UFO UpDates Mailing List
From: United Kingdom UFO Network <ufo@holodeck.demon.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 22:34:22 +0100
Fwd Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 11:57:49 -0400
Subject: Issue 101 - Pt 1 - United Kingdom UFO Network
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U K / / // ___/ / / / 18th May 1999
/ / // / / / / N E T W O R K part 1/3 Issue 101
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The United Kingdom UFO Network - a free electronic magazine with
subscribers in 58 countries.
This issue comes in 3 parts. If any part is missing please mail:
ufo@holodeck.demon.co.uk giving the issue number. The issue will be
reposted to you. Please put the details as below in the subject
section e.g. Repost {101} part 1, part 2 etc.
In this issue:
Editorial
---------
Truth!
Thanks
United Kingdom News
-------------------
[UK 1] Three reports...
i) Riddle of UFO 'the size of a battleship'
ii) British Charter Jet Encounters 'Battleship Size' UFO - Pilot,
Crew In Shock
iii) Jet Crew tell of close encounter with UFO
[UK 2] Cyber terrorist strikes
[UK 3] Video sends pics to the brain
[UK 4] UK Bookmakers taking plenty of bets on Armageddon
[UK 5] Cigar shaped sighting
[UK 6] Scottish Hotel Offers UFO-Spotting Weekends
World News
----------
[W 1] Search for E.T. springs forward
[W 2] The alien hunters are back at it
[W 3] ET call Earth
[W 4] First 'Philadelphia Experiment' Crew Reunion
[W 5] Are gamma-ray bursts holding back intergalactic travel?
[W 6] The 12 Best Brazilian UFO Cases
[W 7] IBM in 'Project Blue Book' UFO probe
[W 8] Spielberg 'Taken' By Aliens
[W 9] Three reports...
i) Strange lights reported on NSW and Qld coasts
ii) Satellite may have been cause of UFO sightings
iii) UFO link to rocket
[W 10] A Way-Out Tale Snatching a few laughs from novel about UFO
abductions
[W 11] Home computers enlisted in search for extraterrestrial
intelligence
Letters
-------
The Janos people
Independent Video Film-Maker Needs Help
Any UFO clubs in England?
Obituary
--------
Vivienne Olbison Birdsall
Advertisements
--------------
4th Lapis International Conference - Blackpool UK
Serialisation
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Part one of three...
Foo Fighters, Fireballs and "Project Saucer."
Copyright: Jim Morris. 1996/97/98
Jim Morris <dx394@clara.net>
Statement, Subscription Information, IRC connecting
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How, where, and maybe even why, to find us - and what to do when you
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=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D----------
Editorial
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Hi Dave here. My sincere appologies for the very late publication of
this issue. There are many reasons for it not least moving house and
a major computer crash. But enough of my problems and on with the
show...
Truth!
Year in year out ever since the UFO phenomenon has become of interest
to the mass general public things appear to have remained in limbo.
I don't decry that things do change. You can almost guarantee that
one or two new 'characters' will appear each year with their own
unique story to tell. New documents appear irregularly via the
Freedom Of Information Act and from other sources. UFO sightings and
abduction reports continue. All of these fuel our hunger for
information. But are we any closer to the truth?
I know that if we looked at a time-line dating from say 1947 to the
present day we could build up a list of main pertinent points that
have come to the foreground each year. These are generally the ones
that everyone remembers.
If you sit back close your eyes and contemplate the whole UFO saga
are we any nearer that truth we so desperately seek than we were 52
years ago? Each year the same few questions get asked time and time
again. Are the governments of the world going to reveal the truth?
Will ET reveal themselves to us? Are we really any closer to knowing
the truth?
As a population there is no doubt that today we are more informed
than ever before. Information flows at an incredible rate. You only
have to be connected to the Internet to know just how difficult it is
keeping up to date with the bombardment of data. Sorting the good
information from the bad is increasingly difficult. Even Sherlock
Holmes would have his work cut out for him.
