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SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT DEPARTMENT -
Pentagon Explores "Human Fear" Chemicals
The U.S. military has owned up to having F-16 fighters in the air near Stephenville on the night that several residents reported unusual lights in the sky. But the correction issued Wednesday doesn't exactly turn UFOs into Identified Flying Objects.
Several dozen witnesses reported that they had seen unusual lights in the sky near Stephenville shortly after dusk Jan. 8. One sighting included a report that the lights were pursued by military jets. Military officials had repeatedly denied they had any flights in the area that night.
But that position changed Wednesday with a terse news release:
"In the interest of public awareness, Air Force Reserve Command Public Affairs realized an error was made regarding the reported training activity of military aircraft. Ten F-16s from the 457th Fighter Squadron were performing training operations from 6 to 8 p.m., Tuesday January 8, 2008, in the Brownwood Military Operating Area (MOA), which includes the airspace above Erath County."
Maj. Karl Lewis, a spokesman for the 301st Fighter Wing at the former Carswell Field, blamed the erroneous release on "an internal communications error."
That still left unanswered the question of what F-16s might have been doing that would look like a line of silent, glowing spheres. Maj. Lewis said he could not give any details.
"What we do down there falls under operational procedures that cannot be released because of operations security for our mission," he said.
One battle tactic used routinely by F-16s involves the ejection of flares that are intended to confuse heat-seeking missiles. The flares can be ejected several at a time, and could form a pattern of bright lights traveling across the sky.
But such activity would not match other aspects of the descriptions of the Stephenville lights. Witnesses generally described what they saw as silent, apparently changing speeds and passing over populated areas. That does not sound like a flare release, said Jay Miller, an aviation consultant and historian in Fort Worth.
For one thing, any jet that dumps flares would also be trying to get away as fast as possible.
"He's going to be in full afterburner," Mr. Miller said, and that's very loud. But the jets wouldn't be the only noise associated with flares.
"Flares don't burn silently. They actually burn quite loudly," he said.
Flares are also extremely hot and dangerous, and it's highly unlikely that any drill would involve their use over populated areas, Mr. Miller said.
Wednesday's news release refocused attention on the lights a few days after more than 500 people attended a meeting intended to gather witness statements. The weekend meeting was hosted by the Mutual UFO Network, which collected more than 200 reports, though many were not about the recent sightings.
The military's admission that it had jets up in the area actually strengthens the credibility of some of the reports, said Ken Cherry, Texas state director for the network. After all, some of the witnesses had said they had seen military aircraft along with the lights.
"We have witnesses who could clearly distinguish the difference between an F-16 and some extraordinary craft performing in a manner not typical of an aircraft," he said.
Steve Allen, a pilot, was one of three men who first went public with their sightings to the local newspaper. Wednesday's military news release answers none of his questions, he said.
The Brownwood Military Operating Area is not close enough to Stephenville to explain what he saw, Mr. Allen said. And pilots are supposed to perform training exercises at high altitude, he said. What he saw happened near the ground.
He said he and his friends first spotted a row of glowing spheres that silently changed formation before vanishing. A few minutes later, they saw two more glowing spheres, with military jets in hot pursuit.
"They were on the deck and with the pedal down," he said.
Mr. Allen said that he had no trouble hearing the roar from the jets when they appeared, but he had heard nothing from the glowing lights before that.
"A bunch of stuff is bubbling up," he said about Wednesday's news release. "They may have to tell us the truth."
Source: The Dallas Morning News
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/
012408dntexufo.4f269ff6.html
Pentagon Explores "Human Fear" Chemicals
American military researchers
are working to uncover and harness the most terrifying chemical
imaginable: that most primal odor, the scent of fear.
Scream Pheromones are chemicals released by animals as signals to their own kind: for sex, for territorial marking, and more. They're often detected in the olfactory membranes. But there's more to pheromones than attraction. Many animals have an alarm pheromone which is used to signal danger; aphids, for example, use it to cause their fellow lice to flee.
Now, the US Army is trying to track down and harness people's smell of fear. The military has backed a study on the "Identification and Isolation of Human Alarm Pheromones," which "focused on the Preliminary Identification of Steroids of Interest in Human Fear Sweat." The so-called "skydiving protocol" was the researchers' method of choice.
The authors collected sweat, urine, blood, saliva, ECG, respiration, and self-report measures in 20 subjects (n=11 males and n=9 females) before, during, and immediately following their first-time tandem skydive, as well as before, during, and immediately following their running on a treadmill for the same period of time. Measurements between the test (skydive) and control (exercise) conditions were made on consecutive days, each experiment precisely matched to the minute between subjects and between conditions to prevent diurnal confounds. Emotional states were monitored using brief standardized questionnaires. For most of the observed compounds, men showed an increase in the compound emission during acute emotional stress, while women showed either no change or a decrease in emission of the compound.
