Cleanup crews trying to mitigate Japan’s never-ending radiation
crisis at Fukushima ran into more problems recently after sensors
monitoring a drainage gutter detected a huge spike in radiation levels
from wastewater pouring into the Pacific Ocean.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company says radiation levels were up to 70
times, or 7,000 percent, higher than normal, prompting an immediate
shutdown of the drainage instrument. The first readings came around 10
a.m. local time on February 22, setting off alarms not once but twice as
radiation levels spiked to extremely high levels.
“The levels of beta ray-emitting substances, such as strontium-90,
measured 5,050 to 7,230 becquerels per liter of water between 10:20 a.m.
and 10:50 a.m.,” reported The Japan Times. “TEPCO requires radioactivity levels of groundwater at the plant discharged into the sea to remain below 5 becquerels.” TEPCO shut off leaky gutter, but radiation continued to spike throughout day
The gutter was quickly decommissioned to prevent further radiation
emissions, but the leaks reportedly continued throughout the day, with
radiation levels hovering between 10 and 20 times higher than normal.
TEPCO says it doesn’t know what caused the sudden radiation spikes.
“With emergency surveys of the plant and monitoring of other sensors,
we have no reason to believe tanks storing radioactive waste water have
leaked,” stated a plant official to the media. “We have shut the gutter
[from pouring water to the bay]. We are currently monitoring the sensors at the gutter and seeing the trend.” Multiple major leaks reported as Fukushima generates 400 tons of new radioactive waste daily
Just four days prior to the leak, the International Atomic Energy
Agency congratulated TEPCO for its continued cleanup efforts at the
Fukushima site. This is despite numerous other radiation leaks, some of them quite major, that have occurred in recent months at the shuttered facility.
Back in October 2013, for instance, a failed transfer of radioactive
wastewater from one storage tank to another resulted in more than four
tons of highly contaminated sludge being dumped into the ground. Not
long before this, 300 tons of radioactive waste reportedly leaked from
another nearby storage tank.
As we reported earlier in the month, a worker actually died after falling into a radioactive storage tank
during a routine inspection. The 33-foot container that swallowed the
man is one of many at the site that holds a portion of the 400 tons of
highly radioactive water generated daily at Fukushima. Fukushima workers build one new storage tank daily, but this can’t go on forever The Japan News reports that large storage tanks capable of
holding up to 2,900 tons of contaminated water are constantly being
built at the site, up to one new tank daily, in fact. At some point,
though, other mitigatory measures will have to be implemented, as
there’s only so much space available to build more tanks.
According to The Ecologist, the Reactor 3 fuel storage pond
also still contains upwards of 89 metric tons of plutonium-based,
mixed-oxide fuel that, should the pond leak
or dry up, could result in another major reactor meltdown. Reactor 3,
as you may recall, experienced a full meltdown back in 2011 that
resulted in the reactor core falling through the floor to the bottom of
the containment vessel.
The chart at the following link, which was put together just days
after the tsunami and earthquake hit Fukushima, provides a visual
breakdown of radiation exposures from various sources. It can be used to
quantify the threat associated with each respective leak:
A look back at August 2019 saw a total of 10 major quakes (mag 6+)
around the world, the biggest being the M 6.9 - 102km WSW of Tugu Hilir,
Indonesia at the beginning of the month, the 10 major quakes brought
the total to 101 major quakes so far this year. It is always interesting
to compare how many major quakes had been recorded this time a year
ago, in 2018, the number is a mere 78, considerably less than this year
so far. 2017 recorded even less with 65 and finished the year on just
111 major quakes, the lowest amount this century. 2016, recorded 93 and
2015, 90, so it's fair to say our planet has been shaking much more this
year than recently.
