Alien Lore No. 187 - John Titor--real, unreal?

John Titor may or may not be a real person, or s/he may be a real person using the name John Titor.  Did Titor make all this up, or did someone make John Titor up?  John Titor claim to have traveled back (and forth) in time.  The photos?  Who knows--they could be stills from a Star Trek set for all I know!

clip 1 of the time machine from John Timor

According to the Wikipedia, "The first post appeared on the Time Travel Institute forums on November 2, 2000, under the name TimeTravel_0. At the time the posts had nothing to do with future events and the name "John Titor" was not being used. Instead, the posts discussed time travel in general, the first one being the "six parts" description of what a time machine would need to have to work (see below) and responses to questions about how such a machine would work"

Clip 2 - John Titor's time machine

In online posts, Titor said that he was an American soldier from the year 2036, from Tampa, who works for (or is it will work for?!) a governmental time-travel project.  Titor says he was sent back to 1975 to bring back a computer needed to debug old computer programs in 2036.  He was chosen for time travel because his grandfather was directly involved with the assembly and programming of the computer he was bringing back.

Mr. Titor claimed that he briefly stopped on earth in the year 2000 for "personal reasons" (to collect pictures he would lose in a war in the future, and also to visit his family.  Titor also said he had tried to spread the alarm about Mad Cow Disease, and about a potential new civil war in the U.S. Online, he also expressed interest in unexplained UFOs, and thought the aliens might be time travelers from much further into the future than 2036.

John titor described his time machine as a  "stationary mass, temporal displacement unit powered by two top-spin, dual positive singularities", producing a "standard off-set Tipler sinusoid".

In 2003, the John Titor Foundation published a book, John Titor: A Time Traveler's Tale, discussing (and documenting?)  his claims.

An Italian TV show, (Voyager - Ai confini della conoscenza) investigated the Titor story on May 19, 2008.  A private detective--Mike Lynch--hired to investigate, found that there were no registry traces of any John Titor or Titor family; that the John Titor Foundation had no office and its address is a post office box; that no tapes, recordings, or evidence of Titor have ever been found; and that only Larry Haber (owner of the commercial rights to John Titor) confirmed his existence.  The investigator believes that John Titor may be John Rick Haber--Larry Haber's brother, a computer professional....
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Alien Lore No. 186 - Indrid Cold, The Grinning Man

By Jack Brummet, Alien Lore and Paranormal Editor

Indrid Cold

Even in the strange, often paranoid, twisted, and highly speculative world of Alien Lore and UFOlogy, The Grinning Man is a mystery.  The Grinning Man has been spotted several times during periods of intense UFO encounters (for instance, during the 1960s Mothman sightings). Maybe he has been seen around El Paso or Manhattan in the recent wave of sightings that were witnessed by thousands.

At the famous Mothman sightings, two teen-aged witnesses said he looked at them with what is sometimes referred to as a "s***-eating grin" on his face. According to researchers who interviewed the boys, he: “was over six feet tall, they agreed, and was dressed in a sparkling green coverall costume that shimmered and seemed to reflect the street lights. There was a wide black belt around his waist.”

The boys also said “He had a very dark complexion, and little round eyes…real beady…set far apart.” Oddly,  “They could not remember seeing any hair, ears, or nose on this figure.” During the Mothman sightings, the grinning man is alleged to have telepathically told a witness his name was Indrid Cold.

The Grinning Man is an obscure figure associated with Alien Lore.   Some scholars and observers believe he is an alien, and others that he was one of the government's Men in Black.  Indrid Cold is thus far his best known incarnation.  He has been  investigated by notable paranormal author John A. Keel and ufologist James Moseley.

The most famous sighting of The Grinning Man went down on October 11, 1966 in Elizabeth, New Jersey. James Yanchitis and Marvin Munoz were walking home along Fourth Street.  Yanchitis noticed the weird man first. "He was standing behind that fence," he told investigators, "I don't know how he got there. He was the biggest man I ever saw." "Jimmy nudged me," Marvin Munoz told the cops, "and said, 'Who's that guy standing behind you?' I looked around and there he was... behind that fence. Just standing there. He pivoted around and looked right at us... then he grinned a big old grin." During the same period of time, on that same street, on the same night, a middle-aged resident of the neighborhood was chased by a "tall green man" The boys skedaddled as soon as they saw The Grinning Man.

According to paranormal investigator/journalist John A. Keel, and the UFO lecturer James Moseley,  Munoz and Yanchitis were interviewed by them separately and told the exact same story. "The man was over six feet tall, they agreed, and was dressed in a sparkling green coverall costume that shimmered and seemed to reflect the street lights. There was a wide black belt around his waist."  The freakiest part of the encounter is that "They could not remember seeing any hair, ears, or nose on this figure."

