frightened, the deejay closed the curtain and did the first thing that came to mind: interrupt the music to tell his listeners exactly what was happening in the skies over the city's Miramar section--an important moment in radio history remembered only by a few.

A friend came into the station's broadcasting studio and joined López in venturing out to the terrace, which they found to be unnaturally hot. The bright object had since disappeared.

According to author Sebastián Robiou, the Willie López experience was never picked up by the newspapers, but it caused considerable interest among other broadcasters, who even urged the Civil Defense to take Geiger counter readings of Radio Rock's terrace area. Public officials apparently did this, but the results were never made known. Two days later, another event described as "strange" occurred at Radio Rock as considerable part of San Juan was plunged into a blackout.

Radio Rock went off the air in the early 1980s. The Vista Bahía Hotel and its Cloud Room are the only remaining witnesses to the strange phenomenon...and they aren't talking.

But the disappearance of a certain radio station did not mean that the UFO phenomenon's interest in the medium had evaporated. Two decades later, Sammy Acevedo, a popular radio disk jockey who goes by the moniker of "Happy" on his radio show on X-100 FM, claims to have seen the nocturnal maneuvers of an unidentified flying object on the 24th of July, 1993. Ironically, "Happy" has become well known for his radio parodies of the numerous UFO sightings which have taken place on the island over the past years. The disk jockey qualified his sighting as "a unique experience" in his life.

"I had never seen any of that, but on Saturday I realized that those things are real," he stated. Acevedo's sighting took place while he was inside a phone booth near the old El Comandante racetrack. The entire event lasted 8 to 10 seconds--all it took the metallic object emitting a pale yellow glow to move across his line of sight, soundlessly. "I don't think the object was round. Rather, it was wide in the middle and narrow at its sides." When asked about the possibility that it may have been a advertising helicopter, Acevedo stressed that it was completely silent.

Two years after Acevedo's CE-1, another radio personality, José Raúl Arriaga from the town of Barranquitas, would have his own story to tell.

In the fall of 1995, Arriaga had taken so many phone calls from eyewitnesses of UFO activity over the preceding twenty months that to say that such cases no longer moved him would be an understatement. However, his interest was about to be rekindled as the control boards at Radio Prócer went crazy during his turn at the mike. The cause: a UFO was hovering over the station's transmitter.
Arriaga stated that at 7:00 p.m. on Saturday, November 18th, he became aware that all the needles on the station's control boards had gone haywire. At the same time, he heard a clamor of voices outside the studio. Upon checking to see what the reason for the commotion could be, he noticed a glow in the night sky and what appeared to be an oval shaped vehicle in mid-air, orbiting Radio Prócer's antenna.
"Whatever that thing was," Arriaga told the press later on, "it was spinning around the station's transmitter. I think that's what caused the boards to distort. After a few more spins, the vehicle took off in the direction of Barrio Helechal. We were showered with phone calls soon after from people who, like me, had been witnesses to the situation."

From Ultracom to Friendship

If UFOs are indeed crewed vessels from another star system coming to our world on scientific missions or endeavors that we can only guess at, the question of how communications would be possible between the "squadrons" of UFOs reported on certain occasions and their larger carrier vessels. These putative space explorers must be under orders to maintain strict silence in their communications, since transmissions between them have not been detected by any means known to us. It is entirely possible, of course, that they have moved beyond the need to employ radio signals, much as our own society has transcended the need for carrier pigeons and smoke signals. Perhaps eyewitness accounts of UFOs firing beams of light at each other could in fact represent some form of ship-to-ship communication; it is also possible that thought transmission of some sort is employed.

Norman Briazak and Simon Mennick's The UFO Encyclopedia (Citadel, 1978) addresses this peculiarity of the phenomenon and leans toward the belief that a more advanced method of communication (perhaps akin to Star Trek's subspace transmissions or the "tight beams" of Asimov's Foundation stories) are being used. The UFO Encyclopedia makes reference to an alleged U.S. military system dubbed "Ultracom" which makes use of an ultraviolet beam for sending messages. While the authors caution that such as system could not be employed between a planetary atmosphere and deep space due to our atmosphere's absorption of ultraviolet wavelengths, it is nonetheless ideal for relaying messages between vehicles in Earth's atmosphere.
Yet a highly controversial Latin American case suggests that some UFOs may employ old fashioned radio to communicate, or at least are able to use it their dealings with earthlings. The case is simply known as "Friendship" after the elusive group of humans and non-humans allegedly operating out of an island in the archipelagoes of southern Chile.

In 1984, a ham radio operator of by the name of Octavio Ortiz, a married resident of Santiago de Chile and proud owner of a 27 megacycle CB base station with which he talks to DXers all over the world, became the protagonist of a drama that unfolds to this very day. That year, Ortiz received a distress call from a vessel that claimed to be ensnared by a mysterious light that was playing havoc with the ship's electronics. The light--an unknown craft--descended even lower over the vessel. Bewildered, Ortiz offered to retransmit messages to the authorities of the port of Iquique on behalf of the ship's master.

As a result of this, Ortiz struck up a friendship with the ship's master, a man named Alberto, who told him that he had been recruited by mysterious "gringos" to ferry equipment and supplies to one of the myriad islands in the Chonos Archipelago. These elusive northerners described themselves as a "congregation" and dubbed themselves and their island "Friendship".