One of the biggest disasters our planet has endured in August was wildfires, at the beginning of the month, a Greenpeace Russia team was documenting wildfires in the taiga forest, in the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia. Despite statements by Russian authorities, the intensity of forest fires in Siberia was dramatically increasing. A, 4.3 million hectare fire - an area larger than Denmark - was contributing significantly to climate change. Since the beginning of the year, a total of 13.1 million hectares had burned in Siberia. Fires have rage every year, but this summer's blazes reached unprecedented size and strength. The
Siberian fires have emitted more than 166 Mt CO2 - nearly as much as 36
million cars emit per year, as we move into September the fires are
still burning. As
increasing pressure on the planet rises with the threat from climate
change, the collapse of our living species, dying oceans, dying
agriculture and a constant threat of WWIII hanging over our heads, it
should not come as any surprise to learn that 17 countries – home to
one-quarter of the world’s population—face “extremely high” levels of
baseline water stress. In
a new report by the World Resources Institute, one-quarter of the
world’s population almost two billion people—face “extremely high”
levels of baseline water stress, where irrigated agriculture, industries
and municipalities withdraw more than 80% of their available supply on
average every year. Full story Peru
became the latest country to suffer horrendous wildfires after more
than 22,000 hectares (54,363 acres) of forest, protected areas and
farmland in drought-stricken parts have been destroyed. In
August, biologists and environmentalists from around the world warned
the presidents of Peru, Brazil and Bolivia about the dangers of
devastating fires in what they said might be the region’s worst drought
in at least half a century. Full story More than a million people were evacuated as Super typhoon Lekima smashed into eastern China on August the 10th. Lekima
made landfall in the early hours of Saturday in Wenling, between Taiwan
and China's financial capital Shanghai. The storm was initially
designated a "super typhoon", but weakened slightly before landfall -
but still had winds of 187km/h (116mph). The
city evacuated some 250,000 residents, with another 800,000 in the
Zhejiang province also taken from their homes. An estimated 2.7 million
homes in the region lost power as power lines toppled in the high winds,
Chinese state media said. It is the ninth typhoon of the year, Xinhua
news said - but the strongest storm seen in years. Full story Just
one day later, huge storms across the planet caused chaos that weekend
killing 200 people! Tornadoes hit Europe from Luxembourg to Amsterdam,
China was battered by the third-largest typhoon in its history and a
further 107 killed in India. Full story On the 14th of August, a total
of 56 wildfires were reported to be burning out of control in parts of
Greece as smoke covered Athens with strong winds fanning the flames. Full story Hat-trick! Tropical storm Krosa was the third storm to hit
Japan in only 10 days after super typhoon Lekima and typhoon Francisco
made landfall earlier in the month causing the country to be hit with
Biblical amounts of rain! The total rainfall surpassed 1200 mm (47
inches) in 24 hours which is more than 10 times their August average. Full story Wildfires
in the Amazon rainforest hit a record number this year, according to
research carried out by Brazil's space research centre (INPE). It cites
72,843 fires, marking an increase of 83% compared to 2018 - the highest
since records began in 2013. Since Thursday, INPE said satellite images
spotted 9,507 new forest fires in the country, mostly in the Amazon
basin, home to the world's largest tropical forest, which is seen as
vital to countering global warming. In the third week of August, almost 10,000 fires ripped through Brazil's dense rainforest and activists claimed most of them will have been set by men working in the jungle, clearing land for cattle and logging. Full story Hurricane Dorian was said to hit Florida as a category 5 monster as the third straight year the U.S. has endured a landfalling major hurricane – a streak not accomplished in nearly 60 years
UC Santa Cruz Wifi "Lockdown" April 27 2019 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TO: Chancellor UC Santa Cruz and Administration University of California Santa Cruz Santa Cruz, California USA To Whom it may concern: It has come to my attention that ITS (Internet Technology Services) has "locked-down" the University WIFI with forced usernames and passwords in order to access the internet here at UCSC. UCSC needs a FREE and OPEN internet wifi access system. Usernames, passwords and forced phone numbers only set up an ILLEGAL spy and surveillance control grid used by local, state and federal agencies and authorities to track, monitor, record and compile databases on a users internet activity. This kind of fascist police state activity has absolutely NO PLACE at UC Santa Cruz. Such activity is ILLEGAL and a direct violation of the 4th amendment which protects ALL US citizens against any unreasonable searches and seizures (of personal information). ITS has turned the public wifi system here at UCSC into a fascist police state prison. Institutions of higher learning REQUIRE free, easy and open access to information. Therefore, i am calling for the immediate arrest, prosecution and imprisonment of all ITS administrative personnel responsible for instituting this illegal, fascist, Big Brother, Nazi police state control grid on the UCSC campus. This type of activity cannot and will not be tolerated here. I will be filing a formal complaint with the UC Administration in Oakland soon, as i have WARNED UCSC in the past NOT to cross this line and to keep ALL internet access FREE and OPEN to ALL students, faculty, staff and