The Grinning Man, a/k/a Indrid Cold was linked to extraterrestrials due to a UFO report in the same area. A report states that a "blazing white light as big as a car" almost hit a 550-foot tall television tower near Pompton Lakes, New Jersey. A policeman and his wife witnessed an object move in a slow arc north, until it disappeared over some nearby hills. On the other side of those hills, two other cops--Sgt. Benjamin Thompson and a Patrolman, Edward Wester, of the Wanaque Reservoir Police, witnessed the same light at 9:45 p.m. as it flew over the reservoir. "The light was brilliantly white," officer Thompson said, "It lit up the whole area for about three hundred yards. In fact, it blinded me when I got out of the patrol car to look at it, and I couldn't see for about twenty minutes afterwards."

Numerous Grinning Man sightings happened in 1966, about the same time as the West Virginia Mothman sightings.  They are reported by John A. Keel in chapters 5 and 10 in his book The Mothman Prophecies.

On November 2, 1966, a man named Woodrow Derenberger was driving his panel truck home after work when he heard a crash. A vehicle raced up behind him, cut in front of him and slowed down. Derenberger said the car looked like "an old fashioned kerosene lamp chimney, flaring at both ends, narrowing down to a small neck and then enlarging in a great bulge in the center."

The UFO stopped on the road, and a door slid open. A man stepped out, wearing a "glistening green" uniform like the outfit worn by the New Jersey Grinning Man. Naturally, he was grinning.

The man communicated with Derenberger telepathically and said his name was "Cold", and asked him strange questions, and the two talked for a few minutes.  The Grinning Man said he would visit him again.



Another case detailed  in the Mothman Prophecies book, happened in the home of the Lillys, a family living in Point Pleasant. The Lillys claimed to see strange lights in the sky right above their home at least every night, and experienced strange events in their house.  Mrs. Lilly said "We've seen all kinds of strange things...blue lights, green ones, red ones, things that change color. Some have been so low that we thought we could see diamond-shaped windows in them. And none of them make any noise at all." Automobiles near the Lilly home would stall for no reason, and kitchen cabinets and doors inside the Lilly home would slam inexplicably in the middle of the night.  Mrs. Lilly said she sometimes heard a sound like "a baby crying" throughout the inside of the home.

John A. Keel, who investigated the Lilly family, asked "Did you ever dream that there was a stranger in the house in the middle of the night?" Linda Lilly, the daughter, said she had seen "a man, a big man. Very broad. I couldn't see his face very well, but I could see that he was grinning at me."  

• Keel, John. A (2002) "The Complete Guide To Mysterious Beings", chpt 14:The Grinning Man, Tor Books, ISBN 0765345862 (reprint) 
• Coleman, Loren (2002) "Mothman and Other Curious Encounters", chpt 7: Keel's Children, p133,146, Paraview Press, ISBN 1931044341
• Coleman, Loren (2007) "Mysterious America", chpt 20: Mad Gasser Of Mattoon and his Kin, Paraview Pocket Books, ISBN 1416527362
• Keel, John A (2002) "Mothman Prophecies", Tor Books, ISBN 0765341972 (reprint)

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Alien Lore No. 184 New book claims UFOs will come out of the closet this week?

 By Jack Brummet
Alien Lore, Paranormal & Unexplained Phenomena Editor


[Thanks to Dr. Stephen Clarke-Willson for spotting this and sending it along.]


A recent book by retired Air Force officer/NORAD staffer, Stanley A. Fulham,  predicts that  next week, on October 13, 2010, we will witness a "massive UFO display over the world’s biggest cities." 

According to Fulham, the aliens will not, buzz, strafe, or communicate on that date, because they know from their previous experience with other planets that sudden intervention will cause fear and panic.
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"[This event will] occur this year, in what will surely be one of the great dramas of our galaxy, the introduction of their alien civilizations and technologies to mankind. We are not alone, and our world will have changed forever." - Stanley Fulham

“Challenges Of Change” reports that this coming out is only the beginning. The aliens will help us remove our poisonous gasses, he says, and that all this will be done by 2015, or earlier.

"The aliens will reveal themselves in a massive UFO display over our principal cities as a first step. They won’t land but they will do so [later]. And I predict that this will happen on October 13, 2010…. It may not happen on October 13. It may happen in November or December. But it will happen this year." - Stanley Fulham in a YouTube video

Stanley Fulham claims to have had extensive communication with The Greys, and that they have told him about things such as climate change, international terrorism, and other topics, because they want the information out without coming down themselves and causing an uproar.

Alien Lore No. 183 - The World's UFO Greeter (bunked and debunked?)