Octavio Ortiz would eventually have the chance to speak directly over his ham radio with one "Ariel", one of the strange members of the Friendship. In an interview with Spanish journalist and broadcaster Josep Guijarro, Ortiz explained that whenever "Ariel" speaks to him over the ham radio, the needles on his equipment jump, indicating that a transmitter of enormous power is being employed. Nor is Ortiz the only one to speak with this entity: his wife Cristina boldly asked "Ariel" where he and his group came from. The voice replied that they were "not of this world, but belonged to Humankind."

In August 1985, little over a year since Ortiz relayed the message from the vessel besieged by the strange craft, a shining object appeared in the early afternoon over their home in Santiago. According to their testimony, a voice on the ham radio bade them to "Come out! come out!" After doing so and talking to "Ariel" on the ham radio, they realized that the UFO was an object remotely controlled by the mysterious Friendship.

According to Guijarro, renowned ufologist Jorge E. Anfruns made note of a highly important detail: "Some of the ham operators were phoning the newspapers to report interference with their sophisticated equipment." Proof that strange cabal actually controlled the saucer? The Ortiz family believes that the object was not remotely controlled, but that their friend "Ariel" was actually aboard it.

More could be said about this bizarre sect of humans who possess advanced technology or aliens who claim some sort of kinship with our species, but it goes far beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say that the Chilean Navy appears to have been aware for many years of the radio interference and problems caused by the strange objects operating in the vicinity of the Chonos islands. Josep Guijarro received a letter from a man who served five years in at a naval radio station in Puerto Montt, stating: "We were sick of these devils, who often jammed our communications with immensely powerful high-tech distorting equipment, which on occasions even produced invisible barriers surrounding all of the Taitao Peninsula and left all boats, including the Navy, bereft of communications."

This chilling admission from a military man leaves us wondering if the Friendship really lives up to its name.

Space Brother Airtime

In 1977, UFO contactee and radio broadcaster Orlando Rimax played a fascinating recording on his show "Otros Mundos" (Other Worlds). The tape, recorded either in the Dominican Republic or in Puerto Rico, featured the haunting and distorted baritone of a being calling itself "Omicron". The purported space entity had been picked up by a ham radio operation and it seemed to be taking a great deal of time establishing its non-human bona fides. Intrusions such as this one appear to be frequent in contactee circles; they are often dismissed as hoaxes, but they are nonetheless intriguing. In the latest reissue of George Hunt Williamson's classic contactee work "Other Flesh, Other Voices", UFO author and publisher Timothy Green Beckley makes the interesting note that Williamson was a ham operator
"who claimed contact with extraterrestrial beings who were
continually broadcasting messages from spaceships
circling in the Earth's uppermost atmosphere."

Alleged TV and Radio Broadcasts from Space, an Internet document written by Jon Hurst, provides transatlantic equivalents to incidents similar to the "Omicron" transmission.

In January 1971, a call-in show on Greater London Radio received a call from "a cold, metallic voice" claiming an extraterrestrial origin. The voice, which did not give itself a name, said it was "speaking by thought transference guided by computer" and imparted the usual patter about the difficulties of life on Earth and humanity's unwillingness to forsake its primitive ways. When asked by the program's host if it was possible to humans to see the interstellar interlocutor, it replied that it was "possible to assume human appearance" for a specific number of minutes.

The ubiquitous Ashtar Command, a source of "space brother" wisdom for many decades, apparently transcended wireless to appear on the small screen. The Command hijacked a number of transmitters belonging to the Southern ITV network at 5:12 p.m. on November 26, 1977, broadcasting its message directly over a news broadcast. The network appears to have been unaware of the problem at the time, or completely unable to correct it. "Possibly," writes Hurst, "this was because the source of the overriding signal was not terrestrial in nature."

The message went on for a little over five minutes, and contained a familiar warning: "We come to warn you of the destiny of your race and your world so that you may communicate to your fellow beings the course you must take to avoid the disasters which threaten your world, and the beings on our worlds around you. This is in order that you may share in the great awakening, as the planet passes into the New Age of Aquarius. The New Age can be a time of great peace and evolution for your race, but only if your rulers are made aware of the evil forces that can overshadow their judgments."


The Perils of FM?

In the Winter 1997 issue of the defunct SAMIZDAT newsletter, Argentinean researcher Guillermo Aldunati voiced his concern that alleged UFO abductions appeared to be more prevalent in areas with "high levels of ELF radiation and FM radio waves", noting that the Argentinean city of Rosario boasted an inordinate number of FM stations. " Why do these cases occur where radio station antennae form a perfect triangle? Coincidence? Happenstance?" asks a bewildered Aldunati.

His article goes on to mention a young woman identified by the pseudonym of "Alicia", who at the time of the event was a passenger aboard a bus along Route 131. She was comfortably seated, Aldunati reports, and listening an FM station on her Walkman©. At around 9:30 p.m., "the station's musical programming changed suddenly: rather than soft instrumental music, a sort of choral music performed in a foreign language made itself heard. Alicia tried hanging stations, but found that she was unable to do so. Her fingers were paralyzed, as well as the rest of her body, given that at that time a light or white fog enveloped her body. Her surroundings --everything she had seen before on the bus--vanished altogether."