In a nutshell:
Yes we are wiser.
Yes new characters appear.
Yes peoples experiences are continually reported.
Yes new documents appear irregularly.
The question?
Are we any nearer knowing the truth?
What are your thoughts?
--
Thanks
uk.ufo.nw would like to thank Jim Morris for allowing us to serialise
his report Foo Fighters, Fireballs and "Project Saucer."
United Kingdom News
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uk.ufo.nw says: Three reports on the sighting of a UFO 'the size of a
battleship' by the crew of a British charter jet.
[UK 1]******
Source: Daily Mail
Publish Date: Tuesday 27th April 1999
Riddle of UFO 'the size of a battleship'
Conspiracy theorists had a field day yesterday over reports that a
UFO 'the size of a battleship' had been spotted 28,000ft above the
North Sea.
Both the Civil Aviation Authority and the Ministry of Defence
confirmed they were aware of the alleged sighting but denied they
were investigating it.
"This may sound silly," said the CAA, "but it is a matter for the
MoD." The MoD commented: "Our people are looking at it but we are not
investigating." One UFO spotter declared: "Well they would say that,
wouldn't they?" The mysterious craft said to be silver coloured and
pencil thin with square windows along the fuselage was reported by a
pilot on a private charter flight between Linkoping, in Sweden, and
Humberside [UK] on February 3rd [99]. The pilot, from the Luton based
airline Debonair, was flying a BAe 146 jet when the cockpit was
immersed in 'incandescent light'.
***
Source: Daily Express newspaper [UK]
Publish Date: Wednesday 28th April 1999
British Charter Jet Encounters 'Battleship Size'
UFO - Pilot, Crew In Shock
By Simon Bird
A British charter jet has had a close encounter with a UFO said to be
"the size of a battleship". The shocked pilot and crew of a Debonair
BAe146 plane reported being buzzed by "a long cylindrical object" as
they flew over the North Sea.
Three other pilots have also independently logged seeing the bright
object 58 miles off the coast of Denmark.
Last night the Civil Aviation Authority confirmed a comprehensive
report of the pilot's sighting had been received.
The report says the captain and crew first became aware of the object
after the underside of the plane was immersed in "an incandescent
light".
A CAA spokeswoman said: "The captain reported seeing an unnatural
bright light below his aircraft while flying at 28,000ft. The area
below him was illuminated for about 10 seconds by incandescent light
and it was certainly not a light from another plane.
"Three other aircraft saw it moving at a high speed or static.
However, air traffic control were informed and they confirmed that
there were no other planes in the vicinity.
"Then, five minutes later, there was a brief radar return from a spot
75 miles away. We believe there was no danger involved."
The Luton-based 96-seater plane was flying company executives from
Linkoping, Sweden, to Humberside airport. A spokesman for Debonair,
which runs cut-price flights throughout Europe, said chief executive
Franco Mancassola had been informed that a "great red light in the
sky" had been spotted near one of the company's planes.
At one stage, the report says, the object came to an abrupt halt
before accelerating past the airliner at thousands of miles an hour.
A CAA source says the object was tracked by a military radar station
in Yorkshire after it entered UK air space.
A spokesman for the 6,000 member British Pilots Association said: "We
get reports of this nature from our members but they are few and far
between.
"In the past 10 years or so I would say there have been around six
cases of UFO's being sighted.
"Many pilots are reluctant to make such claims because it tends to
lay them open to ridicule. So when they do go as far as making a
report we do expect it to be given credence."A spokesman for the
Ministry of Defence insisted there were no military aircraft in the
area adding: "We saw nothing."
***
Source: Daily Mirror newspaper [UK]
Publish Date: Wednesday 28th April 1999
Jet Crew tell of close encounter with UFO A passenger jet's crew have
reported a close encounter with an unidentified flying object. They
said that they noticed an "incandescent" light below their Debonair
BAe 146 as it headed over the North Sea from Sweden to Humberside.