community members without the use of accounts, usernames and passwords. This police state cancer started with the Santa Cruz Public Library which required all patrons to show and have their state ID recorded in order to receive and use a library card in order to access the public internet.. This cancer then metastasized into Cabrillo College which similarly now forces students, faculty, staff and the community to use forced username and password accounts in order to access the internet (along with an ubiquitous campus wide spy and surveillance camera network and an overwhelming police state presence on the campus resembling something out of a Nazi concentration camp). Today, this cancer has spread its tentacles into the UC Santa Cruz campus in the form of Cruz ID and the current "lockdown" of the wifi internet access system. There is now only one small sliver of internet freedom left where patrons can log-on anonymously in order to use the mainframes, which i predict will soon be taken away in the not to distant future, leaving all 3 institutions in complete police state prison lockdown. As i have stated in the past, if this line is crossed, its OVER for this civilization. In collusionary fashion, we are now a thin hair-breaths away from locking the state of California into total and complete destruction from global climate change in the fullness of time. As goes California, so too will go the nation, the planet and rest of human civilization. This is where we now stand as a species- on the very precipice on extinction- all because of this psychotic desire to control, record, track, monitor and spy upon our fellow human brothers and sisters. This is a CANCER of human consciousness that is at the very root of our current predicament. For it is PRECISELY the level of consciousness that erects privacy violating spy and surveillance control grids that similarly has propelled human civilization into the global climate change emergency we are now all threatened with here in California and throughout the planet. Were the recent fires of California not enough? What is it going to take? How about an earthquake or a series of earthquakes that rips the bay area in half? How about a tsunami from the Pacific ocean that takes out a good chunk of California's coastline? How about an ocean die-off that kills a large portion of sea life in the Pacific? Because of this current wifi "lockdown" here at UCSC, i cannot now do the global environmental work that needs to be done to save what's left of this planet and our civilization while i am here. You are, in effect, only hanging yourselves, my friends and my alma mater. UCSC needs to apply full stop brakes on this situation, reverse course 180 degrees and move in the complete opposite direction, which means an END to forced accounts, usernames, and passwords in order to access the internet here at UCSC. We need FREE and OPEN access to the World Wide Web of global information- this is at the very heart of any institution for higher learning and education. Re-install a FREE and OPEN internet and wifi system here at UCSC and i will refrain from submitting a more detailed complaint/warning to the UC Administation in Oakland, the Governor of California as well as local, state and federal representatives about this most unfortunate situation. Its time to reverse course on this internet lockdown, UC Santa Cruz. My friends, you need to re-prioritize, re-boot, re-orient and help put humanity on a trajectory of freedom, prosperity and SURVIVAL on into the 21st century and beyond. The path UCSC is now treading with regards to locking down internet access will most assuredly lead to our unequivocal extinction as a species- i cannot say it more plainly than that... Regards, UCSC Alumni UC Santa Cruz Santa Cruz, California USA *****************************************************************************
‘Look at That Thing!’ U.S. Navy Jet Encounters Unknown Object
A video shows an encounter between a
Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet and an unknown object. It was released by the
Defense Department's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.
By Courtesy of U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE on Publish Date December 16, 2017.
Photo by Courtesy of U.S. Department of Defense.
Watch in Times Video »
WASHINGTON
— In the $600 billion annual Defense Department budgets, the $22
million spent on the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program
was almost impossible to find.
Which was how the Pentagon wanted it.
For
years, the program investigated reports of unidentified flying objects,
according to Defense Department officials, interviews with program
participants and records obtained by The New York Times. It was run by a
military intelligence official, Luis Elizondo, on the fifth floor of
the Pentagon’s C Ring, deep within the building’s maze.
The
Defense Department has never before acknowledged the existence of the
program, which it says it shut down in 2012. But its backers say that,
while the Pentagon ended funding for the effort at that time, the
program remains in existence. For the past five years, they say,
officials with the program have continued to investigate episodes
brought to them by service members, while also carrying out their other
Defense Department duties.
The
shadowy program — parts of it remain classified — began in 2007, and
initially it was largely funded at the request of Harry Reid, the Nevada
Democrat who was the Senate majority leader at the time and who has
long had an interest in space phenomena. Most of the money went to an
aerospace research company run by a billionaire entrepreneur and
longtime friend of Mr. Reid’s, Robert Bigelow, who is currently working
with NASA to produce expandable craft for humans to use in space.
On
CBS’s “60 Minutes” in May, Mr. Bigelow said he was “absolutely
convinced” that aliens exist and that U.F.O.s have visited Earth.