By Jack Brummet

Alien Lore and Unexplained Phenomena Editor

"Hi.  Welcome to earth.  Have a good day!" or ala Idiocracy, "Welcome to earth.  I love you."

As you may have heard, we now have an official alien greeter, thanks to the United Nations. 

The current head of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), Mazlan Othman--a Malaysian astrophysicist--has been allegedly selected as the U.N. ambassador, to meet and greet visitors from other planets. . .presumably, she will also direct them to the various departments and countries in which they may be interested. 

At first, the U.N. General Assembly in Vienna, Austria, called the now widespread news reports hokum.  It has been reported by The Sunday Times that next week Othman will make an announcement about her appointment as chief alien ambassador at a scientific conference, in Buckinghamshire, England.

The science magazine Wired UK, which says Othman has said in recent lectures that extraterrestrials will someday give signs of their existence to mankind.  As you know, there is a fairly large contingent of people, ranging from generals to scholars to out and out fruitcakes, who believe the visitors have already shown those signs. 

“When we do [see those definitive signs], we should have in place a coordinated response that takes into account all the sensitivities related to the subject”, Othman said in a recent lecture.

Update--just this morning the Associated Press...Othman said she thought it would be a really cool job, but no, she is not the Alien Ambassador.

"Yes, she heads the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs. No, she has not been appointed to represent the Earth in future negotiations with aliens.

"That's the word from Mazlan Othman, who Tuesday debunked British press reports indicating she would be Earth's ambassador to beings from outer space if they land in "Take me to your leader" mode.

"Still, it's apparent she kind of likes the idea.


"I think it's cool, but no, I am not about to be appointed the ambassador to aliens," Othman said Tuesday before speaking at a Royal Society conference dealing with extraterrestrial life."


"The issue of Othman's possible role as a point person for aliens was raised nine days ago by the Sunday Times in London, which reported that the U.N. was poised to give Othman the position."

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Alien Lore No. 179 - UFOs over Seattle this summer

This summer, there seem to have been numerous UFOs visiting the City of Seattle.  The following were all reported by The National UFO Reporting Center (which coincidentally is located in Seattle, although soon relocating to an abandoned ICBM missile base in Eastern Washington).   [click all images to enlarge]

Report 1:  July 2010.  "This is the most awe-inspiring moment of my life and I was somewhat sad to see them leave. I really felt like I had seen something extraordinary.


"Looking in the sky to the west to slight northwest on Saturday night at 23:15, I saw about 30 orb-type lights or balls in the sky at about 90 degrees in a pattern that gave off a glow in the night sky.

"The glow was orange and red, but the formation gave off a red orange and a little twinkling, gold color. We watched it for about 6 minutes, then it seemed as half of the formation disappeared, not all at once, but within a second or two.


"Then the other part of the formation left or became invisible, leaving behind two balls that seemed larger or closer. These two orbs remained stationary for about 5 seconds before one of the two took off straight up.

"Then about 7 seconds after the first of the remaining two orbs left, the last one left or followed the rest into the night sky.


"The formation of the UFOs took up a large portion of the sky and seemed massive."  Source: http://www.nuforc.org/

Report 2:   07-17-10, City of Seattle - "The formation/armada was huge. I was looking at stars with my dad over Puget Sound when I looked west and saw 28-30 reddish, orange orbs stationary in the sky.

"These were not florescent lights like we use on earth, it was more like a different type of light, an energy ball that had a golden tint around the formation of UFOs.


"I felt that there was a tremendous amount of radiant energy coming off of the sun-like orbs. The armada/formation of UFOs was only here for approximately 10 minutes before they vanished into thin air, like smoke." Source: www.nuforc.org

Report 3:  7-17-10, City of Seattle - "At approximately 23:28 PM, PST, in Seattle, Washington, my wife and I received a phone call from her parents (who live 1 block away), about some interesting lights in the sky over Beacon Hill (also in Seattle).

"We were told to immediately come outside and look towards the sky (due west) and see them for ourselves.


"We then saw 25+ orange-lighted objects which appeared to blink in and out as they dimmed in the upper atmosphere. They all appeared to be moving in the same direction (towards the northeast) and all seemed to stem from the same location.

"They were only visible for about 3-5 minutes. Three airplanes were seen in the sky as well (heading to SeaTac Airport to land).


"We took video on our camera, but only a couple of the objects were barely visible through the street lights. You could see the airplane clearly. Unless something is reported on our local news media stations, we are assuming that these were indeed UFOs, and a lot of them.


"We also called the local news stations to report the incident, and they informed us that they had not received any other calls about it, but would look into it."  Source: www.nuforc.org

Report 4: 7-17-10 - "My daughter and I were outside, and this object went above us heading straight due north. It was a light, silver-colored disc with a bottom that was about half the size of the craft.