Despite this utter transmogrification of reality, Alicia could still feel herself seated on the bus seat even as the eerie music conveyed her to a glowing point in space which slowly turned into a spacecraft. "Within the vessel," continues Aldunati, "Alicia reportedly saw a large-headed, dwarfish creature who took her hands and began touching certain points of her body. The eyewitness' drawing shows a being which corresponds to the classic, large-headed Greys.The creature softly felt her abdomen. Alicia feels that this exam has a meaning she still cannot fathom. Shortly after, still enveloped in the strange fog and listening to the same music, feels herself transported back to the bus and can make out other shapes aboard, such as the driver and other passengers, as the fog dissipated. Looking out the window, Alicia realized the bus had gone two blocks beyond her own stop, forcing her to get off at the next stop and beat a retreat home."

The experience did not end there: we are told that Alicia was able to have one of her parents listen to the bizarre music pouring from the personal stereo and subsequently from the home stereo, when an effort was made to tune in the station. The music, according to the experiencer, was accompanied by an unpleasant noise. Normal programming was eventual restored, but Alicia appears to have suffered a series of nightmares involving the non-human beings from her experience.

The author ominously wonders if the young woman "tuned into an FM station which was broadcasting a kind of diabolic music capable of inducing the phenomenon being discussed, and if so, was it coincidental?"

Alicia's experience could simply be discarded as one of those "one off" events of high strangeness which are seldom if ever repeated, were it not for another strange case involving an anonymous young man who contacted the Más Allá del Limite radio show: once, while handling a piece of equipment to plug it into an organ, since the experiencer was a composer of Rock music, he felt a loud sound, similar to an explosion at the side of his room, while a powerful, spherical ball of light struck his forehead, causing great pain both in front and in back of his head. Meanwhile, a strange voice called his name twice from one of the loudspeakers. There is no need to say that this experience terrified the witness, who was alone at the time and was unable to find any experience whatsoever. The young man would have subsequent experiences in which brilliant blue lights would form part of the environment.

Conclusion

Radio has been associated with the possibility of extraterrestrial life since its inception. Not only did Guglielmo Marconi, the father of radio, believe that he had received signals from the planet Mars, but our current SETI efforts to turn our collective electronic ears skyward in the forlorn hope of getting a "Hello!" from a distant planet. The ET/radio connection was extrapolated in works of science fiction and popular culture--what could be more chilling than the "Please Stand By" episode from The Outer Limits, where a space entity comes to Earth travelling on radio waves transmitted by the radio announcer portrayed by actor Cliff Robertson?

Perhaps ET doesn't phone home--he just tunes in...

Mexico: Cylindrical Object Plummets into Volcano?

If a picture is worth a thousand words, the numerical value of a video is incalculable, provided it is not a hoax. Prof. Ana Luisa Cid has very kindly shared with us a video from the Mexico's TELEVISA network showing the precise moment at which a bright, cylindrical shape appears to plummet into the smoking maw of 17,000 foot Popocatepetl on 25 October 2012. The volcano's eruption status is continuously monitored by Mexico's CENAPRED agency.
VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWjdC_KYgEU

Visitors from Elsewhen: Time Travelers Among Us

Visitors from Elsewhen: Time Travelers Among Us
By Scott Corrales (c) 2012

Time travel is a subject that has fascinated all manner of authors and given rise to a galaxy of speculation. Whether it’s the romantic, non-technical treatment of Somewhere in Time (1980), the high-tech action adventure of the Time Tunnel (1968) or contemporary projects like Looper (2012), the thought of going back to visit our collective historic past – or the subjective personal past – remains a gripping concept, and one that is surely to remain with us for generations to come. The ability to go back in time and change situations (the rise of fascism) or view historic events (the fall of Rome) has also fueled a number of plots that have become legendary in the realm of science fiction, which has explored the paradoxes of such endeavors.

But what does science have to say about this elusive, seductive subject?

In the 1950s, Arthur C. Clarke penned the essay “Things That Can Never Be Done”, included in his book “Report on Planet Three and Other Speculations”. Listed among these were immortality, invisibility, thought transference, levitation and the creation of life. “For my part,” wrote Clarke, there is only one of these that I feel certain (well, practically certain!) to be impossible, and that is time travel...” Fifty years later, Stephen Hawking and Michio Kaku have left the door ajar for the possibility, with a new understanding of physics.

Hawking originally scoffed at the possibility of time travel, suggesting that we would currently be hosting visitors from our future (perhaps we are, in the shape of UFOs?) and since we have no futuristic travelers among us, was never developed. One could argue that it was developed, but never used, much like a “doomsday weapon” whose consequences are too terrible to contemplate.

The Chrononaut’s Tale

Stories of time travelers – accidental or deliberate – in our times have multiplied thanks to diffusion on the Internet. YouTube presents us with videos of old movies showing characters dressed in an unusual manner for their time, or else using devices that did not exist in the era. 19th century daguerreotypes of people resembling popular actors like John Travolta or Nicholas Cage have been added to the mix, fueling further “time traveler” speculation. Millions of radio listeners were gripped by the time-traveling character who went by the name “John Titor”, sent from the future to obtain an obscure item of computer equipment that would prove vital in his time. While we can dismiss these as flights of fancy or hoaxes, their grip on the popular imagination still remains strong.

As it turns out, a similar time traveler emerged in South America in the year 2000.

According to the Crónica newspaper of Concepción (Chile) a man named Osvaldo Navarrete had arrived from our near future – the year 2012, to be exact. According to Navarrete’s testimony, he had been one of several subjects of a military experiment in time travel designed to return to the year 2000. Interviewed by journalist Richard Sierra, Navarrete made some predictions about the coming ten years, stating that a disaster would sweep the planet and have “terrible consequences for mankind.”