Photo
Harry Reid, the former Senate majority leader, has had a longtime interest in space phenomena.Credit
Al Drago/The New York Times
Working
with Mr. Bigelow’s Las Vegas-based company, the program produced
documents that describe sightings of aircraft that seemed to move at
very high velocities with no visible signs of propulsion, or that
hovered with no apparent means of lift.
Officials
with the program have also studied videos of encounters between unknown
objects and American military aircraft — including one released in
August of a whitish oval object, about the size of a commercial plane,
chased by two Navy F/A-18F fighter jets from the aircraft carrier Nimitz
off the coast of San Diego in 2004.
Mr.
Reid, who retired from Congress this year, said he was proud of the
program. “I’m not embarrassed or ashamed or sorry I got this thing
going,” Mr. Reid said in a recent interview in Nevada. “I think it’s one
of the good things I did in my congressional service. I’ve done
something that no one has done before.”
Two
other former senators and top members of a defense spending
subcommittee — Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican, and Daniel K. Inouye, a
Hawaii Democrat — also supported the program. Mr. Stevens died in 2010,
and Mr. Inouye in 2012.
While
not addressing the merits of the program, Sara Seager, an
astrophysicist at M.I.T., cautioned that not knowing the origin of an
object does not mean that it is from another planet or galaxy. “When
people claim to observe truly unusual phenomena, sometimes it’s worth
investigating seriously,” she said. But, she added, “what people
sometimes don’t get about science is that we often have phenomena that
remain unexplained.”
By Courtesy of U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE1:16Video: U.S. Military Jets Encounter Unknown Object
Video
Video: U.S. Military Jets Encounter Unknown Object
A video shows a 2004 encounter near
San Diego between two Navy F/A-18F fighter jets and an unknown object.
It was released by the Defense Department's Advanced Aerospace Threat
Identification Program.
By Courtesy of U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE on Publish Date December 16, 2017.
Photo by U.S Department of Defense.
James
E. Oberg, a former NASA space shuttle engineer and the author of 10
books on spaceflight who often debunks U.F.O. sightings, was also
doubtful. “There are plenty of prosaic events and human perceptual
traits that can account for these stories,” Mr. Oberg said. “Lots of
people are active in the air and don’t want others to know about it.
They are happy to lurk unrecognized in the noise, or even to stir it up
as camouflage.”
Still, Mr. Oberg said he welcomed research. “There could well be a pearl there,” he said.
In
response to questions from The Times, Pentagon officials this month
acknowledged the existence of the program, which began as part of the
Defense Intelligence Agency. Officials insisted that the effort had
ended after five years, in 2012.
“It
was determined that there were other, higher priority issues that
merited funding, and it was in the best interest of the DoD to make a
change,” a Pentagon spokesman, Thomas Crosson, said in an email,
referring to the Department of Defense.
But
Mr. Elizondo said the only thing that had ended was the effort’s
government funding, which dried up in 2012. From then on, Mr. Elizondo
said in an interview, he worked with officials from the Navy and the
C.I.A. He continued to work out of his Pentagon office until this past
October, when he resigned to protest what he characterized as excessive
secrecy and internal opposition.
“Why
aren’t we spending more time and effort on this issue?” Mr. Elizondo
wrote in a resignation letter to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.
Photo
Pentagon officials say the
program ended in 2012, five years after it was created, but the official
who led it said that only the government funding had ended then.Credit
Charles Dharapak/Associated Press
Mr. Elizondo said that the effort continued and that he had a successor, whom he declined to name.
U.F.O.s
have been repeatedly investigated over the decades in the United
States, including by the American military. In 1947, the Air Force began
a series of studies that investigated more than 12,000 claimed U.F.O.
sightings before it was officially ended in 1969. The project, which
included a study code-named Project Blue Book, started in 1952,
concluded that most sightings involved stars, clouds, conventional
aircraft or spy planes, although 701 remained unexplained.
Robert
C. Seamans Jr., the secretary of the Air Force at the time, said in a
memorandum announcing the end of Project Blue Book that it “no longer
can be justified either on the ground of national security or in the
interest of science.”
Mr.
Reid said his interest in U.F.O.s came from Mr. Bigelow. In 2007, Mr.
Reid said in the interview, Mr. Bigelow told him that an official with
the Defense Intelligence Agency had approached him wanting to visit Mr.
Bigelow’s ranch in Utah, where he conducted research.
Mr.
Reid said he met with agency officials shortly after his meeting with
Mr. Bigelow and learned that they wanted to start a research program on
U.F.O.s. Mr. Reid then summoned Mr. Stevens and Mr. Inouye to a secure
room in the Capitol.