"The half-round bottom looked as though it may have been translucent, its color was grayish and slightly opalescent.


"When the craft passed over what was probably SeaTac Airport, it became very, very bright and looked like a star. But only roughly 6-7 seconds later, it dimmed again and we could still see its disc/orb outline.


"We watched it as far as our eyes would allow. My daughter mentioned the uncanny lack of air traffic as this object moved over the airport area.


"About two minutes after we could no longer see it, we saw a plane come from the airport area. We did not observe the object come from the South - it seemed to just appear in the sky out of nowhere. It was east of us when looking north."  Source: www.nuforc.org
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Alien Lore No. 178 -- Was Disney Onto Something Here? Does Disney Believe?

By Jack Brummet
Paranormal and Alien Lore Editor

"Mankind is in the midst of the most profound event in history – actual contact with intelligent life from other planets. For nearly 50 years, officials have been documenting routine alien encounters here on earth, and thousands of people have seen or experienced this alien presence. Yet many others still refuse to acknowledge the obvious evidence all around them. From beyond the boundaries of our perceptions, intelligent beings are beckoning mankind to join the galactic community."


-- Walt Disney Television special on aliens and UFOs titled Alien Encounters
 

Check out the entire Disney video/program here. 
 
Walt Disney Television televised a most pretty cool one-hour special on UFOs in 1995, titled Alien Encounters from New Tomorrowland. This special discusses UFOs and alien visitation to earth not as some sort of fruitcake alien lore story, but as a fact. You can't buy it, but someone did record it on their VCR back in the day.  It's fascinating.
 

At first glance, this show focuses on a New Tomorrowland ride that was about to be unveiled at Disney World.  The program opens with an, in retrospect, strange, segment by Disney CEO Michael Eisner.
 
But this story is partisan. At no time do they even question the existence of UFOs or a major UFO cover-up. In face, the show almost seems to pity the D.A.s among us who doubt UFOs, or Visitors.
 
 

 

______________________________________________

 
Excerpts from a transcript of the program:
 
Robert Urich [Intro sequence over various UFO photos and film]: This is not swamp gas. It is not a flock of birds. This is an actual spacecraft from another world, piloted by alien intelligence – one sighting from tens of thousands made over the last fifty years on virtually every continent on the globe. Intelligent life from distant galaxies is now attempting to make open contact with the human race. And tonight, we'll show you the evidence.
 

 
Disney CEO Michael Eisner [standing in front of what looks like a military hangar, guarded by armed troops]: Tonight we celebrate the New Tomorrowland at Walt Disney World in Florida with a television special that's out of this world. Hello, I'm Michael Eisner, head of the Walt Disney Company.

At a top secret military installation somewhere in the United States, there are those who believe that the government is hiding the remains of an alien spacecraft that mysteriously crashed to earth. With more and more scientific evidence of alien encounters and UFO sightings, the idea of creatures from another planet might not be as far-fetched as we once thought. In fact, one of you out there could have the next alien encounter. Enjoy tonight's special. I'm going to walk over and see if I can sneak a peak. [soldiers raise weapons] Maybe not!


Robert Urich: Scientific verification of extraterrestrial life forms routinely arriving on earth; top secret reports from ongoing military investigations; compelling home videos of alien craft captured within the last few months; world figures who have gone public with their own extraterrestrial experiences; the shocking history of government misinformation programs designed to prevent widespread panic; and personal accounts of those who have been abducted and studied against their will.

From beyond the boundaries of our perceptions, intelligent beings are beckoning mankind to join the galactic community. It's an invitation which is both wondrous and terrifying. This is the nature of alien encounters.

Mankind has the unique ability to ignore the obvious, especially when the facts reveal a disturbing truth. We once believed the sun revolved around the Earth. When Galileo demonstrated the reverse is true in 1634, he was charged with heresy and placed under house arrest for the last eight years of his life. The charges were later dropped – 342 years later.

Now as we approach the new millennium, mankind is in the midst of the most profound event in history – actual contact with intelligent life from other planets. For nearly 50 years, officials have been documenting routine alien encounters here on earth, and thousands of people have seen or experienced this alien presence.


Yet many others still refuse to acknowledge the obvious evidence all around them. What is it like to be confronted by a creature whose intelligence and skill is far beyond the comprehension of mankind? Would it be enlightening? Would it be an exercise in terror? Or perhaps both?


Here in the New Tomorrowland at the Walt Disney World resort near Orlando, Florida, these concepts are brought to life as guests experience their own alien encounter, a sensory thriller from Disney and George Lukas. We'll give you a sneak preview later in the show. But first, we must prepare you for the future with some shocking insights from the recent past.