Then, they added, a long cylindrical silver-coloured object the size
of a battleship flew alongside. The British plane's shocked captain
saw what seemed to be rows of square portholes on the UFO before it
vanished at "enormous speed".
The crew told the Defence Ministry about their sighting. An RAF radar
station tracked the object, which was seen from three other planes.
[UK 2]******
uk.ufo.nw says: an occasional report of interest
Source: Daily Mail newspaper
Publish Date: Monday 1st March 1999
Cyber terrorist strikes
By Steven Morris and Peter Rose
Police are hunting a computer hacker who is alleged to have targeted
military bases and tried to blackmail defence chiefs.
The infiltrator is said to have attempted to gain control of a
military communications satellite and altered its course, prompting
alarmed officials to notify Tony Blair [UK Prime Minister].
This is alleged to have been followed by a threat to continue
interfering with the satellite unless a large amount of money -
possibly 3 millions pounds [sterling] was handed over.
It is also possible that attempts have been made to break into the
Government's high security listening post, GCHQ in Cheltenham,
Gloucestershire, and other British installations abroad. Police
refused to go into details yesterday, because of the very sensitive
nature of the allegations.
A Scotland Yard spokesman would only say: "We can confirm that
officers from the Metropolitan Fraud Squad are investigating
allegations of a hacker believed to be targeting several different
international sites, some of which may include military
installations."
It is understood that a team comprising the most experienced and
skilled members of the squad's Computer Crime Unit has been told to
trace the origin of the attacks.
One source said: "This is being seen as a very big and very important
investigation.
"The officers involved have been told that discretion is crucial."
Officially, the Ministry of Defence was denying the Sunday newspaper
report that one of its four military satellites, which give crucial
intelligence during actions such as the bombing raids on Iraq, had
been infiltrated.
A spokesman also denied that any of its military installations had
been attacked - but could not explain why a police investigation had
been launched.
One analyst said: "It is no surprise at all that the MoD would deny
this.
"It is hugely embarrassing and, of course, very worrying."
Hacking has become a massive concern for the Armed Forces because
experts agree that the first move of an aggressor would be to attack
defence computers.
When British hackers broke into U.S. defence systems as the two
nations prepared to attack Iraq last year, the CIA feared that the
cyber spies were agents of Sadam Hussein.
Thousands of attempts to crack military secrets over a frantic two
week period were described as the 'most organised and systematic
computer attack we have ever suffered'.
The latest claims have echoes of frightening films such as The Net,
about a plot to infiltrate U.S. defence systems, and War Games, in
which a teenage hacker almost starts World War III.
They also come two years after London music student Richard Pryce was
fined 1,200 pounds sterling after being convicted of breaking into
Pentagon defence computers when he was only 16 as a 'prank'.
It was initially thought that a spy ring was trying to steal secrets.
Pryce also hacked into the computer of a Korean atomic research
institute.
The Americans were then in delicate negotiations with the North
Koreans and were terrified of an 'aggressive act' because it appeared
the hacking had originated from a U.S. air base.
[UK 3]******
uk.ufo.nw says: an occasional technology report
Source: News Of The World
Publish Date: Sunday 14th March 1999
Video sends pics to the brain
Totally blind people are boldly going to see again thanks to
astonishing Star Trek style gadgetry.
Hollywood science fiction is coming true with a sensational system
that will send images to the brain from a video camera mounted on a
pair of spectacles - just like on screen in Star Trek: The Next
Generation.
In the plot, blind Starship Enterprise engineer Geordi La Forge uses
this method to restore his own sight.
And in real life, US boffins at Baltimore's John Hopkins Wilmer Eye
Institute hope their breakthrough will cure almost half a million
sufferers in Europe and America in five to ten years. Already 15
guinea-pig patients are seeing crude images and letters using the
technology.