The time traveler informed the journalist that in the year 2012, the United States was governed by a black president, and that this head of state would inform the people of the discovery of vestiges of ancient intelligent life on Mars following the arrival of a space probe. Writing in mid-October 2012, we can say that the time traveler was on the money. President Obama, however, has made no such disclosure yet). The result of this announcement, stated Navarrete, would be worldwide unrest. Discovery of the Marian ur-civilization would prompt the great powers to work jointly against “an alleged alien attack”, adding to the worldwide social and political crises.

Chrononaut Navarrete was not forthcoming about the way in which he crossed the unsoundable gulf of time from 2012 to 2000. Did he appear in a baroque time machine like Rod Taylor in George Pal’s legendary The Time Traveler, or naked and disoriented in an alleyway like Michael Biehn in The Terminator? The question remains unanswered, and his whereabouts unknown. The last available information on this intriguing person is that he claimed to be “eluding pursuit”, vanishing after making a statement to a radio station.

As an interesting side note, an Argentinean novel about time travel – La invención de Morel (Morel’s Invention), written in 1940 by Adolfo Bioy Casares – is considered by many as the inspiration for the series “LOST”, with its copious doses of confusing time travel and interdimensional action. In Bioy Casares’s novel, the action plays out on an enigmatic island known as Villings, somewhere in the Ellice and Gilbert Archipelago, although the protagonist is never quite sure of the exact location. The characters on the island appear unaware of each other, as if existing in separate time streams, sometimes repeating conversations as though stuck in a “time loop”. The protagonist finds no sign of recent habitation on the island, but the tourists, as he calls them stage a reappearance out of nowhere in the evening. Even more disquieting is the presence of two suns and two moons in the sky, suggesting time and space being superimposed and out of synch.

The Possibility of Time Ships

Unassisted access to another place in time – by stepping into a distortion of what we understand to be space/time, or entering a sacred cave or structure – has been a constant feature in non-technological fiction on time travel. Thus, we have Christopher Reeves visiting Jane Seymour in the past of the early 1900s (Somewhere in Time) by surrounding himself with objects from the epoch, or a memorable Superman comic adventure in which photographer Jimmy Olsen places his head under the hand of a statue of Anubis and finds himself revisiting the Revolutionary War era. Such time travel – untrammeled by machinery – makes for better storytelling, no doubt.

But what about machines that can do the seemingly impossible – go from one age of mankind to another?

Andre Douzet and Filip Coppens, writing in The Chronodome (www.perillos.com/timetravel.html) provide us with the views of legendary author Jacques Bergier on UFOs. Bergier, they note, was ready to accept the notion of UFOs as time machines, not extraterrestrial craft. The gifted mind that gave us Le Matin des Magiciens believed that “a UFO was not a spaceship but a timeship. They were temporal capsules, created by our future descendants, who performed time tourism in them, visiting their distant ancestors – us – if not our own ancestors. For Bergier, this was the main reason why they never interfered with Mankind. Any such action, he felt, might have serious consequences in the future...”

One possible time machine that would have met with Bergier’s approval can be found in the works of the controversial academic Frank J. Tipler of the University of Texas (of Omega Point theory fame). In 1974, Tipler suggested that time travel would be possible by means of an object or spacecraft having the mass of our sun, yet compressed into a cylindrical form measuring 100 kilometers in length and having a diameter of 20 kilometers, spinning at 2000 revolutions per second. These rotations would create closed timelike curves, distorting the surrounding space-time. Approaching the distortion from the right angle, and departing it at the exact point, would conceivably result in an arrival taking place 50 years before the moment of departure. Pinpoint accuracy would be of the essence, as an infinitesimal variation could result in an arrival five hundred or five thousand years prior to the moment of departure.

In 1988, physicist Kip Thorne and colleagues presented a paper suggesting that it would be well within the reach of an advanced civilization to create machines able to “manipulate concentrations of matter-energy” to create closed timelike curves (CTCs). These machines would have little resemblance to Dr. Who’s TARDIS or the sleek stainless steel exterior of Marty McFly’s DeLorean in Back to the Future. In the early 1990s, Stephen Hawking’s own work on the subject (The Chronology Protection Conjecture) posited that time-travel was only possible on the microscopic level, and that CTCs could not be created. Describing - much less understanding! – the physics involved in these theories go beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say that minds not bent on science fiction or mysticism have approached the problem objectively and come up with interesting conclusions

There appear are instances, however, where moderately sophisticated man-made objects have become time machines.

The late Antonio Ribera mentions an unusual case in his Las Máquinas del Tiempo (Planeta, 1984) involving an AVIACO airliner on regular service between the Spanish cities of Valencia and Bilbao. At 16:45 hours on an unspecified day in February 1978, the airliner was over Bilbao’s Sondica Airport, awaiting clearance to land. Due to poor weather, the flight was redirected to Parayas Airport in the city of Santander. The AVIACO crew complied and climbed to twelve thousand feet over the sea, heading toward their new destination. Upon reaching their new cruising altitude, the airliner entered a whitish “cloud” and its avionics began to fail one by one, communication systems were among them. Ribera quotes the pilot: “The two VHF systems quit working. We could neither send nor receive. In other words, we couldn’t hear Bilbao or Santander, and they couldn’t hear us either.”