In a lecture given at a 2007 Congress on Stress, the researchers hint at what their study found:
Our findings indicate that there may be a hidden biological component to human social dynamics, in which emotional stress is, quite literally, “contagious."
This work piggybacks on a 2002 study by the Ludwig-Boltzmann-Institute for Urban Ethology at the University of Vienna. Subjects wore underarm pads while watching a 'terrifying' film -- the horror movie Candyman -- or a 'neutral' documentary. Afterwards subjects were asked to try and distinguish between pads worn by people seeing each film. The results showed that they could -– though subjects thought the smell was aggression rather than fear.
Some have suggested that the human alarm pheromone could lead to chemical fear-sensors. The project Integrated System for Emotional State Recognition for the Enhancement of Human Performance and Detection of Criminal Intent (do they call it ISESREHPDCI for short?) specifically mentions the possibility of monitoring pheromone levels:
Such systems could be used to assess fitness for duty, integrated into closed loop systems regulating user vigilance and workload, or used to detect the sinister intent of individuals and prompt pre-emptive interdictions. These systems could unobtrusively monitor individuals within military operational environments or crowded civilian settings by relying on passive detection.
If they're trying to spot terrorists at an airport, it may not work: I know a number of people whose fear levels when approaching a flight would overload any fear sensor for miles. The suicide bombers are probably way calmer.
But what about offensive use? Pheromones are effective in minute quantities, so a wide area can be blanketed with just a few liters. Given sufficient concentration, would everyone exposed start suffering from an unidentifiable dread? The contagious aspect means that those affected would start churning out fear pheromone as well.
On its own, the alarm pheromone probably would not do much. But given an external trigger, such as a loud noise, it could influence people to start stampeding like spooked cattle. Then again, the bee alarm pheromone triggers attack rather than flight, and the Viennese study suggested something similar may apply to humans -- or are there multiple pheromones involved? Whatever is going on, this research is likely to uncover some novel and powerful ways of manipulating human behavior.
Source: Wired
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/01/pentagon-resear.html
Scream Pheromones are chemicals released by animals as signals to their own kind: for sex, for territorial marking, and more. They're often detected in the olfactory membranes. But there's more to pheromones than attraction. Many animals have an alarm pheromone which is used to signal danger; aphids, for example, use it to cause their fellow lice to flee.
Now, the US Army is trying to track down and harness people's smell of fear. The military has backed a study on the "Identification and Isolation of Human Alarm Pheromones," which "focused on the Preliminary Identification of Steroids of Interest in Human Fear Sweat." The so-called "skydiving protocol" was the researchers' method of choice.
The authors collected sweat, urine, blood, saliva, ECG, respiration, and self-report measures in 20 subjects (n=11 males and n=9 females) before, during, and immediately following their first-time tandem skydive, as well as before, during, and immediately following their running on a treadmill for the same period of time. Measurements between the test (skydive) and control (exercise) conditions were made on consecutive days, each experiment precisely matched to the minute between subjects and between conditions to prevent diurnal confounds. Emotional states were monitored using brief standardized questionnaires. For most of the observed compounds, men showed an increase in the compound emission during acute emotional stress, while women showed either no change or a decrease in emission of the compound.
In a lecture given at a 2007 Congress on Stress, the researchers hint at what their study found:
Our findings indicate that there may be a hidden biological component to human social dynamics, in which emotional stress is, quite literally, “contagious."
This work piggybacks on a 2002 study by the Ludwig-Boltzmann-Institute for Urban Ethology at the University of Vienna. Subjects wore underarm pads while watching a 'terrifying' film -- the horror movie Candyman -- or a 'neutral' documentary. Afterwards subjects were asked to try and distinguish between pads worn by people seeing each film. The results showed that they could -– though subjects thought the smell was aggression rather than fear.
Some have suggested that the human alarm pheromone could lead to chemical fear-sensors. The project Integrated System for Emotional State Recognition for the Enhancement of Human Performance and Detection of Criminal Intent (do they call it ISESREHPDCI for short?) specifically mentions the possibility of monitoring pheromone levels:
Such systems could be used to assess fitness for duty, integrated into closed loop systems regulating user vigilance and workload, or used to detect the sinister intent of individuals and prompt pre-emptive interdictions. These systems could unobtrusively monitor individuals within military operational environments or crowded civilian settings by relying on passive detection.
If they're trying to spot terrorists at an airport, it may not work: I know a number of people whose fear levels when approaching a flight would overload any fear sensor for miles. The suicide bombers are probably way calmer.