Alien ships seem to arrive in waves, and if the last few years are any indication, planet Earth is experiencing a tsunami of sightings. For the last few months of 1994 and lately in 1995, Gulf Breeze, Florida has been ground zero for alien encounters. Especially during the day, extraterrestrial craft have become common ornaments in the uneasy skies. You would think these alien sightings would be front-page news. So why have they received almost no national attention? The answer is simple. For governments determined to maintain their authority, extraterrestrial contact is pure dynamite.

Capt. Kevin Randle (retired air force intelligence officer): There's beings from another planet. We don't know where they come from. We don't know what they're doing here. There's nothing we can do about it. Any time a technologically superior civilization comes in contact with a technologically inferior civilization, the technologically inferior civilization ceases to exist – not necessarily through conquest, not necessarily through invasion, but because the technology changes the underlying social structures of that civilization, and it disintegrates.

Urich: Those fears are reflected in a 1960 federally funded study by the Brookings Institution, which warned that public knowledge of alien life could cause civilization to collapse.

Why have aliens chosen to visit our small blue planet, hidden on the distant fringes of an insignificant star cluster? Well, we invited them here.

There have been reports of alien encounters throughout recorded history. But since the end of World War II, alien encounters have adopted a darker, more menacing demeanor. No longer just spirited lights dancing in the sky, UFOs turned more brazen, announcing themselves with surprising ferocity.


Most alien activity on earth in this century seems to have been sparked by the single most profound technological achievement in human history. The atomic bomb did more than blow away every conventional notion of combat. It also saddled mankind with the awesome responsibility of life and death for the entire planet.


But what the world didn't know in 1945 was that the atomic bomb's brilliant burst of energy would also be mankind's cosmic calling card, announcing to the universe that a technological society had evolved on a small blue planet in the backwaters of the stars. So as the world celebrated the war's end in 1945, aliens who heard man's atomic trumpet were already charting their course toward earth, responding to our open invitation.

As early as 1947, the large alien ships began to arrive, navigated by living creatures. Their advanced physics allowed them to traverse the galaxy and pierce earth's atmosphere with amazing speed. The U.S. military immediately went on the alert against the unknown menace. Sightings were perceived as threats to the security of an America still reeling from the edgy consciousness of war. And the sightings were taking place all across the country.
More than one alien craft crashed and was recovered for secret U.S. military research. The most famous case took place in July of 1947 just outside the community of Roswell, New Mexico – famous, because local officials openly admitted they had retrieved an alien ship before their commanders instructed them to keep the story confidential. What you can't explain, they reasoned, you must deny.

This is the actual site where the Roswell saucer was discovered, along with the bodies of three extraterrestrial missionaries who didn't survive the collision. The debris and the dead were impounded and taken away for top secret study, while a classified investigative committee called the Majestic Twelve was organized by President Truman, and a government cover-up was initiated with a calculated disinformation campaign.

But while the Pentagon refused to publicly admit aliens had arrived on earth, their top secret internal memos told a different story, even detailing the various ships and the creatures they had autopsied.

By the early 1960s, UFOs were having a chilling effect on our defense operations. Their tremendous speed often caused them to be misidentified as incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles, putting American air bases on red alert. There needed to be some way for the U.S. and the Soviets to distinguish between nuclear attack and alien visitors.

Clifford Stone [retired army officer]: The Hot Line between Moscow and Washington was set up so that they could go ahead and make last-minute pleas, that "We're not attacking you, and you're not attacking us." The purpose of this was to insure that a nuclear war would not be touched off by a UFO appearing on the scopes and being mistaken for enemy aircraft.

Urich: The Hot Line eased some international tensions, but it didn't halt the interaction between the military and the aliens, which continues to this day.

Stone: [In] November of 1975, essentially every SAC [Strategic Air Command] base in the United States was visited by UFOs. We have reason to believe that the UFOs went ahead and had some effect on changing the codes within the missiles, within the launch control facility, to change where the missiles would hit.

1976, September, Iran, two F-4s try to intercept a UFO and shoot at one of the UFOs. The weapons systems of the planes go dead, the communications systems go dead. These are just two examples of cases which sound like they came out of science fiction, but in reality, they're from government documentation, documents released by the State Department.

Urich: Indications are that government, military and scientific leaders will soon release nearly a half-century of official documentation of ongoing alien encounters on earth. Perhaps they feel it would be too embarrassing not to reveal the truth, before the truth reveals itself. But these FBI files acquired through the Freedom of Information Act outline nearly fifty years of UFO reports investigated by federal agents all across America, overwhelming evidence that something sinister is at work.