“I
had talked to John Glenn a number of years before,” Mr. Reid said,
referring to the astronaut and former senator from Ohio, who died in
2016. Mr. Glenn, Mr. Reid said, had told him he thought that the federal
government should be looking seriously into U.F.O.s, and should be
talking to military service members, particularly pilots, who had
reported seeing aircraft they could not identify or explain.
Photo
Luis Elizondo, who led the
Pentagon effort to investigate U.F.O.s until October. He resigned to
protest what he characterized as excessive secrecy and internal
opposition to the program.Credit
Justin T. Gellerson for The New York Times
The
sightings were not often reported up the military’s chain of command,
Mr. Reid said, because service members were afraid they would be laughed
at or stigmatized.
The meeting with Mr. Stevens and Mr. Inouye, Mr. Reid said, “was one of the easiest meetings I ever had.”
He
added, “Ted Stevens said, ‘I’ve been waiting to do this since I was in
the Air Force.’” (The Alaska senator had been a pilot in the Army’s air
force, flying transport missions over China during World War II.)
During
the meeting, Mr. Reid said, Mr. Stevens recounted being tailed by a
strange aircraft with no known origin, which he said had followed his
plane for miles.
None
of the three senators wanted a public debate on the Senate floor about
the funding for the program, Mr. Reid said. “This was so-called black
money,” he said. “Stevens knows about it, Inouye knows about it. But
that was it, and that’s how we wanted it.” Mr. Reid was referring to the
Pentagon budget for classified programs.
Photo
Robert Bigelow, a billionaire
entrepreneur and longtime friend of Mr. Reid, received most of the
money allocated for the Pentagon program. On CBS’s “60 Minutes” in May,
Mr. Bigelow said he was “absolutely convinced” that aliens exist and
that U.F.O.s have visited Earth.Credit
Isaac Brekken for The New York Times
Contracts
obtained by The Times show a congressional appropriation of just under
$22 million beginning in late 2008 through 2011. The money was used for
management of the program, research and assessments of the threat posed
by the objects.
The funding went to Mr. Bigelow’s company, Bigelow Aerospace, which hired subcontractors and solicited research for the program.
Under
Mr. Bigelow’s direction, the company modified buildings in Las Vegas
for the storage of metal alloys and other materials that Mr. Elizondo
and program contractors said had been recovered from unidentified aerial
phenomena. Researchers also studied people who said they had
experienced physical effects from encounters with the objects and
examined them for any physiological changes. In addition, researchers
spoke to military service members who had reported sightings of strange
aircraft.
“We’re
sort of in the position of what would happen if you gave Leonardo da
Vinci a garage-door opener,” said Harold E. Puthoff, an engineer who has
conducted research on extrasensory perception for the C.I.A. and later
worked as a contractor for the program. “First of all, he’d try to
figure out what is this plastic stuff. He wouldn’t know anything about
the electromagnetic signals involved or its function.”
The
program collected video and audio recordings of reported U.F.O.
incidents, including footage from a Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet showing an
aircraft surrounded by some kind of glowing aura traveling at high speed
and rotating as it moves. The Navy pilots can be heard trying to
understand what they are seeing. “There’s a whole fleet of them,” one
exclaims. Defense officials declined to release the location and date of
the incident.
“Internationally,
we are the most backward country in the world on this issue,” Mr.
Bigelow said in an interview. “Our scientists are scared of being
ostracized, and our media is scared of the stigma. China and Russia are
much more open and work on this with huge organizations within their
countries. Smaller countries like Belgium, France, England and South
American countries like Chile are more open, too. They are proactive and
willing to discuss this topic, rather than being held back by a
juvenile taboo.”
By
2009, Mr. Reid decided that the program had made such extraordinary
discoveries that he argued for heightened security to protect it. “Much
progress has been made with the identification of several highly
sensitive, unconventional aerospace-related findings,” Mr. Reid said in a
letter to William Lynn III, a deputy defense secretary at the time,
requesting that it be designated a “restricted special access program”
limited to a few listed officials.
A
2009 Pentagon briefing summary of the program prepared by its director
at the time asserted that “what was considered science fiction is now
science fact,” and that the United States was incapable of defending
itself against some of the technologies discovered. Mr. Reid’s request
for the special designation was denied.
Mr.