But what about offensive use? Pheromones are effective in minute quantities, so a wide area can be blanketed with just a few liters. Given sufficient concentration, would everyone exposed start suffering from an unidentifiable dread? The contagious aspect means that those affected would start churning out fear pheromone as well.
On its own, the alarm pheromone probably would not do much. But given an external trigger, such as a loud noise, it could influence people to start stampeding like spooked cattle. Then again, the bee alarm pheromone triggers attack rather than flight, and the Viennese study suggested something similar may apply to humans -- or are there multiple pheromones involved? Whatever is going on, this research is likely to uncover some novel and powerful ways of manipulating human behavior.
Source: Wired
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/01/pentagon-resear.html
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FIRST ONE STORY, THEN ANOTHER DEPARTMENT -
Air Force Say Planes Flying in Area of Texas UFO Sightings
Air Force Say Planes Flying in Area of Texas UFO Sightings
The U.S. military has owned up to having F-16 fighters in the air near Stephenville on the night that several residents reported unusual lights in the sky. But the correction issued Wednesday doesn't exactly turn UFOs into Identified Flying Objects.
Several dozen witnesses reported that they had seen unusual lights in the sky near Stephenville shortly after dusk Jan. 8. One sighting included a report that the lights were pursued by military jets. Military officials had repeatedly denied they had any flights in the area that night.
But that position changed Wednesday with a terse news release:
"In the interest of public awareness, Air Force Reserve Command Public Affairs realized an error was made regarding the reported training activity of military aircraft. Ten F-16s from the 457th Fighter Squadron were performing training operations from 6 to 8 p.m., Tuesday January 8, 2008, in the Brownwood Military Operating Area (MOA), which includes the airspace above Erath County."
Maj. Karl Lewis, a spokesman for the 301st Fighter Wing at the former Carswell Field, blamed the erroneous release on "an internal communications error."
That still left unanswered the question of what F-16s might have been doing that would look like a line of silent, glowing spheres. Maj. Lewis said he could not give any details.
"What we do down there falls under operational procedures that cannot be released because of operations security for our mission," he said.
One battle tactic used routinely by F-16s involves the ejection of flares that are intended to confuse heat-seeking missiles. The flares can be ejected several at a time, and could form a pattern of bright lights traveling across the sky.
But such activity would not match other aspects of the descriptions of the Stephenville lights. Witnesses generally described what they saw as silent, apparently changing speeds and passing over populated areas. That does not sound like a flare release, said Jay Miller, an aviation consultant and historian in Fort Worth.
For one thing, any jet that dumps flares would also be trying to get away as fast as possible.
"He's going to be in full afterburner," Mr. Miller said, and that's very loud. But the jets wouldn't be the only noise associated with flares.
"Flares don't burn silently. They actually burn quite loudly," he said.
Flares are also extremely hot and dangerous, and it's highly unlikely that any drill would involve their use over populated areas, Mr. Miller said.
Wednesday's news release refocused attention on the lights a few days after more than 500 people attended a meeting intended to gather witness statements. The weekend meeting was hosted by the Mutual UFO Network, which collected more than 200 reports, though many were not about the recent sightings.
The military's admission that it had jets up in the area actually strengthens the credibility of some of the reports, said Ken Cherry, Texas state director for the network. After all, some of the witnesses had said they had seen military aircraft along with the lights.
"We have witnesses who could clearly distinguish the difference between an F-16 and some extraordinary craft performing in a manner not typical of an aircraft," he said.
Steve Allen, a pilot, was one of three men who first went public with their sightings to the local newspaper. Wednesday's military news release answers none of his questions, he said.
The Brownwood Military Operating Area is not close enough to Stephenville to explain what he saw, Mr. Allen said. And pilots are supposed to perform training exercises at high altitude, he said. What he saw happened near the ground.
He said he and his friends first spotted a row of glowing spheres that silently changed formation before vanishing. A few minutes later, they saw two more glowing spheres, with military jets in hot pursuit.
"They were on the deck and with the pedal down," he said.
Mr. Allen said that he had no trouble hearing the roar from the jets when they appeared, but he had heard nothing from the glowing lights before that.
"A bunch of stuff is bubbling up," he said about Wednesday's news release. "They may have to tell us the truth."
Source: The Dallas Morning News
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/
012408dntexufo.4f269ff6.html
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DUCK AND COVER DEPARTMENT -
Are Meteorites the Blame For Mysterious Holes In Ice?
Are Meteorites the Blame For Mysterious Holes In Ice?
Spruce Grove residents woke up yesterday to a mysterious octopus-shaped hole in a frozen golf-course pond.
A hole about 1.5 metres in diameter was visible yesterday on the pond at The Links at Spruce Grove, Alberta Canada along with at least 20 splash marks - the longest about six metres.
"It wasn't there (Friday)," said neighbor Tina Danyluk, whose house backs onto the pond. She suspects it might have been a meteorite.
