With this summer’s revelation that the US Navy considers UFOs and “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” (UAPs) to be real, a team of venture capitalists, university professors, and military veterans are launching a project to track UFOs off the coast of California.

UAP eXpeditions is a non-profit group based in Oregon that will “field a top-notch group of uber-experienced professionals providing the public service of field testing new UAP related technologies.” With some of the Silicon Valley UFO Hunters, UAP eXpeditions will pioneer the ability to predict, find, observe, and document UAP for study and analysis. They will use “classical observation techniques, by trained observers and scientists, while using the latest experimental technologies—in the right places and the right times,” Kevin Day, the group’s founder and CEO, wrote in a Facebook post viewed by Motherboard.

Day, who has appeared on the History Channel’s Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation and Discovery Channel’s Contact, is a retired U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer and radar operator. Day served in the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group on the USS Princeton during the 2004 infamous “Nimitz UFO Incident” which was reported by The New York Times in December of 2017.

He recalls tracking the infamous “Tic Tac” UFOs for several days around Catalina Island off the coast of California using the USS Princeton’s advanced radar system. Now, he believes that these objects continue to operate along the same trajectory and “migrate” from Catalina Island south along the California coast.

The company’s white paper is pretty wild. It asks, “Do fleets of UAP 'migrate' from Catalina Island to Guadalupe Island with a certain frequency? And if so, how well do whale songs correlate, if at all, to UAP appearances?” It’s unclear how whale songs are relevant here, but let’s move along.

Day, who believes that his experience tracking these objects has led to some curious special abilities, such as “advanced cognition” told Motherboard that the organization is hoping to “offer technology developers a way to test their new tech at no direct cost to them.” Using state of the art cameras and other experimental monitoring devices, the idea is to put this high tech gear into the field and attempt to track unknown aerial objects off the coast of California.

Leading the team of scientists is Dr. Kevin Knuth, a former scientist with NASA’s Ames Research Center, now an associate professor of physics at the University of Albany. Knuth specializes in machine learning and the study of exoplanets. While the organization and the project is still in its infancy, Knuth told Motherboard that “the goal of the expedition is to give us some ground truth. We aim to try to observe these objects directly, and record them using multiple imaging modalities.”

Knuth explained that the project has two phases. First, the team “will obtain current satellite imagery of the area (more or less in the area of Catalina Island and southward for ~100 miles) and determine whether these anamolous objects can be observed. We will monitor these satellite images both manually and using machine learning and build up a database of detections, classifications, and any observed patterns of activity.”

If, and it's a big “if,” the satellite imagery does point to a strange concentration of unknown objects, the team will go hunt UFOs. The second step, which is slated for November 2020, is to basically park a large boat off the coast of California loaded with various cameras and sensors to detect and record anomalous aerial activity. The team has already begun negotiations to charter the MV Horizon, a small research vessel.

“We will be using tracking security cameras in the visual to infrared wavelengths with telephoto lenses, human eyes on the water with high power binoculars and spotting scopes, as well as digital SLR cameras with high power telephoto lenses ranging from 400mm - 600+mm,” Knuth told Motherboard. “We plan to have high-quality drones in the air with imaging capabilities. We are looking into IR imaging as well, as well as detectors for x-ray, gamma-ray and custom-built neutron detectors (which are designed to look for dark matter).”

Knuth presented a lecture at the Maximum Entropy and Bayesian Methods in Science and Engineering Workshop at the Max Planck Institute for Plasmaphysics in Garching Germany on determining the flight characteristics of unidentified anomalous vehicles in July 2019. His paper, which is currently waiting to be peer-reviewed, can be found online.

"This is an effort that I believe is rare and timely given current events"

Knuth explained that much is still unknown about what exactly people are reporting when it comes to UFOs.

“These are always delicate issues in any study relying on people reporting information. This includes studies in medicine, psychology, and neuroscience which rely on subject responses, sociology studies relying on surveys, and even data reported by scientists (all of whom can make mistakes or lie). The key to ensuring consistency is reproducibility and this requires additional study,” Knuth explained.

This is one of the more serious attempts to look for UFOs. It is, admittedly, a bit of a wild goose chase and will cost a boatload of cash. But the team includes some heavy hitters outside of Knuth himself. According to the organization’s white paper, Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur and MIT technologist Rizwan Virk and the Toronto-based CEO of the quantum computing company, ReactiveQ, Deep Prasad have both signed on to help with securing investment for the project.

“I am personally very excited no matter the outcome,” Prasad told Motherboard. “This is an effort that I believe is rare and timely given current events, such as the apparent increase in UAP incidents through official military channels.”