Elizondo, in his resignation letter of Oct. 4, said there was a need
for more serious attention to “the many accounts from the Navy and other
services of unusual aerial systems interfering with military weapon
platforms and displaying beyond-next-generation capabilities.” He
expressed his frustration with the limitations placed on the program,
telling Mr. Mattis that “there remains a vital need to ascertain
capability and intent of these phenomena for the benefit of the armed
forces and the nation.”
Mr.
Elizondo has now joined Mr. Puthoff and another former Defense
Department official, Christopher K. Mellon, who was a deputy assistant
secretary of defense for intelligence, in a new commercial venture
called To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science. They are speaking
publicly about their efforts as their venture aims to raise money for
research into U.F.O.s.
In
the interview, Mr. Elizondo said he and his government colleagues had
determined that the phenomena they had studied did not seem to originate
from any country. “That fact is not something any government or
institution should classify in order to keep secret from the people,” he
said.
For
his part, Mr. Reid said he did not know where the objects had come
from. “If anyone says they have the answers now, they’re fooling
themselves,” he said. “We do not know.”
Our readers are plenty interested in unidentified flying objects. We know that from the huge response to our front-page Sunday article
(published online just after noon on Saturday) revealing a secret
Pentagon program to investigate U.F.O.s. The piece, by the Pentagon
correspondent Helene Cooper, the author Leslie Kean and myself — a
contributor to The Times after a 45-year staff career — has dominated
the most emailed and most viewed lists since.
So how does a story on U.F.O.s get into The New York Times? Not easily, and only after a great deal of vetting, I assure you.
The
journey began two and a half months ago with a tip to Leslie, who has
long reported on U.F.O.s and published a 2010 New York Times best
seller, “UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the
Record.” At a confidential meeting Oct. 4 in a Pentagon City hotel with
several present and former intelligence officials and a defense
contractor, she met Luis Elizondo, the director of a Pentagon program
she had never heard of: the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification
Program.
She
learned it was a secret effort, funded at the initiative of the then
Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, starting in 2007, to investigate
aerial threats including what the military preferred to call
“unidentified aerial phenomena” or just “objects.” This was big news
because the United States military had announced as far back as 1969
that U.F.O.s were not worth studying. Leslie also learned that Mr.
Elizondo had just resigned to protest what he characterized as excessive
secrecy and internal opposition — the reason for the meeting.
She
spent hours with him reviewing unclassified documents, for the $22
million program operated largely “in the white” (that is, not under
special restricted access), but hidden in the huge defense budget, with
only parts of it classified. A few days later Mr. Elizondo and others
there — including Harold E. Puthoff, an engineer who has conducted
research on extrasensory perception for the C.I.A. and later worked as a
contractor on the program, and Christopher K. Mellon, a former deputy
assistant secretary of defense for intelligence — announced they were
joining a new commercial venture, To the Stars Academy of Arts and
Science, to raise money for research into U.F.O.s. Leslie wrote it up
for the Huffington Post with scant details of the program.
I
had known Leslie for years, and she told me this looked like a story
for The Times. I agreed. Leslie and I met with Mr. Elizondo in
Philadelphia on Oct. 31. Three days later, I emailed the executive
editor, Dean Baquet, about “a sensational and highly confidential
time-sensitive story” that I said “involves a senior U.S. intelligence
official who abruptly quit last month” exposing “a deeply secret
program, long mythologized but now confirmed.”
He
alerted Mark Mazzetti, the investigations editor in the Washington
bureau. Leslie and I briefed him in New York on Nov. 7. We assured him
there were no anonymous sources; everyone was on the record. After
discussions in Washington and New York, Helene joined our team. The
Washington bureau chief, Elisabeth Bumiller, would be our editor. On
Nov. 17, we three met Mr. Elizondo in a nondescript Washington hotel
where he sat with his back to the wall, keeping an eye on the door.
Carl
Hulse, The Times’s chief Washington correspondent, was well acquainted
with Mr. Reid and helped arrange an interview for Helene. She flew to
Las Vegas on Dec. 5 and met with the former senator, who confirmed the
program with details, saying, “I’m not embarrassed or ashamed or sorry I
got this going.”
Leslie
interviewed the aerospace magnate Robert Bigelow, who also confirmed
his participation, saying Americans were being held back from serious
research into U.F.O.’s by “a juvenile taboo.” And I interviewed a
prominent skeptic for perspective.
It
was important that we not take anything on faith. This field attracts
zealots as well as debunkers, and many Americans remain deeply skeptical
that the phenomenon exists as popularly portrayed. In draft after
draft, we took pains to let the investigation speak for itself, without
bias.