To the crew’s astonishment, the DME (Distance Measuring Equipment) continued to operate – only backwards. “As soon as we entered the cloud,” said the pilot, “the DME began counting miles, but in reverse. That is to say, if we’d covered 24 miles at the time from Bilbao, the DME did not proceed with its normal count forward, but to the contrary. To our astonishment, the DME began counting 23, 22, 21, 20 until it reached zero. It kept measuring another nine miles beyond Bilbao, backward.”

Upon emerging from the cloud, all systems were restored to normal operation, even the radar. The AVIACO flight was able to contact the Santander tower, which had frantically been looking for the missing plane, having received no transponder signals at all. But what astonished the crew was that thirty-five minutes had elapsed...an astonishing fact, considering that the normal flight time between Bilbao and Santander was ten to twelve minutes. Fuel consumption was commensurate to the 35 minute time span...a time period which would have put the airliner well past its intended destination.

High Strangeness: A Russian Time Traveler in Stalin's Gulag?

High Strangeness: A Russian Time Traveler in Stalin’s Gulag?

High strangeness constitute the lifeblood of Inexplicata, and we thank our friends at Chile’s Noticiero Ufológico Autónomo for supplying us this tidbit.

The most recent update of the NOUFA blog gives us a newsclipping from Chile’s respected EL Mercurio newspaper, dated 12 March 1995, and from the files of Mr. Aquiles Castillo. We reproduce it here in its entirety:

EL MERCURIO – Sunday, 12 March 1995
Russian Journalist Purportedly Met a “Time Traveler”
MOSCOW, 11 (ANSA) – A man traveling from the future’s 23rd century landed in the Stalin-era Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, spending five years of captivity in a gulag and living for sixty years in the communist era without being able to return to his time. The news, published today by the presidential daily “Rossiskie Viesti”, is attributed to the testimony of journalist Vadim Chernobrov, who swears having met the mysterious – and disoriented – time traveler. According to the newspaper, Eugene Iosifovich hailed from the 23rd century, but arrived in communist Russia and was arrested for espionage. Apparently, those in the 23rd century forgot all about the unwary time traveler, thinking perhaps that a season in the Soviet Union would be punishment enough for going astray. Chernobrov also disclosed that the traveler had forecast the collapse of the USSR and Boris Yeltsin's rise to power.

Time travel is best left to the Time Lords, or to the ever-dutiful John Titor.

Peru: UFO Recorded Over Chimbote

Source: El Comercio (Perú) and NOUFA (Chile)
Date: 10.08.2012

Peru: UFO Videotaped Over Chimbote

** Citizen videotapes an unidentified flying object over Chimbote**
** Cylindrical object caused surprise among the over 60 witnesses who saw it a year ago, on 12 October 2011 **

The sighting took place at 5:45 p.m. according to school instructor Fernando Avalos, to whom the videotape is attributed.

He says there were some 60 students (between ages 11 and 12) among the witnesses, plus four other teachers in Chimbote.

The video lasts only 17 seconds because that was the available card space in his Lumix photo camera – space used to record the image of a cylindrical UFO making its way at a sustained speed through the clouds.

VIDEO: http://elcomercio.pe/peru/1319251/noticia-ciudadano-grabo-ovni-chimbote

[Translation (c) 2012 S. Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Noticiero Ufologico Autonomo – NOUFA]

Argentina: Alleged UFO over Saltos del Moconá

Source: Planeta UFO and Misiones Online
Date: 10.05.2012

Argentina: Tourist Photographs Alleged UFO at Saltos del Moconá

** Ufologist analyzed [image] and dismissed the likelihood of a bird or insect being involved**

Ufologist Julio Gonzalez published the photo of a UFO photographed in the channel of Saltos del Moconá in Misiones (Argentina), submitted by a tourist canoeing through the area. Eduardo Romero, who advised him of the event, said “on 22 September at Saltos del Moconá and around 15:20 hours, while on a visit and touring the area with my family, my wife took the photo. Later, upon returning home, I downloaded it from the camera to my PC. Upon enlarging it, I saw a yellow sphere hovering in the background. It drew my attention. What could it be? That area is entirely covered by jungle vegetation.”

[Translation (c) 2012, S. Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Guillermo Gimenez, Planeta UFO]

Argentina: Background Info on Cattle Mutilations

Source: VISION OVNI
Date: October 3, 2012

Cattle Mutilations: Background Information on Cattle Mutilation in Santo Domingo (Argentina)
By Andrea Pérez Simondini - Visión OVNI

Veterinarian Dr. Jorge H. Teves has informed the media of the events you will read about below, without the ADDED information that appears in most of them. While he states that this is a "strange" case that is unknown to him, he makes it clear that he cannot explain it - only report his observations.

If we recall the year 2000, we may recall that mutilated animals appeared in several provinces, presenting the same characteristics. Accounts at the time were numerous, but the truth was never known, and no scientific theory on the matter was ever convincing.

In the year 2002, precisely in the month of June, I had the chance to take these photos, and one of the details that stood up was the incision made on the animals' hides. The demarcation is exact, performed with an element that both cuts and burns simultaneously (much like pyro-engraving). Furthermore, the bones were almost completely fleshless, with no traces of blood to be found on the soil, while internal organs such as the intestines and stomach remained intact, without a single incision, and clean.

The mystery now returns seven years later, since on August 4, 2009, Dr. Jorge Teves, the local veterinarian, reported to a call from a peasant who found a calf on his property, missing its left flank. There was no blood to be found around it. It was missing intestines, stomach and a kidney. A part of the intestine remained and its contents did not spill.