One of the first successes, 71 year old Harold Churchey, said: "To
see light after 15 years was wonderful. "It was blue and it was just
as if someone had switched it on. It was great. And they showed me
the letter H, for Harold. I had trouble seeing the bottom at first,
so I thought it was the letter U. But it was clear."
The revolutionary technique only works in victims of a condition
called retinitis pigmentosa.
Pioneer
This destroys the retina - the light sensitive area at the back of
the eyeball that acts much like a film in a camera.
When their system is developed pioneer doctors Eugene de Juan and
Mark Humayun will kit patients out with visor like spectacles
containing a mini video camera.
Then they will surgically implant a tiny, sealed electronic microchip
just like those for home computers, in the damaged retina tissue.
There it will pick up electronic video signals beamed from the camera.
The chip will then do what the retina now can't do, and transmit the
information about light, dark and colours as electrical impulses to
the brain. There they are decoded into pictures as normal.
A spokesman for John Hopkins University told us: "As with all medical
progress we urge caution, and we don't want to hold out false hope.
But we believe that extensive progress is being made. It's an
engineering project, just like going to the moon," he said. "With
time and money, you can get there."
Watch this space!
[UK 4]******
Source: The Guardian Newspaper - London
Publish Date: 9th February 1999
UK Bookmakers Taking Plenty Of Bets On Armageddon
By Helen Carter Would you put a bet on the end of the world? It might
seem like a dodgy wager, since no matter what the odds, it could
never possibly be honoured.
But every week dozens of punters are placing bets on Armageddon,
possibly inspired by the Millennium and the feeling of doom
surrounding it.
A survey of 1,001 adults found that 59 per cent think they have more
chance of experiencing the end of the world than winning the National
Lottery.
Most (33 per cent) think the end will be caused by a world war,
followed by global warming (26 per cent) and collision with an
asteroid (15 per cent.)
Bookmakers William Hill are offering odds over whether the end of the
world is nigh.
They are offering 100,000,000-1 against civilisation being destroyed
by mass suicide. But when it comes to destruction by alien life
forms, the odds shorten to 500,000-1. Floods (100,000-1), asteroids
(50,000-1), famine (25,000-1), and war (1,000-1) are all covered.
Graham Sharpe, media relations manager at William Hill, said many
people placed very specific bets about when the world would end. "One
man placed =A31 on a 1,000,000-1 bet on the world ending on August 11,
1999, at 12.50pm, while we gave another odds of 6,666,666-1 that it
would end at 6pm on the sixth day of the sixth month this year.
"I would estimate that we would get at least half a dozen of these
bets every week."
John Mason, vice-president of the British Astronomical Association,
said: "Public concern about an asteroid hitting the earth is
understandable but it is highly unlikely that we will see it in our
lifetime.
"An asteroid like the one which led to the extinction of dinosaurs
hits earth only every 50 to 100 million years."
Stories of a similar widespread panic as the last millennium
approached are exaggerated, according to Eric Christiansen, lecturer
in medieval Europe and Baltic countries at Oxford University. He
said: "This was something dreamed up at the end of the 19th century.
"But fear of the end of the world is regular through every
generation. In 1927, thousands gathered in Weymouth expecting it to
end."
[UK 5]******
From: "Michael Doherty" <ronaislg@iol.ie>
Location: County Donegal
Sighting Date: Friday 12th March 1999
Cigar shaped sighting
My name is Ronan Doherty. I am nearly 16 years of age, and I live in
the townland of Galwilly in the district of Glentogher near the town
of Carndonagh in the peninsula of Inishowen in County Donegal.
Last night at about 20.45hrs there was a clear sky. I saw an object a
few miles away at about aeroplane height, perhaps less, NW from our
house. I am used to seeing planes since they cross from Scotland to
the States over us.
The first time I saw it was for about a minute or two, it was
stationary. Its shape was long and cigar shaped, with two big white
lights one at each End. There was a dim red light in the middle and a
white light flashing alternatively at four different places around.