Helene
met with a Pentagon spokesperson on Dec. 8 for a response to the
information we had gathered. The answer came swiftly. There had been a
program to investigate U.F.O.s, but it ended in 2012 after five years,
the Defense Department insisted.
Our reporting suggested it continues, largely unfunded, to the present. And that’s what we wrote.
A
U.F.O. in New Mexico in 1957. For astronomers, the biggest problem with
alien visitation is not the occasional claim of mysterious light in the
sky, but the fact that we’re not constantly overwhelmed with them.CreditBettmann, via Getty Images
So sang the Byrds in
1966, after strange radio bursts from distant galaxies called quasars
had excited people about the possibility of extraterrestrial
intelligence.
I recalled those words recently when reading the account of
a pair of Navy pilots who were outmaneuvered and outrun by a U.F.O. off
the coast of San Diego back in 2004. Cmdr. David Fravor said later that
he had no idea what he had seen.
“But,” he added, “I want to fly one.”
His story was part of a bundle of material released recently about a supersecret $22 million Pentagon project
called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, aimed at
investigating U.F.O.s. The project was officially killed in 2012, but
now it’s being resurrected as a nonprofit organization.
Advertisement
Disgruntled
that the government wasn’t taking the possibility of alien visitors
seriously, a group of former defense officials, aerospace engineers and
other space fans have set up their own group, To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science.
One of its founders is Tom DeLonge, a former punk musician, record
producer and entrepreneur, who is also the head of the group’s
entertainment division.
For
a minimum of $200, you can join and help finance their research into
how U.F.O.s do whatever it is they do, as well as telepathy and “a
point-to-point transportation craft that will erase the current travel
limits of distance and time” by using a drive that “alters the
space-time metric” — that is, a warp drive going faster than the speed
of light, Einstein’s old cosmic speed limit.
“We
believe there are transformative discoveries within our reach that will
revolutionize the human experience, but they can only be accomplished
through the unrestricted support of breakthrough research, discovery and
innovation,” says the group’s website.
Image
A U.F.O. spotted by Navy pilots near San Diego in 2004.CreditDepartment of Defense
I’m
not holding my breath waiting for progress on telepathy or warp drive,
but I agree with at least one thing that one official with the group
said. That was Steve Justice, a former engineer at Lockheed Martin’s
famous Skunk Works, where advanced aircraft like the SR-71 high-altitude
super-fast spy plane were designed.
“How dare we think that the physics we have today is all that there is,” he said in an interview published recently in HuffPost.
I
could hardly agree more, having spent my professional life in the
company of physicists and astronomers trying to poke out of the cocoon
of present knowledge into the unknown, to overturn Einstein and what
passes for contemporary science. Lately, they haven’t gotten anywhere.
The
last time physicists had to deal with faster-than-light travel was six
years ago, when a group of Italy-based physicists announced that they
had seen the subatomic particles known as neutrinos going faster than light. It turned out they had wired up their equipment wrong.
So
far Einstein is still the champ. But surely there is so much more to
learn. A lot of surprises lie ahead, but many of the most popular ideas
on how to transcend Einstein and his peers are on the verge of beingruled out. Transforming science is harder than it looks.
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While
there is a lot we don’t know, there is also a lot we do know. We know
how to turn on our computers and let gadgets in our pocket navigate the
world. We know that when physical objects zig and zag through a medium
like air, as U.F.O.s are said to do, they produce turbulence and shock
waves. NASA engineers predicted to the minute when the Cassini spacecraft would dwindle to a wisp of smoke in Saturn’s atmosphere last fall.
In
moments like this, I take comfort in what the great Russian physicist
and cosmologist Yakov Zeldovich, one of the fathers of the Soviet
hydrogen bomb, once told me. “What science has already taken, it will
not give back,” he said.
Scientists are not the killjoys in all this.
In
the astronomical world, the border between science fact and science
fiction can be very permeable, perhaps because many scientists grew up
reading science fiction. And astronomers forever have their noses
pressed up against the window of the unknown. They want to believe more
than anybody, and I count myself among them.
Image
Since
the asteroid named Oumuamua was first noticed flying through our solar
system in October, researchers have been monitoring for alien signals,
so far to no avail.CreditM. Kornmesser/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
But
they are also trained to look at nature with ruthless rigor and
skepticism. For astronomers, the biggest problem with E.T. is not the
occasional claim of a mysterious light in the sky, but the fact that we
are not constantly overwhelmed with them.