Dr. Teves remarks that SENASA mentioned the red-muzzled mouse as a possible culprit, but what is strange is the fact that entrails are being removed without any spillage of blood or fecal matter. Both the local police and the veterinarian took photos, of which I have chosen a few for you to see.

Twenty days later, on August 24, 2009, the animal remained abandoned on the field and had not yet decomposed. No microorganisms were in evidence and even more striking is that no dog or carrion bird has approached it to eat its flesh, as often occurs.
Three animals with similar injuries were also found in the neighboring town of Providencia, presenting similar injuries. These photos show a perfect incision in the skin and a removal of the eyes. In this photo, the incision has been circular and under the tail. Its owners have the impression that the animal was attacked while standing, and fell to the ground after it was dead.

I hope this report is sufficiently clear, and that the photos provide the necessary illustration to give the case the seriousness it deserves. Many different stories will be put forth, everyone will reach their own conclusions, but the fact remains that there is no specific explanation for these deaths.

I would like to thank Dr. Teves for his kindness and willingness to provide this information.

[Translation (c) 2012, S. Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Andrea Perez Simondini and Guillermo Gimenez)

Starstrikes: Calling Cards from the Cosmos?

STARSTRIKES: CALLING CARDS FROM THE COSMOS?
By Scott Corrales
(c) 2000

The story has been told in every language and in every single possible context from simple history to science-fiction: how in the summer of 1908 a strange object -- sometimes meteorite, sometimes a cometary fragment, sometimes an alien spaceship -- crashed into, or vaporized over, a remote area in the Siberian wilderness known as Tunguska. Haunting photos of the event's aftereffects are burned into our consciousness and have even graced the covers of rock and roll albums: thousands of trees pointing away from the disaster like so many carefully laid out matchsticks. Stories of the still-unexplained Siberian devastation are equally gripping, and when the first Soviet expeditions made their way to the area decades later, they were startled to find that the local Tungus tribespeople had attributed the event to a surprise visit by the fire-god Adgy.

However, any small comfort offered by both time and distance vanishes when we examine the more immediate crashes on our own continent.

On August 13, 1930 a strange explosion very similar to the one at Tunguska took place at Rio Curaca on a jungle riverbank on the border between Perú and Brazil. Word of the event was brought back to civilization by Catholic missionaries doing the Lord's work in Amazonia and printed in the Vatican's own L'Osservatore Romano. According to the eyewitnesses, their attention was drawn to the phenomenon by a high-pitched whistling sound in the early morning hours. The sun acquired a blood-red cast that frightened the natives and made the missionaries wonder if the time of reckoning might be at hand.The article in L'Osservatore Romano makes reference to the highly unusual fact that a rain of fine ash "left a white layer on the jungle leaves" prior to the impact.

Five years later, a second devastating explosion would occur in South America's northern reaches, specifically at Rupununi in British Guyana. According to an article featured in The Sky magazine in September 1939, the Guyanan incident occurred under cover of darkness in the month of December 1935. Researcher Serge Korff had visited the remote area only a few months after the event and noted that the area affected by the cosmic one-shot could have been much wider than the one in Tunguska decades earlier: he managed to interview a local miner who had gone to bed early on that fateful evening and was brusquely wakened by the explosion and the sound of his crockery being thrown about in the kitchen. The miner claimed to have visited the impact area and guessed that it roughly measured one hundred twenty square kilometers. Giant rainforest trees had fallen down pointing away from the impact "as if they'd been pushed."

It was not until 1937 that William Holden, a researcher with the American Museum of Natural History, was able to visit the area and climb to the top of a local mountain range: he reported being able to see a devastated area measuring several miles in diameter whose trees had been sheared off some 20 feet from their bases. Holden also supported the belief that some sort of cosmic impact had been responsible for the event. Subsequent researchers found that the area had been covered over by the exuberant rainforest in a matter of years.

Researchers agreed that common factors in the Brazilian and Guyanan cases were the ear-splitting sound produced by the object and the fact that both events occurred during annual meteor showers --the Perseids and Geminids--in their respective years and are identifiable with the penetration of Earth's atmosphere by a small meteor. But even so, there was the niggling suspicion, as with the Tunguska event, that something more than stray cosmic junk may have been involved.

The South American landmass appears to have avoided further insults until only recently, when the vast, thinly populated expanses of Brazil were wounded from above once more.

On October 9, 1999 an enormous sonic boom rent the air above the Amazonian logging camp/village of Sao Félix do Xingu on a clear afternoon, spreading terror among the lumberjacks and the Kaiapós natives who occupy the area. A scintillating object roared over the city, leaving a wake of black smoke qualified by the onlookers as "similar to that of a rocket". The smoke trail extended for some 18 miles into the nearby mountains as the object disappeared from view.

The inevitable detonation followed seconds later. Witness Gildemar de Souza noted that "it was a colossal explosion, like a bomb, that made the ground shake." Had anyone in the logging camp been of an occultist bent, they might have reasonably assumed that Nostradamus' Great King of Terror had arrived a few months late.

Local radio station "Rede BAND" took it upon itself to organize a search party to find out what had really fallen into the mountains. Members of the radio station's team were almost completely convinced that a meteor of some sort had fallen in the vicinity and discouraged any talk about alien vehicle. This choice, however laudable, did nothing to discourage speculation among the locals that a stricken spaceship had plowed into their region. Believers in the alien hypothesis bolstered their belief with the fact that no distress calls had been received concerning any downed Brazilian aircraft.