It made no noise at all.
I went back into the house and out again a minute later. In that
time it had moved about 10 miles in a NW direction and was again
stationary, but a good deal smaller. It stayed there for 5 minutes.
After this time it moved off very quickly, vanishing from sight in
about 3 seconds.
About a couple of months ago in roughly the same area but moving in a
NE direction, I saw another strange object. It did not look like a
plane and was making no noise whatsoever. I saw it for about 10
minutes.
Another strange happening took place at about 6.30am on Christmas
morning 1998 while I was jogging in this area. I saw about eight
very bright white flashes in the N direction, lighting up the whole
sky. I looked and listened for news reports of something happening
at that time to explain it, but the only confirmation came from a
friend lying awake in his home in Derry and whose window faces N. He
too saw very bright flashes at the same time. From my home to his is
about 20 miles by road, 13 directly.
The only reason I am contacting you is to pass on this information.
I am not claiming it is a UFO; I can't explain what I saw.
[UK 6]******
Source: This Is London
Publish Date: 18th April 1999
From: Bernhard Nahrgang <bernhard.nahrgang@ob.kamp.net>
Scottish Hotel Offers UFO-Spotting Weekends
Tourists are being offered out-of-this-world weekend breaks at which
they can indulge in UFO-spotting.
The sci-fi themed weekends are being planned for later this year in
Falkirk, Scotland, where there have been more than 350 UFO sightings
reported since 1992.
Organisers of the weekends, at the Comfort Inn, Falkirk, are
expecting to welcome UFO-spotters from as far away at Japan and
Australia.
Falkirk is near the small town of Bonnybridge - where many
inhabitants are said to claim to have seen an unidentified flying
object.
Visitors on the UFO weekends - on September 24-26 and November 19-21 -
will be taken to the "Bonnybridge Triangle", the scene of sightings,
and will also meet Falkirk councillor and UFO expert Billy Buchanan.
Mr Buchanan has spent six years trying to convince the Ministry of
Defence that it should investigate the strange sightings in the area,
and has set up a pressure group called The Lights of Bonnybridge.
The weekends, which include a night of skywatching complete with a
midnight picnic, will cost =A3180 per person.
World News
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[W 1]******
Source: MSNBC
Publish Date: 12th March 1999
Search for E.T. springs forward
By Alan Boyle
Scientists are taking their decades-long quest to find signals from
alien civilizations to its higher level yet, with new software and a
renewed search campaign. Within just a few weeks, the effort could
involve more than 250,000 people - arguably forming the biggest
scientific team in history.
THE FIRST EXTRAVAGANZA is a double-header at the world's largest
telescope, beginning Monday: In a repeat of last September's first
dual campaign, both receivers on the 1,000-foot Arecibo radio
telescope in Puerto Rico will be used simultaneously in the search
for extraterrestrial intelligence, known as SETI.
So far, there have been no confirmed broadcasts from E.T., and it's
unlikely that the new SETI initiatives will crack the case. But you
never know: "It's always possible that we'll establish contact with
E.T. in the next couple of weeks," said Seth Shostak, an astronomer
at the SETI Institute.
Dan Werthimer, principal investigator for Project Serendip, said he
expects the search to yield success after another 20 to 50 years.
"I'm optimistic that we will eventually make contact with other
civilizations, probably in our lifetimes," he said.
PRIME-TIME SCHEDULE
The California-based SETI Institute will use the main radio receivers
for Project Phoenix, a targeted search of 1,000 stars considered most
likely to show signs of life. After years of observations, Project
Phoenix has gotten a third of the way through its list. Over the next
two weeks the researchers will resume the slow, methodical progress
of monitoring each star for hours at a time.
The project checks about 2 billion separate radio channels for each
star. Last September marked Project Phoenix's first two-week session
at the Arecibo telescope, and Shostak said the experience taught the
researchers a lesson about "life in the big city these days - or
should I say, life in the tropics these days."