This particular report from October of 1969 was filled out by Jimmy Carter. He was still Governor of Georgia at the time he witnessed a luminous object suspended in the twilight sky. Later, when he assumed the office of President of the United States, his staff attempted to explore the availability of official investigations into alien contact. As this internal government memo illustrates, there are some security secrets outside the jurisdiction of the White House.

Planet earth has always been a laboratory for alien life forms which can drop in from space or slowly mutate into bizarre fleshy organisms at our feet [holding a large mushroom]. Understanding the nature of these strange creatures from above, and below, is the greatest challenge of our age. We now know that our future, indeed the future of earth itself, rests in the balance of the solid and the ethereal, of common sense and the irrational, in our relationship with alien life as grotesque as a fungus, or as glorious as the heavens.
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Alien Lore No.177 -- The Antikythera Mechanism: Greek, or Grey?

The Antikythera Mechanism has buffaloed scientists and technologists ever since sponge divers found it on a sea floor almost 110 years ago.   As a largely unexplained mystery, it has also inflamed the UFOlogists.  Was it the work of brilliant ancient Greek Scientists, or a gift from our cousins, The Greys?  Well, I'm really good either way.  As an even potential contribution from the Greys, it qualifies for inclusion as another tidbit of Alien Lore. . .

The Antikythera mechanism may be an ancient Greek sort-of-clockwork device that has taken longer than a hundred years to understand. And we still don't really understand it.  The mechanism is housed in the Greek National Archaeological Museum in the Greek capital and is regarded to be the single most complex antiquity in existence.  I saw it at the museum in Athens two years ago, but really didn't think a lot about it until Jeff Clinton recently pointed out several articles and videos about the science and origins of the device.

The question you have to ask: were the ancients really smarter than us (in that we haven't figured it out yet), or was the device something left behind by Our Cousins, The Greys?  Anytime we can't really explain why or how something happened, there is a group of people who will attribute it to aliens, or The Greys.  Gene Rodenberry was particularly cranky about this--saying something to the effect that every time we can't explain something, or we find something particularly brilliant and ancient, people say it came from the aliens.  It's didn't, he said, we're smart!



The Great Pyramids are often attributed as the work of Visitors.  Rodenberry believed this happens because we somehow can't accept that our forebears weren't just knuckle-dragging troglodytes.  They were, in fact, smart--wickedly smart.  So smart that this device used some of the same techniques and technology that we wouldn't come around to until we began to construct the first serious and powerful analog (e.g., mechanical) computers in the 20th century.

Research is still ongoing--we keep learning from and analyzing the device.  The device is stunningly  complex. People originally thought it was some sort of clock, but when Greek inscriptions were found using advanced technology, it turned out to be an engine for predicting eclipses and moon phases and the positions of the planets. Scientists say it seems to be 1,000 years ahead of its time.



On the other hand, the device seems to mainly track the five planets known at that time.  Wouldn't The Greys, having flown to earth, been aware of the other planets in our little solar system?

From various articles, you learn that the machine was able to perform computational tasks 1400 years or so before the time when crude machines of this sort probably appeared. What sort of tasks? Well, using 37 gears or so, it can do subtractions, multiplications and divisions to show the cycles of the moon, predict eclipses, and who knows what else?  It even has an adjustment you can make for Leap Day, since the calendar it employs requires you to catch up with reality once every four years.

From The Wikipedia:  The mechanism is the oldest known complex scientific calculator. It contains many gears, and is sometimes called the first known analog computer,[8] although its flawless manufacturing suggests that it may have had a number of predecessors during the Hellenistic Period which have not yet been discovered.[9] It appears to be constructed upon theories of astronomy and mathematics developed by Greek astronomers and it is estimated that it was made around 150-100 BC.

The most recent findings of The Antikythera Mechanism Research Project, as published in the July 30, 2008, edition of Nature also suggest that the concept for the mechanism originated in the colonies of Corinth.  We know the Corinthians were no 'tards.

When a date was entered via a crank (which we did not recover), the mechanism calculated the position of the Sun, Moon, or other astronomical information such as the location of other planets. Not bad,

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Alien Lore No. 176 -- More X Files from Europe

Thanks to a good friend of All This Is That, Dr. Stephen Clarke-Willson, for another great tip.


















As you know from previous Alien Lore stories here, over the last year or so, Russia, France, and England have opened up and begun releasing their UFO/Grey/Alien files. Literally thousand of documents have already been released by these three countries, with many thousands more queued up for release as I type this.









The Brits just released their latest batch--including a letter saying that Winston Churchill ordered a 50 year cover-up of a wartime encounter between a UFO and military pilot.

The files, published by England's National Archives, "span decades and contain scores of witness accounts, sketches and classified briefing notes documenting mysterious sightings across the country," according to Reuters.