Whatever it was, it had to have followed a high trajectory based on "how the splash spread," Danyluk said.
Astronomer Martin Beech said he wouldn't rule out the possibility of a falling meteorite, but the marks perplexed him. To punch through ice nearly half a metre thick, the meteor would have to be huge and would look like a bright burning ball with an associated sonic boom, said Beech, who teaches astronomy at Campion College at the University of Regina.
"Usually, it's quite a distinctive rumbling sound and people tend to notice that sound," Beech told Sun Media from Regina.
"The whole pond was covered in snow (on Friday) until this morning when we saw the strange marks in the pond," said Danyluk.
Danyluk's neighbor, Aaron Soos, said the marks were puzzling and the phenomenon had residents talking all day.
"If the pond was not frozen, we wouldn't even see those marks."
Members of a makeshift brigade went hunting for the suspected meteorite using a wetsuit in the icy water. However, the only thing recovered were lost golf balls.
A report of a fireball seen in the sky Thursday night combined with a tremor felt by Zienowicz around the same time has led them to the certainty something not-of-this earth is hiding beneath the ice.
But Zienowicz's puny little waterproof light was useless in the murky depths of the pond, and when he felt around all he could find was a plethora of poorly aimed golf balls - including the mud-splattered one he emerged from the water with.
"It's too dark and muddy, and we didn't find anything spectacular," said Soos. "We'll leave it 'til the spring."
The group had set out on their adventure after hearing a meteorite as small as a toaster could fetch up to $10,000, but insisted they were mainly doing it out of curiosity.
"For the fun of it, to see what landed in our backyard," laughed Soos.
Many objects can fall from the sky, but very few end up being meteorites, said University of Alberta professor Chris Herd, who curates the province's meteorite collection.
Space debris such as pieces of satellites sometimes rain from the sky. The mystery object that caused the hole could even be a large piece of frozen waste from an airplane, he said.
"The fact is that there could be a number of other possibilities for what punched a hole through the ice, and the fact that if there is anything, it's at the bottom of a pond, doesn't put it high on the list of priorities for investigating it, unfortunately."
A motorist who described seeing a big ball of fire in the sky Thursday night may provide a key to the puzzle. Eric Whyte, who was driving on Highway 2 between St. Albert and Morinville around 10 p.m., said he originally thought what he saw was a shooting star, but the bright-orange ball of fire with blazing tail didn't burn away.
Alan Hildebrand, a planetary scientist at the University of Calgary and co-ordinator of the Canadian Fireball Reporting Centre, said that description sounds like a falling meteorite. He said he will review the data captured by an all-sky camera near Edmonton to see if it captured a bright trace in the sky Thursday night.
Only between 60 and 70 individual meteorites have ever been found in Canada, according to Herd. None of these has been recovered from a pond, he said. He explained the water could act quickly to destroy much of a meteorite's interest.
The Geological Survey of Canada, which maintains the national collection of meteorites, offers a minimum of $500 for the first specimen of any new Canadian meteorite.
Herd said space rocks belong to landowners - regardless of who finds them.
A golf course spokesman has already said there's no plan to go looking for whatever may have crashed through the ice in the pond, which provides water to irrigate the golf course.
"I think it's a safety issue now," Glen Andersen, a superintendent at The Links in Spruce Grove, said Monday.
"We're not going to do that. We hope people don't come out here - we'd ask them to leave."
Soos insisted he and his partner are not giving up on their quest.
"Oh no, there's something in there, for sure," he said. "There's something in there and we'll find it - it'll just take a little bit more effort than we thought."
Iowa
Couple Stumped by Mystery "UFO"
An Iowa couple is looking for help trying to identify something that fell from the sky and into a pond on their land over the weekend. It happened sometime late Friday night or early Saturday just south of Knoxville in Marion County.
"Whatever it was it hit hard enough to throw water out of that in a big round circle," says Denny Straube.
On Saturday morning, Straube saw three holes in the ice on his pond. The biggest was about three feet across. From his dining room that morning, Denny quickly noticed something different. The impact of the mystery object of objects left several 15 foot cracks running from the hole and about three inches of displaced water on top of the ice.
"Did someone lose something off an airplane? Was there a meteor shower that night?" Denny Straube wonders.
"Maybe God's mad and throwing snowballs at us," Terry Straube says.
Whatever fell from the sky this weekend, it's under six feet of ice and water. The Straube's hope someone volunteers to scuba dive in their pond this summer to find out. According to the British National Space Center, about ten thousand football size meteorites hit the earth each year.
Sources: The Edmonton Sun/KWWL-TV
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/WeirdNews/2008/01/20/4783436-sun.html
http://www.kwwl.com/News/index.php?ID=20757