"There were some chunks of the microwave spectrum there ... where it
was just impossible for us to do any meaningful observations," he
said, due to the increasing cacophony of telecommunications
satellites.
Nevertheless, Arecibo figures into Project Phoenix's strategy for the
next two or three years, Shostak said. The researchers will continue
through their list, and by the time they're finished looking at the
1,000 prime targets, a new telescope system known as the 1HT may be
ready for prime time, he said.
The new system would "speed this thing up by a factor of 1,000 or
more," Shostak said.
ALL SETI, ALL THE TIME
Meanwhile, Arecibo's other receiver is being used independently by
Project Serendip, conducted by Werthimer's team at the University of
California at Berkeley.
Werthimer said the project monitors 167 million channels every
second, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. While SETI does a slow,
thorough analysis of selected targets, Serendip's "piggyback"
receiver can simultaneously do a quick scan of the whole sky for
promising blips.
"I like the mix of strategies," Werthimer said.
Werthimer said progress was also being made on yet another strategy
in the SETI search: looking for transmissions in the optical spectrum
from distant stars, such as bursts of laser light. Scientists at
Berkeley, Harvard University and other institutions are scanning the
skies for short, brilliant bursts of light as well as steady beams,
he said. Berkeley's optical SETI program plans to check 2,500 stars
over the next year or two.
"We're really just getting into gear," Werthimer said.
INTERNET TO THE RESCUE
All SETI projects actually rely on computers to do the heavy lifting,
and right now, the computers represent the biggest bottleneck.
"Even though Serendip is probably the world's largest supercomputer,"
Werthimer said, "it still is not able to find the very weak signals,
and it doesn't look for a wide variety of signal types."
That's where you and about a quarter-million other computer users can
play a part. Over the past four years or so, Werthimer and others
have been working on a way to network desktop computers over the
Internet for distributed analysis of SETI data. It's analogous to the
techniques used to solve encryption puzzles, using tens of thousands
of computers.
The software they developed, SETI@home, is designed to work as a
screen-saver or a background application. It would download a batch
of data from Arecibo, analyze it, then send the results back to
Berkeley. SETI professionals would follow up on any promising blips.
In geek-speak, the 300KB batch represents about two minutes of data
from a frequency band 10KHz wide. The entire SETI@home project is
designed to monitor about 2.5MHz of the radio spectrum - only about
half the bandwidth used by one television channel, and a 40th of the
bandwidth monitored by Serendip. But that relatively small wedge of
bandwidth would be subjected to intense analysis.
About 250,000 people have signed up to receive an e-mail alert when
SETI@home is ready for prime time - and the list is growing by about
1,000 addresses a day, Werthimer said.
Werthimer said a company of about 100 beta testers would be expanded
to a battalion of 1,000 in the next week or so. The current schedule
calls for Windows and Unix versions of the client software in late
April or early May, and a Mac version soon afterward.
If 250,000 computer users actually download the software and use it,
that would make SETI@home the world's largest experiment in
distributed computing, said David McNett, co-founder of
Distributed.Net.
"It gets more difficult as the numbers get higher," McNett said. His
project, aimed at solving encryption challenges and demonstrating the
power of distributed computing, has attracted about 150,000 users
during about two years of operation, with 60,000 users currently
active.
SETI@home's project director, David Anderson, acknowledges that
there's a question mark about "the ability of our server side - the
software and the hardware resources we have - to support the demand
of what could potentially be several hundred thousand people banging
on the thing at once."
The challenges won't end even when the technical kinks are worked out
of the system, McNett said. One of the biggest long-term challenges
will be keeping people interested in a search that could take years
or decades, with no certain "solution" at the end. That goes for
SETI@home in particular - and the SETI search in general.
"The psychological hurdles are actually the hardest ones to reach,"
McNett said.
-[continued in part 2]-
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