An unidentified letter writer in 1999 says that a Royal Air Force plane returning from a mission in Europe during World War Two was "approached by a metallic UFO." The author says his grandfather attended a wartime meeting between Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower during which the two expressed concern over the incident and "decided to keep it secret." The Ministry of Defence was unable to find any primary source materials regarding this claim: and , in addition, "... the MoD does not have any expertise or role in respect of 'UFO/flying saucer' matters or to the question of the existence or otherwise of extraterrestrial lifeforms, about which it remains totally open-minded."








An earlier release--an ATIT Alien Lore post,--details a 1995 sighting. A plane approaching Manchester airport experienced a near-collision with an "unidentified object," in which a witness claimed he saw a UFO "20 times the size of a football field." (Just about Independence Day-sized). An investigation failed to turn up anything.









"Prior to the demise of the Former Soviet Union, aircraft were scrambled some 200 times annually to intercept and investigate uncorrelated tracks penetrating the UK Air defence region (AKADR) from the north..." it said. The last scramble was in September 1991 -- just about the time the Soviet Union imploded.

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41 years ago, we landed on the moon. Links to alternate theories on whether we actually made it, or made it first. . .

By Jack Brummet
Paranormal & Extraterrestrial Affairs Editor

Forty-one years ago, the American astronaut Neil Armstrong, a quarter million miles from Earth stepped on the moon saying, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." He became the first human to walk on the surface of the moon.  Probably.  Or did he?  We've covered this story a few times in the last six years as part of our Alien Lore series.  Here are links to some of the possibilities, ranging from wildly improbable to somewhat plausible:

Alien Lore: Neil Armstrong's Moonwalk and Oral Sex
Alien Lore No. 81 - The Skeleton on the moon
Forty years ago today, we landed on the moon
Alien Lore No. 154 - Life on the moon?
Nixon's back pocket speech in the event of a moon landing disaster
Alien Lore No. 134 - Moonwalker claims cover-up
Michael Jackson moonwalk video clips
The Six Faked Moon Landings?
Alien Lore No. 29 - Nazis On The Moon!!
Alien Lore 53 - The Moon Dust File
Alien Lore No. 108 - The spaceship on the moon

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Alien Lore No. 175 --> Flights over China diverted as a UFO is spotted in the air over the Zhejiang province

Thanks to our regular paranormal tipster, Jeff Clinton, for spotting this one.

According to an article in China Daily, a UFO disrupted air traffic over the Zhejiang province, Hangzhou, late Wednesday, the city's government said Thursday. Xiaoshan Airport was closed after the UFO was detected at around 9 pm,  Flights were rerouted to airports in Ningbo and Wuxi, according to an airport spokesman. The airport later resumed operations.  More details would be revealed after an investigation, according to the spokesman.  Right.

At 11 pm on Wednesday, a Chinese citizen blogged three entries announcing the airport's closure.  The posts were soon deleted.  China Daily reports:  "He posted an apology at midnight, saying the news had not been confirmed and asking those who had republished his earlier entries to delete them." 

It sounds like the citizen had a visitor.
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Alien Lore. No. 174 - Happy Belated UFO Day a) "Proof" that aliens do exist, that we met them on the moon, and how they asked us not to return, and b) The New York Times reports no one seems to really care much anymore about UFO sightings

First,  happy and belated UFO Day. UFO Day inspired John Schwartz to publish an article on the decline of  UFO sightings (Out of This World, Out of Our Minds).  The New York Times printed the article last weekend.

Contrary to popular alien lore, NASA did go to the moon, but were told to never come back. Thanks to Jeff Clinton for pointing out this video, which, naturally, delves deeply into conspiracy and cover-up theories.

"...sightings rarely capture the popular imagination. Now that cellphone cameras are all but ubiquitous, there isn’t a moment that can’t be snapped — so if the truth really were out there, we’d see it. And we haven’t."

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Alien Lore No. 173 - Our methane-breathing cousins on Saturn: NASA scientists say "alien life exists on Saturn's moon."

Thanks to All This Is That alien lore tipster Jef Clinton for this story

Nasa scientists have discovered evidence 'that alien life exists on Saturn's moon.'     NASA Researchers believe they have discovered vital clues that indicate primitive aliens could be living on the moon.  Hello, cousins!

NASA's Cassini probe has transmitted data back to us that led to extensive analysis of the complex chemistry on the surface of Titan.   Titan is the only Saturn moon with a dense atmosphere.  Astronomers claim the moon is generally too cold to support even liquid water on its surface.