Rede BAND's expedition used a small aircraft to get as close to the site of events as possible, and then employed a small boat to reach the Xingu's headwaters. Friendly Kaiapó tribesmen led them to the spot in the jungle where the crash occurred and the tropical vegetation still smoldered a full two weeks after the impact: giant hardwoods had been uprooted and burned and the jungle floor had been furrowed. No traces of machinery or meteoritic rock were in evidence; stranger still was an odd area where the trees pointed away from impact's probable epicenter. All of this puzzled Rómulo Angélica, the Rede BAND expedition's geologist, who was at a loss to explain how despite the fact that the area looked like a meteor-stricken landscape should look, the lack of a "culprit" was very distressing to the scientists -- as was a peculiar odor which did not resemble any smell that the expedition members were able to immediately identify.

Although they did not say so, perhaps some of the expedition members were recalling the still-unexplained Divinolandia impact six years earlier.

In the spring of 1994, farmer Trajano Martins and his wife, residents of the municipality of Divinolandia deep in the state of Sao Paulo, were startled to hear a sound similar to that of a low- flying helicopter followed by the sound of an explosion. Running out of his house to see what had occurred, he was startled to see a large boulder on a nearby hill completely enveloped in a cloud of white smoke.

Fortunately for the Martins, a surveyor had been shooting the landscape a few miles away and was able to witness an object "reflecting the sun's light" fall out of the sky directly toward the location indicated by the farmer. This corroboration prompted the University of Sao Paulo to send out a team to investigate the event and recover the meteorite. However, their efforts were in vain: not even the smallest fragment of rock was found. The research team's verdict was that if a meteor had been involved, it must have buried itself into the ground.

But this explanation did not suffice for members of the Grupo Ufologico de Guarujá, who contacted Professor Francisco Donizetti and asked him to look further into the matter. Glad to oblige, the scholar visited Divinolandia and was impressed by the way in which the large boulder had been shattered by whatever external force had been brought to bear against it. He corroborated the lack of any meteoritic fragments and ventured the suggestion that the event may have been a "shock wave of an unknown nature", remarking that a similarly strange event had taken place in the late '70s at Aguas da Prata, where a strange celestial object had fallen on a coffee plantation, setting it on fire and creating a hole well over fifty feet (16 m) deep.

Many people in South America, particularly those given to reading books on the spiritism of Allan Kardec and esoterica in general, had been keenly aware of the arrival of the year 1999 and the dreadful cataclysmic portents for the "seventh month" of said year forecast by Michel de Nostradamus in the 16th century concerning a "king of terror" that would appear in the sky. When nothing happened, trepidation increased rather than abated, since the cosmic intruder was probably delayed for reasons not even Nostradamus could have explained on a good night. The terrifying omen would appear like the thief in the night described by the Apostle Paul.

On Tuesday, January 25, 2000, the noontime routine of the Argentinean village of Sachayoj in the Andean foothills was disrupted by Nostradamus' late arrival: an object described as a glowing ball of flame roared across the daylight skies, rending the air with dull, deafening roar and frightening the locals into prayer. What happened shortly afterward was a repetition of the Brazilian incidents--a loud explosion was heard throughout the Santiago del Estero region as energy was released from the impact point. The ground shook, although not as powerfully as it might in this earthquake-prone part of the Americas. It was all over in a matter of minutes, and the townspeople's gratitude at being spared turned into normal human inquisitiveness: had it really been a bolide, or was it a crashed UFO similar to the one which had allegedly fallen in 1995 near the Argentinean town of Metán, some 200 miles to the north? UFOs had already been reported earlier in January over the military facilities at Puerto Belgrano, so anything was possible at this juncture.
It took a few days for teams of specialists from all over Argentina to gather their instruments and report to Santiago del Estero, the largest city closest to Sachayoj. The military and their scientific advisors proceeded to comb the area for signs of the alien object--whether natural or artificial--but were soon hampered by the local geography of thick forests covering yawning canyons and gullies -- uninhabited and mostly unexplored, but filled with a variety of subtropical animals on both banks of the Salado River Finding the object would involve the daunting prospect of doing it all on foot, aided by the seasoned backwoodsmen who inhabited the region.

Town commissioner Olga Bertolotti told journalists that a farm worker at an estancia (ranch) known as Fabril Chaquena had witnessed the object's descent and that the local police was reading the required expedition based on the man's indication. Bertolotti informed the Intervoz de Córdoba newspaper that "with the arrival of the year 2000 and apocalyptic beliefs, townspeople are concerned about the strange object that fell from the sky and are following the events closely." The Commissioner also added that her greatest concern was the awareness that the object had fallen from space and was therefore an unknown quantity. It is not entirely unreasonable to surmise the Bertolotti was aware of her region's propensity toward abnormal activity: not only had something odd fallen near Metán a few years ago, but the area was also one of the country's ufological hot spots. The spectacular Trancas Case (in which a farmhouse was besieged by six UFOs which deployed "heat rays" against it) had taken place not too far away, and the city of Salta and its extensive history of unusual celestial events was a nearby regional capital.

Reporters also took an interest in some of the eyewitness accounts brought to their attention, such as the testimony of school janitor Ramon Agustín, who explained that the event had filled him with "considerable panic and fear" given the sheer size and rapid descent of the mystery object, whose loud, thundering noise caused domestic animals to run amok. "I looked at it and felt paralyzed, I didn't know what to do. After the event, I ran away and stayed with my family," he told the press.