Some other individuals on the team include Sean Cahill, the former Chief Master-at-Arms who served aboard the USS Princeton during the 2004 Nimitz Incident, and optical physicist and UFO researcher Bruce Macabee.

Getting the money to pay for all this isn’t going to be easy. While Day’s team is working on grant proposals, they know that the vast majority of funding will have to be private. Renting a research vessel and acquiring the high-tech gear needed to search for UFOs is not cheap. While Day is looking at potentially crowd funding this project, he hopes that the non-profit can secure a few angel investors who are interested in funding scientific research into studying the UFO phenomenon. Day is asking for any interested parties to reach out to him via email as the group’s website is still under development.

Knuth believes it is time to start doing real scientific work on UFOs. While the study is unorthodox (especially the whale bit), so is the very real fact that unidentified aerial vehicles are tracked by the Air Force and Navy, and seem to easily evade the technological weapons apparatus maintained by the most powerful military on the planet.

“The failure to study these phenomena scientifically has resulted in a state of ignorance, which is unacceptable considering the aviation safety issues that have been reported by the US Navy,” stated Knuth.

Update: This article previously noted that Luis Elizondo would be part of this project. Though he is listed on the team's white paper, he has since said he will not participate.

Source: Vice
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8xw83b/the-navy-says-the-ufos-in
-tom-delonges-videos-are-unidentified-aerial-phenomena

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An ominous, blaring siren has been startling people across Wichita Falls, Texas. To some it sounded almost like something out of an apocalyptic movie.

For Atzhiri Acosta hearing the sirens around 6:45 Monday morning was all too real. “I was preparing for my meditation that I do every morning and the siren just went off,” she said.

The siren is right near her house by Lucy Park, “I looked to the window, and I see it spinning so I was like freaking out.”

She had never heard or seen anything like it before, so she called the police. “They didn't know what was going on.”

So, she texted friends, “Apparently no one had heard it. It was just me, so everyone was making fun of me,” she said laughingly.

But she had not imagined it, “People were telling me that they heard it this morning also, across town.”

Footage of the sirens this Monday was taken by Jessica Pichardo, on the southwest part of town, not far from Lake Wichita and Memorial Stadium.

It was also early in the morning around 7, almost the same time when Acosta heard the sounds the week before.

Pichardo remembers, “I was making some coffee and I just heard a really weird noise. My dog kind of tilted her head and walked over to the door. I just kind of looked out…it was far away at some points and then it sounded like it was closer.”

She is not the only one trying to find out where it came from.

Traffic Engineering Superintendent Larry Wilkinson sent out his crew to inspect the more than 50 sirens around town. He said they found nothing unusual. Now, the department plans to reach out to the manufacturers of the sirens they use for more answers.

It does not help that the mysterious sirens add to this already eerie time of year.

Pichardo said, “You know, I watch a lot of horror movies. The first thing I was thinking with it being Halloween time was Martial Law or a zombie apocalypse or something like that.”

Source: Texoma News Network
https://www.newschannel6now.com/2019/10/29/residents-describe-hearing-
mysterious-sirens-around-wichita-falls/

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In the Summer of 1949, a geologist named Vadim Kolpakov discovered a strange feature on the surface of the earth in the Bodaibo, Irkutsk, region of South-Eastern Siberia. Encircled by a largely treed area, this anomaly is oval with a conical crater that contains a small ball-like mound in its middle. The entire structure consists of broken grey limestone. Its width is between 130-160 meters, while the cone is up to 80 meters high. Oddly, few trees grow on the formation, however, the surrounding conifers have experienced rapid growth. Named the Patomskiy Crater, the Kolpakov Cone, and the Fire Eagle Nest, the geologic mystery has baffled scientists who are uncertain of what caused this weird formation.

Far Out Theories on the Patomskiy Crater

    "I don’t know if it is a meteorite or a spaceship, but there is definitely something under the crater."
    Alexander Dmitriev

Named for the river that runs near the anomaly, the Patomskiy crater has spawned many interesting theories. Wild ideas speculated that it was a secret Stalin-era uranium mine that used Gulag labor forces. Ancient astronaut theorists chimed that it was the landing site of an alien UFO. Other popular theories include: an underground uranium or natural-gas explosion, a dust-sized meteorite that burrowed through the planet and left the crater as an exit wound, a cylindrical metallic object of unknown origin, and the Tunguska Event.

The uranium theory may sound unlikely. However, this area is known to be rich in naturally occurring radioactive elements. A precise series of events would need to take place in order to create the circumstances for an explosion, but it lies within the realm of possibility. However, the trees do not indicate large explosions from uranium or the Tunguska event which would have leveled the conifers.