Half
a century ago, the legendary physicist Enrico Fermi concluded from a
simple back-of-the-envelope calculation that even without warp drive, a
single civilization could visit and colonize all the planets in the
galaxy in a fraction of the 10-billion-year age of the Milky Way.
Proponents
of SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, have been
debating ever since. One answer I like is the “zoo hypothesis,”
according to which we have been placed off-limits, a cosmic wildlife
refuge.
Another answer came from Jill Tarter,
formerly the director of research at the SETI Institute in Mountain
View, Calif. “We haven’t looked hard enough,” she said when I asked her
recently.
If
there was an iPhone sitting under a rock on the Moon or Mars, for
example, we would not have found it yet. Our own latest ideas for
interstellar exploration involve launching probes the size of postage stamps to Alpha Centauri.
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In
the next generation, they might be the size of mosquitoes. By contrast,
the dreams of some U.F.O. enthusiasts are stuck in 1950s technology.
Still, we keep trying.
Last fall when a strange object — an interstellar asteroid now
named Oumuamua — was found cruising through the solar system,
astronomers’ thoughts raced to the Arthur C. Clarke novel “Rendezvous
With Rama,” in which the object was an alien spaceship. Two groups have
been monitoring Oumuamua for alien radio signals, so far to no avail.
Meanwhile, some astronomers have speculated that the erratic dimming of a star known as “Boyajian’s star” or “Tabby’s star,”
after the astronomer Tabetha Boyajian, could be caused by some gigantic
construction project orbiting the star. So far that has not worked out,
but none of the other explanations — dust or a fleet of comets — have,
either.
A pair of Harvard astronomers suggested last spring that mysterious sporadic flashes of energy known as fast radio bursts coming
from far far away are alien transmitters powering interstellar
spacecraft carrying light sails. “Science isn’t a matter of belief, it’s
a matter of evidence,” the astronomer Avi Loeb said in a news release from Harvard.
“Deciding what’s likely ahead of time limits the possibilities. It’s
worth putting ideas out there and letting the data be the judge.”
U.F.O. investigations are nothing new. The most famous was the Air Force’s Project Blue Book, which ran from 1952 to 1970 and examined more than 12,000 sightings.
Most
U.F.O. sightings turn out to be swamp gas and other atmospheric
anomalies, Venus, weird reflections or just plain hoaxes. But there is a
stubborn residue, a few percent that resist easy explication, including
now Commander Fravor’s story. But that’s a far cry from proving they
are alien or interstellar.
I
don’t know what to think about these stories, often told by sober,
respected and professional observers — police officers, pilots, military
officials — in indelible detail. I always wish I could have been there
to see it for myself.
Then I wonder how much good it would do to see it anyway.
Recently I ran into my friend Mark Mitton, a professional magician,
in a restaurant. He came over to the table and started doing tricks. At
one point he fanned the card deck, asked my daughter to pick one, and
then asked her to shuffle the deck, which she did expertly.
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Mr.
Mitton grabbed the deck and sprayed the cards in the air. There was my
daughter’s card stuck to a mirror about five feet away. How did it get
there? Not by any new physics. Seeing didn’t really help.
As modern psychology and neuroscience have established, the senses are an unreliable portal to reality, whatever that is.
Something might be happening, but we don’t know what it is. E.T., if you’re reading this, I’m still waiting to take my ride.
figure it out: all this smoke is NOT normal. fires in summer?, yes, but not on this scale.
The state of oregon has been turned into beijing oregon.
Its GLOBAL WARMING, remember?
To
put it mildly, You are destroying your state and civilization folks.
In your desperation and insanity, you have created an unsustainable,
utterly polluted, congested and 'out of control' urban sprawl of
staggering proportions in every city and municipality you inhabit.
Your children are losing their future because of your idiocy.
you
have GOT to get out of your gas guzzling trucks and SUV's. You need to
stop procreating like flies and you have GOT to STOP eating meat. why
is it that almost every single restaurant in the state of oregon serves
meat? Yours is a failed lifestyle, its killing our planet and it cannot
and will not survive the future simply because it is NOT sustainable.
So,
get rid of your chinese made american blood drenched flags, STOP
supporting the US military and the domestic spy and surveillance
american nazi police state, and learn to go vegan, ride bicycles and fly
an EARTH FLAG on your front porch.
STOP
voting for the war mongering republicrats and demoblicans and VOTE GREEN
PARTY at the next round of voting. Perhaps then, and ONLY then, will
we have a chance of surviving the 21st century.