A full week since the mystery object burned a path across the skies of northern Argentina, the authorities determined that the villages of Tintina, Otumpa, Sachayoj and the marches of the Gran Chaco were the likeliest to hold the answer to the mystery. Journalists had discovered that the area's inhabitants--normally taciturn farmers--had become quite talkative about this intrusion into the sedate lifestyle. The owner of one business establishment was even able to pinpoint the location of the alleged crash site basing himself on the descriptions given by his clientele. Another local told reporters of fellow residents who had hired themselves out as guides to the growing number of technicians and officials engaged in searching for the object in the vegetation-covered canyonlands of the area.

As the search expanded to cover other possible crash locations the office of the comisario (sheriff) in the town of Quimilí rejected suggestions that an aircraft may have been involved, adding that the eyewitnesses' reports seemed to agree with the collision having occurred at a place known as Campo del Cielo --Heaven's Field--where a massive meteorite shower appears to have occurred millennia ago (an area similar to Mexico's Zone of Silence, which would appear to exert a certain attraction over inbound celestial objects)

Much in the same way as with the Xingú crash of 1999, the private expeditions seemed to have a higher profile and better luck than the official ones. A radio station (Radio Mocovi) and a television station (Charata Cable) hired a small plane to fly their respective crews over the possible impact site. According to radio broadcaster Juan Carlos Barros " [the area covered] is a
forested area and no anomaly could be observed which might have been caused by the possible fall of an object. It is an area of great size, and if that's where it fell, it would take a great deal of effort to reach the area and search it."

The Santiago del Estero meteorite/bolide/UFO story faded from the paper after a few weeks after experts and local guides alike threw in the metaphorical towel. As in the Divinolandia case in Brazil, the object had behaved like the Cheshire Cat--but this time not even its smile remained.

Paulina González was a highly intelligent young woman from the town of Villa Cardel, Veracruz -- not far from Jalapa, the state capital. She had entered into the service of the author's family in Mexico City and quickly became an inseparable member of the family, playing the roles of housekeeper and companion with equal ease. Her qualities as a storyteller were unparalleled, particularly concerning the smallest details of farm life in rural Mexico.

Perhaps one of her most memorable accounts was the story of the day "the world almost came to an end" had it not been--she was convinced--through the intercession of the Virgin of Guadalupe and a supporting cast of lesser-known saints.

It was noon in Villa Cardel and she was returning home from school for the midday meal when she noticed people screaming and pointing to the heavens as a "white ball of fire" bore down on the town. Shouts of "the world is ending" rang from people's throats, but the bolide never struck the earth...it continued on its path out to sea.

Paulina retold the story a number of times, but it would not be until many years later that I would come upon a similar account highlighting the state of Veracruz's proclivity toward these phenomena in John Keel's Operation Trojan Horse: residents of the city of Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico were wakened by the a loud rumbling sound in the early morning hours of March 27, 1968. One witness to this terrifying event remarked that the source of light and its attendant noise made her feel cool at first and then cold, as night was turned into a frightening semblance of a daytime that was still many hours away. The light intensified and the ground shook as if in resonance. Again, before the world ended on that occasion, the "bolide" appeared to rise again and vanish. Keel notes that corroboration for the event was made by the crew of a Mexican warship and an oil tanker some twenty-five miles away from Veracruz. These distant onlookers were able to describe it as "two or three objects in the center of a bright ball of fire."

But we would be mistaken to limit these bizarre near-misses (if they in fact are) to the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. Little over a year after the still-unexplained incident over Veracruz, a colossal bolide appeared in the early morning skies over the northern Mexican desert. February 8, 1969 could have been a date every bit as memorable as Tunguska--written in letters of fire--as residents of Ceballos, Durango woke up to the blinding light of a fiery sphere that headed straight for their town, illuminating every feature of the rocky desert and causing understandable feelings of dread. The rumbling sound of the object filled the streets of Ceballos as the townspeople came out to see what could well be their last day on earth.

But unlike the Veracruz objects, this bolide stayed on course and was not deviated by any unnatural force. It hit the ground near the village of Pueblito de Allende--scant miles from Ceballos--and its shock wave fanned out almost immediately, causing a deafening clap of sound.

The Allende Meteorite is a matter of public record, but what is less known is that the Zone of Silence, this arbitrary patch of desert at the location where the states of Durango, Coahuila and Chihuahua meet, is constantly peppered by smaller stones mysteriously attracted to the region from outer space. These skyfalls have added to the Zone's reputation as an enchanted region. Similar "meteorite attractors" exist in other locations, such as the aforementioned "Campo del Cielo" in Argentina.

Living, as we do, in an age obsessed with the possible obliteration of our civilization due to meteorite impacts, interest in the subject is high and has spawned a number of motion pictures and book projects. But we needn't go as far as northern Asia to find some amazing stories: on the 10th of August, 1972, North America almost had its very own Tunguska as a massive meteor, having an estimated weight of two million pounds, burned its way into Earth's atmosphere leaving a wake of sonic booms over the state of Utah. Closing in at nine miles a second, the space rock seemed ready to slam against our planet until it rebounded against the denser air of the lower atmosphere and gently returned back into space. Astronomers estimated that the object's trajectory was leading it toward ground zero in southern Canada, slamming into the province of Alberta with a force equivalent to a 400-kiloton nuclear bomb.

One gets the impression that, like a cat, Earth seems to be running out of lives...