By far, the theory most out of this world involves some kind of external or alien body that long ago embedded itself in the Patomskiy crater causing the unique shape. The unremarkable radiation levels seem to contradict this though, as an object from space would leave far higher radioactive levels than the typical levels on earth. Of course one could counter this by saying that the spacecraft landed so long ago that, by now, high levels have returned to nominal. This is supported by the increased size of the vegetation surrounding the site.

Science at the Crater

The two most reasonable theories that initially arose stated that the origin is volcanic or meteoric. The problem is that scientists have not found any evidence of either scenario on the slopes of the Siberian crater yet. There is no volcanic rock, nor meteor debris anywhere. Nonetheless, the site reminded scientists of the meteor impact marks on the moon and believed that evidence lay deeper in the earth where the meteor would have exploded. By now, the majority of the evidence has ruled out a meteor, and most scientists have abandoned this theory.

Local Legend of Bad JuJu at the Crater

Although remote, the Irkutsk region has an indigenous population called the Yakut. These people consider the crater a bad place, and they insist that large animals do not go into the area. One theory about this superstition suggests that perhaps their ancestors were present at a time when the area had a far higher radiation level. These ancestors may have become ill and died from this radiation. Over time, the legend was synthesized into oral tribal stories that became a part of the Yakut culture. In fact, the Yakut gave the crater the name, Fire Eagle’s Nest because of its shape.

Investigations of the Fire Eagle Nest

Although discovered in 1949, the first scientific expedition committed to properly investigating the Patomskiy crater wasn’t launched until 2005. There were a number of reasons for this delay, whereas, in many other countries an anomaly of this magnitude would have been a scientific focus. Until the Soviet Union fell, expenditure on scientific activity focused on military development. Consequently, the study of the crater was postponed.

The initial expedition in 2005 met with a major set-back when not long after embarking for their target, the lead researcher Evgeny Vorobyov died on the trail. When officials recovered his body, an autopsy showed a massive heart attack (Zubacheva 2013). Nonetheless, a bad omen or not, the group pressed on. Although scientists studied the area thoroughly, it only provided more possibilities. At that time, they were unable to make a conclusive determination about its cause. Interestingly, though, a number of anomalies were discovered in the surrounding area.

Because it was around the beginning of the Cold War, the Russian government was originally concerned this could be the site of a nuclear test by another nation. After all, the Americans had only made their nuclear debut over Japan three years prior, and it was an open secret that the Russians were attempting to create the same technology.

Subsequently, one of the first things officials searched for at the site was increased levels of radiation. However, the results were unremarkable. Although fractionally above nominal, the amount in no way indicated a nuclear blast.

What is perplexing, though, is that the surrounding vegetation experienced a sharp increase in size for over a century before its discovery. Whilst sounding benign, this anomaly is common in instances of nuclear contact. The mutagenic properties of radiation affect the size of flora, often dramatically increasing it over time. This was also the case in the vegetation around Chernobyl. Magnetic anomalies are also present on and in the surrounding vicinity of the odd Patomskiy crater. However, of course, there are other causes of tree growth spurts.

Recent Revelations About the Patomskiy Crater

Modern geomorphologists believe the Fire Eagle’s Nest may be a very rare gas volcano, acting as a vent for vast stores of underground gasses. The odd rock formations may also be indicative of chemical reactions between elements on the surface and those leaking through from deep in the earth.

Dmitry Demezhko, Institute of Geophysics, Yekaterinburg, proposes that the crater formed in two phases. First, the tectonic actions in the area created a type of channel similar to mud volcanism. Then, over time, repeated freezing and thawing caused the rock to break up.

One of the most recent studies published in 2015 in a paper by V.S. Antipin, B.G. Pokrovsky, and A.M. Fedorov concludes that the formation occurred from one or more explosions of steam as magma moved up through water and rock or when fissures released pressurized water trapped in the rock.

Little by little, experts are getting closer to conclusively solving this puzzling mystery once and for all, if they haven’t already. Something all scientists appear to agree on is that there is nothing like the Patomskiy crater anywhere else on the planet.

Source: Historic Mysteries
https://www.historicmysteries.com/patomskiy-crater-what-caused-it/

- KANGAROOS RETURN DEPARTMENT -

Kangaroo Sightings Move to Madison, Wisconsin
By Tia Lynn Ivey

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- ARIEL'S NOT SO NICE RELATIVES DEPARTMENT -

Woman "Rescued" After Being Captured By Mermaids