One study, in the journal Icarus, shows hydrogen gas flowing throughout the planet’s atmosphere, showing  that alien forms could possibly breathe. Another paper, in the Journal of Geophysical Research, says there is no hydrogen on the surface of Titan. The hydrogen theory scientists believe the hydrogen may have been consumed by life. Huh?  Like, they used it up?

According to NASA, "researchers expected sunlight interacting with chemicals in the atmosphere to produce acetylene gas. But the Cassini probe did not detect any such gas."

Chris McKay, an astrobiologist at the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, CA, said: “We suggested hydrogen consumption because it's the obvious gas for life to consume on Titan, similar to the way we consume oxygen on Earth."

"If these signs do turn out to be a sign of life, it would be doubly exciting because it would represent a second form of life independent from water-based life on Earth.”

Professor John Zarnecki, of the Open University, said “We believe the chemistry is there for life to form. It just needs heat and warmth to kick-start the process."

They warned, as these tricksy scientists always do, that there could be other explanations for their findings. However, "taken together, these studies indicate two important conditions necessary for methane-based life to exist."

All photos and quotes are courtesy of NASA.  And we get to use them here because we, the taxpayers, paid for it.
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Alien Lore. No. 172 - Is The Voyager 2 overrun with Greys 8.5 billion miles from earth?

Thanks to Jeff Clinton...for the alien lore news tip. 

Hartwig Hausdorf, an author of several books and German UFO expert recently said that a NASA spacecraft may have been hijacked by aliens, who are now attempting to contact Earth.

Hausdorf claims that Voyager 2, an un-manned probe we fired into space 33 years ago, is transmitting unintelligible signals from aliens who are now attempting to contact Earth.

After the erratic signals from the ship, the Voyager 2 went silent on April 22nd.  NASA told reporters that engineers were working to solve a data transmission fault.  NASA's only comment on the alien story are that the fault is a glitch in the probe's computer memory.  You may remember that Steven Hawking recently warned us to quit trying to contact aliens (because they would likely not arrive here with the noblest of intentions).

Voyager 2 and its twin, Voyager 1, launched in 1977 to explore Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Thirty years later they are the most distant human-made objects in outer space.  Scientists say that the Voyager 1 is more than 8.5 billion miles from Earth and will soon leave the heliosphere (the sun's bubble) for interstellar space.  Each vessel contain a disk for whoever might find them with music, images, mathematical formulas, cultural artifacts, and greetings in 55 languages. Maybe the Greys didn't like what they saw and heard??   Or it was a Valentine from a planet ripe for plunder.

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Alien Lore. No. 171 - Ancient Astronauts

By Jack Brummet
Paranormal and Alien Lore Editor

[ed's note: thanks once again to frequent news tipper Jeff Clintion.

The Ancient Astronauts have always been an interesting and even tantalizing theory. You may remember, if you were alive in the 1970's, Erich von Däniken's books--like Chariots of the Gods--that claimed the ancient astronauts gave us important technologies and enabled us (or even did it for us) to build monuments like the Egyptian pyramids, Stonehenge, and the Moai of Easter Island.

Generally, ancient astronaut theories postulate that we were visited thousands of years ago by Visitors. Some alien lore goes so far as to speculate that not only were we visited, but that we are the fruit of seeds planted by these ancient astronauts. In short, our great great great great grandparents were Greys or another form of alien who not only populated the earth, but left behind clues that would eventually enable us to fly and practice medicine and other sciences. This theory is shaky, considering that bloodletting was still standard medical operating procedure up until the late 1800's.  Only around the same period did we realize that hand washing and sterilizing surgical instruments would prevent infection and death following surgery.


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Alien Lore No. 170 - Steven Hawking on why we should avoid The Greys (and quit searching for our cousins)

By Jack Brummet             
All This Is That Unexplained Phenomenon Editor 

 

Thanks to Jeff Clinton for pointing out this news story on Hawking's pronouncements...

Stephen Hawking believes, and probably rightly, that we should fear aliens, who likely come to earth in search of something (Tungsten? Soybeans? Nitrogen? Beer?)  and ready to destroy us, or at the best, utterly indifferent to our fate.  I wrote in a poem a couple of years ago: 

We can't picture
Greys or martians

Coming in peace
Because we never came in peace.

That pretty much echoes Dr. Hawking's take on the matter.  He says on the Discovery Channel that he believes aliens exist, and that we should do everything we can to avoid them. I think this means we should probably quit sending radio signals out into deep space, trying to contact our cousins, and otherwise maintain a low cosmic profile. God knows what kind of global blitzkrieg these wackjobs from way out there could unleash?

Any creatures smart enough to find us "will probably be seeking resources", according to Hawking.  You can just imagine how that might work out for us.  "We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet," said the good Doctor.  Just ask the Buffalo and Native Americans.

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